Mubeen Blogs

A sense of deja vu surrounds a fourth European final between the Spanish champions and French giants in Norway You could be forgiven for having a sense of deja vu before a fourth Champions League final between the Spanish champions, Barcelona, and French title-winners, OL Lyonnes, on Saturday evening. The three-time champions and eight-time champions played each other in the final of Europe’s premier competition three times in six years between 2019 and 2024, with Lyonnes earning a 4-1 win over the Catalan giants in 2019 and a 3-1 win in 2022, before Barcelona delivered a 2-0 defeat of the French side in 2024. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/0ryaQsK

Former general Petr Pavel says Moscow’s testing of alliance’s eastern flank should be met with firm line The Czech president, Petr Pavel, has urged Nato to “show its teeth” in response to Russia’s repeated testing of the alliance’s resolve on its eastern flank, suggesting a range of options including switching off its internet, cutting its banks off Russian from global financial systems and shooting down jets that violate allied airspace. Speaking to the Guardian in Prague, Pavel called for “decisive enough, potentially even asymmetric” responses to counter Moscow’s provocative behaviour against the alliance or risk the Kremlin intensifying its actions. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/41yFEzx

Policy adviser Jen Reed says tech-facilitated abuse has become ‘increasingly prevalent’ and calls for its inclusion in Domestic Abuse Act The Domestic Abuse Act fails to fully recognise the danger of technology-facilitated abuse, such as location tracking or hidden stalkerware, a Lords select committee has heard. Tech abuse has become “increasingly prevalent” and “very commonplace now within a domestic abuse context”, said Jen Reed, the head of policy at University College London’s Gender and Tech Research Lab, during an evidence session. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/v06apEu

Climate change is pushing starving grey whales to San Francisco Bay, where ship strikes led to 40% of 21 deaths Ferries, cargo ships and tankers cut through choppy waters in the San Francisco Bay on Tuesday as a whale surfaced nearby, its spout barely visible against the white caps. Until now, whales could easily go unnoticed by mariners, but an AI-powered detection network launched this week is designed to track them day and night. The system, called WhaleSpotter, scans the bay around the clock for whale blows and heat signatures up to 2 nautical miles away, alerting mariners to slow down or reroute when whales are nearby. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/E1S9F35

The bank’s interim chief executive says ‘this issue should never have happened’, but warns it may take time to process claims National Savings and Investments bank will start to contact thousands of families affected by a missing savings scandal next week, as it confirmed how much they are owed. In March, the chief executive of the state-backed bank was forced out after it emerged there had been long-running problems with the tracing of accounts belonging to customers who had died . Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/Ye50j7K

The pope’s encyclical will address ‘the protection of the human person in the age of AI’, the Vatican says In the first major text of his papacy, Pope Leo will address the rapid rise of artificial intelligence . The Chicago-born pontiff will present the document, known as an encyclical, at the Vatican next week during an event attended by Christopher Olah, the co-founder of Anthropic – a US-based AI firm that has clashed with Donald Trump’s administration. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/AlHW9nK

Southbank Centre, London Between a sci-fi concert for eggs and an interview with a bee, the scarecrow broadcasters in Philippe Quesne’s oddball performance piece make the case for art as salvation and for farms as the lifeblood of humanity Bump into one of these scarecrows at night and you’d be forgiven for running a mile. But stick around to listen to this hay-laden gang of crop-protector castaways, who no longer have crops to protect nor birds to scare thanks to the climate crisis, and you’ll see they have only good intentions. The sensorily ambitious Farm Fatale joins five scarecrows with faces of melted plastic and voices of children swallowed by machines in the artificial studio of their pirate radio station. It is set in the near future, when the air is hard to breathe and birdsong is recorded. The only people getting by are the industrial farmers capitalising on the ruin of others. When the scarecrows interview a bee, with a microphone charmingly taped to a pitchfork, the little...

The Wolves probably won’t win a title without big roster changes, but their postseason run made their case as one of the league’s most entertaining teams The Minnesota Timberwolves are out of the NBA playoffs . It’s a miracle it took this long. In their first-round series against the Denver Nuggets, they saw two starters and another key reserve suffer significant injuries . The Nuggets entered the series on a 12-game winning streak and were favored from the jump. After somehow winning that series in six games, finding Denver’s weak points and pummeling them until they broke, the Wolves met an even more daunting opponent in the San Antonio Spurs. Though they’d have been forgiven for tiredly accepting a sweep, the Wolves swiped Game 1 on the Spurs’ home floor, then a close Game 4 at home. After that, the tank finally ran empty. But even in the losses – including Friday night’s in Game 6 – the Wolves found ways to frighten. They’d go down 18-3 and then tie the game by the end of the fir...

There needs to be a zero-tolerance approach to stealing other clubs’ secrets – Kim Hellberg’s emotional response shows just how deep this goes Kim Hellberg was clearly upset and his press conference after Middlesbrough’s defeat at Southampton in the Championship semi‑final playoff second leg became unexpectedly moving as a result. In football, the Boro manager said, you accept that some teams have greater resources than others but where the coach of the less well-off team can gain an advantage is in the “tactical element”; it is in effect the only weapon he has. And if that weapon is made less effective by an opponent cheating, it is understandable that Hellberg should feel that his profession, the skillset he has developed to test himself against his peers, has been betrayed. That disgust is, no doubt, genuine enough, and it is perhaps difficult for those of us who do not work in that world fully to grasp how frustrating it must be if strategies and ploys carefully conceived and pra...

The idea that one day Mourinho might return to the Bernabéu had hung in the air, if not really as a serious possibility. Now the impossible is probable The last time José Mourinho was at the Santiago Bernabéu, he parked up in the bus. That night in late February the Benfica manager was suspended, a red card from the first leg of the Champions League playoff meaning he wasn’t allowed on the touchline he had prowled 13 years and a lifetime ago, so Real Madrid prepared a media booth for him to watch from. Situated on the eighth floor, Spanish radio to the left of him, Portuguese to the right, Cabin No 6 had been supplied with nuts, fruit, salad and jamón sandwiches. As kick-off approached, a crowd gathered by the door. But if the camera phones were out, he wasn’t. Mourinho never showed. Instead, he stayed in the basement 10 floors below, watching from an iPad on board the bus and leaving the post-match press conference to his assistant, João Tralhão. The next time he comes, which could b...

In this exclusive book extract, Rob Draper and Jonathan Northcroft reveal the remarkable process which led to Thomas Tuchel’s appointment as England manager In 2024, when the Football Association was tasked with finding Gareth Southgate’s successor, Mark Bullingham hired two external data companies who built a profile of what successful international managers looked like then tailored it to mesh with England’s player base. The top 50 coaches in the world were matched against the criteria and a shortlist emerged. “I joked with the team afterwards, because it came up with a list you and I could have come up with in the pub in 10 minutes,” Bullingham, the FA’s chief executive, says. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/lpwOkbY

Sherman theatre, Cardiff Connor Allen’s autobiographical show is a twister that winds in everything from gothic mystery to therapy sessions in an ambitious, rather incoherent mix Connor Allen’s autobiographical show features plenty of smoke and mirrors, literal and figurative. Smoke swirls from a pit on a darkened stage, jagged mirrors stand like rocks across it. It is an emotionally anguished play featuring a mixed-heritage protagonist (played by Allen) who has been abandoned by his Jamaican father and raised by his Welsh mother. His inability to forgive his father takes him back to Jamaica where he experiences a psychic watershed. This twister of a drama shifts ambitiously in form and tone, sliding between gothic thriller, family psychodrama and standup-style direct address at one point when Allen interacts with the audience with tipples of gin in warmly comic tones. At Sherman theatre, Cardiff , until 23 May Continue reading... from The Guardian htt...

The OpenAI chief rejects claims he deceived Elon Musk as high-stakes AI trial nears its end Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email The OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman , took the stand on Tuesday to defend himself and his company against a lawsuit by Elon Musk . Altman is set to be one of the final witnesses in the trial, which has pitted two of the tech industry’s most powerful men against each other in a dramatic courtroom showdown. Musk has accused Altman and OpenAI of breaking the AI firm’s founding agreement by restructuring it into a for-profit enterprise, alleging that Altman essentially swindled him into co-founding the company and providing tens of millions in financial backing. Musk also claims Altman unjustly enriched himself in the process and is seeking the CEO’s removal from OpenAI, the redistribution of $134bn to the firm’s non-profit and the undoing of its for-profit conversion. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2tuIl1b

BBC to bring back classic gameshow after 24 years away Former world champion to host with Paddy McGuinness The BBC is reracking the balls and chalking the cues again after announcing that the classic TV gameshow Big Break will return after 24 years away. The seven-time snooker world champion Stephen Hendry is to co-host the series alongside the presenter and comic Paddy McGuinness in a reboot of a show that originally ran for 10 series from 1991 to 2002. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/QmvVrZq

‘It’s going to be really hard … but how fun would that be?’ Bradley is in field for this week’s PGA Championship Keegan Bradley still reflects on the pain of captaining the United States to a home Ryder Cup defeat last year but says he would love to make the 2027 team as a player. Bradley took full responsibility as his USA side endured a chastening first two days at Bethpage Black last September, slipping to a record 11.5-4.5 deficit, before a valiant fightback fell short. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/NYLlXW2

VAR will rule on corners and second yellows at World Cup PGMO fears change will put more pressure on officials The Premier League is to reject widening the scope of VAR next season after talks with the refereeing body Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO). Under a regulation change approved by the International Football Association Board (Ifab) in February, the video assistant referee will be permitted to rule on the award of corners and second yellow cards from next month, with referees to use the powers at the World Cup after a request from Fifa. Ifab has made the new law discretionary, however, allowing leagues and competitions to decide whether to adopt it. The Premier League’s final decision will be made by the clubs at their annual general meeting next month, but PGMO has advised against extending the use of VAR. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/N0LGjSd

Ukraine president says Russian army is ‘not complying’ with the US-mediated truce and is ‘not even really trying to’ Russia has been conducting assault operations on the Ukrainian frontline in breach of a three-day ceasefire announced by US President Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday. “The Russians are continuing assault activity in sectors key for them,” Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said in his evening address. “On the frontline, the Russian army is not complying with the ceasefire and is not even really trying to.” Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/4tgqcXk

Finborough theatre, London Titas Halder’s raw solo play relays one young man’s feverish struggle in the face of racism, deftly played by Amar Chadha-Patel in his stage debut Titas Halder’s striking new one-man play is about a young British Asian man, A.K., growing up in Britain and experiencing increasingly brutal incidents of racism: bullying in the playground; casual jibes at work; parents who no longer feel safe in their family home. And at the centre of it all: a funny and sensitive man, struggling to find himself and fracturing in two. This is a strangely arresting production but there are some issues too. It feels like there’s a fairly specific play hiding in here but we’re only given scraps of details. A.K. spends his youth growing up on unnamed “Island” and later moves to the city, where he lives in a dingy flat on Seven Sisters Road. There are fleeting references to Walkmans in his childhood and, later, an allusion to the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes but the writing wav...

Main-event ring-walks scheduled for 11pm BST Wardley v Dubois is bout of uncertainty | Mail Alex Brad Rea gets back to winning ways with a tasty stoppage of the popular Liam Cameron. The hometown light-heavyweight gets back to winning ways in a one-sided contest, ended in style. Cameron showed plenty of heart getting up after he was clubbed to the canvas in round four. But Rea was all over him, putting his punches together well to force another knockdown and the referee to wisely step in. An impressive finish by the “Sting” Ray. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/hpZBm4a

An exhibit of psyops leaflets released in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya finally shows American people the messages that were made in their name By Moustafa Bayoumi For over a century, the United States military has been dropping propaganda leaflets in deliberate psychological operations, or psyops, to achieve success in war. But the key question behind the effort remains unanswered: does it even work? In 1918, the US released more than 3m leaflets behind enemy lines by plane and hydrogen balloon. To their delight, they found the leaflets helped erode morale and unit cohesion among the Germans in the first world war. Or so the story goes. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/oVeICmB

Brooklyn Storehouse, New York City The viral star electrified Brooklyn with winking visuals, self-aware humor and a slew of special guests From the look of the crowd at PinkPantheress ’s show in Brooklyn last night, you’d be forgiven for thinking that King Charles had extended his recent trip to New York. The crowd that snaked its way through a never-ending circuit of cracked asphalt and grimy water on their way to Brooklyn Storehouse wore union jacks and tartan miniskirts, which you could imagine would be in line with royal protocol for how to dress when a sovereign visits a warehouse rave. PinkPantheress is certainly royalty among a vast swath of young, terminally online people; a pop princess who is mainstream enough to clinch top billing at Coachella and perform on primetime TV, but whose taste has always leaned more niche and left-field than anything that would ever go platinum. Or would it? Pop music is always in a state of flux but we’re living through an interesting period o...

Tickets for US opener v Paraguay go for $1,000+ Infantino recently defended World Cup prices Donald Trump has questioned the value of four-figure World Cup tickets for matches involving the United States, telling the New York Post that “I wouldn’t pay it either, to be honest.” The remark came in a phone interview with the Post, with Trump claiming he “did not know that number” for the USMNT’s opening match against Paraguay. In December, Fifa established a base price for Category 3 tickets – the cheapest available to most fans, given the small swathe of Category 4 seats at the tournament – of $1,120, according to the Guardian’s reporting at the time . Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/abiLmTn

Arsenal’s 1-1 draw against Brighton hands City title Andrée Jeglertz’s side still have chance of Double Manchester City are WSL champions for the first time in 10 years, after Arsenal’s draw at Brighton. It is not the nicest way to win a league title, but City will not care. Their only previous league title was won in 2016 and they have had six runners-up finishes since, as well as second place in the shortened Spring Series as the competition moved from its previous summer scheduling. Scheduling issues meant Arsenal had three games in hand over the league leaders going into Wednesday’s game in Crawley. However, they needed to win all of those to keep the title race alive, with City on 52 points with one game remaining and Arsenal’s maximum total points tally 53 points. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/cyEB3Im

‘I crossed the line’ says 34-year-old Brazil forward Neymar hugs teenage teammate after Santos goal Neymar has publicly apologised to his Santos teammate Robinho Júnior for slapping him during a training session, as the pair appeared to put the dispute behind them during a game on Tuesday. Santos said they had opened an investigation this week after the altercation between Neymar and the 18-year-old son of Robinho, the former Real Madrid and Manchester City striker. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/jH9ouvO

Activists found guilty over break-in at Israeli defence firm’s UK site after jury deliberated for more than 14 hours Four out of six Palestine Action activists who stood trial over a break-in at an Israeli defence firm’s UK site have been convicted of criminal damage. Charlotte Head, 29; Samuel Corner, 23; Leona Kamio, 30; and Fatema Rajwani, 21, were all found guilty on Tuesday of smashing up property , including drones, manufactured by Elbit Systems and computers at its factory in Filton, near Bristol, on 6 August 2024. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/LNu9h1b

Costume Art pairs couture pieces with items from its collection in exploration of many kinds of human bodies Speaking at the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute spring exhibition in New York, Anna Wintour described the first Monday in May as her “favourite day of the year, and also my most terrifying one”. This particular Monday may be more high-stakes than previous years, with Monday night’s Met Gala for the exhibition’s launch mired in controversy , owing to Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos’s sponsorship of the event. It is also the inaugural exhibition for the Costume Institute’s new home: a 12,000 sq ft space, named the Condé M Nast Galleries, that puts the museum’s fashion exhibitions in a considerably more high-profile spot, right off its Great Hall. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/LRYDfHF

From prescribing spiritual warfare to demonizing health experts, RFK Jr’s health empire has become a dangerous vehicle for a Christian nationalist worldview In February 2025, Robert F Kennedy Jr began his tenure as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with an unusual message for the federal department responsible for protecting public health. America’s greatest challenge, he said, was not just chronic disease but a “spiritual malaise”, a kind of soul-sickness derived from America’s moral decline. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/Xr2FaCs

Group broke through locked door in Manhattan, damaging property and injuring a staff member, church says A group of youths forced their way into a Scientology church in New York on Saturday in the latest in a string of nationwide “speed running” incidents that have gone viral on social media in recent weeks. The group broke through a locked door to gain entry to the Church of Scientology on West 36th Street in Manhattan, throwing objects, damaging the property and injuring a staff member as worshippers and visitors attended a seminar, the church said in a statement to the Guardian. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/dG89pqW

Arsenal put pressure on Manchester City with 3-0 win First-half performance ‘one of the best’ this season Mikel Arteta said his Arsenal team had played some of their best football of the season in Saturday’s 3-0 home win over Fulham and demanded that they take the positive feelings into the return leg of their Champions League semi-final against Atlético Madrid on Tuesday. Arsenal picked a fine time to recover their attacking flow, Viktor Gyökeres scoring either side of a Bukayo Saka goal to give them an unassailable half-time lead. The result took them six points clear of Manchester City at the top of the Premier League, albeit their rivals have two games in hand – the first of which is at Everton on Monday night. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/S0oGDeU

The Nottinghamshire bowler took five Leicestershire wickets at Grace Road while Dom Sibley dug in against Sussex A wicket at Grace Road , where Notts are pounding Leicestershire round the ground. Jack Haynes a fourth wicket for Ben Green. Joe Clarke is approaching his hundred. Notts 426-5. A pretty good looking crowd at Taunton, some huddling against a brick wall for warmth. Joe Root at first slip polishes the ball, Will Smeed, slow starting again, still on nought. Jack White on the money. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/XIySmlc

Leo, who has criticized Trump’s hardline immigration policy, selected Evelio Menjivar-Ayala as state’s new bishop Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox Pope Leo XIV has appointed a man who had once entered the United States as an undocumented immigrant, hidden in the trunk of a car, as the new bishop of West Virginia . The pope approved the resignation of Bishop Mark E Brennan of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, and selected Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, 55, of Washington to take his place, reported OSV News . Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/6eQ3gOR