Court heard woman asked fashion boss to stop but he did not even when she started crying

James Holder, a co-founder of the clothing firm Superdry, has been found guilty of raping a woman after a night out in the Gloucestershire town of Cheltenham.

Gloucester crown court heard Holder, 54, had been due to get a taxi back to his mansion in the Cotswolds with a male friend. Instead, the pair got into the victim’s taxi and went to her flat, where the fashion boss raped her.

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US president says European countries are ‘absolutely horrible’ to refuse to support operations in strait of Hormuz

• Europe live – latest updates

Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw US troops from Italy and Spain a day after saying he was looking at reducing the number deployed in Germany.

The US president’s threat to Germany came after the country’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said America was being “humiliated” by Iran.

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The US president said he would carry out of a review of US military presence in Europe after public criticism of the US-Israeli war on Iran

In more serious news, t he European Union’s mammoth trade deal with South American bloc Mercosur provisionally enters into force today, despite a pending court ruling on its legality, AFP noted.

The agreement to create one of the world’s biggest free-trade zones was sealed in January after more than 25 years of intermittent negotiations. Together, the EU and Mercosur account for 30 percent of global GDP and more than 700 million consumers.

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While Charles and Camilla were on a three-line whip, MPs watched the excruciating discomfort of civil servants

We don’t often get to see senior civil servants out and about in the wild. They are kept away from the public gaze, sat behind a desk trying to persuade their ministers not to do something too catastrophic to their government department. Quite why they have been been made a knight or a dame just for doing their jobs is one of life’s mysteries. The rest of us have to make do with the occasional email from the boss. But in the last week, two top civil servants have been reluctantly made to give evidence on Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador before the foreign affairs select committee and very instructive it has been, too. Not least to see how much they dislike any extra attention from the public. Their obvious discomfort at being held to account was excruciating to watch.

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Islamabad has reportedly switched to lower-profile role but believes peace can make progress without face-to-face meetings

Pakistan is passing proposals between Iran and the US to keep talks alive behind the scenes and inch towards a peace agreement, officials and experts say.

Pakistani officials say that they are conscious of the fact that at stake is not only regional peace, but the health of the global economy and the livelihoods of millions of the poorest people in the world – including in Pakistan, whose monthly energy import bill has almost tripled as a result of the war.

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(Heavenly)
With strong words for Keir Starmer, the Irish rave-rap trio remain unbowed by the controversy around them – and yet this is a more ruminative record than you might expect

Five tracks into Fenian, the listener is confronted by the sound of rapper Mo Chara expressing a desire to go and live off-grid outside a small village in County Meath. He does this in characteristic style – prefaced with the line “run along, fuck’s sake, I’m sick of you cunts” – but still, it comes as a surprise. After all, the tales of drugged-out madness on Kneecap’s previous album, 2024’s Fine Art , took place in an exclusively urban environment: at one juncture Mo Chara claimed that his preferred milieu was “the snug of a dimly-lit, shit, run-down pub”, presumably one like the lairy Belfast boozer in which much of the album was set. Nothing about Kneecap has given the impression of a band given to wistfully pining after a simple bucolic life.

And yet, who can blame him for wanting to switch off and get away from it all? The two years since Fine Art’s release have been tumultuous for the Irish rave-rap trio, and it’s difficult to discern how much their soaring profile has to do with their music. Fine Art was warmly received – it was potent, funny and original – but quickly drowned out by the din of controversy that began when Mo Chara was alleged to have displayed a Hezbollah flag on stage at a London gig in November 2024. He was later charged with terror offences, which he denied – Kneecap said they have never supported Hezbollah and “condemn all attacks on civilians, always” – and the case was ultimately thrown out of court. In the interim, there were cancelled gigs and tours, a ban from entering Canada and Hungary (decisions Kneecap strongly opposed), and calls from both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch for Kneecap’s 2025 Glastonbury set to be dropped. Badenoch had already quarrelled with them over their lurid republicanism when she was business secretary, trying to cancel a grant they’d been given – and Kneecap prevailed in that case, too .

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ICA, London
Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison and Jasmine Gregory were born in the 80s and endured the financial crash as they set out as artists – their fury is intoxicating

This is a bitter, resentful exhibition by a handful of bitter, resentful artists. Americans Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison and Jasmine Gregory were born in the mid-1980s, coming of age in a world at its financial peak, but becoming adults just as the 2008 financial crash turned everything to crap. They saw a land of opportunity and boundless possibility, and then had it all kicked out from under them. Of course they’re resentful; we all should be.

Jenna Bliss’s first video here sets the mood. Shaky, handheld images of the New York skyline and public artworks in the city’s financial district are overlaid with text such as “We survived Y2K but now the real world source code is malfunctioning” and “Save the banks to save us all”. That’s the vibe: millennial despair at a world built to keep the banks rich and the rest of us placid.

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The Mets have the second-highest payroll in baseball. They also own the worst record in the major leagues

A franchise once known as baseball’s lovable losers are, for the moment, merely baseball’s most expensive losers.

The New York Mets wrapped a shocking April by losing 5-4 to the Washington Nationals on Thursday, dropping to a major league-worst 10-21 and burrowing even deeper into last place in the National League East – making them somehow even worse than their old rivals the Philadelphia Phillies, another wealthy-yet-terrible team . The Mets will (probably) not play at their current 52-win pace all year but their sordid first month has done immense damage to their postseason hopes. Their chances at October baseball were 87% on Opening Day, according to the analytics site FanGraphs . They are now less than three-in-10 to make the playoffs, and that projection seems pretty generous for a team who have lost 17 of their last 20 games.

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You’ll need a large area and a sunny aspect, but this plant is a true delight when homegrown

If you read my recent piece about celeriac, you’ll know that I’m trying to make an effort to write about crops that I don’t actually grow myself – this is my next instalment. Unlike celeriac, which I don’t like, I don’t grow sweetcorn because I simply don’t have the right space and conditions. So if you’re fortunate to have the room and sunny aspect for it to thrive, I’m jealous. When freshly plucked and shucked, homegrown sweetcorn is beyond delightful.

As you might suspect, sweetcorn grows best during long, hot summers – so get your seeds started now as they’ll want some warmth to germinate (in a propagator ideally) and pleasant weather as they get growing. As with so many of the best summer crops, it likes fertile and moisture-retentive soil, and as much sun as the summer days have to offer. Seedlings more than 8cm tall are ready to be planted out, but resist putting your seedlings into the ground until the days are warm and the risk of frost is well passed. And keep some fleece handy to throw over them should the temperature drop unexpectedly.

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