B&Q sales hit by wet Easter but it hopes to gain in heatwave

• Diplomacy between Tehran and Washington has accelerated after weeks of escalation, with regional mediators helping drive a new round of Iran-U.S. talks. • The reporting says the confrontation follows more than six weeks of disruption tied to Iran’s pressure on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and a U.S.-enforced naval blockade.

• The Center for Strategic and International Studies hosted a press briefing previewing the upcoming summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping, with Taiwan expected to be a central issue. • CSIS said Xi highlighted Taiwan as the most important issue in U.S.-China relations during a February 2026 phone call and urged Washington not to provide arms to Taiwan.

Keir Starmer announces review after three boys were given youth rehabilitation orders for rape of two girlsThe court of appeal will review the non-custodial sentences given to three teenage boys for the rape of two girls, Keir Starmer has announced.The boys, two of whom were 15 and one aged 14 at the time of sentencing, were given youth rehabilitation orders after the judge in the case said he wanted to “avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily” and support their reintegration into society. Continue reading...

Vote for Republican nomination is latest test of President’s grip over GOPHello and welcome to the US politics live blog.Texans are voting for a Republican nominee for US Senate in Tuesday’s runoff election, following Donald Trump’s late bid to influence the race in his latest effort to rid the GOP of less devoted leaders.Iran has poured cold water on suggestions that a deal with the US is imminent, pointing to the confusion in US positions and Israeli interference as reasons why an agreement is proving difficult to secure. Speaking at the weekly foreign ministry press briefing, Esmail Baghaei, the spokesperson for Iran’s negotiating team, also said future management of the strait of Hormuz was a matter for Oman and Iran to agree on, and that it was not tolls that were being proposed but “fees for navigational services”.By contrast, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that a deal was still possible, adding that the strait of Hormuz would open “one way or another”. “There were some talks going on in Qatar today, so we’ll see if we can make progress. I think it’s a lot of talking back and forth going on about specific language in the initial document,” Rubio told reporters in Jaipur during an official visit to India.A Trump Tower planned for the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, is to be built on land currently part-owned by the son of the US-sanctioned leader of the country, according to official records. The proposed skyscraper, a joint venture between a local consortium and the Trump Organization, which is managed by the US president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, will be on a plot whose current registered owner is the International Charity Fund Cartu.Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said on Monday her government agreed to allow the Iranian national football team to stay in Mexico during the World Cup, adding that the United States did not want to host the team. Sheinbaum said football’s governing body Fifa approached her government after the US said it did not want Iran’s squad to stay in the country throughout the tournament, despite Iran playing all three of its group matches there. Continue reading...

Measure could ease concerns from countries – such as France – that are sceptical about bringing in more membersEurope live – latest updatesThe EU could deny future member states veto rights for several years in an attempt to make enlargement more politically acceptable as the bloc undergoes a push to admit new countries before the end of the decade.Under plans being considered by the European Commission, prospective member states – such as Moldova and western Balkan countries – would not, on joining the EU, have the automatic right to veto foreign policy decisions or other issues agreed by unanimity, such as taxation. Continue reading...

Scandal-plagued Ken Paxton has won Trump’s backing – can he defeat John Cornyn in a high-stakes primary runoff? Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, takes on four-term incumbent John Cornyn on Tuesday in the ugliest primary election of the year. The winner of the Republican Senate runoff in Texas will contest November’s general election against Democrat James Talarico.Paxton and Cornyn have spent months coveting the most valuable endorsement in Republican politics: Donald Trump. Last week, scandal-plagued Paxton got it, with the US president describing him as “a true Maga warrior”. Continue reading...

Broadcaster describes Robert Kenyon, who is standing in the upcoming Makerfield byelection, as a misogynist and a ‘cowardly man’ Carol Vorderman has demanded an apology from the Reform UK candidate in the upcoming Makerfield byelection for “disgusting comments” he made about her on social media in the past.The broadcaster and former Countdown numbers expert described Robert Kenyon, who Reform have backed to face Andy Burnham in next month’s vote, as a “cowardly man” for a series of offensive posts made by the Wigan councillor that have since been deleted, along with his account. Continue reading...

Five of the deaths were by drowning while two people died competing in sporting eventsSeven people have died in France in an extreme early-summer heat event that is affecting a swathe of western Europe, as France and the UK set record highs for May and temperatures were forecast to rise further on Tuesday.“What I can say today is that there have been seven deaths linked directly or indirectly to the heat,” the government spokesperson, Maud Bregeon, told French television TF1, adding that five of the deaths were by drowning. Continue reading...

Trump campaign accelerating climate crisis as officials move migrants to detention jails and deport them from USUS immigration enforcement flights are producing hundreds of thousands of metric tonnes of climate-damaging carbon emissions as officials shuttle unprecedented numbers of people to detention centers far from home and deport them to countries across the world.Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign has spurred at least an 80% increase in such flights year over year, accelerating the climate crisis by emitting massive amounts of carbon dioxide, according to data analysis shared exclusively with the Guardian. Continue reading...

Ellen Roome, whose son, Jools Sweeney, was 14 when he died, wants a ban put in place for under-16sThe mother of a teenager who believes he died in a TikTok challenge gone wrong has said that Downing Street has been too slow to move towards a social media ban for under-16s, and accused the government of “kicking it down the road”.Ellen Roome, the mother of Jools Sweeney, 14, is among the families who will meet Keir Starmer on Tuesday as a consultation into the social media ban closes this week. Continue reading...

Former health secretary says he unsuccessfully argued for tougher action when in cabinetGood morning. The government has been consulting on whether to follow Australia and impose a ban on social media for under-16s, or whether to opt for other restrictions, and the consultation ends at 11.59pm tonight. Keir Starmer is expected to announce the government’s response soon afterwards. He has already said that there will be action of some sort. Last year ministers were sceptical about following the Australian example, but this is an issue where opinion – both in government, and in society more broadly – has been shifting very quickly.This morning Wes Streeting, the former health secretary who is running what is in effect a leadership campaign, has intervened. As the Guardian reports, he has said that a social media ban for under-16s “must be the start, not the end” and he has compared the sector to the tobacco industry.Streeting restated his claim that social media is like the tobacco industry and suggested that, just as tobacco bosses did in the mid-20th century, social media executives have been suppressing evidence about the full extent of the harm caused by their products. He said:What we’ve seen from Big Tech is behaviour akin to Big Tobacco … We know from whistleblowers that in the tech industry, among those who are responsible for designing technology, including social media platforms, that are changing every aspect of our lives, they know that the product they’re designing is addictive, they know that it is harmful, and the business model is orientated towards getting kids while they’re young, addicting them with the design features that are designed for addiction, to grab your attention and keep you on their platform for as long as possible.He said there was a “growing body of evidence” about the ways in which social media is harmful.And then we see the consequences beginning to emerge through the growing body of evidence about the impact of this technology on childhood, whether that is sleep, concentration, learning, health, wellbeing, including mental health.The harms are evident.He claimed governmments around the world had been “asleep at the wheel” on this issue. “Frankly, legislators, regulators, have been asleep at the wheel on this,” he said.He suggested that Keir Starmer had been “behind the curve” on this issue. While he was not overly criticial of the PM on this issue, suggesting that governments around the world have been slow to confront social media companies on this issue, he made it clear that he thought the Starmer government could have acted more quickly. He said that he was speaking out now because he was “liberated from the obligations of collective responsibility”. He said the arguments he was making in public today were the ones he was making privately in government, “in a number of cabinet committees and meetings”, and that he “pushed as hard as I could”. He said the government was now moving to a “better position”, but he suggested Starmer could have acted more quickly.To be fair to Liz Kendall, the science and technology secretary, she came into office [in September last year], she’s gripped this, she’s chosen to run a rapid consultation with the principle of how to implement restrictions, rather than whether. That’s all positive. And I trust Liz Kendall to act quickly following the closure of the consultation today.And we must, because, as I say, we’re behind the curve. Continue reading...