City & Guilds London Institute trustees accused of stalling inquiry into £166m sale

The trustees of City & Guilds London Institute have been accused of attempting to dodge accountability for a “catastrophic failure of governance” by stalling on the launch of an independent inquiry into the £166m sale of the vocational charity’s training and accreditation business last October.Members of the 148-year-old body voted overwhelmingly last month for the trustee board to trigger what would be the third investigation into how the foundation sold its operations to the private operator PeopleCert in October.However, members complained that the process then seemed to have stalled.The poll followed the Charity Commission opening a statutory inquiry in January, which was mirrored a day later by PeopleCert commissioning its own internal investigation into the deal.Neil Bates, an elected member of the City & Guilds council, which appoints and advises the trustees, said: “Why would they not be accountable for decisions made if everything was above board? It is shocking there has been such a catastrophic failure of governance – and subsequently a failure of accountability

Worried Britons ‘prepping’ for major disruption with stash of tins and cash, survey shows

Millions of Britons are “prepping” for a potential “major disruptive event” by keeping a stash of cash at home, stockpiling tinned goods or ensuring they have a battery-powered torch close to hand, new data suggests.With war raging in the Middle East and Ukraine, extreme weather becoming more frequent, and warnings that the UK’s critical infrastructure is at risk from cyber-attacks and power outages, many people feel the world has become a more dangerous and chaotic place.While some are taking steps to make sure they are not left high and dry in the event of a bank IT failure, others are preparing for a possible natural disaster, or even a societal collapse. UK experts recently advised people to have an emergency store of food in their home in case something happens that causes shortages.Link, the UK’s ATM network, tracks how people are using, and thinking about, cash and, for the first time, its researchers have asked the public about what “contingency planning” they are doing to prepare for an event that would cause “major disruption to normal services”

US consumer confidence hits record low as Americans fret about rising prices; jobs report beats forecasts – as it happened

Newsflash: the US economy added more jobs than expected in April.Non-farm payrolls rose by 115,000 last month, the Bureau for Labor Statistics reports, beating forecasts of a 62,000 increase.That’s still a slowdown compared with March, though – where the NFP has been revised up to 185,000 jobs, from 178,000 initially.But February’s data is even worse than previously thought – payrolls that month are now estimated to have fallen by 156,000, down from a previous estimate of a 133,000 decline.Those revisions mean employment in February and March combined is 16,000 lower than previously reported

UK borrowing costs fall and pound rises after Starmer says he will stay as PM

UK government borrowing costs fell and the pound rose on Friday as Keir Starmer vowed to remain as prime minister despite the Labour party losing hundreds of council seats across England.Investors calculated that some of the intense pressure on Starmer’s leadership had eased, as Labour appeared on track for smaller losses than election experts had predicted.The yield – effectively the interest rate – had jumped earlier this week, amid fears that the prime minister could face a leadership challenge if the results from the local elections and the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales were particularly poor.But after Starmer insisted he would not walk away, the yield on benchmark UK 10-year gilts was down 5 basis points, or 0.05 of a percentage point, at 4

Great Western Railway to be nationalised in December

Great Western Railway will be nationalised in December, the government has announced.The train service, which has been in private hands for 30 years, mainly run by First Group, will be the 11th train operator on the national railway brought back into public ownership.When the Labour government was elected in 2024, legislation was immediately passed to renationalise all passenger trains when contractually allowed, a process that is expected to conclude by the end of 2027.The date for GWR train services to be nationalised has now been set for 13 December, the Department for Transport (DfT) said, when new timetables around the country are set to take effect.GWR has worked closely with the DfT in recent years in upgrading the mainline and introducing a new fleet of intercity trains

US added 115,000 jobs in April in surprise gain amid Iran war uncertainty

US employers added 115,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate remained steady at 4.3%, a surprisingly robust gain to the labor market as the US-Israel war with Iran continued to drive up economic uncertainty.Economists projected about 55,000 new jobs and a 4.3% unemployment rate. A day earlier, the labor department announced 200,000 people filed for weekly unemployment benefits, a slight increase from the week before

Iran war costs Toyota £3bn as prices of materials soar and sales fall

Toyota has reported a £3bn hit from costs from the war in Iran, as prices of parts and materials soared and sales dropped.The world’s biggest carmaker said profits declined in its financial year to March as it was “likely unable to absorb newly added impact from the Middle East”, in one of the largest warnings yet of the war’s impact on businesses.The biggest hit for the Japanese manufacturer was a 400bn yen (£1.9bn) increase in materials costs linked to the war, while it lost another 270bn yen in lower sales. Toyota is the dominant automotive brand in the Middle East

British Airways fares to rise in attempt to offset £1.7bn fuel cost hit

British Airways fares will rise to try to recoup most of a €2bn (£1.7bn) hit in fuel costs this year, its parent group has said, adding that the Iran war will dent profits.The International Airlines Group (IAG) said its annual fuel bill was now expected to be about €9bn, up from the forecast €7.1bn, as 70% of its supply was hedged, shielding it from the full impact of soaring jet fuel prices since the start of the conflict.It expects to recover about 60% of the €2bn additional fuel costs through “revenue and cost management actions”, with fare rises primarily loaded on BA rather than its sister airlines

GameStop CEO opens eBay storefront to pay for potential eBay acquisition

The CEO of GameStop, Ryan Cohen, said he was selling vintage video games, baseball cards, GameStop merchandise and a $14,000 pair of tube socks to help fund the company’s proposed $55.5bn acquisition of eBay.His platform of choice? eBay, of course.Cohen posted a link to his eBay storefront on Tuesday night, saying: “I’m selling stuff on eBay to pay for eBay.”Hours later, Cohen posted a screenshot with a notification that his account had been suspended

Gas-fired power still looks a safe bet for Centrica in the renewables era

The eye-catching non-Hormuz news in energy-land last month was that Great Britain is set for a record-breaking summer for wind and solar power generation. The national energy system operator even thought there could be periods – a sunny weekend or a bank holiday afternoon of low demand, for example – when more renewable power would be available than the electricity grid needed.So, on the face of it, it is an odd moment for Centrica, the owner of British Gas, to fork out £370m to buy a 16-year-old combined-cycle gas turbine plant in south Wales. After all, the government’s clean power plan imagines that, come 2030, Great Britain’s entire fleet of gas plants will be used to generate only 5% of its electricity, down from 31.5% in 2025

Senate Democrats press top media regulator Brendan Carr to back off ABC

A group of prominent Senate Democrats sent a letter on Thursday to Brendan Carr, the Trump-aligned Federal Communications Commission chair, asking him to rescind the US media regulator’s order last week requiring ABC to apply early to renew its television licenses.The eight ABC-owned station licenses were not originally up for renewal until 2028 at the earliest and 2031 at the latest; now, the renewal requests must be filed by the end of May.Although Carr told reporters that the early license renewal request stemmed from an ongoing investigation into the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts of ABC’s parent company, Disney, the announcement came just a day after the president and his wife called on the network to fire Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night comedian, for a poorly timed joke. The letter called the early renewal demand an “extraordinary abuse of power” and an “unconstitutional abuse of the Commission’s powers”.“The campaign against Disney and its editorial decision-making, culminating in last week’s early-renewal order, is an egregious abuse of power and a clear violation of the First Amendment,” lawmakers state in the letter led by Senators Edward J Markey, Chuck Schumer, Maria Cantwell and Ben Ray Luján

Financial stability risks are rising as AI fuels cyber-attacks, IMF warns; oil below $100 on Iran peace hopes – as it happened

Newsflash: The International Monetary Fund is warning that financial stability risks are rising as artificial intelligence fuels cyber-attacks.In a new blogpost, just published, the IMF singles out Claude Mythos as an example of how quickly risks are increasing.The Fund is calling for “resilience, supervision, and international coordination” to safeguard global financial markets, and protect them against attackers with new AI tools.It warns that AI tools such as Mythos can “dramatically” cut the time and cost needed to identify and exploit vulnerabilities, which raises the risk of weaknesses in key systems being discovered and exploited.IMF experts Tobias Adrian, Tamas Gaidosch and Rangachary Ravikumar write:double quotation markMythos could find and exploit vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser—even when used by non-experts

‘Restaurants won’t survive’: Michelin chef opens venues abroad to withstand UK taxes

A British Michelin-starred chef says he is opening restaurants abroad to subsidise his UK venues against a backdrop of high taxes and a struggling hospitality sector.Jason Atherton is now in Forte dei Marmi, on the Tuscan coast in Italy, where he is preparing his newest opening, Maria’s, which will be in the Principessa hotel. The Sheffield-born chef now has restaurants all over the world, including in Dubai and St Moritz.He said he was finding it easier to make a profit in countries with more forgiving policies towards restaurants, pubs and bars. “I am trying to sustain our business by opening abroad

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for spring chicken thighs with spring onions, mint and peas | A kitchen in Rome

The weather lately has been as temperamental as peas in pods. But peas are even harder to read than the sky: some pods contain sweet things no bigger than peppercorns, which explode when you bite them; the contents of others, however, are closer to small ball bearings, their size very likely a sign that all the natural sucrose has been metabolised and transformed to pea starch. The best thing for the tiny ones is to snack on them alongside a bit of cheese, whereas the path for big ones is the same as for dried peas, so pea and ham soup or a long-simmered puree.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link

Navel gazing: oranges, mandarins and persimmons top Australia’s best-value fruit and veg for May

“Sweet, low seed and great for snacking” imperial mandarins have just started their season, says Josh Flamminio, owner and buyer at Sydney’s Galluzzo Fruiterers. The tangy-sweet citrus is selling for between $2.99 and $3.99 a kilo in major supermarkets. At Galluzzo, Queensland-grown imperial mandarins are $3

How to save asparagus trimmings from the food-waste bin – recipe | Waste not

Asparagus butts are a particularly tricky byproduct to tame because they’re so fibrous. I usually cut them very finely (into 5mm-thick discs, or even thinner), then boil, puree and pass them through a sieve (as in my green goddess salad dressing and asparagus soup), but even then you’ll still end up with a fair bit of fibrous waste. Enter asparagus-butt butter: a recipe that defies all odds, making the impossible possible by transforming a tough offcut into an intense compound butter that’s perfect for grilling or frying asparagus spears themselves, or for eggs, bread, gnocchi or whatever you can think of. The short fibres brown and caramelise in the butter, and in the process become the highlight of the dish, rather than the problem.This transforms an unwanted byproduct into an intense expression of the plant’s flavour

Thoran and chaat: Romy Gill’s Indian-style asparagus recipes

Spring’s first asparagus always feels like a celebration, but there’s so much more to cooking those spears than just butter and lemon. Here, those tender stems combine with bold Indian flavours in two playful dishes. The thoran, inspired by Keralan home cooking, involves stir-frying asparagus with coconut, mustard seeds and curry leaves to create something warm and comforting (my friend Simi’s mum always used to drizzle it with a little lemon juice to give the flavours a lift). The chaat, meanwhile, tossed with tangy tamarind, yoghurt, spices, crunchy chickpeas and sweet pomegranate, is a delicious snack or side. Together, they show how versatile asparagus can be: easy to cook, vibrant and moreish even in unexpected culinary traditions

Australian supermarket sauerkraut taste test: one is ‘like eating the smell of McDonald’s pickle’

It’s ‘Gut Coachella’ for Nicholas Jordan and friends, who blind taste a line-up of 20 shredded and fermented cabbage productsIf you value our independent journalism, we hope you’ll consider supporting us todayGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailI cannot tell you how many times I’ve been introduced to a fatty, salty hunk of meat and thought, “my god, I’m going to need a pickle”. I feel the same eating cheese toasties or deli sandwiches with rich mayo-based sauces. Where is the pickle, hot sauce, citrus or ferment? Even the most savoury, juicy slab of umami is a bit much without acidity to balance it.What is the point of sauerkraut without acidity? It’s just wet, salty cabbage, and what is that for, other than deflating my spirits and inflating my gastrointestinal system? Sauerkraut should be sour; it’s the hallmark of the very thing that created it – fermentation.Why am I saying all this? After eight friends and I tasted 21 supermarket sauerkrauts, I was shocked to find some lacked not just acidity but any vigour at all

Fears for spears: how to cook asparagus without blanching | Kitchen aide

I always blanch asparagus, but how else can I cook it?Joe, via email“Blanching captures that green, verdant nature of asparagus so well, and saves its minerality, too,” agrees Bart Stratfold of Timberyard in Edinburgh, but when the season is going full tilt, it’s just common sense to expand our horizons. For Billy Stock, chef/owner of the Wellington in Margate, that means salads, especially with spears that are really fresh: “Use a peeler to shave thin strips off the raw asparagus, and use them in a delicious variation on salade Niçoise.”Another approach would be the grill, Stratfold says: “Coat the spears in rapeseed oil, then grill on an excruciatingly high heat for just a few seconds, until they develop some char.” After that, he rolls them in a tray of vinegar or preserves: “At the restaurant, that’s usually sweet pickled elderflower and elderflower vinegar.”Joe could even abandon the kitchen altogether

Georgina Hayden’s quick and easy recipe for spanakopita orzo | Quick and easy

For me, it isn’t really spring until the first May bank holiday; the days are longer, the flowers are out, and an abundance of green graces our shelves. This spanakopita orzo is a celebration of all things light, bright and spring. It’s a great weeknight dinner that will instantly transport you to Greece.This dish should be oozy, like a good risotto, so if your orzo absorbs all the stock, add a little more hot water to give it that requisite creamy finish.Prep 15 minCook 25 min Serves 425g butter 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra to serve1 bunch spring onions, trimmed and sliced2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced220g baby leaf spinach, chopped1

Spring soup and bean and cheese quesadillas: Thomasina Miers’ Mexican-inspired seasonal recipes

I have always loved the evident (though not proven) link between how foodie a country is and its love of soups. In Mexico, where nose-to-tail eating is a given, broths maintain a steadying presence in any self-respecting cantina, and soups are commonplace on most menus. We don’t eat a crazy amount of meat at home, but having homemade stock in the freezer is an ingenious fast track to flavour and goodness. Here, whether your stock is chicken or vegetable, homemade or shop-bought, the joy is in the gentle spicing, a scattering of herbs, zingy tomatillos and some lovely spring leaves.There are so many different herbs in Mexico that are impossible to find here, so I’ve used bundles of more common soft herbs to try to capture the lovely breadth of flavour in this soup

How to make the perfect Spanish broad bean stew – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to make the perfect …

I always feel sorry for broad beans, the lumpy cousin perpetually overshadowed by the charms of slender, elegant asparagus and sweet, bouncy, little peas. They’re in season at roughly the same time, but asparagus in particular gets all the glory, perhaps because so many of us are scarred by childhood experiences of large, grey wrinkly beans served in a floury white sauce (my own parents are so averse to the things that I vividly remember the first time I came across them on a Sunday roast as a teenager and had to ask a friend what they were).The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more

‘We don’t want to make the same mistakes’: Jamie’s Italian reopens in London

Jamie Oliver’s head of restaurants is optimistic about new recipe of smaller site, slimmed-down menu and no burgersWhen Jamie’s Italian crashed and burned in 2019, with the company in £83m of debt and causing 1,000 job losses, no one imagined the celebrity chef would try again.But seven years later, Jamie Oliver has opened a flagship site under the same name in Leicester Square in central London, and believes he has a new recipe for success: a smaller restaurant with a slimmed-down menu, which features cheaper cuts of meat and no burgers.At its peak the chain, which opened in 2008, had 47 UK restaurants. Now it just has the one.Ed Loftus, the global director of Jamie Oliver Restaurants, has worked with Oliver for 20 years and is charged with making the reopening a success

Willy’s, Margate, Kent: ‘It chortles in the face of small plates’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

This cute and jovial eatery is reason enough to make a break for the coastAs summer looms, and with it the urge to stampede towards the edges of Britain in search of paddling opportunities, I proffer another coastal dining idea: Willy’s in Margate – and, yes, that name does have about it something of the naughty seaside postcard. Tucked away in the back of Margate House hotel on Dalby Square, a few minutes’ walk from the seafront, Willy’s is a blur of frilly red-and-pink seaside adorableness. It’s cool, cute and jovial, with pork scratchings and apple chutney on the menu, as well as black pudding scotch eggs, sticky toffee pudding and Sunday lunches of beef rump and baked cauliflower cheese. This menu is short, intentional and hearty, rather than airy-fairy, and it chortles in the face of small plates.But, for the foodie/sippy crowd, the signifiers are all here: there’s a paper plane and a penicillin on the cocktail menu, throwbacks to New York’s iconic Milk and Honey bar