Court rules judge who oversaw landmark trial was mistaken in allowing women whose accusations were not part of case to testify

The disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinsteinas 2020 conviction on sex crimes was overturned by a New York appeals court on Thursday.

In a 4-3 decision, the state of New York court of appeals ruled that the judge who oversaw Weinsteinas 2020 conviction prejudiced the ex-movie mogul with aegregiousa improper rulings and was mistaken in allowing other women whose accusations were not a part of the 2020 case to testify.

Scottish first minister says scrapping power-sharing deal amarks a new beginning for the SNP governmenta

• UK politics a latest updates

Humza Yousaf has put the Scottish National party on an election footing after unilaterally scrapping his partyas landmark coalition with the Greens and signalling he will drop vote-losing policies.

In a surprise move on Thursday morning, the first minister called in the Scottish Greensa two co-leaders, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, to tell them they were being sacked as he axed a power-sharing deal first hailed as a new era in consensus politics.

High court judge orders actor turned politician to pay APS90,000 damages to each individual for social media libel

The actor and rightwing activist Laurence Fox has been ordered to pay APS90,000 each in damages to two people he libelled by referring to them as apaedophilesa on social media.

A high court judge made the order in London on Thursday. Fox lost his high court libel battle in January, after Mrs Justice Collins Rice ruled that he had defamed two men by calling them paedophiles after they labelled him a racist.

Ex-National Enquirer publisher testifies that he bought the Karen McDougal story so it did not affect the outcome of the 2016 election

• A guide to Trumpas hush-money trial
• Who is David Pecker, key witness in Trumpas criminal trial?

aHe said she was a 12 out of 10,a David Pecker says the former editor in chief of the National Enquirer, Dylan Howard, told him about Karen McDougal after meeting with her.

Pecker says McDougal told Howard she didnat want her story about Trump to be published. He says:

She said she didnat want to be the next Monica Lewinsky a| She wanted to restart her career.

Dylan came to me in early June of 2016 and said that he received a call from one of his major sources, in California, that thereas a Playboy model who is trying to sell a story about a relationship that she had with Donald Trump for a year.

Government allowed information to be released fully for only 34% of requests in 2023

Rishi Sunak has been accused of presiding over the least transparent government for 25 years, after it emerged the rate of freedom of information (FoI) requests granted in full dropped to a record low last year.

The prime ministeras government allowed information to be released fully for only 34% of requests in 2023.

Ex-nurse has asked appeal court for green light to challenge convictions for murder and attempted murder of babies

Three of Englandas most senior judges are considering whether to allow Lucy Letby to appeal against her convictions for the murder and attempted murder of babies.

The former nurse has asked the court of appeal for permission to mount a full legal challenge over her convictions for murdering seven infants and attempting to murder another six.

World Weather Attribution group says intensified El NiA+-o effects caused torrential rain, but rules out cloud seeding as cause

Fossil fuels and concrete combined to worsen the adeath trapa conditions during recent record flooding in the United Arab Emirates and Oman, a study has found.

Scientists from the World Weather Attribution team said downpours in El NiA+-o years such as this one had become 10-40% heavier in the region as a result of human-cased climate disruption, while a lack of natural drainage quickly turned roads into rivers.

Angela van den Bogerd says she forgot about email in 2010 saying cash balances in post office operatorsa accounts could be remotely accessed

Humza Yousaf, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, is holding a press conference now.

He says he has been in the post for little more than a year.

We are investing record [sums in the NHS], ensuring it can employ record numbers of staff delivering the best performing A&E units in UK. We are, of course, the only part of the UK to avoid strike action in NHS. Iave delivered the council tax freeze this year in every local authority, helping families a|

And last week we approved plans for Europeas largest floating offshore wind farm. These are just some of the actions that are making Scotland a better country.

Hamas video of hostage prompts protests, as Israeli authorities prepare for ground assault on Rafah

The families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have put renewed pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu to restart negotiations for a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the release of their loved ones, as Israeli authorities said they were making progress in preparations for a ground assault on Rafah.

After the release by Hamas of a hostage video of the Israeli-American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, police and protesters clashed outside the Israeli prime ministeras Jerusalem home, and demonstrators lit fires, set off fireworks and swarmed the car of the far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Harry Hunter, a former Household Cavalry officer, ran epic 250-km, seven-day race across the Sahara

On the morning of his 76th birthday earlier this month, Harry Hunter emerged from a bivouac in southern Morocco to line up with more than 800 other runners in the Sahara.

But, bar the chorus of Happy Birthday they greeted him with, there was little other celebration of this milestone, which saw Hunter subsequently become the oldest Briton to complete the epic Marathon des Sables, a 250-km (155-mile), seven-day race through rolling sand dunes and rocky mountains.

Hundreds voice dismay at Sunak and Starmer, accusing them of misreading UK attitudes towards Europe

• UK politics a latest updates

Elena, 35, was aflabbergasteda when she heard that both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer had dismissed a proposal by the European Commission to reintroduce freedom of movement for young people between the EU and the UK.

Last Friday, the prime minister rejected the post-Brexit youth mobility deal, which would have allowed Britons aged between 18 and 30 to live, study or work in the EU for up to four years, after Labour declined the offer the previous day.

Denounced as giving a aveneer of legality to slaveholdinga and despite claims of reform, kafala laws persist, allowing bosses to abuse women, who vanish from society. This is their testimony, gathered over two years in a Guardian investigation

Condemned as dangerous and abusive, the kafala labour system not only disregards migrant workersa rights but depends on exploitation. But 10 years after Qatar was advised by the UN to abolish kafala (asponsorshipa) entirely and replace it with a regulated labour network, the system is thriving across Lebanon, Jordan and the Gulf states a with the regionas most vulnerable migrants hidden behind closed doors.

Over two years, the Guardian spoke to 50 women who are or were domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar or Jordan. Their testimony reveals a section of society operating under appalling conditions facilitated by the stateas employment apparatus.

Pedro SA!nchez accuses opponents of abullying operationa conducted against him and his wife, BegoA+-a GA3mez

On Wednesday night, Spainas socialist prime minister, Pedro SA!nchez, abruptly announced he was cancelling his public duties for the rest of the week and considering resigning from office. He said he would announce his decision on Monday.

From Miriam being arevealeda as a transgender woman to the contestants trashing the set, it was the cruellest reality show ever. Ahead of a new series about its tragic fallout, Miriamas brother and friend open up for the first time about her death

It was the very definition of adifferent timesa. In summer 2003, a TV dating series saw men compete for the affections of a 21-year-old Mexican model named Miriam Rivera. What her suitors didnat realise was that the glamorous star of the show had a secret. In the climactic episode, Rivera announced that she was a transgender woman. All hell broke loose. Contestants sued the show in an attempt to ensure it never aired.

Thereas Something About Miriam would go down in the showbiz hall of shame as one of the most controversial reality shows ever. Now, a Channel 4 docuseries revisits the making of the show 20 years since it aired a and five years since Rivera died at the age of 38. Itas a story of belief-beggaring insensitivity and its tragic aftermath.

Beccy, 49, and Natalie, 60, became best friends after she visited Natalieas rescue farm in Ontario, Canada. They now run events together on the farm and love travelling together

• Tell us your story of how you met someone special

When Beccyas cousin suggested they go to an open day at a local farm, she jumped at the chance. aWe live in a small rural area called South Glengarry in Ontario. She told me about this woman who rescues animals and was raising money through a visiting day,a she says. aWe got there and she had so many animals and beautiful gardens. I was impressed.a

They tried to find Natalie, the farm owner, to say hello, but she was nowhere to be found. Instead, Beccy looked up the rescue centre on Facebook to learn more. A few months later, in the autumn of 2017, she mentioned the farm visit to some friends. aThey told me they knew Natalie and suggested we all get together for dinner with her and her husband.a

As Drake, Kendrick Lamar and more continue their high-profile beef, we run down the most inspired a and vicious a attacks in rapas history

• aA lot of rich guys arguinga: inside the rap beef of the decade

Whether you view the beef that has consumed hip-hopas upper echelons as a spicy addition to the genre or a dispiriting Trumpian exercise by grandstanding millionaires, itas hard not to love the fire and venom of Lamaras verse here, bashing J Cole and Drake.

Could they agree on immigration and housing? And why did the conversation turn to pigeon racing?

Sian, 56, Herefordshire

Occupation CEO of a social enterprise

As Taylor Swift tops $1bn in tour revenue, musicians playing smaller venues are facing pitiful fees and frequent losses. Should the state step in to save our live music scene?

When you see a band playing to thousands of fans in a sun-drenched festival field, signing a record deal with a major label or playing endlessly from the airwaves, itas easy to conjure an image of success that comes with some serious cash to boot a particularly when Taylor Swift has broken $1bn in revenue for her current Eras tour. But looks can be deceiving. aI donat blame the public for seeing a band playing to 2,000 people and thinking theyare minted,a says artist manager Dan Potts. aBut the reality is quite different.a

Post-Covid there has been significant focus on grassroots music venues as they struggle to stay open. Thereas been less focus on the actual ability of artists to tour these venues. David Martin, chief executive officer of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), says weare in a acost-of-touring crisisa. Pretty much every cost attached to touring a van hire, crew, travel, accommodation, food and drink a has gone up, while fees and audiences often have not. a[Playing] live is becoming financially unsustainable for many artists,a he says. aArtists are seeing [playing] live as a loss leader now. Thatas if they can even afford to make it work in the first place.a

The actor on tricking her tear ducts, being entertained as a child by Tom Cruise and legging it from dinosaurs while wearing stilettos

Hi Bryce! If two generations makes an acting family, does three make an acting dynasty? [Her father is director Ron Howard, both of whose parents were actors.] JohnHunt
I think a dynasty is five generations or more, so weare not even close. Weave got a way to go. Weave got three generations, so maybe Iall be around for it when the Howards cross that threshold.

When youare directing something thatas part of a larger collection, such as The Mandalorian, how do you find the balance between maintaining the tone and making something that reflects your own artistic vision? porcospino
Something like The Mandalorian is such an important story and piece of intellectual property. Itas dramaturgically essential to understand the essence of the creator and what inspired them to create that in the first place, so whatever Iam building on is an extension of their original vision. In the case of Star Wars, itas George Lucas, but I would feel that way no matter what the material is. Itas very important to have a deep, nuanced, compassionate and objective view when you take the baton.

What broke me as a child was my motheras death from breast cancer. But around that shattering, I became a person a and learned how to parent my son

I try to remember her hands. They were younger than mine are now. I imagine her long fingers and yellow, uneven and unpolished fingernails. Or had her nails fallen out? I am eight, about to turn nine; she will be dead in two weeks. Today is Motheras Day and I am allowed to stay home alone with her while everyone else goes to church. I am to be her helper, so I carry a basket up from downstairs. I set it on her bed. She is sitting up.

I know this is meant to be our day, our time; it is the first and last time I will be alone with her in this house. But I donat want to be here. Within weeks, she has transformed from my mother into a ghost, a skeleton; no hair, scarves covering her head. I know I am supposed to want to be with her on this day, but how can I want that? To be with a dying woman, my disappearing mother, whom I resent. It is too much. aWhat are you doing?a, I want to scream. aWhat do you expect me to do now, here without you?a

These stunning, extremely relatable women, with nuanced facial expressions and sensible shoes, helped me outline success on my own terms

I love watching television a ideally in bed with a bowl of salt and vinegar potato chips and a bottle of Coke, zoning out for hours.

Iave always been like this. In my teens and 20s I watched back-to-back-to-back Law & Order and Law & Order SVU episodes. I loved the comfort and reliability of the form: the drama of a murder, investigation, plot twist and resolution, all in under 60 minutes. But several years ago, I stopped watching Law & Order; I grew uncomfortable with its uncritical portrayal of the police.

Our former PM has a dire warning and a book to sell, but it isnat really cutting through. A bit more Brit-style bumbling might help

aI know the name,a texts a friend when I ask if she knows who Liz Truss is, but like most Americans canat quite put her finger on why. aLike 8%,a guesses another when I ask her to put a number on how many of her countrymen she imagines know of Truss. The standard response, in my extremely unscientific poll of Americans as to whether or not they know of Truss, however, was: aNo, should I?a a the answer to which, of course, depends entirely on whether you want to understand why the Tory party is polling around 20% or whether you happen to be Liz Truss.

Truss, the only one of us to suffer that particular misfortune, was in Washington DC this week trying, like so many minor British celebrities before her, to catch the eye of the Americans. At the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing thinktank that hosted the launch of Trussas book Ten Years to Save the West, she came bearing a awarninga. Not an ideal ice-breaker, perhaps, but one clearly tailored to an audience receptive to the frisson of the term aforces of the global lefta.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Ali died of cancer last year. He was 21, and had to live in the choking smoke of the Rumaila oilfield

A year has passed since my beautiful boy Ali Julood died. Not a day goes by when I do not think of him smiling and playing football with his friends outside. Those days are gone. As a father, that gives me great pain.

Ali was diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of 15. The cancer caused him to drop out of school, leave his football team and spend years undergoing painful medical treatment. He died at the age of 21 on 21 April 2023.

Sewage pollutes our waterways, species face extinction. We must act fast to halt the decline a and we will

• Steve Reed is shadow environment secretary

We must not be the last generation to have the opportunity to marvel at nature.

When I was growing up, I took for granted the excitement of climbing trees in the local woods at the end of our road, sleeping under the stars at Scout camp, and exploring the micro-worlds of seaside rockpools on holiday in Cornwall. Our children and grandchildren deserve to be astounded by the magnificence of our landscapes and coastlines, mesmerised by the beauty of a robinas song, and to splash about in the local river.

Steve Reed is the MP for Croydon North, and shadow secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs

Our capital has many problems, but it is time to push back against attacks from those who neither know nor understand it

I have been reading about the most abysmal place. It is a land where children, red-faced with their own radicalism, march alongside bearded Islamists to make the streets a no-go zone, while nodding-dog liberals curse the Brexiter masses for inflating the cost of their arugula. It boasts an infinite array of pronouns; multimillion-pound townhouses whose residents demand you check your privilege; a thousand rainbow flags, but not a single St Georgeas cross. It is rife with criminal behaviour, which extends far beyond the prices charged by pub landlords. Hieronymus Bosch, put down your paintbrush: this place truly is Hell.

It also happens to be my home.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Large-language models such as ChatGPT are still liable to distort the meaning of what they are summarising

• Seth Lazar is a professor of philosophy at the Australian National University and a distinguished research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Ethics in AI

What is the role of AI in democracy? Is it just a volcano of deepfakes and disinformation? Or can it a as many activists and even AI labs are betting a help fix an ailing and ageing political system? The UK government, which loves to appear aligned with the bleeding edge of AI, seems to think the technology can enhance British democracy. It envisages a world where large-language models (LLMs) are condensing and analysing submissions to public consultations, preparing ministerial briefs, and perhaps even drafting legislation. Is this a valid initiative by a tech-forward administration? Or is it just a way of dressing up civil service cuts, to the detriment of democracy?

LLMs, the AI paradigm that that has taken the world by storm since ChatGPTas 2022 launch, have been explicitly trained to summarise and distil information. And they can now process hundreds, even thousands, of pages of text at a time. The UK government, meanwhile, runs about 700 public consultations a year. So one obvious use for LLMs is to help analyse and summarise the thousands of pages of submissions they receive in response to each. Unfortunately, while they do a great job of summarising emails or individual newspaper articles, LLMs have a way to go before they are an appropriate replacement for civil servants analysing public consultations.

Today, we remember the 1974 Carnation Revolution. But as memories of dictatorship fade, anti-democratic forces are on the rise

Fifty years ago, on 25 April 1974, a military-led movement in Portugal took down the rightwing authoritarian regime that had governed the country for 41 years. The Carnation Revolution, named after the flowers people offered soldiers on the streets, led the country to democracy and an era of immense social progress a reducing infant mortality and illiteracy rates, for example, which were comparatively very high in 1974. By 1986, Portugal had made enough strides to be able to join the European Communities, now the EU.

I was born in the early 1990s, but even in my generation 25 April is a hallowed anniversary for many. Growing up as a teenager interested in politics generated a strong emotional attachment to a national holiday centred on the celebration of political freedom.

Devolution has been too cautious, and England has less say about community affairs than almost any other democracy

• Tony Travers is a visiting professor in the LSE department of government and a director of LSE London

All the bigger British political parties are in favour of devolution, yet it proves oddly difficult to deliver. England is a remarkably centralised country, with the UK government responsible for setting every tax, including the annual cap on council tax. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also, despite their devolved status, heavily centralised within their own national systems of government.

It is exactly 50 years since the major reform of local government structure in England and Wales. Prior to the 1974 changes, there were 1,245 councils in England; after the reforms were implemented, the number of councils was slashed to just 412. Today there are 317 councils, and the number continues to fall as the result of a near-continual reorganisation, which has turned two-tier counties a where there were county councils plus districts within them a into one or more unitary councils, where a single council provides all municipal services. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, after more recent reforms, now have a single tier of large municipalities.

While other comedians spend more time complaining than cracking jokes, the former Late Show host remains gloriously unhinged and hilarious

With every advance in human technology comes an advance in weird new emotional situations. For example, the Germans should invent a word for the specific drop in the stomach that occurs when you open X to see a celebrity you like trending globally. No one 20 years ago could ever have imagined this specific feeling. Depending on the person, my brain leaps to conclusions. If itas an older person, I worry theyave carked it. If itas Sydney Sweeney, I assume her breasts are up to something again (existing). And if itas a comedian Iave loved since childhood, I assume theyave been cancelled for doing something shitty (due to patterns).

A few weeks ago, I got a Tower of Terror-size gut drop when I saw Conan OaBrien, one of my biggest comedy heroes, trending. Luckily I didnat need to worry. He had gone viral for his appearance on the YouTube show Hot Ones, where a celebrity is interviewed while eating progressively hotter wings. Conan had given a completely unhinged and hilarious performance, including rubbing hot sauce on his nipples. In a sentence Iad never thought Iad say, thank God it was just more breasts discourse.

A desperate prime minister has given up trying to meaningfully account for the money he is putting into pre-election promises

According to the myth, Catherine IIas courtier Grigory Potemkin recruited peasants to populate fake villages erected along the Dnipro River, so the Russian empress, passing in her barge, might get a favourable impression of conditions in newly conquered Crimea. Historians doubt that it happened, but the idea of counterfeiting progress to appease the boss was plausible enough for the name aPotemkin villagea to have stuck.

In a democracy, the boss is the electorate, which leads governments to erect Potemkin policies a paper pledges puffed up as substantial measures a to convince voters that all is well. Rishi Sunakas announcement on defence spending this week is a case in point.

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