21 h. ago Shoppers flock to buy £64 garden sun lounger reduced to £25 with 'game changer' feature for anyone who likes reading

This lounger has a unique feature that makes it perfect for reading in the sun

Economics

22 h. ago Championship final day: Leeds crowned champions and Luton relegated

Injury-time winner against Plymouth seals top spotLuton down, Bristol City and Coventry in playoffsLeeds were crowned Championship champions in dramatic fashion after Manor Solomon’s injury-time winner against Plymouth at Home Park meant Daniel Farke’s side held off Burnley, who beat Millwall 3-1, on goal difference to seal top spot with a century of points. At the other end of the table, Luton suffered a second successive relegation after a 5-3 loss at West Brom.It is the first time two sides have reached 100 points in the same Championship season. But it looked uncertain early in the day, with Mihailo Ivanovic giving the Lions an early lead at Turf Moor and a Sam Byram own goal doing likewise for Argyle. Continue reading...

Sport

42 h. ago ‘My moment of glory’: Nicolas Cage lookalikes assemble in London

To mark the release of his new film, hundreds of people who sort of look like the actor gather outside Prince Charles cinemaOn a sunny, bustling late afternoon outside a cinema in Soho, central London, more than a hundred people have gathered, a number of whom sort of, if you squint, look a little bit like the actor Nicolas Cage.There is a Raising Arizona Cage, moustachioed and with a Hawaiian shirt. There are several Con Air Cages in white vests, one of whom has a toy bunny in a small cardboard box. Several can genuinely claim an uncanny likeness to the actor; one or two others might uncharitably be said to be closer to Cage’s character in Face/Off, who surgically swaps his own distinctive features for the face of someone else – in that case, John Travolta – who looks nothing like him. Continue reading...

Politics

44 h. ago ‘I was scared to even eat the vegetables in my fridge’: the eating disorder that focuses on food purity

As health institutions collapse and Maha influencers spread food fears, experts say orthorexia is on the riseKatie Lundgreen Urness’s struggles with disordered eating began when she was just 11.A gymnast, she put a lot of value in being petite. Urness, 28, who lives in Utah, remembers longing for candy as a child but “feeling like I couldn’t eat a single Skittle”. Continue reading...

Politics

48 h. ago Why are Hollywood stars lining up to appear in a play they know nothing about?

Toby Jones, Frances McDormand and Mike Myers are some of those who have appeared alongside Tim Crouch in An Oak Tree, despite never having seen the script before. As the play celebrates its 20th anniversary, past performers explain its strange appealThe standard routine in theatre goes something like this: an actor is cast in a play; they read, learn and rehearse it; and then, at last, they perform it to an audience, who will hopefully soak up their hard work. But for Tim Crouch, one of the industry’s chief experimenters, this exercise began to feel reductive. “A lot of actor training is about holding focus within the stage and putting the audience into a receiving role,” says Crouch. “I used to go to pubs and bitch about it.”An Oak Tree – his 2005 play that is now seen as a landmark work – was born directly from these frustrations. The script, which is written to be performed by Crouch and a new actor each night, celebrates its changeability. “It is a finished p...

Politics

69 h. ago I’m considering dating again. Should I stop having sex with my ex?

This may be the best sex of your life thus far, says advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, but does that mean it’s the best sex can possibly be?Read more Leading questionsShould I stop having sex with my ex? I recently broke up with someone who is fantastic in bed, and good at the fun stuff, but utterly incompatible with me as a partner. There was a lot of pain involved in finding this out.I’m considering dating again, but haven’t managed to stop having sex with this person – it’s the best sex I’ve ever had, and we have agreed to be friends with benefits. Should I stop? Will it impede my progress in moving on to potential new partners? I don’t have any desire to rekindle a deeper relationship, but don’t want to give up the fun bits that bring me so much pleasure and joy. I’ve never done anything like this before – uncharted territory for me. Continue reading...

Politics

69 h. ago I’m considering dating again. Should I stop having sex with my ex? | Leading questions

This may be the best sex of your life thus far, says advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, but does that mean it’s the best sex can possibly be?Read more Leading questionsShould I stop having sex with my ex? I recently broke up with someone who is fantastic in bed, and good at the fun stuff, but utterly incompatible with me as a partner. There was a lot of pain involved in finding this out.I’m considering dating again, but haven’t managed to stop having sex with this person – it’s the best sex I’ve ever had, and we have agreed to be friends with benefits. Should I stop? Will it impede my progress in moving on to potential new partners? I don’t have any desire to rekindle a deeper relationship, but don’t want to give up the fun bits that bring me so much pleasure and joy. I’ve never done anything like this before – uncharted territory for me. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago Freakier Friday cast and crew criticise ‘hurtful’ Asian stereotypes in 2003 film

Director Nisha Ganatra said she felt they ‘owed audiences to make it right’ in the new filmThe director and leading cast member of Freakier Friday, the soon-to-be-released sequel to Disney’s 2003 body-swap comedy Freaky Friday, have criticised the “hurtful” Asian stereotypes of the older film and said they “owed audiences to make it right”.Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, director Nisha Ganatra, a Canadian whose parents were first generation immigrants from India, said of the 2003 film: “I remember watching it and feeling torn, mostly about the Asian representation It was something I brought up right away when I had my first meetings with the producers. I had a moment of the presentation that was like, ‘problematic Asian representation!’” Continue reading...

Culture

4 d. ago Playing with words: why novelists are becoming video game writers – and vice

While the novel remains a high-status cultural form, video game writing is still seen as a throwaway art – despite some of the biggest names in fiction being involvedI’ve been working in games for a little more than 15 years, and the main thing I’d say about it at this point is that it’s a pretty annoying job to explain at parties. People often say something like, “Oh, I don’t really play games,” which is surely an odd thing to tell a game designer moments after you’ve been introduced; I don’t really eat croissants, but that’s not the first thing I bring up if I meet a patissier.So one of the joys of publishing my first novel last year was the option to sidestep all of that, and say: “Oh, I’m a writer.” I wrote a novel; I’m working on another one; job done, the conversation can move on. Nobody says, “Oh, I don’t really read books,” even though that’s at least as likely to be true. Continue reading...

Culture

4 d. ago Several people injured in Uppsala after reports of gunfire, police say

Police say people ‘have been found with injuries that indicate gunfire’ after loud bangs heard in Swedish citySwedish police said on Tuesday that several people in the city of Uppsala in eastern Sweden had been found with injuries that indicated gunfire after loud bangs were heard in the city.The police said in a statement that they had received calls from members of the public who said they had heard noise that sounded like gunfire in the centre of the city. Continue reading...

Events

5 d. ago ‘Maga Catholics’ are gaining ground in the US. Now their sight is set on the Vatican

Conservative US Catholics like Steve Bannon look to win ‘war that lasts decades’ with pope antithetical to FrancisOnce the papal conclave starts, the cardinals choosing Pope Francis’s successor will be strictly shut off from the world until a new pope is named. But the coming days before the conclave begins on May 7 will see competing factions of Catholics, including many laypeople, campaigning in the Vatican and the US to influence the church’s future – none with more urgency than those discontented with Francis’s liberal reign.American Catholics will fight to play a central role. Soon after the news of Francis’s death reached faithful the world over, the American counter-revolution mobilized, Vatican watchers say. Red-eyes to Rome were booked. Long-distance phone calls were made. Various cardinals likely received sudden dinner invitations. Continue reading...

Economics

6 d. ago Manchester City show hints of resurgence with Guardiola masterclass | Jacob Steinberg

Manager finds fresh motivation with young talent after guiding club to win over Forest in FA Cup semi-finalNews just in: Pep Guardiola still has a few tactical tricks up his sleeve. The scary thought for the rest of the Premier League must be that Guardiola, who looked and sounded like a man ready to pack it in and head for the golf course earlier this season, is finding fresh motivation in putting Manchester City back together. Enjoy it while it lasts, you can imagine him saying to his rivals, but just be aware that I have revenge planned for anyone who dared to wonder if I was finished when we were losing 4-0 at home against Tottenham.It is, of course, worth pointing out that it is too soon to assume that a new imperial era is taking shape. City are deservedly through to their third consecutive FA Cup final, a date with Crystal Palace secured thanks to a well-crafted 2-0 win against Nottingham Forest, but Guardiola still has damage to repair. Ever the perfectionist, he will look b...

Politics

6 d. ago My life’s a mess. Will turning it into a game make everything better?

With two small kids and a dog to take care of, I often struggle to look after myself. Self-care apps promise to help – if you can handle the quests, magic potions and rainbow stones. I put four of them to the testThe other night, I didn’t moisturise before bed. The baby had just woken and was crying for a feed. I didn’t want him to wake the toddler he shares a room with, and I couldn’t, in that intensely fraught moment, locate my Elizabeth Arden.We all find it hard, at times, to fit in self-care. But if there’s one thing I’ve noticed since becoming a mum of two small children, it’s that even the most basic level of personal care requires military-level planning. Often, I pour from an empty cup because I haven’t had time – or, more likely, I’ve simply forgotten – to refill it. Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago Which dog should I get? How to choose the best pet for families, city living or people with allergies

We asked professional dog trainer Graeme Hall AKA The Dogfather to give us his suggestions for your perfect poochAt the risk of pleasing a handful of the dog owning population and annoying the vast majority, we asked Graeme Hall, AKA The Dogfather, a dog trainer, presenter of TV’s Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly and author of Does My Dog Love Me? to suggest the best breeds for different contexts. “It would be really funny if for every category I said labrador,” laughs Hall. However, his recommendations do come with a caveat: “Dogs are individuals. All Yorkshiremen are smashing, but every now and again you might meet one who’s not. Dogs are a bit like that.” Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago Boxing shines through unexpectedly once Eubank Jr and Benn step into ring | Alex Reid

If professional boxing is a test of will and skill, there was a so-so supply of the latter but a gigantic supply of the formerIn north London on Saturday night, people turned up for a soap opera and, of all things, a fight broke out. Chris Eubank Jr’s unanimous-decision victory over Conor Benn gradually developed into a contest so action-packed that it was tempting to completely overlook the tawdry buildup or the fact that it was only their famous surnames that had guaranteed both boxers career-high paydays.During a scrappy start, you could be forgiven for thinking the fight had perhaps peaked two hours and five minutes before the first bell. That was the moment when Chris Eubank Jr arrived at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with a smirk and – perhaps more notably – his supposedly estranged father by his side in a suitably ostentatious sheepskin jacket, looking like a 1980s football commentator who had won the pools. Continue reading...

Sport

8 d. ago Sister Europe by Nell Zink review – all the ideas Trump deems most dangerous

This comedy of manners set among Berlin’s cultural elite is a prescient interrogation of language, identity and powerOn 7 March 2025 the New York Times published a list of words that the Trump administration was systematically culling from government documents and educational materials. This list, which includes the words “gender ideology”, “affirming care”, “confirmation bias”, “ethnicity”, “identity”, “immigrants”, “racism”, “prostitute”, “political”, “intersectional” and “privilege”, reads like a bingo card for Nell Zink’s astonishingly prescient new novel, Sister Europe, in which a large cast of racially, economically and gender-diverse characters convene over the course of a single evening to attend a literary awards ceremony in Berlin.On its surface, Sister Europe is a comedy of manners set among Berlin’s exclusive and elusive cultural elite. The prose is searingly quick, revelatory and funny: Zink’s dialogue reads like our best plays. Entertaining banter could ...

Politics

8 d. ago Who’s a clever boy: the average dog has a mental age of about two. But what are they really thinking?

They can learn hundreds of words, count to five and read humans like a book, so why do we struggle to understand them? Scientists reveal the truth about our pets – and whether they ever feel guilty for eating our slippersThe thing that made me think my dog may be a genius was the word monkey. We’d developed a game where I’d hide her monkey toy – a sad, lifeless being, long lobotomised by my golden retriever puppy – and, when I asked her to find it, I realised she could differentiate the word monkey from other objects. A woman in the park had a similar story. On holiday in an unfamiliar cottage, she had misplaced the car keys. After hunting for them for over an hour, her dog, a border collie, overheard her and her husband talking about it, recognised the word “keys” and immediately went and found them.So maybe my dog, Rhubarb, isn’t a genius after all. Dogs, says Vanessa Woods, director of the Puppy Kindergarten project at Duke University in North Carolina, US, and writer of sev...

Politics

9 d. ago Ravneet Gill’s recipe for apple souffle and hazelnuts | The sweet spot

Here’s a showstopper pudding for you: a scooped-out apple shell stuffed with apple souffle and topped with nutsTake souffle to the next level by baking it inside an apple. This retro dessert is easy and a bit of fun, too. The result is a soft, tender apple shell filled with light, airy souffle, perfect with lashings of vanilla ice-cream (which will hopefully form a delightful puddle when served with the hot pudding). Ideal for entertaining – it’s like eating the filling of an apple pie, but lighter. Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago Elon Musk’s xAI accused of pollution over Memphis supercomputer

Hearing scheduled for Friday as residents say AI company has distributed leaflets that downplay pollution dangersElon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is stirring controversy in Memphis, Tennessee. That’s where he’s building a massive supercomputer to power his company xAI. Community residents and environmental activists say that since the supercomputer was fired up last summer it has become one of the biggest air polluters in the county. But some local officials have championed the billionaire, saying he’s investing in Memphis.The first public hearing with the health department is scheduled for Friday, where county officials will hear from all sides of the debate. In the run-up to the hearing, secretive fliers claiming xAI has low emissions were sent to residents of historically Black neighborhoods; at the same time, environmental groups have been amassing data about how much pollution the AI company is likely generating. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Nintendo backtracks on Switch 2 feature leaving some players worried

This feature would have been a game changer for people playing Nintendo Switch 2 in docked mode.

Sport