Dakar, Senegal Followers of the Layène Brotherhood, a Sufi Muslim sect, attend Eid al-Adha prayers in Cambérène Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters
New Delhi, India Worshippers gather at Jama masjid for Eid al-Adha prayers, marking the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. During the festival, sacrificial meat is shared in three parts – for family, friends and those most in need Photograph: Rajat Gupta/EPA
Gilgil, Kenya A student injured in a stampede is helped from a school bus after a fire tore through a dormitory at Utumishi girls’ academy in Nakuru county Photograph: Thomas Mukoya/Reuters
Gaza City A funeral for 10 Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike the night before. Gaza remains gripped by daily violence, with the Israeli military and Hamas accusing one another of violating the truce, in effect since 10 October. More than 900 people have been killed by Israel since the ceasefire, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the UN Photograph: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images
Port-au-Prince, Haiti Children play football in the hilly suburb of Pétion-Ville Photograph: Odelyn Joseph/AP
Delhi, India A boy plays in a park in the old quarters of the city Photograph: Kabir Jhangiani/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock
Kolkata, India A Bangladeshi woman, who allegedly illegally crossed the border, arrives for verification at an Indian border security force camp. Hundreds of people have fled to the frontier, according to police, after the government ordered the construction of detention centres for undocumented Bangladeshi migrants and Rohingya refugees Photograph: Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images
Hyderabad, India A child yawns during Eid al-Adha prayers Photograph: Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images
Bangkok, Thailand Community members carry food into Buddarul Mumineen mosque after Eid al-Adha prayers Photograph: Matt Hunt/Anadolu/Getty Images
Paris, France Naomi Osaka walks on to the court at the Roland Garros French Open tennis tournament Photograph: Virginie Lefour/Belga/Shutterstock
Paris, France The installation of La Caverne du Pont Neuf by the French photographer and street artist JR. The artwork pays tribute to the the late French artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 1985 wrapping of the city’s oldest bridge Photograph: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images
Windsor, United Kingdom The newly renamed and redesigned Venus Garden at Windsor Castle in Berkshire. First used as a garden in the 1820s during the reign of George IV, this new design is inspired by the petal-shaped orbit of Earth’s closest planetary neighbour Photograph: Royal Collection Trust/PA
Cambridge, UK People on a punt tour past Clare College and King’s College Chapel on the River Cam after days of record-breaking heat Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA
Mindelo, Cape Verde The Leopard tugboat shipwreck Photograph: Patrick Meinhardt/AFP/Getty Images
Yerevan, Armenia Cars transport military robots during a military parade marking Republic Day Photograph: Hayk Baghdasaryan/Photolure/Reuters
Tokyo, Japan The bipedal robot Mini Pi, made by the Chinese startup High Torque Technology, is surrounded by visitors during the Humanoids Summit. The annual technology conference is centred on advancing humanoid robotics Photograph: Franck Robichon/EPA
Barcelona, Spain The sun melts into the horizon behind Basílica de la Sagrada Familia. Pope Leo XIV is scheduled to visit the city next month Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP
Middle age is a brutal time of life. As those of us mired in it know, it’s perfectly suited to being mined for laughs (the unhinged type of laughs that are bound up with tears, crisis, and, inevitably, death.) But still too few comedy series take this pressured segment of time and squeeze it for all its acidic worth. Enter middle-aged joke machine Tina Fey , who with The Four Seasons – her zippy 2020s update of the 1980s film of the same name, co-created and written with Tracey Wigfield and Lang Fisher – has triumphed once again. The second season of her midlife comedy drama is even more perspicacious, poignant and hilarious than the first.
Again there are four fancy holidays split across the seasons, each one given two gag-packed episodes – a rigid but neat structural device that allows the big moments to happen off-screen. Meanwhile we get the aftermath soundtracked by an avalanche of Vivaldi and bracing jokes about sad lonely donkeys, secret vapes mistaken for thumb drives, and the tragicomedy of being an angry, unravelling fiftysomething man in a T-shirt printed with “Keep Calm and Fuhgeddaboutit”.
The three couples have been reconfigured after the death of Nick (Steve Carell) at the end of season one. So there’s Kate (played by Fey) and Jack (the uptight/softie duo relentlessly workshopping their marriage into the ground), Danny and Claude (gay, unbearably chic, forever bickering) and Nick’s ex-wife Anne and the much younger woman for whom he left her, Ginny – now heavily pregnant with his baby. “Ladies aren’t supposed to be friends with the woman their dead husband left them for,” wails Anne. “You’re right,” says Kate. “There is no Beyoncé song about that.” Anyway, come summer the two women and a baby have moved in together, and Anne’s so besotted with her new role she is testing Ginny’s breast pump on her own nipple.
Springtime. The grief-stricken sextet go on an upstate hike to scatter Nick’s ashes from his favourite mountain. The first time they’re interrupted by a Brownies group. The second time everyone hates each other, plus Danny forgot the ashes. The third time they’re reeling from an active manhunt in the area that traps them in a retro motel overnight, in a town so depressing “Tracy Chapman sped away from it” – a joke so specific I felt it was written for middle-aged me, which is Fey’s special power. There are moments in The Four Seasons so hilarious I laughed like I do (re)watching 30 Rock. Which, considering I have a Romanian rescue dog called Lizzie Lemon, is a compliment of the highest order.
Summer: to the beach. Ginny has given birth, Danny and Claude (sort of, maybe) want a baby, and Jack has found a man friend to have play dates with on the beach. Aw, says Kate (at first): “I didn’t think middle-aged straight men could make new friends!” The conversations between Danny and Claude are particularly funny, moving, and sensitively wrought. Meanwhile Kate and Jack are “freeballing”: the name given to their decision to “grow apart on purpose”. If anyone else was writing these characters they would be insufferable. Instead, what unfolds is a beautiful meditation on the endurance test of long-term relationships.
Big Thanksgiving culminates in Jack kicking the turkey down the stairs and twisting his ankle. Little Thanksgiving travels back in time to the Covid pandemic when Steve was alive, and Anne almost left him. In many ways this second season belongs to Anne. She makes a joyous transition from lonely, fearful ex-wife to contented (enough) single woman willing to dress up as an folkloric old witch at an Italian Christmas pageant. She gets many of the best lines, and the most fabulous wardrobe.
It’s worth watching The Four Seasons for the knitwear alone. The laughably exquisite settings are straight out of a Nancy Meyers movie, and this being Fey, there’s a joke about that, too. “Life is not a Nancy Meyers movie!” claims Anne after an attempt at a summer fling goes awry. Of course, the joke is that The Four Seasons looks like a Nancy Meyers movie, but is nothing like one. Pull back the woven rug and the neutral linen curtains and – how would Meyers put it? – it’s complicated . This is a dark and difficult world in which good men smash up vintage snack shacks, regrets must be lived with, sacrifices made, childhood traumas kept buried, and people who love each other want completely different things.
I found the levels of lush lakeside lawns and lobster rolls ludicrous at first but by the time these flawed, flailing friends were wintering in the Italian alps and Kate was delivering an Emmy award-deserving speech to Jack (while running a marathon!) about her secret levels of despair, I was all in. The sublime locations are a lure to reel you into the murky depths of midlife experience. “I worry that you and I are going to get weirder and weirder and keep pulling apart until we’re living like strangers,” she wheezes, “and all the neighbourhoods kids are gonna skip our house at Halloween because we’re too creepy. And sometimes honestly I’m afraid to die and other times I’m like sure, it seems nice, the big sleep … let’s fucking do it!” At which point Kate and Jack cross the finish line together, and embrace.
Actor, producer and member of the Cannes jury Demi Moore arrives on stage during the closing ceremony in Cannes. Photograph: Valéry Hache/AFP/Getty Images
As La Croisette closes for another year, here are the most memorable looks from its final week
The French actor Isabelle Huppert’s black and white Chanel gown consists of giant paillettes that sparkle under the lights at the festival’s closing ceremony Photograph: Domine Jerome/ABACA/Shutterstock
Stellan Skarsgård puts another contemporary twist on red-carpet tailoring by swapping the traditional white shirt/black tie formula for a red on red look by Loewe at the Histoires de la Nuit premiere Photograph: Alfonso Catalano/SGP/Shutterstock
The Senegalese director and producer Angèle Diabang Brener wears a tangerine-coloured gown with a contrasting gold neckline detail to the closing ceremony Photograph: Ernesto Ruscio/Getty Images
Working with her stylist, Mohit Rai, Indian actor Aishwarya Rai wears a sculptural gown for the Histoires de la Nuit premiere. Created by the Delhi based designer Amit Aggarwal the dress features crystalline embellishments on lattice-like structures that according to Aggarwal ‘create an interplay of luminosity, depth, and fluidity’ Photograph: Max Montingelli/SGP/Shutterstock
The pleated detailing on Tilda Swinton’s Chanel dress gives it a lovely bouncy movement as she makes her way down La Croisette for the closing ceremony Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock
Like Swinton, Chloé Zhao also opts for a red dress on a red carpet styling trick for the festival’s closing ceremony. Zhao’s knitted dress is by Gabriela Hearst and the looped tiered fringe on the skirt again gives it a springy bounce effect Photograph: Valéry Hache/AFP/Getty Images
Renate Reinsve and her stylist Karla Welch have been taking a minimalist approach to red carpet dressing but there is always at least one element of surprise. Here they makes the case for disco trousers at the closing ceremony. Reinsve’s Louis Vuitton look consists of sequined silver trousers paired with a full-length sleeveless top fastened at the neckline Photograph: Zabulon Laurent/Shutterstock
The French actor and master of ceremonies Eye Haidara wears a ruched black dress by Elie Saab featuring cut-out back detailing at the premiere of L’Objet du Délit Photograph: Jean-Marc Haedrich/SIPA/Shutterstock
After nearly a dozen looks over the past two weeks, Demi Moore leaned into duvet dressing for the closing ceremony. Her emerald green Balenciaga dress was teamed with a puffy pale blue shawl that cocooned the actor and jury member Photograph: Clemens Bilan/EPA
Winner of the best actress award, Tao Okamoto wears a delicate floral dress by Chanel Photograph: Daniele Venturelli/WireImage
Zoe Saldaña’s floral Chanel dress for the closing ceremony appears to be tied with a giant bow at the waist Photograph: Alfonso Catalano/SGP/Shutterstock
Adèle Exarchopoulos’s top by Phoebe Philo looks so plump and padded it could double up as a pillow. The designer is all about the little details and Exarchopoulos’s trousers with exposed zippers are another perfect example of this Photograph: Lionel Hahn/Getty Images
Festival jury member Ruth Negga gives a nod to old Hollywood in a black high-necked dress that trails behind her and contrasting white gloves at the premiere of the film Coward Photograph: Andreea Alexandru/AP
Penélope Cruz wears a one-shoulder dress by Chanel that features a thigh-high split and fun fuzzy pom-poms at the premiere of La Bola Negra Photograph: Domine Jerome/ABACA/Shutterstock
Monica Bellucci leaves after the screening of the film Histoires de la Nuit on Friday dressed all in black Photograph: Manon Cruz/Reuters
Swinton wears a suit fresh off the Chanel couture catwalk at the premiere of La Bola Negra. If you zoom in, you’ll notice its ombre effect comes from sumptuous velvet and tiny fluttery feathers Photograph: Andreea Alexandru/AP
Evie Templeton is carving out a name for herself in the horror and thriller genres. Her gothic inspired Rodarte dress gives a nod to the mood at the Victorian Psycho photocall Photograph: Lionel Hahn/Getty Images
Ruth Wilson wears a trompe l’oeil blazer-dress by JW Anderson at the Victorian Psycho presentation Photograph: Domine Jerome/ABACA/Shutterstock
Pale rose and lavender make for a delicious colour combination for Kārlis Arnolds Avots at the Ulya photocall Photograph: Alberto Terenghi/Shutterstock
An Astroturf-green pleated skirt and knitted vest by Chanel makes for an elegant yet fun look for Anamaria Vartolomei at a photocall for La Bataille de Gaulle: L’âge de Fer Photograph: Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock
The American actor Maika Monroe in a cross-back dress from Saint Laurent at the premiere of La Bataille de Gaulle: L’âge de Fer Photograph: Max Montingelli/SGP/Shutterstock
Another premiere, another moment for big pants. Here Marion Cotillard attends the Roma Elastica screening in a sheer spider web-like knitted dress by Chanel Photograph: Daniele Venturelli/WireImage
Bows are showing no signs of fatigue in fashion. Here Alexa Chung wears a pretty satin dress by Dior couture that is loosely tied with a black ribbon at The Man I Love premiere Photograph: Max Montingelli/SGP/Shutterstock
The designer Thom Browne is known for his love of sharp tailoring so this softer take as seen on Moore at The Man I Love premiere is unexpected. Even the bow is undone, something we never thought we’d be writing given Browne’s go-to is a neat three-move oriental knot. It just goes to show anything can happen at Cannes! Photograph: Soul Brother/Shutterstock
Bella Hadid’s Schiaparelli dress with its plunging neckline and brooch detailing is a tribute to Jane Birkin. The actor-singer wore a similar crocheted version in 1969. At the time, Birkin famously styled hers backwards to create a deep neckline that she fastened with a brooch Photograph: Daniele Cifalà/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Seaweed-like organza fringing, cyclamen floral embroidery and a looped cocoon shape sounds a bit bonkers on paper but Wilson’s Dior dress at the La Bataille de Gaulle: L’âge de Fer premiere is a new off-beat choice for the actor Photograph: Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock
She’s appeared on the catwalks of Jean Paul Gaultier and Alexander McQueen and is known for her maximalist style. However, for the premiere of Rossy de Palma’s latest film Bitter Christmas written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, the actor went back to fashion basics in a simple little black dress and woven espadrilles Photograph: Sébastien Nogier/EPA
Jury member Juliette Binoche at Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas premiere wearing a tailored look from Celine. The oversized and undone bow detailing plus chunky shoes add a little edge Photograph: Daniele Cifalà/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
The model Anja Rubik has worked with Saint Laurent for more than a decade so unsurprisingly, for the opening of Bitter Christmas, she wore one of its classic Le Smoking suits Photograph: Stéphane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty Images
Zhao chose a navy Prada dress with contrasting black velvet pockets for the premiere of a Bitter Christmas. Cue ‘a dress – with pockets!’ hysteria Photograph: Aurore Marechal/Getty Images
Marvel star Sebastian Stan opts for a tonal oatmeal look for a photocall for his new film Fjord Photograph: Lionel Hahn/Getty Images
Dita Von Teese has made a 50s hourglass gown her red carpet signature. Here, a contrasting black velvet corset on her Tamara Ralph couture gown draws even more attention to her waist as she attends the premiere of a Bitter Christmas Photograph: Gisela Schober/Getty Images
The Night Manager star Diego Calva goes for sharp tailoring for the premiere of Her Private Hell. Calva clearly likes fashion and his suit’s oversized peaked lapels, plus the tiny brooch and square sunglasses, are very on trend Photograph: Ernesto Ruscio/Getty Images
The Worst Person in the World actor Reinsve wears not the worst red carpet look at the Fjord premiere. Her simple white racer back gown is by Louis Vuitton Photograph: Domine Jerome/ABACA/Shutterstock
Daisy Edgar-Jones climbs the steps of La Croisette at the Fjord screening wearing a Balenciaga gown featuring a matching sheer, embellished cape Photograph: Scott A Garfitt/AP
Charlotte Gainsbourg has bit of a nonchalant approach to the red carpet which is captured in both her textural clashing look from Saint Laurent (brocade! lace! fringing!) and her refusal to stop for photographers at the premiere of Fjord Photograph: Zabulon Laurent/Shutterstock
Léa Seydoux loves a wafty gown for the red carpet so this sleek suit from Louis Vuitton for the premiere of L’Inconnue is a bit of a vibe-shift for her Photograph: SGP/Shutterstock
Skarsgård’s grey double-breasted suit from Ami is smart but a purposefully messy tie stops it from feeling too formal as he attends the Fjord premiere Photograph: SGP/Johnny Dalla Libera/Shutterstock
Sharon Stone gives a nod to wisteria season in a hand-beaded ombre gown featuring the embroidered detailing of the flower. Sheer gloves, a cape and clutch complete her red carpet look at the Fjord premiere Photograph: SGP/Johnny Dalla Libera/Shutterstock
At a photocall for her new sci-fi film Hope, actor Taylor Russell gives a nod towards the genre with a futuristic inspired Schiaparelli dress made from laminated spiral satin that creates a tree bark effect Photograph: Scott A Garfitt/AP
Here’s Cate Blanchett tasselmaxxing in a fringed dress from Givenchy and matching fringed gloves at the premiere of Garance Photograph: Jean-Marc Haedrich/SIPA/Shutterstock
A red dress on a red carpet is a Hollywood classic. At the Garance screening Julianne Moore goes for an off-the-shoulder look from Bottega Veneta. Its scoop neckline is even more of an opportunity for her Messika necklace featuring 67 carats of diamonds to stand out Photograph: Daniele Cifalà/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
The German actor Lars Eidinger wears a white tailored suit by Dior for the Moulin premiere but, instead of a shirt and tie, he wears a miniature ruff Photograph: David Fisher/Shutterstock
What to wear when your jewellery consists of a Chopard necklace featuring a 129 carat emerald cabochon? In Adriana Lima’s case the model keeps the rest of her outfit simple in a strapless long black dress Photograph: Samir Hussein/WireImage
Colman Domingo makes a case for the party at the front and party at the back shirt. His sheer and sequined purple shirt by Valentino also includes a shimmering cape detail that he was enjoying twirling around La Croisette in Photograph: Samir Hussein/WireImage
The Hope actor Jung Ho-yeon wears an intricate beaded custom Louis Vuitton by Nicolas Ghesquière dress for the film’s premiere. Its cowl neck is mirrored by a fluid train and the scoop back gives plenty of opportunity for the classic over-the-shoulder red carpet pose Photograph: Alfonso Catalano/SGP/Shutterstock
The French actor Emmanuelle Béart wears a structured leather jacket from Balmain at a screening of Garance Photograph: Max Montingelli/SGP/Shutterstock
Feathers, lace, florals – it’s a combination that sounds overwhelming but in the hands of Matthieu Blazy at Chanel it just works. Here, the model Liu Wen, who is a regular on the French house’s catwalk, wears a dress from its autumn/winter 2026 collection for the Garance red carpet Photograph: Alfonso Catalano/SGP/Shutterstock
Earlier this week Hadid described Cannes, a festival she has been attending for almost a decade as ‘her favourite week’. For her 2026 debut, she wears a simple column gown from Prada with a smattering of embellishment. The endorsement of the old-school Hollywood red-carpet shawl is unexpected but fun Photograph: Alfonso Catalano/SGP/Shutterstock
Zebra print is gearing up to be a summer hit on the high street. Here, Carla Bruni makes the case for it on the red carpet, too, in a fluted gown from Roberto Cavalli at the Garance premiere Photograph: Alfonso Catalano/SGP/Shutterstock
For those looking for whimsy here’s the Spanish actor Paz Vega in a wafty white dress, giant bow and huge aviators at the Paper Tiger premiere Photograph: Clemens Bilan/EPA
Blanchett goes back to red carpet basics in a classic long black dress by Louis Vuitton for the screening of the film Paper Tiger Photograph: Valéry Hache/AFP/Getty Images
At first glance Moore looks as if she is embracing princess dressing at the premiere of crime drama Paper Tiger. But on closer inspection you’ll notice the dress’s ripped hem, skewed giant bow and raw edging. A nice subverting of glamour by the Paris brand Matières Fécales. Yes the name does translate as fecal matter. Fashion! Photograph: Zabulon Laurent/Shutterstock
French musician and producer Quentin Dupieux, also known as Mr. Oizo, gives dad trainers the thumbs up at the Full Phil premiere Photograph: SGP/Johnny Dalla Libera/Shutterstock
At the Full Phil premiere Kristen Stewart wears a crocheted dress by Chanel. Walking up the steps the actor hoisted up her dress to reveal a pair of high-top Chanel trainers – breaking the festival’s ‘no sneakers’ rule. Stewart has always been somewhat of a footwear rebel at Cannes. In 2018 she took off her heels to walk La Croisette barefoot in protest of its no-flats rule Photograph: Thibaud Moritz/AFP/Getty Images
Sex Education star Emma Mackey wears a full-length white dress from Louis Vuitton featuring an inverted triangular cut-out at the premiere of Full Phil Photograph: Thibaud Moritz/AFP/Getty Images
Rather than working with a stylist the director Zhao is choosing her own red carpet looks. This spiked Schiaparelli look shows she is not shying away from bolder looks Photograph: Zabulon Laurent/Shutterstock
The skirt suit has become synonymous with Chanel. Here, Stewart wears one from its latest couture collection that features a transparent tweed effect Photograph: Marco Barada/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
Oversized silhouettes, a flash of flesh and a smattering of bold accessories is quickly becoming Odessa A’zion’s fashion formula. Here the Marty Supreme actor wears Dior at the premiere of Karma Photograph: Samir Hussein/WireImage
John Travolta reveals his new penchant for a floppy beret and pair of gold rimmed glasses is inspired by old Hollywood director dressing. Cosplay but make it fashion? Photograph: Kristy Sparow/Getty Images
Andie MacDowell keeps it simple with a slightly sheer long black gown and a sleek blow-dry at the screening of the film Karma Photograph: Chassery+Courdji/Shutterstock
As the face of Chanel No 5 since 2020, the French actor Cotillard naturally chose to wear the brand for the premiere of her new thriller Karma. Cotillard likes to mix it up on the red carpet and this dress in leather with raffia edging and double CC buckles ticks all the edgy boxes Photograph: Thibaud Moritz/AFP/Getty Images
The internet is very much enjoying Calva’s mechanic-core overalls by Isabel Marant that he chose for the Club Kid photocall Photograph: Stéphane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty Images
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?
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.
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
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.”
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.
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.”
