The president’s new Craposseum is the perfect venue for Vance, Hegseth and others to battle for favour. Fight, fight, fight indeed

On behalf of the US administration, the American embassy in London has published a notice advising the UK government not to ban social media for the under-16s. Thanks, but … we didn’t ask? Or perhaps that’s uncharitable. It’s actually a privilege to take child protection lectures from a country where the leading cause of death in children and adolescents is gunshot wounds. Are we allowed to suggest a surprisingly obvious way to help with that grimly perennial problem – or is international advice just a one-way street?

Either way, lectures from Donald Trump’s administration have not been in short supply in recent days, with the US defence secretary deciding that a D-day commemoration address was a seemly moment to dump all over Europe. It’s always painful to be reminded of Pete Hegseth, with his fundamentalist “body art” and Mr Whippy hair – primarily because it dilutes the purity of one’s loathing for JD Vance. (Who, it won’t have escaped you, was also on the international lecture circuit last week.) But standing at the podium in Normandy, Hegseth had just phoned in some stuff about how wars are won, when he got to the needle-scratch subject-change you sensed he’d made the transatlantic journey for. “Sadly,” began this here-it-comes moment, “today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive.”

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

From Thundercat’s all-star funk to Kacey Musgraves’ hymns to solitude, we look at some of our favourite music of the last six months from across the pop spectrum

• Listen to a Spotify playlist of every album here

Once mocked internationally, the UK became a gastronomic hotspot in recent decades – London was hailed as the foodie capital of the world. Now many Michelin-starred restaurants have closed and the rot is spreading

It’s 9am on a weekday morning and although I’ve just finished my porridge, the chef Richard Wilkins is making my mouth water. “My signature dish is soft Scottish langoustines wrapped in very thin, crispy pastry, served with Japanese sushi rice and a langoustine bisque.”

His other specialities include turbot in a spinach and champagne sauce, buttery wagyu steak with English peas, and raspberry millefeuille. Sadly, I won’t be able to sample any of them and neither will anyone else. At the end of April, Wilkins took the painful decision to close his west London Michelin-listed Restaurant 104 after seven years.

Few things are more feared than a dementia diagnosis. Now people living with the condition are fighting against damaging stereotypes and demanding proper medical support

When Maxine Linnell, 78, a retired psychotherapist living in Leicestershire, learned that she had dementia four years ago, the diagnosis proved less challenging than some people’s reactions. “What was striking was how many people’s attitudes changed almost immediately … they stop seeing you as a person and see only dementia, some professionals included. Like this is the end and everything after will be devastating.”

The assumption that you go overnight from diagnosis to late-stage dementia isn’t confined to family and friends. Julie Hayden, a nurse and social worker from Yorkshire, was diagnosed nine years ago at the age of 54, long after sensing that something was wrong but being constantly told that it was depression or menopause; her doctors still associated dementia with old age and didn’t consider that she might have had young onset. “At the point of diagnosis,” she recalls, “most of us are told: ‘Well, it’s dementia, nothing we can do about that. Best go away and get your end of life affairs in order.’”

In an often chilling new documentary, the chefs of brutal leaders from Idi Amin to Saddam Hussein, talk about their unusual lives behind the scenes

Kim Jong-il loved pepperoni pizza. Saddam Hussein couldn’t resist a fish barbecue. Idi Amin reportedly had the capacity for an entire roasted goat. The menus may have differed, but the appetite was the same. For history’s most notorious strongmen, the dining table doubled as a stage for power. For the cooks who served them, every meal came with extraordinary stakes. “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.”

In his latest film, How to Feed a Dictator, which premieres at the Tribeca film festival this week, five private chefs recount their intimate experiences serving some of the world’s most feared dictators and the ever-present dangers that came with the job. Based on the 2020 book by the Polish journalist Witold Szabłowski, the 95-minute documentary probes the fraught terrain between morality and survival, asking viewers to consider the choices these chefs made – and the choices they never really had. Structurally, the film is something of a tasting menu, serving up sobering morsels of human atrocity within the trappings of a decadent cooking show. It makes for especially uneasy viewing on an empty stomach.

As the Makerfield byelection and a potential leadership challenge loom, there is a sense the PM is looking to create impacts that last

As the weeks ticked down to her departure from Downing Street in 2019, Theresa May had a plan. Not only did she want to put a net zero target into law, but she wanted the UK to be the first major economy to do so. And that meant beating the French.

“It required the machinery of government to move more quickly than the French parliament,” a No 10 official from the time recalls. And it worked: the UK target came into force in June 2019, six weeks before May handed over to Boris Johnson, and five months before the French. She had her legacy.

PSNI give update on attack after the Northern Ireland secretary praised members of the public for intervening

• Full report: Man seriously injured in Belfast stabbing Starmer describes as ‘sickening’

Badenoch said, after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, it was right that people wanted to ensure this did not happen again.

It led to the Macpherson report, she said.

[It] wanted to put right what went wrong with policing in the 1990s.

However, in attempting to do so, it also enshrined a principle which I believe is wrong that a racist incident is racist if it is perceived as racist by the victim or any other person.

Equality law, properly designed, should protect us all in the same way. It should be a shield, not a sword.

It should protect people from discrimination. It should protect people from being treated differently because of their race, sex, religion, sexuality, disability or age.

Investigation alleges former editor-in-chief of Sport Newspapers introduced woman to David Sullivan, who is accused of sexually exploitative behaviour

The BBC presenter Tony Livesey is to “step back” from his radio show after allegations were raised about his previous career as the editor-in-chief of David Sullivan’s Sport Newspapers.

The BBC said Livesey, 62, would be stepping away from presenting his late-night 5 Live show for “a short time” while the corporation considers the issues raised by a Panorama investigation, which accused Sullivan, a billionaire and co-owner of West Ham United, of sexually exploitative and predatory behaviour against women over several decades.

IDF earlier issued urgent evacuation order in Lebanon’s fifth biggest city

• Israel and Iran step back from renewed conflict after Trump calls for halt

• Complex relationship between Trump and Netanyahu continues to undermine Middle East ceasefire

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are close allies with a deeply complicated and often strained relationship that has shown signs of fracturing over recent days. The Guardian’s senior international correspondent, Julian Borger, has looked into how the two leader’s diverging political priorities are undermining ceasefire negotiations. Here is an extract from his analysis piece:

Trump and Netanyahu went to war together against Iran on 28 February but fell out of step within days, as soon as it was clear that the quick victory and regime change promised by the Israelis was unlikely to materialise. From then on, their interests have increasingly diverged.

Once Iran closed the strait of Hormuz, the spike in the oil price and the interruption in the flow of globally traded chemical products became a political threat to Trump. Despite Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression, Democrats have a plausible shot at capturing at least one chamber of Congress in November elections, undermining his authority. More immediately, the president would clearly prefer to steer clear of global distractions while he hosts football’s World Cup.

Co-op academy in Blackley to close for day after students were locked down in classrooms during attack

A schoolgirl has been arrested after two students and a staff member were stabbed at a school in Manchester.

Students were put into lockdown and told not to leave their classrooms after emergency services were called to the Co-op academy in Blackley on Tuesday morning.

Gabriel Raimondo, who put his studies on hold to run in Channel Islands, is one of world’s youngest politicians

Most politicians who win an election in Jersey are probably satisfied with a pat on the back from their supporters and a mention in the local newspapers.

But after becoming one of the youngest politicians in the world, Gabriel Raimondo received a message of congratulations from Donald Trump.

Tory leader takes aim at police guidance and says more black boys searched means more black lives saved

• UK politics live – latest updates

Kemi Badenoch has argued that Britain took a wrong turn after the landmark Macpherson report into the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence, and said that it didn’t matter how many young black boys were stopped and searched by police.

The Conservative leader made the comments as she announced plans to scrap the obligation on public bodies to consider how they can promote equality as she seeks to head off the challenge to her party from Reform UK.

Reform had previously suggested Farage would be ‘steering clear’ of event, modelled on US conservative gathering

• UK politics live – latest updates

Nigel Farage will be headlining at an American conservative summit brought to the UK by Liz Truss next month alongside a raft of hard-right speakers, despite his party previously suggesting he would be “steering clear”.

The Reform UK leader has announced he will speak in July at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), which claims it wants to “save Britain, save the west”.

Brazilian judge rules there is enough evidence to try Ruben Dario da Silva Villar over killings of journalist and activist

The alleged mastermind and financial backer of the murders of the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira in the Amazon four years ago will stand trial before a jury, a federal judge in the state of Amazonas has ruled.

Judge Cristina Lazzari Souza found that, based on the charges brought by federal prosecutors, there were “sufficient indications of authorship” to try Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, known by his nickname “Colômbia”.

Price of dairy product has risen fivefold after users of GLP-1 medications advised to increase protein consumption

The growing popularity of weight-loss drugs has fuelled global demand for whey protein, sparking concerns among industry experts over a potential shortage.

The price of whey has risen fivefold to record levels as companies race to secure supplies amid a boom driven by growing use of GLP-1 drugs, such as Mounjaro, which often require higher protein intake to preserve muscle mass.

In a wide-ranging interview, an upbeat Ukrainian president also discusses Donald Trump, King Charles, and how Kyiv is prepared to share its experience of drone warfare with the west

Sitting down with the Guardian in London, Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems cheerful. More than four years after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, he believes Europe’s biggest war since 1945 appears to be slowly turning in Ukraine’s favour. The military situation is the most promising it has been for Kyiv for two and a half years, Zelenskyy says. “We can’t say Russia is losing this war. But we can say they are losing the initiative each day, day by day,” he insists.

Over the past week the Kremlin has suffered a series of setbacks. Long-range Ukrainian drones have hit Putin’s home city of St Petersburg, setting fire to oil terminals and sending smoke billowing above the skyline. Similar attacks have crippled occupied Crimea. A key supply road is littered with burning lorries and tankers and the peninsula seized by Russia in 2014 is experiencing severe fuel shortages.

Fifa has found its tournament squarely caught up in the second Trump administration’s aggressive border restrictions

For successive men’s World Cup tournaments Fifa has managed to bulldoze its way through costly immigration and entry requirements. In 2014, Brazil passed a law granting free temporary visas to ticket holders, and for Russia and Qatar, the respective autocracies bypassed traditional border friction using Fan IDs and Hayya cards as makeshift visa entry documents that also provided free public transport. Not so in 2026, where Fifa has found its tournament squarely caught up in the second Trump administration’s aggressive border restrictions. Here are some of the people that have been affected.

This bleak investigation into allegations against the former West Ham owner and porn baron David Sullivan is incredibly valuable. It needs to spark widespread change – not least for all the women who’ve come forward

At this point, is it even worth saying that British football has a problem with safeguards around club ownership? In the context of the various sports-washing petrostates, incompetent investment conglomerates, oddball entrepreneurs and publicity hounds who control the purse strings of “the beautiful game” in the UK, West Ham United’s billionaire owner David Sullivan didn’t seem that much of an outlier. By the end of his tenure, West Ham fans largely hated him. But while they had their reasons and many of them were entirely valid, they didn’t always seem connected to either his business dealings or his tabloid past.

Football fans are nothing if not morally flexible. They (perhaps, in the interests of full disclosure, I should say “we”) will overlook almost anything if there’s a trophy or two finding its way into the cabinet. While Sullivan’s recent decision to step down as West Ham’s owner has been widely celebrated in east London, that’s mainly a result of the club’s recent relegation from the Premier League.

Whether it’s water-saving showerheads or natural sponges, these easy swaps cut waste and make your bathroom a little kinder to the planet

• The best refillable beauty products for a sustainable routine

As a sustainability journalist, I’ve often despaired at how unsustainable our bathrooms are – from water use to plastic bottles to chemical-heavy cleaners. However, there are ways to reduce their carbon footprint. As water becomes increasingly precious, hacks for our loos that cap its usage are useful, as are smart showerheads that cut down on water, particularly as baths these days feel like a guilty indulgence.

Swap plastic-packaged and chemical-loaded products, such as bleach and multipurpose sprays, for eco-friendly ones, and buy secondhand good-as-new fixtures. From bamboo loo roll to solid shampoo bars, here are my tips for a more planet-friendly bathroom.

In an extract from Aftershock, a definitive new history of dubstep, DMZ’s Mala, Coki and Loefah recall the bass drops and pacifist mentality that went into their creation

By the turn of the millennium, British electronic music had some growing pains. The jungle and drum’n’bass scenes that energised the 1990s were running out of creative gas, and garage had shifted from the moody underground into champagne flash and chart hits. Across pockets of London, Croydon and Essex, a tiny group of artists coalesced around a new idea. After 15 years of high-octane beats, they decided to strip the breakbeats, hard partying and cliquishness out of dance music, focusing instead on soundsystem fundamentals: bass, space and togetherness. From there, dubstep was born.

As we approach the 25-year anniversary of dubstep’s beginnings, I’ve documented the genre in my book, Aftershock: The Seismic Impact of Dubstep: an oral history of its origin story told through 28 artists and key figures. Some of the most influential are part of DMZ, a record label and party series led by south London DJ-producers Mala, Coki and Loefah, and MC Sgt Pokes. With its anti-VIP ethos, DMZ became one of dubstep’s driving forces, and earlier this year, Mala and Coki performed at Fred Again’s residency at London’s Alexandra Palace: their influence is shifting to a new generation of fans.

Felines have long been associated with feminine power – and these women are embracing a cliché used to bring them down

To support 700 cats, you need roughly 1,350lbs of food a week. But that’s just the dry stuff, which isn’t a balanced enough diet for a cat. You also need 1,000 cans of wet food.

Next, 600lbs of litter, because cats, like all living things, need a place to do their business. Sixty rolls of paper towels to clean up the many messes that will occur. Nine gallons of laundry detergent, six gallons of dish detergent, 200 large trash bags, and 400 kitchen trash bags.

We’re two days away from the start of the biggest World Cup ever. Football correspondent Ewan Murray is in North Carolina with the Scotland team ahead of their game against Haiti this weekend.

Post your questions in the comments now on Scotland’s chances and anything World Cup-related. Ewan will be here answering them at around 5pm BST (12pm EST)

Hello, and welcome to the first Guardian World Cup Q&A

Ewan Murray is one of our newly expanded team of Guardian football correspondents scattered across North America to cover all 104 games.

Ewan will be joining us live from Charlotte, North Carolina at 5pm BST (12pm EST), where Scotland didn’t play Norway on Monday, to answer any questions you might have about the World Cup as a whole and, specifically, Scotland’s chances in group C alongside Haiti and France 98 group rivals Brazil and Morocco. Post your comments and questions below the line and Ewan will answer as many as he can.

Here’s some reading/watching/listening in the meantime:

As football’s greatest spectacle comes to North America, our cartoonist creates a heartwarming narrative around the Fifa president

• Buy a cartoon | David’s favourite works of 2025

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

The bottom of the ocean has barely been explored, but every journey to the deep reveals wondrous new lifeforms. As underwater mining gains momentum, we risk destroying one of the Earth’s last great wildernesses

On 8 March 2014, at 1.20am, Malaysian Airlines flight 370 veered off its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. An hour later, military radar spotted the plane heading west over the Andaman Sea. Six or seven hours later, it is presumed to have crashed somewhere over the southern Indian Ocean, one of the least studied bodies of water in the world.

Just how little we knew about this part of the ocean became clear during the subsequent search for the missing aircraft. Before a proper underwater search could even begin, a vast stretch of seafloor had to be mapped. Over the next three years, a team of ships from Australia, China and Malaysia scanned the bottom with a combination of submersible robots and ship-borne sonar. Together, they charted a swath of ocean roughly 1,500 miles long and 150 miles wide, encompassing an area the size of France. The maps produced from these scans revealed a lost world, full of undersea canyons, crevasses, volcanic plateaux and a single, enormous cliff taller than the Swiss Alps. Even the abyssal plains, thought to be some of the flattest areas on the planet, were home to previously uncharted hills.

Players and fans denied visas, the spectre of ICE raids on stadiums, Pete Hegseth’s latest speech ... By the end of this contest, the nature of this US government will be even clearer

Whenever my kids and I are stationary in the same room, within five minutes they will have started talking about football. Every now and then, a name will float out that I recognise – Jude Bellingham, say – but most of the time it lacks the dramatic texture to hold my attention. Everyone is either a genius or an irretrievable loser.

There’s a lot of counting. “Would you watch a play in which everyone was either entirely wise or entirely stupid and the rest of it was mainly a body count?” I ask, trying to wedge myself back into the conversation. They reply: “Hello? Romeo and Juliet?!” then go back to the shortcomings of La Liga, so I go back to looking at my phone.

The climate phenomenon is intensifying an already unequal global economy

One plan would see young workers offered early access to a slice of future pensions. It’s not perfect, but we need bold ideas

While we wait with nail-biting anxiety for the voters of Makerfield to decide the fate of the country, the prospect of renewal at the top provides a fertile time for breeding ideas and confronting great problems. Alan Milburn’s searing analysis of the first generation ever to do worse financially than their parents did at their age opens the door to people with solutions to this crisis. Now is the time to bring them out.

Among the thinktanks, voluntary sector and business organisations coming forward with ideas, this week the Social Market Foundation (SMF) is offering an inventive plan to help ease the growing inequality between those young people gifted some wealth and the majority who have none. We are now in the time of the “great wealth transfer”, with an estimated £5.5tn to be passed down by the baby boomer generation in the UK over the next three decades. My lucky generation had everything for free. Ordinary salaries bought homes easily and property values rocketed to make homeowners wealthy beyond all expectations, even as the UK has gotten relatively poorer compared to other European and North American countries.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Becoming the world’s first trillionaire is only going to supercharge this sense of impunity and bring us one step closer to full-blown oligarchy

“Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about,” Elon Musk wrote in February on Twitter/X, the social network he bought for $44bn. He capped the statement with a sad face emoji.

Alas, Musk’s information is outdated. A 2024 study found a substantial difference in happiness between the wealthy and people who are low income. “A greater feeling of control over life can explain about 75% of the association between money and happiness,” the study’s author noted.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist and the author of Strong Female Lead

The company is clearly trying to make an example of the author who wrote about her time at the company. Her free speech should be protected

This year’s Hay festival concluded with a strange spectacle. I was on a panel about the dangers of excessive tech power, alongside former Meta employee Sarah Wynn-Williams – who sat without saying anything on the advice of her lawyer. She had been silenced by Meta’s legal threats to bankrupt her if she spoke.

Wynn-Williams has written a book, Careless People, about her time at Meta (then Facebook), where she was an early director of global public policy. In the tradition of such books (usually written by former government officials), it is in parts flattering, more often critical and, above all, insightful.

Prof Tim Wu is professor at Columbia University Law School and the author of The Age of Extraction:
How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

Marmite asks: ‘Do you love me or hate me?’ Vegemite couldn’t give a stuff. It’s as dry as our Aussie humour, and I wouldn’t have it any other way

The hill I would die on is made of Vegemite. Marmite is a minuscule mound in comparison. A hapless hillock. A negligible knoll.

Vegemite is Australian penicillin. It cures everything from homesickness to heartbreak. From pleb to celeb and prime minister to prisoner, Vegemite is our culinary mainstay. Aussies are not that big on etiquette – our only breach of etiquette is to suggest that we adhere to any. But there is one cardinal sin: not to like Vegemite. It is a trait that, socially, places you just below leper and just above Maga supporter in our estimation.

Kathy Lette is a comedy writer and novelist. Her latest novel, The Sisterhood Rules, is literary Vegemite

His toxic Henry Nowak intervention fits a pattern. Vance has hard-right views, a disdain for European society – and he may yet become president

Immigration is falling in Britain. It’s falling so fast and so hard – net migration to the UK nearly halved between 2024 and 2025 – that before long we could conceivably be a shrinking population, with more people leaving the country than coming here. (And no, that’s not because of an exodus of bright young Britons fleeing overseas, though you wouldn’t blame them given how hard they’re finding it currently to get jobs: the rise, as the Institute for Government’s Sam Freedman helpfully points out, is mainly in foreign students and foreign workers going home.) Even small-boat crossings are down on last year. We have, in short, finally made ourselves as unattractive to the rest of the world as leave voters always wanted – which means that, sooner or later, populists who built their careers on railing against supposedly uncontrolled immigration are going to be needing another scapegoat to explain why taking back control hasn’t magically solved all the country’s problems. And with a grim inevitability, they’re finding it in turning on migrants who are already here.

That’s the background to two hand grenades lobbed aggressively into British politics from across the Atlantic last week, causing enough concern in Downing Street to prompt a rare public rebuke. The claim from the US vice-president, JD Vance, that “righteous anger” was “the only response” to the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak would have been provocative enough, given its pointed echo of Nigel Farage’s now widely condemned call for “pure, cold rage”.

A belated change of policy on nude digital images of children must be part of a wider reset

Amid the flurry of resignations by ministers who said they had lost confidence in Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, Jess Phillips’s attack on his record on tech regulation stood out. “Over a year ago I presented solutions, long worked on by brilliant civil servants, that would end the ability for children in the UK to take naked images of themselves,” she wrote. The postponement of an announcement in March left her frustrated. In the end, all that Ms Phillips managed to secure was a pledge that the law might change sometime.

Other campaigners echoed her frustration. Hannah Swirsky, head of policy at the Internet Watch Foundation, agreed that the government had been slow to act, despite the rise in offences involving self‑generated explicit imagery.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

The Global Justice Report offers a hopeful bargain: tax extreme wealth and replace consumer excess with social and economic security for all

Humanity can raise living standards, reduce inequality and keep global heating within a 2C rise, according to a sweeping vision for planetary survival, the Guardian reported last week. In an age of ecological dread, that is a bracingly hopeful claim. The optimism came courtesy of the Global Justice Report, produced by Thomas Piketty’s World Inequality Lab.

It arrives against the grain of the times. Anti‑migrant demagoguery, fossil-fuel revivalism, attacks on multilateralism and billionaire capture all militate against the redistributive state capacity that the report requires. Yet Prof Piketty’s team insists that decarbonisation, “sufficiency” and equality can mean a good life for most people.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Readers respond to an article on how early intensive rehabilitation after a stroke or head injury is crucial for recovery

Rather like Ian Sample himself trying to read Orlando Swayne’s book, I was nervous reading his article, braced for half-digested truths or oversimplifications on neurotherapy (The doctor who mends broken brains: why there is room for hope after a stroke or head injury, 3 June). But he paints an accurate picture of the way brains retain neuroplasticity and the reality of the postcode lottery around therapy and rehabilitation services.

I am a speech and language therapist specialising in stroke and neurorehabilitation, and I can attest to what he and Dr Swayne state in the article – that sadly, for some people, the damage caused by neurotrauma cannot be recovered from, but for others, the vital neuroplasticity continues for months and, in some people I have seen, years at a time.

A major overhaul is required if protections against unscrupulous employers are not to become illusory, says Emma Wilkinson

Your article (Indian man awarded almost £30,000 after UK employer failed to provide work, 31 May) and editorial (3 June) rightly highlight the significance of the employment tribunal decision in the claim brought by Shabin Shaji against Swan Care Solutions and the importance of introducing stronger safeguards against such abuses of migrant workers.

This is just one of many such cases involving migrant workers, but the vast majority never bring such claims, partly because it is extremely difficult to obtain the sort of pro bono assistance that the Work Rights Centre provided to Mr Shaji, and partly because, although lawfully resident here, they fear that such action is likely to jeopardise their precarious status. Rather than leaving it to individual claimants, there is a clear role for the newly established Fair Work Agency to support the enforcement of such rights. But to be able to do so it needs to be properly resourced and financed, something that is far from clear at the moment.

Gerald Harrison on being trapped in the middle of bureaucracy with his British and Irish passports

Regarding the “colonial attitude” of the British Passport Office, which asked your letter writer’s sister to change her Greek surname (1 June), I am in a similar situation, but prefer to call it arrogance.

I had an English dad and an Irish mum. For nearly 40 years, I used two passports. Last November, when I needed to renew my British passport, I enclosed my Irish one. My renewal was refused because my Irish passport has my first name and one middle name, whereas my British one has my first name and two middle names.

Polly Creed takes issue with a quote in an article that denigrated the importance of the work that mums do

Robert dos Santos’s call to be more human, to connect and to challenge AI and the dark cloud it’s set to bring upon humanity is certainly laudable – a valiant rallying cry for the dystopian, uncertain times we’re living through (I’m asking people to do a lot, but that’s what it means to be a human’: why one man made the first straight-to-video movie in 20 years, 4 June). However, I found one comment the film-maker made baffling: “Someone once said that if your mum can do it, it doesn’t have value.”

It’s frustrating that, in a world where we’ve made so much progress to combat everyday sexism, a sentiment like this could still be reeled off in a national newspaper. But also, who once said this? Whoever it was, they were clearly wrong. After all, how many mothers are doctors, artists, scientists, lawyers, cleaners, social workers, teachers? Does their work not have any value? Not to mention the unpaid domestic labour that mothers so often shoulder – the bedrock that holds up society and our economy.

• Latest news as World Cup countdown continues

• Player guide | Bracketology | Wallchart | Mail Rob

Away from the World Cup, the latest allegations against the now former West Ham chairman have alerted the new regulator, as PA Media reports:

The football regulator is in contact with West Ham after allegations were made against. the co-owner David Sullivan that he had pressured aspiring models for sex.

The 77-year-old recently quit as chairman of the east London football club to fight what he claimed were “false allegations” about his conduct.

According to the reporting, the claims about Mr Sullivan involve him pressuring young or aspiring models in their late teens or early 20s.

The Times said it was a two-year investigation, which involved its reporters interviewing dozens of former models and other industry sources.

This year’s World Cup serves up yet more soulless, corporate animal slop to leave fans pining for the days of unique talismans

World Cup Willie marched on to the scene in 1966 with a spiky mane, bovver boy stance, bulbous brogues and – intriguingly for a World Cup held entirely in England – a union jack shirt. The product of a five-minute sketch by children’s illustrator Reg Hoye, who went on to create a red devil mascot for Manchester United, Willie was a marketing sensation. The first World Cup mascot featured on everything from bedspreads to beermats, ceramics to cereal boxes.

Fast forward 60 years and it’s clear how far World Cup mascots have fallen since their peak in the 1970s and 80s. In 2026 we have what’s largely been served up for the past 32 years: soulless, corporate, anthropomorphic animal slop. Meet Canadian moose Maple, Mexican jaguar Zayu and American bald eagle Clutch, who look like rejects from a straight-to-streaming DreamWorks sequel.

Morocco’s semi-final appearance in Qatar has raised the possibility of an African team reaching the final, but who are best poised to do so?

With a record 10 African teams at the first 48-nation World Cup finals tournament, the big question, after Morocco’s historic semi-final appearance in Qatar, is whether any of them can go a step further.

The prospect of an African side becoming world champions appeared realistic after Cameroon defied the odds to beat Diego Maradona’s Argentina, the defending champions, in the opening game of the 1990 tournament and embarked on a fairytale run that ended in a 3-2 quarter-final defeat by England. But in the eight subsequent World Cups, African teams have been long on promise and short on delivery.

A last World Cup – surely – for Cristiano Ronaldo, and Portugal are in great shape for a long run in the competition

This article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June.

Iraq’s No 2 discusses his recipe for a World Cup shock, the players’ singing and his time assisting Alex Ferguson at Manchester United

Iraq’s journey to their first World Cup finals tournament in 40 years involved sacrifices unmatched by any other side. After 20 qualifiers, the team faced a decisive playoff in the Mexican city of Monterrey but, with Iraq dragged into the Middle East war and airspace closed, several staff and players had an arduous job getting there.

“They had to travel from different cities to Baghdad by car or bus,” says René Meulensteen, the assistant to Iraq’s head coach, Graham Arnold. “Some of those journeys took up to eight hours. Then, from Baghdad they travelled roughly 15 hours on bumpy roads to Amman, in Jordan, where occasional flights were still operating. The other Asian‑based players made their own way to Amman, so they could all travel together.”

Donald Trump arrived at the Knicks’ biggest night in 27 years hoping to cement his status and power in his hometown. But the fans had other ideas

On Monday night, the most powerful man in the world crashed a citywide celebration 27 years in the making and almost shut it down, with barricades around Midtown Manhattan, security lines outside Madison Square Garden and agents wanding Victor Wembanyama as if the San Antonio Spurs phenom were a threat off the court as well as on it. And when Donald Trump finally arrived for his grand entrance, it was in a half-mile-long motorcade. Anyone taking in the scene couldn’t help but ask the quintessential New York question: who does this guy think he is, some kind of big shot?

At this point in Trump’s presidency, it’s fair to wonder if he got into politics for the free tickets. On a night when he could’ve been dealing with far more pressing issues – soaring living costs, war with Iran, a global economy under strain – Trump flew to New York expressly to watch the Knicks play host to their first NBA finals game since he started making noises about running for office someday; he evidently couldn’t turn down the game after being invited by “numerous people.”

• Player considering his position following altercation

• Atkinson also present at club along with Saracens players

Ben Stokes’ future as the England Test captain has been thrown into doubt after the England and Wales Cricket Board launched an investigation into “a breach of team protocol” related to an incident involving Stokes and Gus Atkinson that took place in a London nightclub in the early hours of Monday morning.

Both players have been referred to the Cricket Regulator, an independent disciplinary body with the power to impose suspensions and unlimited fines, and a decision is expected imminently over whether they will be allowed to participate in the second Test against New Zealand that starts at the Oval on 17 June – a squad without them in it could be named as early as Tuesday. Stokes is understood to be considering his position as captain.

• Captain to miss Nations Championship barring injuries

• Feyi-Waboso could recover in time for tour after surgery

The chances of Maro Itoje touring with England this summer continue to diminish after the national captain was left out of Steve Borthwick’s latest June training squad. It is understood England would ideally like to give Itoje a rest barring a sudden rush of injuries which affects the number of other second row candidates available to Borthwick.

Despite his club Saracens having failed to make the Prem play-offs, Itoje is not among the 26 players gathered in Bagshot to prepare for a fixture between an England XV and a France XV in Vannes on Friday week. Other senior players including Jamie George, Ben Earl and Tom Curry are involved, however, alongside uncapped hopefuls such as Gloucester’s Afolabi Fasogbon and Ben Redshaw and the Bristol centre Benhard Janse van Rensburg.

• Sage guided Lens to second place in Ligue 1 this season

• Glasner likely to join Milan after rejecting Feyenoord offer

Crystal Palace are poised to appoint Pierre Sage as Oliver Glasner’s successor after holding productive talks with the Frenchman.

Sage, who guided Lens to the Coupe de France and second place in Ligue 1 this season, is understood to have agreed terms on a two-year deal with the option of a 12 month extension. Compensation for the 47-year-old must be resolved but that is not thought to be an obstacle.

The batter is primed to take advantage of the home T20 tournament – she is determined to create memories for the nation

Given how composed Alice Capsey has recently looked in an England shirt, it’s hard to imagine her getting nervous – but with only days to go until England’s World Cup opener on Friday against Sri Lanka, she admits she is struggling. “I doubt I’ll sleep very well [on Thursday],” she says. “I think it might take me a little while to wind down and switch off from all the nerves and excitement.”

Capsey has been through a lot since she first came to public attention five years ago at the age of 16 by scoring a blazing half-century at Lord’s in the Women’s Hundred: this will be her fourth World Cup. But she is acutely aware that a home tournament brings pressure on a whole different scale. “This is a once-in-a-career opportunity,” she says. “We’ve got an amazing opportunity as a team to create some really special memories, not only as a group, but for the nation.”

There are young stars and golden oldies available on a free transfer this summer. But which team is stronger?

Goalkeeper
Illan Meslier, aged 26, contract expiring at Leeds United
The goalkeeper joined Leeds as a teenager but departs the Yorkshire club having not made a first-team appearance since March 2025. Meslier was recently seen alone on the Elland Road pitch, seemingly contemplating his departure.

• Live Championship updates from 11am UK time

• Email Tanya | MCC apologises for Lord’s pitch

Lehmann and Prest in the middle; Topley, leaping up and down at the top of his mark, to finish his over. And the sun is out.

Just realised I’ve been watching the covers on day two on the stream. No wonder it all looked so familiar. Play is actually about to start at The Oval!

Track and field’s youngest world champion on ‘wanting to change the sport’ and his admiration for Napoleon

We are in living in the era of teenage super talents. On Saturday, Mirra Andreeva won the French Open at 19. Spain’s Lamine Yamal, at 18, is one of the favourites for the World Cup’s golden ball. Then there is Cooper Lutkenhaus, the 17-year-old American already making the world’s best athletes gasp for air and reach for superlatives, who may yet prove the best of the bunch.

True, it is early days. But Lutkenhaus is already track and field’s youngest world champion, having won 800m indoor gold in March. On Sunday, he added to his CV with victory against a top-class field in his first Diamond League race. But it was what his rivals said afterwards in Stockholm that left the deepest mark.

The town where rugby league began may find itself without a top division team unless plans for a new stadium come to fruition by 2030

Saturday afternoon was meant to provide a glimpse into a different, more optimistic future for Huddersfield Giants. But in the end, it was another stark reminder of why rugby league in the West Yorkshire town is facing an existential fight.

Super League has been thriving lately but if there is one place where the game has stagnated, if not regressed, it is in the town where rugby league was born in 1895. Huddersfield have struggled for much of the summer era, barring the odd flirtation with the elite, but the past 18 months have been bleak even by those standards.

Ofcom move follows concerns about misinformation and online claims over police response to Henry Nowak stabbing

Social media companies have been ordered to have emergency measures in place to stop illegal content going viral, as regulators battle to stop the type of misinformation spiral that circulated after the 2024 summer riots.

Sites such as X, formerly Twitter, and TikTok will have to have a “crisis protocol” in place to intervene when the sharing of dangerous content begins to rise.

Father and mother of Annabel Rook praised her dedication to helping others and want to focus on her legacy

A retired Old Bailey judge has paid tribute to his daughter after her killer was jailed for life.

Today at Snaresbrook crown court, Clifton George, 45, was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of the murder of Annabel Rook, 46, whom he stabbed in the living room of her own home in Stoke Newington, north London.

Police use teargas to disperse demonstrators in Nanyuki, 120 miles from Nairobi, amid rising anger at US plans

A man has been shot in the head during a protest in a town in central Kenya against a proposed Ebola quarantine facility for US citizens.

Photographs from the scene appeared to show a person lying motionless on the ground. Dozens of people had gathered near Laikipia airbase, the proposed site of the centre in Nanyuki, 120 miles from the capital, Nairobi, some wearing protective equipment and carrying a coffin with “Ebola” written on it.

New dangerous dogs law after spate of attacks in England and Wales could fine people or have their pet seized

A new crackdown on XL bullies and other dangerous dogs will make it illegal to leave children under 12 alone with them in England and Wales.

There has been a spate of attacks on children by dogs from certain dangerous breeds, including one on a 10-year-old girl who died last year after being attacked by the family pet, an XL bully. A nine-month-old baby was also mauled to death last year by a dog of that breed.

Medical Protection Society calls for law to be overhauled to help medics avoid liability for errors made by technology

Doctors and the NHS could be sued for medical negligence over mistakes made by artificial intelligence tools used in diagnosing patients and suggesting their treatment, ministers are being warned.

Under the law as it stands, medics and the health service can be held liable for patients being harmed or dying even if it was AI that made the errors that resulted in their suffering.

Third of world’s energy needs should come from electricity by 2035, says Murat Kurum, as priorities set out for this year’s UN climate summit

The world should aim to meet a third of its energy needs from electricity within a decade to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the host of the next UN climate summit has said.

While about a third of global electricity generation already comes from renewable sources, other energy-intensive sectors – chiefly transport, heating and industries – have lagged behind. Close to four-fifths of final energy still comes from fossil fuels, as a result.

The arid Barind region was transformed by aquifer wells but now the water system is collapsing under the pressure of the climate crisis and decades of extraction

In the parched fields of north-west Bangladesh, where the earth hardens into cracked red clay beneath an unforgiving sun, farmers in the Barind region say they are watching the foundations of rural life disappear underground.

For decades, groundwater transformed Barind – one of Bangladesh’s driest regions – into a productive agricultural belt. Deep tube wells allowed farmers to grow rice, wheat, maize and vegetables year-round across land once defined by drought.

Datacentre off Shanghai coast uses less power and water than land-based equivalent

The world’s first wind-powered underwater datacentre has started operations off the coast of Shanghai, as China presses forwards with solutions for energy challenges created by the country’s artificial intelligence boom.

The Shanghai Lingang undersea datacentre demonstration project, which launched in May, has a capacity of 24 megawatts. It is a joint effort between HiCloud Technology and China Communications Construction, a state-owned company.

Global effort needed to limit effects of pollution, industrial fishing and climate crisis, World Ocean Assessment says

The world’s oceans are under “severe and accelerating” pressure from human activities, with the rate of sea-level rise double that of a decade ago, according to a damning assessment from the United Nations.

The “intensifying” stressors, which include pollution and large-scale industrial fishing, are cumulative, said the report, resulting in widespread biodiversity loss and putting ocean systems under “severe strain”.

Sources say much delayed Dip is close to sign-off but only after some of the Labour government’s worst infighting

Cabinet relations have been left badly damaged by the protracted row over the defence investment plan (Dip), according to Whitehall sources who say the standoff has led to some of the worst infighting since Labour took power.

Ministers are putting the final touches on the plan, which is expected to be published in the coming weeks after departments agreed to cut their capital budgets by about 1% to pay for additional military spending.

TUC, GMB, Unite and Unison leaders reject invitation to affiliate to Reform amid rising support for party among their members

• UK politics live – latest updates

Major trade unions and the TUC have rebuffed Nigel Farage’s call for unions to affiliate to Reform UK, saying the party is “cosplaying” as workers’ champions and has opposed new employment rights.

Farage issued a call on Tuesday for unions to attend Reform’s conference and to affiliate to the party, and he suggested one union may be on the brink of doing so.

Exclusive: Sir Paul Marshall’s climate views and those broadcast on GB News said to be ‘in direct opposition’ to those of Church of England

The co-owner of GB News, a British TV channel accused of broadcasting climate change denial, has donated £28m to influential Church of England institutions that support climate action.

This raises “serious questions”, say Christian leaders, given that Sir Paul Marshall’s views on the climate crisis and those frequently broadcast on the TV channel are “in direct opposition” to the Church of England, which believes that “responding to the climate crisis is an essential part of our responsibility to safeguard God’s creation and achieve a just world”.

Exclusive: Landscape painter was also a keen musician and played a cello made for him by his friend and mentor

He was one of Britain’s greatest landscape painters, with masterpieces including The Hay Wain and View on the Stour near Dedham But John Constable was also a keen musician – and his personal cello, which he commissioned, is to be played in public for the first time in 100 years after its restoration.

The instrument was made in 1802 and it is thought Constable may have played it in a local band in his home village of East Bergholt in Suffolk.

Fears that EES checks requiring personal information and biometrics will cause summer of travel chaos in Europe

• Business live – latest updates

The new EU border system that has triggered hours-long delays at big airports may not “stabilise” for two years, an official has warned.

Uku Särekanno, a director of the EU border agency Frontex, said some member states were “struggling” to adopt the entry/exit system (EES), which requires passengers from non-EU countries to register their personal information and biometrics at the border.

Khan, a prominent British lawyer, has repeatedly denied the allegations which first emerged in 2024

The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, Karim Khan, has been suspended after a disciplinary process triggered by sexual abuse allegations against him reached a conclusion.

The ICC’s governing body announced the decision on Monday evening after its executive committee voted to refer the proceedings against Khan to a special session of the court’s member states for them to consider his future.

National Libertarian party wants museum to highlight ‘victims’ of socialist government ousted by CIA-backed coup in 1973

Far-right lawmakers in Chile have proposed the creation of a “museum of truth” to tell its own version of the years preceding Gen Augusto Pinochet’s bloody dictatorship – and emphasise the plight of what it calls the victims of Salvador Allende’s socialist government.

According to the seven congresspeople from the far-right National Libertarian party who presented the bill, the museum would highlight the “outrage, hunger and humiliation” of Allende’s Popular Unity government.

Hard times – and British-style pubs – are squeezing restaurant-bars that once thrived in cities everywhere. Can they innovate to keep pace with change?

From rowdy spit-and-sawdust joints to dimly lit high-end eateries, from chains equipped with tablets to family-run holes in the wall, Japan’s izakaya restaurant-bars are as varied as the cuisine they serve.

They are also a bellwether, reflecting strength and shifts in the wider economy. Now that economy is squeezing them harder than ever, pushing closures to record rates. The damage is spread unevenly: amid the struggles, some flourish, while a chain of unlikely alternatives expands.

Tech company received infrastructure relief as its five biggest UK divisions generate £32bn in revenues

Amazon’s main division in the UK was handed a £7.6m tax credit last year by HM Revenue and Customs, despite profits at the retail-to-streaming company surging by more than a quarter to £355m.

Amazon UK Services – which employs 66,000 staff, the vast majority of the company’s 75,000 employees in Britain – said it owed £9.1m in “current tax” last year.

Complaints-led approach could pile £6bn of extra costs on to lenders, says City watchdog

• Business live – latest updates

The City watchdog has warned that a wave of legal challenges to the compensation scheme for victims of the motor finance scandal could leave drivers waiting three more years for payouts, while piling £6bn of extra costs on to lenders.

Bosses at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), who have consistently hit out at lenders and a consumer claims group for challenging its scheme, told MPs the scandal could affect lenders for years, and have “consequences” by stretching its resources.

At his final WWDC keynote, Tim Cook highlights AI-forward upgrade to the voice assistant to be widely released in fall

After years of anticipation, user frustration and false starts, Apple announced a major upgrade to Siri at its annual developer conference on Monday. The voice assistant will come integrated with Apple’s artificial intelligence tool, Apple Intelligence, and has been rechristened “Siri AI”.

The new Siri, which will be widely released in the fall, will more closely resemble AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Google Gemini, than a question-and-answer tool that draws from the web.

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as the AI trade bounces back

• OpenAI confidentially files for initial public offering on US stock market

The pound is strengthening against the US dollar today, as calm returns to the markets.

Sterling is up a third of a cent at $1.3376.

A light week in terms of macroeconomic news out of the UK meant the focus for sterling traders was mostly elsewhere. We did see an MPC member (Greene) stating that she would consider voting for a hike at the next Bank of England meeting later this month.

A notable upward revision in the PMI business indices last week suggests that the initial confidence drop was overstated and that the UK economy is more resilient to the Middle East events than first feared. We look to this week’s April monthly GDP data, released Friday, to validate this modestly optimistic view.

“Just when the supersized tech rally was looking a little tired, along comes the news of OpenAI’s decision to IPO.

Presumably the move has been spurred along by Anthropic’s recent move towards a public listing, but and now markets face the test of yet another superheavyweight firm listing to test demand for these highly-valued companies that promise to reshape not just the investing landscape, but the entirety of human society.”

The race is on to extract money out of the roar of enthusiasm for companies providing the backbone to the artificial intelligence revolution. There’s now a hat trick of mega listings on the cards, with OpenAI’s filing for an IPO coming hot on the heels of Anthropic and SpaceX. The research company behind the hugely successful ChatGPT had first-mover advantage, buoyed by an early deal with Microsoft, but Anthropic has gained ground and is tackling adeptly from behind, winning reams of enterprise contracts.

The price of staying at the top of the game is eye-watering for OpenAI – it’s estimated to be spending more than $100 billion a year on the infrastructure and processing power to support its services and power the next generation of AI models. To stay high and dry in its AI fortress, the company reckons that by spending at this level, it will create a moat too difficult to cross for the competition, enabling it to keep raking in revenues and eventually turn big profits.

OpenAI is currently valued at $850bn, the ‘baby’ of the group, since Anthropic is now valued ahead of OpenAI at $965bn. The company laid out the ‘third phase of OpenAI’ on Monday and said that it is undertaking research into artificial general intelligence, and looking at becoming a ‘product company’.

The latter is interesting for investors, since it would be a major potential source of future revenue. Although it is early days, if OpenAI launches its own product range, it could become a major competitor to Apple and Google, and their share prices are worth watching closely on Tuesday.

There are some advantages to being an older debutant, including knowing what it’s like to fail and not having your new novel overshadowed by early literary promise

Recently I was at a film event where I was introduced to a big producer by a very nice actor. The actor said, “this is Patrick, he has a debut novel coming out soon.”

The producer looked me up and down and said, “You took your time.”

Yes, it’s a documentary on a sobering topic. But when you’ve got an endless stream of blockbuster names spouting irresistible gossip – plus Nigel Farage being a total panto dame – you can’t help but have a ball

Let’s get one thing straight immediately: no documentary about Brexit should be this much of a hoot. The dread many felt when the referendum result came in – a fear that reactionary populism was on the rise and Britain was entering an era of managed decline – has only bloomed like mould in the intervening decade. Brexit was the source of much inadvertent comedy, of course, but to see it treated so irreverently en masse does leave a bit of a bad taste. Laughing at a YouTube compilation of politicians accidentally saying breakfast instead of Brexit? Fine. Chortling along with Nigel Farage as he reminisces about tensions between Dominic Cummings and Arron Banks? Tittering as Boris Johnson blathers about losing a tennis match to David Cameron during which the prime minister tried to secure his support for remain? No thanks.

Still, there is something extremely difficult to resist about Brexit: A Very British Civil War, a talking head-heavy chronicle of the period between the 2015 general election and the referendum itself. Rather than get bogged down in po-faced sincerity or hand-wringing about integrity (like the remain campaign!), it deals almost exclusively in attention-grabbing bombast (like the leave campaigns!). From the off we’re blasted with Brexit-flavoured juice. Vote Leave bosses “didn’t really want to win”, says Farage. Johnson’s position had “nothing to do with the EU,” says George Osborne. “It was Game of Thrones.” Johnson denies this, stifling a smile. “Everybody says I did this in order to be PM. I would have become prime minister anyway.”

Sci-fi about the inventor of a device to communicate with aliens, in which scientists spend too much time talking astrophysics at each other

Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is not alone in the universe. It is now joined by another sci-fi about Earth’s first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life in the form of a high-concept, low-risk, talky drama from writer-director Jonathan Sobol. It stars Isabelle Fuhrman as Dr Annika Cask, a brilliant young computer scientist, already famous for taking the first photograph of dark matter.

Predictably for this kind of film, Annika has a tragic backstory (the death in childhood of her sister) which drives her single mindedness and has left her with a deep sense of the fragility of life. She takes a job for brash tech billionaire Dennis Quaid, working on a top-secret project on his private island in the Caribbean. On the helicopter she’s joined by another wonder-kid, electronics engineer Charlie (Josh Hutcherson). The pair have been recruited to keep an eye on the even more brilliant Perry Glassner (David Thewlis), who has invented a device called Littlemouth, a fancy-looking mini-pylon designed to communicate with other life in the universe. Glassner is an unbalanced narcissist, played by Thewlis in style of his character Johnny in Mike Leigh’s Naked: all fear and rage, though channelled this time through a PhD in quantum physics. Here he is on a rant about humanity: “Petty, cruel, prone to self-destruction, hellbent on rage-fucking our habitat out of existence.”

Josh Charles is the grumpy lead in new series Best Medicine. Plus: it’s Alan Carr’s maximalist Interior Design Masters final. Here’s watch to watch this evening

8pm, Sky One
“I find the people here demanding, irrational and far too chatty in supermarkets.” Like Martin Clunes’s Doc Martin – upon which this US comedy is based – Martin Best just wants to be left alone. He’s good at his job, but his bedside manner leaves plenty to be desired. However, his hopes of a quiet life in a small fishing village in Maine are set to be repeatedly dashed. A little bland, but Josh Charles is an appropriately lugubrious lead. Phil Harrison

James Bidgood’s experimental DIY movie, first released in 1971, starred Bobby Kendall and was shot mostly in Bidgood’s own apartment

James Bidgood’s experimental homoerotic reverie is now reissued in restored form. The film was shot mostly in Bidgood’s own New York apartment throughout the 1960s; it was finally released in 1971 with Bidgood’s name removed from the credits after an opaque dispute with his backers and his authorship only revealed 20 years later.

Pink Narcissus is a movie of garish colour, mute melodrama and dreamlike imagery which mimics early cinema, perhaps simply because the resources for recording lip-sync dialogue were not available. (The director says that Powell and Pressburger’s Red Shoes was an inspiration although the title alludes more to their nun melodrama Black Narcissus.) It interestingly merges its rather pastoral fantasies with the urban circumstances where these would be consumed – the city’s movie theatres, outside which poverty and alienation were commonplace. Some of the most interesting and successful parts of the piece are the radio soundscapes and the modelled neon skylines.

As he publishes a memoir, the pioneering guitarist talks about rejecting spandex and hair metal, his fears for breakthrough hit Black Hole Sun – and completing nine unfinished Soundgarden songs

Kim Thayil has always felt like an outsider. For example: the Soundgarden guitarist has lived in Seattle, a city infamously addicted to coffee, for more than four decades, but only started drinking the stuff himself during lockdown. “I was pretty against-the-grain to my Seattle friends, who always wanted to meet up at coffee shops,” he grins, cradling a freshly brewed cup of java in his kitchen. “My girlfriend in the 80s and 90s even worked at the original branch of Starbucks and made coffee with a French press every morning. But I drank tea, because my parents are Indian.”

Thayil’s Indian heritage also set him apart from his peers. In his new memoir, A Screaming Life, he writes that when he and bassist Hiro Yamamoto formed Soundgarden in 1984, the group was “two-thirds Asian”, and that “as liberal and accepting as the punk scene was, it was still largely white, and I was ever aware of that”. Nevertheless, Soundgarden went on to become pioneers of Seattle’s grunge movement, a multiplatinum-selling, critically acclaimed, Grammy-winning group whose breakthrough hit, Black Hole Sun, transcended their gnarly milieu to become an enduring anthem.

Former US soccer player Merritt Mathias looks at times when the beautiful game has been a political football. Plus, a deep dive into who is funding Reform UK

Former US soccer player Merritt Mathias (pictured above) and journalists Musa Okwonga and Julio Ricardo Varela are a fascinating team of “football/soccer time-travellers”. They trace the history of how global power has tried to influence the game and make it political. After setting the scene with musings on this year’s World Cup, they first look at the 1934 tournament in Mussolini’s Italy, which Uruguay boycotted. Hollie Richardson
YouTube and Spotify, episodes weekly

As she prepares to mark 70 with a birthday concert, the musician talks about her destructive mindset – and the steps she took to finally make sense of her life and music’s part in it

It was 2023. The holiday of a lifetime, in Australia, had begun, after two weeks at the Australian festival of chamber music, in which I’d played viola in several of my own works. I had fretted about this for months, not really believing that I could stand up as a soloist and deliver. Even as a full-time viola-player in the 80s, I avoided solo playing – always feeling more at home in larger chamber groups. But as my husband Peter and I set off on our holiday, I was euphoric. I had performed with the marvellous young pianist Joseph Havlat, with the legendary accordionist James Crabb and virtuoso trumpeter David Elton – and all had gone well.

But then came a horrible realisation: I had not asked for the concerts to be recorded. This had been a moment in my life that would never be repeated. And I hadn’t captured it. I sank into despair. The fact that this is a pattern in my thinking didn’t make it any less painful: the more wonderful the event, the more likely I am to find regrets to attach to it. It is a destructive mindset I have learned to live with, but for years I had no idea why my head seemed compelled to ruin every joyful memory.

Tired, emotional and besieged by fans and enemies alike, by 1966 the Fab Four were ready to quit touring for good. A new collection of images by rock photographer Jim Marshall captures their last gigs

The Beatles played their last official concert on 29 August 1966, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Jim Marshall’s pictures capture the group at a pivotal moment, when they are already feeling nostalgia for what they are leaving behind.

Two months earlier, the Beatles had finished precording Revolver, a glittering collection of pop gems. The next day they boarded a plane to begin a global tour during which they would play nothing from it. They were not being perverse; it was simply that none of the songs lent themselves to live performance. On stage, they were a four-piece band. They could hardly play anything as complex as Eleanor Rigby or Tomorrow Never Knows to tens of thousands of fans.

This bleak but brilliant tale of enigmatic alien entities and slow social collapse exposes the terrifying insecurity of life right now

M John Harrison’s prose has thrilled me since I was a teen. It has thrilled others, too, including Angela Carter, Deborah Levy and Robert Macfarlane, but snobbery about the genres in which he made his mark – science fiction and fantasy – has hindered the respect his achievement deserves. His rigorously realistic novel Climbers, published in 1989, looked as though it might change that, but subsequent work has remained genre-fluid and uncompromisingly peculiar.

In the 1970s and 80s, he wrote stories about Viriconium, a fabled city crumbling into decadence and anarchy. These swashbuckling yet sinister tales functioned as escapist adventures for readers who preferred a far-flung nightmare to the contemporary humdrum. But in the 21st century, the world we inhabit has become utterly fantastical and Harrison has no need to revisit Viriconium; his anarchic, disintegrated metropolis is London and The End of Everything is set in an unnamed town on the Kent coast.

What does it mean to push the boat out, and can peacocking be more than just a beautiful gesture?

A friend’s mother once told me that for a couple of years in the 1980s – as the Conservatives were waging war on the miners and she spent late nights at Marxist-feminist reading groups – she wore an almost daily uniform of jeans and a white T-shirt. On her wedding day she broke with habit and put on a dress she had bought, at great expense to her, that was fun, sexy and, although she didn’t use this word, flamboyant. The next week at the school she taught in she saw a colleague wearing it. “Nice dress,” she said. “It’s OK for work,” her colleague replied, “but I wouldn’t wear it out.”

I found myself recalling this anecdote as I read Jack Parlett’s memoir-cum-cultural history of our attempts to push the boat out. To make any effort is to risk embarrassment, to be seen either as ridiculous or hopelessly naive. One way to avoid those charges is to use playful or cynical irony. Parlett finds examples of this in Oscar Wilde and what the cultural critic Susan Sontag once described as camp, a worldview obsessed with artifice and performance. Although Flamboyance is not a polemic, it’s clear that its author sees something lacking in these efforts at self-fashioning. The book is couched as an alternative; Parlett presents flamboyance as a model for how to live a life that not only “burns with a resistant energy” but “puts politics back into the picture”. In practice, this means that he has little patience for the notion of art for art’s sake; he insists, for example, that there is no making sense of flamenco without understanding the history of fascism in Spain.

The Pulitzer-winning author of Less has crafted a breezy confection of fish-out-of-water wit, insecurity and self-discovery set in an Italian paradise

‘There’s a place in Italy in need of someone. Why don’t you look into that?” Inspired by his two-year stint directing a writers’ residency, the Santa Maddalena Foundation outside Florence, with these words American author Andrew Sean Greer launches a hapless, clueless innocent into the Tuscan hills and the embrace of its eccentric aristocracy, in the person of the eponymous Coco, Baronessa Lisabetta.

Variously known as “our young man”, Gio and Giovedi, Villa Coco’s narrator is here to fill the post of “adjutant” for the Baronessa. His duties include pruning roses, emptying drains, hunting the Baronessa’s mortal enemy, the pine marten, and cataloguing the dilapidated Villa Coco’s contents. Among the camel saddles and hat racks, he is assured, lurk priceless works of art, including a Picasso and a Botticelli. He joins a staff consisting of a Sri Lankan cook, her husband and a Lebanese factotum; they share in the sisyphean task of keeping Villa Coco going, and the Baronessa out of harm’s way.

Our rigid eating habits date to the Industrial Revolution – it’s time to embrace culinary spontaneity

‘One of the stupidest things in an earnest but stupid school of culinary thought is that each of the three daily meals should be ‘balanced’.” So argues American food writer MFK Fisher in her 1942 book How to Cook a Wolf. She goes on: “In the first place not all people need or want three meals each day. Many of them feel better with two or one and one-half, or five.”

Fisher wrote her book ostensibly as a guide on how to feed yourself pleasurably and nourishingly during a period of food shortages caused by war, but there is much in her insightful advice to inspire and provoke us today. More than 80 years later, threats to the sacred breakfast-lunch-dinner mode of eating can still make the news: “A nation of snackers: Britons no longer eat three meals a day”, gasped one recent headline in the Times. Deviations from the “standard” model are the subject of research by academics and health professionals, and food retailers commission studies in an attempt to understand (and shape?) when and how customers consume their food.

Hundreds of video games were shown at June’s annual bonanza. After watching more than 15 hours of showcases, our video games editor picks the highlights

The sequel to a revered 2014 horror game from British developer Creative Assembly: this time you must evade the xenomorph on the surface of a storm-ravaged colony world.

Released just before the World Cup kicks off, this upstart football game is positioning itself as a credible alternative to EA Sports FC

This month something extremely unusual happened in the video game world: someone launched a new football game. It used to be that the market could support a vast array of contenders, from arcade kickabouts such as Super Sidekicks and Hat Trick Hero, to serious simulations named Actua Soccer or This Is Football, to eccentric oddities such as Namco’s LiberoGrande which made you experience the whole match as a single onfield player.

For the past decade plus, however, the scene has been dominated EA’s Fifa series, now EA Sports FC. With the exception of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer, now eFootball, there have been few competitors – and few plucky upstarts.

90s PlayStation fans, rejoice: California studio Toys for Bob is making Spyro: Realms Beyond, intended to ‘inspire love, joy and laughter’

As the gaming mascots of millennial childhood have been resuscitated one by one for a nostalgic audience, one has remained notably absent: 1990s PlayStation hero Spyro. A new game starring the purple dragon was announced at tonight’s Xbox Game Showcase – the first original title since 2008. Called Spyro: A Realm Beyond, it is being developed by studio Toys for Bob in California and will be released in spring 2027 on Xbox, PlayStation 5, PC and Nintendo Switch 2.

It features a freshly redesigned Spyro with his trademark quiff, voiced by Tom Kenny, the original star of the games. Unlike in the original Spyro titles, players will be able to take flight at any time. “[We’re] leaning into the true capabilities of being a dragon,” explains creative director Lou Studdert. “It’s really engaging … the player is making decisions how they fly. They are diving down to sustain speed. They are using fire-breath to light campfires, to create an updraft to get lift before flapping their wings.”

PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox; Yacht Club Games
This brilliant adventure creates a whole world from one character with a unique ability

You could mistake Mina the Hollower for something found on the liquid-crystal display of a Game Boy Color around the turn of the millennium. Like the pocketable Zelda and Pokémon games of the time, it presents a kind of snow-globe reality that you peer into from above, relying on imagination to decipher each two-colour clump of pixels into a tree, or a skeleton, or a cloaked mouse wielding a hammer twice her size.

This is Mina, our hero: she jumps, she moves at a clip, and she can delve downward into the soil or floorboards, tunnelling underfoot for a moment or two before popping back up, like an inflatable forcibly submerged in a swimming pool. This is her signature move, perfectly elastic in sensation – the way the released button springs back against your thumb! – and in application. The burrow-jump is an excavation tool, unearthing any treasure you happen to dig through, and a navigational one, used to hop over gaps, reach high-up spots and nose into tiny hidden spaces, where more treasure almost invariably awaits.

Wigmore Hall, London
The quartet communicated intimately and naturally in a programme of music by Shostakovich, Ravel and Stravinsky

A hushed chord sustained by the second violin, viola and cello. Fragments of a melody played as a distant memory by the first violin, which reached slowly upwards to a final crystalline harmonic. Pizzicato, diminuendo, silence. In this captivating performance by the Danish String Quartet, stillness settled over the closing portion of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No 3 in F Op 73 like heavy snow. Bow changes became impossibly seamless. The quartet’s silken tone appeared to exude eerily, disconnected from the basic friction of hair on string.

Such quiet control was all the more striking in the wake of jagged, impassioned solo interjections, deeply incised octave unisons and phrases pursued as if the musicians’ survival depended on it. There was articulation so spiky it was percussive – all contact, no resonance – and passages that sounded symphonic in their velveteen richness. Yet there were also moments of polite levity and luminous classicism. The atmospheric gearshifts were sometimes imperceptibly gradual, sometimes violent, but rarely visible: beyond describing itself as “relatively bearded”, the Danish String Quartet is not an ensemble given to choreographed spectacle.

Richmond theatre, London
Society tries to quash the quirks of a spirited eccentric in Peter Quilter’s new play that fails to go beyond its lead character’s unworldliness

There are some good jokes in Peter Quilter’s new play and Maureen Lipman knows how to land them. “Some do cocaine, I do cabaret,” she shrugs as Allegra, whose singing is annoying her neighbours. “The ironic thing is it’s the cabaret that gets up people’s noses.”

Allegra’s spontaneous serenades – at the butcher’s, the bakery, the hairdresser – are increasingly unwelcome in her village. Waiters march her out of restaurants, and even the local choirs have banned her. Her brother Ronen (John Middleton), worried for her health, employs a Czech care worker to make sure she eats. Every now and then Lipman gets a twinkle in her eye, a shimmy in her shoulders, and launches into a tune.

At Richmond theatre, London, until 13 June. Then touring until 4 July and at Harold Pinter theatre, London, from 8 July to 8 August.

White Cube Bermondsey, London
A body falls through the sky, figures flail and thrash, while sagging skin and brittle limbs are scrawled on every work. This is the German painter’s last collection – and it’s both brutal and beautiful

On one wall, a body falls calmly through a serene blue sky. On the opposite, splat, it’s landed with a thud on the blood-spattered mud. You don’t need to be an expert in image analysis to figure out what Georg Baselitz’s final paintings are about: death was coming for him, and he knew it.

Baselitz died in April aged 88 years old. He was one of the most influential, recognisable painters of his generation, and this body of work was his last. It’s impossible to look at these paintings and drawings and not see them through the lens of death. They feel like a final attempt to come to terms with life and what it has meant, and a desperate, furious, chaotic reckoning with the end of it all.

A new West End blockbuster puts Ol’ Blue Eyes in the spotlight and features the superstar’s hits including One for My Baby and Come Fly With Me. Take a first look

Photographs by Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Audience members said baby’s cooing and gurgling ruined Branagh’s return to the RSC after 30 years, with some seeking refunds

Boatswain! The opening scene of Shakespeare’s seminal play The Tempest, in which Prospero conjures up a violent storm to shipwreck his treacherous brother, is enough to wake up anyone – let alone a baby.

Audience members at a matinee performance of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production, starring Kenneth Branagh as Prospero, complained after a baby gurgled and cooed its way throughout the entire first half.

Enter our competition to snag lunch for two, an arty blanket or a year of free Tate entry as part of our partnership with Tate for Emin’s A Second Life exhibition

This summer, as part of our partnership with Tate for their Tracey Emin: A Second Life exhibition, we have an amazing prize up for grabs.

A Second Life is the largest ever exhibition of Emin’s work, and features career-defining sensations alongside works never before exhibited.

A special-edition one-year Tate Membership for you and a friend

Lunch for two at Tate Modern

A Tracey Emin Teacup and Pancake blanket (worth £200)

An exhibition catalogue for A Second Life

A Tracey Emin tote bag

A Tracey Emin cap

The promotion starts on Tuesday 9 June 2026 and closes at 11:59pm on Sunday 5 July 2026.

Open to residents of the United Kingdom aged 18 and over.

By entering this competition, you consent to the use of your personal data by the Guardian and Tate as set out in these terms and conditions and the Guardian’s privacy policy located here. The Guardian and Tate will not pass your details to any third party not referred to in these terms and conditions and/or the privacy policy located here.

Your information will be used to administer the promotion only in accordance with our privacy policy, located here, and Tate’s privacy policy, located here.

A special-edition one-year Tate Membership for you and a friend

Lunch for two at Tate Modern

A Tracey Emin Teacup and Pancake blanket (worth £200)

An exhibition catalogue for A Second Life

A Tracey Emin tote bag

A Tracey Emin cap

Short story collection All Around the World will be available for £1 in attempt to widen access to quality fiction

An initiative that aims to widen access to Booker prize-winning authors is set to launch this week, as research finds that more than a third of UK adults find it hard to read books through to the end.

The Booker Prize Foundation is launching a short story collection entitled All Around the World, including works by the Booker prize winners Anne Enright, David Szalay and Booker prize nominee Nadifa Mohamed. The collection was curated by another former winner, Roddy Doyle.

Musician who spliced jazz, funk and blues, including in a spell on a major label in the early 1980s, was celebrated as ‘fearless’ by his family

James Blood Ulmer, the US guitarist celebrated for his avant garde splicing of jazz, blues and funk, has died aged 86.

A statement on social media said he died on 3 June. “His music was fearless, and so was his spirit,” his family added in another statement.

She starred in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, had to stoop when she danced with Fred Astaire, then became world-famous – and a gay icon – in the original Batman series. But her life behind the scenes has been just as interesting ...

Julie Newmar is showing me her secret garden: an oasis of greenery around her house in Brentwood, Los Angeles, that is crammed with trees, flowers, sculptures and labyrinthine paths. It feels like a little piece of old-school Hollywood, untouched by the world outside. “Here, try one,” Newmar says as she leans over from her mobility scooter and picks me a blueberry from a bush. “Isn’t that nice?” It’s a well-maintained jungle of begonias, jasmine, geraniums, fruit trees, and above all, roses. She has 90 varieties, she says, including one named after her. “That one’s Marilyn Monroe,” she says, pointing out a creamy pink one. “Doesn’t it look like her flesh?” Monroe’s former house is just up the road, she mentions. Newmar has lived here for decades with her son, John, who has Down’s syndrome. They spend a lot of time out here.

“I would say my life is about beauty,” Newmar says. “I want to be a beautiful old woman; beauty in the garden; beauty in your behaviour, in your treatment of others. Because we all know that life’s a circle. All this stuff comes back. And in my 90s now, one has evolved. Big things happen now and they’re more in the metaphysical, they’re in the ‘what can I do for others?’ Because I’ve already done it for myself.”

Our writer found a surprisingly effective way to cut down his smartphone use. Plus, what to eat while watching the World Cup – inspired by all 48 teams

• Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

I recently learned through Apple’s Screen Time app that I was spending about eight hours a week on my phone browsing Reddit and Instagram. That’s 17.3 days a year spent consuming entertaining but ultimately pointless fluff. So my piece looking for solutions for phone addicts was highly personal.

The warning signs are if your phone is the first thing you look at in the morning and the last thing you look at in bed, says Prof Marcantonio Spada, emeritus professor of addictive behaviours and mental health at London South Bank University and chief clinical officer at Onebright, who I spoke to for my article.

Swimwear season is upon us – so here’s our pick of the most flattering, practical and comfortable costumes

• Jess Cartner-Morley’s June essentials

The trick with swimwear shopping is to stick to well-established criteria. Your priorities, of course, are comfort, support, coverage and price. But while your demure black one-piece might cover those bases, you shouldn’t settle for a costume that does the bare minimum.

Take tummy control swimwear. If you want support in that area, you don’t have to avoid bikinis. Try a high waist pair with a built-in control panel, or a tank top. Ruching is fairly standard these days (as is a tie at the side) and does the trick by tucking everything away. If in doubt, wear something printed to distract.

From spicy South African relish to Scottish tattie scones, food is an integral part of watching the beautiful game. Here’s how fans around the world fuel match day

• International recipes inspired by the World Cup

The biggest World Cup ever is surely going to mean the most ever watching parties around the world. With 48 countries competing, why not take inspiration from global cuisine to serve your friends and family something more adventurous than crisps and lager this summer?

Football, after all, is a sport of rituals – from fans wearing the same “lucky pants” to watch every game, to placing the name of an opposing team in the freezer – and that extends to eating and drinking, too. This doesn’t just mean booze; in nations where alcohol is prohibited, for example, tea and traditional sweets provide the social lubrication. South American fixtures are fiestas of churrasco (barbecues), chimichurri and a lot of cheering, while in regions where cafe culture thrives, baked goods and strong espresso are more commonly enjoyed during matches than half a cider and some pork scratchings – even at 3am.

Summer is here, and your May favourites show you’re feeling the heat

• Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Our on-again, off-again relationship with summer finally went official in May, with temperatures soaring across much of the UK. Many of us sweltered in the heat, ordering fans to try to get a good night’s sleep during the unprecedented heatwave, and shade shelters to keep us out of the sun’s glare.

But we also couldn’t help embracing that summer feeling, with many of your May favourites reflecting a little more time spent outside. Many of you got back to nature and went camping, with some of your fellow readers’ top camping products making the list, such as an ingenious washing line and a flying disc. From comfy holiday sandals to a cult favourite K-beauty SPF, these were your favourite things in May.

Keep things simple, outsource and prep ahead where you can, and never forget the golden rule of canapes …

My daughter is getting married: what vegetarian and vegan canapes can I make at least a day ahead?
Sue, by email
“Canapes need to be no more than two mouthfuls,” says Barney Desmazery, author of One Dish Four Ways, “unless you’re going to provide something to eat them from, but in my book they’re then no longer canapes.”

You’ll not want anything too labour-intensive. “Sue is going to be making them tens or hundreds of times over, so outsourcing some work with store-bought ingredients is an easy win,” says Richard Makin, AKA School Night Vegan and author of Stress-Free Dinners. Also remember that, as with most things in life, less is usually more: “Good ingredients always triumph over complicated recipes,” says Desmazery, who recalls a wedding he once attended in Liguria, Italy: “There was a round of aged parmesan with knives for guests to break off shards, and that was great.” Granted, parmesan isn’t one for Sue’s vegetarian/vegan spread, but you get the idea.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Served with a sauce full of sweetness and acidity – and a splash of sherry – this is a simple but deeply Spanish dish

Duck is one of those ingredients that feels rather special, but is actually very simple to cook. It’s something I always enjoy taking my time with, so it’s tender and full of flavour, and for me what really makes this particular dish are the cherries, even more so when they’re picotas from Extremadura, where I’m from. They’re small, sweet and full of sun, and a crop we wait impatiently for every year. When you cook with them, they bring a beautiful balance of sweetness and acidity to the rich duck, while the addition of a touch of amontillado transforms this simple dish into something that’s deeply Spanish. And remember, it’s always worth using a good sherry and enjoying the rest with the meal.

A simple harissa and cream cheese sauce brings a flourish to this easy dinner

One of my favourite kitchen shortcuts? Harissa and cream cheese mixed to make a sauce. The cream cheese rounds out the heat from the harissa, and together they work perfectly with everything from beans to pasta – or, in today’s case, both. Spring greens add welcome colour, and the whole lot is spiked with lemon at the end. It’s one of my most-made pasta dishes.

Dip tips: a good mix of North African spice, seasoning, colour and texture is guaranteed to get the palate excited for the meal ahead

Dips are never just accompaniments at our restaurant, the Barbary in central London, but a way of building flavour from the outset. They set the tone for the meal, so it’s important not only to have a variety of spice and seasoning, but also contrast in colour and texture, not least to get the palate excited straight away. These early-summer dips, inspired by the former Barbary Coast (Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia), are all best served with grilled flatbread, seeded crackers and fresh vegetables. The kaha kaha and machluta dips are both somewhere between a dip and a salad, and go especially well with grilled chicken, while the fava is good with grilled fish.

Like many couples, my husband and I bickered over who would do what and who did more. We came up with a radical solution

It was when my second child was born in 2021 that I realised I needed a new system for parenting. We were coming out of lockdown, and I was tired and overwhelmed. During the pandemic, my husband and I had built our own mini unit in the UK, as our families lived in the US. I had decided to start my own literary agency as soon as my daughter was old enough to start nursery at six months. It wasn’t ideal timing, but I wanted to start as soon as possible.

I approached finding a parenting system the way I think many women of my generation do, with the same intensity that we would have approached a school dissertation. I decided to crowdsource my research: I watched videos of home-schooling mums in the US demonstrating their morning routines, I read every parenting book I could, I listened to podcasters interviewing mothers who seemingly “had it all”, and listened to others who argued that “having it all” was impossible.

Chronicling your humdrum, solitary life has become an online trend. It’s certainly perplexing. Is it also empowering?

Name: Loneliness influencers.

Age: A few months old.

He walked out of his way to get me on to the right street, then handed me the brolly saying, ‘Here, you take this’

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

It was bucketing down, absolutely pouring. I was on my way to a birthday dinner but got lost in central Sydney’s labyrinth of streets, so I ducked into an internet cafe to look up directions to the restaurant. I then wrote those directions down by hand – such were the times!

As I stepped out of the cafe, I realised just how bad the weather had become and how ill-prepared I was for the rain. As I stood waiting to cross the road, swiftly getting wet, a man waiting for the lights in the opposite direction offered up his big rainbow umbrella to share. I gratefully accepted and, still a little unsure of where I was going, asked if he knew the way to the restaurant.

Nicky and Dan share an outlook on life shaped by their experiences of loss – and it has ignited their sex lives
• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

I thought: I’ve found someone else who wants to live every moment like it’s their last – he gets it

Also: Anthropic advocates for a ‘pause’ on AI advancement – days after filing to go public on the US stock market

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, the US tech editor at the Guardian. Today we’re discussing Donald Trump’s neediness for AI and the contradictions of Anthropic’s safety-first posture.

OpenAI confidentially files for initial public offering on US stock market

Apple debuts revamped ‘Siri AI’ and new child safety features for iPhones and iPads

The Guardian view on children and the internet: rolling back big tech’s untrammelled power | Editorial

Silicon Valley including Meta has embraced Maga politics, says Nick Clegg

Bernie Sanders’ AI sovereign wealth fund plan is good. But we think this is better | Nathan E Sanders and Bruce Schneier

Majority of US’s new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land

Billions spent and hypothetical returns: the AI boom explained with six charts

‘A driver of political violence’: how the breakneck AI boom is fueling anti-tech extremism

The line is vital for our elderly relative’s care, but after 20 calls BT seems unable to resolve the problem

My elderly aunt, who lives alone, has been unable to receive incoming calls for more than two months after BT switched her analogue service to Digital Voice.

Her care is overseen by a rota of relatives who check on her and arrange medical appointments and in-home help.

Bereaved relatives have been bombarded with calls, emails and letters addressed to the deceased

ScottishPower sent a debt collection letter to my house demanding £130 owing on my late brother’s gas account. I am his sole executor and had informed it of his death.

The company, meanwhile, owed a £430 credit on his electricity account. It eventually paid this with a cheque issued in my late brother’s name, which could not therefore be cashed.

Buyers are ripped off after assuming online stores were genuine because they are recommended by an AI tool

You want to buy a new bag and so you ask ChatGPT for help. You have always liked Russell & Bromley so you ask ChatGPT what is popular there at the moment.

The artificial intelligence (AI) assistant gives you cross body, shoulder, casual and formal options with the prices listed beside them. You click through from the sources to what looks like the official Russell & Bromley site and buy your new bag, which is conveniently on sale.

Influencers often brand sugar as inherently harmful – but not all sweet foods are created equal

‘It’s a common myth,” says Dr Emily Leeming, a dietitian at King’s College London – and one that thrives on social media. The confusion, she says, often comes from people cutting out sugary foods and feeling better. But that can be because removing ultra-processed sweet treats improves the overall quality of a diet (making more room for wholefoods).

Leeming says influencers who call sugar “toxic” often see it as inherently harmful – solely responsible for weight gain, poor blood sugar control and heart problems. But in controlled studies where calorie intake is kept the same, diets high in sugar don’t appear to worsen weight loss, metabolism or key health markers. “It’s not ideal nutritionally if you’re missing out on fruits, vegetables and whole grains,” Leeming says, “but sugar isn’t in itself directly harmful in that context.”

Doctors say diagnosis is usually clinical and doesn’t rely on a blood test, with symptoms often starting in the mid-40s

There’s a special frisson to period changes in your mid-forties. Every deviation from your usual pattern can feel like a harbinger of the menopause transition, also known as perimenopause.

One might spend years staring at their underwear, wondering: am I or aren’t I?

Keren Landman MD is an independent health reporter who is also trained as an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist, with experience serving as a disease detective at the CDC and conducting HIV and malaria research in resource-poor countries. Her public health newsletter is called Landmansplained

Drug that stops cancer cells hiding and a breakthrough for pancreatic cancer among highlights from Asco conference – but there were also notes of caution

Doctors, scientists and researchers shared new research about ways to tackle cancer at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco) annual meeting, the world’s largest cancer conference.

The event in Chicago, attended by 40,000 health professionals, featured more than 200 sessions and 2,700 poster presentations on this year’s theme, “the science and practice of translation: improving cancer outcomes worldwide”. Here are the five biggest takeaways.

As demand for cobalt, gold and other minerals grows, mining is accelerating deforestation in the Congo basin – and increasing the risk of deadly Ebola outbreaks

For decades after the discovery of Ebolavirus in 1976, outbreaks of the disease were relatively small and contained, affecting a few hundred people at most.

Not any more. In recent years, outbreaks of Ebola have been much larger, affecting thousands and even tens of thousands of people across multiple countries. The 2014 outbreak of Ebola in west Africa infected more than 28,000 people in 10 countries on three continents. The current eruption, which began in early May and shows no signs of abating, has caused 363 confirmed cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has crossed into Uganda.

Sonia Shah is the author of five books including Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, and writes the newsletter Cross Pollinations on Substack

From France’s catwalk looks to Virgil van Dijk’s classic approach, these are the teams and players to watch

The 2026 World Cup may not kick off until Thursday, but the fashion tournament has already begun, as teams arrive at training camps across the US.

Fashion moments range from the outfits players wear to get to training, to the suits worn on planes and their training gear. The French team’s training camp in Clairefontaine became something of a catwalk this week thanks to the style of players such as Jules Koundé and Kylian Mbappé. Meanwhile, brands including Loewe, Gabriela Hearst, Patta and the rapper Drake’s Nocta have worked with teams on suiting and training gear.

A higher price does not necessarily mean better fabric, fairer pay for workers or greater sustainability. To guarantee you’re buying ethically, experts say, you need to dig a little deeper

Does paying more for a T-shirt mean that it’s more likely to be ethically made?

In short (sleeves): no. People who spend their time investigating fashion companies’ supply chains and employment practices seem united in the conclusion that money cannot necessarily buy us a clear conscience.

The sundress is back – here’s how to make it short but not (too) sweet

One sunny day recently, I looked around and realised that every woman in my vicinity was wearing the same dress. Not the same dress, exactly. But the same dress. A maxidress, colourful but in a tasteful sort of way. Floaty, probably with a tiered skirt. Wholesome and vaguely rustic, but also a bit fancy. You know the dress I mean, because if you have been at any outdoor event between 2019 and about last Thursday, you have had the same experience. The maxidress has colonised summer dressing, and it’s out of control.

So I am here to tell you that the maxidress must die. Ha! Not really, but also sort of yes, really. It started so well. When the maxi first landed, it beguiled us all. Floor-length, after all, was new fashion territory for anyone born after about 1965, so it felt fresh and exciting, plus you could go to a party in flat shoes and not have to shave your legs. Result! But somewhere down the line the maxidress has got a bit Motherland. It has become a garment that somehow represents the tense negotiation between prettiness and exhaustion that defines modern womanhood. A dress you wear for a holiday selfie that you retake 14 times before posting on Instagram with a joie-de-vivre caption.

Think self-tan is too much effort – or too risky? Not any more. The latest products are so simple to use you can just go with the glow

I can’t be without a facial self-tan in spring/summer. Keen to offload heavier coverage foundations that can slip, slide and suffocate in the sunshine, I reach for a subtle tanner as a warmer, lighter and, truly, easier base layer for makeup.

People wrongly imagine self-tan to be too effortful, fiddly and risky, and understandably wonder where to slot it into their skincare routine, but a new crop of facial self-tanners simplifies both these issues.

Matosinhos was built on fish, but today its retro seafood restaurants and canneries sit alongside great art spaces, museums and landmark architecture

This once declining industrial city is on the up, but not so much that it has been ruined – yet. See it now, mid-gentrification, before its humble seafood restaurants become overpriced and its beautifully curated museums and galleries overrun.

The newly designated Joyce Country and Western Lakes Unesco Geopark in Galway and Mayo celebrates a 700-million-year geological history that has produced a unique terrain and rich cultural heritage

‘If you take all these springs together in terms of flow, it’s by far the largest in Ireland, and one of the biggest systems in the world,” said Dr Benjamin Thébaudeau, geologist for the newly designated Unesco Joyce Country and Western Lakes Geopark in western Ireland.

Over a few days, I discovered that this massive system of limestone springs and caves is the engine that drives this landscape, in the same way as an underground train network powers a city. It’s a place where rivers disappear into limestone fissures and subterranean lakes, and where roads twist through drowned valleys beneath mountains shaped by fire and ice.

Rallying the kids can be chaotic and frustrating, but from Interrailing all the way to Turkey to Vespa rides in Naples, these trips brought families together

Finland has been named the world’s happiest country for nine years running, but arriving in Helsinki, dishevelled from one of my first flights with my nine-month-old baby, I was less interested in national rankings and more in having a nice nap. My husband, Jake, and I had emerged from the fog of newborn life and the idea of a holiday felt possible again. My ambitions were small: a sunset beer, a walk in the woods, reading a few pages of my book uninterrupted.

A week-long mountain trek with two young children felt like an ambitious undertaking – but they loved every minute

It’s said the 19th-century Parisian flâneur, intent on not rushing past the beauties of the street, would take a tortoise on a lead to set the pace. I thought about this as my donkey bent his head to another thistle and I turned my attention to the view, waiting for him to finish. Every way I looked, layers of mountains receded in deepening shades of eggshell blue. There were no sounds but the wind, the squeals of marmots and the giggles of my two young kids. I was extremely, uncomplicatedly happy.

Our donkeys were on loan from Burrotrek, a small outfit run by Swiss-born Denise Wirth. Twenty years ago, Denise spent four and a half months walking the Camino from Switzerland to Santiago de Compostela with two donkeys. She liked Spain, and she loved donkeys, so she settled on the idea of offering donkey treks in the Pyrenees. She has not looked back. For much of the year she is based where she settled, near Cadaqués, and offers a variety of self-guided itineraries through the vineyards in the foothills and along the Mediterranean coast, with trips lasting between a day and a week. But for the summer months, when temperatures soar, she relocates with her donkeys to Cal Jan de la Llosa in the province of Lleida, a gorgeous ruin of a farm several miles up an unpaved track. From here, she lends her animals to people who, for whatever reason, have a romantic notion of what it might be like to take a donkey up a mountain.

The theory is that breathing near your plants releases carbon dioxide, boosting photosynthesis and growth

The problem
We’ve all done it. Walked past a drooping fern, crouched down and given it a few encouraging words (whether you admit it to other people is a different matter). We are told it’s actually good for our plants, so should we all be chatting away to them to help them thrive?

The hack
Speaking to your plants is said to encourage growth. This is because breathing near them releases carbon dioxide, which they absorb during photosynthesis. More CO2 means faster, healthier growth.

A great big bear of a dog, Chewy the newfoundland is always there to rescue us if we fall in the water, or if my 96-year-old grandma needs a hand

I got Chewy, short for Chewbacca, when he was eight weeks old – he was this giant ball of a newfoundland puppy. I live in North Carolina and we drove five hours to Georgia to get him. It was love at first sight, but I never expected how much of a role he would play in my family.

Chewy was the craziest puppy, very clumsy and goofy. He grew so quickly – he went from 10lb (4.5kg) to 100lb (45kg) in the first 10 months. Now aged four, he’s calmed down quite a bit and looks like a big, fluffy, long-haired bear. He’s enormous – you just want to hug him.

The answer to today’s puzzle

Earlier today I set this elegant number puzzle. Here it is again with a solution.

Nose to tail

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions explores a topical issue of personal cybersecurity

• Readers reply: If an alien asked you: ‘What is music?’ what would you play for them?

I’ve been struggling to get my head around the idea that a passkey, which can be a PIN on your phone, or facial recognition, can be safer than using a complicated password, and two factor authentication.

I get that having something unique to your device, not stored on a company’s server is unphishable, and less hackable by cybercrims, but what if your phone is nicked and someone guesses the password? And what if you lose your phone?

There are more than one million young carers in the UK – with an average age of 12 – which is the equivalent of two kids in every school class. Do they feel supported? In Walthamstow, east London, we meet a group of carers as they are collected for a rare night off that brings a sense of community and a glimpse of fun for a few hours every few weeks. It’s hosted by Satvinder, a tenacious council worker who fights to improve the recognition of young carers in her borough and provides them crucial emotional support.

This film is released during Carers Week in the UK, a campaign that celebrates unpaid carers across the country and calls for better recognition and support for them.

This word for outdoing or outshining others originated in the manosphere, but is now thoroughly mainstream. Why is it so popular – and should we be worried about slang that arises from toxic subcultures?

Until recently, if someone had said “mog” to me, I probably would have assumed they were talking about the children’s book cat created by the late great Judith Kerr. If asked about “mogging” or being “mogged,” I would have been completely baffled. But for many members of gen Z and gen Alpha (or anyone who is just a bit too online), the slang term, which means to outdo or outshine others, is everywhere.

Mogging’s origins are in the manosphere, where it began as a verb derived from the acronym “Amog” (alpha male of the group). In misogynistic forums in the 2010s, to “mog” came to mean to outdo someone in terms of sexual desirability. Mogging has been adopted by “looksmaxxing” influencers such as Braden Peters, known online as Clavicular, who encourage men to try to alter their looks – sometimes in extreme ways – to increase their “sexual market value”. Such an influencer might talk of “frame mogging” another person in a photo or video – a variation on mogging that specifically refers to being more muscular.

Cockroach Janta party began as online joke but is growing into one of the most unexpected challenges to country’s rightwing government

The call out to the youth of India was simple: “Get ready to swarm the streets of Delhi with peaceful and loving dissent.” They came in their thousands.

The weekend marked the first public protest of the Cockroach Janta party (CJP), a movement that began as an online joke, but which has swiftly grown into one of the most unexpected challenges to the indomitable power of the country’s rightwing Narendra Modi government – driven by millions of discontented and disillusioned young people.

Andrew Sparrow has been writing the Guardian’s daily political live blog for more than 15 years. How does he cope with the relentless psychodrama of British politics?

On Monday at 14:12 BST, the Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow posted two sentences announcing one of the largest government document dumps in British political history:

The Cabinet Office has published the Mandelson files.
They are in three volumes.

Many people despair at the quality of governance in Britain at the moment, but in one respect we are living through a golden age; if you are interested in contemporary history, and learning about what actually happens at the heart of government, then you can now – sometimes – access the sort of information never available before …

Last month a minister compared [the documents being published today] to the evidence released as part of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. But the Chilcot inquiry took place in the era before WhatsApp, and it was publishing secret memos – intended for circulation within Whitehall. WhatsApp messages are a lot more personal; reading them is like being able to eavesdrop on a private conversation.”

How did you find it? Did it help in your efforts to find work?

Keir Starmer has announced a new AI work assistant tool dubbed a “job centre in your pocket” to help job seekers get into work.

In a speech at the start of London Tech Week, the prime minister said the new AI job tool will “help those out of work find the right jobs, create their CVs and get back into work”.

We’d like to hear about your favourite films made by the director and why you love them

On Sunday we published the best Steven Spielberg films chosen by directors, critics and super fans. Now we’d like to hear from our readers – what is missing from our list and which Spielberg movie means the most to you?

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

If you’re a millennial aged between 31 and 45, how do you feel about growing old in the UK?

If you’re a millennial aged between 31 and 45, how do you feel about growing old in the UK? We would like to hear about your experiences of the UK healthcare system, housing and income, and your thoughts on the future.

Healthcare: In your experience, has healthcare been reliable and efficient? Have you ever experienced significant delays in A&E for procedures, operations, or referrals?

Please let us know and we’d love to see your pictures too

Socks, trainers, sofas, cushions, the entire contents of your fridge - the list of things dogs will attempt to eat their way through is endless. And sometimes it gets weird. We want to hear from people who’ve witnessed their dog try to chew their way through the remarkable, the bizarre, the seemingly impossible – and lived to bark the tale! Pictures are a must.

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

Wake up to the top stories and what they mean – free to your inbox every weekday morning at 7am

Scroll less, understand more: sign up to receive our news email each weekday for clarity on the top stories in the UK and across the world.

Explore all our newsletters: whether you love film, football, fashion or food, we’ve got something for you

Get smart, sustainable shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox, every Sunday

The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.

A weekly email from our star chefs featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas

Each week we’ll send you an exclusive newsletter from our star food writers. We’ll also send you the latest recipes from our star chefs, stand-out food features and seasonal eating inspiration, plus restaurant reviews from Grace Dent.

Sign up below to start receiving the best of our culinary journalism in one mouth-watering weekly email.

Upgrade your space today, with eight emails packed with tips to brighten up your home - whatever your budget

Embrace your space: the Guardian’s House to Home newsletter is bursting with tips and tricks to help you boost your bedroom and give your living room some love.

Sign up any time, and get eight emails direct to your inbox every Sunday morning.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world