The Duke of Sussex has said it is “impossible” for him to bring his wife and children back to the UK after losing his legal challenge over personal security, and revealed he would “love” a reconciliation with his family.

In an emotional interview with the BBC, Prince Harry said his father, King Charles, would not speak to him “because of the security stuff”, but said he wanted reconciliation as life was “precious” and he did not know how long his father, who has been diagnosed with cancer, had left to live.

Speaking in California, where he now lives, Harry, 40, said: “For the time being, it’s impossible for me to take my family back to the UK safely.”

He added: “I can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the UK at this point … I love my country. I always have done, despite what some people in that country have done. I miss the UK. And it’s really quite sad I won’t be able to show my children my homeland.”

Harry had sought to overturn changes to his security provision while in the UK, which were made after he and the Duchess of Sussex stepped away from royal duties in 2020.

He was offered “bespoke” security, which he felt was inferior and claimed the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (known as Ravec), which authorises security measures, had breached its own terms of reference by not conducting a risk management board (RMB) before making the decision.

He insisted his father could help resolve the issue, though he had not asked him to intervene. “I can only come to the UK safely if I am invited, and there is a lot of control and ability in my father’s hands.

“Ultimately, this whole thing could be resolved through him, not by intervening, but by stepping aside and allowing the experts to do what is necessary and to carry out an RMB,” he said.

It is understood it would have been constitutionally improper for the king to intervene while the matter was being considered by the government and reviewed by the courts.

Although the royal household provides representation and input into the Ravec decision, Friday’s judgment laid out that the chair of the Ravec committee was the decision maker on the provision of security. Royal private offices and private secretaries should be consulted as to the practicalities of the protection measures agreed, the ruling said.

Harry appealed to the prime minister, Keir Starmer, saying: “This all was initiated under a previous government. There is now a new government. I have had it described to me by people who know about the facts that this is a good old-fashioned establishment stitch-up. And that’s what it feels like.”

Asked whether the prime minister should “step in”, he replied: “Yes, I would ask the prime minister to step in.

“I would ask Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to look at this very, very carefully and I would ask her to review Ravec and its members, because if it is an expert body, then what is the royal household’s role there if it is not to influence and decide what they want for the members of their household?”

The prime minister would be “quite reluctant” to become involved in decisions about Harry’s security, a senior cabinet minister said on Friday night. Pat McFadden told Sky News: “I think he would be quite reluctant to make a judgment about someone’s personal security needs. We have experts who do that for a reason, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea for any politician to be saying that that person requires this level or that level of security.”

On his family rift, Harry said: “There have been so many disagreements, differences between me and some of my family. This current situation, that has been ongoing now for five years with regard to human life and safety as the sticking point. It is the only thing that’s left.

“Of course some members of my family will never forgive me for writing a book, of course they will never forgive me for lots of things, but … I would love reconciliation with my family.

“There’s no point in continuing to fight any more. Life is precious. I don’t know how much longer my father has. He won’t speak to me because of this security stuff. But it would be nice to reconcile.”

He added: “If they want that, it’s entirely up to them.”

Harry said he could never leave the royal family, though he had left the “institution” because “I had to”.

He continued: “Whether I have an official role or not is irrelevant to the threats, risk and impact on the reputation of the UK if something was to happen. What really worries me more than anything else about today’s decision [is that] it set a new precedent that security can be used to control members of the family, and effectively, what it does is imprison other members of the family from being able to choose a different life.”

He claimed that, through the court disclosure process, he had “discovered that some people want history to repeat itself, which is pretty dark”. Asked who he meant, Harry declined to answer.

In a statement released on the Sussexes’ website, Harry said: “Ravec’s ability to make decisions outside of its own policies and the so-called political sensitivities of my case have prevailed over the need for fair and consistent decision-making. The court has decided to defer to this, revealing a sad truth: my hands are tied in seeking legal recourse against the establishment.

“This all comes from the same institutions that preyed upon my mother, that openly campaigned for the removal of our security, and that continue to incite hatred towards me, my wife and even our children, while at the same time protecting the very power that they should be holding accountable.”

He told the BBC he was “devastated” by the court’s decision, adding: “Not so much devastated with the loss [as] about the people behind the decision feeling as though this is OK. Is it a win for them? I’m sure there are some people out there, probably most likely the people that wish me harm, [who] consider this a huge win.”

He indicated that he would not be seeking a further legal challenge, saying Friday’s ruling had “proven that there was no way to win this through the courts”.

A spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said: “All of these issues have been examined repeatedly and meticulously by the courts, with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.”

The Duke of Sussex has lost a legal challenge over the level of taxpayer-funded security he is entitled to while in the UK, allowing the government to proceed with a “bespoke”, and cheaper, level of protection for his family.

Three senior judges at the court of appeal rejected Prince Harry’s claim that he had been “singled out” for “inferior treatment” and that his safety and life were “at stake” after a change in security arrangements that occurred when he stepped down as a working royal and moved abroad.

He had challenged the dismissal of his high court claim against the Home Office over the decision of the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, known as Ravec, that he should receive a different degree of protection when in the country.

Sir Geoffrey Vos, the master of the rolls, said: “I concluded, having studied the detailed documents, I could not say the duke’s sense of grievance translated into a legal argument for a challenge to Ravec’s decision.”

The ruling will be a personal blow to Harry who said he was “overwhelmed” by the case when he flew back for the two-day hearing last month. Speaking to a Daily Telegraph reporter outside the hearing, he suggested he considered the appeal more important than his other legal battle against tabloids, saying “this one always mattered the most”.

Barristers for Harry, 40, told the appeal court that Ravec did not follow its own “terms of reference” when deciding his security.

Shaheed Fatima KC said his safety, security and life were “at stake”, and that the “human dimension” of the case should not be forgotten.

“We do say that his presence here, and throughout this appeal, is a potent illustration, were one needed, of how much this appeal means to him and his family,” said Fatima.

The Home Office, which is legally responsible for Ravec’s decisions, opposed the appeal. Sir James Eadie KC, for the Home Office, said Ravec was faced with a “unique set of circumstances”.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “All of these issues have been examined repeatedly and meticulously by the courts, with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.”

In a ruling on Friday, Vos, Lord Justice Bean and Lord Justice Edis dismissed Harry’s appeal.

Reading a summary of the decision, Vos said:”The Duke was in effect stepping in and out of the cohort of protection provided by Ravec.

“Outside the UK, he was outside the cohort, but when in the UK, his security would be considered as appropriate.”

He continued: “It was impossible to say that this reasoning was illogical or inappropriate, indeed it seemed sensible.”

A high court judge ruled last year that Ravec’s decision, taken in early 2020 after Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, stepped down as senior working royals, was lawful. Harry’s legal team argued the judge had erred in his judgment.

Ravec’s final decision, shared on 28 February 2020, stated that Metropolitan police protection would no longer be appropriate after the Sussexes’ departure, and that they should receive a different degree of protection when in the UK.

The Sussexes would instead receive a “bespoke” security service, whereby they would be required to give 30 days’ notice of any plans to travel to the UK, with each visit being assessed for threat levels and whether protection is needed.

Critics of Harry have said he raised his own profile as a possible terrorist target in 2023 after disclosing in his memoir Spare that he had killed 25 Taliban fighters.

Harry could appeal, but would need permission to do so, according to the legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg.

“There wasn’t an application for permission just now from the court of appeal. There might be one in writing. If permission is refused, then Prince Harry’s lawyers could go and ask the supreme court for permission,” Rozenberg told Sky News.

“But what the supreme court will look at is whether this is a case of general public interest, general public importance. It seems to me it’s one of very, very specific importance to Prince Harry.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The UK government’s protective security system is rigorous and proportionate.”

The Duke of Sussex has lost a legal challenge over the level of taxpayer-funded security he is entitled to while in the UK, allowing the government to proceed with a “bespoke”, and cheaper, level of protection for his family.

Three senior judges at the court of appeal rejected Prince Harry’s claim that he had been “singled out” for “inferior treatment” and that his safety and life were “at stake” after a change in security arrangements that occurred when he stepped down as a working royal and moved abroad.

He had challenged the dismissal of his high court claim against the Home Office over the decision of the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, known as Ravec, that he should receive a different degree of protection when in the country.

Sir Geoffrey Vos, the master of the rolls, said: “I concluded, having studied the detailed documents, I could not say the duke’s sense of grievance translated into a legal argument for a challenge to Ravec’s decision.”

The ruling will be a personal blow to Harry who said he was “overwhelmed” by the case when he flew back for the two-day hearing last month. Speaking to a Daily Telegraph reporter outside the hearing, he suggested he considered the appeal more important than his other legal battle against tabloids, saying “this one always mattered the most”.

Barristers for Harry, 40, told the appeal court that Ravec did not follow its own “terms of reference” when deciding his security.

Shaheed Fatima KC said his safety, security and life were “at stake”, and that the “human dimension” of the case should not be forgotten.

“We do say that his presence here, and throughout this appeal, is a potent illustration, were one needed, of how much this appeal means to him and his family,” said Fatima.

The Home Office, which is legally responsible for Ravec’s decisions, opposed the appeal. Sir James Eadie KC, for the Home Office, said Ravec was faced with a “unique set of circumstances”.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “All of these issues have been examined repeatedly and meticulously by the courts, with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.”

In a ruling on Friday, Vos, Lord Justice Bean and Lord Justice Edis dismissed Harry’s appeal.

Reading a summary of the decision, Vos said:”The Duke was in effect stepping in and out of the cohort of protection provided by Ravec.

“Outside the UK, he was outside the cohort, but when in the UK, his security would be considered as appropriate.”

He continued: “It was impossible to say that this reasoning was illogical or inappropriate, indeed it seemed sensible.”

A high court judge ruled last year that Ravec’s decision, taken in early 2020 after Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, stepped down as senior working royals, was lawful. Harry’s legal team argued the judge had erred in his judgment.

Ravec’s final decision, shared on 28 February 2020, stated that Metropolitan police protection would no longer be appropriate after the Sussexes’ departure, and that they should receive a different degree of protection when in the UK.

The Sussexes would instead receive a “bespoke” security service, whereby they would be required to give 30 days’ notice of any plans to travel to the UK, with each visit being assessed for threat levels and whether protection is needed.

Critics of Harry have said he raised his own profile as a possible terrorist target in 2023 after disclosing in his memoir Spare that he had killed 25 Taliban fighters.

Harry could appeal, but would need permission to do so, according to the legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg.

“There wasn’t an application for permission just now from the court of appeal. There might be one in writing. If permission is refused, then Prince Harry’s lawyers could go and ask the supreme court for permission,” Rozenberg told Sky News.

“But what the supreme court will look at is whether this is a case of general public interest, general public importance. It seems to me it’s one of very, very specific importance to Prince Harry.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The UK government’s protective security system is rigorous and proportionate.”

“Democracy sausages” have long been a fixture of the Australian election – but this year food delivery behemoth Uber Eats is cashing in on the beloved tradition.

Uber Eats is offering voters “democracy sausages” on 3 May for “hardworking Australians” who don’t have access to a snag on election day.

But unlike the regular democracy sausages, which are a fundraising opportunity for the schools, churches and community halls where polling centres are located, these snags are prepared at “democracy sausage stores” operated by Maverick, an external marketing company.

In Sydney, for instance, they are being cooked and packed for delivery at a temporary kitchen available for hire in Ultimo, according to Uber Eats.

The sausages are only available in certain inner parts of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney on Saturday from midday until sold out, with 1,000 available in each city. Users outside the delivery zone are told they can buy ingredients to construct their own on the Uber Eats app.

Guardian Australia ordered a vegetarian sausage and a meat sausage with sauces and onion on Saturday afternoon. It cost $11.60 for both sausages including delivery and service fee. Uber said $3.50 for every sausage would be donated to Australian Red Cross partners, to the maximum value of $10,500.

The products arrived in less than 30 minutes, in green boxes which read “democracy sausage delivered”. Inside the boxes were a single sausage on a piece of white bread, sauce sachets and another quote reading “exercise your democratic bite”.

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The sausages, which were reasonably cold, were contained in a sheet designed to look like ballot paper. But rather than listing candidates, the paper ticked the customer’s preferences for sauces, onion and variety of sausage, with a disclaimer noting “this is not an official voting form”.

The managing director of Uber Eats Australia, Ed Kitchen, said “thousands” of Australians were likely to miss out on democracy sausages as not every polling place had a barbecue.

“For those of you able to make use of a local sausage sizzle, I strongly encourage you to support the community fundraising efforts first and foremost – that’s what I’ll be doing,” he said.

The company enlisted celebrity chef Iain “Huey” Hewitson to promote the deal. He said he was “pleased to don my sausage suspenders to help ensure finding a democracy sausage is obtainable this year in areas where the local school might not be turning over these tasty morsels”.

Some social media users raised their eyebrows at Uber capitalising on the trend.

Many polling centres are located at schools, which take the opportunity to fundraise by offering a barbecue, cake stall, or selling plants or books.

“That is so unAustralian,” one user posted on Facebook. “Schools or community groups are meant to make a few dollars selling a sausage sizzle. Not some big corporations.”

Another labelled it a “thoughtless tone deaf publicity stunt”, while a third simply wrote: “who wants a cold limp sausage? It’s democracy manifest.”

The democracy sausage has grown in popularity in recent years and was listed as the word of the year by the Australian National Dictionary Centre in 2016, cementing its place in the Australian lexicon.

Alex Dawson from the Democracy Sausage project had uploaded more than 1,600 sausage stalls and other stands operating around the nation to its grassroots website days out from the election, 900 more than the last federal election in 2022.

There were reports of election day sausage sizzles at every continent in the globe this year – including Antarctica.

According to Kate Armstrong at the Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD), the term “democracy sausage” was coined around 2010 when a Snag Votes website first listed and mapped polling places offering a sausage in bread.

“The popularity of the democracy sausage is in part due to voting being compulsory in Australia,” she said.

“Polling places are typically primary schools and community halls, and polling days are on Saturday … naturally this presents an ideal opportunity for local associations and parents and friends’ groups to fundraise by setting up food- or refreshment-based activities around their polling place.

“Early on it was cakes, jams and even crafts, but with the rise in popularity of the portable gas barbecue in the ‘80s, this extended to the much-loved Aussie sausage sizzle.”

Donald Trump is proposing huge cuts to social programmes like health and education while planning substantial spending increases on defense and the Department of Homeland Security, in a White House budget blueprint that starkly illustrates his preoccupation with projecting military strength and deterring migration.

Cuts of $163bn on discretionary non-defense spending would also see financial outlays slashed for environmental and renewable energy schemes, as well as for the FBI, an agency Trump has claimed was weaponised against him during Joe Biden’s presidency. Spending reductions are also being projected for the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In contrast to the squeeze on discretionary social programmes, the administration is planning a 13% rise – to more than $1tn – in the Pentagon budget, a commitment at odds with Trump’s frequent vows to end the US’s involvement in “forever wars” in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The figures for the White House’s so-called “skinny budget” for 2026 represent a 22.6% cut in spending from that projected in the current fiscal year, which ends on 30 September.

They include big cuts to the National Institutes of Health – which undertakes extensive research on cures for diseases such as cancer – as well as for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but provide funding of $500m for the Make America healthy again initiative spearheaded by Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

By contrast, the Department of Homeland Security – which oversees border security – would see its spending boosted by 65% in a graphic illustration of Trump’s intense focus on stemming the flow of migrants into the US.

Non-defense discretionary spending refers to federal money that is reauthorised each year and generally covers areas like public health, transport and education. The latter sector faces cuts of $12bn under Trump’s plan.

But it does not cover the highly sensitive areas of Medicare, Medicaid and social security, which provide healthcare and support for retirees and the poor and which the president has vowed to leave untouched. That has drawn widespread scepticism from Democrats, who accuse the Republican of plotting cuts to the programmes to pay for an extension of Trump’s sweeping 2017 tax cuts.

The spending clampdown is consistent with the professed goals of Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” team, also known as Doge, which has infiltrated multiple federal agencies – including the Social Security Administration – in a supposed quest for “waste, fraud and abuse”. Doge’s aggressive onslaught has included the almost total shuttering of USAID, the federal agency for foreign assistance. The budget projections assume large-scale cuts to foreign aid.

Russell Vought, director of the White House office of management and budget and a proponent of large-scale cuts to the federal workforce, said the plan was intended to tackle “wasteful spending and bloated bureaucracy”.

“At this critical moment, we need a historic budget – one that ends the funding of our decline, puts Americans first, and delivers unprecedented support to our military and homeland security,” he said.

The White House plans to cut staffing at the Central Intelligence Agency by 1,200 positions while other intelligence agencies including the National Security Agency will also shed thousands of jobs, the Washington Post has reported.

A person familiar with the plan confirmed the changes to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration has told members of Congress about the planned cuts at the CIA, which will take place over several years and be accomplished in part through reduced hiring as opposed to layoffs, the Post reported on Friday. The cuts include several hundred people who had already opted for early retirement, it said.

In response to questions about the reductions, the CIA issued a statement saying its director, John Ratcliffe, was working to align the agency with Donald Trump’s national security priorities.

“These moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse the agency with renewed energy, provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position CIA to deliver on its mission,” the agency said in the statement.

A spokesperson for the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Gabbard’s office oversees and coordinates the work of 18 agencies that collect and analyse intelligence.

The CIA earlier this year became the first US intelligence agency to join a voluntary redundancy program initiated by Trump, who has vowed to radically downsize the federal workforce in the name of efficiency and frugality. The NSA has already offered voluntary resignations to some employees.

The CIA has said it also plans to lay off an unknown number of recently hired employees.

The Trump administration has also eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs at intelligence agencies, though a judge has temporarily blocked efforts to fire 19 employees working on DEI programs who challenged their terminations.

Trump also abruptly fired the general who led the NSA and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, Tim Haugh.

Ratcliffe has vowed to overhaul the CIA and said he wants to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China.

With the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse

The Trump administration is considering cuts worth $163bn to departments including health and education as well as environmental schemes while increasing spending on defense, according to a White House budget blueprint.

In contrast to the squeeze on discretionary social programmes, the administration is planning a 13% rise – to more than $1tn – in the Pentagon budget, a commitment at odds with Donald Trump’s frequent vows to end the US’s involvement in “forever wars” in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The budget draft was circulated as reports emerged of a huge military parade planned to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US army as well as Trump’s birthday.

Here are the key stories at a glance:

Catching up? Here’s what happened on 1 May 2025.

King Charles has accepted an invitation to open Canada’s parliament on 27 May, in “an historic honour that matches the weight of our times”, the country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, said on Friday.

In his first news conference since an election dominated by Donald Trump’s threats to Canada’s sovereignty, the prime minister also confirmed he would meet the US president at the White House on Tuesday.

Trump has repeatedly suggested annexing Canada to the US and imposed tariffs on some Canadian goods, moves which Carney has described as a “betrayal”.

“As I’ve stressed repeatedly, our old relationship, based on steadily increasing integration, is over,” he said, adding he would “fight” to get the best deal for the country. “The questions now are how our nations will cooperate in the future.”

Carney’s Liberals are set to form a minority government after Monday’s election, and are projected to hold at least 168 seats, with recounts pending in at least two electoral districts. The Conservatives will form the official opposition with a projected 144 seats, while the Bloc Québecois won 23, the progressive New Democratic party seven and the Greens one. Carney praised the strength of the country’s democracy amid high turnout, telling reporters all party leaders “quickly and graciously” accepted the results.

The prime minister said he would call a byelection immediately after Conservatives decide which member of parliament will step aside to give leader Pierre Poilievre, who failed to win his own seat, the chance to run for a new seat.

“No games,” he said.

But Carney rejected the idea of signing a formal pact with the NDP in order to guarantee the survival of his minority government, as his predecessor Justin Trudeau did following his narrow electoral victory in 2021. Carney said the Liberals had received a strong mandate “and the most votes in Canadian history”, adding: “Canadians elected a new government to stand up to President Trump and build a strong economy.”

Carney told reporters he would announce a cabinet with gender parity on 12 May and parliament would return on 27 May in a move that “clearly underscores the sovereignty of our country”.

The visit of a monarch to give the speech from the throne marks the first in more than half a century. The last time a sovereign opened parliament was in 1957, when Queen Elizabeth II came to Ottawa.

The prime minister also acknowledged that a large portion of the voter base had concerns they felt the Liberals had so far failed to fully address.

Ahead of the election, the Conservatives had emphasized a “tough on crime” message and Carney said on Friday that his party would strengthen both the criminal code and bail laws “for those threatening the safety of Canadians”, making it more difficult for those accused of auto theft, home invasion and human trafficking to obtain bail. Carney also pledged to build more houses and to cut taxes on new builds in an attempt to make the real estate market more accessible.

“I’ve been clear since day one of my leadership campaign in January, I’m in politics to do big things, not to be something,” he said. “Now that Canadians have honoured me with a mandate to bring about big changes quickly, I will work relentlessly to fulfil that trust.”

Much of the press conference, however, focused on Carney’s upcoming meeting with Trump. The prime minister told reporters he would not negotiate in public amid questions over how he might approach a possible trade deal with the president, as well as the presence of tariffs on Canadian goods that violate current trade rules.

“Do not expect white smoke out of that meeting,” he said, a reference to the upcoming papal conclave.

The White House has cited the alleged flow of fentanyl from Canada for imposing tariffs, even though only minimal amounts of the drug have been seized at the northern border in recent months.

“There will be difficult discussions,” Carney said in French. “The fentanyl-related tariffs, we don’t understand why they’re still in place.”

When pressed on Trump’s musing on making Canada the 51st state, Carney said any such proposal would be rejected by Canada.

“It’s always important to distinguish want from reality,” he said.

After the success of this year’s biopic A Complete Unknown, a whole new generation has learned about the lyricism, nasal vocal style and often-frustrating nature of Bob Dylan.

And this month they will get the chance to discover he is also a painter, as the songwriter exhibits a series of original artworks – created with “emotional resonance” – in London.

Dylan, 83, will unveil 97 recent works featuring characters, objects and various scenes at the Halcyon Gallery.

And it seems that he is not only still touring in his 80s, but also painting. The show, Point Blank, is based on original sketches created by Dylan between 2021 and 2022. They depict people playing instruments, couples, sportspeople – along with rooms and places where Dylan spent time.

The drawings were painted over with vivid colours to create “living, breathing entities that have emotional resonance, colours used as weapons and mood setters, a means of storytelling”, Dylan said.

“The idea was not only to observe the human condition, but to throw myself into it with great urgency,” he added.

The studies include a mirror reflecting a set of lips, a saxophonist and a cowboy with a pistol hanging on his belt in front of a rising sun.

Some of the drawings are tangled up as blue, red and neutral monochromatic studies, reminiscent of Pablo Picasso’s early blue period.

The Point Blank series began as a book and includes accompanying prose.

Kate Brown, the creative director at Halcyon, said: “These works on paper feel like memories, intangible windows into the life and imagination of one of the greatest storytellers who ever lived.

“People who attend the exhibition will discover that they provoke stories from our imagination. We consider the circumstances of the protagonists and ponder our movement through the spaces that the artist depicts.”

The Halcyon Gallery previously exhibited Dylan’s series Drawn Blank, which featured graphite drawings made when travelling between Europe, Asia and the US from 1989 to 1992 – and later reworked with paint.

Dylan describes the process of making his work as a way to “relax and refocus a restless mind” during busy tours.

Paul Green, the president and founder of Halcyon, said: “It is nearly 18 years since Halcyon first started working with Bob Dylan and it has been an extraordinary experience to watch this cultural icon develop into such a critically revered and important visual artist so closely.

“This latest body of paintings feels like a more intimate connection to the artist than in any of his previous work and it is a great privilege to share them with the public for the first time.”

The exhibition is free of charge and will open on 9 May.

Israeli warplanes have carried out a series of airstrikes outside Damascus and across Syria, after warnings from Israeli officials that the country would intervene to protect the Syria’s minority Druze sect.

The airstrikes targeted a Syrian military site in the Damascus suburb of Harasta, as well as hitting unknown targets in Deraa province in south Syria and Hama province in north-west Syria. At least one civilian was killed and four people were injured as a result of the Israeli bombings late Friday night, according to Syrian state media.

The latest round of strikes come after Israel killed four civilians earlier on Friday in a bombing in southern Syria and struck the vicinity of Syria’s presidential palace.

Syria’s new rulers had angrily denounced the raids launched by Israel’s air force against unidentified targets near the presidential palace earlier in the day, warning of a “dangerous escalation”.

Syria’s presidency called the strike “a dangerous escalation against state institutions and its sovereignty” and accused Israel of destabilising the country.

Israeli officials said the attacks were intended to send a message to the Syrian government after days of bloody clashes near Damascus between pro-government militia forces and fighters from the Druze minority sect.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and the defence minister, Israel Katz, said in a joint statement that the attack early on Friday, the second this week in Syria, was intended to deter the country’s new leadership from any hostile move against the Druze.

“This is a clear message to the Syrian regime. We will not allow the deployment of forces south of Damascus or any threat to the Druze community,” the statement said.

The Israeli army confirmed in a statement that fighter jets struck near to the area of the palace of the president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in Damascus but gave no further details.

Israel has said that it will protect the Druze religious minority in Syria, a declaration that most Druze leaders have rebuffed.

The head of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria condemned the Israeli strikes in an interview with Al Jazeera on Friday.

”The Israeli attacks on Syria are absolutely unacceptable. There is nothing in international law that allows for pre-emptive bombing,” said Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, the chair of the commission.

The government in Damascus took power after ousting Bashar al-Assad in December last year and is dominated by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which has its roots in the al-Qaida jihadist network. Though Syria’s new rulers have promised inclusive rule in the multi-confessional, multi-ethnic country, they face pressures from extremists within their own ranks.

Clashes broke out in Druze-majority areas outside Damascus on Tuesday after an audio clip circulated on social media of a man making derogatory comments about the prophet Muhammad. The clip, which was falsely attributed to a Druze cleric, angered many Sunni Muslims, but may have been fabricated.

On Thursday, one of the three Syrian Druze spiritual leaders, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, accused Syria’s government of what he called an “unjustified genocidal attack” on the minority community.

Hijri released a statement calling for international protection for the Druze in southern Syria, asking international forces to “intervene immediately”. The two other Syrian Druze religious leaders chose to negotiate with Damascus directly and rejected calls for international intervention in Syria.

A UK-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said 56 people in Sahnaya and the Druze-majority Damascus suburb of Jaramana were killed, including local armed fighters and security forces.

The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shia Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria, largely in the southern Sweida province and some suburbs of Damascus.

Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 war and annexed in 1981.

The Syrian government has denied that any of its security forces were involved in the clashes with the Druze, which followed a wave of massacres in March when security forces and allied groups killed more than 1,700 civilians, mostly from Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite community, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Since the fall of Assad’s regime in December, Israel has launched repeated airstrikes on Syria, destroying military hardware and stockpiles, in what it says is defence of the Druze. Israel has also sent troops to what was a demilitarised zone in the Golan Heights, on Syria’s south-west border with Israel, seizing key strategic terrain where Syrian troops were once deployed.

Analysts in Israel say the strategy aims to undermine the new Syrian government while also protecting and so co-opting a potential proxy ally within the country. The strategy is controversial, however, with some officials arguing that a stable Syria would better serve Israel’s interests.

The Syrian president, Sharaa, told a visiting US congressman last week that Damascus wanted to normalise ties with Israel.

An Illinois landlord who killed a six-year-old Muslim boy and severely injured his mother in a vicious hate-crime attack days after the war in Gaza began was sentenced on Friday to 53 years in prison.

Joseph Czuba, 73, was found guilty in February of murder, attempted murder and hate-crime charges in the death of Wadee Alfayoumi and the wounding of his mother, Hanan Shaheen.

Czuba targeted them in October 2023 because of their Islamic faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas. The Palestinian American family were renting rooms from Czuba at a suburban Chicago house at the time of the attack.

“No sentence can restore what was taken, but today’s outcome delivers a necessary measure of justice,” said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of Cair-Chicago. “Wadee was an innocent child. He was targeted because of who he was – Muslim, Palestinian, and loved.”

The boy’s great-uncle, Mahmoud Yousef, was the only family member who spoke during the hearing. He said that no matter the sentence length it wouldn’t be enough. The boy’s parents had plans for him and Czuba robbed them of that, he said.

Yousef asked Czuba to explain why he attacked the boy and his mother, asking him what news he heard that provoked him, but Czuba did not respond, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Evidence at trial included harrowing testimony from Shaheen and her frantic 911 call, along with bloody crime scene photos and police video. Jurors deliberated for less than 90 minutes on Friday before handing in a verdict. Illinois does not have the death penalty.

The family had been renting rooms in Czuba’s home in Plainfield, about 40 miles (65km) from Chicago. Central to prosecutors’ case was harrowing testimony from the boy’s mother, who said Czuba attacked her before moving on to her son, insisting they had to leave because they were Muslim. Prosecutors also played the 911 call and showed police footage. Czuba’s wife, Mary, whom he has since divorced, also testified for the prosecution, saying he had become agitated about the Israel-Gaza war, which had erupted days earlier.

Police said Czuba pulled a knife from a holder on a belt and stabbed the boy 26 times, leaving the knife in the child’s body. Some of the bloody crime scene photos were so explicit that the judge agreed to turn television screens showing them away from the audience, which included Wadee’s relatives.

“He could not escape,” Michael Fitzgerald, a Will county assistant state’s attorney, had told jurors at trial.

The attack renewed fears of anti-Muslim discrimination and hit particularly hard in Plainfield and surrounding suburbs, which have a large and established Palestinian community.

Separately, lawsuits have been filed over the boy’s death and the US Department of Justice has launched a federal hate-crimes investigation.

Britain’s anti-immigrant and Trump-aligned Reform UK party has made sweeping gains in English local elections, challenging the traditional political dominance of the country’s two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives.

Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, claimed his party had overtaken the Tories as the UK’s main opposition after Reform won control of at least six county councils, one mayoralty, and narrowly defeated the governing Labour party in a parliamentary byelection in what had been considered a safe seat.

With votes still being counted on Friday from the 1 May elections, the combined vote for Labour and the Conservatives appeared to have fallen well below 50%, the first time that has happened in modern political history.

In some counties in the Midlands and the north of England, Reform won more than 60% of the vote, capitalising on disillusionment with the Labour government, and with the Tories as an opposition as well as their record running the country from 2010 to 2024. Reform campaigned principally on anti-immigrant sentiment, which Farage had long sought to cultivate. The Liberal Democrats also made more modest inroads in some councils, mostly at the expense of the Conservatives.

Across the country, Reform won a 30% share of the vote, leaving Labour second with 20%, Liberal Democrats on 17% and the Conservatives relegated to fourth with 15% of the votes

The one parliamentary byelection being fought on Thursday was Runcorn and Helsby, near Liverpool in England’s north-west, where the sitting Labour MP had been convicted of punching a constituent. It had been a solid Labour seat that the party won with 53% of the vote at the general elections, but it lost by six votes to Reform on Thursday, in a rebuke to the prime minister, Keir Starmer.

Starmer admitted the results were “disappointing” and said he would draw lessons from the setback, adding: “We need to go faster on the change that people want to see.”

Starmer has sought to compete with Reform by announcing stricter policies to contain illegal immigration, but many in his party have complained he has steered too far to the right and alienated Labour’s traditional supporters by introducing austerity measures such as cutting winter fuel payments for elderly people.

Political analysts said Reform had performed particularly well in areas with a lot of pensioners and few university graduates.

The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said the result showed that the country was “fed up” with the Labour government but “still not yet ready to trust us”.

Speaking at a rally in Durham, where Reform won 65 of the 98 council seats, Farage claimed the vote “marks the end of two-party politics as we have known it for over a century in this country”. He said it was the “beginning of the end of the Conservative party”.

Farage, who has hailed Donald Trump as his “inspiration”, said that in the county councils where Reform was now in charge, the party would try to block government efforts to house asylum-seekers in local hotels.

Asked if councils had the power to do that, he replied: “We’ll give it a go.”

Switching off the colours on your phone and spending half an hour a week pruning your algorithm can help consumers control and improve their online media diet, according to a professor turned “digital nutritionist”.

These two measures, otherwise known as greyscaling and algorithmic resistance, are among a number of recommendations from Dr Kaitlyn Regehr, an associate professor at University College London and a leading expert in digital literacy.

While recent debate has focused on the harm caused to children by social media, Regehr wants to address digital illiteracy among parents so they can better understand their children’s devices and how they can be used safely and effectively.

In her new book, Smartphone Nation, Regehr recommends first facing up to your own usage with a digital “walk-through” of favourite apps with a friend or partner, or keeping a “phone-fed journal”, noting what you opened your phone to do, where you ended up, how long you were on it and how you felt at the end.

“Turning your phone to greyscale is one of the quickest and easiest ways of understanding the impact of colour and images on our user experience,” she writes. “This will give you a sense of how colour and image play into the addictive nature of these devices.”

Instructions for this can be found either at Google Help for Android phones or Apple Support for iPhones.

Algorithmic resistance, meanwhile, is about controlling your algorithm rather than letting it control you, so Regehr advises making clear choices about what you want to see on your feed, dedicating half an hour a week to finding the best possible content and not dwelling on rubbish.

“When I was concerned about my family’s digital diet … I struggled to know what guidance to use,” Regehr explains in the book. “I created something to help myself and my family navigate the digital terrain. I thought of myself as a digital nutritionist.”

In an interview with the Guardian, Regehr said she supported school smartphone bans and the growing campaign for a smartphone-free childhood, but these were not enough alone and more education was needed to help families think critically about their digital choices.

“Because even if you hold off giving a kid a smartphone until after they are 15, they will turn 16. And we have a responsibility to give them the tools they need to navigate this space effectively,” she said. “We do need to provide them with education about how these things work.”

Her book, subtitled “Why we’re all addicted to screens and what you can do about it”, is designed to help fill that gap, and will be accompanied by new educational materials that will be introduced in schools later this month.

Almost all schools in England have now banned mobile phone use by pupils in school hours, according to the first national survey on the subject, commissioned by Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England.

Prompted by concerns about the effect on children’s mental health, attention span and online safety, the survey of more than 15,000 schools found that 99.8% of primary schools and 90% of secondary schools had some form of ban.

“I support the work of Smartphone Free Childhood,” said Regehr, who is programme director of digital humanities at UCL and has previously researched how algorithms used by social media platforms are rapidly amplifying extreme misogynistic content. “My fear is that when you implement a ban, it can let schools and legislators off the hook because they think the job is done.”

Regehr’s book is dedicated to her two young daughters. “My goal is for my kids to look back on our generation as wildly unhealthy and tech-enslaved, just as we look back on a generation previous smoking in hospital delivery rooms and not wearing seatbelts.

“I am trying to make a cultural change so that their lives are better. This is the biggest threat to their health and wellbeing, and it’s something that I want to tackle and I believe we can see a cultural change. People just need the information.”

Smartphone Nation: Why We’re All Addicted to Screens and What You Can Do About It by Dr Kaitlyn Regehr is published by Bluebird on 15 May