Former home secretary says Tory voters are ‘on strike’ and are ‘not coming out to support us’ in wake of dire local and mayoral election results

• Labour triumphs in London and West Midlands
• Braverman says no time to oust Sunak so he must ‘own this and fix it’
• Full mayoral and council results for England

Mark Harper is now being interview by Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC. When it is put to him that people in his party want it to change course, Harper says the government will stick to its plan.

In his interview on Sky News Mark Harper, the transport secretary, ducked a question about whether the party should shift to the right, as Suella Braverman is advocating, or to the centre, as Andy Street proposes. (See 7.55am.)

What he is talking about there is what I just said. He is talking about you focus on the priorities of the British people, that is what you do.

We are going to stick to focusing on the priorities that the prime minister set out, which are the government’s priorities, the prime minister’s priorities but they are also the priorities of the British people.

Hopes for ceasefire fade as Israeli PM hardens stance against Hamas demands for end to war in Gaza

A local official in southern Lebanon said an Israeli strike on a village on Sunday killed a couple and their child, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

“The dad, the mother and their little son were martyred”, according to the Mays al-Jabal municipality chief Abdelmoneim Chukair.

TV head hopes programme will spark ‘a #MeToo moment for men’ ahead of two-part show on the Oscar-winning actor

One of the producers of a Channel 4 documentary that contains fresh claims that Kevin Spacey “behaved inappropriately” with men says it will be broadcast as planned on Monday, despite public denials from the actor this weekend.

Dorothy Byrne, a former head of news and current affairs at the television channel, told the Observer that she hopes the new two-part programme, Spacey Unmasked, will prompt “a #MeToo moment for men” and start a wider discussion about standards of behaviour in working situations.

Area around Rio de Janeiro beach filled for several blocks as singer closes her Celebration world tour

More than a million people have thronged Brazil’s Copacabana beach for a free Madonna concert, braving the heat to see the end of her Celebration world tour.

The sand and oceanfront boulevard around Rio de Janeiro’s famed beach were filled for several blocks on Saturday night by a crowd the city estimated at 1.6 million.

Longer sentences and court backlogs push 25% of prisoners in England and Wales into shared cells, adding to drug-use and violence

The scale of the prison overcrowding crisis has been laid bare by figures revealing that a quarter of prisoners in England and Wales have been sharing cells designed for one person with at least one other inmate.

According to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), 11,018 cells intended for single use were being shared by two prisoners, with a further 18 such cells shared by three inmates. The overall prison population – which has ballooned over recent decades because of longer sentences and court backlogs – stood at about 88,000 when the statistics were originally compiled in late February.

Russian president attends service led by one of his staunchest backers while Zelenskiy asserts God is on Kyiv’s side

Orthodox Easter services in Ukraine and Russia have taken on a political tone, as Volodymyr Zelenskiy asserted that God had a “Ukrainian flag on his shoulder” and Vladimir Putin attended a church service led by a staunch supporter of Moscow’s invasion.

Noting that Ukraine had now been fighting Russia for 802 days, Zelenskiy called on Ukrainians to pray for each other and the soldiers on the frontline. “And we believe: God has a chevron with the Ukrainian flag on his shoulder,” said the president, dressed in a traditional embroidered Ukrainian vyshyvanka shirt and khaki trousers. “So with such an ally, life will definitely win over death.”

As more NHS trusts in England report budget deficits health leaders warn that waiting lists will rise

Hospitals are being forced to cut medical staff, threatening their ability to care for patients, senior health leaders have warned.

NHS trusts are reporting budget deficits after the chancellor Jeremy Hunt gave England’s health service £2.5bn extra funding, which only covers inflation and pay increases.

Charities say FoI disclosure that 369 such children were held over 21-month period is ‘hugely concerning’

More than 350 lone children were held in UK-run detention facilities in northern France over a 21-month period, according to documents disclosed under freedom of information laws.

The Home Office has admitted that it failed to keep data on how many properly trained staff looked after the children held in four short-term holding facilities near Calais and Dunkirk in 2022 and 2023.

Lost documents prevented victims from finding out the truth, official inquiry told

Disastrous failures that caused the contaminated blood scandal were denied by ministers for decades after officials destroyed, lost and blocked access to key documents, memos submitted to the official inquiry reveal.

Several batches of files involving the work of a blood safety advisory committee were shredded as the government faced the threat of legal action, documents show. Patients who were given contaminated blood when they were children have also told the infected blood inquiry how their hospital medical files were destroyed or initially withheld.

Academics warn loss of higher education arts and humanities courses will harm understanding of racism and imperial history

Cuts to arts and humanities subjects within higher education will have damaging implications for our understanding of race and colonialism, academics have warned.

Petitions have been launched to save anthropology at Kent University, where the subject has come under threat of closure, while Oxford Brookes confirmed the closure of its music programme earlier this year.