Exclusive: Concerns over effect on UKas finances lead officials to believe utility should be renationalised before general election

Senior Whitehall officials fear Thames Wateras financial collapse could trigger a rise in government borrowing costs not seen since the chaos of the Liz Truss mini-budget, the Guardian can reveal.

Such is their concern about the impact on wider borrowing costs for the UK, even beyond utilities and infrastructure, that they believe Thames should be renationalised before the general election.

Exclusive: Working-class people less likely to get jobs in charities than public and private sectors, EY Foundation report finds

Charities are hiring staff with aprivilege rather than potentiala, according to the author of a report highlighting the stark class divide in the sector.

Working-class people are less likely to be hired by charities than by employers in the public and private sectors, said the EY Foundation, which supports young people from low-income backgrounds to progress in professional roles.

Worried MPs have concocted five-point plan of quick measures aimed at showing that the party cares about publicas priorities

Rishi Sunak is braced for a bruising week as Tory rebels flaunted plans for a 100-day apolicy blitza to secure quick wins if the local election results prove disastrous for the party.

The prime minister said on Sunday that he was not adistracteda by his personal ratings lingering at record lows. He refused to rule out calling a July general election amid mounting rumours that unruly MPs will attempt to oust him if the West Midlands mayor, Andy Street, and the Tees Valley mayor, Ben Houchen, are defeated on Thursday.

An attempt to end the junior doctors pay dispute with a 10-12% offer.

Further cuts to legal migration numbers, with a curb on the number of foreign students staying in the UK.

Vow to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2027.

Introduce measures to jail prolific offenders and build rapid detention cells to increase prison capacity.

Cut the benefits bill, with a target to reduce payments for depression and anxiety.

Exclusive: Operation comes weeks earlier than expected and is thought to have been timed to coincide with local elections

The Home Office will launch a major operation to detain asylum seekers across the UK on Monday, weeks earlier than expected, in preparation for their deportation to Rwanda, the Guardian can reveal.

Officials plan to hold refugees who turn up for routine meetings at immigration service offices or bail appointments and will also pick people up nationwide in a surprise two-week exercise.

The east African country has close ties to China and Tim Loughton had sanctions imposed on him by Beijing in 2021

A former government minister who has had sanctions imposed on him by China has said he was detained and deported by Djibouti as a adirect consequencea of the east African countryas close ties with Beijing.

Tim Loughton, the Conservative MP for East Worthing and Shoreham since 1997, said he was held for more than seven hours at the airport earlier this month, barred entry to Djibouti, and told he was being removed on the next available flight.

US president and Israeli PM talk as Israel vows to invade Gaza city despite global concern for 1 million Palestinians sheltering there

The White House on Sunday said Joe Biden had again spoken with Benjamin Netanyahu as pressure builds on Israel and Hamas to reach a deal that would free some Israeli hostages and bring a ceasefire in the nearly seven-month-long war in Gaza.

There were no immediate details of the conversation, which took place as Israel vows to invade Gazaas southernmost city of Rafah despite global concern for more than 1 million Palestinians sheltering there. The US secretary of state is returning to the Middle East on Monday.

Grey skies and persistent rain could be replaced by temperatures as high as 20C in south-east England

Chilly April is on its way out with the coming days set to usher in warmer temperatures more akin to spring, according to the Met Office.

The lack of sunshine, grey skies and persistent rain have contributed to it feeling unusually cold as April comes to a close.

Police avery confidenta body parts in Salford belong to a man in his 60s whose torso was found on 4 April

More human remains have been found in two locations as part of a murder investigation that started when a manas torso was discovered in a nature reserve in Greater Manchester, police said.

Detectives believe the torso, found in Salford, belongs to a man in his 60s and they have informed his family. Formal identification of the remains has not yet taken place but should be completed by next week, Greater Manchester police (GMP) said.

Exclusive: aDistressinga scarcity sowing uncertainty among 400,000 with type 1 diabetes, experts warn

People with type 1 diabetes are being forced to endure the astress and anxietya of insulin shortages, patients, pharmacists and health campaigners have warned.

The adistressinga drug scarcity, the latest to affect the UK, is sowing uncertainty for the 400,000 people with the condition, with some products not available again until next year amid global manufacturing shortages.

CWU seems to concede six-day service is financially unviable as company battles takeover bid

Letterboxes could fall silent on Saturday mornings, after the postal workersa union appeared to accept a proposal from Royal Mail that would abandon its duty to deliver all letters six days a week.

Royal Mail is required to deliver post from Monday to Saturday under the terms of the universal service obligation (USO) set down by an act of parliament in 2011. Amid a long-running industrial dispute with the financially struggling company, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) has so far opposed a APS300m cost-cutting blueprint that would include scrapping most Saturday services.

Airport staff surprised by arrival of centenarian instead of infant after American Airlines booking system errors

A 101-year-old woman has been regularly mistaken for an infant because an airlineas booking system was unable to compute her date of birth.

The woman, named only as Patricia, was born in 1922, but the American Airlines system apparently does not recognise that year, defaulting instead to 2022, the BBC reported.

Authorities in Kigali say awe are readya to accommodate refugees as Rishi Sunakas plan moves closer

Daily interviews, an orientation session and football: this is what awaits refugees scheduled to land in Rwanda as part of the UKas migration plan.

Some asylum seekers will be taken to the Hope hostel a a 20-minute drive from Kigali international airport a where they will be fed, taught about the countryas history and be allowed to walk past the armed security guards to stretch their legs.

Chris Webb is expected to win Blackpool South for Labour but eyes are on the fortunes of Mark Butcher, who works with the poor and insists he is anot a politiciana

Mark Butcher, Reform UKas candidate in Blackpool Southas byelection, watched as a carriage driver on the townas promenade plunged a fist into the manure-collecting bag behind his horse. Petty bureaucracy, both men furiously agreed, was stifling the resortas appeal.

aPeople came here because it was a magical place, but where have the donkey rides gone? Where are the ice-cream vendors?a asked Butcher, evoking a nostalgia for the townas glory days and reciting a mantra that Blackpool had long been ill-served by a Labour-controlled council and a when the ared walla crumbled in 2019 a a Conservative MP.

While some voters may want to send a message to Westminster, more local concerns will have an influence

This weekas local elections have been widely described as one of the toughest tests of Rishi Sunakas 18-month premiership, with Westminster-watchers considering the results as portents of his fate in the coming national poll a considered to be coming this autumn.

But while some voters in England may use their vote to bloody his nose this Thursday, a host of more local issues are also likely to influence the results.

The two-decade transformation of the industrial site north of Kingas Cross station in London, once notorious, now a pleasant enclave of offices, homes, shops, bars and boulevards, is essentially complete. Itas a huge success a and yet is there something missing?

The near quarter-century, kilometre-long, 67-acre project to redevelop Kingas Cross in London is a monument of its age. It is the urban embodiment of the Blair era in which it was conceived, of the third way, of the idea that market forces, wisely guided by light-touch government, can be a power for good. It will get into the history books about cities (if such things are written in the future), representing its time in the same way that John Nashas Regentas Park represents the Regency and the Barbican represents the 1960s.

The architects of its masterplan, Allies and Morrison and Demetri Porphyrios, have now submitted it for this yearas RIBA awards programme, which could get it on to the shortlist for the Stirling prize. This means that, although there is construction still to be done, not least on the Google headquarters, they consider the essential concept of the masterplan complete. Cadence, a residential building by Alison Brooks Architects, which occupies a culminating point at one end of the site, is also, bar some snagging, finished. Somewhat shockingly, of more than 30 practices commissioned on the site, Brooks is the first one with a womanas name in its title.

As people play their hearts out on station platforms, this is undoubtedly stirring stuff a but thereas always been something terribly odd plaguing it too

The new series of The Piano confronts the obvious problem head on. aI thought we were one and done,a Claudia Winkleman says to the talent showas judges, Mika and Lang Lang, because everyone will know now that the pair are hidden away somewhere, assessing all the amateur musicians who step forward to take their place at the public pianos stationed at various a well, stations a and selecting the winner from each concourse, who will go on to perform in a special concert at the end of the series.

No matter, says Mika, wholly unconvincingly. It was the stories of the people that drove the series, not the big reveal. So, that apparently dealt with, on we go.

While a cast of literary heavyweights grace Laingas account of her garden restoration, the real joys lie in her detailed description of the pruning and the planting and the soothing effect on her state of mind

Olivia Laingas new book, The Garden Against Time, is as fragrantly replete as a long border at its peak. The word that comes to mind is spumy: a blossomy, brimful excess thatas almost too much at times. Here are hundreds of plants, exquisitely described; here is colour, energy and expertise. In a way, itas akin to a garden itself; a place, almost a park, in which the reader never quite knows whatas around the next corner. But while this is invigorating a my imagination whirred across the verdant expanses of its pages like some crazy, old-fashioned lawnmower a itas also tiring. Dizzy on its pollen, I often had to put it down. I began to think of the chapter breaks as conveniently placed benches on which I might for a while sit quietly, temporarily unassailed by endless common names, ongoing worries about honey fungus, and long disquisitions on privilege and exclusion.

Laing does two things at once. First and foremost, this book is a memoir, in which she describes her restoration of the garden attached to the house in Suffolk to which she moved in 2020, as Covid-19 raged on and so many of us sought respite in our backyards, balconies and window boxes (in the course of 2020, more than 3 million people in Britain began to garden for the first time, nearly half of them under 45). All her life, she has longed for a garden to call her own a one she would never have to give up on the whim of some landlord a and now, at last, she has one, bought with her husband, a retired Cambridge don. The work originally of a designer called Mark Rumary who liked hedges and ponds, this third of an acre cannot be seen in its entirety all at once, appearing instead as a series of secretive rooms; a beguiling prospect for a woman who read Frances Hodgson Burnettas marvellous novel The Secret Garden as a child.

Having a baby led to an unexpected disease and then surgery that altered Lauren Benstedas body for ever. She talks about the pain she felt in being separated from her newborn, and her journey to learn to accept her new life

aWeare going to have to disconnect you,a says the man at my bedside. Since I was hospitalised a fortnight ago, this man and his team have been trying to save my colon, a 5ft-long tangle of ulcers and inflammation. The speed and scale of my colonas fury has fascinated doctors. I imagine them in their morning meetings, poring over my colonoscopy with the mystification usually reserved for the Voynich manuscript. But time is up. Unless they adisconnecta me, my bowel will perforate and I will die.

Disconnection, explains the doctor, involves whipping the whole colon out a here he mimes pulling a rabbit from a hat a and diverting my digestion through a hole in my abdomen called a stoma. He sketches my new anatomy on a piece of paper, quick as a high-street caricaturist. He cannot imagine what it is like to receive this news a to hear your body will change for ever and with it your whole life too a just as I cannot imagine what it is to break it. I want to grab his hand, ask him how. How does a body give birth to a healthy baby and then burst into flames?

The effectiveness of Tinder and Hinge is hard to judge without access to their data. But now researchers are creating a free alternative with full transparency

A class-action lawsuit filed in a US federal court last Valentineas Day accuses Match Group a the owners of Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid dating apps, among others a of using a apredatory business modela and of doing everything in its power to keep users hooked, in flagrant opposition to Hingeas claim that it is adesigned to be deleteda.

The lawsuit crystallised an ocean of dissatisfaction with the apps, and stimulated a new round of debate over their potential to harm mental health, but for scientists who study romantic relationships it sidestepped the central issue: do they work? Does using the apps increase your chances of finding your soulmate, or not? The answer is, nobody knows.

Linbury theatre, London
Bohuslav MartinA-as 1928 work is a strip-lighted nightmare whirlwind, while Harbisonas is highly stylised post-tonal sitcom unfolding around a four-poster bed

In an evening where little was obvious, it was definitely a bad night for teddies. One had its head torn off as the violent accompaniment to a coloratura tour-de-force. Moments earlier, the backdrop had parted to reveal an entire wall of mutilated bears, clumsily taped back together. And, in one of the most disturbing moments of all, a human-scale teddy wandered on playing an accordion like a cameo in a horror film, before eventually removing its own oversized head to pick a fight with one of the singers.

Confused? I was, repeatedly, in these extraordinary performances of two supremely weird operas. The bears themselves were the work of directors Eleanor Burke and Harriet Taylor, who staged Bohuslav MartinA-as 1928 Larmes de Couteau and John Harbisonas 1977 Full Moon in March a the former as a kind of strip-lighted nightmare whirlwind of wedding cake, mannequins and that bear-accordionist; the latter as a differently nightmarish, highly stylised post-tonal sitcom unfolding around a four-poster bed.

Families of two girls killed when a Land Rover ploughed into their school are still waiting for answers, 10 months later

The question awhat if?a plagues Smera Chohan and her husband, Sajjad Butt.

Last July, Chohan had just posed for a photograph with their eight-year-old daughter, Nuria, at her school picnic in Wimbledon when a Land Rover crashed through a fence and ploughed into them. Nuria Sajjad and her friend Selena Lau were ultimately killed by the collision while Chohan was left with 10 broken bones and the overwhelming grief of losing her only child.

Itas almost a century since the 1924 expedition ended in tragedy, yet the question of whether the climbers conquered the summit remains unanswered

On the morning of 6 June, 1924, George Mallory a one of the worldas greatest mountaineers a set off with his companion, Sandy Irvine, from a camp on the slopes of Mount Everest and headed for its summit.

A veteran of three British Everest expeditions, Mallory knew the worldas highest mountain better than any other climber at the time. He had come close to death there on three occasions.

• Champions respond to Arsenal win with victory at Forest
• Guardiola: aI donat think they are going to lose any pointsa

Pep Guardiola has warned Manchester City cannot drop any points if they are to secure a historic fourth successive Premier League as he expects Arsenal to win their remaining matches after proving their mettle by defeating Spurs on Sunday. Josko Gvardiol and Erling Haaland edged City past Nottingham Forest to leave them a point behind top spot but crucially with a game in hand.

aWe prefer they lose, we cannot control what they do,a Guardiola said of Arsenal. aThere are four games left, I donat think they are going to lose any points, so we know exactly what we have to do.a

German operated at his own pace in the north London noise, passing beautifully, holding the ball up and punishing Spurs

With 96 minutes gone in this agreeably fevered north London derby a small, stricken-looking man in a tracksuit could be seen leaping across the touchline at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, arms waving furiously, before being dragged back off the pitch by the fourth official.

Arsenalas Nicolas Jover has been a pioneer of the fashion for set-piece coaches to pop up at every designated opportunity and assume a look of urgent command, apparently convinced that their presence sightly closer to the pitch, their personal voodoo, their revolving index fingers, will somehow affect events on it.

World No 2 basically auditioning for acceptance to return to policy board is faintly ludicrous in increasingly fractured sport

The most unpalatable and unlikely scenario could be a necessary one. Rory McIlroy to LIV has been rumoured, slapped down, rumoured and slapped down. Yet as the PGA Tour procrastinates over completion of a deal with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, and even the formal involvement of McIlroy himself, one wonders if it may take something nuclear to allow golf to wake up to the haplessness of its present, fractured state. Should McIlroy sign for golfas rebel tour the establishment would be sent into a level of frenzy so serious that collaboration between the PGA Tour, LIV and the PIF would surely transpire in a heartbeat.

There is no suggestion this will happen. Still, Greg Norman knew precisely what he was doing in recent days. aIf Rory was willing to sit down and have a conversation with us, would we be happy to sit down with him?a Norman said. a100%.a McIlroy is not actually the PGA Touras main concern. The live prospect of LIV continuing a talent drain on established tours into 2025 should be the prime cause for fear. While not McIlroy, it could be Viktor Hovland. If not Hovland, it could be Tommy Fleetwood. The PGA Tour and its marquee events are being materially harmed by golfas lack of compatibility. This will continue to be the case while the PGA Tour wanders aimlessly on one path and LIV confidently on another.

• Bristol City 0-4 Manchester City
• Teenager Hobson stuns Arsenal with late leveller

Manchester City extended their lead at the top of the Womenas Super League to six points with a 4-0 win at Bristol City that relegated their hosts after only one season. Second-placed Chelsea can draw level at the summit by winning their two games in hand.

But Cityas win ended Arsenalas interest in the title race after the Gunners were held 1-1 by Everton earlier in the day.

• Defender rues alack of tactical awarenessa in Barcelona defeat
• Chelsea resume WSL title bid against Liverpool on Wednesday

Jess Carter believes Chelsea have ano choicea but to regroup quickly after their Champions League semi-final heartbreak.

Emma Hayesas side suffered a 2-0 defeat at home to the holders, Barcelona, on Saturday, going out of the competition 2-1 on aggregate after claiming an impressive 1-0 first leg victory in Spain. Afterwards, the manager questioned the refereeing decisions that saw Kadeisha Buchanan sent off after two Ayellow cards and Barcelona awarded a Apenalty for a foul on Aitana BonmatA.

Leeds claim nervy 18-12 win, giving Rhinos outside hopes of the playoffs while Hull face a squad overhaul in the coming months

The winds of change are blowing through rugby league more than ever before as IMGas plans to revolutionise the sport begin to take shape. With a grading-style system replacing promotion and relegation later this year, the end goal is simple: the biggest and best clubs on and off the field competing in Super League.

In a sport where big city presences are perhaps thin on the ground, Hull FC and Leeds Rhinos represent two major pillars of the IMG plan. They are two of the seven clubs who were awarded provisional A gradings at the end of last year, meaning that their futures in Super League are safe no matter what happens on the field: which is just as well.

Lyon reached their 11th Womenas Champions League and will hope to win a ninth European Cup in Bilbao after holding off Paris Saint-Germain by winning 2-1 at the Parc des Princes to complete a 5-3 aggregate win over their fellow French team. Melchie Dumournayas late goal confirmed progress to the Basque capital after PSG had been held at armas length for most of the second leg.

After defending champions Barcelona broke Chelsea hearts in Emma Hayesa final season, the club coached by Sonia Bompastor, widely linked with the vacant Chelsea vacancy, held off PSG with a combination of sharp finishing and steady defending.

• Francesco Bagnaia wins in Spain for third straight year
• Reigning world champion closes gap to leader Jorge MartAn

The reigning MotoGP champion, Francesco Bagnaia, won his third straight Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday to make up ground on Jorge MartAn in the world championship standings after the Pramac Racing rider crashed out of the race while leading.

Marc MA!rquez, a six-times MotoGP champion, finished second from pole position for Gresini Racing at the Circuito de Jerez, with VR46 Racingas Marco Bezzecchi third.