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Ministers promise responsible middle path' and hint at second consecutive surplus but warn some spending deficits will remain

Harbour city has already recorded 124mm of rain in first six days of May, more than the long-term average for the month

On his first visit to Europe since 2019, Xi is set to meet with Emmanuel Macron before heading to Serbia and HungaryXi Jinping has lauded China's ties with France as a model for the international community as he arrived in Paris amid threats of a trade war over Chinese electric cars and French cognac.On his first visit to the EU in five years, China's president will meet his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who will urge him to reduce trade imbalances and use his influence with Russia over the war in Ukraine. Continue reading...

Home affairs minister clarifies that panel created to manage release of people from indefinite immigration detention is not a separate structure from government'

Human rights experts say attack was violation of international law, and that US supplying of weapon defies 1997 Leahy lawIsrael used a US weapon in a March airstrike which killed seven healthcare workers in southern Lebanon, according to a Guardian analysis of shrapnel found at the site of the attack, which was described by Human Rights Watch as a violation of international law.Seven volunteer paramedics, aged between 18 and 25, were killed in the 27 March attack on an ambulance center belonging to the Lebanese Succor Association in the town of al-Habariyeh in south Lebanon on 27 March. Continue reading...

Unaffordable rents and property prices risk becoming a key political battleground across the continent

Seven out of 10 have outside work with six earning more with work than as parliamentary representatives, analysis showsHalf a dozen members of the European parliament earn more from second jobs than as EU lawmakers, according to analysis that raises questions about potential conflicts of interest.The campaign group Transparency International EU found that 70% of the European parliament's 705 members have side jobs. Just over a quarter (26%) of side jobs were paid, with six lawmakers earning more than their 120,900 (103,000) annual gross MEP salary. Continue reading...

Reports say Sir Keir Starmer may risk union support and bow to pressure from business to amend new dealWatering down Labour's plan to strengthen workers' rights would be disastrous for the party's relations with the unions and could cost votes at the general election, the president of the Trades Union Congress has warned.Amid reports that Sir Keir Starmer may bow to pressure from business and amend important parts of his new deal for workers", Matt Wrack said the Labour leader risked causing significant anger" among union members. Continue reading...

Union to roll out 24-hour strikes across England's train operators for three days this week and six-day overtime ban from MondayRail passengers face a week of disruption as train drivers embark on another round of industrial action on Monday, despite tentative attempts by the industry to restart talks.Drivers in the Aslef union will strike for 24 hours at each of England's national train operators over the course of three days from Tuesday until Thursday, while an overtime ban will apply nationwide from Monday until Saturday. Continue reading...

Affording a home has become a political issue as rents and prices soar and supply plummets

The airline agrees to a $100m fine and to repay $20m to customers in settlement with the ACCC

Families of two Australians and American who went missing in Baja California have identified the bodies, officials sayMexican authorities have identified the three dead bodies found in a well in Mexico as Australian brothers Callum and Jake Robinson and their travelling companion, Jack Carter Rhoad.The trio, who went missing in the Pacific coast state of Baja California, were killed with gunshots to the head, Mexican authorities said on Sunday. Continue reading...

Ministers say move will combat growing concerns about privacy and dignity' in gender-neutral facilitiesNew restaurants, offices, schools and hospitals in England will be required to have separate male and female toilets, in a move ministers say will combat growing concerns about privacy and dignity" in gender-neutral facilities.The law will mean newly built non-residential buildings require separate facilities, and cannot solely have universal" lavatories. Continue reading...

Singer says her country needs the opportunity to remind Europe of Russia's invasionUkraine's former Eurovision winner Jamala has said her country cannot afford" to boycott the song contest because it needs the opportunity to remind Europe of Russia's invasion.There have been calls for artists to refuse to participate over Israel's inclusion in the music competition while the war in Gaza continues. Continue reading...

Governments in Westminster and Edinburgh urged to engage with Petroineos to save Scotland's sole remaining oil refineryThe UK and Scottish governments have been asked to arrange urgent talks to protect the future of Scotland's only remaining oil refinery at Grangemouth.Daniel Johnson, Scottish Labour's economy spokesperson, has written to PetroChina, part of the joint venture that owns the site, seeking to discuss the future of the complex where oil refining is due to cease next year. Continue reading...

Graeme McCormick said he had the support to run but is backing former Scottish deputy first minister, who is sole official candidateA Scottish National party activist has pulled out of the race to become its new leader and has endorsed John Swinney as Scotland's next first minister.Graeme McCormick, who stood to become SNP president in 2023, earlier claimed he could gather the 100 signatures needed from 20 different party branches to mount a challenge for the leadership. Continue reading...

About 100 people attended Republic rally in central London, with parallel events in Edinburgh and CardiffA 15ft dinosaur called Chuck the Rex" was the centrepiece of a rally calling for the abolition of the monarchy ahead of the first anniversary of King Charles's coronation.It will be a year since the king's coronation on Monday, when gun salutes across the capital will commemorate his reign. Continue reading...

Trailers for fake five-episode series use broadcast clips to poke fun at Conservative prime ministersChaos, drama, sleaze and scandal - it sounds like the background to a prestige TV show, but it could also describe 14 years of Conservative government.It's this overlap that Labour is riffing on as the party releases trailers for Chaos & Decline, a spoof five-episode series stitching together broadcast clips of low moments under Conservative rule that pokes fun at Tory MPs while telling the story of the damage wreaked on UK society and the economy under the party's five prime ministers. Continue reading...

Suspect, 27, from Witham, Essex has been released on bail while five-month-old boy remains in critical conditionA woman has been arrested on suspicion of neglect after a five-month-old boy suffered a cardiac arrest at Legoland Windsor Resort.The baby is in critical condition in hospital after the incident at about 1pm on Thursday, police said. Continue reading...

Netanyahu refuses demands of permanent ceasefire and also moves to shut down Al Jazeera networkSenior Israeli officials ramped up pressure on Hamas on Sunday, saying Israel would refuse any permanent end to hostilities and threatening a new onslaught in the very near future" if the militant organisation did not accept recently proposed terms for a ceasefire.In a televised address, Benjamin Netanyahu once more rejected Hamas's demands for a definitive end to the war in Gaza, saying that any permanent ceasefire would allow the group to remain in power and pose a continuing threat to Israel. Continue reading...

Three men from Scotland and one from Colombia held in connection with discovery at Stags Head Inn, Lelley, East YorkshireFour men have been arrested after 40m worth of cocaine was found in the back of a van in a Yorkshire village pub car park.About 500kg of the drug was discovered in a Vauxhall Vivaro in the car park of the Stags Head Inn in Lelley, East Yorkshire, the National Crime Agency said. Continue reading...

PM and allies seemingly intent on staying the course in face of conflicting calls on how to avoid wipeout when country goes to pollsAs the terrible council and mayoral results rolled in for the Conservatives on Friday night, was there any part of Rishi Sunak that regretted sealing Boris Johnson's fate as prime minister by resigning as his chancellor less than two years ago?This could have been Johnson's defeat, hurtling towards a Labour landslide at a general election, with Sunak and his allies plotting how to replace him thereafter. Continue reading...

Pat McFadden says local election results give the party confidence it can win blue wall' seats that are turning red'Labour is planning to target the south of England heavily at the general election as the local election results show some blue wall" seats are turning red, Keir Starmer's election chief has said.The shadow cabinet minister Pat McFadden said Labour was advancing in southern Tory heartlands and it was wrong to think the Lib Dems were the only challengers to the Conservatives in the south. Continue reading...

Analysis shows almost 18% drop in party's vote in areas of England where more than a fifth are MuslimA senior Labour official has insisted the party wants better lives for Palestinian people as it prepares to shift its campaigning to win back voters opposing its position on Gaza.Pat McFadden, the party's national election coordinator, said it would work to get people's support back" as analysis showed that despite huge gains in council seats, seizing the West Midlands mayoralty, and Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London, winning a third term, there was an almost 18% drop in the Labour vote in areas of England where more than a fifth of people identified as Muslim. Continue reading...

Southern Water says supplies coming back to St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings now that rupture in woodland area has been fixedWater has started to return to more than 30,000 homes in East Sussex after a main burst three days ago.Southern Water said in an update on Sunday afternoon that supplies were gradually being restored" to about 32,5000 properties in St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings. Continue reading...

Graeme McCormick claims he will gather requisite number of signatures to force contest instead of unopposed coronationJohn Swinney could face a leadership contest before he becomes Scottish National party leader after an activist said he expected to win enough nominations to stand.Graeme McCormick, a well-known party activist who stood to become SNP president in 2023, claimed he would gather the 100 signatures needed from 20 different party branches to mount a challenge for the leadership. Continue reading...

Council says punctuation mark causes problem for geographical databases but locals say their loss is a sign of falling standardsA council has provoked the wrath of residents and linguists alike after announcing it would ban apostrophes on street signs to avoid problems with computer systems.North Yorkshire council is ditching the punctuation point after careful consideration, saying it can affect geographical databases. Continue reading...

Foreign Press Association decries move under new law based on claim network is a treat to national securityIsraeli authorities shut down the local offices of Al Jazeera on Sunday, hours after a government vote to use new laws to close the satellite news network's operations in the country.Critics called the move, which comes as faltering indirect ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas continue, a dark day for the media" and raised new concerns about the attitude to free speech of Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline government. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Party insiders say departure of Hilary Schan could mark start of end for grassroots leftwing groupMomentum's future is hanging in the balance" after the leftwing grassroots group's co-chair resigned and quit Labour to campaign for the Green party and independent candidates.Hilary Schan said she had begun contemplating her role within Labour in October when councillors first expressed their frustrations over the leadership's unwillingness to show value to the humanity of Palestinian lives". Continue reading...

Peter Magyar, who is running in European elections, has shot to prominence by pledging to end corruptionA rising challenger to Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, has held what he has called the largest countryside political demonstration in the country's recent history on the latest stop on his campaign tour that has mobilised thousands across Hungary's rural heartland.

Suella Braverman says Conservative party will be lucky to have any MPs unless it adopts harder line on immigration and rightsRishi Sunak will face pressure to adopt hard rightwing policies such as an immigration cap and scrapping European human rights law this week, with Suella Braverman saying he needs to own and fix" a disastrous set of local election results.Sunak's allies were on Sunday insisting he wanted to stick to his current plan and that it was working, as plotters against his leadership accepted they did not have the support to challenge him. Continue reading...

Matthias Ecke, a European parliamentarian for Olaf Scholz's SPD, was set upon while putting up EU election posters in DresdenA 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early on Sunday morning and said he was the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician", police said in a statement. Continue reading...

Parisian bakers have claimed victory over rivals in Italy who created a baguette almost 133 metres long in 2019For the past five years, bragging rights over the world's longest baguette have belonged not to the residents of a small village or a city in France, but rather to a clutch of bakers 500 miles away in Como, Italy.On Sunday a crop of 12 bakers from France set out to rectify this, spending hours kneading, shaping and baking their way back to victory. Continue reading...

Prof Ghassan Abu-Sitta says Schengen-wide ban imposed by Germany appears to be attempt to silence witness testimonyA London surgeon who provided testimony on Israel's war in Gaza after operating during the conflict has said he feels criminalised after being denied entry to France over the weekend.Prof Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon was due to speak on the ongoing war to the French parliament's upper house on Saturday. However, after arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport north of Paris on on a morning flight from London, he was informed by French authorities that Germany had enforced a Schengen-wide ban on his entry to Europe. Continue reading...

Party has gained 768 seats, Labour 545 and the Greens 480, while the Conservatives has lost 1,783The Lib Dems have added more council seats than any other party over the last parliament, gaining more than 750 in the last five years, largely in the south-west and south of England.As Ed Davey's party won more seats than the Conservatives in the local elections last week, the Lib Dems said Tories would be looking over their shoulder terrified" as the general election approached. Continue reading...

Netanyahu cabinet votes to shut down TV network's operations in Israel; Yoav Gallant says Hamas appear to not be serious about reaching a truce. This live blog is closed

Former home secretary says Tory voters are on strike' and are not coming out to support us' in wake of dire local and mayoral election results

The wartime PM was so taken with Paul Trevillion's work that he arranged a meeting to pay his compliments in personAt the age of 90, and with a successful career as a sports artist under his belt, there is one work of which Paul Trevillion is particularly proud. Perhaps surprisingly, it isn't among his portraits of legendary stars such as Sugar Ray Robinson, Pele, Muhammad Ali, George Best, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods.It is an image of another of Trevillion's heroes: a pen-and-ink drawing of Winston Churchill created in 1955, and carrying a rare signature of the UK's wartime leader. Continue reading...

Police say a woman and three children escaped blaze with not life-threatening injuriesA child has died and four people were treated in hospital after an early morning house fire in Bradford.West Yorkshire fire and rescue service sent three crews to the fire at a residential property in the Bolton Outlanes area of the city at 1.05am on Sunday. Continue reading...

Pro-Palestine protesters hope encampments at universities will contribute to an international student revolt'Students across Britain have said they hope pro-Palestine protests will reach the same scale as those seen on US campuses as they call for universities to divest from companies supplying arms to Israel.Protests have spread across university campuses in Sheffield, Bristol and Leeds, after a crackdown in the US on protests, which led to mass arrests of students and staff. Continue reading...

Many prisoners are homeless after release but former inmate and probation worker want to fix thatDarryn Frost and Steve Gallant are still dealing with the trauma of tackling a terrorist at Fishmongers' Hall, London Bridge, in 2019.Gallant, 47, who was on day release from prison where he was serving a life sentence for murder, helped fend off the attacker alongside Frost, 43, a probation worker who had grabbed a 1.5-metre long narwhal tusk as a weapon. Continue reading...

Russian president attends service led by one of his staunchest backers while Zelenskiy asserts God is on Kyiv's sideOrthodox Easter services in Ukraine and Russia have taken on a political tone, as Volodymyr Zelenskiy asserted that God had a Ukrainian flag on his shoulder" and Vladimir Putin attended a church service led by a staunch supporter of Moscow's invasion.Noting that Ukraine had now been fighting Russia for 802 days, Zelenskiy called on Ukrainians to pray for each other and the soldiers on the frontline. And we believe: God has a chevron with the Ukrainian flag on his shoulder," said the president, dressed in a traditional embroidered Ukrainian vyshyvanka shirt and khaki trousers. So with such an ally, life will definitely win over death." Continue reading...

Word of the demonstrations that have spread across the west has cheered some in Gaza's southernmost city

Charities say FoI disclosure that 369 such children were held over 21-month period is hugely concerning'More than 350 lone children were held in UK-run detention facilities in northern France over a 21-month period, according to documents disclosed under freedom of information laws.The Home Office has admitted that it failed to keep data on how many properly trained staff looked after the children held in four short-term holding facilities near Calais and Dunkirk in 2022 and 2023. Continue reading...

Former home secretary says PM's plan is not working' and he needs to change course after local elections drubbing

TV head hopes programme will spark a #MeToo moment for men' ahead of two-part show on the Oscar-winning actorOne of the producers of a Channel 4 documentary that contains fresh claims that Kevin Spacey behaved inappropriately" with men says it will be broadcast as planned on Monday, despite public denials from the actor this weekend.Dorothy Byrne, a former head of news and current affairs at the television channel, told the Observer that she hopes the new two-part programme, Spacey Unmasked, will prompt a #MeToo moment for men" and start a wider discussion about standards of behaviour in working situations. Continue reading...

Academics warn loss of higher education arts and humanities courses will harm understanding of racism and imperial historyCuts to arts and humanities subjects within higher education will have damaging implications for our understanding of race and colonialism, academics have warned.Petitions have been launched to save anthropology at Kent University, where the subject has come under threat of closure, while Oxford Brookes confirmed the closure of its music programme earlier this year. Continue reading...

Rapper says sport, music and gaming venture in south London is aimed at widening opportunities for young black communityStormzy has won three Brit awards, headlined Glastonbury, persuaded Usain Bolt and Jose Mourinho to star in a music video, and bought AFC Croydon Athletic with the former Crystal Palace player Wilfried Zaha.His skills on the pitch, however, are not up to much. I'm shit at football. I was never going to be a footballer," he said. But maybe if I knew how to be a pundit [I'd have gone down that road]. Maybe if I knew how to be a data analyst or all the intricate jobs behind the scenes that people might not know about." Continue reading...

Longer sentences and court backlogs push 25% of prisoners in England and Wales into shared cells, adding to drug-use and violenceThe scale of the prison overcrowding crisis has been laid bare by figures revealing that a quarter of prisoners in England and Wales have been sharing cells designed for one person with at least one other inmate.According to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), 11,018 cells intended for single use were being shared by two prisoners, with a further 18 such cells shared by three inmates. The overall prison population - which has ballooned over recent decades because of longer sentences and court backlogs - stood at about 88,000 when the statistics were originally compiled in late February. Continue reading...

Lost documents prevented victims from finding out the truth, official inquiry toldDisastrous failures that caused the contaminated blood scandal were denied by ministers for decades after officials destroyed, lost and blocked access to key documents, memos submitted to the official inquiry reveal.Several batches of files involving the work of a blood safety advisory committee were shredded as the government faced the threat of legal action, documents show. Patients who were given contaminated blood when they were children have also told the infected blood inquiry how their hospital medical files were destroyed or initially withheld. Continue reading...