News and stories from all over the world

Keyword – Fashion
KeywordS –
Title – Bows, bounce and rule breakers: week two on the red carpet at the Cannes film festival – in pictures
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/matt-fidler,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/chloe-mac-donnell
Link – Bows, bounce and rule breakers: week two on the red carpet at the Cannes film festival – in pictures
Publish date – Mon 25 May 2026 16.00 CEST
Category – Lifestyle
Hyperlink – Bows, bounce and rule breakers: week two on the red carpet at the Cannes film festival – in pictures

Barcelona
‘The end of the road’: the man on a mission to take Barcelona back from overtourism
Stephen Burgen
Mon 18 May 2026 06.00 CESTLast modified on Mon 18 May 2026 08.24 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/18/man-tasked-with-taking-barcelona-back-from-overtourism

A fter decades of relentlessly marketing their vibrant Mediterranean city, the Barcelona authorities have appointed a man on a mission to say “no more” – and, he says, to return its most iconic market back to local residents.

Last year, the Barcelona area attracted 26 million visitors, up 2.4% on 2024. The appointment of José Antonio Donaire as the city’s first commissioner for sustainable tourism represents a significant change of heart and a shift away from viewing tourism as an unalloyed good to believing it is alienating citizens and eroding the Catalan capital’s identity.

“We’ve reached the end of the road, Barcelona has reached the maximum number of tourists it can accommodate,” he says. “We don’t want more tourists, not even one more, but we need to manage those we have.”

It could take some time to feel the impact of the changes Donaire proposes, not least because, whatever the city’s intentions, other actors, many of them beyond its control – such as the port, the airport, airlines, hoteliers and the big-is-better travel industry – may not be on the same page.

But there is no doubting his sincerity and ambition, which even extends to rescuing Barcelona’s famous La Boquería market, emblematic of the worst of what mass tourism has wrought on the city’s identity.

La Boquería, once a haven for chefs and foodies but for years a no-go area for most of Barcelona’s residents, will, he says, return to being a market that sells fresh food rather than takeaway snacks, which will be banned with the consent of the majority of stall holders.

“Within a year you’ll see the new Boquería,” Donaire says.

The city’s attempt to curb visitor numbers began in 2017 with a moratorium on building new hotels in central Barcelona, but that was largely undermined by the rapid surge in short-let tourist apartments listed on sites such as Airbnb.

In 2028, Barcelona’s 10,000 legal tourist apartments will have their licences revoked and it is hoped by the city council that the majority of these properties find their way back on to the rental market and alleviate the city’s housing crisis.

Donaire accepts this has not been the case in New York City – which in effect banned tourist apartments in 2022 without any subsequent increase in rentals – but says Barcelona has plans to incentivise landlords to put property back on the market.

“At the moment the housing stock is growing by 2,000 homes a year,” he says. “If we can get those 10,000 tourist apartments on the residential market, it’s the equivalent of five years’ growth.”

Donaire, an eloquent man with a penchant for tartan waistcoats who came to the job with a professorship at the University of Girona and as director of its tourism research institute , says the new policies are not aimed so much at reducing numbers as changing the profile and behaviour of visitors.

About 65% of visitors are classified as “leisure tourists” while the rest are either in Barcelona for conferences, or are what Donaire describes as “cultural visitors” who come for the museums, architecture and music festivals.

He says the aim is to reduce the number of leisure tourists to arrive at an equal three-way split between them, culture visitors and people coming on business. Other measures include reducing the number of cruise ship berths from seven to five: the city though will still receive upwards of three million cruise passengers each year.

These visitors spend little when they’re ashore and, as Donaire puts it, “create more problems than benefits”.

Another group that will not be affected by restrictions on city centre hotels and tourist lets are the seven million annual day trippers, most of whom arrive by coach. Barcelona has increased parking fees and forced coaches to park on the periphery of the city in an effort to reduce numbers.

About half of tourists in Barcelona are repeat visitors who will have already seen the main sites and Donaire plans to encourage this group to make day trips out of the city or to visit areas such as Montjuïc, a large park that is home to several museums but scarcely any residents.

“What we don’t want is to encourage tourism in areas that aren’t prepared for it and where it will create problems,” he says.

Barcelona is also – and not for the first time – clamping down on various forms of antisocial behaviour, including a ban on organised pub crawls. “We’re not interested in this type of tourism and we want it to disappear,” says Donaire. It furthermore plans to invest a portion of the recently increased tourist tax into the city centre to increase local commerce in an area where retail is dominated by convenience stores, souvenir and cannabis shops.

Such proposals will no doubt be received with some scepticism, especially as quality over quantity – although those were not Donaire’s words – is not a new refrain, but he and his backers hope that after 30 years of tourist boom the balance may be tipped back in favour of Barcelona’s residents. “Many citizens feel the city centre no longer belongs to them,” Donaire says. Can he be the man to give it back to them?

Iran
Trump turns to Middle East allies as deal to end Iran war proves elusive
Andrew Roth
Tue 19 May 2026 20.45 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 22.23 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/19/trump-iran-analysis

As he seeks an exit from the Iran war, Donald Trump is increasingly outsourcing his policymaking to US allies in the Middle East, while the White House appears unable to find a simple way to end the fighting and reopen global shipping lanes held by Tehran.

In Trump’s telling, the “dealmaker-in-chief” has maintained a consistent policy toward Iran aimed at preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, leveling threats and incentives to reach a new deal that would also open the strait of Hormuz.

But amid calls with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and contacts with Gulf leaders, the US president has oscillated between preparing to launch a major strike on Iran and then postponing plans for the supposed attack because a deal was “within reach” – despite little indication that Tehran and Washington are any closer to making peace.

The sequence of events began on Sunday, when Netanyahu said he would speak with Trump about the Iran file, adding that Israel’s “eyes are also wide open regarding Iran”. Shortly after their call, Trump wrote on TruthSocial that the “clock is ticking” regarding Iran. “They better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them,” he wrote. “TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”

Pakistani diplomats had said that talks were continuing but had given no indication that Iran and the US were close to a peace deal. The US and Iran at the time had been trading drafts of a peace deal but Trump had said publicly that he was unhappy with Iran’s proposals. “Well, I looked at it, and if I don’t like the first sentence I just throw it away,” he said during his return flight from China to the US.

Trump is known for changing his views based on the “last man in the room”, with advisers sometimes prompting major policy changes based on short conversations. A presentation by Netanyahu in the White House Situation Room in February was instrumental in convincing Trump to launch joint strikes against Iran – even despite the skepticism of some of his senior advisers, the New York Times reported.

As he wrote that the ceasefire with Iran was on “life support”, open-source analysts also noted a significant increase in US military activity in the Middle East, including the presence of dozens of KC-46 and KC-135 refuelling aircraft at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport.

But with rumours on Monday swirling of an imminent strike, Trump in an extraordinary disclosure said that he had cancelled an attack on Iran in order to allow for negotiations to move forward.

To explain the sudden about-face in US policy, Trump said US allies in the Gulf – the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the UAE president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, and the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani – requested a pause because “serious negotiations are now taking place, and that, in their opinion, as Great Leaders and Allies, a Deal will be made, which will be very acceptable to the United States of America”.

Iran was also ready to sacrifice its nuclear program for peace, Trump claimed, although there was little evidence from Tehran that this was true. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, a relative moderate to the hardline leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), appeared to confirm renewed talks but added that “dialogue does not mean surrender” and promised to protect the rights of the Iranian people.

The reaction to Trump’s disclosure of a planned military strike on Iran has been mixed, and there has been considerable skepticism. A headline in the Daily Beast summed that up succinctly, writing: “TACO Trump Calls Off ‘Planned Military Attack’ Nobody Knew About.” (“Taco” stands for “Trump always chickens out” – a jab at the US leader’s tendency to back down on his threats during negotiations.)

Most importantly, none of the Gulf leaders appeared to know about Trump’s plans for an imminent attack. The Wall Street Journal had reported that Gulf leaders were “unaware” of US plans to attack Iran, instead urging more time for talks in order to prevent an escalation of violence that could blow back on energy infrastructure in Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Asked later, Trump kept his options open once again, saying that he had only called for a delay in the attack of several days.

“I never tell anybody when, but they knew that we were very close,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “I would say we were, I was an hour away from making the decision to go today.”

Trump, meanwhile, said Iran had just a few days to return to negotiations.

“Maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday, something, maybe early next week, a limited period of time,” he said.

“We may have to give them another big hit. I’m not sure yet,” he said.

Comedy films
I Love Boosters review – Boots Riley’s absurdist shoplifting comedy is a mixed bag
Radheyan Simonpillai
Tue 19 May 2026 12.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 21.49 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/19/i-love-boosters-review-boots-riley

B ack in 2018, rapper and activist Boots Riley made his feature film debut with Sorry to Bother You . It’s a caustically funny satire about racial and economic disparity, following a telemarketer played by LaKeith Stanfield, who puts on a “white voice” to succeed. But it also has horse people. That was, for me at least, the point when Sorry to Bother You threatened to break the spell, even in an absurdist fun-house mirror of our fraught world that Riley makes his soapbox.

The brash film-maker doesn’t make it easy to love his gonzo agitprop. That’s part of his whole appeal, really. He dares us to resist and gets away with it because he’s such a compelling and necessary voice.

All this to say, Riley’s latest, I Love Boosters, is just as outrageously hilarious and militant in its refusal to be enjoyed in the most conventional sense. Just when you’re getting into a comfort zone with his seductive heist premise, in which Robin Hood-like thieves liberate high fashion from the filthy rich, Riley throws in some demon cunnilingus; or Marxist notions like dialectical materialism, which he illustrates for the audience by depicting two people raw-dogging it.

OK, those hysterical bits are pretty digestible. I’m holding back from revealing just how absurd and baffling things get from there, at the risk of alienating or distancing in the same way Riley did in Sorry to Bother You. But the offending gags and detours always feel motivated by, and organic to, the movie’s rousing political ideas and cinematic resistance. And whatever it is that makes them confounding or frustrating, also makes sure we’re not being lulled into complacency.

Let’s just say I Love Boosters is welcoming of all resistance, even towards itself.

And Riley isn’t the first to play this game, of course. Trolling with political intent is very Jean-Luc Godard, who Riley throws a cheeky reference to in I Love Boosters. Perhaps he’s acknowledging how much is borrowed from the French new wave film-maker’s radical masterpiece, Tout Va Bien. Just substitute Tout Va Bien’s Paris for the Bay area setting in I Love Boosters, and replace the hostile labour strike at a French sausage factory with a multifaceted international revolt against the fashion industry.

The boosters, led by Keke Palmer’s squirrely and irresistibly charming Corvette, are part of that revolt. They’re on a shoplifting spree, snatching designer fashion off the racks in retail stores, stuffing everything they can into their spacious outfits, all to be pawned later. We first see Corvette making off with so much under her pink plush jump suit that she looks like a Teletubby waddling out the store.

Corvette, Taylour Paige’s mischievous Mariah and Naomi Ackie’s stoic Sade are entrepreneurs who treat their venture like a movement. They’re building community among fellow boosters and appreciative customers. Mariah dubs it “fast fashion philanthropy”.

Their operation also puts them on the same side as the exploited retail staff and the Chinese sweatshop labourers who oppose Demi Moore’s silver-haired Christie Smith, a haute couture vulture capitalist who knows no ethical or corporeal bounds. Christie, who comes off like a more conniving, less commanding response to The Devil Wear’s Prada’s Miranda Priestly, has some creations that bend in a similar direction to those horse-people from Sorry To Bother You.

It’s Christie who dubs the unidentified thieves ransacking her stores “the Velvet Gang”. She also calls them “low-class urban bitches”. Corvette’s just flattered Christie knows they exist.

Corvette idolizes Christie. She once aspired to be just as successful a designer before hustling, as a fast way out of living in an abandoned fried chicken spot with Mariah. They take showers where the service counter used to be, the scent of extra crispy chicken remaining hard to shake.

I Love Boosters is loaded with several such sight gags, while boasting Riley’s knack for sketch comedy, especially during deliriously fun heist scenes. An early bit when Mariah holds her breath long-enough so she can turn light-skinned Black, just to throw off the white retail staff watching suspiciously, is peak Riley. Things get especially wild when Poppy Liu shows up, as a refugee from the unsafe Chinese factory producing Christie’s clothing. She joins the Velvet Gang, and brings a teleportation device to the action.

Riley gets the most out of his ensemble, which also includes Sorry to Bother You’s Stanfield as a sultry playboy who seems to melt the screen whenever he stares deep into Corvette’s eyes, and Don Cheadle, disguised under heavy latex, to play a greasy furniture salesman with a pyramid scheme preying on his own community.

But while every actor gets to make a brash and indelible impression, their characters can feel frustratingly limited. We don’t really get intimate with Corvette and her crew, to know and adore them enough to hang on when the plot goes haywire. So many of the movie’s characters are defined mostly by where they fall on the spectrum when it comes to race and capitalism, and their function in the movie’s messaging.

I Love Boosters keeps everyone at a distance, in full view of its political tapestry.

I Love Boosters is out in US cinemas on 22 May with UK and Australia dates to be announced

Sign up for the Football Daily newsletter: our free football email

2022-11-14T09:05:50.000Z
News
https://www.theguardian.com/info/2022/nov/14/football-daily-email-sign-up

Grenfell Tower fire
Police to seek criminal charges against 77 companies and people over Grenfell fire
Vikram Dodd
Tue 19 May 2026 19.09 CESTFirst published on Tue 19 May 2026 14.38 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/19/grenfell-fire-police-criminal-charges-companies-individuals

Scotland Yard has said it hopes to bring criminal charges against 77 companies and individuals for the Grenfell Tower fire , but trials will not start until a decade after the disaster that killed 72 people.

The Guardian understands a king’s counsel, a senior lawyer experienced in prosecutions, has been appointed to lead the crown’s criminal cases, which are expected to be complex and possibly last years.

The lead police investigator, Garry Moncrieff, said his team of 220 detectives and other staff had gathered “strong evidence” of potential wrongdoing that led to a devastating blaze tearing through the west London tower block in June 2017.

Police said they were sending a series of files of evidence to prosecutors later this year seeking a decision on whether criminal trials should be held.

The Crown Prosecution Service said it expected to make decisions on charges by June 2027, the 10th anniversary of the disaster.

Police say files will be sent to the CPS seeking charging decisions about 57 individuals and 20 companies.

Moncrieff said: “It’s our job to make sure that we do a fair, thorough, and comprehensive investigation, so that charging decisions can be taken, and that fairness runs throughout everything that we do.

“What I can say is that we have gathered strong evidence, and that evidence is sufficient, that we will be submitting files to the Crown Prosecution Service for them to make charging decisions.”

But it emerged that there was no prospect of any individual or company appearing in court until next year at the very earliest. It is more likely no trial will get before a jury until 2028, or possibly even later.

The group Grenfell United said: “Those responsible must now be held to account. Our community cannot be expected to endure years more of delay.”

The group Grenfell Next of Kin said: “There is a complete breakdown in trust and confidence. We no longer have faith in the institutions responsible for delivering accountability. After years of delays, reassurances and procedural updates, confidence in the system has been shattered.”

Offences being considered include corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, fraud, and health and safety offences, police have said. Also under consideration is misconduct in public office but police declined to say whether that included any past or current political figures.

The Met investigation is examining the causes of the fire for criminal culpability along with how the tower block came to be in such a condition that the blaze could spread so widely and quickly, with catastrophic consequences.

A public inquiry by the retired judge Martin Moore-Bick into the disaster concluded in 2024. It found widespread failures in the construction industry, the council, regulators and central government. Moore-Bick said: “The simple truth is the deaths that occurred were all avoidable.”

The police investigation has so far cost £150m, and a replica of the tower costing £2m will be built so any jury can understand how the building looked before flames tore through it.

The long wait for justice in the courts has angered survivors and the bereaved.

Part of the cause is the complexity of the investigation and assigning criminal blame. The Guardian understands that police have for instance found cladding that caught fire and helped the blaze spread quickly, but that multiple companies and individuals played a part in the decision making.

Another reason for the wait of at least a decade is a decision to allow the public inquiry to take place and report before trials could take place.

The Met felt it had to wait for the inquiry’s final report before completing its identification of suspects and finalising its files of evidence, all of which were needed before prosecutors could assess the strength of the cases.

Grenfell Next of Kin said: “The criminal investigation and justice process should always have come first and been given priority. Instead, the £172m public inquiry was prioritised ahead of criminal accountability and delayed our justice.

“That decision is the central reason criminal accountability has been delayed for so many years and why justice for the Grenfell community continues to be denied.”

Grenfell United, which represents survivors and bereaved families, said: “For our community, this is not news we meet with celebration. We meet it with caution, grief and determination. We have waited almost a decade for accountability.”

The Grenfell inquiry concluded in 2024 that at the heart of the tragedy was the “systematic dishonesty” of multimillion-dollar companies whose products caused the fire to spread so rapidly.

Grenfell United said: “The Ministry of Justice and the government must ensure the courts are properly resourced so that any prosecutions linked to Grenfell are heard swiftly. Justice delayed any further would be unacceptable.”

Ebola
As WHO sounds alarm over Ebola in DRC, what can be learned from previous outbreaks?
Peter Beaumont
Tue 19 May 2026 14.51 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 22.23 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/19/why-the-lessons-of-the-drcs-last-ebola-outbreak-are-being-tested-again

To be around the centre of an Ebola outbreak is to become used to the smell of chlorine. At hospitals and government buildings, surfaces are sprayed with it and hands washed in a 0.05% solution that can kill the virus in 60 seconds.

Infrared handheld thermometers take temperatures at airports and border crossings. Any indication of a fever prevents passage. Contact-tracing teams crisscross the countryside.

From 2018 to 2020, Butembo, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s northern Kivu province, was the setting for the largest Ebola outbreak the country had seen. The complexities of the crisis were not confined to the ravages of the virus itself – they were intensified by social, political and economic pressures of an area in the midst of a conflict.

As global health officials wrestle with a serious new Ebola outbreak in the DRC , which has shocked the World Health Organization with its speed and scale, the question is what lessons have been learned from previous outbreaks?

Ebola, unlike Covid, is not a particularly efficient virus. As it is not airborne it requires physical contact with bodily fluids, including blood and vomit, to spread. That makes it particularly risky for healthcare workers , who need full-body personal protective equipment (PPE) and stringent disinfection processes.

Social practices including physical contact with the dead and dying in poor rural communities accelerated the spread in eastern Kivu and Ituri province.

A second critical factor that hampered the response six years ago was the history of political tension between the country’s government in Kinshasa and the Nande ethnic group in eastern Kivu amid an insurgency. The outbreak was exploited by cynical actors during elections, who either suggested Ebola did not exist or had been brought in by outsiders.

That, in turn, led to armed attacks, some lethal, on health workers and Ebola clinics, including one in Butembo while the Guardian was visiting.

While a new vaccination programme was available during that outbreak, there is no vaccine for the current strain of the Ituri outbreak, which is caused by the Bundibugyo variant of Ebola. It is the least well known of the three forms of the disease and has caused only two outbreaks before – in 2007 and 2012 – which killed about 30% of those infected.

Another reason for concern in the current outbreak is the suggestion that the cases may have been missed early on, potentially enabling unrecognised transmission.

One key difference from previous major outbreaks in west and central Africa is the speed with which this time the WHO has declared it a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).

In 2018, the WHO was roundly criticised for delaying for four months before declaring a PHEIC, defined as “an extraordinary event that may constitute a public health risk to other countries through international spread of disease and may require an international coordinated response”.

In the current outbreak, a PHEIC was declared within 48 hours, and the WHO’s head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said his concern was so great he had decided to act without an emergency committee meeting.

Despite that, Daniela Manno, a clinical epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, has warned the current Ituri outbreak shares some of the complicating elements of the 2018 to 2020 outbreak.

“First, the number of suspected cases reported before confirmation suggests transmission may have been ongoing for several weeks before the outbreak was formally recognised,” she said.

“Second, the outbreak is occurring in a region affected by insecurity, population displacement and high population mobility, all of which can complicate surveillance, contact tracing and delivery of healthcare.

“A previous Ebola outbreak affecting North Kivu and Ituri provinces between 2018 and 2020 lasted for nearly two years, with insecurity and community mistrust repeatedly disrupting contact tracing, vaccination and response activities.

“In addition, the outbreak is now thought to be caused by Bundibugyo virus, a rare Ebola-causing virus for which there are currently no licensed vaccines or therapeutics specifically approved. There are also no vaccines in late-stage clinical development that could be readily deployed during the outbreak.

“However, it is important to emphasise that the DRC has extensive experience responding to Ebola outbreaks, and outbreak response capacity is significantly stronger today than it was a decade ago.”

Anne Cori, an associate professor in infectious disease modelling at Imperial College London, said the spread of the disease across an international border had probably influenced the quick declaration of an international public health emergency.

“A PHEIC is an official declaration made by the WHO under the international health regulations, recognising the international nature of a public health threat. It aims to help mobilise attention and resources, and coordinate response efforts at international level.

“The last PHEIC for an Ebola outbreak was declared in July 2019 during the 2018 to 2020 Ebola epidemic in the North Kivu province of the DRC. At the time, the PHEIC was declared a year into the outbreak after it reached the urban area of Goma, threatening to spread internationally to nearby Rwanda.

“The current epidemic already comprises confirmed cases across both the DRC and Uganda , which likely influenced the declaration of a PHEIC as its focus is really the international nature of the threat.”

Peter Beaumont reported from Butembo for the Guardian in 2019, visiting Ebola treatment centres and vaccination efforts.

Books
‘Obvious markers of AI’: doubts raised over winner of short story prize
Aisha Down
Tue 19 May 2026 21.25 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 22.23 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/19/commonwealth-short-story-prize-winner-doubts-ai-artificial-intelligence

A few syntactical tics – and the verdict of an AI detection platform – have sparked a furore over the possibility that a short story given a prestigious literary award was written by AI.

The foundation that awarded the prize and Granta, the magazine that published the winning story , said they had considered the allegations but had not reached a conclusion as to whether they were true.

“It may be that the judges have now awarded a prize to an instance of AI plagiarism – we don’t yet know, and perhaps we never will know,” the publisher of Granta, Sigrid Rausing, said.

The Serpent in the Grove was named as the winning entry for the Commonwealth prize from the Caribbean on Saturday and published in Granta magazine.

In “a voice of restraint and quiet authority”, according to the judging committee, it narrates an intense episode in a troubled marriage, and is set in a farmhouse next to an enchanted grove.

Shortly after it was published, internet sleuths – and a few literary critics – seized upon the work and its author, Jamir Nazir, reportedly a 61-year-old from Trinidad and Tobago with few publications to his name.

Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote on Bluesky: “100% AI generated story just won the Commonwealth prize for the Caribbean region,” calling it “a Turing test of sorts”. As evidence, he cited Pangram, an AI detector, which said the work was AI-generated, but also said: “Come on, if you know you know.”

Another commentator, previously employed at Palantir, said there were “plenty of other obvious markers of AI writing” in the story, including a litany of “not x, but y” sentence structures, by now a familiar trope.

Other pundits dug into what appeared to be Nazir’s LinkedIn profile , where he discusses matters including the AI arms race and AI replacing jobs.

The accusations are another episode in an ongoing, frenetic conversation about whether artists and creators are passing off AI-generated work as their own – and whether publications will be able to reliably catch them doing it.

The New York Times cut ties with a freelance journalist in March after he admitted to having used artificial intelligence to author a book reviewthat appeared to echo elements of one published in the Guardian.

The publisher Hachette cancelled the release of a debut horror novel, Shy Girl, over concerns it was written at least partially with AI.

Episodes such as these have fuelled discourse around the telltale signs of AI writing – words such as “delve”, a profusion of em dashes, and “vague, soft intensifiers” such as “quietly powerful” and “deeply transformative”.

They have also generated energetic business for a new cottage industry of AI detectors such as Pangram, which purport to be able to separate machine prose from human efforts.

Pangram performs well in controlled tests, but research into the efficacy of AI detectors predicts there will be “a continuous technical arms race” between the detectors, AI models and writers adapting their usage of them.

The Commonwealth Foundation and Granta have said there is a limit to their ability to detect whether the allegations around Nazir’s possible use of AI are true.

The foundation said it did not use AI checkers in its judging process because supplying unpublished work to them “would raise significant concerns surrounding consent and artistic ownership”.

It said all entrants to the prize had avowed that their submissions were their own work and “personally stated that no AI was used”, something it confirmed with “further consultation”. It added that AI checkers were “not unfailing and infallible”.

The foundation’s director general, Razmi Farook, said: “Until a sufficient tool or process to reliably detect the use of AI emerges that can also grapple with the challenges pertaining to working with unpublished fiction, the foundation and the Commonwealth short story prize must operate on the principle of trust.”

Granta emphasised that it did not have control over the winning stories but merely published them as part of an agreement with the Commonwealth Foundation. It said it put the winning story into the AI tool Claude, which equivocated on the work’s provenance, saying it was probably not pure AI but probably not an entirely human creation either.

“There is, however, a certain irony in the fact that beyond human hunches, AI itself is the most efficient tool we have for revealing what is AI-generated,” Rausing said. “Until the Commonwealth Foundation comes to a definite conclusion, we will keep these stories on our website.”

The Guardian approached Nazir for comment.

Europa League
Aston Villa bid to complete journey from Championship to Europa League glory
Ben Fisher
Tue 19 May 2026 19.14 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 22.54 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/19/aston-villa-europa-league-final-freiburg

A s Aston Villa arrived at Besiktas Park on the banks of the Bosphorus, for one last training session before the real thing, it was impossible not to consider the journey to the Europa League final. John McGinn, who will lead Villa out as captain in Istanbul, was in the side promoted from the Championship via the playoff final seven years ago. Tyrone Mings also started that day at Wembley and across the course of the following 12 months Villa built a spine that will be central to their hopes of winning their first major European trophy since 1982.

It is why McGinn’s mind goes back to a 3-0 league defeat at Wigan and a midweek trip to Rotherham in the season they clinched promotion, averting a likely financial disaster. Tammy Abraham, then on loan from Chelsea, also began the playoff final victory over Derby. “If we lose that match, are Aston Villa here at the minute?” McGinn says. “Probably not. For us, tomorrow night, it will be nice to see the supporters who were there at Rotherham away, Wigan away, nights like that on a Tuesday evening when it’s very easy to stay at home. They deserve it just as much as the players do and hopefully we can give them something to remember.”

Ezri Konsa, a beacon of consistency who could be forgiven for living off being labelled a Rolls-Royce by Prince William, who is expected to attend the final as an avid Villa supporter, joined in the months after they returned to the Premier League. Emiliano Martínez, Ollie Watkins and Matty Cash arrived the following summer. Together the core of this Villa side have reached the Europa Conference League semi-finals, the Champions League quarter-finals and a FA Cup semi-final. On Wednesday they will, as Emery says, be the focus of the footballing world.

McGinn has spoken about shedding the tag of “nearly men” and Martínez acknowledges it would be “massive” to get over the line against Freiburg. “We’ve been together for so many years, played so many games together, going from mid-table to the European places, semi-finals and now we’re in the final. I think we deserve it. I think the fans deserve it. And obviously the manager has had five finals and you wouldn’t want anyone else on the bench leading us in a European final.”

Martínez likens trying to feed Villa’s hunger for a first trophy since the League Cup in 1996 to his first Copa América with Argentina in 2021. “I went into my first Copa América without seeing Argentina win a trophy,” says the World Cup winner. “I was 27, 28 years old and this is the same. In Birmingham the Villa fans always say: ‘I’ve never seen Villa in a European final, I’ve never seen Villa lifting a trophy.’ So it’s that same mindset as I went into my first Copa América, with that anger, belief and confidence I can do it. I believe in my team and myself.”

Martínez was speaking publicly for the first time since attempting to leave the club last summer. It was this time last season he cried as he left Villa Park, presuming it would be for the last time. “We are in a European final, in the Champions League again with all the circumstances and the ups and downs, and with the budget we had this year, we were among the lowest spenders in the Premier League,” says Martínez. “Sometimes football can change … when we stick together and fight together we can beat anybody. I am really proud to stay – I made the right choice.”

Villa yearn for a trophy and, as Martínez says, the consensus is that in Emery they have something of a superpower. Thomas Tuchel’s comments in the buildup to Chelsea’s Super Cup victory over Emery’s Villarreal in 2021 spring to mind. “They can call the [Europa League] trophy the Unai Emery trophy soon,” said the now England manager. Emery, however, is reluctant to lean into that characterisation.

“I am not a king in this competition,” says the Basque. “I am now here with Aston Villa in a new chapter. And everything I did is done – of course it’s there in that moment but with it I am not winning tomorrow. I need to win with the players we have now, with Villa now. It’s a new way, a new moment and, hopefully, a new era.”

Villa, who could welcome back Amadou Onana from a calf injury after he trained with his teammates on Tuesday, are heavy favourites to beat a Freiburg side that finished seventh in the Bundesliga . McGinn and Emery recognise as much, both reading from the same hymn sheet. McGinn talks of treating Freiburg with the respect they deserve, Emery of a tricky task. “We have a huge challenge,” Villa’s manager says. “Are we thinking about the next party on Friday? No, no, no.”

West End
Some West End shows could ‘go dark’ as Equity members back possible strikes
Lanre Bakare
Tue 19 May 2026 18.01 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 22.23 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/may/19/west-end-shows-equity-possible-strikes-london

Some of the biggest West End shows could be forced to temporarily close during a “summer of turbulence” in London after union members voted to move towards strike action over a dispute about pay and conditions.

An indicative ballot held by the performing arts union, Equity, was overwhelmingly backed by its membership: 98% voted yes to potential strikes. The result means the union now has the right to have a statutory ballot on taking industrial action.

A recent report on British theatre found that demand for live performance had never been higher . Last year, 37 million people attended shows around the UK and more than 17 million did so in the West End.

Despite the record audiences, theatre producers are facing financial challenges after the costs of production doubled in a decade . Ticket prices in London remain much lower than on Broadway .

The general secretary of Equity, Paul W Fleming, said: “The West End has had a very successful three years. Our members want to share in that success and they’re tired of antiquated working conditions. They really have snapped.”

Equity and the Society of London Theatre (Solt) have been negotiating their multiyear agreement since December 2025, but have come to an impasse over pay, holidays and how injuries caused while performing are handled.

The union has proposed a 7% pay increase for its members every year for the next three. It is also pushing for better holiday and incapacity pay if a worker is injured on a production.

Fleming said he was hopeful industrial action could be avoided, as it was in 2023 , but if it did happen it wouldn’t mean that the whole of the West End would “go dark”; instead the big weekend shows that were economic drivers for producers would be targeted.

Equity has about 1,000 members, including performers and stage managers in the West End working on 44 shows, including hits for producers such as Cameron Mackintosh and Sonia Friedman.

If an agreement is not reached when the two sides meet on 10 June, then the union could ballot its membership on whether they would be prepared to take part in a strike, which would affect matinees and evening shows on Saturdays.

Fleming said: “If Solt doesn’t come back with a proposal that implements the proposal we’ve just balloted our members on, then we will be balloting for industrial action.”

A spokesperson for Solt said: “Constructive, good faith discussions are ongoing, and we have already made meaningful progress together in a number of areas.

“We look forward to our upcoming meeting with the Equity team and remain committed to the jointly agreed process, and to continued productive discussions to reach a fair, sustainable minimum terms agreement as soon as possible.”