Several people were killed when a driver ploughed a car into a crowd at a street festival on Saturday in the Canadian city of Vancouver, local police said.

“A number of people have been killed and multiple others are injured,” Vancouver police posted online. “The driver is in custody.”

One witness told CTV News he saw a black vehicle driving erratically in the area of the festival just before the crowd was struck. The Vancouver Sun said thousands of people had been in the area.

“I didn’t get to see the driver, all I heard was an engine rev,” said Yoseb Vardeh, a food truck operator, in an interview with Postmedia.

“I got outside my food truck, I looked down the road and there’s just bodies everywhere,” said Vardeh, as his voice broke. “He went through the whole block, he went straight down the middle.”

The incident happened shortly after 8pm near East 41st Avenue and Fraser Street as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day, said the Vancouver mayor, Ken Sim.

The festival commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century.

Police said the incident happened shortly after 8pm Saturday local time in the city’s Sunset on Fraser neighbourhood.

“Our thoughts are with all those affected and with Vancouver’s Filipino community during this incredibly difficult time,” Sim wrote.

The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, said: “I am devastated to hear about the horrific events at the Lapu Lapu festival in Vancouver earlier this evening. We are all mourning with you.”

Conservative and progressives will intensify efforts to shape the future of the Roman Catholic church in the coming days as 135 cardinals prepare to be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel in order to choose a successor to Pope Francis.

The group of cardinals who will vote for the next leader of about 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide are less predictable than ever before, with the vast majority having no experience of a papal conclave. A much wider geographic spread of cardinals adds to the uncertainty.

Eight in 10 of those eligible to vote in the conclave were appointed by Pope Francis in the past 12 years. Twenty became cardinals only in December last year. Many had never met each other before heading to Rome over the past week after the pope’s death last Monday.

The papal conclave is expected to begin formal deliberations next week. But discreet ad hoc discussions and lobbying in the Vatican’s corridors, dining rooms and magnificent gardens have gathered pace over recent days.

“In fact, conversations have probably been going on for some time, certainly since the start of this year, because the trajectory of Pope Francis’s health has been clear,” said Miles Pattenden, a historian of the Catholic church at Oxford University.

More than 20 cardinals have been identified as papabile – candidates for the papacy – by Vatican observers. However, few frontrunners at the start of the process make it through successive rounds of voting. In 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was not considered a papabile, but by the end of the conclave he was Pope Francis.

Some cardinals who are not thought to be in the running for the job are likely to be pushing their favoured candidates, especially among less experienced colleagues.

Among those likely to be lobbying for a conservative successor to Francis are Raymond Burke, a Donald Trump-supporting US bishop, and Gerhard Müller, a German who warned last week that the church could split if an orthodox pope is not elected.

The progressive camp includes Jean-Claude Hollerich from Luxembourg, Timothy Radcliffe from the UK and Michael Czerny from Canada.

Critics accused Francis of packing the college of cardinals with his supporters in making more than 100 appointments during his papacy. But Pattenden said: “Historically, no pope has been able to control the election of his successor.”

There were clear conservatives and progressives among the cardinals, but “it’s a spectrum”, he added. “There are some who hold conservative views on certain issues but liberal views on other issues – for example, sexuality and climate change.

“Francis was more inclined to promote his ideological confreres, but he didn’t exclusively appoint those who appeared to agree with him. He had other priorities – to make the college of cardinals as inclusive as possible, which meant choosing men from very small Catholic communities like Iran and Algeria and Mongolia and balancing it away from its rich European and North American heartlands.”

In 2013, more than half of cardinal electors were European. Now, the proportion has dropped to 39%, while 18% come from Asia, 18% from Latin America and the Caribbean, and 12% from sub-Saharan Africa.

Francis also sought to lower the age profile of the college of cardinals. Seven of those appointed last December were under the age of 60, with one – Mykola Bychok, a Ukrainian-born bishop in Melbourne – only 44. Cardinals were appointed from Peru, Ecuador, Algeria and Iran in an attempt to tilt the balance away from Europe.

The first vote will be taken soon after the conclave convenes, and then each morning and afternoon until a candidate secures a two-thirds majority.

The cardinals will be “under quite a lot of pressure to choose quite quickly,” Pattenden said. “The world’s eyes are on them, and the Catholic faithful might find it a bit disconcerting if they’re still in the conclave in June or in July.”

In the past century, most conclaves have lasted two to three days. The longest conclave, in the 13th century, lasted two years and nine months, and the shortest was in 1503 when a result came within hours.

The bookmakers’ favourites to succeed Francis are Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s chief diplomat, and Luis Antonio Tagle, a Filipino cardinal.

Speculation on the outcome of the conclave has already become one of the most popular betting markets this year. Leighton Vaughan Williams, a professor of economics and finance at Nottingham Business School, told AFP: “What was once a pursuit confined largely to Renaissance Roman bankers and courtiers has evolved into a multimillion-dollar global market accessible at the click of a button or a tap on a crypto wallet.”

He said the speed with which betting activity had taken off this year “underscores an enduring cultural fascination with the papacy, amplified by media coverage and popular culture”.

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have sat down for a face-to-face talk in the opulent halls of a Vatican basilica to discuss a possible ceasefire, after which the US president accused his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, of not wanting to “stop the war”.

The White House described Trump’s meeting with the Ukrainian leader before Pope Francis’s funeral as “very productive”, while Zelenskyy said on X that the talk with the US president was symbolic and had the “potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results”.

It was the first time that Zelenskyy and Trump had met face to face after a frosty February encounter in the White House where Trump and the US vice-president, JD Vance, berated the Ukrainian leader and accused him of ingratitude for US aid.

Trump later published a social media post criticising Putin. “There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days,” he posted on Truth Social.

“It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ’Banking’ or ’Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!” the US president wrote.

In an effort to to end fighting between Ukraine and Russia, Washington is engaging in intense mediation between the two countries, at war since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

On Friday, Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met Putin, in Moscow for three hours to discuss Washington’s peace proposal. Trump said that “most of the major points are agreed to”, in a post on his Truth Social platform, without further elaboration. He called for a meeting between Kyiv and Moscow’s leadership to sign a ceasefire deal, which he said was “very close”.

Despite Trump’s eagerness for a deal, significant differences remain between the US vision for peace and what Ukraine and its European allies have deemed acceptable conditions for a ceasefire.

Two sets of peace plans published by Reuters on Friday showed that the US is proposing Moscow retain the territory it has captured, including the strategic Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.

This is seemingly a non-starter for Ukraine and European countries, with Zelenskyy insisting the territory is the “property of the Ukrainian people”.

“Our position is unchanged,” the Ukrainian president told reporters in Kyiv. “The constitution of Ukraine says that all the temporarily occupied territories … belong to Ukraine.”

It is also unclear if Moscow will agree to the US peace deal, which is seen as offering considerable concessions to Russia.

On Saturday, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said all Ukrainian troops had been forced from Russia’s Kursk region, a key aim for Moscow. Ukrainian officials disputed the claim.

The technical details of a ceasefire deal still need to be hammered out, including how western sanctions imposed on Russia would be lifted and what sort of security guarantees would be offered to Ukraine.

Trump acknowledged on Friday that the talks were “very fragile”, and he has warned that the US would halt its mediation efforts if the two sides did not come to an agreement soon.

Fighting continues in tandem with mediation efforts, and the Kremlin blames Ukraine for a car bomb that killed a senior Russian general near Moscow on Friday. Kyiv did not comment on the incident, the latest in a string of killings of Russian military officials over the past three years.

The day before, Russia carried out its deadliest attack in months on Ukraine, launching 70 missiles and 145 drones, mostly towards Kyiv.

The attack caused Trump to lash out at Putin on social media. “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday.

• Russia’s FSB secret service said on Saturday that it had detained a man it suspects of killing a senior general with a car bomb outside Moscow. Russia has accused Kyiv of being behind the blast on Friday, which killed Gen Yaroslav Moskalik. The FSB alleged a Ukrainian agent it named as Ignat Kuzin rigged a Volkswagen Golf in the city of Balashikha with a homemade explosive device from a Ukrainian secret service stash in the Moscow area and that the bomb was then detonated remotely from Ukraine. A video released by the FSB showed a man identified as Kuzin, and what was said to be his arrest taking place on a forest road. Kyiv has not commented on the blast, which bore the hallmarks of previous attacks on military figures and high-profile backers of the Kremlin’s offensive.

• Donald Trump has said he doubts Vladimir Putin wants to end his war in Ukraine and expressed scepticism that a peace deal can be reached soon. The comments come only a day after Trump said Ukraine and Russia were “very close to a deal”. As William Christou writes, Trump said on Saturday that “there was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days … It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along.”

• Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, sat down for a face-to-face talk in the Vatican basilica to discuss a possible ceasefire. The White House described Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy as “very productive”, while Zelenskyy said the talk with the US president was symbolic and had the “potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results”. Trump suggested after the meeting that he might put secondary sanctions on Russia and/or ratchet up banking restrictions.

• Andrew Roth writes that for months, Zelenskyy and European leaders have struggled to get through to Trump that Putin does not want to stop the war. Now they might see hope for a change, but, Roth writes in his analysis, “This could, of course, all come to naught. The US president is notoriously mercurial.” A possible second Trump-Zelenskyy meeting in Rome did not take place.

• Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday, after a “very positive” exchange with Zelenskyy, that Ukraine was ready for an unconditional ceasefire with the help of the US and Europe, and that the so-called “coalition of the willing” led by France and Britain would continue working on achieving that, as well as on “ending the war in Ukraine. That is an objective that we share in common with President Trump.” Zelenskyy also met the British prime minister, Keir Starmer; Italy’s PM, Giorgia Meloni; and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.

• Ukraine’s military on Saturday denied Russian claims that Ukrainian troops had been forced out of their last footholds in Russia’s Kursk region. The Ukrainian military’s general staff said its forces were continuing their operations in some districts of Kursk region, and its incursion into another part of Russia, Belgorod region, was still under way.

• The Trump administration is letting a Russian Gazprom subsidiary continue operating in Serbia without sanctions for at least the next two months, according to Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic. NIS, majority-owned by Russia’s Gazprom, runs the only oil refinery in Serbia. Joe Biden put it under sanctions in January as he was leaving office, giving Gazprom 45 days to exit ownership of NIS. Since then it has received several waivers of sanctions related to the Russian war in Ukraine.

Donald Trump spent his Saturday at the Vatican, attending the funeral of Pope Francis along with his wife Melania and leaders from more than 150 countries. Before the ceremony, the US president met with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for the first time since their heated Oval Office exchange in February.

This time, the two men sat face to face on chairs drawn up in St Peter’s Basilica, after huddling briefly with the French president, Emmanuel Macron. The results of the quiet conversation were apparent soon after, when Trump posted on his social media platform that there was “no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently”.

The two men then emerged to take their places among the guests of honor at the funeral, with the one notable difference being that Zelenskyy was greeted with cheers from the assembled crowd outside.

Trump listened as Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re read a homily that seemed to nod at the tensions between Trump and the late pontiff, particularly over the White House policies on migration and the recent executive order on deportations.

“‘Build bridges, not walls’ was an exhortation he repeated many times,” Re said during his homily.

Trump then flew home on Air Force One to be greeted by new polling from a number of organizations that shows he is historically unpopular for a president nearing Day 100 of his term.

Here are the key stories at a glance:

Catching up? Here’s what happened on 25 April 2025.

The floral perfume of tea and coffee fills the air in ‘t Zonnetje (The Sun), as – behind the counter – Marie-Louise Velder weighs out loose leaf tea, parcelling black leaves into paper packets. Mahogany-coloured shelves are stacked with pots containing beans from Ethiopia, Java, India, alongside bric-a-brac, such as vintage tea tins and old master-style pictures.

But in less than two months, the sun will set for good on this cosy shop in Amsterdam, which was founded in 1642. For the owner, the rent is just too high.

Velder, an energetic 76-year-old, who took over the business 26 years ago from an English family, paid 975 guilders (about €440 or £376) rent a month in 1999. Now she expects a monthly bill of up to €4,500, backdated to last September, after a legal dispute with her landlord. That was reduced from €6,000 by an independent arbiter, but still represents a hefty increase on the €3,000 she pays now.

“It makes me sick, that’s all I can say,” she said over a cup of Ceylon tea. Traditional shops, she said, “are all dying” because of soaring rents.

Since the Amsterdam-based newspaper Het Parool revealed the closure last week, she said she had received a huge response from customers – “love, only love”.

As another independent shop closes, fears are growing that the city will be increasingly dominated by chain stores and shops catering to tourists.

Johannes Wilhelm, a 63-year-old local businessman, who had cycled over for some lapsang souchong, described ‘t Zonnetje’s imminent disappearance as a real pity. “There are a lot of cheese and Nutella-pancakes and all kinds of tourist shops. Tourists are fine [and] good. But this should be here as well,” he said.

Rents have been growing in the “most sought after high street retail locations” across the Netherlands, according to one market analyst.

Although the future of the shop site is uncertain, Karel Loeff, the director of the conservation organisation Heemschut, has observed that higher rents tend to mean bigger companies with more standardised offers move in when sole traders move out.

Founded in 1642, the shop on Haarlemmerdijk began by selling herbs, coal and buckets of water, but as the Dutch empire prospered it offered tea and coffee.

In the modern shop, Velder makes Earl Grey in the chilly basement by steeping Assam leaves in bergamot for three days, a blend that took two and a half years to perfect. She once sold 350 varieties of tea, but her offer is sharply reduced as she runs down her stock.

Loeff said preserving living heritage – one of the aims of Heemschut – was very hard.

“We can preserve the wooden beams and shelves … but we can’t preserve a function. We can’t say this is an original tea shop and you should preserve this for the future.”

Local shops run by private owners for decades “are what make cities unique”, he continued. “If you push them away and you only have standard brands and shops, the attractiveness of the city disappears.”

Amsterdam has been grappling for years with how to preserve its heritage in the face of increasing numbers of homogenous chain stores and tourist-friendly novelty shops selling sweets or rubber ducks in the historic centre. In 2017, the city government announced that retailers catering mainly to tourists, such as bike-rental companies or cheese shops, would be prevented from opening in parts of the city centre.

Iris Hagemans, an urban geographer at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, cautioned about generalising. Amsterdam has places where tourism has created a “monoculture in the shopping landscape”, she said, citing the congested central Damstraat. But just a few hundred metres away “the atmosphere is completely different” and shops confronted with dwindling demand from residents and competition from online shopping are benefiting from tourist footfall. “I think this monoculture is sometimes portrayed as a kind of oil spill that will eventually spread throughout the city, but the effect is much more local.”

Government support for independent businesses, such as intervention to control commercial rents, was a tricky area, she said. “There can be quite a big gap between the type of shops that people claim to want to see in their neighbourhood and … the kind of shop that they actually frequent … I think there’s a risk there of supporting a function for which there is not really a demand.”

Hagemans favours government action to protect basic needs, such as access to healthy food, healthcare and other essential services, but cautions against the state as an arbiter of taste. “The retail landscape should be able to respond to the market and be dynamic. And it’s democratic in the way that you vote with your wallet.”

Down the road from ‘t Zonnetje, near a pizza joint and lemonade shop, a banner has gone up to mark the 750th anniversary of Amsterdam, which falls in October. Velder has heard there are plans afoot to support small business owners in this anniversary year, “but it is too late for me”.

The UK’s equalities watchdog has said trans women and men “should not be put in a position where there are no facilities for them to use” as it issued interim guidance after the supreme court ruling on biological sex.

Trans women “should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities” in workplaces or public-facing services like shops and hospitals, the EHRC said, and the same applies to trans men, who are biologically female, using men’s toilets.

But the watchdog also insisted that trans people should not be left without facilities.

The supreme court has declared that the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex. The ruling has been interpreted to mean that trans women, who are biologically male but identify as women, can be excluded from women-only spaces like toilets and changing rooms.

The guidance has been released because “many people have questions about the judgment and what it means for them”, the EHRC said.

Schools must provide single-sex changing facilities to boys and girls over the age of eight, according to the new guidance.

“Suitable alternative provisions may be required” for trans pupils, the watchdog said, as trans girls “should not be permitted to use the girls’ toilet or changing facilities, and pupils who identify as trans boys (biological girls) should not be permitted to use the boys’ toilet or changing facilities”.

The watchdog also said that sports clubs and other associations of 25 or more people are allowed to be exclusively for biological men or women.

Such clubs “can be limited to people who each have two protected characteristics”, the guidance said. This would mean, for example, that a lesbian women’s sports club should not admit trans women.

The watchdog has said it is working on a more detailed code of practice following the supreme court ruling and aims to provide to the government for ministerial approval by June.

The UK’s equalities watchdog has said trans women and men “should not be put in a position where there are no facilities for them to use” as it issued interim guidance after the supreme court ruling on biological sex.

Trans women “should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities” in workplaces or public-facing services like shops and hospitals, the EHRC said, and the same applies to trans men, who are biologically female, using men’s toilets.

But the watchdog also insisted that trans people should not be left without facilities.

The supreme court has declared that the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex. The ruling has been interpreted to mean that trans women, who are biologically male but identify as women, can be excluded from women-only spaces like toilets and changing rooms.

The guidance has been released because “many people have questions about the judgment and what it means for them”, the EHRC said.

Schools must provide single-sex changing facilities to boys and girls over the age of eight, according to the new guidance.

“Suitable alternative provisions may be required” for trans pupils, the watchdog said, as trans girls “should not be permitted to use the girls’ toilet or changing facilities, and pupils who identify as trans boys (biological girls) should not be permitted to use the boys’ toilet or changing facilities”.

The watchdog also said that sports clubs and other associations of 25 or more people are allowed to be exclusively for biological men or women.

Such clubs “can be limited to people who each have two protected characteristics”, the guidance said. This would mean, for example, that a lesbian women’s sports club should not admit trans women.

The watchdog has said it is working on a more detailed code of practice following the supreme court ruling and aims to provide to the government for ministerial approval by June.

An immense blast in Iran’s southern port of Shahid Rajaee has killed at least 18 people and injured more than 700, according to state media, with an official suggesting the fire was caused by the explosion of chemical containers.

A spokesperson for Iran’s crisis management body pointed to poor storage conditions of chemicals as the trigger for the port explosion. “The cause of the explosions was the chemicals inside the containers,” Hossein Zafari, a crisis management spokesperson, told Iran’s ILNA news agency. He added that the port administration had previously been warned about the danger these chemicals posed.

The Iranian government has not yet specified the exact cause of the explosion, though it suspected combustible chemicals to be behind the blast.

The provincial attorney general had ordered a “thorough and urgent” investigation into the circumstances of the explosion, which local officials said began in several containers in the port.

Shahid Rajaee is a large Iranian container facility that handles 80m tons of goods a year, including fuel and other combustible materials. It is part of the Bandar Abbas port, the country’s largest.

State media had previously quoted Iranian security officials as saying “any speculation about the cause of the explosion is worthless”.

Videos showed a huge billowing mushroom cloud and the force of the blast destroyed a nearby building and shattered windows.

Injured people lay on the roadside as authorities declared a state of emergency at hospitals across Bandar Abbas to cope with the influx of wounded.

Aerial and naval firefighting teams worked to extinguish the blast, and state media reported officials expected the firefighting operation to be completed within an hour. Local media reported people trapped under the wreckage of a collapsed building.

In the aftermath of the explosion, port activities were suspended and Iranian customs officials halted export and transit shipments to the port.

The state-owned National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company said that oil refineries, tankers and pipelines in the area continued to operate and were unaffected by the blast.

The explosion occurred as Iran and the US met for the third round of nuclear talks in Oman on Saturday, aiming to achieve a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme. Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araqchi spoke through Omani mediators for six hours on Saturday to create a framework for a new nuclear deal.

Trump, in an interview with Time magazine on Friday, said that he thought a deal with Iran was possible. Oman’s foreign minister announced that another “high-level meeting” was scheduled for 3 May.

The US and Israel view the prospect of Iran getting a nuclear weapon as an urgent threat. Iranian officials, in turn, are keen to lift a severe US sanctions regime on the beleaguered economy.

“Iran remains steadfast in its principled stance on the need to end unjust sanctions and is ready to build confidence about the peaceful nature of its nuclear programme,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said in Oman.

In 2020, the Shahid Rajaee container facility was hit with a complex cyber-attack that jammed port logistics, which the Washington Post reported as being perpetrated by Israel in retaliation for an Iranian cyber-attack.

The cyber-attack was one of a series of incidents that has affected Iranian critical infrastructure in recent years.

The government has blamed some of the incidents, such as a 2024 coalmine blast in southern Iran which killed 31 people, on negligence. Tehran has accused Israel of being behind other incidents, such as an attack on Iranian gas pipelines last year.

The Israeli government made no comment on Saturday’s explosions in Iran.

Reuters contributed to this report

It was late, and they were tired, but with four minutes left and long after midnight in Seville Jules Koundé found the strength to send a shot flying into the net and the Barcelona fans behind the goal into raptures. The fireworks were lit and the men in blue and red sprinted towards him from all sides of this stadium: here, at last, it was. The Copa del Rey final, a first clásico final in 11 years, had a winner. They had been a goal up and a goal down, they had thought they had a last-minute penalty to win it, but now the Catalan side had done it. Real Madrid had fought and rebelled, but eventually they were defeated 3-2.

You might call it a game of two halves, but there were four of them, and they had been superb. They also had an unlikely man there at the heart of a decisive moment: Pedri, Kylian Mbappé, Aurélien Tchouaméni and Ferran Torres had all scored and now it was Koundé who did. It had also had a very, very likely man standing in the middle of what might have been the decisive moment: after all the talk about referees, after Madrid had boycotted pre-match activities and the threat that they might boycott the game itself, it was indeed the officials who took the spotlight at the decisive moment.

Ricardo De Burgos Bengoetxea, who had cried in the pre-match press conference, prompting that no-show from Madrid, gave Barcelona a penalty with 30 seconds of normal time remaining. But Pablo González Fuertes, the video assistant referee whose talk of taking action against those who criticised officials had so incensed Madrid, called him to the screen. And so there they were, time run out, a decision to make. Eventually the penalty was withdrawn, and so it went to extra time and Koundé’s moment.

What a relief that Madrid had not boycotted this, even if at the end they may have wished they had. They played their part in a brilliant final that swung back and forth, where exhausted players gave everything – one that dignified this competition more than what had happened the day before. At the end of it, Barcelona – whose high line, life lived on the edge, had seen a Madrid goal and two penalties ruled out by the offside flag – had the trophy. Madrid were furious, but it had been some occasion.

How exhausted everyone was. How this game had swung. How long ago, those early moments felt. It had taken took 56 seconds for Madrid to even touch the ball and then, when they did, they immediately lost it again, the tone was set already. In a first half in which Madrid found themselves always arriving a fraction later and Barcelona dominated, they fell behind to a lovely Pedri goal.

Twice they might have equalised, two of those three flags denying them, but Barcelona were dominating, seemingly in control until the half-time introduction of Mbappé and a new mentality shifted everything. Arda Guler and Luka Modric too tipped the balance. Madrid were alive and could sense of vulnerability hidden until then. Every action felt like an opportunity. Pressed, Barcelona were finding it hard to get out and even harder to resist.

The equaliser came when Mbappé was dragged down by Frenkie de Jong. Madrid wanted a red card, the fans chanting about corruption at the federation, but they got something better. From the free-kick, Mbappe bend beyond Szczesny’s hand. Running to the touchline he gestured the way Cristiano Ronaldo once did against Barcelona: “Calm down, I’m here.” Barcelona knew: Mbappé was involved in another swift move with Bellingham that sent Vinícius Júnior skipping clear again, Barcelona rocking now. There was a speed and intent about Madrid, a directness, that soon led to Tchouaméni rising to head Madrid into the lead. Into the corner, they went, leaping about.

But as the celebrating players broke Antonio Rüdiger had to be treated, a huge bandage applied to his leg. The significance of that was perhaps seen when with six minutes left, he couldn’t catch Torres as the forward ran on to Lamine Yamal’s lovely pass, went past Courtois and struck a clean, low, angled finish into the empty net to make it 2-2. Rüdiger, in his defence, continued and made a huge interception to deny Lamine Yamal as he raced into the area deep into added time. He also might have been fortunate not to be punished for what then appeared to be a foul in the area on Ferran Torres.

And what always felt like it might happen happened. Just maybe not with 30 seconds left. Raphinha dashed in from the right and went down under challenge from Raúl Asencio. De Burgos Bengoetxea gave the penalty. From the VAR room, though, González Fuertes called him to have another look. Minutes passed, conversations were had, pressure was applied. And in the middle of the storm, the last thing he could have ever wanted, the referee who says his son pays for moments like this too stood there alone. A single decision, a million consequences, so many thoughts to be blocked out. Eventually, De Burgos Bengoetxea stepped away from the screen and said: no penalty.

And so to extra time, an exchange of blows, everyone on edge. Ferran just wide. Bellingham diving to head. An Mbappé penalty ruled out by another perfectly timed backline and its accompanying flag. And then there was Koundé’s moment.

Nigel Farage is a “political fraud and hypocrite” who is “cosplaying” as a working-class champion in order to win votes at this week’s local elections, the UK’s most senior union chief has warned.

In a stark rejection of the Reform UK leader’s attempts to court the trade unions, Paul Nowak, general secretary of the TUC, said there were “massive contradictions” in Farage’s positions on issues ranging from workers’ rights, the economy, industry and Brexit.

Ahead of this week’s local elections, in which Reform is expected to gain hundreds of seats across Labour’s post-industrial heartlands in the Midlands and north of England, he said he understood the disillusionment with mainstream politics but warned that the rightwing party was not the answer.

In an interview with the Guardian, Nowak urged Labour not to learn the wrong lessons from the anticipated results by pitching to the right, telling Keir Starmer he “should not have a crisis of confidence” when he has a huge parliamentary majority of 170 to drive through change.

In recent weeks, Farage has parked Reform’s tanks firmly on Labour’s electoral lawn, calling for British Steel and failed water companies to be nationalised, openly courting the unions and delivering a speech in County Durham, the spiritual home of the miners, in which he vowed to “reindustrialise Britain”.

Nowak warned voters tempted by Reform UK not to have the wool pulled over their eyes, even though they were impatient for change. “They got 4 million votes at the last election, of course there’s a lot of disillusionment with mainstream politics,” he acknowledged.

“But there isn’t a bandwagon that the fella isn’t prepared to jump aboard if he thinks it’s gonna result in more votes. I think people will see that lack of consistency, lack of political honesty, lack of coherence. He promises all things to all people.

“I get why people might be attracted in the short term. I think it’s partly my job to say to people, well, don’t just listen to what he says, look at what he does. He’s directly voting against the interests of millions of working people.”

Nowak’s criticism of Farage represents the most personal attack yet on the Reform UK boss from within the labour movement in the run-up to the elections. He described him as a “political fraud and a hypocrite” who “makes Liz Truss look like a politician with integrity”.

“I don’t think he really wants a sensible relationship with trade unions any more than I think he really cares about the interests of British workers or industry or those working-class communities,” he said.

“This is Nigel Farage, public school-educated ex-metals trader cosplaying as a champion of the working class. There’s a massive contradiction between what he says and what he actually does in practice.”

He added: “The fella who says he stands up for British industry is hanging on the coat tails of Donald Trump whose tariffs will put at risk thousands of good quality jobs in Britain’s manufacturing heartlands.

“His driving through of Brexit did lasting harm to the UK economy, including those jobs in engineering and in manufacturing. He hasn’t got a coherent economic plan.”

Reform has opposed the employment rights bill, which includes day one sick pay and new rights to parental leave and flexible working, even though a TUC poll found it was the government’s most popular policy among Reform voters. The bill goes to the House of Lords on Tuesday.

MPs across the main political parties believe that Reform could struggle if they do win the two metro mayoral contests in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire as some polls suggest.

“He and his party have never run anything – a local council, a parish council. He’s literally spent a lifetime doing what he accuses others of doing, which is riding the political gravy train,” the TUC chief said.

“I think they’ll be found wanting because it’s such a ragtag coalition. I don’t think there is any real political coherence and they’ll have to actually prove how they’re going to make the sums add up.”

Nowak also accused Farage of “playing fast and loose with racist rhetoric” in the past over Brexit and immigration and suggested his “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” about a police conspiracy after the Southport killings had “kindled the fires of violence” on the streets.

But he distanced himself from the stance of the UK’s largest teaching union which has called Reform “far-right and racist”, saying: “I don’t think for one minute that the vast majority of people who vote Reform are in any way racist at all, but there are clearly racist elements in that party.”

He said that Farage had pushed a “very divisive narrative” on migration, after the TUC argued that the UK should forge much closer ties with Europe amid an increasingly volatile and unpredictable global economy.

But Nowak also had a warning for Starmer. “Don’t learn the wrong lessons from what happens in the local election results on 1 May,” he said. “I don’t think lurching to the right is the answer. You’ll never out-Reform Reform. The solution doesn’t lie in aping Farage.”

Instead, he said the government should stick to its Labour values to deliver on public services, workers’ rights, industrial strategy and the cost of living.

“That’s the thing that will make a real difference. You shouldn’t be suffering any sort of crisis of confidence with a 170-odd seat majority, you need to get on with the job of delivering the change that people voted for.

“And I think that would be the best way to shut up Farage and those yapping on the populist right.”

A spokesperson for Reform UK said: “Workers are ripping up their trade union memberships to join Reform. It’s no wonder Paul Nowak is lashing out.”

Donald Trump has demanded free transit for American commercial and military ships through the Panama and Suez canals, tasking his secretary of state with making progress “immediately”.

Trump has for months been calling for the United States to take control of the Panama canal but his social media post also shifted focus on to the vital Suez route. “American ships, both military and commercial, should be allowed to travel, free of charge, through the Panama and Suez canals!” Trump posted on Saturday.

He claimed both routes would “not exist” without the US and said he had asked his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, to “immediately take care of” the situation.

The Panamanian president, Jose Raul Mulino, without directly referencing Trump said on Saturday that toll fees were regulated by the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), an autonomous governing body that oversees the trade route. “There is no agreement to the contrary.”

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said during a visit to Panama City this month that the US was seeking an agreement under which its warships could pass through the canal “first, and free”. He also floated the idea of US troops returning to Panama to “secure” its strategically vital canal, an idea that was quickly slapped down by Panama’s government.

The US and China are two of the top users of the canal.

Egypt’s Suez canal, a key waterway linking Europe and Asia, accounted for about 10% of global maritime trade before attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on shipping routes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

The Iran-backed rebels began targeting vessels after the start of the Israel-Gaza war, claiming solidarity with Palestinians. It has forced ships to take a long and costly detour around the southern tip of Africa.

Egypt said in 2024 that its canal revenues had plunged 60%, a loss of $7bn.

The US military has been attacking Houthi positions since January 2024 and those assaults have intensified under Trump, with almost daily strikes in the past month. Trump has said military action will continue until the Houthis are no longer a threat to shipping.