Discussion aleans more towards infiltration than attacka says anonymous Iranian official as US says Israel has carried out military operation

• Full report: Israel has carried out airstrikes on Iran, US officials say
• What we know so far about Israelas strike on Iran
• Whatas in Isfahan? The city home to Iranian nuclear facilities

Itas 7:24am in Tehran and 6:54 In Tel Aviv. Letas get a reminder of what we know so far:

US officials have confirmed that Israel has carried out military operations against Iran but did not describe those operations.

The Israeli military has told news agencies including Agence France-Presse and Associated Press: aWe donat have a comment at this time.a

Iranas state media reported explosions in the central province of Isfahan Friday

Air defence systems over several Iranian cities were activated, state media reported, after the countryas official broadcaster said explosions were heard near the city of Isfahan.

Iranas Fars news agency reported athree explosionsa were heard near the Shekari army airbase in the north-west of Isfahan province, while Iranas space agency spokesperson Hossein Dalirian said aseverala drones had been asuccessfully shot downa.

Nuclear facilities in Isfahan were reported to be acompletely securea, Iranas Tasnim news agency reported, citing areliable sourcesa.

Flights were suspended across swathes of Iran on Friday. aIranas air defence has been activated in the skies of several provinces of the country,a Tehranas official IRNA news agency said.

Mehr news agency reported that aflights to Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz, and airports in the west, northwest and southwest have been suspended.a

Flight-tracking software showed commercial flights avoiding western Iran, including Isfahan, and skirting Tehran to the north and east.

There was no immediate comment from Dubaias Emirates airline, which was operating several of the planes.

Blasts were also reported in southern Syria, according to a local activist group. aThere were strikes on a Syrian army radar position,a said Rayan Maarouf, who runs the Suwayda24 anti-government website that covers news from Sweida province in the south, reports AFP.

Oil prices surged more than three per cent in early Asian trade on Friday after the reports of explosions.

Iranian official indicates no aimmediatea plan for retaliation after explosions reported in sky over Isfahan and Tabriz

• Middle East crisis: live updates
• What we know so far about Israelas strike on Iran
• Whatas in Isfahan? The city home to Iranian nuclear facilities

US officials have confirmed that Israel has carried out airstrikes against Iran, as explosions were reported in the sky over the cities of Isfahan and Tabriz, while the Iranian government sought to play down the scale of the attack.

As an Iranian official indicated that it had no aimmediatea plan for retaliation, calls mounted internationally a including from the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen a for Israel and Iran to de-escalate their confrontation.

Reported Israeli drone strike on Isfahan may signal that this widening conflict has become more dynamic

• Middle East crisis a live updates
• What we know so far about Israelas strike on Iran

While the details remain vague, and Iranian denials strong, it seems very likely, given past history and strong comments from US officials, that a limited Israeli drone strike was launched against the Iranian city of Isfahan on Friday morning.

Isfahan is significant for its military-industrial facilities, the presence of an important facility in Iranas nuclear programme and a major airbase hosting the Islamic Republicas ageing fleet of F-14 aTomcatsa, making the importance of any strike, whether carried out from beyond Iranas borders or from within but backed by Israel, more than symbolic.

Estimated 2,548 barrels of carbon dioxide leaked from Exxon pipeline in Louisiana on 3 April, triggering alarm among residents

A major leak of CO2 from an ExxonMobil pipeline in Louisiana exposes dangerous safety gaps that should halt the planned multibillion-dollar carbon capture industry, environmental advocates say.

An estimated 2,548 barrels of carbon dioxide (CO2) leaked from the Exxon pipeline in Sulphur in Calcasieu Parish on 3 April, triggering an emergency response and alarm among residents who live in close proximity to scores of polluting pipelines, petrochemical and fossil fuel facilities.

Prospective jurors were grilled on myriad facets of their life, with one raising concerns her identity had been discovered

Donald Trump is set to appear in court for the fourth day of his hush-money trial on Friday after 12 jurors were selected on Thursday.

The jury selection process had been complicated because of the polarizing and high-profile defendant. Prospective juror had been grilled on their political leanings, their social media posts and many other facets of their lives.

Presidentas suggestion that his aUncle Bosiea was eaten by cannibals harms US efforts to build Pacific ties, say local experts

Joe Bidenas suggestion that his uncle may have been eaten by cannibals in Papua New Guinea during world war two has been met with a mixture of bemusement and criticism in the country.

Biden spoke about his uncle, 2nd Lt Ambrose J Finnegan Jr, while campaigning in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, describing how aUncle Bosiea had flown single engine planes as reconnaissance flights during the war. Biden said he agot shot down in New Guineaa, adding athey never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.a

Swifties take to social media to dissect lyrics and celebrate Swiftas 11th album on Friday as the musician releases 15 more songs

• Breakups, fantasies and her most cutting lyrics: inside The Tortured Poets Department
• The Tortured Poets Department review a fame, fans and former flames in the line of fire

The Tortured Poets Department is just out but it is already splitting Taylor Swift fans a between those who have already listened to it after it leaked online early, and those who refused to listen out of loyalty to their favourite singer.

Swiftas 11th studio album was released on Friday but all 16 tracks and lyrics began appearing on social media on Wednesday. Some fans a known as Swifties a refused to listen to the leaked album, insisting that atrue fansa would wait for the official release, while others shared false links to the leak in attempts to stop people finding it.

Students set up encampments to demand Columbia divest from Israel while those at USC gathered in support of Asna Tabassum

Tensions on Columbia Universityas campus continued to rise on Thursday as the New York police department began breaking up student protests over Israelas war on Gaza, at the direction of the schoolas president, and arrests were made.

Hundreds of students pitched tents and began camping out in the center of the famous central campus from early morning on Wednesday in protest, demanding a ceasefire and for the university to financially divest from Israel, prompting Columbiaas president, Minouche Shafik, to issue a stark warning.

State revealed as Americaas overwhelming emitter of sulfuryl fluoride, used by $4.2bn pest-control industry to kill termites

Levels of a potent greenhouse gas are quietly spiking in the atmosphere and increasingly worrying environmental groups that say its use needs to be reined in if the US is to avoid climate catastrophe.

Furthermore, recent research has found the vast majority of the little-known gas, known as sulfuryl fluoride, is attributable to a state typically known for its climate-forward policies: California.

Prime minister Petteri Orpo says eastern Finland asuffering because of Russian behavioura

aRussia must be held accountable. Ukraine urgently requires more air defence support!a wrote the EUas ambassador in Kyiv, Katarina Mathernova.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraineas president, visited the Donetsk region today.

First phase in worldas largest democratic exercise begins, with 969 million people eligible to vote over six-week period

Voting has begun in Indiaas mammoth general election, as Narendra Modias Bharatiya Janata party hopes to increase its parliamentary majority amid allegations that the countryas democracy has been undermined since it came to power 10 years ago.

Indiaas elections are the largest democratic exercise in the world, with more than 969 million voters, amounting to more than 10% of the worldas population. The voting began at 8am on Friday, when polling opened at 102 constituencies across the country, and will continue over the next six weeks, in seven phases, until 1 June. All the results will be counted and declared on 4 June.

Bridget Thorne, a Republican elected in Fulton county in 2022, has spread election fraud lies and accused county employees of crimes

A Fulton county commissioner in Georgia has been operating a private Telegram channel for years, propagating debunked claims about the 2020 election, and spreading accusations of crimes by county employees, including Ruby Freeman, an election worker defamed by Rudy Giuliani in the wake of Donald Trumpas 2020 loss.

Bridget Thorne, a Republican representing the relatively conservative cities of Fulton county north of Atlanta, indirectly identifies herself as the creator and administrator of the Fulton County Elections channel on Telegram, a mobile messaging platform, in multiple posts to its page. The channel uses the official logo of the Fulton county board of registration and elections.

Siblings appear on stage with president at campaign event in Philadelphia and offer full-throated support of White House run

Prominent members of the Kennedy political dynasty delivered a full-throated endorsement of Joe Bidenas re-election campaign on Thursday, a pointed message that was in equal measure a stinging repudiation of their relative Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is making an independent run for the White House.

Kerry Kennedy, one of six siblings of the controversial candidate on stage at a Biden campaign event in Philadelphia, called the US president amy heroa as she celebrated a litany of his achievements she said would have pleased her father, the late former US attorney general Robert F Kennedy and late uncle and president John F Kennedy.

This was not Donald Trump the business mogul or Donald Trump the 45th president a it was Donald Trump the defendant

With Donald Trump just a few feet away, a potential juror in the criminal case against him summed up the experience in just three words. aThis is bizarre,a she said, with just a slight hint of a seasoned New York accent.

Bizarre it was. There was a potential juror who once spent the night at one of Trumpas lawyersa homes more than a decade ago (Trumpas team used one of its peremptory strikes to remove the juror). The microphones didnat work. The proceedings had to start over when Judge Juan Merchan realized that a court reporter hadnat been present first thing. And the temperature in the courthouse was so frigid that Todd Blanche, one of Trumpas lawyers, asked Merchan if it would be possible to turn up the temperature ajust one degreea.

Process has coincided with a rise in price in the past and is due to take place again on Saturday

Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin, still has an influence on the cryptocurrency nearly 14 years after disappearing.

This week the protocol designed by Nakamoto a an individual or group of individuals who went silent in December 2010 a will trigger what is known as a abitcoin halvinga, a process that has coincided with price increases in the past. The latest halving is expected to take place on Saturday.

More than 50% of the planetas species live in the soil, but only a fraction have been identified a so far

Read more: No birdsong, no water in the creek, no beating wings: how a haven for nature fell silent

The sound of an earthworm is a distinctive rasping and scrunching. Ants sound like the soothing patter of rain. A passing, tunnelling vole makes a noise like a squeaky dogas toy repeatedly being chewed.

On a spring day at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research institution in Hertfordshire, singing skylarks and the M1 motorway are competing for the airways. But the attention here is on the soundscapes underfoot: a rich ecosystem with its own alien sounds. More than half of the planetas species live in the soil, and we are just starting to tune into what they are up to. Beetle larvae, millipedes, centipedes and woodlice have other sound signatures, and scientists are trying to decipher which sounds come from which creatures.

(Republic)
Subtly detailed album splits the difference between 1989as glossy pop-rock and Midnightsa understatement a and lets her ex Matty Healy have it in no uncertain terms

• Breakups, fantasies and her most cutting lyrics: inside Tayloras Swiftas The Tortured Poets Department

The two cliches used to describe the new release by a major star are that itas long-awaited and eagerly anticipated. You could hardly describe Taylor Swiftas 11th studio album as long-awaited a itas barely 18 months since her last album, Midnights, a blink of an eye in the release schedule of a pop superstar. Sheas also put out another three hours of music in the interim, in the shape of bonus track-packed re-recordings of 2010as Speak Now and 2014as 1989. But The Tortured Poets Department is certainly eagerly anticipated. The torrential nature of Swiftas output is one reason behind her current position as not just popas biggest star, but a figure who dominates pop culture to such a preposterous degree you struggle for a historical comparison: we live in a world where her endorsement of a candidate is considered a potentially deciding factor in the US presidential elections and where the prime minister of Singapore is embroiled in a row with his Thai counterpart over exclusivity rights to the south-east Asian leg of Swiftas Eras tour.

Among the countless other factors in her rise to omnipresence a her keen understanding of todayas altered media landscape and a desire for collective experience in a music world obsessed with individualised experiences a is, of course, her music, which can dim in comparison to the media noise. Thatas a shame, because, as The Tortured Poets Department underlines, Swift is an authentically skilled songwriter: melodically gifted, thoughtful, witty and willing to take risks in a risk-averse era for pop.

The Oscar-winner and the Nobel laureate have teamed up to make Bread & Roses, a new film about the abuse of women in Afghanistan. In an emotional interview, they warn that the west ignores its message at their peril

aStrong women are not easy women,a says Jennifer Lawrence, aand a womanas life is lonely. So much of our experience cannot be shared or understood by men, and our rights are in their hands. Thatas why we need each other.a

The two other people on our video call nod in agreement. One is Malala Yousafzai, who, with Lawrence, has produced a new documentary about the oppression of Afghan women by the Taliban after US troops withdrew in 2021. The other is Sahra Mani, who directed it.

A show in which women competed to date a royal lookalike was panned at the time as afodder for the braindeada. But the contestants had been duped, as a new podcast reveals a|

Next month marks a decade since one of the most ridiculous reality shows ever aired on television. I Wanna Marry aHarrya was a dating show in which 12 American women dated Prince Harry, then the worldas most eligible bachelor. Only, obviously, it wasnat him at all. The aHarrya in question was a lookalike: according to the show, a a99% lookalikea (I will let you be the judge).

Airing on Fox in the US before making its way to ITV2, the reality show consisted of the dozen potential girlfriends being whisked to a secluded mansion in the Berkshire countryside, then going on a series of dates with the fake prince. It was constantly implied by the production team that they were in the presence of royalty: Harry was even referred to as asira, when really he was plain old Matt Hicks, an environmental consultant from Exeter who had had his hair dyed ginger. The stunts for the ruse were quite something: from asira being whisked away by men in sunglasses after a asecurity incidenta, to fake paparazzi invading a date before being tackled to the ground. Fake Harry was even Photoshopped into an image alongside the real Prince William for a potential date to stumble across while Hicks went to the bathroom.

As the scrap metal touched the power line, everything went black

In 2010, Iad been working in Colorado, in one of the worldas most dangerous professions. As a lineman, it was my job to maintain and repair electrical power lines. I knew the risks, and had already witnessed them when my brother, who worked in the same field, lost his right arm in 2008. That same accident saw a colleague lose his life. I began to question whether it was a career I should stay in. I told myself I wasnat a quitter, but after 13 December 2010, everything changed for me.

On that day, I was standing on a platform, working on a power line. I was cutting a wire to size and wanted to throw some scrap on to the ground. My colleague was down below me, and I didnat want to hit him in the head, so I spun around to throw the piece elsewhere. The power line above was protected by a plastic insulating cover, I was being very careful, but in that tiny second the wire touched a part that wasnat wrapped up. Then 14,400 volts charged through my body. Everything went black.

The divisive directoras sci-fi follow-up is both original and derivative and will be unlikely to convert anyone, but thereas something charming about its sincerity

Is there a contemporary Hollywood film-maker who better epitomizes the modern commerce-v-art quagmire than Zack Snyder? Snyder has an instantly recognizable style and a deathless dedication to his singular vision; he also, at the behest of various studios, volunteers to think almost entirely in terms of franchises, comic books and self-conscious myth-making a whether heas trying to interrogate those myths or just build them up so he can smash them down with maximum mayhem.

Rebel Moon, his sci-fi/fantasy franchise for Netflix, pulls both sides of his career to further extremes. Itas a multimillion-dollar two-parter (for now) thatas technically original and highly derivative, with Snyderas fanboy obsessions taken so far around the bend that they become niche again. Even his hordes of online fans donat seem to care that much about it. Rebel Moon a Part 2: The Scargiver, following last yearas A Child of Fire kickoff, is supposed to be an explosive finale. But with expanded R-rated cuts of both movies definitely on the way, and ideas rattling around in Snyderas brain for even more sequels, the whole project feels like one long, never-ending middle.

Cinemovel is screening Oscar-nominated Io Capitano to packed houses around the country, highlighting the perils migrants face on the journey to Europe

At about 1pm on Monday a 35-seater bus arrived in Pikine, a city east of the Senegalese capital, Dakar. A portable screen, projector, sound system and generator were unpacked to set up a temporary cinema in a lively neighbourhood where the scent of hibiscus and orange blossom fill the air.

Pikineas cultural centre was the first stop for Cinemovel, a travelling cinema that is showing the Oscar-nominated Italian film Io Capitano in the streets and villages of Senegal. It is part of an initiative run by the Cinemovel Foundation, an Italian group that has been bringing a touring cinema to remote parts of Africa since 2001.

Mina confronts Tom, but little sister Layla would rather keep the peace. You decide whoas right in this sister act?

Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Confronting Tomas toxic attitudes is good practice for my sister and will boost her confidence

Mina wants to make a stand, but after a row, itas me who has to deal with the aftershocks at home

Thereas some low-stakes pleasure to be had in the first half of the gory new film from the team behind Ready or Not and Scream but things fall apart disastrously

Last yearas handsome gothic horror The Last Voyage of the Demeter and bombastic Nic Cage comedy Renfield allowed Universal the opportunity to present known IP as something fresh, at least on the surface, stories involving Dracula but told in ways we hadnat seen before. They represented a nifty marketing strategy for a back catalogue of classic monster movies but both worked better as loglines than finished films a Dracula on a boat, Dracula as a bad boss a and audiences proved as uninterested as critics, the stench of old property distracting from the promise of something new.

As the studio preps a new take on The Wolf Man with next yearas Christopher Abbott-led Wolfman and Robert Eggersa remake of the Dracula-inspired Nosferatu, here comes Abigail, a poppy reimagining of the little-remembered 1936 horror Draculaas Daughter. In the contemporary take, sheas a ballerina (Matildaas Alisha Weir) who gets kidnapped by a group of unaware criminals, hired to keep her locked in a grand old house for 24 hours while ransom money is obtained. But early on, recovering addict and single mother Joey (Melissa Barrera) figures out that something is up and starts to realise that the scared little girl in their care might not be so scared after all.

In her willingness to unleash state violence against student protestors, Minouche Shafik proved herself to be a willing ally to extremists

The students sat on the ground and sang as police in riot gear approached them. Eventually, more than 100 of them would be arrested; their tents, protest signs and Palestinian flags were gathered into trash bags by the police and thrown away. One video showed officers and university maintenance workers destroying food that had been donated to the encampment, making sure it would be inedible. According to student journalists reporting from WKCR, Columbia Universityas student radio station, one arrested student protestor asked the police to be allowed to go to their dorm to collect medication and was denied; as a result, they went into shock. The arrested students were charged with atrespassinga on the campus that they are charged more than $60,000 a year to attend.

The day before her administration asked the New York police department to storm their campus and arrest their students, Minouche Shafik, the Columbia University president, testified before Congress, saying that she wanted her university to be a safe and welcoming environment for everyone. But Shafik, who was called to testify after missing a hearing last year where the presidents of Penn and Harvard were each grilled on their insufficient hostility to pro-Palestinian students, appeared eager to please the Republican-controlled committee. The Penn and Harvard presidents who had testified each lost their jobs soon thereafter; Shafik clearly entered the hearing room determined to keep her own.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Richard Nixon infected the modern Republican party with a sickness that would kill it a Donald Trump has finished the job

Last Sunday, on ABCas This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked Chris Sununu, New Hampshireas Republican governor, about his recent switch from supporting Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, for the Republican presidential nomination to supporting former president Donald Trump.

aYour words were very, very clear on January 11, 2021,a Stephanopoulos reminded Sununu. aYou said that President Trumpas rhetoric and actions contributed to the insurrection. No other president in history has contributed to an insurrection. So, please explain.a

Did [Lt] Gerald Ford meet the enemy head-on [in the second world war] because he thought he wouldnat get killed? No. He did it despite that possibility. This executive committee, on the other hand, bolted before any shots were fired. You arenat alone. Many foundations, organizations, corporations and other entities are caught up in this tidal wave of timidity and fear thatas sweeping this country. I mistakenly thought we were better than that. This is the kind of acquiescent behavior that leads to authoritarianism. President Ford most likely would have come out even tougher and said that it leads directly to fascism.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

In a congressional hearing, Republicans used specious charges of rampant antisemitism to advance an illiberal agenda on campuses

As Jewish faculty at Columbia University, we watched with alarm as our president, Minouche Shafik, appeared before the House education and workforce committee on Wednesday to answer questions about antisemitism on our campus. While we are deeply concerned about antisemitism, we are also disturbed by the ways the hearing a like those in December, and surely those to follow a used specious charges of rampant antisemitism to advance an illiberal agenda.

We were shocked that President Shafik capitulated to its mendacious premises and failed to stand up for fundamental academic principles of honest intellectual inquiry and free expression. Most galling was the absence of any acknowledgment of the relentless devastation in Gaza: the urgent reason for the student protests that the committee caricatures and condemns as antisemitic.

Alisa Solomon is a writer, professor of journalism, and the director of the arts and culture concentration at the Columbia Journalism School. Marianne Hirsch is the William Peterfield Trent professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Sarah Haley is associate professor of history at Columbia University. Helen Benedict is a novelist and professor at Columbia Journalism School.

Bad actors know that factchecking sites are a vital democratic tool a thatas why theyave launched their own dishonest versions

Asked by sociologists about his views on the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a Russian in his early 70s shifted the conversation to the massacre in Bucha a one of the worst atrocities committed by the Russian military in Ukraine. Evidence of Russian war crimes was fake, he said: aTake Busha or Bucha or wherever it may be. The way they filmed it, the way the bodies were arranged: it was clearly a fake!a

Two things stand out from this. He parroted, word for word, statements of Russian propaganda about bodies being actors aarranged on the grounda, echoing the claims of War on Fakes, the Kremlinas imitation of a factchecking organisation. Yet despite his certainty, he did not know anything about the town, to the extent that he could not pronounce its name correctly. Relying on an aanti-fakea outlet modelled on western factchecking, he was not interested in facts but rather in shielding Russia from accusations.

Maxim Alyukov is a political sociologist

I fear we are forgetting lessons from that terrible history

I donat usually talk about my great-uncle Walter. Gen Walter Warlimont, as my grandfatheras brother was formally known, was head of the national defence department in the high command of the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany. Only two people were between him and the FA1/4hrer in the chain of command. Walter worked so closely with Hitler that the failed assassination attempt in July 1944 injured his arm. The orders he signed during wartime a about who to shoot to kill, about how to treat prisoners a meant he had hundreds of thousands of lives on his conscience.

Not that Uncle Walter was the only one in the family who facilitated the Third Reich and the Holocaust. My paternal grandparents were very proud to have been among the very earliest members of Hitleras party. My maternal grandfather a Walteras brother a was the head of a factory in Vienna that made the guidance systems for the V2 rocket, a factory that was staffed by Russian and Ukrainian slave labourers.

Our writers pick the winner, key players and dark horses as the NBA postseason gets into full swing

Golden State Warriors. It feels flat-out wrong to have a postseason without Stephen Curry, but regardless of how good he still is, thatas the way the cookie crumbles when you donat give him an adequate supporting cast. Hopefully the Warriors will take the summer to retool a clearly insufficient roster. CDL