First minister says deal was no longer providing stability in parliament and parties will cooperate but less formally in future

Humza Yousaf, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, is holding a press conference now.

He says he has been in the post for little more than a year.

We are investing record [sums in the NHS], ensuring it can employ record numbers of staff delivering the best performing A&E units in UK. We are, of course, the only part of the UK to avoid strike action in NHS. Iave delivered the council tax freeze this year in every local authority, helping families a|

And last week we approved plans for Europeas largest floating offshore wind farm. These are just some of the actions that are making Scotland a better country.

Locals say city is against plan and accuse authorities of turning Venice into a atheme parka by charging day trippers for visits

The latest target in Amsterdamas decade-long battle against overtourism is an unlikely one: river cruises.

City finance chief Hester van Buren announced this month that the city wants to halve the number of river cruises by 2028, from the current total of 2125. Councillors have already voted to close an ocean cruise terminal in the city centre.

Scheme for plastic bottles and cans put back to 2027 while environment minister says glass recycling aundulya complex

A UK deposit return scheme for recycling drinks bottles has been delayed to 2027, meaning it will not be in place until almost a decade after it was proposed.

Campaigners say the delay is a ahuge disappointmenta, adding they are doubly dismayed that the plan will not include glass bottles.

Israel says the graves were dug by people in Gaza a few months ago but the corpses had been examined by IDF soldiers

Here are some of the scenes in Jerusalem, where people, including Israeli interior security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have been worshipping during the Passover holiday.

Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah for Al Jazeera, states that two people have been killed there by drone strikes. He writes for the news network:

A surge in attack drones flying over Rafah has taken place over the past couple of hours. At least two people have been hit in what appear to be targeted killings a one in the western part of the city and the other in the east. They were killed when the drones fired missiles about half an hour apart. The tragedy keeps unfolding. The destruction is overwhelming. Everywhere you go, you see rubble-filled roads.

Animals ran through rush-hour streets, colliding with vehicles and leaving four people in hospital

Two of the military horses that broke loose during a morning exercise and bolted through central London on Wednesday are in aserious conditiona and have been operated on, according to officials.

The runaway horses, including one white horse drenched in blood, ran through the rush-hour streets of the capital, colliding with vehicles and resulting in four people being taken to hospital.

Blades of famous cabaret venue fall from roof overnight

The blades of the Moulin Rouge windmill, one of the most famous landmarks in Paris, have collapsed, firefighters have said, just months before the French capital hosts the Olympics.

There was no risk of further collapse, Paris firefighters said after the incident overnight.

Party pledges to bring all passenger rail a but not rolling stock a into public ownership as contracts with train operators expire

• Analysis: Labouras plans all but set up by Tory government

Labour will fully nationalise the train network within five years of coming to power, with a pledge to guarantee the cheapest fares as part of athe biggest reform of our railways for a generationa.

One of Labouras first major acts in government will bring all passenger rail into national ownership under Great British Railways as contracts with private operators expire, a plan endorsed by the architect of the Conservativesa own rail plan.

Exclusive: MSF calls for transparency after its bill for a trial of TB treatment came to a fraction of the billions claimed by pharmaceutical companies

Doctors have for the first time released details of their spending on a major clinical trial, demonstrating that the true cost of developing a medicine may be far less than the billions of dollars claimed by the pharmaceutical industry.

MA(c)decins Sans FrontiA"res (MSF) is challenging drug companies to be transparent about the cost of trials, which has always been shrouded in secrecy. Its own bill for landmark trials of a four-drug combination treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis came to a!34m (APS29m).

Chemical thought to be in emerald green covers of four 19th-century books identified by Poison Book Project

Franceas national library has removed four 19th-century books from its shelves whose emerald green covers are believed to be laced with arsenic.

The library said on Thursday that handling the books, which were printed in Britain, would probably cause only minor harm, but it was taking them away for further analysis.

Drake used AI to simulate the voice of the late rapper and have him chide Kendrick Lamar, which the estate calls a aflagrant violationa

The estate of the late Tupac Shakur has sent a cease and desist letter to Drake, following the release of a Drake track that uses an AI version of Shakuras voice to lambast Kendrick Lamar.

As seen by Billboard, the letter instructs Drake to remove the track, Taylor Made Freestyle, within 24 hours, or face legal action.

Hundreds voice dismay at Sunak and Starmer, accusing them of misreading UK attitudes towards Europe

• UK politics a latest updates

Elena, 35, was aflabbergasteda when she heard that both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer had dismissed a proposal by the European Commission to reintroduce freedom of movement for young people between the EU and the UK.

Last Friday, the prime minister rejected the post-Brexit youth mobility deal, which would have allowed Britons aged between 18 and 30 to live, study or work in the EU for up to four years, after Labour declined the offer the previous day.

Pedro SA!nchez accuses opponents of abullying operationa conducted against him and his wife, BegoA+-a GA3mez

On Wednesday night, Spainas socialist prime minister, Pedro SA!nchez, abruptly announced he was cancelling his public duties for the rest of the week and considering resigning from office. He said he would announce his decision on Monday.

Denounced as giving a aveneer of legality to slaveholdinga and despite claims of reform, kafala laws persist, allowing bosses to abuse women, who vanish from society. This is their testimony, gathered over two years in a Guardian investigation

Condemned as dangerous and abusive, the kafala labour system not only disregards migrant workersa rights but depends on exploitation. But 10 years after Qatar was advised by the UN to abolish kafala (asponsorshipa) entirely and replace it with a regulated labour network, the system is thriving across Lebanon, Jordan and the Gulf states a with the regionas most vulnerable migrants hidden behind closed doors.

Over two years, the Guardian spoke to 50 women who are or were domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar or Jordan. Their testimony reveals a section of society operating under appalling conditions facilitated by the stateas employment apparatus.

What broke me as a child was my motheras death from breast cancer. But around that shattering, I became a person a and learned how to parent my son

I try to remember her hands. They were younger than mine are now. I imagine her long fingers and yellow, uneven and unpolished fingernails. Or had her nails fallen out? I am eight, about to turn nine; she will be dead in two weeks. Today is Motheras Day and I am allowed to stay home alone with her while everyone else goes to church. I am to be her helper, so I carry a basket up from downstairs. I set it on her bed. She is sitting up.

I know this is meant to be our day, our time; it is the first and last time I will be alone with her in this house. But I donat want to be here. Within weeks, she has transformed from my mother into a ghost, a skeleton; no hair, scarves covering her head. I know I am supposed to want to be with her on this day, but how can I want that? To be with a dying woman, my disappearing mother, whom I resent. It is too much. aWhat are you doing?a, I want to scream. aWhat do you expect me to do now, here without you?a

Beccy, 49, and Natalie, 60, became best friends after she visited Natalieas rescue farm in Ontario, Canada. They now run events together on the farm and love travelling together

• Tell us your story of how you met someone special

When Beccyas cousin suggested they go to an open day at a local farm, she jumped at the chance. aWe live in a small rural area called South Glengarry in Ontario. She told me about this woman who rescues animals and was raising money through a visiting day,a she says. aWe got there and she had so many animals and beautiful gardens. I was impressed.a

They tried to find Natalie, the farm owner, to say hello, but she was nowhere to be found. Instead, Beccy looked up the rescue centre on Facebook to learn more. A few months later, in the autumn of 2017, she mentioned the farm visit to some friends. aThey told me they knew Natalie and suggested we all get together for dinner with her and her husband.a

These stunning, extremely relatable women, with nuanced facial expressions and sensible shoes, helped me outline success on my own terms

I love watching television a ideally in bed with a bowl of salt and vinegar potato chips and a bottle of Coke, zoning out for hours.

Iave always been like this. In my teens and 20s I watched back-to-back-to-back Law & Order and Law & Order SVU episodes. I loved the comfort and reliability of the form: the drama of a murder, investigation, plot twist and resolution, all in under 60 minutes. But several years ago, I stopped watching Law & Order; I grew uncomfortable with its uncritical portrayal of the police.

Could they agree on immigration and housing? And why did the conversation turn to pigeon racing?

Sian, 56, Herefordshire

Occupation CEO of a social enterprise

From Gold Lion winner Archie Moore to Brazilians the TupinambA! collective, First Nations artists are making their voices heard at athe Olympics of arta. They talk hammocks, hunting and human connection

aIam not using the word arepresentinga as I canat represent Australia,a says the softly spoken Indigenous artist Archie Moore, recovering after the packed opening of the Australian pavilion at the Venice Biennale. aI canat even represent all the Aboriginal people a because weare not a homogenous group. So I choose to just say Iam presenting an exhibition for the Australian pavilion.a

Although First Nations artists have been to Venice before, with the Nordic pavilion hosting SA!mi artists in 2022, this time they seem to have broken through en masse at the biennale. The main exhibition, called Foreigners Everywhere, is packed with their work, sourced from all over the world by the Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa. The idea is that being colonised makes you feel like a foreigner in your own country, with the erasure of your culture, the robbery of your land, and at worst the extermination of your people.

Britainas first black female MP faced hostility from the media and political establishment from the start. Nearly 40 years on, she is still not giving up

Six weeks ago, the Conservativesa biggest donor, Frank Hester, was revealed by the Guardian to have spoken at a meeting of his healthcare company, the Phoenix Partnership, about one of Britainas longest-serving and most pioneering MPs. aYou see Diane Abbott on the TV and a| you just want to hate all black women,a Hester said. aI think she should be shot.a

The meeting had taken place in 2019, when Abbott was Labouras shadow home secretary. As a lifelong defender of civil liberties, a radical leftwinger and a close ally of the then party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, Abbott was notably different from previous holders of the role. But there was an anger and viciousness to Hesteras remarks, which are being investigated by the police, and also a limit to the Labour support for her that they prompted, which was very striking.

As Taylor Swift tops $1bn in tour revenue, musicians playing smaller venues are facing pitiful fees and frequent losses. Should the state step in to save our live music scene?

When you see a band playing to thousands of fans in a sun-drenched festival field, signing a record deal with a major label or playing endlessly from the airwaves, itas easy to conjure an image of success that comes with some serious cash to boot a particularly when Taylor Swift has broken $1bn in revenue for her current Eras tour. But looks can be deceiving. aI donat blame the public for seeing a band playing to 2,000 people and thinking theyare minted,a says artist manager Dan Potts. aBut the reality is quite different.a

Post-Covid there has been significant focus on grassroots music venues as they struggle to stay open. Thereas been less focus on the actual ability of artists to tour these venues. David Martin, chief executive officer of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), says weare in a acost-of-touring crisisa. Pretty much every cost attached to touring a van hire, crew, travel, accommodation, food and drink a has gone up, while fees and audiences often have not. a[Playing] live is becoming financially unsustainable for many artists,a he says. aArtists are seeing [playing] live as a loss leader now. Thatas if they can even afford to make it work in the first place.a

Do you love reading a but all too often find yourself just scrolling through your phone or watching TV? Here is how to get lost in literature again

In the age of digital distractions, it is easy to struggle to find the time and headspace to get lost in literature. How can you get back into the habit? Librarians share the best ways to rediscover reading, make it a regular habit a and their tips for the most unputdownable books.

Our capital has many problems, but it is time to push back against attacks from those who neither know nor understand it

I have been reading about the most abysmal place. It is a land where children, red-faced with their own radicalism, march alongside bearded Islamists to make the streets a no-go zone, while nodding-dog liberals curse the Brexiter masses for inflating the cost of their arugula. It boasts an infinite array of pronouns; multimillion-pound townhouses whose residents demand you check your privilege; a thousand rainbow flags, but not a single St Georgeas cross. It is rife with criminal behaviour, which extends far beyond the prices charged by pub landlords. Hieronymus Bosch, put down your paintbrush: this place truly is Hell.

It also happens to be my home.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Our former PM has a dire warning and a book to sell, but it isnat really cutting through. A bit more Brit-style bumbling might help

aI know the name,a texts a friend when I ask if she knows who Liz Truss is, but like most Americans canat quite put her finger on why. aLike 8%,a guesses another when I ask her to put a number on how many of her countrymen she imagines know of Truss. The standard response, in my extremely unscientific poll of Americans as to whether or not they know of Truss, however, was: aNo, should I?a a the answer to which, of course, depends entirely on whether you want to understand why the Tory party is polling around 20% or whether you happen to be Liz Truss.

Truss, the only one of us to suffer that particular misfortune, was in Washington DC this week trying, like so many minor British celebrities before her, to catch the eye of the Americans. At the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing thinktank that hosted the launch of Trussas book Ten Years to Save the West, she came bearing a awarninga. Not an ideal ice-breaker, perhaps, but one clearly tailored to an audience receptive to the frisson of the term aforces of the global lefta.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Devolution has been too cautious, and England has less say about community affairs than almost any other democracy

• Tony Travers is a visiting professor in the LSE department of government and a director of LSE London

All the bigger British political parties are in favour of devolution, yet it proves oddly difficult to deliver. England is a remarkably centralised country, with the UK government responsible for setting every tax, including the annual cap on council tax. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also, despite their devolved status, heavily centralised within their own national systems of government.

It is exactly 50 years since the major reform of local government structure in England and Wales. Prior to the 1974 changes, there were 1,245 councils in England; after the reforms were implemented, the number of councils was slashed to just 412. Today there are 317 councils, and the number continues to fall as the result of a near-continual reorganisation, which has turned two-tier counties a where there were county councils plus districts within them a into one or more unitary councils, where a single council provides all municipal services. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, after more recent reforms, now have a single tier of large municipalities.

It is perverse that adults are legally protected from violence, yet striking a child can be defended. Calls for a ban are getting louder

When a child is scared of their parents, they can spend a long time plucking up the courage to talk. I learned this during a decade of volunteering as a Childline counsellor. There is a 20-second period, in between saying your name and waiting for them to share theirs, that is the most silent the air can ever be. You could hear a pin drop or just a calleras breath echoing on the receiver. In that moment, a young girl who has been slapped by her father is deciding whether to ask for help or to hang up and try again to form the words in a week or two.

I thought of this silence as I read calls from leading doctors to ban parents from smacking their children in England and Northern Ireland. Unlike in Scotland and Wales a where over the past four years the Victorian-era law that allows it has been overturned a it is still legal for a parent or carer to hit, smack or slap their child if it is a areasonablea punishment.

Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist and author of Crippled: Austerity and the Demonisation of Disabled People

Idahoas law requires doctors to treat pregnant womenas health as disposable a and the loss of their lives as an acceptable risk

The risk of stating plainly what Idaho argued at the US supreme court on Wednesday morning is that it is so sadistic and extreme that people might not believe you. Idaho has one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country. Prohibiting all abortions at any stage of gestation, with no exceptions for rape or incest, the Idaho law allows doctors to perform abortions in cases where the life a but not amerelya the health a of the pregnant woman is at risk.

In practice, this has wound up being a ban on abortions needed to save womenas lives: according to Idaho hospitals, six pregnant women experiencing medical emergencies have had to be airlifted across state lines to hospitals in states with life and health exemptions in the months since Idaho began enforcing its abortion ban. One way to describe this state of affairs is to say that Idahoas abortion law has come into conflict with medical best practice. Another way to describe it is to say that the law has forced pregnant women to flee the state for their lives.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

The safety and security of Palestinians and Jews are interdependent, so we should use language carefully

In reporting on the encampments springing up on college campuses across the US, the media seem to have convened a terminology confab and agreed on two descriptions: apro-Palestiniana and aanti-Israela. These labels oversimplify Americansa opinions on Israelas onslaught against Gaza, which marked its 200th day on Tuesday with no end in sight. But the error is worse than semantic.

aUniversities Struggle as Pro-Palestinian Demonstrations Grow,a says the New York Times. aColleges Struggle to Contain Intensifying Pro-Palestinian Protests,a reports the Wall Street Journal. In Minneapolis, the Star Tribune has the local news that the aUniversity of Minnesota police arrest 9 after pro-Palestinian encampment set up on campusa. Some publications less shy about displaying their political biases take the opposite tack. A headline in the right-leaning New York Post, for instance, exaggerated the literally incendiary nature of the demonstratorsa tactics: aAnti-Israel protesters carry flares to March on NYPD HQ after 130 arrested at NYU.a The accompanying video is cast in red. Ever evenhanded, CBS does both: aPro-Palestinian, pro-Israel protesters gather outside Columbia University.a

Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books

The late elder statesman understood the need for a progressive realignment of British politics. That prize shouldnat be lost

David Marquand and Frank Field, both of whom died this week, never sat on the Labour benches together. The professor of politics and the long-serving backbench MP had very different temperaments too, one searchingly academic, the other a bold moraliser. They also disagreed about many of the big issues in British politics, the European Union above all.

But they also had some hugely important things in common. Both started as free-thinking Labour MPs a Marquand in 1966 and Field in 1979. Both possessed a rare degree of intellectual and spiritual hinterland. Both then went on lifetime political journeys. These took them increasingly away from Labour, though they always remained in Labouras orbit.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Finance chiefs say higher taxes for the super-rich are key to battling global inequality and climate crisis

• Billionaires should pay minimum 2% wealth tax, say G20 ministers

When the governors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund convened for the spring meetings last week, it was all about the really big questions. What can the international community do to accelerate decarbonisation and fight climate change? How can highly indebted countries retain fiscal space to invest in poverty eradication, social services and global public goods? What does the international community need to do to get back on track towards reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? How can multilateral development banks be strengthened to support these ambitions?

There is one issue that makes addressing these global challenges much harder: inequality. While the disparity between the richest and poorest countries has slightly narrowed, the gap remains alarmingly high. Moreover, in the past two decades, we have witnessed a significant increase in inequalities within most countries, with the income gap between the top 10% and the bottom 50% nearly doubling. Looking ahead, current global economic trends pose serious threats to progress towards higher equality.

Svenja Schulze is Germanyas minister for economic cooperation and development; Fernando Haddad is the minister of finance in Brazil; Enoch Godongwana is the minister of finance in South Africa; MarAa JesAos Montero is first vice president and minister of finance and Carlos Cuerpo is the minister of economy, trade and business in Spain

A desperate prime minister has given up trying to meaningfully account for the money he is putting into pre-election promises

According to the myth, Catherine IIas courtier Grigory Potemkin recruited peasants to populate fake villages erected along the Dnipro River, so the Russian empress, passing in her barge, might get a favourable impression of conditions in newly conquered Crimea. Historians doubt that it happened, but the idea of counterfeiting progress to appease the boss was plausible enough for the name aPotemkin villagea to have stuck.

In a democracy, the boss is the electorate, which leads governments to erect Potemkin policies a paper pledges puffed up as substantial measures a to convince voters that all is well. Rishi Sunakas announcement on defence spending this week is a case in point.

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