5 h. ago Scots soldier who lost eye during training opens up on 'daunting' experience

Steven Williams, 42, from Edinburgh, was forced to leave the Army in 2011 after a sharp tree branch snapped back into his face during field training in Nairobi.

Events

6 h. ago Lottie Tomlinson has emergency surgery after falling ill on flight to Abu Dhabi

The influencer experienced stomach pains while travelling, meaning she had to be rushed to hospital

Politics

7 h. ago The best photos as people enjoy Barry Island on hottest day of the year so far

It looks like the hot, sunny weather is here to stay with the Met Office warning the UK could experience heatwave conditions over the weekend

Culture

7 h. ago The Guardian view on assisted dying: a momentous bill that needs further attention | Editorial

Kim Leadbeater has led a strong campaign, but concerns about the likely impact on vulnerable people remainThe central issue before MPs, as they decide how to vote on the latest version of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill, is how to value individual autonomy relative to collective responsibility for vulnerable members of society when making regulations around the end of life. Should terminally ill people be allowed to end their lives with medical help? If so, under what safeguards? The question remains ethically, medically and legally complex.Technological and social changes enabling people to live much longer have created challenges around the resourcing of care and experiences of ageing and dying. There are profound questions about how we manage the final stages of life – and what we owe to those living through them. Continue reading...

Events

7 h. ago La Mer: French Piano Trios album review – expansive, beguiling and unexpected

Neave Trio(Chandos)Works by Saint-Saëns, Mel Bonis and Sally Beamish’s imaginative reinterpretation of Debussy’s La Mer make for a disparate but rounded programmeThree French works make a disparate but rounded programme on this release from the Neave Trio. Saint-Saëns took years to write his Trio No 2, and the result was a sprawling five-movement work that gets an appropriately wide-ranging and meaty performance here. The first movement roils and surges, the players catching both the push and pull of the restless theme and the brief passage of stillness later on. The slow third movement sings .with wistful nostalgia, and the fourth flows by in a waltz-like whirl pitched somewhere between Chopin and Dvořák. But the second movement, with its obsessively repeated rhythmic motif, perhaps needs a little more imagination to make it work.The two movements of Mel Bonis’s Soir et Matin, written in 1907, are the opposite way round in atmosphere from how you might expect: Soir (Evening) is sou...

Politics

7 h. ago Spain rejects Nato plan for member states to spend 5% of GDP on defence

PM Pedro Sánchez says he wants a ‘more flexible formula’ that would make target optional or allow Madrid to opt outSpain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has rejected Nato’s proposal for member states to increase their defence spending to 5% of their GDP, saying the idea would “not only be unreasonable but also counterproductive”.Sánchez said that he was not seeking to complicate next week’s Nato summit in The Hague, but he wanted there to be a “more flexible formula” that would either make the target optional or allow Spain to opt out. Continue reading...

Politics

8 h. ago Steve Borthwick wants as many England players as possible involved with Lions

There are five uncapped names in an experimental England squad.

Sport

8 h. ago Trump denies report that he has approved US attack plans against Iran

US president says Wall Street Journal ‘has no idea’ what his thoughts are on Israel-Iran conflictMiddle East crisis – liveDonald Trump has denied a report in the Wall Street Journal that he has approved US plans to attack Iran, saying that the news outlet has “no idea” what his thinking is concerning the Israel-Iran conflictThe Journal reported late on Wednesday that Trump told senior aides a day earlier that he had approved attack plans but was delaying on giving the final order to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program. The report cited three anonymous officials. Continue reading...

Politics

8 h. ago Emma Willis details her 'scary' surgery after doctors found 'bizarre' hole in her heart during check

The much-loved presenter, 49, took a trip to the doctors in January after experiencing an increasing number of heart palpitations.

Science

8 h. ago Lauryn Goodman slams trolls after social services called on her kids

Lauryn Goodman has spoken out about her horrific experience with notorious gossip website Tattle Life, saying that social services were even called over her kids she shares with Kyle Walker.

Politics

9 h. ago £30k for being compared to Darth Vader. £25k for a birthday card. £17k for being called a weirdo. How Britain's employment tribunals became a laughing stock... and have reached breaking point

When Lorna Rooke's NHS colleagues entered her personality traits into a light-hearted online quiz they had no idea this apparently innocent piece of workplace banter would lead to a court hearing.

Economics

9 h. ago George Ford and Jamie George add experience to youthful England facing France XV

Steve Borthwick has named his England XV to take on a France XV, with 13 players away on Lions duty

Politics

10 h. ago Ryanair plane crashes on runway after passengers experience 'severe turbulence'

This is a breaking news story and is constantly being updated as the story develops

Events

10 h. ago Hark by Alice Vincent audiobook review – a search for silence

A former music journalist’s exploration of how we listen is informed by her life-changing experience of motherhoodWhen did you last experience total silence? In Hark, the author Alice Vincent goes to extreme lengths to eradicate noise as she spends time in an anechoic chamber, a heavily soundproofed space designed to swallow up sound waves. There she becomes aware of the noises of her own body, from involuntary swallowing to the soft, high-pitched ringing in her ears. But rather than feel unease, she is “confronted with a comfort I couldn’t have imagined – and a familiarity with quietude I didn’t realise I was living in”.Hark is a book about listening, being heard and the author’s shifting relationship with sound in the early years of motherhood. While working as a music journalist in her 20s, Vincent had been surrounded by noise. But now, in her 30s and plunged into domesticity, she finds herself craving quiet. She also examines how others experience sound, investiga...

Politics

10 h. ago Holidaymakers battle it out for £10 trip to luxury Ibiza holiday worth £10,000

Holidaymakers have the opportunity to win the ultimate Ibiza experience worth £10,000 complete with entry to some of the hottest clubs

Economics

10 h. ago ‘Death is complicated and kaleidoscopically beautiful’: Jerskin Fendrix on his emotional new album – and life after Oscar success

The British composer broke into Hollywood as Yorgos Lanthimos’s go-to guy on Poor Things and more. But his heart remains in Shropshire – the backdrop to his ambitious, grief-stricken latest recordThe sun is shining, birds are tweeting and a river gently flows just yards away as Jerskin Fendrix tells me about his love of growing up in Shropshire. “It was so gorgeous and majestic,” he says, sitting in the garden of a friend’s house where he spent a lot of time in his youth. “It was nature, forests and hills and then just normal teenage life. The combination of this numinous, big landscape and getting wasted in a cornfield with your mates listening to Kanye West on a Bluetooth speaker while seeing a massive sunset.”Such vivid scenes fill his latest album, Once Upon a Time in Shropshire. The opening track, Beth’s Farm, captures an idyllic scene where animals roam and rural teens party. “I thought it was a really nice symbol of this naive innocence,” he says. “Trying to get across how bu...

Events

11 h. ago Make your viewing experience smarter with Samsung’s range of OLED TVs

Powered by Samsung’s latest AI processors, enjoy enhancements to your favourite films and TV shows like you've never seen them before

Politics

11 h. ago Love Island 'carnage' as 'most intense row yet' sees stars scream in each others' faces

Love Island experienced the 'most intense row yet' which saw stars scream in each others' faces as tensions boiled over.

Politics

11 h. ago Lucy Bronze responds to squad controversy with defiant Lionesses message ahead of Euro 2025

Lucy Bronze has hailed the Lionesses squad as one full of "winners", despite losing experienced trio Mary Earps, Fran Kirby and Millie Bright ahead of their European Championship defence

Politics

12 h. ago Lived experience key as Harbour Ayrshire help people facing addiction

Three years on, an Ayrshire charity is continuing to support people facing addiction with a string of lived experience at the heart of their work.

Politics