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Gabriel Attal unexpectedly interrupted a radio debate in which Valérie Hayer was taking part France’s prime minister has been accused of deliberately seeking to eclipse the head of his party’s list in European elections when he unexpectedly appeared on a stage where she was taking part in a radio debate. The prime minister, Gabriel Attal, strolled into France Info’s radio debate with lead candidates amid an exchange between the anchor and the head of the ruling party’s list for the 9 June polls, Valérie Hayer. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/vetNQG8

These are the moments he lives for – right at the centre of things, all stardust and no responsibility Alas, poor Dicky, I knew him well. Richard Tice and Nigel Farage had already given two press conferences in the previous week. Both times they had been given equal billing. Even though everyone but Dicky T knew who the real star was. On Monday all pretence had been pushed aside. Out came the op note. Nigel Farage was to make an “emergency election announcement”. Tice wasn’t even mentioned as an afterthought. Even though he was probably paying for the pleasure. Dicky was determined not to be left out, though. The man with no charisma or personal warmth relegated once more to Nige’s warm-up act. The man on the downward trajectory. Soon he will be relegated to doorman. I’m not sure if Tice even convinces himself. His patter is all third-rate Farage. The sort of thing you might get if you typed “write me a bad Nigel speech” into ChatGPT. Reform was “moving into eighth gear”, he said. Re

Deputy leader has voted against renewing Trident but says she supports ‘triple lock’ commitment to programme in near term Angela Rayner has said she has not changed her mind about nuclear weapons even though she supports Labour’s policy to keep and renew them. The deputy Labour leader voted against the renewal of Trident in 2016 but said on Monday that she supported Labour’s “triple lock” – a commitment to maintain the UK’s nuclear deterrent round the clock, build four new nuclear submarines, and carry out future upgrades. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/ENCYmBM

Increase sharper than in any age group and is likely to be linked to soaring obesity levels, junk food and inactivity, say experts The number of people under 50 being diagnosed with cancer in the UK has risen 24% in two decades, a sharper increase than any other age group, according to figures experts say are likely linked to soaring obesity levels, cheap junk food and inactivity. Early onset incidence rates grew from 132.9 per 100,000 people in 1995 to 164.6 in 2019, analysis of data shows. About 35,000 under-50s are now developing cancer every year, almost 100 young women and men a day, the research reveals. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/qvbuUeD

A look back at the life of the rugby league star who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2019 and has died aged 41 Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/U8ZK2BO

With a vote on the technology looming, it’s debatable that the search for accuracy is worth the sacrifice of spontaneity On Thursday, Premier League clubs will vote on Wolves’ proposal to scrap video assistant referees . The motion will almost certainly not achieve majority support, never mind secure the 14 votes out of 20 needed for it to pass. But what it may do is to shift the Overton window and lead to a serious review of VAR, an assessment of where it works and where it doesn’t. And that is something that is long overdue. Consultation is unfashionable in the modern world. Politicians of all stripes act too often in effect by fiat, and that is as true in football as anything else. VAR was imposed for the 2018 World Cup with minimal research or conversation and accepted almost everywhere without anybody really investigating the consequences. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3JLgGep

Campaign starts against Scotland with the Yorkshireman set to play an influential role in ensuring team hit all the right notes But for a slip on the golf course, a cruel twist of fate that led to a cruel twist of a left ankle and a pretty sickening compound fracture, Jonny Bairstow might well be a fifth member of the England squad with two white-ball World Cup winners medals. As it is, the Yorkshireman goes into this T20 World Cup defence still looking to add to the 50-over title he was so central to back in 2019. Slated to open in Australia two years ago, only for that incident on the tee to offer Alex Hales a route back in, Bairstow has now been repurposed as a firebrand No 4 after the peppy arrivals of Phil Salt and Will Jacks alongside Jos Buttler in the top three. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/hfT4o5j

After new feature tells people to eat rocks or add glue to pizza sauce, company to restrict which searches return summaries Google announced on Thursday that it would refine and retool its summaries of search results generated by artificial intelligence, posting a blog explaining why the feature was returning bizarre and inaccurate answers that included telling people to eat rocks or add glue to pizza sauce. The company will reduce the scope of searches that will return an AI-written summary. Google has added several restrictions on the types of searches that would generate AI Overview results, the company’s head of search, Liz Reid, said, as well as “limited the inclusion of satire and humor content”. The company is also taking action against what it described as a small number of AI Overviews that violate its content policies, which it said occurred in fewer than 1 in 7m unique search queries where the feature appeared. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/HBTsJ

Author of Anansi’s Gold, a nonfiction account of a notorious Ghanian conman ‘told with biting wit’, wins £1,000 award Yepoka Yeebo has won the 2024 Jhalak prize for her nonfiction book about a Ghanaian con artist. Anansi’s Gold is an “exhilarating journey” through the life and “almost unbelievable” adventures of John Ackah Blay-Miezah, “told with great panache and a biting wit,” said prize director Sunny Singh. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3dZucnP

I was shocked to learn of the brazenness of Israel’s intimidation effort. It is to the credit of the ICC prosecutors that it has failed I should not be surprised at the lawlessness of a government that bombs and starves Palestinian civilians in Gaza, but I was still shocked by the brazenness of Israel’s efforts to subvert the international criminal court’s investigation of its war crimes. As exposed by the Guardian along with Israeli media outlets +972 and Local Call, the Israeli government over the course of nine years “deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries”. The effort was brazen. Mysterious men visited the former chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, outside her private home and handed her an envelope of cash, which the ICC believed “was likely [Israel] signalling to the prosecutor that it knew where she lived,” the Guardian has reported . They allegedly threatened her

Rishi Sunak is so palpably convinced he can’t win he’s promising any old mad thing. Meanwhile, the Lib Dems are falling off kayaks People say manufacturing has declined under the Conservatives, but the sheer volume of outrage manufactured by Rishi Sunak’s national service wingnuttery at the weekend was last night compounded by his decision to unveil a quadruple lock to the state pension. Truly the seven-blade razor of advanced pensions technology. It’s so innovative it might even spin off and manufacture another deranged Loose Women segment . I am still howling at the moment on the show a couple of weeks ago when Janet Street-Porter demanded of Sunak: “Why do you hate pensioners? WHY DO YOU HATE PENSIONERS? That is the only conclusion I can come to.” State of the art lunacy, made end-to-end in the UK. Let’s face it: this is what you call a joined-up manufacturing industry. But look, for whatever reason, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves preferred to spend their afternoon at a facility

Few of us have the money to take a long pause from work or caring responsibilities. But, as I found, even a day can make a difference You might imagine that escaping from your everyday life would involve relocating to a Hebridean croft or attending a series of rejuvenating retreats. But, according to Emma Gannon’s new book project, A Year of Nothing, it could be as simple as staying at home. “I did nothing,” writes Gannon. “I stopped replying to emails. I used my savings. I slept. I borrowed a friend’s dog. I ate bananas in bed. I bought miniature plants. I read magazines. I lay down. I did nothing. It felt totally alien to me.” For Gannon, the sabbatical was enforced after she experienced burnout, caused by chronic exhaustion from occupational stress. “All the while, I was keeping diaries,” she says. “Writing down the ‘nothingness’ of my days. I journalled all the things I noticed, the stuff I usually ignored, the people I met, the kindness of strangers, the magical coincidences – t

This revealing memoir about the author’s 20 years in the City of Light identifies the complex codes of behaviour that newcomers are obliged to master In 1990 the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo published a short essay called Paris, Capital of the 21st Century. By the end of the 20th century, he had decided that Paris was exhausted. The city of avant gardes, ideas, revolutions and class struggle, which had defined so much of European and world history, was now no more than a museum. As almost a lifelong Parisian and a lover of the place, Goytisolo desperately wanted Paris in the 21st century to retake its place as a great metropolis. But this could only happen, he argued, if Paris reinvented itself by “de-Europeanising” itself. By this, he meant it had to look towards the world beyond Europe, welcoming its sometimes dissident non-French, non-European voices to make itself a truly global city. Only in this way could Paris be brought back to life. More than 30 years on from that essay, Si

Dominant Pogacar wins by biggest margin since 1965 Tim Merlier outsprints Jonathan Milan to take final stage Slovenia’s Tadej Pogacar emphatically won the Giro d’Italia on his debut when he retained his unassailable overall lead after the 21st and final stage in Rome on Sunday, winning by the biggest overall margin since 1965. The 25-year-old UAE Team Emirates rider had been in the leader’s pink jersey since winning stage two, the first of his six stage successes, and finished the ceremonial 125km flat run on Sunday safely in the bunch as Tim Merlier won the stage. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/jVsG3bO

Bilbao is used to being decorated in stripes, the flags of their beloved Athletic Club hang from every other window, but on Saturday the city found itself swamped in less familiar colours, Barcelona’s red and blue filling every bar and populating every square as travelling fans celebrated beating Lyon in a Champions League final at the third time of asking. It was their talismanic duo, playmaker Aitana Bonmatí and superstar Alexia Putellas, who delivered in front of 50,827 fans. Bonmatí’s effort taking a deflection off Vanessa Gilles to take it past Christiane Endler shortly after the hour mark, before Putellas added the second a minute after coming on deep into injury time. It was deserved, the French champions were unable to handle the guile of the world’s best passers of the ball. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/Vsb9tAm

The world champion speaks on dealing with Red Bull’s internal strife, learning from mistakes and focusing on performance Max Verstappen takes a breath, gathering his thoughts, the usually ebullient and unpredictable driver for once appearing stilted. It is almost as if he is assessing the parameters of what he can and cannot say, knowing his words carry more scrutiny than ever this season. “The more I talk about it, the more people have to write,” he says, almost apologetically. “You write it down, you make a story out of it and people will pick up little things and it becomes a massive shit storm. You know what I mean? I tell you a story that might get translated to Spanish, Dutch, whatever. The more I say about it is not going to help the situation.” Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/L18RTbO

Ceiling of Medusa Beach Club on the seafront at Palma de Mallorca gave way, according to reports At least four people have been killed and 27 injured after a building collapsed on a beachfront in Mallorca, emergency services said on Thursday. The two-storey building, the Medusa Beach Club, collapsed in Palma de Mallorca, according to reports. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/1AzYfcr

Last of state’s Indigenous tribes vote ‘in solidarity’ to bar Noem after she claimed tribal leaders benefit from drug cartels South Dakota’s far-right governor Kristi Noem is now officially barred by Indigenous groups from visiting all tribal lands in her own home state. The sweeping ban is the latest development in the contentious relationship between Noem and Indigenous tribes after controversial comments the governor made connecting tribal leaders to international drug cartels. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/lCNUTAZ

Cannes film festival Gilles Lelouche’s new movie aims for a Springsteenesque blue-collar energy but buckles under the weight of its own naivety Gilles Lelouche’s new film is a giant operatic crime drama of star-crossed lovers and hurt feelings; it’s very French, but aiming for some blue-collar Springsteen energy. There are some good performances, and a very serviceable armed robbery scene. But Beating Hearts suffers from a lack of subtlety and bloat, with an increasingly insistent cry-bully sensitive-macho ethic, and a colossally inflated final section belatedly reassuring us of the film’s belief in the power and importance of love. In the end it is sentimental and naive, particularly about the legal consequences of beating your husband half to death in a phone box, however abusive he has been. And I had a strange taste in my mouth after a late scene in which the heroine, working on the checkout of a supermarket where her boyfriend is employed in the loading bay, coolly tells the obn

Ex-president recasts FBI’s standard policy statement limiting use of deadly force into claim Biden officials were ‘locked and loaded’ On social media and in a Tuesday fundraising email, Donald Trump raised an alarming concern. The Department of Justice, he said, was ready to kill him. The wild distortion came against the backdrop of Trump’s hush-money trial in New York and amid fears of rising political violence around the coming presidential election, predominantly from the far right. The comments cement an inverted picture Trump and his allies have painted, in which a patriotic Trump is pitted against anti-democratic deep-state foes. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/RmbU7p2