Tit-for-tat attacks have breached taboo of direct strikes on each otheras territory but Tehran has no aimmediatea plans to retaliate

World leaders urged calm on Friday after Israel conducted a pre-dawn drone sortie over Iran following a cycle of tit-for-tat attacks that crossed an important red line that has for decades held the Middle East back from a major regional conflict.

There were tentative hopes late on Friday that the apparent strike attempt against an airbase near the city of Isfahan was sufficiently limited to fend off the threat of a bigger Iranian response and an uncontrolled spiral of violence between a nuclear power and a state with the capacity to develop nuclear weapons quickly.

Majority leader Chuck Schumer says approving bill was aright thinga for Democrats and Republicans to do

The US Senate voted late on Friday night to approve the reauthorization of the controversial Fisa surveillance program, narrowly preventing its midnight expiration.

The reauthorization secures what supporters call a key element of the United Statesa foreign intelligence-gathering operation.

Man identified by police as Max Azzarello, from Florida, dies the day after incident outside lower Manhattan courthouse

A man has died after setting himself on fire outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trumpas hush-money trial was taking place.

NBC News and other US media said early on Saturday that the man had died. NBC News quoted New York City police as saying the hospital where the man was taken had declared him dead.

Actor and wife Katherine Schwarzenegger dismantle 1950 Zimmerman house designed by architect Craig Ellwood

Chris Pratt has drawn ire from architecture aficionados after news broke that the actor and his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, had razed a historic, mid-century modern home to make way for a sprawling 15,000-sq-ft mansion.

Last year, the couple purchased the 1950 Zimmerman house, designed by the architect Craig Ellwood, in Los Angelesas Brentwood neighborhood for $12.5m. The residence, with landscaping by Garrett Eckbo a who has been described as the pioneer of modern landscaping a had previously been featured in Progressive Architecture magazine.

Vote makes Chattanooga factory first auto plant in US south to unionize via election since the 1940s

Volkswagen workers at the carmakeras Chattanooga plant in Tennessee have voted to unionize with the United Auto Workers, a historic victory for the union and the labor movementas efforts to expand to the southern United States.

The vote was the first union election to be held as part of the UAWas ambitious organizing drive aimed at unionizing 150,000 workers at non-union auto plants around the US.

University says it is aredesigninga commencement plans days after it decided to prevent Asna Tabassum from speaking on 10 May

The University of Southern California is aredesigninga its entire commencement plans a just days after making the controversial decision to cancel the valedictorian speech of a Muslim student a and will also cancel the keynote speech by film-maker Jon M Chu.

The Los Angeles universityas provost, Andrew Guzman, said on Monday that it took the unprecedented step of canceling valedictorian Asna Tabassumas speech at the 10 May ceremony because because the aalarming tenora of reactions to her selection as valedictorian a along with athe intensity of feelingsa surrounding Israelas military strikes in Gaza a had created asubstantial risks relating to securitya. They did not cite any specific threats.

US House of Representatives moves closer to passing Ukraine aid; bureaucracy delays APS500m in foreign assistance channelled through UK Ministry of Defence. What we know on day 787

• See all our Ukraine war coverage

Russia came under attack from Ukrainian drones Friday night and into Saturday morning, the defence ministry in Moscow said. It claimed there were 50 Ukrainian UAVs detected: 26 over the Belgorod region, 10 over Bryansk, eight over Kursk; two over the Tula region and one each over the Smolensk, Ryazan, Kaluga and Moscow regions.

Various reports suggested Ukraine mounted a wave of attacks on Russian electrical and petrochemical facilities. One of the attacks left an oil facility burning in Kardymovo a about 100km from the Ukrainian border inside Russiaas Smolensk oblast, the regionas governor said on Saturday morning.

Russian officials said Ukrainian drones also attacked an electrical substation in Bryansk oblast, about 50km inside Russia. Unconfirmed videos and pictures online showed a large fire. In line with Moscowas usual information tactics, the ministry claimed all the drones were shot down, while local officials said any damage was only done by falling debris from the intercepted UAVs. There was no independent confirmation.

Ukraine said it shot down a Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber from a distance of 308km (180 miles) after it took part in a long-range airstrike that killed eight people including two children in Dnipro. aI can only say the plane was hit at a distance of 308km, quite far away,a said Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraineas military spy agency, the GUR.

An intelligence source told Reuters the plane was hit with a modified S-200 Soviet-era long-range surface-to-air missile system. Unconfirmed social media footage showed a warplane with its tail on fire spiralling towards the ground. The Russian defence ministry confirmed the crash in Russiaas southern Stavropol region but claimed it appeared to have been caused by a technical malfunction. Four aircrew ejected with one dead, two rescued and another missing, the Russian regional governor said.

Ukraineas president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited the site of the strike in Dnipro and again called on Ukraineas allies to rush in more air defences. Zelenskiy said Russian missiles also struck the Black Sea port of Pivdennyi in the southern Odesa region on Friday afternoon, destroying grain storage facilities and the food inside.

In the US, the House of Representatives has pushed ahead through procedural hurdles towards passing a foreign aid package that includes $61bn for Ukraine, Joanna Walters writes. The House is expected to vote on Saturday on the legislation. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic party leader in the Senate, has told senators to be prepared to return this weekend if the package passes the House and goes back to the Senate. If passed by the Senate, it must be signed into law by president Joe Biden a after which the US would ship arms to Ukraine aright awaya, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters on Friday.

More than half of an international APS900m military fund for Ukraine run by the British Ministry of Defence has not been used because of bureaucratic delays in handing out contracts, Daniel Boffey reports. Critics claim slow provision of weapons to the frontline by the International Fund for Ukraine, with just APS404m spent and ministers admitting some of the equipment is not expected to reach Ukraine until spring next year.

The fund was set up in August 2022 and was designed to be aflexiblea and alow-bureaucracya. Delays are said by MoD officials to have been caused by a need to assess each of the huge number of defence companies that have tendered for contracts. An MoD spokesperson said: aThousands of responses have been received from industry to International Fund for Ukraine requirements, each of which have had to be individually reviewed. We make no excuses for having made sure this was done properly and in a way that most effectively helps Ukraine.a

More than 11,000 people told to leave their homes after Mount Ruang erupted at least three times since Friday afternoon

More than 2,100 people living near an erupting volcano on Indonesiaas Sulawesi island were evacuated on Friday due to the dangers of ash, falling rocks, hot volcanic clouds and the possibility of a tsunami.

Indonesiaas volcanology centre recorded at least three eruptions since Friday afternoon, with the maximum height of the eruption column reaching 1,200 metres (3,900 ft).

Nick Bostromas Future of Humanity Institute closed this week in what Swedish-born philosopher says was adeath by bureaucracya

Oxford University this week shut down an academic institute run by one of Elon Muskas favorite philosophers. The Future of Humanity Institute, dedicated to the long-termism movement and other Silicon Valley-endorsed ideas such as effective altruism, closed this week after 19 years of operation. Musk had donated APS1m to the FIH in 2015 through a sister organization to research the threat of artificial intelligence. He had also boosted the ideas of its leader for nearly a decade on X, formerly Twitter.

The center was run by Nick Bostrom, a Swedish-born philosopher whose writings about the long-term threat of AI replacing humanity turned him into a celebrity figure among the tech elite and routinely landed him on lists of top global thinkers. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Tesla chief Musk all wrote blurbs for his 2014 bestselling book Superintelligence.

Local people say archipelagoas outdated industry made life unaffordable and prompts environmental emergencies

Thousands of people will join protests across the Canary islands on Saturday to call for an urgent rethink of the Spanish archipelagoas tourism industry and a freeze on tourist numbers, arguing that the current, decades-old model has made life unaffordable and environmentally unsustainable for local people.

The protests a which will take place under the banner aCanarias tiene un lAmitea (The Canaries have a limit) a are being backed by environmental groups including Greenpeace, WWF, Ecologists in Action, Friends of the Earth and SEO/Birdlife.

Israel launched a limited attack on Iranian soil on Friday morning, in the latest tit-for-tat between the two countries

• All our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war

Israel launched an attack on Iranian soil on Friday, in a tit-for-tat battle between the two foes, days after Iran launched an unprecedented strike on Israel with a barrage of drones and missiles, most of which were shot down. The Iranian strike was a response to an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus on 1 April.

The strikes have brought a long shadow war between the two sides into the open and also come against the backdrop of Iranas support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose assault on Israel on 7 October triggered the invasion of Gaza.

Moas staff evacuate 80% of critically wounded soldiers from regionas battlefield, where medics say morale is falling

It is around midnight in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, and the first emergency ambulance of the night is charging 75mph down a single carriageway road from the frontline. Inside, under the care of two watchful medics, is Ihor, an unconscious soldier wounded from the battle of Chasiv Yar, with shrapnel, perhaps from a mine, in his abdomen.

The medicsa task is to complete the last leg of evacuation from the battlefield, which involves Ihor and tonightas most serious casualties being taken to a hospital in the safe central city of Dnipro. Four ambulances are following on a bumpy high-speed run that takes three hours down roads largely deserted because of the 9pm curfew, the full single beds creaking and bouncing as they go.

As militias targeted the Masalit community in a wave of ethnic violence, one man offered shelter and an escape route across the border

Every night, for weeks at a time last year, Saad al-Mukhtar put a small group of people in the back of his Toyota Land Cruiser and drove them under the cover of darkness from his home in the Sudanese city of Geneina across the border and into Chad.

The operation was an extraordinary act of bravery and selflessness: Mukhtar is an Arab, and the people he was smuggling to safety were members of the darker skinned Masalit community who were being targeted in a vicious wave of ethnic violence perpetrated by Arab militias.

I used to think open relationships were a recipe for heartbreak a or just a bit tacky. Then we began to experiment. Could seeing other people be the secret to a happy home life?

I settled back into the train seat and pulled a notebook out of my bag: something extraordinary had happened, and I needed to process it by writing it down. Speeding along the south coast, past Arundel Castle and on towards Bristol, I made notes about the night Iad spent near Brighton with a man Iad known for years, but seen again in a whole new context. About how delighted I felt, how hot, how incredibly free.

My body, which had been pregnant in the Covid pandemic, given birth and then dragged itself through several house moves with a baby and a three-year-old, seemed to be renewed, on fire. My mind was blown, and my lips were bruised. I bought a beer and ate crisps. I texted friends, caught eyes with strangers: I wanted to talk to everyone about how I was feeling. Most of all, I wanted to tell my husband.

How do I know what soil I have? Do bulbs come back? And how did people garden before Google? As the growing season gears up, our experts are here with a barrowful of advice

Few domestic gardens need work every weekend a whisper it, but theyare quite good at looking after themselves. Broadly speaking: new growth on twiggy, brown (or woody) stems is a fair sign to prune old growth back to encourage the new growth into a neater, fuller shape; a shift to spring and summer signals a need to feed plants; if your plants are romping away, your weeds probably will be too a pulling them out while theyare small is easier a and planting or sowing things late is better than not at all. Mulch whenever you think about it. Alice Vincent

Tourists have been descending on Achill ever since Heinrich BAPll wrote effusively about its inhabitantsa customs and idiosyncrasies

In 1954, the German writer Heinrich BAPll landed in Ireland for the first time, headed west and kept going till he reached the Atlantic Ocean. He was seeking a refuge from the brash materialism of postwar Germany, and found it on Achill Island, where waves crashed against cliffs, sheep foraged in fields and villagers went about their business of fishing, farming and storytelling.

The following year he returned with his family and began to observe and chronicle the customs, idiosyncrasies, sorrows and joys of its inhabitants. So began a literary love affair between Germany and a windswept corner of County Mayo that endures 70 years after the Nobel laureateas first visit.

The Tortured Poets Department depicts a spell of post-breakup mania against the perfect backdrop of the Eras tour a a thrillingly immature reality undermined by safe music

As The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) finally sees its official release, the intention behind the title remains as enigmatic as it was when Taylor Swift announced it two months ago. The title track seems to mock one such tortured poet who carts a typewriter around and likens the budding couple to Patti Smith and Dylan Thomas. aWeare modern idiots,a Swift laughs. The albumas aesthetic wallows in anguish and Swiftas liner notes and social media captions are littered with self-consciously poetic proclamations. And the erratic period captured in the lyrics couldnat be further from a life of cloistered studiousness.

TTPD depicts a manic phase in Swiftas life last year, the reality behind the perfect stagecraft of the Eras tour. Wild-eyed from what sounds like the slow dissolution of a six-year relationship, she lunged at a once-forbidden paramour with a taste for dissolution, a foul mouth and a well-founded bad reputation. The latter, she makes clear as she sings repeatedly about flouting paternalistic and public censure, was a central part of the attraction: aHe was chaos, he was revelry,a Swift sings on But Daddy I Love Him (evidently about the 1975as Matty Healy).

(Monkeywrench/Republic)
With superproducer Andrew Watt working his magic, the Seattle grunge veterans sound on point and full of energy in their 35th anniversary year

Discussions about Pearl Jamas 12th record should dwell on the extraordinary longevity of this grunge-era band, who arrive in their 35th year largely intact and on the right side of history a pro-environment, pro-voting. For their latest album they have turned to 33-year-old rock fan turned superproducer Andrew Watt (happy customers include Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop and the Rolling Stones, plus PJ singer Eddie Vedder solo), who applies Spotify-era tweakments to heritage acts. Here, he amplifies melody, foregrounds crunch and trims fat, while harking back to Pearl Jamas first two hits, Ten (1991) and Vs (1993). By now, most listeners will know where they stand on Vedderas distinctive holler and the bandas beefiness; little on Dark Matter is likely to enchant gen Z away from their own heroes.

But the faithful will rejoice. In contrast to Pearl Jam works assembled more lugubriously a Gigaton (2020) a you can really hear the guys-in-a-room energy percolating through faster songs such as Running. React, Respond finds Pearl Jamas rhythm section and guitars feeding off one another. Something Special, addressing Vedderas daughters, is less enticing. But there is nothing amiss with the title track, a pile-driving swirl complete with headphone Doppler effect that doesnat need a 90s revival to sound on point.

You need to consider why this bothers you so much and if you should bring it up. Without asking directly, itas hard to know his motivation
aC/ Every week Annalisa Barbieri addresses a family-related problem sent in by a reader

Over a few drinks, a good friend of mine recently let slip that he keeps a spreadsheet of his friends, which he uses to rank them in tiers. Initially I laughed it off as drunken ramblings, but he then proceeded to show me the actual document, saved on his phone with comments next to peopleas names.

I learned that he keeps a running score of his friends based on how often they WhatsApp him, take the time to call him or go to the pub or on a trip abroad together.

Late-night hosts discuss the first week of Trumpas trial, strange election polls and the media playing Guess Who? with jurors

Late-night hosts talked Trump jurors, the former presidentas complaints about his trial and some strange polling before the 2024 election.

Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is challenging incumbent Rick Scott and highlighting his aunapologetic and prouda support for the stateas six-week ban

A round table on abortion rights, hosted by Floridaas Democratic Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, has only just begun, and already she finds herself comforting a woman in tears with a very personal story to tell.

The woman is from Colombia, and speaks softly in Spanish as she tells the intimate gathering of the Miami-Dade Hispanic Democratic Caucus about the distressing decision her daughter had to make to terminate a pregnancy after learning the fetus was not developing.

From films about Play-Doh and Barbie to the Shrek aexperiencea, consumer capitalism has run out of ideas

When it was announced last week that Margot Robbie will follow up the success of Barbie with a film based on Monopoly, my heart sank, did not pass go, and did not collect APS200. Robbieas production company will partner with Hasbro, just as the Barbie film was an initiative from rival toy company Mattel. Barbie was criticised for being little more than a 114-minute toy ad, but it did so well at the box office a buoyed, significantly, by a $150m marketing budget, which was larger than that spent on making the film a that a glut of similar titles are planned: a Barney film produced by Daniel Kaluuya, a Polly Pocket film written and directed by Lena Dunham, and a film based on the card game Uno. Robbie is also making a film version of The Sims video game, while Hasbro has licensed a Play-Doh feature film, a cinematic adaptation of an inert substance.

Where does it end? Why not make Alpro vegan yoghurt into a series of detective novels? Why not write an opera about the Adidas Predator football boot? Or, for that matter, why not aimagineera your way to full 360, helicopter-vision integrated brand synergy and make a football boot inspired by Wagneras Ring cycle, or a Raymond Chandler-themed yoghurt? It is almost as if the gatekeepers of popular culture have completely run out of ideas. All that remains is a kind of infinite consumer ceilidh, where brands line up and take it in turns to partner with one other for 15 minutes of coverage and social media consternation. Weare told that capitalism is all about innovation, disruption and the unbridled individual genius of the human mind. So why do I now turn a corner in Londonas West End and half expect to see a billboard for Marmite: The Musical, next to a pop-up shop selling Nespresso x Nike limited edition streetwear?

Dan Hancox is a freelance writer, focusing on music, politics, cities and culture

Both seem keen to limit hostilities, and key Arab states are ready to resist Tehran. But real change will require new Israeli leadership

When it comes to the Middle East, itas the pessimists who look smartest. Predict the worst and youall rarely be proved wrong. If you are, itas usually because your forecast was insufficiently bleak.

So put on your gloom-tinted spectacles and assess the events of the last week. Youall see the dawn of a grim new era, in which the regionas two strongest powers, Israel and Iran, trade blows directly. Last weekend, Iran crossed what had previously been a red line, aiming a barrage of missiles and drones directly at Israeli territory for the first time. In the early hours of Friday morning, Israel responded with a series of drone strikes on targets inside Iran, including Isfahan, site of an airbase and the countryas burgeoning nuclear programme. You donat have to be Clausewitz to know that two regional powers, one an aspirant nuclear state, the other already there, engaged in a tit-for-tat exchange of fire aimed at each otheras sovereign terrain spells danger.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Crisis in the Middle East
On Tuesday 30 April, 7-8.15pm BST, join Devika Bhat, Peter Beaumont, Emma Graham-Harrison and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as they discuss the fast-developing crisis in the Middle East. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Both Iran and Israel are calibrating their responses. That does not mean the region should breathe easy

The danger facing the Middle East is not from wild or impulsive action, but from the considered decisions of men who believe they know what they are doing and how their opponents will respond. Their confidence is not reassuring when their judgment has previously fallen short.

On Friday, Iran was quick to play down the overnight strike by Israel, suggesting that it was unclear who was responsible and indicating that there would not be immediate retaliation. Israel had chosen to launch a limited attack on Isfahan, the home of a major nuclear site, without targeting the facility itself. The aim was apparently to send a message about what it could do, not to cause significant damage now. If this is the extent of its response to Iranas weekend attack, it is far from the worst that many had predicted. The optimistic view is that both sides feel, or at least feel they can claim, that they have restored deterrence to some degree. A moment of respite is welcome. But relief would be premature.

Other fields are plagued with famous peopleas offspring too, yet musical genius seems particularly difficult to pass down the generations

Talent, sang Russell Mael of the band Sparks, is an asset. And that asset can be handed down from generation to generation. However, there is almost invariably an almighty inheritance tax at play, depleting the genius of the parent so that by the time it reaches the offspring it is, at best, mere competence.

In music, it is vanishingly rare for the heir to outshine the ancestor. To use a football analogy, for every Erling Haaland or Frank Lampard Jr there are a dozen Paul Dalglishes and Jordi Cruyffs. Which brings me to Primrose Hill, which James McCartney released in collaboration with Sean Ono Lennon last week. An instantly forgettable pastoral number about a pleasant day spent at a London beauty spot, it only received its moderate flurry of interest because it revives the songwriting credit Lennon-McCartney. (Itas marginally better than the Beatlesa own AI-enhanced dirge Now and Then, but thatas a low bar.) It isnat outright awful, but itas three minutes of your life youare never getting back.

The president of Columbia University testified about her administrationas handling of campus unrest. Hereas what I would have said

Surely Iam not the only person who has wondered what I would say if I were one of the college presidents who has been summoned to testify before the House committee on education and the workforce. How would I answer their unmistakably hostile questions about how the war in Gaza has been affecting campus life a and about how the university administration is dealing with the divisive and threatening atmosphere that the conflict has created among students and faculty?

After two presidents a Harvardas Claudine Gay and the University of Pennsylvaniaas M Elizabeth Magill a lost their jobs this winter, at least partly because of their responses to the committeeas interrogation, I imagined that I might have tried to sound more thoughtful, more human, less lawyered up, more cognizant of the difficulties and complexities inherent in these issues. But both women seemed to be repeating what theyad been instructed to say. They claimed that their response to an openly antisemitic statement would depend on context, a word that a they must have known a was wide open to the misinterpretation, dissatisfaction and mockery it almost instantly engendered. I even imagined appealing to the lawmakersa decency and intelligence, to their sense that we were all working to find a way to end this brutal war. But, as time has shown, that would have been an absurd idea.

Francine Prose is a novelist. Her memoir, 1974: A Personal History, will be published in June

• World champion beat Hamilton by 13 seconds in Shanghai Sprint
• Red Bull driver now leads Formula One standings by 15 points

Red Bullas triple world champion Max Verstappen won the first sprint race of the Formula One season at the Chinese Grand Prix on Saturday. Verstappen beat Mercedesa Lewis Hamilton by 13.043 seconds in the 19-lap race at the Shanghai International Circuit to extend his championship lead over teammate Sergio Perez, who finished third.

Verstappen passed Hamilton on the ninth of 19 laps and then stretched out his lead to continue his F1 dominance in all formats. Ferrarias Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finished fourth and fifth.