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Teams like Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls have gone down in history for their winning streaks. But what's it like to be on a truly terrible roster?The business of sports is about winning. But that, of course, doesn't mean there aren't plenty of losers out there. That's most evident every year in the NBA around the first day of spring. With about a dozen games left in the regular season, it's obvious which teams are also-rans - and they have probably known that for some time. But when a team are losing and losing often, how does that affect the roster? How do the players deal with the constant lows?When you lose," says former NBA All-Star Xavier McDaniel, it's like getting a life sentence. I knew for me, losing, it started me to drink beer. Losing created a lot of bad habits. Losing can be a disease. We were losing so much [my rookie season] that by January I was drinking beer!" Continue reading...

Whether it is by declaring a trade war or by bullying Greenland, visceral hatred is driving American policyThe Signalgate" scandal confirmed what Europeans already knew. The Trump administration's disdain for Europe is deep and the transatlantic fracture is structural. While our leaders publicly play down the significance of the unravelling that is manifestly under way, few actually sound as convinced in private.Hopes persist that Europe can prevent the most extreme manifestation of the collapse in the relationship, be it an invasion of Greenland, the withdrawal of US forces from Europe's Nato member states or an all-out trade war. Most urgently, European leaders are focused on ensuring that if (or perhaps when) the US throws Kyiv under the bus, it is Europe collectively that will somehow succeed in securing a free, independent and democratic Ukraine. But there should be no illusion that this will happen by working in synergy with Washington or even with its tacit approval.Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist Continue reading...

The cliche of the loutish, emotionally inadequate boyfriend is everywhere. The truth is more complicatedHow is the ideal heterosexual girlfriend supposed to behave? This played on my mind after I watched Companion, a film about a loutish millennial man named Josh with a robot girlfriend named Iris. Iris was designed to be the perfect girlfriend, and so she regards Josh with total devotion and admiration, and prioritises their relationship above all else. She has a head full of fake memories, such as the one of the day they met, when they were both in the same supermarket and he clumsily upended a display of oranges, sending them rolling across the floor. This caught her attention. She has been programmed to regard this as the best day of her life.Like so many things you watch and read now, Companion is intended to reflect a familiar trope back at the viewer in an exaggerated but unchallenging fashion. It's a pantomimed version of a wildly imbalanced heterosexual relationship, a portrayal that will be familiar to anyone who has come across heteropessimist" discourse recently. Men, in this telling, are broadly akin to useless, unappealing Josh. Women feel deeply disappointed and embarrassed about dating them but are still committed to doing so, like a self-aware version of Iris. Crucially, heteropessimism shows no desire to reform the very real disparities between men and women, but the opposite: it takes as a given that women are sheepishly resigned to heterosexual relationships reflecting the worst of these inequities.Rachel Connolly is a writer and author of the novel Lazy CityDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Thanks to Trump's administration, the US could soon have to fight wars to get things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the askingNo one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office."

Sudan's capital has been hollowed out and stripped for parts, its people trampled beneath a conflict that is far from overTen days ago, in a major turning point in almost two years of war, the Sudanese army reclaimed the capital city from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia which took it over in 2023. What little we know so far paints a picture of a city ravaged by unimaginable horror.The war has sent Sudan hurtling into the largest humanitarian disaster in the world, triggering genocide in the west of the country, and starvation there and in other areas. Previously allies in power, the RSF - formalised and expanded from the remnants of the Janjaweed militia - and the Sudanese military went to war when their partnership fell apart. The victims have been the Sudanese people, whose lives were trampled beneath. Khartoum's centrality in the war, both in its prosperity and in terms of what it represents for the RSF as the seat of power, has meant the city has been subjected to a particularly intense and vengeful campaign: the RSF seized it and then proceeded not to govern the city, but strip it and terrorise its inhabitants. Continue reading...

US president says his Russian counterpart's questioning of Volodymyr Zelenskyy's credibility could delay ceasefireDonald Trump has said he is pissed off" with Vladimir Putin over his approach to a ceasefire in Ukraine and threatened to levy tariffs on Moscow's oil exports if the Russian leader does not agree to a truce within a month.The US president indicated he would levy a 25% or 50% tariff that would affect countries buying Russian oil in a telephone interview with NBC News, during which he also threatened to bomb Iran and did not rule out using force in Greenland. Continue reading...

Trump also says in interview he was very angry' with Putin and threatened to bomb Iran - key US politics stories from 30 March 2025Donald Trump has said there are methods" - if not plans" - to circumvent the constitutional limit preventing US presidents from serving three terms, in an explosive interview in which he also said he was very angry" with Vladimir Putin, threatened to bomb Iran and did not rule out using force in Greenland.In the interview, which aired Sunday on NBC, Trump told host Kristen Welker regarding a third term that there are methods which you could do it". Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of serving a third term but has often masqueraded it as a joke. But on Sunday, he confirmed he was not joking".Catching up? Here's what happened on 29 March. Continue reading...

The actor best known for his roles in TV shows including Dr Kildare and The Thorn Birds has died aged 90. We look back at his career on stage and in film and television

Atlantic editor says Trump adviser's defense for accidentally adding him to war plans chat was implausibleAtlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg has dismissed the explanation offered by national security adviser Mike Waltz for how he was included in a Trump administration group text chat about - and in advance of - the recent bombing of Houthi rebels in Yemen.Goldberg said Waltz's theory that his contact was sucked in" to his phone via somebody else's contact" was implausible. Continue reading...

Alexander Stubb - who played golf with Trump this weekend - suggested deadline and US sanctions packageDonald Trump is losing patience with Vladimir Putin's stalling tactics over the Ukraine ceasefire, the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, said after spending several hours with the US president - including winning a golf competition with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Saturday.Stubb, who also spent two days with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, last week in Helsinki suggested in a Guardian interview a plan for a deadline of 20 April, by which time Putin should be required to comply with a full ceasefire.

Leaders call on federal authorities to explain actions after University of Minnesota student detained on ThursdayOfficials in Minnesota were seeking answers in the case of a University of Minnesota graduate student who was being detained by US immigration authorities for unknown reasons.University leadership said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detained the student on Thursday at an off-campus residence. Officials said the school was not given advance notice about the detention and did not share information with federal authorities. The student's name and nationality have not been released. Continue reading...

Group of Sipa graduates demonstrate against government's jailing of graduate student, who spoke up for PalestiniansA handful of alumni from Columbia University's school of international and public affairs (Sipa) ripped their diplomas in a show of protest against the federal government's jailing of graduate student Mahmoud Khalil's over his activism for Palestinians.On Saturday, instead of participating in the university's annual Sipa alumni day, a few dozen alumni and students gathered outside campus as part of a protest organized by Sipa's and Barnard Alumni for Palestine groups. Continue reading...

Owner of Ogilvy and Grey agencies follows other multinationals in dropping or downplaying DEI policies since Trump's electionThe British advertising giant WPP has become the latest company to cut the phrase diversity, equity and inclusion" from its annual report as the policies come under attack from the Trump administration.The agency, which counts the US as by far its largest market, boasts the storied Madison Avenue" agencies J Walter Thompson, Ogilvy and Grey among its top brands. Continue reading...

A new book chronicles the Slovenian's rise with the Dallas Mavericks, his extraordinary skills and the fallout from a trade that shook the NBASeventy-three points. That was Luka Doni's total when he led the Dallas Mavericks to a victory over the Atlanta Hawks last season. He wasn't the only NBA player to have an explosion on offense that season - think Joel Embiid or Karl-Anthony Towns. And the league subsequently decided to change officiating to favor more physical play that would presumably cut down on high offensive output.That's how Tim MacMahon sees it. The veteran ESPN writer has covered Doni since the Slovenian's arrival in Dallas as one of the most heralded European talents in NBA history. He saw Doni live up to his billing, leading the Mavericks to the Western Conference finals in 2022 and the NBA finals last year. And he knew that even a change in rules wouldn't stop Doni's stepback three. Continue reading...

WHCA says it was dropping Amber Ruffin's performance so the event's focus is not on the politics of division'Comedy is off the menu at the annual White House correspondents' dinner, a once convivial get-together for reporters to meet with federal governments officials that has become too fraught for light-heartedness amid the second Donald Trump presidency.The dinner, scheduled for 26 April, is organized by the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA), and it typically features a post-meal comedic interlude where a comedian sets to work on the powerful. Beginning with Calvin Coolidge in 1924, every president has attended at least one WHCA dinner - except for Trump. Continue reading...

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Rare admonition from a sector that has largely been silent in the face of the second Trump administrationThe US biotech industry's main lobby group issued a rare warning following the forced and abrupt resignation of the nation's top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), saying the loss of his experienced leadership would erode scientific standards" and affect the development of transformative therapies to fight disease.The statement, issued on Saturday by John Crowley of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), followed the news a day earlier that Dr Peter Marks - who led the FDA division that ensured the safety of vaccines - had resigned over what he called misinformation and lies" from health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.Stephanie Kirchgaessner contributed reporting Continue reading...

America's Quad God lapped the field to win another world title with a record-tying six quadruple jumps, but his attention remains fixed on a standard just out of reachIlia Malinin had just finished defending his world title with another sensational performance including six quadruple jumps beneath the lights of a nearly sold-out TD Garden. But as he pounded the ice after his final pose, the gesture wasn't pure triumph like last year in Montreal. It was the frustration of a perfectionist falling short of a standard no one else is asking him to meet.That was definitely because I didn't land all seven," the 20-year-old American said afterward. It's still the one thing I want to accomplish - whether before the Olympics or sometime in my career - just to land them all and really maximize my technical ability, while also incorporating the rest of the program." Continue reading...

Key elections in Florida, Texas, Arizona and Wisconsin could offer a glimmer of hope to DemocratsSeveral elections on Tuesday will be a crucial test of the popularity of the chaotic and extremist first two months of Donald Trump's second term and the clout of his close ally, Elon Musk, the world's richest man who has been tasked with radically reforming the US federal government.They could also offer a glimmer of hope to Democrats - fresh off a surprise upset win in a local race in Pennsylvania last week - that their divided political party could be seeing a resurgence in its fortunes. Or, if they fail to land further blows on Republicans, it will be yet another sign that the party is destined for a long period in the wilderness amid historic lows of its popularity in recent polls. Continue reading...

Masih Alinejad is a vocal critic of Tehran who recently was pursued by hitmen for her advocacy of Iranian womenMasih Alinejad has long held fast fighting for women's rights in Iran despite ongoing threats from the regime.Alinejad, an Iranian American dissident, has for years been targeted by Tehran for her unrelenting criticism of Iran's government as a journalist, author and activist publicizing human rights abuses on social media - and calling for change. Continue reading...

Trump says tariffs on foreign-made cars would would lead to increased sales of US-made carsDonald Trump said on Saturday he did not warn car industry executives against raising prices as tariffs on foreign-made autos come into force, telling NBC News he couldn't care less" if they do.The president's comments came as the White House prepared to impose new tariffs on a range of consumer goods on 2 April, a move that has drawn criticism from international leaders and concerns about potential price increases for consumers.Guardian staff contributed reporting Continue reading...

The president - who believes he has been treated unfairly by the press - is squeezing the media in different ways than his first termOn Tuesday 4 March, Donald Trump stood in the House of Representatives to issue a speech to a joint session of Congress, the first of his second term.Near the beginning of what was to be a marathon address, the president declared: I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It's back." Continue reading...

GOP lawmakers and consumer advocates have found common ground in banning preservatives and chemicalsA West Virginia law signed this week bans synthetic dyes and preservatives in food - a first-in-the-nation consumer protection led by Republicans in the face of vociferous industry opposition.West Virginia's law is one of dozens of bills introduced across the country, as Republican state lawmakers get on board with one of the most powerful forces to emerge from the 2024 presidential campaign - the movement to make America healthy again" or Maha. Continue reading...

Experts says rounding up protesters and taking control from universities goes beyond McCarthy's witch-huntsDonald Trump campaigned on the promise that he would crack down against pro-Palestinian student protesters.Over the past few weeks, he has forcefully followed through. Continue reading...

Priyanka Shetty combines personal and political in #Charlottesville, a play that explores the deadly 2017 white supremacist rallyShe had moved from India to live the American dream. Priyanka Shetty came to study acting at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, a liberal place of clipped lawns and classical architecture rated in one survey as the happiest city in America.But what she found was isolation and discomfort because of her race and, as the era of Donald Trump dawned, a nation on the cusp of hostility towards immigrants like her. Then came a white supremacist march through Charlottesville and an explosion of racist violence that left one woman dead. Continue reading...

Normally staid historians sound alarm at authoritarian grasping for control of the premier US museum complexIn a brightly lit gallery, they see the 66m-year-old skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex. In a darkened room, they study the flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the national anthem. In a vast aviation hanger, they behold a space shuttle. And in a discreet corner, they file solemnly past the casket of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman in the US south.Visitors have come in their millions to the Smithsonian Institution, the world's biggest museum, education and research complex, in Washington for the past 178 years. On Thursday, Donald Trump arrived with his cultural wrecking ball. Continue reading...

The push to end sexual violence has sparked a revenge campaign setting fire to women's rights and pushing young men to the right. But organizers can learn from the movement's lossesDressed in his trademark sunglasses and a skintight black T-shirt, Andrew Tate strode into a Las Vegas arena like a returning king. He was there to watch Power Slap, a UFC offshoot where people slap each other in the face with such force that doctors say it could lead to brain damage and death.Days earlier, Tate and his brother Tristan had been in Romania, their assets seized, awaiting trial on human trafficking charges. But following reported conversations between Romanian officials and the Trump administration, the Romanian government lifted a travel ban on the brothers. Now, as a heavily male crowd watched men slap one another so hard they collapsed, the UFC president, Dana White, warmly embraced the Tates. White, a Meta board member who was once caught on camera slapping his own wife, smiled at the Tates, looked them in the eyes, and told them: Welcome to the States, boys." Continue reading...

Trump and congressional Republicans attempting to exert control over mostly Democratic capital cityWashington DC has found itself in the crosshairs of Donald Trump and congressional Republicans in recent weeks, with efforts by both to exert more control over the overwhelmingly Democratic capital city.The president on Thursday signed an executive order he said would make Washington DC safe, beautiful, and prosperous" by stepping up crime fighting, arrests of undocumented immigrants and the processing of permits to carry concealed weapons. Trump separately directed JD Vance to remove improper ideology" from the Smithsonian Institution, which has many museums in and around the city. Continue reading...

Scale of cuts undermines US president's own promises of ending stateside terrorism and curtailing antisemitismDonald Trump's administration has ended funding for a slew of counter-terrorism research projects, in a move experts say will hinder future law enforcement abilities to predict and prevent attacks on the public, especially from the far right.The cuts, affecting multiple agencies and departments, come after the US president granted unconditional" pardons to about 1,500 people involved in the January 6 attacks on Capitol Hill and the appointment of the Trump ultra-loyalist Kash Patel to the helm of the FBI. Continue reading...

At rallies, town halls and protests, voters are unleashing their fury with Donald Trump, stoking what some believe is a populist backlashDemocrats are furious. And they want their leaders to get mad, too.I wish you'd be angry," a constituent told representative Gil Cisneros, a Democrat of California, at a recent town hall. At an event in Minnesota featuring a panel of Democratic attorneys general, an activist voiced a similar sentiment: Get angry, man," punctuating the message with a profanity. Continue reading...

Ono was blamed for splitting the Beatles and taking John Lennon from his true calling. Let's hope things are getting easier for women who date famous musiciansMore than 50 years after John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1969 bed-in, protesting against war, Ono finally gets her love-in. David Sheff's biography Yoko, published last week, seeks to put the record straight about her stellar achievements as aninternationally renowned conceptual artist.In recent years there havebeen retrospectives, including one at London's Tate Modern. Kevin Macdonald's docufilm, One To One: John And Yoko, is released in the UK next month. Ono, 92, is seeing reputational rehabilitation on a global scale, and all a long time coming. Continue reading...

Is it worth me writing jokes about Trump's US? It looks like they are targeting even their mildest visa-carrying criticsDuring the Brexit era, it became obvious many comments under these columns were being placed by Russian trolls, with slightly strange grasps of idiomatic English, cut-and-pasting blocks of approved pro-Putin and anti-EU texts to change the direction of the discourse. Their posts read like the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but trained on 90s MTV Europe presenters' accents and Russia Today op-eds.I began to bait the bots by inserting deliberately incomprehensible, but also somehow provocative, sentences into my pieces, culminating in the following paragraph, from the summer of 2016, after which point the Russian provocateurs left me alone: Continue reading...

The US president's rapid dismantling of democratic norms has sent scholars scrambling for global precedentsIt reads like an inventory of Donald Trump's first two months back in the White House.A newly elected demagogic president, renowned for his rabble-rousing rallies and provocative stunts, makes a whirlwind start on taking office. Continue reading...

Arrests, blacklists and deportations are chilling reminders of the red scare that transformed AmericaGold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that goes into the finding and getting of it." It's a line spoken by Walter Huston in the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a story about greed and moral corruption directed by his son, John Huston. That line was to have appeared on screen at the beginning of the film. It didn't, on orders from the studio, Warner Bros. It was all on account of the word labor'," John Huston later reflected. That word looks dangerous in print, I guess."It was a relatively insignificant moment in the drama of America's postwar red scare. McCarthyism proper had still to take flight. Yet, so deep ran the fear already that a single, everyday word could create consternation in Hollywood. Continue reading...

I'm with Lauren Laverne: surviving the disease can lead to a newfound resilience and love of simply being aliveLauren Laverne says she loves her life more now that she's had cancer. I know exactly what she means. Imagine you're diagnosed with cancer. Do you think you'd look back on the moment as one of the best of your life?It sounds bonkers if you've not been through it, but it's how I feel. My wedding day beats it. As does Stuart Pearce's penalty against Spain in Euro '96, Nottingham Forest getting promoted at Wembley and Oasis reuniting. But those are in everyone's top five, so let's set them aside. Continue reading...

His foolish foreign trip and the response to the Signal chat leak reflect the irresponsibility of White House teamNot for the first time, JD Vance, America's outspoken vice-president, has made a public fool of himself. He insisted on visiting Greenland despite unequivocal statements by the territory's leaders and Denmark's government that he was not invited and not welcome. Vance's trip was confined to a remote Arctic base, where he briefly spoke to a few Americans. Plans to make a wider tour and speak to Greenlanders were cancelled - because Greenlanders did not want to speak to him.Such hostility is entirely understandable, given the repeated, provocative and disrespectful declarations by Vance's boss, Donald Trump, that the US plans to annex Greenland and may do so illegally and by force. Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory within the kingdom of Denmark. Election results this month showed the vast majority of local people back expanded self-rule or outright independence. They do not want to be Americans. Continue reading...

More than 200 demonstrations take place from Australia to Switzerland; senior FDA official resigns citing RFK Jr's misinformation and lies' - key US politics stories from 29 March 2025People around the world joined protests against Elon Musk and his attempts to dismantle the US federal government on Saturday, gathering outside Tesla showrooms from Australia to Switzerland and California.Protest organizers asked people to do three things: don't buy a Tesla, sell off Tesla stock and join the Tesla Takedown" movement. Hurting Tesla is stopping Musk," reads one of the group's taglines. Stopping Musk will help save lives and our democracy." Continue reading...

Despite drastic cuts by the Trump administration, Native American coaches are teaching and defending traditionsLong before Michael Jordan changed the sport of basketball, another Jordon transformed the National Basketball Association's (NBA) history by breaking the league's racial barrier as its first Native American player.In 1956, Phil the Flash" Jordon, a descendant of the Wailaki and Nomlaki tribes, was drafted by the New York Knicks and played 10 seasons in the league. Though he may not carry the same cultural cache as other hoopers throughout professional basketball's century-plus existence, Jordon embodies a longstanding Native American fixation on the sport - especially at the community level. Throughout the years, Native Americans have embraced basketball and made it their own. One way they're doing so today is with rez ball", a lightning-fast style of basketball associated with Native American teams. Continue reading...

PM told to be as robust as Canada with the US president as the UK stages last-ditch talks to strike trade dealKeir Starmer should fight back strongly against Donald Trump if he imposes punitive tariffs on British exports, senior UK and EU diplomats said on Saturday night, amid heightened fears that the US president could trigger a global trade war with devastating effects on the UK economy.British government officials in London and Washington are working frantically this weekend to try to persuade Trump not to slap duties on more key UK industries on what he is calling liberation day" on Wednesday. The US president has already announced plans for 25% levies on imports of cars, steel and aluminium to the US. Continue reading...

If I reduced my existence to a series of ChatGPT prompts, the act of my living is only shorter - not betterAs much as I have the general vibe of a luddite (strange hobbies, socially maladjusted, unfathomable fashion choices, etc) I have to hand it to automation: it's nice that computers have made some boring things in our lives less boring.I side with the writer and philosopher John Gray, who in his terrifying work of eco-nihilism Straw Dogs balances the fact that human beings are a plague animal who are wrecking the biosphere that supports them with the idea that we have made our lives easier through technology. Gray, in particular, calls anaesthetised dentistry an unmixed blessing". Continue reading...

The US administration believes it can divide public attention until there is a new scandal. It may be a winning strategyWhen it comes to Trump-era scandals, the shameless responses to Signalgate", in which top administration officials discussing details of an impending strike in Yemen in a group chat without noticing the presence of a prominent journalist, should set alarm bells ringing for its brazenness and incompetence.In a particularly jaw-dropping exchange, Tulsi Gabbard, the United States' director of national intelligence, was forced to backtrack during a house hearing after she had said that there had been no specific information in the Signal chat about an impending military strike. Then, the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg published the chat in full, contradicting Gabbard's remarks that no classified data or weapons systems had been mentioned in the chat. Continue reading...

My own trip to Nuuk showed me you can't just rock up and attempt to bend all that bleak, rugged terrain to your willIn August 2018, I did something that JD Vance and his wife, Usha, can only dream of: I went to Greenland, and I didn't cause a national outcry against my presence. The not-causing-a-national-outcry part of that was easy. All I had to do was show up and not be a thinly veiled agent of Trumpian expansionism while pretending to care about dog sled races.The other part - going to Greenland in the first place - is harder to explain. I'm not an explorer, a sailor or a climate scientist. I don't belong to any of the vanishingly few occupations with legitimate reasons to visit the Arctic Circle. I was there, inexplicably, as a literary journalist. Continue reading...