Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals celebrates after scoring against the Philadelphia Flyers on April 16, 2024, in Philadelphia. He’s now in his 20th season in the NHL.
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WASHINGTON — Step into Washington’s Capital One Arena, and the number 895 pervades every curve of the concourse — there’s even a stack of exactly that many pucks, topped by a goal horn waiting for a certain historic moment to blare.
It’s the magic number in hockey this spring: the number of career goals it will take for Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin to break one of the most significant records in National Hockey League history.
When the sport’s all-time great, Wayne Gretzky, retired in 1999, he left the NHL having scored 894 goals in his regular-season career, 93 more than any player before him. To many, Gretzky’s record seemed like it might never be broken.
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Wayne Gretzky waves to the crowd at New York City’s Madison Square Garden after his last game in the National Hockey League, against the Pittsburgh Penguins on April 18, 1999.
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Ovechkin, with 888, is on the brink. He only needs six more goals to tie Gretzky’s record — and seven to set a mark of his own. The chase has come to loom large over every Capitals game, broadcast and hockey front page.
“He amazes me night in, night out. I mean, he truly is the best,” Capitals goalie Charlie Lindgren said after a February game in which Ovechkin scored three goals, the cheers of the delighted Washington crowd growing more deafening with each score.
Even Ovechkin’s teammates were starstruck that night — and every night, as the record draws nearer. “You can’t deny how special this is,” Lindgren said. “I’m trying to soak it in every single chance I can.”
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“Russian machine never breaks”
The career goals record, along with the career points record (in hockey, a statistic that counts both goals and assists), are the two most significant records in the sport, according to hockey historian Andrew Podnieks.
“As the game progresses, and [with] the quality and the skill and the coaching and the styles of play, fewer and fewer records — those big records — are going to be broken,” he said. “Those are the kinds of records, when Ovechkin retires, that will stand the test of time.”
From the start of his career, Ovechkin has always been a threat to score. But scoring capability alone is not enough to claim a record like this. It’s the combination of skill and Ovechkin’s remarkable longevity that has made claiming the record possible.
Early in his NHL career, Ovechkin took a hard shot to his foot and had to be helped off the ice. The next day, he had completely recovered. When a surprised reporter inquired, Ovechkin famously replied, “Russian machine never breaks.”
At 39, Ovechkin might not blaze across the ice like he used to, but he’s already scored 35 goals this season and is tied for fourth-most league-wide — even though a broken fibula sidelined him for more than a month.
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That durability has never been more salient. In his 20th season in the league, Ovechkin has already scored 35 goals — tied for fourth-most league-wide. Nevermind that he was sidelined for more than a month after a leg-on-leg hit in a November game left him with a broken fibula.
“Scoring goals is a difficult task, and if you look at everybody’s career arc, goal scoring goes down as you get older. It’s a fact of life,” Podnieks said.
The years are visible on Ovechkin, who at 39 moves slower on the ice these days. His unruly brown hair has turned grey, and he has lost a tooth and a half. He moves more slowly than he once did, drifting down the ice when the younger Ovechkin more often barreled toward the goal.
Yet he has scored more goals this year than the season when he was 25. Had he not broken his leg, he might have scored 50 this year.
“That’s just mind-boggling,” Podnieks said.
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“Ovi’s office”
Ovechkin’s consistency as a scorer is due in part to his trademark move — a one-timer slapshot from the left side of the ice. That shot is especially deadly during the power play, when his Capitals are up a man while an opposing player sits in the penalty box.
His preference for that particular spot on the ice — around the left face-off circle, stick raised, ready to slap the puck into the net — was evident early in his career. Before long, commentators and fans were calling it his “office.”
Ovechkin skates against the Montreal Canadiens in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals of the 2010 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs.
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“That is not a play that ages you easily,” Podnieks said. “You can stand there when you’re 50 years old, and if someone puts the puck on your stick and you’ve got a great shot like he’s got, it’s going to go in the net.”
Even when opponents know it’s coming, they struggle to stop it, said Capitals forward Anthony Beauvillier, who played against Washington for years before being traded to the Capitals this spring.
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“It’s so hard to score goals in this league the way he’s been doing it over and over and over again, with guys knowing exactly where he’s going to stand in the power play, and still being able to get it off and score a goal from there,” Beauvillier said.
Ovechkin’s career has seen the NHL reach new heights after its low point
Ovechkin is no stranger to pressure, or to the spotlight of an entire league. He entered the NHL at its lowest point: the lockout of 2004–’05, when union negotiations between the team owners and players grew so acrimonious that an entire season of hockey was wiped away.
It remains the only time in major North American professional sports that a labor dispute erased a whole season. At the time, there was serious anxiety about whether attendance and viewership could recover.
Ovechkin went No. 1 in the 2004 draft, signing with the Washington Capitals. He didn’t begin his NHL career until 2005, because a labor dispute wiped out the 2004-’05 season.
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Hopes rested on the shoulders of two young phenoms who entered the league the year the lockout ended: Sidney Crosby, the divine 18-year-old Canadian drafted by the Pittsburgh Penguins, and of course, Ovechkin, the bruising 20-year-old from Moscow.
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It was billed as a rivalry for the ages, and TV broadcasts played it up, hoping to lure back hockey fans and spark the league back to life.
Two other players so young might have wilted under the pressure. But not Crosby and Ovechkin, said the historian Podnieks. “They welcomed the attention, and they thrived on the attention, and they thrived on the rivalry,” he said. “These two young … players really did take the league and drive the energy and the enthusiasm after the lockout.”
A dozen games to go
The Washington Capitals took their first Stanley Cup on June 7, 2018, knocking out the Golden Knights in Game 5 in Las Vegas. Ovechkin, the team captain, later won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the MVP of the playoffs.
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Twenty years later, Ovechkin has performed beyond any Washington fan’s loftiest dreams. He helped reverse the fortunes of a long-suffering franchise and brought the team its first Stanley Cup, in 2018.
Now, skating into the twilight of his career, his current contract is set to expire after the end of next season. It could be his last. Barring injury or unexpected early retirement, he is essentially certain to claim the goals record for himself, whether it comes this spring or next fall.
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The Capitals have 12 games left to play this regular season. The NHL plans to start bringing Gretzky and Commissioner Gary Bettman to every Capitals game, to have them both on hand for the historic moment when it comes.
Ovechkin says he won’t feel any disappointment if the chase stretches into the fall. “It’s life. You can’t change it, so it is what it is,” he told reporters at practice last week.
His teammates say they will enjoy this ride while it lasts.
“I’ve never seen a guy so hungry. Some guys score and they go, ‘OK, I had a good night.’ He comes back to the bench, and he’s asking if he can go out again right away,” said forward Tom Wilson. “It’s been an amazing journey watching him do what he can do.”
The Caps have a dozen games left this regular season. The NHL plans to start bringing Wayne Gretzky to all the games so that he’ll be there for the inevitable moment when Ovechkin breaks his career goals record.
When it came time to plan San Francisco Pride this year, Suzanne Ford, the organization’s executive director, reached out to some longtime corporate sponsors to ask how they planned to support the event.
Their abrupt responses stunned her: Not at all.
Several of the event’s largest sponsors — including Comcast, Anheuser-Busch and the beverage company Diageo — told Ms. Ford that they would not be providing funding this year. The companies, which together provided over $200,000 to San Francisco Pride in 2024, each told her that supporting the event was no longer in its budget, she said.
“It was totally shocking,” Ms. Ford said, adding that some of the companies had supported San Francisco Pride for decades. “It was like somebody in your family just all of a sudden saying, ‘We don’t want to be involved with you anymore.’”
With only weeks left to lock in sponsors for the summertime events, Pride organizers across the United States say that many longtime corporate sponsors are suddenly being evasive about their financial commitments or abandoning their support entirely. While some companies cited tight budgets or economic uncertainty, Pride organizers see another factor: President Trump’s widening crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion, which has prompted corporate America to retreat from such initiatives.
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“There’s a lot of fear of repercussions for aligning with our festival,” said Wes Shaver, the president of Milwaukee Pride. Many corporations he has spoken to are worried that the Trump administration will classify funding Pride events — one of the signature L.G.B.T.Q. festivals on the calendar — as a diversity, equity and inclusion effort, and that they’ll be punished or penalized. “Everyone’s afraid,” he said.
In recent weeks, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, Comcast and the auto dealership group Darcars have dropped their sponsorship of WorldPride, to be held in Washington, D.C., organizers said.
Andi Otto, the executive director of Twin Cities Pride, said that some longtime sponsors were leaving his calls and emails unanswered, and that his organization was about $200,000 behind its funding goal.
And Hampton Roads Pride in Norfolk, Va., has had some sponsors reduce their donations, while others have postponed decisions, said Jeff Ryder, the organization’s president.
This is a sharp reversal from past years — when corporations clamored to have their logos be seen at Pride events — and is creating deep unease among many L.G.B.T.Q. people.
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“The tone has definitely changed,” Mr. Shaver said. While none of his sponsors have officially dropped out, Mr. Shaver estimates that he will lose about $50,000 in corporate funds this year, a 30 percent reduction from last year.
To adjust, he plans to scale back some performances, curb marketing plans and abandon hopes to hire big-name acts.
Pride Toronto is also taking a hit, organizers said. So far, it is short over $300,000 — out of a total budget of around $5.6 million — because corporations with U.S. ties have pulled out or reduced their donations, according to Kojo Modeste, the organization’s executive director. The event plans to cut one of its five stages, shorten performances and cancel its signature “Island Party” event on the Toronto Islands.
Nissan, one of the companies that pulled out of Pride Toronto, said in a statement that its decision not to sponsor the event this year was “due to a re-evaluation of all our marketing and media activations in a variety of activities.”
Corporate sponsorships help pay for security, insurance, permitting and equipment rentals. But for some groups, the cuts could reverberate beyond this summer’s Pride events. In Washington, the funding gap is endangering an endowment planned as part of WorldPride to support local L.G.B.T.Q. organizations that provide housing, food, clothing and group therapy.
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A spokeswoman for Comcast declined to say why the company was withdrawing its sponsorship of WorldPride and San Francisco Pride, but said it was supporting smaller Pride events in California, including in Oakland, Silicon Valley and Sacramento. Diageo declined to comment. Anheuser-Busch, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte and Darcars did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
John Paul Rollert, an adjunct associate professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said that many organizations worry “that they will be subject to heightened scrutiny and perhaps even reprisal by the current administration” if they support D.E.I.-related efforts.
While many companies blamed budgetary issues or potential economic headwinds, “I don’t believe that for one moment,” Mr. Rollert said. “Supporting a Pride event is not a particularly expensive undertaking. This is a fear of potential reputational harm that might come from the administration turning its spotlight on them.”
Ms. Ford had hoped to raise $2.3 million from corporate sponsors for San Francisco Pride this year, but as of mid-March had secured only $1 million. Insurance, security and medical services alone cost over $1.2 million, she said, prompting her to seek new corporate sponsors and solicit individual donations.
Many organizers said that most sponsors were sticking with them, and that some had even increased their donations. But the cooling support from some has refocused attention on how reliant large Pride events are on corporate backing.
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For decades, companies grew increasingly comfortable associating their brands with L.G.B.T.Q. communities, said Matt Skallerud, the president of Pink Media, which specializes in L.G.B.T.Q. marketing. But that began to change in 2023, when a marketing campaign by Bud Light with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney provoked outrage from the right and a boycott of the beer.
Months later, Target faced a backlash over its Pride Month store displays. After Target scaled back the displays, there came another backlash, this time from the left.
“At that point, a lot of other companies said, ‘Whoa, I think we need to slow down,’” Mr. Skallerud said. Some began to dial back spending on Pride-related marketing and events.
Since returning to the White House in January, Mr. Trump has ramped up his anti-D.E.I. efforts. After he issued an executive order instructing federal agencies to investigate “illegal D.E.I.” in the private sector, Mr. Skallerud said that many companies pulled the plug on such efforts. In recent weeks, Paramount, Google and Goldman Sachs have become the latest big-name companies to roll back D.E.I. programs.
The retreat — at a moment when many L.G.B.T.Q. people feel under threat — has added to criticism that corporations only support their community when it benefits them financially, a practice called “pinkwashing” or “rainbow capitalism.”
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It suggests, Mr. Skallerud said, that companies “were only in it halfheartedly, and they weren’t completely our partners.”
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Pirelli’s board is pressing China’s Sinochem, its largest investor, to cut its stake over fears that the Trump administration’s hawkish position on Beijing ownership of American assets will thwart the Italian tyremaker’s US expansion.
At a board meeting on Wednesday, Pirelli’s management will demand the Chinese investor immediately cut its 37 per cent stake to less than Italian shareholder Camfin’s 26.4 per cent holding, according to several people with knowledge of the plans.
The move demonstrates the drastic steps being taken by companies as they adapt to the policies of US President Donald Trump’s administration.
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Korean car group Hyundai on Monday was the latest international business to announce large investments in the US, unveiling a $21bn package that Trump said was evidence that his trade policies “very strongly work” as he seeks to boost domestic manufacturing.
One of the options Pirelli proposed is for Sinochem to reduce its stake below 25 per cent through a share buyback with some stock being resold on the market immediately, people with knowledge of the plans said.
It is unclear whether Sinochem, which will be represented at the meeting by its president Jiao Jian — also Pirelli’s chair — will agree to the proposal. The parties failed to reach an agreement in preparatory talks ahead of the board meeting, the people added.
Pirelli declined to comment. Sinochem could not immediately be reached for comment.
Pirelli owns a factory in the US state of Georgia but produces most of its tyres for the North American market in Mexico and South America. In response to Trump’s trade policies and the looming threat of tariffs on imported cars, it has sought to expand its operations in the US, where it makes a quarter of its global revenues.
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But the tyremaker has met resistance in recent conversations in the US about its expansion plans, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The company believed that this stemmed from the fact its largest shareholder was a Chinese state-owned company, the people added.
Pirelli, which supplies the tyres used by Formula 1 cars, also owns proprietary technology that can link information picked up by tyre sensors to vehicles’ driving commands. The technology is in high demand in the US but Pirelli also fears it will be cut out of a potentially lucrative market because of Sinochem’s stake in the group, according to the people.
The US in January finalised a ban on Chinese automated driving systems as well as hardware and software that interact with cars, such as Bluetooth, WiFi and satellite.
State-owned ChemChina, which later merged with Sinochem, first bought a majority stake in Pirelli in a $7.7bn deal in 2015. Under the initial deal, the Chinese investor agreed it would not interfere with the Italian group’s day-to-day management, strategy or appointments.
This week’s showdown comes less than two years after Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government imposed limitations on state-owned Sinochem’s shareholder rights in Pirelli.
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The rare state intervention, under Italy’s “golden power” foreign investment screening mechanism, followed repeated clashes between Pirelli’s Italian management, including its former chief executive Marco Tronchetti Provera, and Sinochem as Beijing sought to tighten its grip over one of Italy’s historic industrial groups.
Sinochem’s attempts to exert control at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions led to disputes with Pirelli’s management. The disagreements culminated with Sinochem’s attempt in 2023 to revise a shareholder pact and strip Camfin — where Tronchetti Provera is the controlling shareholder — of the indefinite right to appoint Pirelli’s chief executive.
Good morning. Look, it could happen to anyone: I well remember, for example, the time I added my mum to a thread with my siblings discussing what to get her for Christmas. On the other hand, I don’t have a secure communications facility in my house for when I need to get something out on the family group chat. Also, we rarely digress from pictures of cute kids to setting out war plans for an imminent set of airstrikes on the Houthis in Yemen.
So perhaps the latest Trump administration hullabaloo isn’t that relatable, after all. Two days after the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he had been mystifyingly added to a thread on Signal – an encrypted WhatsApp-like instant messaging app – in which vice-president JD Vance, defence secretary Pete Hegseth, and a host of others chatted about a highly sensitive operation, there are as many questions as answers. How on earth did Goldberg get added in the first place? Why didn’t anybody realise the error? Are White House officials doing this all the time? And how vulnerable are their communications to interception from America’s adversaries?
Today’s newsletter explains this absolute dumpster fire of a story, and why it matters. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Spring statement | Rachel Reeves will make additional welfare cuts in her spring statement on Wednesday after the Office for Budget Responsibility rejected her estimate of savings from the changes announced last week. The chancellor is expected to announce an additional £500m in benefits cuts to make up part of the £1.6bn shortfall.
Ukraine | Russia and Ukraine have agreed to “eliminate the use of force” in the Black Sea, though the Kremlin said it was conditional on sanctions relief for its agricultural exports. The warring parties also agreed to implement a previously announced 30-day halt on attacks against energy networks.
Assisted dying | The introduction of assisted dying in England and Wales is likely to be pushed back by a further two years in a delay that supporters fear could mean the law never comes into force. The delay marks the latest major change to the proposals, which have proven deeply contentious in the Commons and beyond.
Gaza | Press freedom organisations have condemned the killing of two journalists in Gaza on Monday by the Israeli armed forces. Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old correspondent for the Al Jazeera Mubasher channel, and Mohammed Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, died in separate targeted airstrikes.
Society | Non-monogamous people are just as happy in their relationships as those with only one partner but are not “significantly” more sexually satisfied, research suggests. The authors of a new study said their findings challenged what they called a prevailing “one-size-fits-all approach to relationships”.
In depth: How a journalist got a front row seat to US military planning
Donald Trump speaks to the press alongside JD Vance, Pete Hegseth and Mike Waltz days before the Houthi strike. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
“This is going to require some explaining,” Jeffrey Goldberg writes at the beginning of his Atlantic story about how Pete Hegseth ended up messaging him about an imminent attack on Yemen, and he’s absolutely right.
In brief: Goldberg was added to a Signal thread by Michael Waltz, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, who presumably confused his contact with someone else’s. Goldberg was allowed to lurk on the thread for several days as senior officials – here’s a rundown of the dramatis personae – discussed the timing of the strike against the Houthis, fulminated against European “free-loading”, and celebrated the operation’s success with fire emojis. Eventually, Goldberg removed himself, and then wrote a story about it. Since then, all hell has broken loose.
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Here’s what else you need to know about the significant issues raised by this fiasco – and, as a bonus, the best quote from the fallout so far: “Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot.” (Donald Trump said he was “doing his best”, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.)
What’s the problem with having national security discussions on Signal?
The most glaring issue is the lack of adequate security protocols for discussions about US military operations – even if, hilariously, Hegseth sent a message to the group saying “we are currently clean on OPSEC” while Goldberg was still in it.
Such conversations are meant to be held in enclosed areas called sensitive compartmented information facilities, or Scifs, which have reinforced physical defences against eavesdropping, tight controls on access, and shields against electronic surveillance. Many senior government officials have Scifs installed at their homes; failing that, they are meant to use secure government-issued devices. Peter Beaumont has more on what America’s adversaries might have learned.
To state the most obvious point: if the discussion had been held under such conditions, a journalist would not have been accidentally added. But even if Goldberg hadn’t been included, significant issues would remain.
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While the messaging app Signal is a more secure way to exchange messages than ordinary texting, it is a rung below official government communication channels. One aspect of the risk is that it is possible to download messages to a desktop, which lacks the layers of security in the app itself. The Pentagon warned its employees against using Signal last week.
It is also possible that the participants were using their own devices. In this Politico piece, a former White House official warns: “Their personal phones are all hackable, and it’s highly likely that foreign intelligence services are sitting on their phones watching them type the shit out.”
Is it possible the participants broke the law?
By holding sensitive national security discussions on a commercially available app, the participants may well have violated the US espionage act. Kevin Carroll, a national security lawyer, told the Washington Post: “I have defended service members accused of violating the Espionage Act through gross negligence for far, far less. If these people were junior uniformed personnel, they would be court-martialed.”
Vance, Hegseth and their colleagues may also have been in breach of federal records law – which mandates that messages about official acts be preserved. Many former officials have said that for that reason, they confined their use of platforms like Signal to bland logistical discussions or as a way to direct others to a more secure channel.
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That is not what happened here – and because Waltz switched on Signal’s “disappearing messages” function, the discussions might have vanished for ever barring Goldberg’s accidental inclusion. Yesterday, CIA director John Ratcliffe, another participant, claimed that the decisions taken in the group were also formally recorded.
What did we learn about the Trump administration’s view of Europe?
One thing the leak makes absolutely clear: when Vance expresses his disdain for Europe in public, he isn’t putting it on. Part of the discussion about the timing of a strike against the Houthis was focused on the idea that by protecting a trade route used by European shipping, Washington was giving EU countries a free ride.
Vance, who expressed his reluctance to conduct the operation immediately, eventually said: “If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” In reply, Hegseth agreed: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”
The discussion concluded with a suggestion that “we soon make clear” that Europe should contribute to the cost of the operation.
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In Brussels yesterday, all of that was greeted with weary dismay. “Horrific to see in black and white,” one European diplomat told the BBC. “But hardly surprising.”
Are there any awkward historical precedents which the protagonists have expressed strong opinions about?
Funny you should ask! After the story broke, CNN put together a montage that showed just some of the times that those involved in the message thread took a stern line on the notorious row over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while in office.
“If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they’d be in jail right now,” Hegseth said on Fox News in 2016. Marco Rubio said in the same year that “nobody is above the law – not even Hillary Clinton.” And Ratcliffe said in 2019 that “mishandling classified information is still a violation of the espionage act”.
Later, Trump’s consigliere Stephen Miller tweeted that because of Clinton’s “illegal” behaviour, “foreign adversaries could easily hack classified ops & intel in real time from other side of the globe.” With that uncompromising line, the White House must be hoping Stephen Miller never hears what Stephen Miller’s been up to.
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The administration steered well clear of addressing that aspect of the story. Hillary Clinton didn’t, though: “You have got to be kidding me,” she wrote on X, along with an eyeballs emoji.
How have Trump’s supporters fought back?
The White House has admitted the thread “appears to be authentic”. Still, that didn’t stop Hegseth turning to a familiar strategy in response: attack the media.
“Nobody was texting war plans,” he said, although Goldberg reported that Hegseth himself texted “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen”.
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Hegseth also sought to discredit Goldberg, among the most eminent journalists in the United States and one with no obvious track record of dishonesty: “You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes.” Later, Trump called him a “total sleazebag”. Waltz, for his part, called him “bottom scum” and suggested he could have got himself added to the group “deliberately” because he “wasn’t on my phone”, a fairly head-scratching claim.
All of that aligned closely with the approach taken by presenters on Fox News. Sean Hannity dismissed it as “the state-run legacy media mob” being “obsessed with an accidentally leaked text”.
Another Will Cain, found a silver lining: “After years of secrecy and incompetence, if you read the content of these messages, I think you will come away proud that these are the leaders making these decisions in America.”
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But the idea that there’s nothing to see here doesn’t seem to have landed with everyone. At a hearing before the Senate intelligence committee yesterday, John Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence who was also on the thread, faced intense questioning about their roles, and found it tricky to agree on a strategy: immediately after Gabbard refused to confirm her participation in the thread, Ratcliffe confirmed he had done so and said it was permissible.
“What you’re saying didn’t make sense,” said Democratic senator Mark Warner. Somewhere in Washington, a Republican was probably sending an eyeroll emoji.
What else we’ve been reading
Hamdan Ballal is released from Israeli custody on Tuesday 25 March. Photograph: Léo Corrêa/AP
Lorenzo Tondo spoke to witnesses about the brutal assault on Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal by settlers, who handed him over to the military, bruised and bleeding. The attack on Ballal, who was subsequently detained, “might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment,” said Basel Adra, another of No Other Land’s directors. Nimo
The Guardian’s blockbuster invertebrate of the year prize continues with Patrick Barkham singing the praises of the “twerking pollinator with a bum-bag”: it is, of course, the dark-edged bee-fly. Slightly alarmingly, they “use false legs to bumble into a bee burrow and scoff the pollen left for the bee babies”. Archie
Rashid Khalidi is searing in his response to Columbia University’s “capitulation” with the Trump administration’s sweeping policy changes last week. “Columbia barely merits the name of a university, since its teaching and scholarship on the Middle East, and soon much else, will soon be vetted by a ‘senior vice-provost for inclusive pedagogy’, in reality a senior vice-provost for Israeli propaganda,” he writes. Nimo
The bleak sight of Conor McGregor visiting the White House on St Patrick’s Day has not gone down well with most people in Ireland, writes Justine McCarthy – but his putative presidential run risks galvanising the country’s “small but vocal minority on the hard right”. Archie
For those who are mourning the end of Severance (me), Claire Cao has a great antidote: the film Triangle (pictured above) will scratch the “puzzle box” sci-fi plot itch that the Ben Stiller thriller has left. Nimo
Sport
Trent Alexander-Arnold. Photograph: Richard Martin-Roberts/CameraSport/Getty Images
Football | Real Madrid are close to completing a deal to sign Trent Alexander-Arnold on a free transfer this summer. The Liverpool right-back has long been a target for the European champions and there is now a widespread expectation that he will join Carlo Ancelotti’s side when his contract expires at the end of the season.
Football | David Brooks scored in the sixth minute of injury time to rescue a point for Wales in their World Cup qualifier against North Macedonia. The game had been 0-0 until Bojan Miovski’s goal as normal time expired.
Tennis | As Emma Raducanu enjoys her best run of form since her 2021 run to the US Open title, she now comes up against Jessica Pegula in the quarter final of the Miami Open. The match is just reward for her persistence, writes Tumaini Carayol: “to her credit she kept on rolling with the punches and showing up.”
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The front pages
Guardian front page 26 March, 2025 Photograph: Guardian
“Fears of further tax rises as Reeves promises to ‘secure Britain’s future’” is the splash on the Guardian today, while the Financial Times says “Reeves to leaven grim spring outlook with £2.2bn defence spending boost.” The spring statement is also previewed in the DailyMail, which has “Don’t shift blame for economy’s woes, voters tell Reeves,” and the Mirror, which runs an interview with Rachel Reeves under the headline “My mission.”
“Victims must see ‘sense of justice being served’” is the lead story on the Express, while “Mortal blow to assisted dying Bill” is the focus in the Telegraph. “JD Dunce hates Britain, hates Europe and hates Ukraine…And could be president at any moment,” says the Star, and the Metro: “Trump backs chump.” The Sun covers a row over the pricing of Oasis tickets with the headline “Definitely Shady”.
Today in Focus
A protester wearing a whirling dervish costume performs in front of Turkish riot police barricades as he tries to march to Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey, 23 March 2025. Photograph: Erdem Şahin/EPA
The arrest that plunged Turkey into turmoil
Protesters took to streets after President Erdoğan had his rival arrested. What will happen next? Sami Kent and Ruth Michaelson report
Cartoon of the day | Rebecca Hendin
Cartoon of the day Illustration: Rebecca Hendin/The Guardian
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
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Mark Nedd, a fisher, on Soubise’s beach. He has been coping with the effects of the sargassum seaweed since he was a teenager. Photograph: Haron Forteau/The Guardian
In Grenada, the persistent issue of sargassum seaweed, which has long plagued the island’s shores, is being reimagined as an opportunity rather than a burden. While the decaying seaweed causes bad smells and disrupts fishing and tourism, innovative solutions are emerging. The Grenadian government, in collaboration with the EU, is exploring ways to turn sargassum into a valuable resource, including clean energy, bioplastics, and fertiliser.
Companies such as Seafields are developing methods to farm the seaweed and harness its potential, which could boost the economy. A bioenergy project is already converting sargassum into biogas and organic fertiliser. “They use diesel to generate electricity 1742975300, which is very expensive for the local population. We are providing a reliable, cost-effective and sustainable alternative,” Benjamin Nestorovic, who works for the Grenada-based bioenergy company SarGas, says, adding that the company plans to expand across the Caribbean.
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