hello there. welcome along. i'm paul scott at the bbc sport centre. here is what we've got coming up in the programme. europe beckons — manchester united qualify for the champions league after dismantling chelsea at old trafford. following the racist abuse directed at real madrid forward viniciusjunior by valencia fans, the la liga's president appeals for more powers to punish offenders. and birthday boy geraint thomas celebrates turning 37 by increasing his lead at the giro d'italia. hello there. welcome along.

thank you forjoining us. here's what's coming up. we start with football because manchester united have qualified for next season's champions league after thrashing chelsea 4—1 in the premier league at old trafford. erik ten hag's side needed only a point, but secured all three in style. casimiro scored his second goal in two matches to send them on their way when he opened the scoring with a header in the sixth minute. marcus rashford scored the fourth after anthony martial and a bruno fernandes penalty had put the home side firmly in control. it means united are now guaranteed a top four finish and a return to europe's premier club competition. so we finalised the season and that was our objective. we achieved it and that's huge, especially in this league because there are many competitors who also have the same objectives and they have all good squads and teams. so when you achieve it, it's a massive performance and we are really happy with it.

i think it was an open game, and i think they are already preparing next season and they were quite relaxed, they played with an open mind and that is always difficult to play against. if you're not going to be on point at both ends of the pitch, it's hard to come here and win. and when you create what we created in the first half, you should be scoring goals. and when you don't, it's not easy for the confidence of the team. and it's a bit of the story of the season. when you see our position and how many goals we score that's relative, you'll always see that if you don't score enough, you'll end up struggling to get to where you want to get to. it's only one part of the picture as well. and today we came up against a good team, ruthless on the counterattack, you know, really clinical and killers in front of goal when we haven't got that at the moment. well, here it is then — confirmation that manchester united have qualified for the champions league next season. the win pushes them up to third, ahead of newcastle, who are also guaranteed a champions league place. it means liverpool have failed to qualify for europe's premier club competition for the first time since 2016.

they'll be playing in the europa league next season after finishing fifth, something that is not acceptable to their forward mo salah, who's had this to say on social media, says... "i'm totally devastated. there's absolutely no excuse for this. we had everything we needed to make it to next year's champions league and we failed. we are liverpool and qualifying for the competition is the bare minimum. i am sorry, but it's too soon for an uplifting or optimistic post. we let you and ourselves down." well, another side who've endured a difficult season are tottenham hotspur, and the news that feyenoord manager arne slott has ruled out a move to the club leaves them no closer to appointing a permanent manager following the departure of antonio conte at the end of march. spurs have takenjust 12 points from 12 games since they beat chelsea at the end of february, leaving many fans angry with owners and the chairman, daniel levy.

it's reported that tottenham would have had to pay at least £20 million to free slot from his final contract. there's been a serious fear that they were going to lose him for the last two weeks. we know from very good sources that there were talks between his agent and the tottenham hotspur people, and it was always going to look that slot was going to leave with three of his assistants and it was looked like the end of a campaign after winning the league in holland, feyenoord were not going to let him go for less than £20 million, and that was really a major stumbling block for tottenham hotspur. elsewhere, the president of spain's la liga, javier tebas, says they could greatly reduce the number of racist incidents if the league had proper powers. real madrid's viniciusjunior was subjected to racist abuse by valencia fans last weekend. he was left out of the squad

for real�*s win over rayo vallecano on wednesday but came onto the pitch to applaud the fans. his team—mates all wore shirts with his name and number on the back in solidarity. tebas has been speaking to the bbc. translation: we don'tl want to hide on the issue of racist insults. it's not enough for us only to be able to file complaints. we want to be able to punish anyone who shouts racist insults. we're convinced that if we had these powers within months, we'd get rid of the problem, or at least we would improve it considerably and specifically in the case of vinicius. but if we don't have the powers, all we can do is file complaints, and that's what we've done. eliminating this problem 100% will never be possible — the same way that totally eliminating robberies and other crimes is impossible. but we would reduce it a great deal. and if we were given the necessary powers in six or seven months, we could say that we don't have racism.

well, tebas was widely criticised for his reaction to those chants aimed at vinicius, but he's claimed that he didn't mean to attack the brazilian and that la liga doesn't want to hide from the issue of racism. here's our reporter, guy hedgecoe. mr tebas did seem to regret that rather unpleasant twitter exchange he had with vinicius in the wake of sunday's game in valencia when when vinicius confronted several fans who had been taunting him with racist insults. and after the game, vinicius had accused mr tebas of la liga of not acting strongly enough to stop racism. mr tebas hit straight back on twitter saying that vinicius was being manipulated, that he was slandering la liga. now, today, mr tebas was rather more contrite. he said he didn't want to attack vinicius at all. that wasn't his intention. but when i did ask him about the issue of racism in spain, he did say he doesn't believe that spain is a racist

country or has a major racist problem, and he didn't believe that there's a major problem of racism in spanish football. it's more a case of there being racist episodes, which he said need to be tackled very strongly. valencia have played for the first time since their fans racially abused viniciusjunior. and they tried to send a strong message. their players lined up behind a la liga banner reading "racists out of football." but one of their own defenders refused tojoin in. mukhtar diakhaby is unhappy with how the spanish league dealt with his own allegations of racist abuse back in 2021. now, it's been a birthday to remember for geraint thomas. he's increased his lead at the giro d'italia to almost half a minute with three days to go. stage 18 was won by italy's filippo zana, but the main drama was amongst those trying to catch thomas. nick parrott reports.

starting the day in the leader's jersey made it an extra special birthday for geraint thomas. he's now 37 and said before they got under way, "i'm still feeling good, still feel like i'm improving and just enjoying my racing." with one mountain stage after this one, time is running out for his rivals to catch him. with 30 kilometres to go, his ineos grenadier team picked up the pace, trying to turn it into a race of attrition. but primoz roglic was clearly feeling good and with his jumbo—visma team—mate sepp kuss, they went for it. thomas stuck with them, butjoe almeida couldn't. the young portuguese slipped back and as a result conceded second place overall to roglic. the slovenian finished seventh on the day with thomas in his shadow. it's another day ticked off, but is two superb days to go and tomorrow's the queen stage. real hard finished climb. harder than, well, the hardest of the race. so, definitely not getting carried away. just today it was a good day, butjust keep doing the basics. it sounds boring, but yeah.

just take it climb by climb. the briton�*s party is on hold for now, but if he's still in pink come sunday afternoon in rome, his celebrations will be huge. nick parrott, bbc news. to tennis now, and the world number one carlos alcaraz could meet novak djokovic in the semifinals of the french open. they are in the same half of the draw. alcaraz will face a qualifier in the first round, while third seed djokovic plays american alexander kovacevich. the british number one cameron norrie takes on frenchman benoit paire. defending women's champion iga swiatek starts against spaniard cristina bucsa. the second seed from belarus, aryna sabalenka, will face ukraine's marta kostyuk. and wimbledon champion elena rybakina is still waiting to find out her first round opponent. meanwhile, norrie is through to the semifinals of the lyon 0pen. the defending champion beat sebastian baez in three sets. he'll face another argentinian next in francisco cerundolo,

who beat jack draper to progress. the other semifinal sees brandon nakashima take on frenchman arthur fils. now, lewis hamilton says he's not been in talks with ferrari and is close to agreeing a new contract with mercedes. there had been reports that ferrari had contacted him about switching to the italian team. speaking ahead of this weekend's racing in monaco, hamilton says he's sticking with his team. we've had the wrong car. we've made, you know, there have been some decisions that have been made over the past two years that have not been ideal, and we're working our way through that. when you're in the contract negotiations, there's always going to be speculation. and i think ultimately that's, unless you hearfrom me, then that's what it is. and that is all from the world of sport for now. thank you for watching.

hello. you need a certain level of temperature to make clouds. and on thursday, that temperature was 17 degrees. from a blue sky, sunny start to the day across the yorkshire area, soon as we hit 17, we started to get these cumulus clouds. as the air started to rise. it had a layer of warm air higher up in the earth's atmosphere and that cloud then started to spread out, and by the time we got to the early afternoon it turned pretty cloudy. and that kind of thing you can see happening here on the satellite picture from thursday — look how this area of cloud just expands through the course of the afternoon. showing you that because probably going to see a similar sort of thing happening on friday as well. now, right now, quite a few patches of cloud still across areas of lincolnshire. otherwise, for most of us we've got clear skies

and temperatures around seven to nine degrees celsius. now on friday, for many of us, it's going to be a sunny start to the day with those blue skies with us first thing in the morning, late morning, that's when we hit 17 degrees. that's when we start to see clouds develop. late morning, that's when we hit 17 degrees. that's when we start to see clouds develop. and i think probably parts of yorkshire again prone to seeing some of those clouds spreading across the skies. same too probably across parts of the north midlands, northwest scotland have a bit more cloud, a few more breaks for northern ireland. for most, it's a dry day with sunny spells and temperatures still into the low twenties and the warmer spots. in the warmer spots, it will feel pleasant if you're outside well into the weekend. we do have a cold front that's going to be running into our area of high pressure that will be affecting northern areas. so expect more in the way of cloud for scotland. a bit of patchy rain too for 0rkney, shetland, the western isles and the highlands too. and this air flowing into north scotland, is actually quite chilly. so temperatures just 12 degrees through the afternoon in lerwick on saturday. further south, more sunshine

and if anything it's going to be a warmer day with more of us seeing temperatures into the low twenties, probably peaking at around 23 or 2a degrees. heading into sunday, the high pressure is still there. and again, it's a case of sunny spells coming and going with the cloud. so south and east wales, the south west midlands, south west england, highs could hit around 23 or 2a degrees, but otherwise starting to turn just a little bit cooler across northern and eastern areas. that's the case as well for bank holiday monday. temperatures just down a few degrees, but still feeling warm in that strong may sunshine. that's your latest weather, bye for now.

wagoner this is wagoner bbc news. live from washington. this is bbc news. as russian mercenaries from the wagner group say they are pulling out of bakhmut, bbc verify reveals the extent of the destruction cause by months of fighting. could there be movement in the us debt talks? the new york times reports the white house and republicans are closing in on a deal. and the uk sees record migration numbers, after a decade of promises to bring them down. hello, i'm sumi somaskanda. we start in ukraine, where officials have dismissed claims that the city of bakhmut has fallen to russia, after wagner mercenaries said

they've started handing over control of the eastern city to moscow's army.