http://www.guardian.co.uk/

The Guardian

My mother was forced to give me up for adoption. But when we finally met decades later, it was far from a fairytale ending (sam., 06 juin 2026)
Thirty years after my parents were pressured into placing me with an adoption agency, I finally reconnected with them. But it was nothing like the neat stories you see on TV One morning in late September 2023, I discovered by chance that my birth mother had been killed almost a year earlier. The revelation came while I was searching my work email for a stray message. In the bin folder, amid a slurry of irrelevant press releases, lay an unopened email, ­flagging a long-forgotten Google alert I had set up for her name, Susan Barras. We had been estranged for almost 15 years, so this in itself provoked trepidation. I had cut contact with her when our relationship had finally become too fraught and emotionally ­exhausting for me to continue. Opening the email, I realised with shock that the alert had been triggered by a probate notice about her estate. Susan was only 69 when she died, and my first thought was that the breast cancer she was being treated for when we were in touch had returned. My second was the realisation that both my birth parents were now dead – my birth father had died of liver failure in late 2018, aged 70. But then the unfamiliar name listed on the probate notice, Suzann Doyle, captured my attention. Underneath this was confirmation that my birth mother had changed her name. Her address at the time of her death posed further questions. It was not that of the large detached house in Guildford I had visited just once, a few months after we were reunited, where she had lived with her husband. This address was for a tiny one-bed retirement flat overlooking Guildford train station. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Predator or prey? The confounding case of the missing sea eagle (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
The UK’s biggest bird of prey has been compared to a flying barn door. So how can one fitted with a satellite tracker disappear in prime grouse-shooting country? The six police officers arrived at the Snilesworth estate in two pickup trucks last week, according to one account. They asked to go up on the moors, a source said, and “so off they went”. A vast expanse of spectacularly undulating lands on the western edge of the North York Moors, Snilesworth is globally renowned for its grouse, partridge and pheasant shooting. It is known locally for attracting “rich people from London in helicopters and blacked-out SUVs”. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Power and glory: World Cup promises a spectacle impossible to ignore (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Ten years in the making, the greatest show on earth is set for a six-week sprint through Trump’s America This is the end, of our elaborate plans, the end. Of everything that stands, the end. It seems fitting that football’s latest stopping point on its voyage upriver into the blank parts of the map, a mission so choice that when it’s over you may never want another one, should be a World Cup overseen by a haunted-looking man with a messiah complex, out there operating beyond the pale of acceptable sporting governance, the warrior-poet Swiss lawyer football never knew it needed. The 2026 World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada will finally kick off in earnest on 11 June at the Azteca Stadium. From there the tournament will unspool across 39 days, 16 host cities, 104 matches and a 6,000-mile span from Mexico City in the south to Vancouver in the north to Boston in the east. Ten years in the making, the end product of a century of powerplay and hyper-grift, this is by almost any metric not just the largest sporting event ever staged, but the largest event, as we say in America, period. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

When I claim my black Britishness in this age of intolerance, here is the music that goes with it | Hugh Muir (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
A wonderful thing happened on a visit to the new V&A East: a very public, taxpayer-funded soundtrack of my life This is surreal. I’m standing in the new home of one of Britain’s most historically august cultural institutions, and it looks and feels for all the world like a silent disco. There is a middle-aged white woman to my right, staring intently ahead, swaying gently and bobbing her head as rhythmically as the giant headphones covering her ears will allow. Behind me there is a young black woman, her hair pulled back to give the headset and whatever she is listening to untrammelled passage. She is swaying, rising a bit, then falling: in the room but in a world of her own. Behind me, I see a muscular guy of mixed heritage; his ripped torso is still, his head of braided hair is not, and his face gently creases as he smiles about what he is hearing. My feet are planted, but I’m aware that I’m giddy, as if slightly drunk. There we are, imbibing different musical clips of different things in different bits of semi-darkened galleries, and yet it is a shared endeavour. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Blind date: ‘It felt like taking part in Blind Date was a lifelong thing she wanted to do’ (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Laurine, who works in forensics, meets Theo, a financial adviser. They are both 27 What were you hoping for? Love! Or someone new, great conversation, a free dinner and feature in my favourite Guardian column. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

How a Starbucks marketing stunt spiralled into mass boycotts in South Korea (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
A botched tumbler promotion on the anniversary of a pro-democracy massacre unleashed a boycott, police investigation and political firestorm It was a PR nightmare: customers smashing Starbucks branded tumblers and mugs as fans deleted loyalty apps and cashed out prepaid balances. Amid the uproar, government ministries cut ties with the coffee chain and apology notices were pasted on Starbucks stores across South Korea. The initial shock may have passed, but the anger remains. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Labour deputy says Farage is a threat to democracy and calls for misinformation clampdown (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Lucy Powell calls for tougher laws to tackle misinformation and says Reform UK has benefited from bots and troll farms Reform UK is destabilising British democracy by spreading divisive material that is being amplified by bots and troll farms, Labour’s deputy leader has said. Lucy Powell called for tighter laws on social media giants to tackle misinformation, arguing the online space was “open to wealthy individuals, and bad state actors”. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Starmer suggests US ‘trying to interfere in our democracy’ over Nowak claims (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Prime minister’s office responds after JD Vance blames British teenager’s death on mass migration How Britain was rocked by Henry Nowak’s murder – and why the US intervened ​Keir Starmer has suggested the US is trying to interfere in British democracy after JD Vance, the US vice-president, blamed the murder of the British teenager Henry Nowak on mass migration. The prime minister’s office responded after the senior Republican politician claimed in a post on X that Nowak would be alive “if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it”. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Thames Water should be nationalised, says Andy Burnham (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Exclusive: Labour’s Makerfield byelection candidate advocates public ownership of water companies as he prepares for potential leadership bid Thames Water should be nationalised, Andy Burnham has said, revealing public ownership of water companies would “absolutely be an option” under his potential leadership of the Labour party. Burnham, Labour’s candidate in the Makerfield byelection, has previously called for “greater public control” over the companies. In an interview with the Guardian, he has confirmed this could mean nationalisation. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Armenia heads to polls amid Russian pressure and threat of ‘Ukrainian scenario’ (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Relationship between Vladimir Putin and traditional ally has slowly unravelled under current PM Nikol Pashinyan The bottling line at the Abovyan cognac factory in Armenia is running at full tilt. Women in white coats and hairnets work the conveyor with practised speed – labelling, stacking, loading pallets – racing to fill a truck. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Gulf countries targeted by Iran after exchange of fire with US, in latest threat to fragile ceasefire (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Kuwait and Bahrain issued air raid alerts as Iran targeted American bases, after the US shot down drones and struck Iranian radar sites The US and Iran exchanged a series of strikes on Saturday morning, in the latest flare-up to threaten the ceasefire in the Middle East war. The US military said it shot down four Iranian drones that were launched toward the strait of Hormuz and struck coastal surveillance radar sites in response. Iran followed hours later, saying it targeted US bases in the region, with Kuwait and Bahrain both issuing air raid alerts. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Victoria Derbyshire investigated by BBC after complaints about behaviour (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Allegations of bullying by Newsnight host not upheld after case emerges from 2025 workplace culture review The BBC presenter Victoria Derbyshire was the subject of an investigation over her behaviour, after multiple complaints were received by the broadcaster. It is understood that three complaints about the Bafta-winning Newsnight host were received, which came to light as part of the BBC’s campaign to improve its workplace culture after high-profile cases of inappropriate behaviour. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

US threatens to reconsider role in Bosnia and Herzegovina amid rift with Europe (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
US embassy in Sarajevo made threat after European states refused to back its preferred High Representative candidate A deepening US-European rift over the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina has broken open with a dispute over a top administrative post, leading to a US threat to “reconsider” its role in international peacekeeping. The American embassy in Sarajevo issued the threat after European states refused to back the US preferred candidate to become the new High Representative for the international community. At a meeting this week in Sarajevo of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) – a multinational group tasked with overseeing the implementation of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement – Washington supported an Italian diplomat, Antonio Zanardi Landi, while the UK, France, Germany and most European states backed France’s envoy to the Western Balkans, René Troccaz. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Essex woman jailed for life for poisoning baby son with cocktail of drugs (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Emma Barnett killed her one-year-old after a court ruling he be taken away from her A mother who poisoned her one-year-old son with a lethal cocktail of prescription medications added to milk in a baby bottle has been jailed for life for his murder. Emma Barnett, 36, killed her son Oakley before he could be taken into care after a family court hearing ordered that he be removed from her. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Former Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow diagnosed with Alzheimer’s (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Long-serving presenter talks about diagnosis in investigative documentary to be broadcast on 20 June The former Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, the Alzheimer’s Society has said. Snow, who presented his last news bulletin in December 2021, will take part in a documentary that will be broadcast on Channel 4 and in which he talks about his diagnosis. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Alien hunters update guidance on sharing news of possible intelligent life (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Experts stress need for transparency while aiming to prevent premature announcements and protect scientists Alien hunters have released fresh guidelines on how to handle potential signals from intelligent life beyond Earth, in the hope of avoiding an outburst of panic, misinformation and confusion if any are detected. While the idea of little green men may be a thing of the past, the possibility of intelligent civilisations elsewhere in the universe remains a serious topic among astronomers. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Removing ‘invisibility cloaks’ and safely skipping chemo: new weapons in war on cancer shared at US conference (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

How campaigners beat industrial farming in Denmark’s ‘pig election’ (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Mette Frederiksen’s new government promises overhaul for people – and animals – in home of ultra-intensive farming Like all new prime ministers, when Mette Frederiksen secured a third consecutive term as Denmark’s head of government this week, she promised her administration would take steps to “improve the everyday lives” of the country’s inhabitants. Unlike most new prime ministers, however, she specified that her left-leaning coalition’s policy programme would be not just for “the people who are in Denmark and the ⁠generations to come” but also “for the animals”. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Tim Dowling: I’m on an ebiking holiday in Romania. There will be blood (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
The country’s bears are one thing. Its tree roots are quite another. And then there is the gorse my wife tumbles into I’m on a plane, in the middle seat between my wife – on the aisle – and a stranger who is occupied on her phone. I too am occupied, with work I should have finished before we left. My wife, a nervous flyer, is in a restless mood. She snatches my laptop and begins typing. I wait, arms folded. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

The Alien Autopsy Scandal: this fascinating tale of a bizarre DIY hoax hits Spinal Tap levels of hilarity (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
A fake alien made by a Doctor Who sculptor, animal organs sourced from a butcher, an actual magician behind the camera … this outrageous story makes for a great watch If you had to be interviewed on film, how would you hope to come across? Attractive, honest, a good egg? Or pathologically shifty, to the point that audiences want to throw their shoes at the screen? I found myself unlacing my Doc Martens this week, watching a documentary about the biggest hoax of the last century. In 1995, a grainy film was released that purported to be of an autopsy conducted on a creature recovered from a crash site on military land in Roswell, New Mexico. The incident had long been hallowed in ufology, but no moving footage had ever been uncovered. You’ve seen it. Hazmat figures loom over a bulbous-headed humanoid, spreadeagled on the table. Its dead, oval eyes are black, mouth agape, belly distended. I saw the shocking footage again last night, or thought I did. It was actually my laptop screen going dark, after I fell asleep in front of Netflix. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

How the ‘Picasso of ponds’ went from shaping golf courses to making freshwater homes for wildlife (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Shaun Hancox has created scores of ponds for rewilding projects across Britain – and he says there’s a lot more to it than digging a hole He is known as “the Picasso of ponds” but the tableaux being created by Shaun Hancox in a boggy field in Somerset currently looks more like a building site. An orange and black excavator is rhythmically removing lumpy clay soil and sculpting it into brown banks. The result looks like a scar of bare earth on what was once green pasture – but the magic happens as soon as rain fills the newly created depressions. Plants seed swiftly, invertebrates and amphibians rapidly find the water, and life explodes. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Anthony Head brought gravitas to Buffy and everything else he touched | Jesse Hassenger (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
The late actor was a charming and funny father figure, and sometime singer, in the cult TV show, one of his many roles that showed just how much he could do Anthony Head, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Ted Lasso actor, dies aged 72 For years, fans eagerly anticipated the oft-floated idea of a spinoff from the cultishly beloved 1997-2003 TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As described by creator Joss Whedon, this miniseries would not follow beloved supporting characters like nerdy witch Willow, sardonic vampire Spike or laconic were-teen Oz. It would be called Ripper, and it would focus on the younger days of Rupert Giles, the school librarian and “watcher” character played by Anthony Head. Giles served as the tweedy mentor and father figure to Buffy, the woman chosen to keep vampires at bay, throughout the show’s seven seasons. Sadly, the show never came to pass – and now, with Head’s death at the age of 72, it probably never will, at least not with its signature star. (And probably not its creator, who has since faced multiple accusations of on-set misconduct.) But both creative and fan interest was consistently high; just think about that for a moment. This 90s-originated teen drama tantalized viewers with the promise of spinning off a token grownup character into his own adventures. To picture Buffy’s contemporaries following suit is downright laughable; consider the equivalent spinoff from Dawson’s Creek, for example. Would it star Jen’s Gram? The female teacher who committed statutory rape with Pacey? Even given the expanded possibilities of a more fantastical world, Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s aunts were never exactly in talks with the BBC, either. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘I’m down to one option’: bank customers left frustrated by latest closures (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Apps intended to replace branches have been hit by outages, as a poll finds most Britons want high street services With its windows blanked out, a poster pinned to the door of the Staines branch of Lloyds Bank tells its customers they can do their “everyday banking with our mobile banking app”. But not today. On Wednesday, when the Guardian visited Staines, they wouldn’t have got very far because the Lloyds group was battling an IT outage that left thousands of its customers unable to make payments or send money. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Horror’s Hollywood takeover is an exciting moment – but won’t someone think of the squeamish? (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
In this week’s newsletter: The unprecedented success of Backrooms and Obsession has made stars of their creators. For the good of cinema, however, they’d do well to look beyond the genre going forward • Don’t get The Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Did you go to the cinema this week? If you did, that rumbling you felt wasn’t down to those spicy nachos you ate. Well, it might have been – but equally, you may just have been experiencing the tectonic shift suddenly under way in Hollywood. This was the week that two twentysomething YouTubers took over the box office with their horror films, upending all the industry rules and preconceptions in the process. At the top of the tree sits Kane Parsons, a 20-year-old phenom whose debut film, Backrooms – an A24 psychological chiller based on his own webseries, and inspired by a “creepypasta” horror story shared across the internet – has grossed a scarcely fathomable $140m worldwide in its first week. Just beneath Parsons, though a shade older at 26, is Curry Baker, a YouTube comic whose supernatural horror movie, Obsession, has enjoyed an almost unheard of week-on-week-on-week rise in ticket sales, and is on course to be one of the most profitable films of all time, having been made for a tiddly $750,000. That the pair have nudged Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian and Grogu – a far more expensive movie that was expected to squat atop the box office for much of May and June – into third place only underscores what an unlikely cinematic revolution this is. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait review – the radiant, uncontainable star she always wanted to be (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
National Portrait Gallery, London The actor’s life in pictures, from mousey-haired teen to American icon to her shocking death at 36, beams with the charm that defined a century. But why aren’t we shown more of what lay behind the smile? I wanted to hate the National Portrait Gallery’s new blockbuster show, Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait. It represents two things that really should be binned: anniversary exhibitions (it marks Monroe’s 100th birthday) and exhibitions of celebrity portraits. Anniversaries rarely signify anything other than the passing of time, which is an inevitable and uninteresting fact of life. As for exhibitions of celebrity photographs – they’re like anniversary shows, only with faces. And yet … I didn’t quite hate this show, and the reason is Monroe herself. We first see her as Norma Jeane Baker, a regular-looking teenager with mousey brown hair, in a self-portrait taken in a photo booth in 1940. She then becomes the radiant, uncontainable, insanely glamorous film star, cheesecake pin-up and actor seen here in photographs, paintings, and excerpts from her films. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

From Masters of the Universe to Monteverdi: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
The cartoon favourite and Mattel toy He-Man battles Skeletor on the big screen, and Garsington continues its run of excellent early operas Masters of the Universe Out nowSwords and sorcery seem to be having a little bit of a moment, with the excellent Deathstalker remake a couple of months ago. Now Nicholas Galitzine flexes his muscles as the 1980s Mattel hero He-Man, with Jared Leto vamping as the evil Skeletor. Erupcja Out nowPete Ohs directed, produced, shot, edited and co-wrote this lo-fi hipster movie about Bethany (Charli xcx) and Rob (Will Madden), a young couple on holiday in Warsaw who reconnect with an old friend when a volcanic eruption prompts Bethany to re-evaluate what she wants from her life. Scary Movie Out nowBefore the concept pole-vaulted over the shark with the laugh-free binfires that were Date Movie, Epic Movie and Disaster Movie, the first Scary Movie films had a certain something: lewd, crude, but with some undeniable knockout gags. Now the original talents are back for a “rebooquel” parodying the likes of Terrifier 3, Ma and M3gan. Enzo Out nowRobin Campillo (120 Beats Per Minute) returns to co-write and direct the final film from his friend Laurent Cantet, who died aged 63 after starting to make this tale of a teenager (Eloy Pohu) from a rich family who pursues an unexpected future, training as a mason and falling for a Ukrainian builder (Maksym Slivinskyi). Catherine Bray Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

French Open finals, Monaco GP and World Cup warm-ups for England and Scotland – follow with us (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Palaeolithic cave paintings, life under a Delhi flyover and restaurants critics’ tips for ordering a perfect meal (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

From Cape Fear to Zoh Amba: the week in rave reviews (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Javier Bardem is at his menacing best in a wild remake of the psychological thriller, and the jazz sax maven surprises with raw country rock spirituality. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Romário: ‘I consider myself one of the greatest players ever. An 11 out of 10’ (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Brazil’s 1994 World Cup winner on being good without training, his political legacy and why he loves social media Few people’s interview list over the past year features Neymar, Robert Lewandowski, Xavi Hernández and Iker Casillas. But then not many interviewers have the pulling power of Romário. Thirty-two years after the former Brazil striker was crowned world champion and best player at the 1994 World Cup, he is travelling far and wide to speak with football greats for his YouTube channel. Romário began his “face to face with the man” project a year ago. “This whole Romário TV thing is a brand-new situation in my life,” he says. “I’m really happy, enjoying it. It’s so cool. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Uruguay World Cup 2026 team guide (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Uruguayans hope Marcelo Bielsa will have less of a rollercoaster of results so Federico Valverde can inspire them to reach the latter stages 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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘I don’t want to give my money to Fifa’: Toronto turns its back on the World Cup (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
For football fans in Canada, the initial prospect of the World Cup coming to town was thrilling – but hundreds of tickets remain unsold As far back as he can remember, football has long been a part of Lawrence Yee’s life. Growing up in a Canadian town where hockey was the dominant sport, he found community and passion in the game. The sport – and the full, at times devastating, spectrum of emotion that comes with fandom – has remained braided into adulthood. Nearly four years ago, when Fifa announced Toronto and Vancouver would join 14 other cities in hosting the World Cup, Yee was ecstatic. “Hearing the biggest stage, the highest competition, the biggest tournament in the world was coming into Toronto? I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for someone like me. Being able to live in the city and cycle to the venue? I knew I’d be the first in line for tickets.” Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Tuchel confident ‘sharp’ Kane is in perfect form to lead England at World Cup (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Head coach says Bayern Munich striker is in ‘top shape’ England face New Zealand in warm-up on Saturday Thomas Tuchel has said that Harry Kane is in top shape and ready to lead England to glory at the World Cup. The Bayern Munich striker has been short of fitness at previous major tournaments but he has enjoyed a brilliant season in Germany and has looked in peak physical condition in training this week. England have prepared for the intense heat expected at the World Cup by heading to Florida to acclimatise to the weather and have been working in testing conditions at their pre-tournament base in West Palm Beach. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

World Cup 2026: guide to all 1,248 players (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
Everything you need to know (and more) about every squad member. Click on the player pictures for more information Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘It hurts. I expected a different game’: Wiegman’s shock at Spain humbling (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
England likely to face World Cup qualification playoffs Manager calls for a reaction in final group match Sarina Wiegman said she wants to see a reaction from her Lionesses after England suffered their heaviest defeat in 17 years against Spain. It was a humbling evening for Wiegman and her team, who needed a win or a draw to qualify for the World Cup. Even a defeat by a single goal would have kept the chance of topping their qualifying group alive. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Emilio Gay rides his luck but passes his test of temperament for England | Andy Bull (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Test debutant opener enjoyed a few breaks but showed he could handle himself when the odds were against him to offer hope for a longer stay in role Emilio Gay lived three lives on Friday. The first ended in the 14th over, when he was on 20 and he leaned forward towards a ball from Matt Henry that zipped off the pitch, caught the edge of his bat and spat through the gap between first and second slip. The second finished in the 16th, when he had 24 and he played and missed another of Henry’s deliveries that jagged back and whacked into his front pad. The umpire gave him the benefit of the doubt, and New Zealand chose not to review it, a decision they were left regretting when moments later the TV replays showed they had been just as wrong as he had. The third, and last, came later in the afternoon session, when Gay had reached 57, the highest score anyone had yet made in a match where batting has been almost insuperably difficult. He reached for a ball from Nathan Smith that held its line and edged a fine catch behind to Tom Blundell. This time Gay had to go. He rolled his head back in regret and stared at the sky a while, no doubt asking why he had allowed himself to be suckered into playing a delivery which would have passed harmlessly by wide of off-stump, then turned and made the slow walk back towards the Long Room doors. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

NBA finals: Knicks within two wins of elusive title after holding off Spurs in Game 2 (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Brunson leads Knicks to second road finals win New York take 2-0 series lead back to Garden Spurs face uphill battle after home-court sweep The white-hot New York Knicks moved within two wins of their first NBA championship in more than half a century on Friday night, edging the San Antonio Spurs 105-104 in a Game 2 thriller to take a commanding 2-0 lead in the NBA finals before the series shifts to Madison Square Garden. After stealing Game 1 with a furious fourth-quarter comeback, the Knicks once again turned to Jalen Brunson when the game hung in the balance. The All-NBA guard sank the go-ahead free throw with 9.5 seconds remaining after a costly turnover by Spurs star Victor Wembanyama. Moments later, Wembanyama’s clean look from the elbow at the buzzer caromed off the back rim, allowing New York to become only the third team to win the first two games of an NBA finals on the road after the 1993 Chicago Bulls and 1995 Houston Rockets. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Zverev sets up French Open final with Cobolli and opportunity he cannot afford to miss (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Second seed wins semi-final 7-5, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 Cobolli through after Arnaldi withdraws due to virus Alexander Zverev moved to within one match of a long-awaited first grand slam title as he defeated Jakub Mensik, the Czech 26th seed, 7-5, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 to reach the French Open final for the second time. Zverev, the second seed and world No 3, will contest his fourth grand slam final on Sunday. The German lost his first grand slam final at the 2020 US Open in a fifth set tie-break against Dominic Thiem having led by two sets and served for the match in the fifth. He was then defeated by Carlos Alcaraz here in 2024 and Jannik Sinner in the 2025 Australian Open final. He will face the 10th seed Flavio Cobolli in the Italian’s first grand slam final after Matteo Arnaldi was forced to withdraw from their match due to a virus, a development that was announced just 25 minutes before the semi-final was due to begin. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘It’s like family’: team Bruce McLaren built is carved in his image as they mark 1,000th GP (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Driver died four years after founding McLaren but his legacy lives through his inspirational tenacity and team’s roll call of champions As the streets of Monaco echo to the roar of engines, history too will resonate long and loud in Monte Carlo this weekend. Allegiance be damned, it would take a heart of stone not to recognise McLaren’s achievement and contribution to the sport when the team that made their debut here in 1966 contest their 1000th grand prix. Bruce McLaren, the team’s founder, had brought his first F1 car, the M2B, to Monaco in 1966. On Thursday it was on the track once again, driven by their double world champion Mika Häkkinen to mark the team’s milestone race, having taken 203 victories, 13 drivers’ titles and 10 constructors’ championships. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Celtic to confirm appointment of Martin O’Neill after Robbie Keane backlash (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
O’Neill agrees one-year deal after successful return Keane had a managerial spell with Maccabi Tel Aviv Celtic are expected to confirm the appointment of Martin O’Neill as their permanent manager after the 74-year-old agreed a one-year contract to remain in Glasgow. O’Neill led Celtic to the domestic double during the second of two interim spells he undertook this season. Robbie Keane had been prominent in the thoughts of the Celtic hierarchy and held talks with Dermot Desmond, the club’s principal shareholder, earlier this week. But the potential appointment of Keane was met with a furious backlash by an element of the Celtic support, who objected to his managerial spell in Israel. Keane was in charge of Maccabi Tel Aviv before switching to Hungary and Ferencvaros, from whom he resigned at the end of May. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Real Madrid to launch €150m bid for Michael Olise if Florentino Pérez re-elected (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Bayern midfielder to be No 1 target in summer window Olise was watched by potential new manager Mourinho Real Madrid will launch a €150m (£130m) bid for Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise if Florentino Pérez wins re-election as the club’s president. The election is being held this weekend and Pérez is expected to beat his rival candidate Enrique Riquelme, whose promise to sign Erling Haaland has prompted a threat of legal action from Manchester City. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Football super agent Joorabchian’s £24m gamble has day of destiny at the Derby (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Ancient Egypt finally carries owner’s hopes at Epsom three years after huge spending spree at the Sales Many great gambles have been landed in the Derby down the years, from John Bowes’ bet on his horse, West Australian, in 1853 that won the equivalent of more than £5m today, to Raymond Guest’s £500 each-way on Sir Ivor at 100-1, a few months before his victory in June 1968 as the 4-5 favourite. And the 247th running of the Epsom Classic on Saturday could see another spectacular payoff, albeit without a bookie on the other side of the bet. Twenty months on from his three-day, £24m spending spree on yearlings at Tattersalls’ Book 1 sale in Newmarket in October 2024, the football super-agent Kia Joorabchian will be at Epsom to watch two of his big-money buys, Poker and Ancient Egypt, go to post for the premier Classic. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Prem team of the season: from teen with a sky-high ceiling to a stat-topping No 8 (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
The league has been a launchpad for players such as Noah Caluori while showcasing the best English rugby has to offer The final round of the regular Prem season is nigh, with the playoffs yet to come. Here is the Guardian’s 2025-26 team of the season with players needing to have appeared in at least nine league fixtures to get the nod. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Leaked WhatsApps, embarrassing emails: it’s bad for British politics that privacy is now dead | Simon Jenkins (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
The principle underlying the release of the Mandelson papers is that officials are always ‘on the record’ – but our leaders must be able to speak their minds freely Did you know a Cabinet Office minister commiserated with Peter Mandelson on his being sacked as ambassador to Washington, saying that he was “so sorry”? How could Darren Jones possibly sympathise with a friend who lost his job? Yet his sympathy was not even on the public record, in the 1500 pages of new revelations about the Mandelson affair. It appears to have been leaked from within Jones’s own department. So too was news of Keir Starmer’s own communications on WhatsApp. We learned that they are subject to an auto-delete function, erasing what he thinks or intends to do from hour to hour. It is an outrage against public accountability, so the thinking goes. When our leaders press send, we have the right to receive. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Britain is a swamp of lies and disinformation – and we got here on the Brexit bus | Jonathan Freedland (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Ten years after the vote, our economy is battered – and our national conversation darkens by the day. Still, there is reason for hope When the anniversary comes, later this month, few will be in the mood to look back. All the political talk will be of the Makerfield byelection, of the future of this government and this prime minister. And yet, it would be wise to reflect on what happened on 23 June 2016 – if only because the choices Keir Starmer and his would-be successors face, indeed the entire political and cultural landscape we now inhabit, are informed or were shaped by that event. We are living in Brexit Britain. A useful prompt comes from the upcoming two-part BBC series Brexit: A Very British Civil War, made by the master documentarian Norma Percy. Speaking to (nearly) every key player, it brings it all back – the red bus, “take back control”, the pantomime river battle of Nigel Farage v Bob Geldof. Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist 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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

When does Nigel Farage 'speak for the nation'? When it suits him | Marina Hyde (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Compare his response, or lack of, to three murders over the past decade – Jo Cox, Sarah Everard and Henry Nowak Which murder victim’s ambulance does the would-be statesman chase? Can you be said to “speak for England” if there are other times you wimp out on speaking at all, either out of self-preservation or moral smallness, or just not actually giving much of a toss? The questions arise after Nigel Farage moved himself into pole position with an explicitly incendiary speech in the wake of the appalling murder of Henry Nowak. The good news for Nigel is that he has struck political gold: increased numbers of people saying “I don’t like him, but I agree with him on this”. The less good news for the nation he’d like to lead is that, when dealing with murders that rightly horrify and outrage the country, you can’t be sure which Nigel Farage will turn up. If, indeed, he turns up at all. Today, I’d like to look at three murders spread evenly over the past decade – all of which caused national outrage – and how Farage conducted himself in the wake of each. Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

It’s no surprise that an AI-faked presidential speech condemning foreign exploitation went viral – the world is suffering from a leadership vacuum (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Attributed to the president of Namibia, the speech is still being shared as citizens across Africa and the Caribbean cry out for moral leaders willing to speak uncomfortable truths For a moment, the speech attributed to Namibia’s president travelled across the world like a gust of hope. It was fierce. Defiant. Unapologetically sovereign. The speaker denounced corruption, condemned foreign exploitation and declared that Africa’s resources belonged not to politicians or multinational corporations but to its people. Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah spoke of leaders who signed away national wealth behind closed doors and warned that those who betrayed the public trust would face accountability. It sounded like the language of decolonisation reborn. Across social media, many listened with admiration. Finally, here was a leader speaking with moral clarity. Here was the rhetoric that generations of postcolonial citizens had been waiting to hear. But there was one problem. It was fake. Nandi-Ndaitwah rejected it as an AI-generated fabrication. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

A wedding invitation makes me feel like a deer in the headlights: the Becky Barnicoat cartoon (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

The right’s culture war over prostate cancer screening is damaging trust in medicine | Polly Toynbee (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
The decision not to test all men and only screen the most at risk, including black men, is fact-based. Yet it’s been called ‘two-tier’ – and labelled as misandry If the country seems to be slipping away from reason and trust in science, blame usually falls on modern phenomena such as social media and its fantastical influencers. Or on the US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s bizarre anti-vaccine, anti-fluoride, anti-evidence lunacy. But campaigns against the UK national screening committee’s decision to limit prostate cancer testing have been run by British bastions of the sort laying claim to “common sense”. They include two Tory ex-prime ministers, David Cameron and Rishi Sunak (who see themselves as sensibles, unlike Boris Johnson and Liz Truss), joined by their Tory/Reform media, especially the Mail and the Telegraph, plus a host of distinguished campaigners such as Stephen Fry, fount of QI knowledge. The national screening committee (NSC) has for a long time resisted a call for universal testing of all men for prostate cancer, though it kills 12,000 men a year in the UK. I was on the committee in the 1990s, and it was besieged by demands for screening for prostate cancer and numerous other conditions. These were often refused for unreasonable cost, but this decision is about harm to men, not about money. Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist 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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Rivals’ Rutshire – a place where modern Britain’s brutal divisions disappear in a cloud of sex | Jess Cartner-Morley (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
As the second series of the Jilly Cooper adaptation climaxes, we can be thankful that quality TV doesn’t always have to be bleak and stressful For Jilly Cooper devotees – a motley band that unites me with Queen Camilla and Joanna Lumley, Ian Rankin and ex-footballer Tony Adams – it has been the best of times, and the worst of times. (No apologies for the clunky Tale of Two Cities misquote. Jilly was fond of gleefully shoehorning in the odd bit of Dickens, or Shakespeare, or Wordsworth.) The best of times, because the television adaptation of Rivals has shown the world what some of us knew all along, which is that Cooper’s stories are life-affirming and wise and hysterically funny; but the worst of times, when Cooper’s unexpected death last year cut short the late-life renaissance in which she was quite rightly revelling. The first half of a blissful second season of Rivals comes to a climax this week (puns always intended). Six heavenly hours on the sofa, following the professional rivalries and personal dramas of a hard-drinking bunch of 1980s telly executives as they bomb along Cotswold lanes blowing Silk Cut smoke through the open windows of their Austin Metros, or pogo to Nena’s 99 Red Balloons on sticky pub carpet while knocking back tequila shots. Rivals has reminded us that good television can be fun. A golden age of television has given us some modern masterpieces, but the payoff for artistic quality has been that prestige viewing has become, for the most part, pretty bleak. Adolescence was utterly harrowing. Baby Reindeer was a pretty tough watch. Even The Bear and The Pitt are kind of stressful. Life in Rutshire has gifted us television as it used to be: a naughty, indulgent treat. Jess Cartner-Morley is associate editor (fashion) at the Guardian Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

The Guardian view on Henry Nowak’s murder: big tech and the far right are allied in an outrage arms race | Editorial (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Anger and distress at the treatment of the stabbed teenager is widely shared. But the online amplification of myths and grievances must be tackled To learn of the last minutes of Henry Nowak’s life would be shocking and distressing under any circumstances. The stabbed teenager begged officers for help, as they handcuffed him before realising their mistake. To watch those final moments, on the police body-cam footage released this week, is all the more immediate, and unbearable. The outrage is widely shared. But the way it has been weaponised is alarming. His family’s wish is for his legacy to be a renewed effort to reduce knife crime, not increased antagonism along racial and religious lines. Instead, the unscrupulous are using the power of the footage and the speed of social media to spread myths about “two-tier policing” and turn trauma into political mobilisation. Rightly, Hampshire’s chief constable has apologised. Three of the officers involved are being investigated, while a fourth has left the force. Policies are being reviewed. Vickrum Digwa will serve at least 20 years for murder before being eligible for parole. Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch have met with the victim’s family. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

The Guardian view on the UK’s first centre for illustration: visual literacy, and the sheer joy of images, matter | Editorial (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
A new national institution, the brainchild of revered artist Sir Quentin Blake, shows this overlooked artform is finally getting the recognition it deserves “What is the use of a book … without pictures or conversation?” the heroine of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland complains. When you think of Alice, you probably imagine John Tenniel’s 19th-century engravings. Roald Dahl’s BFG is now synonymous with Sir Quentin Blake’s big-eared giant, and the much-loved Gruffalo owes as much to Axel Scheffler’s drawings as Julia Donaldson’s rhymes. And yet illustration nearly always plays second fiddle to words. Caught between fine art and publishing, it is often overlooked as a highly skilled craft in its own right. Hopefully, this is about to change with the opening of the first permanent home for illustration in the UK, and the largest of its kind in the world. The centre is the brainchild of 93-year-old Sir Quentin Blake, who gives it his name and huge archive of 40,000 drawings. Many wonderful creations – crocodiles, birds, babies who transform into dragons – have sprung from Blake’s imagination. This museum, in a cleverly repurposed 17th-century former waterworks in London’s Clerkenwell, will celebrate the history and future of illustration in all its guises. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

A low birthrate isn’t the end of the world | Brief letters (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Population fears | Pure, cold rage | Protest arrests | Broom v leaf blower Surely the old will be cared for by robots while watching endless pictures of kittens (The right is desperate for a solution to falling birthrates. Who’s going to tell them that the answer is immigration?, 31 May). As the population falls, there will be a glut of housing, which will become affordable, and so women will be able to have more children and the cycle will begin again, assuming that one or other of the megalomaniacs haven’t blown us all to smithereens first. Mary Bolton Chiswick, London • Nigel Farage has called for “pure, cold rage” (Starmer urges calm as far right seeks to exploit Henry Nowak murder, 2 June). Strangely enough, this is precisely what I have felt since he and his cronies cheated me out of my EU membership back in 2016. Shane Roberts Easton, Bristol Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

How to prevent older people from having fatal falls | Letters (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Jules Robinson outlines the targeted support needed to prevent accidental deaths, and Sara Hazzard urges investment in rehabilitation and the physiotherapy workforce Denis Campbell’s article (GPs in England too ‘overloaded’ to help older people at risk of falling, say MPs, 3 June) draws welcome attention to a severe but often overlooked health crisis. Research by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) shows that falls are the leading cause of accidental death in the UK, killing over 11,000 people a year, more than 9,000 of whom are aged 75 and over. And this crisis is getting worse, with a 12% increase in the rate of deaths over a single year. Falls are preventable, and should not be regarded as just an inevitable part of ageing. The causes are varied and complex, so intervention must take into account a person’s living environment and access to networks of support as well as their physical and mental health. Such a detailed multifactorial assessment requires not just specialist expertise but far more time than is available within a short GP appointment. RoSPA is calling for equitable access to falls and fracture liaison services, removing the variation in treatment available depending on postcodes. Without such targeted support there is a real risk that fatal falls will continue to increase, taking the lives of vulnerable people in tragic accidents that could be prevented. Jules Robinson RoSPA Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Remembering Maureen Duffy and an all-night reading of Gor Saga | Letters (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Joan McGavin shares a unique memory of the late poet, playwright and novelist I was saddened to read your obituary for Maureen Duffy (3 June) but also interested to discover that her early 1980s novel Gor Saga had been reissued under the title First Born in 2024. Duffy is the only writer I have heard give an all-night reading of their novel – here in Southampton – if I remember rightly under the aegis of David Benedictus, who was a resident writer in the city in the early 1980s. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

For gluten-free food, look to other cultures around the world | Letters (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Kathryn Monk says nutritious, naturally gluten-free food is widespread in cuisines of Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America Your article on the rising cost of gluten-free foods highlights a genuine problem (Gluten-free basics ‘now a luxury’ as price of a small branded loaf nears £4, 30 May). However, I was struck by how narrowly the discussion was framed. Much of the article focuses on the affordability and availability of gluten-free versions of bread, biscuits, breakfast cereals and other wheat-based products. Yet for much of the world’s population, diets have traditionally been based on rice, maize, millet, cassava, pulses and other naturally gluten-free staples. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Martin Rowson on the political response to Henry Nowak’s murder – cartoon (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Anthony Head, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Ted Lasso actor, dies aged 72 (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
British actor starred on the West End before finding international fame in the 90s on Buffy the Vampire Slayer Anthony Head brought gravitas to Buffy and everything else he touched Anthony Head, the actor best-known for playing Rupert Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has died aged 72. “He passed away peacefully of complications due to pneumonia, surrounded by his family,” his daughters Emily and Daisy Head said in a statement. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Calls for inquiry into all royal finances after Andrew subletting revelations (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
MPs urged to push for ‘radical reform’ after NAO finds former prince made income from Royal Lodge properties Campaigners have called for radical reform and a public inquiry into all royal finances after revelations that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor received an undisclosed private income from subletting three cottages on his Royal Lodge estate while paying a “peppercorn rent”. A report from the public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO), found the rental income went to the former Duke of York, but said: “We do not know what rent was charged.” Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Ebola spread in central Africa could match 2014 record outbreak, US health officials say (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Modelling from US CDC shows Ebola spread could be on ‘dangerous trajectory’, but experts warn outbreaks can be very hard to predict Central Africa’s Ebola outbreak could spread to be similar in scale to the worst outbreak in history, west Africa’s 2014-2016 outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people, according to a new analysis by US health officials. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday published a range of scenarios generated by computer models, from 10,000 cases to more than 20,000. In the west Africa outbreak, more than 28,000 cases were reported. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Two men convicted of wounding journalist in London ‘on orders of Iran’ (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Pouria Zeraati of Iran International TV was stabbed three times outside his London home in attempt to ‘silence’ him Two men have been found guilty of involvement in a targeted knife attack on an Iranian journalist in London said to have been carried out on behalf of the regime in Tehran. Pouria Zeraati, a British journalist of Iranian origin, was working for Iran International, a Farsi-language dissident broadcaster, when he was stabbed in the leg outside his west London home in 2024. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Man dies after being bitten by shark off Western Australian coast (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Government department says man was in the water around Michaelmas Island, near Albany, when he was bitten by a suspected 4.5-metre shark Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast A male diver aged in his 30s has died after being bitten by a shark in Western Australia. The state’s police force confirmed on Saturday afternoon that the 35-year-old man had died, after being treated by paramedics at the scene for more than two hours. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Average person eats six times more chicken than in 1961, UN report finds (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
UN report says global meat supply has risen fourfold in last 60 years and is expected to keep rising Analysis: Ingredients in place for shift to plant-based diets but meat still dominates The average person eats about six times as much chicken and twice as much pork as their grandparents’ generation did, data from a UN report suggests, with global meat supply having risen fourfold in the last 60 years and expected to keep rising. The supply of poultry rose from below 3kg a person in 1961 to 17kg in 2022, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Pork supply doubled to 15kg a person over the same period, while beef, the most polluting food, stayed steady at 9kg. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Steak or tofu: why can’t we stop eating so much meat? (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Despite health risks and environmental damage, the meat industry is working hard to safeguard its dominance Average person eats six times more chicken than in 1961, UN report finds Should I tuck into a juicy steak or stick a tofu patty in a bun and call it a burger? Twenty years ago, that question was largely seen as a moral dilemma influenced by grim conditions in factory farms and slaughterhouses. Back then, animal rights activists were the loudest campaigners arguing for people to abstain from meat. They had limited success because vegetarians and vegans made up less than 5% of the population in rich countries – and the best fake meats were bland replicas of real flesh. The word flexitarian had not yet made it into the dictionary. The debate has shifted sharply. The pollution from animal agriculture, which makes up 12-20% of planet-heating gas, is now part of public discourse around eating meat. A dramatic rise in rates of obesity and diseases linked to red meat have made health concerns part of individual decisions to eat less of it. Meanwhile, some plant-based alternatives have improved in texture and taste to the point where even meat lovers struggle to tell that they did not come from an animal. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
Global report provides an alternative to climate breakdown, political extremism and economic tensions • ‘Happiness is not just about GDP’: ambitious plan or utopia? Humanity can raise living standards, reduce inequality and keep global heating within a 2C rise, according to a sweeping vision for planetary survival. The report by the World Inequality Lab (WIL) aims to be the most comprehensive attempt yet to navigate the polycrisis that is pushing the world toward climate breakdown, political extremism and ever greater economic and social tension. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Get set for a painted lady summer: big year for orange butterflies in Britain (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Migrant insects have been seen in large numbers along east coast thanks to heatwave and benign southerly winds If you’ve spotted a pale orange butterfly dashing at frenetic pace through streets, fields or gardens, you’ve noticed the new migrants that will add colour to the summer in record-breaking numbers. What is expected to be the largest arrival of painted lady butterflies in Britain for 17 years is under way after heatwaves and favourable winds ushered thousands if not millions of the insects northwards. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Man jailed for rape over which Andrew Malkinson was wrongly imprisoned (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Paul Quinn’s minimum term of 14 years means he may serve less time than man wrongly convicted of 2003 Salford attack A “savage” rapist who evaded justice for nearly two decades could spend less time in prison than the innocent man who was wrongly convicted of his crime. Paul Quinn, 52, was ordered to serve a minimum of 14 years in prison on Friday over a 2003 rape for which Andrew Malkinson wrongly spent 17 years behind bars. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Labour will make AI ‘work for the workers’, says Liz Kendall (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Technology secretary promises to support people whose jobs are swept away by automation Liz Kendall has insisted Labour will make artificial intelligence “work for workers”, and not abandon people whose jobs are swept away by its rapid advance. With public fears mounting about the impact of AI on employment, particularly for young people, the technology secretary claimed that the government could shape the way it is adopted. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Trump lawyers refuse to reveal financial information to BBC in defamation case (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Request for evidence to support claims of reputational and financial harm from Panorama documentary dismissed as ‘fishing expedition’ Donald Trump’s legal team has rejected a request by the BBC to hand over financial information as part of his $10bn defamation case against the broadcaster. The US president’s lawyers accused the BBC of a “fishing expedition”, according to court filings, after the broadcaster’s representatives asked for details to get evidence on Trump’s claims he suffered reputational and financial damage because of a Panorama documentary centred on the US Capitol riots. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Ruling removes ‘vital’ UK safeguards for severely disabled people, charities warn (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Campaigners say supreme court judgment on deprivation of liberty safeguards introduces ‘regressive legal standard’ Severely disabled people will be at heightened risk of abuse in care homes and hospitals after the biggest upheaval in disability law in a generation overturned “vital” legal safeguards, campaigners have warned. They said a supreme court judgment that potentially strips the right of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people to independent checks on the safety and appropriateness of their care “devalues the dignity of disabled people”. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Xavier Becerra advances in California’s hotly contested governor’s race (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Becerra advanced to the general election after emerging from California’s crowded primary field in the race to succeed Gavin Newsom Xavier Becerra has advanced to the November general election in California’s gubernatorial race, cementing a stunning come-from-behind primary victory in one of California’s most turbulent campaign seasons in recent memory. Election officials are continuing to count ballots to determine whether he will face fellow Democrat Tom Steyer, the environmental activist who championed progressive policies like universal healthcare and more taxes on billionaires like himself, or Republican Steve Hilton, the former UK political operative turned Fox News personality who was endorsed by Donald Trump, in the fall. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Man charged with murder of veteran US character actor James Handy (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Handy, 81, died after being stabbed, allegedly by Michael Gledhill, whose mother was in relationship with Handy A man has been charged with murder in the stabbing of Jumanji and Top Gun: Maverick actor James Handy, who was in a relationship with the suspect’s mother. Michael Gledhill, 44, was charged after police say officers found the 81-year-old Handy stabbed in the chest and unconscious outside his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Handy was taken to the hospital and later pronounced dead. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Trump news at a glance: new intelligence director given green light to fire ‘a lot of people’ (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Trump says Bill Pulte is ‘less shackled’ because he has only been appointed director of national intelligence temporarily. Key US politics stories from 5 June 2026 at a glance Donald Trump has said that he wants Bill Pulte, his new acting director of national intelligence, to cut the office, which has already been significantly scaled back during the president’s second term. Trump noted that the size of the office as been “way too high for way too long,” and that “if he cut, I wouldn’t mind”. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

UK-EU ‘reset’ summit may still happen next month despite delay speculation (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
EU’s Maroš Šefčovič says summit will ‘probably’ be in July but sources say it could be put back as talks deadlocked The EU has said Keir Starmer’s upcoming summit “resetting” the UK-Europe relationship may still happen in July, amid growing fears it could be postponed to the autumn as talks over youth mobility remain deadlocked. “The summit is supposed to be mid-July but at the moment it could be put back to after the summer,” said one EU diplomat. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Anthropic says the world should have option to ‘pause’ on AI (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
US firm says it will convene policymakers for discussion of dangers, in post detailing progress of its Claude model Anthropic has floated the idea of a worldwide “temporary pause” on AI development – and said it was going to convene “policymakers” to discuss the dangers of advanced AI – in its latest release touting the capabilities of its products. In a long post on Thursday, Anthropic detailed the progress of its AI model, Claude, towards “recursive self-improvement” – that is, being able to make better and more powerful versions of itself. Recursive self-improvement is a bugbear of AI safety researchers, viewed as the key step for AI to become superintelligent and therefore unleash widespread consequences on humanity. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘It’s not inevitable’: Asda chair on how his turnaround will hold off Aldi threat (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Allan Leighton on government help, talk of a reheated merger with Sainsbury’s – and the vital role of bananas “It’s not bloody inevitable,” that Asda will be overtaken by Aldi as Great Britian’s third-biggest supermarket, Allan Leighton roars as the veteran retail boss insists his turnaround of the ailing business is on track. Leighton, the chair of Asda, who returned to lead the business in November 2024 after a 20-year absence, is attempting to defy the critics and revive Asda for the second time in his career. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

UK house prices fall for third successive month amid Iran war uncertainty (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Unexpected monthly drop of 0.1% in May leaves price of typical home at £298,806, says lender Halifax UK house prices fell unexpectedly in May as rising mortgage rates fuelled by the war in Iran affected affordability and homebuyer demand. The average price of a typical UK home fell by 0.1% in May to £298,806, the third consecutive monthly drop recorded by the lender Halifax. Analysts had been expecting a return to growth, with a consensus of a 0.1% rise forecast for May. The monthly drop followed falls of 0.1% in April and 0.5% in March. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

New claimants seek to sue Elon Musk’s xAI after Labour MP’s test case (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Jess Asato’s lawyer says others want to take action over demeaning sexualised material created by Grok AI tool New claimants have come forward to take legal action against Elon Musk’s company xAI after the Labour MP Jess Asato launched a test case against the firm over demeaning sexualised material created by its Grok AI tool. A handful of complainants contacted Asato’s lawyer on Thursday in response to coverage of the MP’s decision to sue Musk’s company for damages over its creation and circulation of fake images of her in a bikini and an AI-created video that she said showed her “being chloroformed and prepared for a sexual assault”. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘I would draw blood’: Jemaine Clement and Nicola Walker’s wild wrongcom about sexual betrayal (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
What if your best mate slept with your child? The stars of Alice and Steve, the new taboo-busting comedy about friends at war, open up about drug-taking, iffy sex – and why British jokes are so hard to understand Alice and Steve, the new “wrongcom” starring Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement, starts like the story of a lifelong friendship between two 50ish exes. They went out for a short time, a million years ago, and ever since have been platonically inseparable. In one of the first scenes, Alice (Walker) tells Steve (Clement) that she loves him so much that if he were ever drowning, she’d hollow out her own mother’s body and use it as a canoe. Alice and Steve go to funerals, get drunk, talk frankly about their disappointments, devise ill-advised solutions, take cocaine but only once every epoch; all the stuff of a loving friendship is here. But creator Sophie Goodhart also uses it to put every kind of relationship under the microscope. “It’s every stage of love Sophie is looking at,” says Walker. So it’s also about the doldrums of a long marriage, between Alice and Daniel (Joel Fry). And it’s about first love going exquisitely well for Dom, Alice and Daniel’s teenage son, until they take an edible and everything goes awry. Unavoidably, though, all the fireworks are around one love story – and how it puts paid to Alice and Steve’s relationship. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Taylor Swift: I Knew It, I Knew You review – giddy up! Song for Toy Story cowgirl Jessie is Swift’s best in years (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Full of handcrafted care and the rootsy soul of her country origins, this gently elated song is a reminder of what fans love about Swift … and the film series Taylor Swift does not fear a challenge. She’s broken records then broken those records; taken Grammy snubs as a sign she just has to work harder; mounted probably the most physically exhausting tour of all time. But in writing a song for Toy Story’s cowgirl Jessie, she’s set herself a deranged task: how could anyone outdo Randy Newman’s devastating When She Loved Me, Jessie’s song about being abandoned by her owner, Emily, from Toy Story 2? Newman’s songs for the Disney Pixar series are some of the greatest film soundtrack work of all time, and Swift knows it. In a post about her song, she acknowledged the “incomparable” Newman: “You created the Toy Story musical world, and we are lucky to get to live in it.” Her own ventures into soundtrack work have never had much staying power (beyond Zayn collab I Don’t Wanna Live Forever from Fifty Shades Darker). Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

TV tonight: a terribly entertaining holiday party gets out of hand (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
The holiday from hell is a hoot to watch in Two Weeks in August. Plus: relive the joy of the 1966 World Cup final. Here’s what to watch this evening 9.15pm, BBC One Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Sex, austerity and mugs of vodka: how the Greek myth Iphigenia became a Welsh-language film sensation (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
The movie adaptation of Gary Owen’s acclaimed play Iphigenia in Splott, Effi o Blaenau, is released this month. Here, its director and crew explain why they relocated the film to a post-industrial mining town – and refused to make it in English The one-woman play Iphigenia in Splott was first performed in 2015. Eleven years on, Gary Owen’s reworking of Greek tragedy, transplanted to working-class Splott in Cardiff, has earned its place as a modern classic. It reimagines the mythological heroine Iphigenia as Effie, a young woman filling her days drinking vodka out of a mug in her dressing gown. The play is about poverty and social inequality, closures and cuts, services scraped to the bone by austerity. Its most recent five-star Guardian review in 2022 advised: “Everyone should see this.” One person who did was Leisa Gwenllian, a final-year drama student from north Wales. “I was on the front row with my mate,” says Gwenllian, 24, drinking mint tea in a London hotel. “I can remember thinking: wow! A Welsh woman with a strong Cardiff accent on the stage at the Lyric [in Hammersmith, London], that’s what it’s all about.” At the Oxford School of Drama, Gwenllian was mainly studying the classics alongside people with different accents and backgrounds from her own. “To see yourself on stage is really powerful.” Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

How Marvel deals with Doctor Doom is make or break for the MCU. No one wants a watered-down Tony Stark (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
The hooded supervillain is a scientist, a sorcerer, a monarch and a mummy’s boy – Robert Downey Jr’s Doom should be all these things and more, radiating history, magic and the biggest ego The problem with building the next stage of your superhero franchise around Doctor Doom is that nobody really knows if he is Marvel’s Darth Vader, or just the guy from those terrible 20th Century Fox films. We wouldn’t even be getting Doom in the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday if Marvel’s original post-Thanos masterplan had not collapsed when Jonathan Majors, who played Kang, was dropped from the franchise. And we don’t really know if the subsequent casting of Robert Downey Jr (previously Marvel’s Iron Man) in the role is some kind of ingenious masterstroke that will all make sense when we finally see the finished film, or just an expensive nostalgia panic button. The stakes are so high here that the geekosphere is delving into every possible clue, no matter how fleeting, as to which version of Doom we might be getting in the film. Will this be a flamboyant, comics-accurate take on the Latverian dictator? Or will Marvel dip into the multiverse of convenience and deliver an iteration that is little more than Tony Stark in eastern Europe? Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Being Towards Death review – Chinese hospital comedy drama uses plucky patients to ask big questions (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
A debt-laden caregiver attempting suicide is the catalyst for him finding new meaning to life from a ward of terminally ill patients in touching ensemble drama ‘You know the law of entropy? Life is a process of constant decay,” ssays a doctor in this Chinese hospital comedy drama – but not that you’d know it from the gabbling, frenetic first half-hour of director Chen Sicheng’s death-fixated film. Being Towards Death kicks off with caregiver Xiaobing (Jiang Long) about to throw himself off the roof because, after a scheme to flog his superiors care robots fails, he’s in hock to triad loan sharks. Thankfully the film later settles into an intermittently touching ensemble drama with a meta tint; albeit one that doesn’t fully grasp the profundities it’s aiming for. Hauled back from the ledge, Xiaobing is talked by the hospital director into leading a project studying mental health interventions in terminal cancer care. So he finds himself among the “Ward 10 Fearless Squad”, a group of patients whose outlook is as plucky as their diagnoses are grim. Before long, he has co-opted film director Dao (Wang Zichuan) to make a documentary about his roomies, including bullish property mogul Mau (Cai Ming), browbeaten first son Bowen (Huang Yi) and fib-spinning poppet, Xiaobing (Ye Quanxi) – nicknamed Little Bing. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

From G-Flip to Tame Impala: why Australian music is soundtracking so much TV right now (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
From Off Campus to the Summer I Turned Pretty, it seems like Australian artists are everywhere right now – but what does the exposure actually mean? Last month, a new Amazon Prime series, Off Campus, fought its way to the top of the streaming TV pile. Releasing its first season all at once, the glossy campus drama – set around an elite hockey team at a fictional US university – racked up 36 million viewers in its first 12 days, becoming the platform’s biggest debut among women aged 18 to 34. Its star attraction is the sweet-and-steamy romance between music major Hannah (Ella Bright) and brooding hockey star Garrett (Belmont Cameli). But sharp-eared viewers noticed something else around the hot people doing hot things: a conspicuous run of Australian music, from heavyweights like AC/DC and The Kid Laroi to indie-pop favourites George Alice and Royel Otis, plus rising name Redd. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Add to playlist: the introspective ‘Afromood’ of Nigerian star Strei and the week’s best new tracks (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Less interested in spectacle than vibe, the Delta State artist’s subtle atmospheric projects are carving a quietly distinctive path From Delta State, Nigeria Recommended if you like Omah Lay, Rema, XXXTentacion, Juice WRLD Up next Album Night out now Born and raised in Delta State and now based in Lagos, Strei is part of a new generation of Nigerian musicians turning away from Afropop’s extroverted certainties and towards something more inward-looking. His self-described “Afromood” sound retains the melodic instincts of contemporary Nigerian pop, but softens them into something more atmospheric and emotionally porous. There are traces of Omah Lay in his melancholic delivery, and of the late Juice WRLD in his confessional songwriting, but Strei’s music doesn’t feel like a mix of influences so much as a deliberate attempt to find emotional clarity. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

BBCNOW/Bancroft review – conductor takes final bow in imaginative programme of vivid colours and emotions (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Hoddinott Hall, CardiffWorks about infatuation and deep feeling were fitting choices with which the Ryan Bancroft bid a celebratory farewell to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales Back in 2018, Ryan Bancroft jumped in as a last-minute replacement for a BBC National Orchestra of Wales tour. By September 2020, the US-born musician was principal conductor. In his six-year tenure, he has always been a vibrant and quietly forceful presence on the podium, amply demonstrated in this, his last Cardiff concert in the role. He opened with Stravinsky’s Song of the Nightingale, the symphonic poem fashioned from music originally an opera and ultimately a ballet choreographed by Balanchine. Hans Christian Andersen’s story, set in imperial China, allowed Stravinsky to conjure exotic sounds, including gong and celeste. But it’s the poignancy of the emperor’s fate, symbolised by his infatuation first with a real nightingale – made suitably enchanting by Matthew Featherstone’s flute – who is then usurped in his affection by a mere mechanical version, that colours the score. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Lizzo: Bitch review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
(Atlantic)After scrapping an album and starting anew, Lizzo still sounds lost amid these weak genre-hopping songs. Perhaps the zeitgeist has simply left her behind Just over a year ago, Lizzo appeared on Saturday Night Live, announcing a new album called Love in Real Life in grandstanding style. Wielding an electric guitar, clad in a Trump-baiting T-shirt that read Tariffied, she performed its title track and two other new songs, Still Bad and Don’t Make Me Love U. As with her appearance earlier the same week on a late night talkshow – during which she ran into the audience to high-five fans who were yelling “we love you Lizzo!” – it looked very much like a defiant comeback, fit to drag her out of the controversy that erupted at the end of her hugely successful 2023 world tour. Three former backing dancers and a costume designer filed lawsuits against the singer alleging harassment and discrimination: damaging claims given how Lizzo’s songs have preached a message of inclusivity, body positivity and self-confidence. Some of the allegations were dismissed by a judge but others are ongoing; Lizzo has refused to settle out of court, saying: “I’m fighting the case because I know that it’s not true.” But the Love in Real Life single, a pivot towards rock that owed a little to Tom Petty’s American Girls – or the Strokes’ American Girls-indebted Last Nite if you prefer – failed to make the charts, a far cry from the period between 2018 and 2022 when Lizzo’s singles seemed to go multi-platinum as a matter of course. The same fate befell Still Bad, a track much more in the vein of her big hits, prompting a rethink. The album was pulled, Lizzo apparently taking control of her own destiny – “I need to do shit my way”. A mixtape that returned her more-or-less to where she started, before pop stardom came calling – punchy hip-hop, albeit tricked out with guest appearances from Doja Cat and SZA – appeared in its place: My Face Hurts from Smiling received mixed reviews and underwhelming streaming figures. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

The best recent poetry – review roundup (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Haunting the Black Air by Anthony Joseph; Selected Poems by Leontia Flynn; Sparrow on the Rooftop by Rachel Long; You Must Live: New Poetry from Palestine, edited by Jorie Graham; Melete by Jennifer Lee Tsai; Somebody Should Have Pressed Record by Galia Admoni Haunting the Black Air by Anthony Joseph (Bloomsbury, £12.99) Joseph’s follow-up to the TS Eliot prize-winning Sonnets for Albert sees his poetic approach become more radical. He pays homage to avant garde writers such as Will Alexander and Nathaniel Mackey, while exploring “Nostalgia, mostly grief, / a haunting sound – / the frequency of some / magnetic feeling.” That makes for challenging syntax on first reading the poems. Persist, and Joseph’s unabashed lyricism shines through, finding beauty on dancefloors, city streets and in Trinidadian landscapes: “the way music fills the room, how we embrace until / we become flare bright, light as the white refraction / of the sun upon the summit of hills.” Selected Poems by Leontia Flynn (Carcanet, £14.99) She was a Next Generation poet and Forward prize winner; it’s a shock to remember that Flynn has been publishing for more than 20 years, so fresh do her poems remain. This assembly is a glorious reintroduction to her mordant wit, imaginative image-making and unerring ability to puncture pretension. Letter to Friends from 2011 is a brilliant, Auden-esque dissection of the early 21st century, worth a library of political analyses: “daily threats brought to our Way of Life / by man-made imminent apocalypse / though neither really outweighs private grief”. There are pleasures on every page. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

The Children by Melissa Albert review – intriguing fairytale of creativity’s dangers (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
In her first novel for adults, the YA author explores the dark side of writers who fictionalise their children’s lives Children’s writers are sometimes cruel, and often damaged. And, as AS Byatt put it crisply when talking about her 2009 novel The Children’s Book: “Writing children’s books isn’t good for the writer’s own children.” Think of Christopher Milne, raging at having been Christopher Robin; Vivian Burnett, dragging Little Lord Fauntleroy behind him; Alastair Grahame, lying down on train tracks. This is fertile material, as Byatt recognised, for a grown-up book. The American author Melissa Albert, herself a very successful children’s writer, has made it the theme of her first adult novel. The Children’s protagonist is Guinevere Sharpe, who as a grown woman is trapped by a very public version of her childhood. Her mother, Edith, a sort of JK Rowling/Enid Blyton composite, wrote an era-defining run of children’s portal fantasies called the Ninth City series, in which Guin and her older brother Ennis appeared as the named protagonists. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

The Ruiners by Ellena Savage review – a playful and subversive take on Great Expectations (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
In her sharp and intellectual first novel, the author finds tragic comedy in socialism, inequality and the flawed ways we connect as the world burns In her fiction debut, The Ruiners, Ellena Savage probes the awkward realities of white privilege, social mobility and a lack of ancestral connection. At first it seems that Savage has turned away from the experimental ambition of her successful memoir, Blueberries, but the novel gradually reveals itself to be craftier and more subversive than it appears. This anti-inheritance novel is in direct, playful conversation with one of its inspirations – Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – and, while knowledge of the coming-of-age novel isn’t essential, it’s delightful to see Savage tease the themes of the original in her surreal contemporary take. Having failed to fulfil or even define her own ambition, 29-year-old Pip drifts aimlessly through her life. She is smart, funny and vaguely unhappy. In quick succession, her estranged father dies and leaves her an inheritance of $50,000 and she falls quickly, recklessly in love with Sasha, a brooding young writer who narrates the third part of the novel. With the inheritance Pip sees the opportunity to change her situation. She quits her job – “I’ve developed a rare blood disorder, I wrote. As such, I must cut my hospitality management career short. I hereby tender my resignation, effective immediately” – and marries Sasha, and together they spend the entirety of her small fortune on a rotting house on the remote (fictional) Greek island of Fokos. In the background, a trash volcano burns relentlessly and waste pirates fight to offload their illegal garbage on to the shores. But the move does little to improve their circumstances or resolve their unhappiness. The Ruiners by Ellena Savage is out now (Summit Books, $34.99) Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Marjane Satrapi, creator of Persepolis and acclaimed French-Iranian artist, dies aged 56 (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
Family members said the author of the landmark comic book memoir ‘died of sadness’ after the death of her husband last year Marjane Satrapi, the French-Iranian artist, film-maker and graphic novelist whose acclaimed memoir Persepolis helped reshape international perceptions of Iran, has died at the age of 56. In a statement provided to French news agency AFP, relatives said she had “died of sadness” after the death of her husband, the Swedish producer Mattias Ripa. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Mina the Hollower review – squeaky fresh fun full of vintage magic (Wed, 03 Jun 2026)
PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox; Yacht Club GamesThis 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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

From God of War to Until Dawn – seven reveals from last night’s PlayStation event (Wed, 03 Jun 2026)
The PS5 era has been in some ways disappointing for Sony – on Tuesday, the company revealed a slate of games they hope will change that • Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here PlayStation’s future has looked a little uncertain these past few years. Although the PS5 has sold well and been very profitable, the brand is far from the runaway market leader it was in the PS2 days. Earlier this week, Game File dug into Sony’s most recent earnings reports to illustrate how PlayStation has been selling fewer and fewer of its own flagship games since a peak during the pandemic. About 54.1m copies of games either developed or published by Sony were sold in the 2018 financial year; in 2025, it sold 32.1m. Sony has put out some great homegrown games since the PS5 was released in 2020, from Astro Bot to Ghost of Yōtei, but it has also had some expensive and very public failures and cancellations; PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, who retired in 2024, placed big bets on live-service games and only a few panned out (hello, Helldivers). Sony also seems to have rolled back on releasing its single-player PS5 games on PC after a polite interval of time, suggesting it wants to preserve what advantage and exclusivity it has. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Nex Playground: the family game-night gadget that revives the spirit of the Wii (Mon, 01 Jun 2026)
Launching in the UK this month, this new pint-sized console revives the motion-controlled video game boom of the 00s – with better, safer tech For a wonderful moment in the noughties, video games became a truly universal pursuit. As I witnessed my controller-phobic aunt swing a Wii remote and nail a tennis serve, while my great-grandmother furrowed her brow over sudoku puzzles on her Nintendo DS, it seemed my long-derided hobby had finally gone mainstream. The Nintendo Wii flew off the shelves, inspiring a wave of competitors such as the Xbox Kinect camera that encouraged people to play games by moving their bodies. But the tide turned: outside of still-niche VR gaming and the odd controller-waggler on the Switch, motion-controlled gaming has barely been seen for more than a decade. Now, 20 years later, a new console is aiming to get the whole family flailing in front of the TV once again: the Nex Playground. Launching in the UK later this month, the first thing that struck me about this family-friendly device is just how tiny it is. The size of two and a half Rubik’s Cubes taped together, this impressively unintrusive device swaps cumbersome controllers for camera-controlled minigames, putting you and your family directly in the game. Using a wide-angle lens and AI-powered tracking tech, the Nex Playground offers over 50 games that track players’ bodies as they leap, flail and dance about the living room. It’s not hard to see the appeal. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

If you want to run your first marathon in your 50s, it helps to be chased by zombies (Fri, 29 May 2026)
When Ben Elton didn’t distract from the pain of moving my body, I found the perfect solution – the interactive smartphone game Zombies, Run! At 56, I am running my first marathon, an old, fat, bald dad surrounded by millennials in body-hugging Lycra and smiles that look AI-generated. But I am ahead of them. For they are only competing for positions and personal bests, and I am being chased by zombies. The black dog of depression hit me around the time of my last birthday. I didn’t feel I had achieved anything of note for an eternity. I used to work out but, for years, work kept getting in the way. I decided to kill two circling, carcass-sniffing vultures with one stone and run my first marathon. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Terry Winters review – flashes of magic in patterns science has yet to explain (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Modern Art, London The mathematically named new works of Along the River are disorienting, illusive and seem to offer a flash of the secret sequences that underpin the physical world Why do we find things beautiful? More precisely, why do some paintings of coloured dots in rippling patterns inspire in me something like revelation? The idea that beauty is the feeling you get when encountering truth is unfashionable in the arts, but lingers in the sciences. The physicist Paul Dirac once proposed that it is more important that a formula is beautiful than that it can be proven: when a perfectly beautiful theory produces results that cannot be real, he argued, then we should not discard the theory but reconsider what is real. Since the 1970s, Terry Winters has been rebuilding that bridge between art and science. Taking inspiration from disciplines including botany – his early paintings, particularly, evoke sprouting pods and tangled roots – engineering, computer modelling and cybernetics, his paintings might be understood as diagrammatic approximations of the patterns that govern everything from the division of cells to the constellation of stars. If every era has to renew its standards of beauty to reflect new understandings of how the world is constructed, then Winters comes as close to providing that model as any living painter. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Are You Watching? review – unflinching, fury-filled interrogation of the vile side of the web (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Royal Court, London Teenage girls discuss the horrors they have seen via their phones as Georgie Dettmer’s reckoning with internet culture is brutally realised by director Jess Edwards Georgie Dettmer’s gaze is unflinching. Nothing is held back in Are You Watching?, her fury-filled interrogation of our twisted relationship with sex and violence, and the emotional distance we hide behind when we watch them both through a screen. This bluntness can feel unsubtle, but it’s also admirably unafraid. Two teenage girls (Kosar Ali and Abby McCann) perch on a bunk bed, talking about the worst things they’ve ever seen. Across the rest of the traverse stage, those stories are smashed into sharp, rapid-fire scenes, flicked between as if scrolled through on a phone. Under Jess Edwards’ direction, the depths of the internet are hurled across the stage (by an excellent multi-rolling cast including Lucy McCormick and Maimuna Memon), while the two girls watch from the safety of their duvets. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice review – mindboggling bag of tricks will make you believe in magic (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Buxton Opera House Villages appear out of thin air, broomsticks take flight and owls turn into people in a truly enchanting showcase of theatrical storytelling If you catch a young audience member at just the right moment, when they are old enough to be fully engaged but not so old that the sharp edges of teenage cynicism have begun to slink into view, you can make them truly believe in the magic of theatre. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is the kind of show that will make them – and possibly some adults – believe in magic. To begin by praising the lighting design may seem odd, but this is one of the most effectively lit pieces of theatre you might see. Lighting designer Simon Bond’s barn doors, gels and gobos are integral to creating the many illusions on the stage. Director Paul Bosco McEneaney was a magician before turning his hand to theatre directing and he empties out a bag of tricks on to the stage of the jewel-like Buxton Opera House. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Mind-melting MC Escher, mesmerising Marilyn and the greatness of Glasgow – the week in art (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Escher’s eye-popping visions enter the video dimension, Pan-Africanism pulls in the big names and agent provocateur Julio Le Parc hits the UK – all in your weekly dispatch MC EscherThe great Dutch artist of eye-popping, brain-melting visual paradox gets a rich retrospective of his prints, with video, music and installations adding to the fun. • Somerset House, London, until 6 September Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Marjane Satrapi captured profound human emotions – and paved the way for a generation (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
The graphic novelist had a remarkable gift for visual storytelling, in the phenomenon that was Persepolis and beyond. Many of us owe our careers to the space she created, says Iranian cartoonist Mana Neyestani • News: Marjane Satrapi, creator of Persepolis and acclaimed French-Iranian artist, dies aged 56 On the morning of 4 June, when I heard the news of Marjane Satrapi’s death, I was stunned. I simply could not believe it. Although I had met her only a handful of times in person – despite having lived in Paris for 16 years and having contributed to her book Woman, Life, Freedom – I felt a deep connection to her work and legacy. Our collaboration on that book took place mostly through email correspondence, but I always held her in the highest regard. I admired her intelligence, her extraordinary sense of humour and, above all, her remarkable gift for visual storytelling. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘The Edward Hopper of the Black Country’: the photographer whose epic shots captured Sikh life in Walsall (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Paths You Walk is a show that finds beauty in images of alienation as Billy Dosanjh turns his lens on race, identity, empire – and the men who kept the furnaces glowing It was bitter in Walsall that winter of 1962-3 when snow turned the Black Country white. In After the Storm, Billy Dosanjh’s epic photographic reconstruction of one especially chilly night back then, an elderly Sikh man, recently arrived from the Punjab, stands under an old carriage lamp. He is, the shot suggests, seeing snow for the first time. “I thought it was quite a fitting note to get him gazing at the snow, looking a little bewildered,” says Dosanjh as we stroll around Paths You Walk, his gripping exhibition of photographs, films and installations at the New Art Gallery Walsall. At the back of the image, three furnace smoke stacks rise up in ghostly fashion, almost like the three crosses on Calvary have been relocated to Mordor. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘They are disturbing the dead’: reconstructing the site of the forgotten first genocide of the 20th century (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
At least 3,000 Herero and Nama people died in a German concentration camp at Shark Island, Namibia. A new forensic exhibition in Berlin is using digital technology to unearth how colonisers scarred a landscape, and a community Visiting the Namibian port town of Lüderitz in late 2024, I came across a small museum run by descendants of German settlers. Alongside imperial German flags and memorabilia, it displayed artefacts of the Herero tribe that had been recovered from nearby Shark Island. What went unmentioned is that, from 1905 to 1907, Shark Island was the site of a concentration camp where Herero and Nama prisoners were subjected to forced labour, starvation and systematic abuse. At least 3,000 people are estimated to have died there. Shark Island was used as a tourist campsite when I visited. Monuments on the island honoured Adolf Lüderitz and Heinrich Vogelsang, the German merchants who helped establish the colony known as German South West Africa. Today, it is widely reported that Namibia’s white minority – less than 2% of the population – owns roughly 70% of commercial farmland. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Dawn Airey, the ‘fearless’ TV veteran charged with protecting the arts (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Former Channel 5 chief is tipped to ‘break things that need to be broken’ as new chair of Arts Council England When Dawn Airey ran Channel 5, she famously described the channel’s core strengths as the three Fs: “films, football and fucking”. The comment by the veteran television executive, who has just been appointed chair of Arts Council England (Ace), set the tone for a career defined by boldness and commercial instinct. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

What links champagne, Mozart and veal pie? The Saturday quiz (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
From the ‘Intransigents’ to Simple Comforts and Cookery Bible, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz 1 What began to tilt in 1178? 2 Which deep-sea fish attracts prey with a glowing lure called an esca? 3 Habitat 67 is a Brutalist housing development in which North American city? 4 Which founder member of the Football League no longer exists? 5 What was Barbara Castle’s 1969 plan to improve industrial relations? 6 Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first European to see what? 7 Which artistic group were originally called the “Intransigents”? 8 Which 1963 fantasy film did Tom Hanks declare the “greatest movie ever made”? What links: 9 Simple Comforts; Cookery Bible; How to Be a Domestic Goddess? 10 I’m a Believer; I Wanna Be Yours; Feel Good Inc? 11 Champagne (Chekhov); Mozart (Mahler); veal pie (Pitt the Younger); whisky (Dylan Thomas)? 12 Altes; Bode; Neues; Pergamon? 13 Estonian; Finnish; Hungarian; Sámi? 14 Dupplin Moor; Halidon Hill; Culblean; Neville’s Cross? 15 Aird; Dickinson & Sawyer; Edgar; Hunt; Mundson; Poulain? Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Meera Sodha’s vegan recipe for freekeh salad with fennel, apple, tofu and dill | The new vegan (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
This endlessly adaptable salad is the perfect addition to your summer picnic basket When I was growing up, picnicking was a favourite Sodha family pastime, but we did it in a very Indian way. The focus was never on the place: we never had to eat in a bucolic location to have a good time. Our understanding was that homemade food was the best and therefore should be eaten always and anywhere. The food came first; a view was a bonus. As such, even now, decades after leaving the family home, I am always thinking of a good meal for us to eat outdoors. This nutty, chewy freekeh with fennel, dill and tofu has shot up to the top of my favourites: robust, easy to assemble and, above all, delicious whether you eat it on the bank of a lake or in a service station car park. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

The best electric toothbrushes in the UK for every budget (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Electric toothbrushes promise healthier teeth and gums and can transform your oral hygiene. We put 29 models to the test • How to make your toothbrush last longer If you grew up using a conventional toothbrush – essentially a stick with bristles on the end – you may be surprised to learn just how long the electric toothbrush has been around. The first was designed in the late 1930s, but that model was a long way from the sleek, feature-packed and Bluetooth-enabled beasts you can buy today. There are now dozens of ultra-advanced versions on the market, but which ones are worth your cash? To help answer that question, my teeth have become figurative guinea pigs. Over the past 18 months, I’ve put 29 electric toothbrushes from the likes of Oral-B, Philips, Suri, Ordo, Silk’n and Foreo through their paces to separate the best from the rest. Here are my conclusions. Best electric toothbrush overall: Laifen Wave Pro Best budget electric toothbrush: Odonta PowerPlus Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

From cooling bedroom fans to the best ever teabags: 12 things you loved most in May (Wed, 03 Jun 2026)
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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

How I Shop with Karen Carney: ‘Nine times out of 10 I’m wearing Reiss’ (Tue, 02 Jun 2026)
Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food and the basics they scrimp on? The former footballer talks Lego, Rich Tea biscuits and spending money on experiences with the Filter • Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Karen Carney is England’s fourth most-capped football player, competing at four World Cups, four European Championships and the London Olympics before retiring in 2019. In 2022, she began leading a landmark government review into the Future of Women’s Football in the UK, the recommendations of which were successfully backed by the government in 2023. She was part of the first all-female punditry team for ITV at the men’s World Cup 2022, led ITV’s coverage of the men’s Euros in 2024 and contributed analysis to the women’s Euros in 2025. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

The best face sunscreens in the UK: 10 lightweight, non-greasy SPFs for every skin type – tested (Thu, 28 May 2026)
Whether you want a stick, a spray or a tinted cream, our expert’s favourite formulas can provide year-round sun protection • The best face moisturisers for every budget There’s nothing quite like the warmth of the sun on your face after a long, dreary winter. But before you bask in it, you should always apply an SPF. That’s especially true if you use retinol serums, which can increase your vulnerability to sun damage. If you’re not wearing an SPF every day, you might as well toss the rest of your skincare out of the window. As well as the risk of sunburn, UV rays cause longer-lasting, deeper skin damage, resulting in age spots, pigmentation and premature ageing. But if the thought of slathering sticky sunscreens on your face every day makes you want to spend your life in perpetual shade, you’ve come to the right place. Best face SPF overall:Beauty of Joseon relief sun rice + probiotics Best budget face SPF:E45 Sensitive Sun face cream Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Cocktail of the week: Alta’s rebujito – recipe | The good mixer (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
A funky, fresh pre-batch to set your summer party alight The rebujito is a classic Spanish cocktail that’s typically made with sherry and a lime/lemon soda. This lifts it up a notch, and also takes well to being batch-made for summer party drinking. Steve Georgiou, beverage manager, Alta, London W1 Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for no-churn tiramisu ice-cream | The sweet spot (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
The magic of easy-make ice-cream combined with the comfortingly familiar flavours of the classic Italian dessert I can be a real creature of habit when it comes to ice-cream. You could present me with the most creative flavoured scoops in the fanciest gelato shop and I will unfailingly choose mint chocolate chip, pistachio or coffee – not at the same time, of course, I still have some sense. I recently came across a tiramisu ice-cream and my interest was piqued; it’s one of my favourite desserts. Here, I’ve turned it into a no-churn version for ease and added a mascarpone layer to stay true to the original dessert. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Always have a starter – and be wary of specials: restaurant critics on 14 ways to order the perfect meal (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
Restaurant dining is a terrific and expensive treat, so how can you be sure to get the best from every menu? Experts give their advice, from looking for the strangest dish to going easy on the booze For many of us, going to a restaurant is a real treat, so you want to make the most of every mouthful. From starters to small plates, how can you ensure that you have the best possible dining experience? Restaurant critics share the insider secrets to ordering well when eating out. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Has sparkling water come of age? (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
We pop open a selection of fun but healthy fizzy flavoured waters that should satisfy even the fussiest princess I am not a princess about many things, but there has to be sparkling water in the house. Refreshing, enlivening and occasionally hangover-clearing, it is an essential. Thankfully, my husband is aligned with me (it would never have worked with someone who answered: “Tap’s fine”, when offered water in a restaurant). I’m not fussy about my fizzy, though – SodaStreamed tap is fine – but I am increasingly seduced by the rainbow of new flavoured, unsweetened sparkling waters such as Dash Water and Aqua Libra that have turned up of late. Depending on how you look at them, they offer a healthy take on fizzy drinks and/or bring a bit of bling to an otherwise neutral beverage. “They make water a fun drink,” says the chef and author Jesse Jenkins, who co-founded sparkling water brand Yew. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Age gaps, swag gaps and Claude gaps – are they really such a big deal in relationships? (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
The internet is making everything into a ‘relationship gap’ by seizing on any difference between two dating humans It started with the age gap. Can a 40-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman truly get along? That was once a question answered with a resounding “yes” by creepy English professors or moustached indie film-makers with a questionable grasp on the meaning of Lolita. Then came gen Z. A cohort raised on the rigid moral boundaries of internet discourse – things are either good or bad, no in-between – decided that May-December relationships were either problematically one-sided or transactional in nature. Growing up in the fractured aftermath of #MeToo, where monstrous men were often much older than the women they victimized, probably contributed to that conclusion. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘I almost forgot how to date’ | The Global Dating Crisis: episode 3 – video (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
In many countries, dating seems to be on the decline, with many young people either dating less, or finding it harder to have meaningful relationships. In 2024, one in five of South Korea's 52 million citizens were living alone. In the third episode of our series, reporter Haeryun Kang is in Seoul on a journey to find out what’s stopping people from coupling up. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘It shatters my heart’: the fosters taking care of stressed former lab beagles (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
Hundreds of people applied to adopt beagles from a breeding facility – but ‘these are not ordinary dogs’, says one rescue worker In May, 1,500 beagles were released from Ridglan Farms, a breeding and bioresearch facility near Madison, Wisconsin. The event made headlines. Soon, a deluge of tear-jerking videos followed, showing the lab beagles experiencing the outside world for the first time. Millions of people watched the dogs touching grass and instinctively paddling their paws at the sight of water. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

I want sex more often than my husband does – what can we do? | Leading questions (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
It sounds like you both see sex the same way, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith – and perhaps that’s part of the problem Read more Leading questions My husband and I have been married for five years and are having trouble with our sex life. From the beginning of our marriage (we only started having sex after marriage) I wanted sex more frequently than him. In the first year or so of marriage we’d have sex two to three times a week which I enjoyed, although sometimes hoped for more. A few years into our marriage my husband had a very stressful time at work. Sex dropped to roughly once a week, typically on the weekends. He picked up running to help deal with the stress and really enjoyed it. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Homes for sale with water views in England and Scotland – in pictures (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
From a London houseboat with views of the River Thames to a property by a loch in the Inner Hebrides Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

How to invest £50 a month: tips for people at different ages (Wed, 03 Jun 2026)
Experts explain how small, regular sums can build wealth over time, from your 20s through to retirement Thinking about investing? There are compelling reasons for moving at least some of your money away from standard savings accounts and into the stock market. There are also risks, but over the long term the rewards can be better. Many people are put off by the idea that you need to be wealthy to start investing, or over a certain age. But even if you can only afford to set aside £50 a month, it is worth considering. And while there are important factors to consider before you start, it is rarely too early, or too late, to take the first step. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘Quite shocking’: why was a vulnerable customer sent a £8,400 energy bill? (Wed, 03 Jun 2026)
ScottishPower apologises for charging error, as millions face higher costs under revised energy price cap The energy bill from ScottishPower sent Richard Palmer into an immediate panic. It said he had to pay more than £8,400 straight away or risk his credit history being impaired for years. The 76-year-old felt he had no option so he paid the bill, using half of his savings to do so, even though it amounted to nine times what his annual payment would normally be. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

I surrendered my driving licence after a spinal injury but the DVLA revoked it (Tue, 02 Jun 2026)
Although I voluntarily handed in the licence, the agency’s action has made it far harder for me to get it back I suffered a spinal cord injury in August 2024. I voluntarily surrendered my driving licence to the DVLA, only for it to revoke it instead. This makes it much, much harder to get it back later on. I’ve since been told that I need to take a medical driving assessment to get the licence back, but I am unable to take one because I do not have a licence. I am now on my third application, with evidence from my spinal consultant and an off-road driving assessment confirming that I can drive with hand controls. This was submitted two months ago, and the DVLA still can’t update me. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

A disease of deforestation: how Ebola is linked to the smartphone in your pocket (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
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 Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

How to actually reduce your screen time: 12 simple, realistic tips to stop doomscrolling (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
Want to spend less time on your phone? We asked psychotherapists, professors and specialists for practical (and achievable) ways to cut down • The best screen-free activities Everywhere you look, people are glued to their smartphones. If you haven’t noticed this phenomenon, it’s likely because you, too, are glued to the little dopamine-deliverer. In March, Meta and YouTube had to pay a combined $6m after a US court found that the tech companies’ platforms were designed to be addictive. Put such tempting apps in a device that’s carried everywhere, and that’s a recipe for compulsive behaviour. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Doomscrolling: is it really worth five years of your one wild and precious life? (Wed, 03 Jun 2026)
A new survey reveals the average person in Britain will spend 41,000 hours flicking idly between news apps and social media – and, in all likelihood, getting increasingly miserable Name: Doomscrolling. Age: The term first emerged in 2018, but took off in 2020 (when the doom got especially heavy). Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

The doctor who mends broken brains: why there is room for hope after a stroke or head injury (Wed, 03 Jun 2026)
The neurologist Orlando Swayne doesn’t suggest everyone can recover. But he does argue that early, targeted and intense therapy can sometimes bring about life-changing improvements – and we have a moral obligation to provide it Claire was in bad shape. She had been brought to the ward on a stretcher and hoisted on to a bed where she lay curled up in a ball. She was unable to speak, her eyes flat and face expressionless. While she could move her right arm a little, her left arm and both legs were immobile. Life had changed dramatically for Claire, a mother of three in her late 30s, many months earlier, when she collapsed while on a night out with friends. A weakness in an artery at the base of her brain had ruptured, spilling blood around her frontal lobe. She was taken to hospital, where surgeons removed two side plate-sized pieces of bone from her skull to relieve the pressure on her brain. She spent months in intensive care. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Fashion goals: World Cup’s style tournament has already kicked off (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

How much should you pay for an ethically made T-shirt? (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: forget your go-to maxidress – less is more this summer (Wed, 03 Jun 2026)
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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Sali Hughes on beauty: the best facial self-tans for summer (Wed, 03 Jun 2026)
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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

A family holiday on the hoof: donkey trekking in the Spanish Pyrenees (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
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 Girona, 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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Watersports, biking and island escapes: readers’ favourite family holidays (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
From boat trips on Lake Garda to zip-wiring in Wales, you share your favourite family-friendly breaks in Europe • Tell us about a glamorous seaside hotel that didn’t break the bank? The best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher Lake Garda gave us one of the most memorable and unexpected family holidays yet. We hired a car and headed from Milan to Unesco-listed Peschiera del Garda and the family-focused apartment we found on Airbnb. A gentle 15-minute walk to the lakeside restaurants and gelaterias, this was the perfect base for exploring the beautiful town. Special mentions go to: Gelateria la Romana, with its wonderful ice-cream; the boat trip to Sirmione, an old town with thermal springs on a narrow peninsula; and, further up the lake, picturesque Malcesine and the cable car to the top of Monte Baldo to watch paragliders and to take in the amazing views. Alex Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

An almost wild camping trip: alternative family fun in the Peak District (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
Over one weekend, we hiked, swam, slept in a woodland cabin and camped on a hillside – while also supporting community-run projects The children were asleep in the little tent behind us, wrapped in two sleeping bags, each with an extra helping of wool blankets. Earlier, all I could see were their little faces half-lit by torchlight as I read them a book about rivers to the sound of rain on canvas. They fell asleep as fast and thick as the fog pooling in the valley below. My partner and I sat outside, huddled together under a waterproof coat, cheek to cheek, perched on our daughters’ foam swim vests because the ground was saturated. We were laughing. As parents, absurdity and beauty make for familiar bedfellows. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

From churches and castles to wonderfully weird Portmeirion: exploring Wales’s north-west coast on foot and by train (Wed, 03 Jun 2026)
The Cambrian Line hugs the shore, offering easy access to the Wales Coast Path, the Cadfan Way pilgrimage route and glorious Cardigan Bay From the graveyard of St Michael’s in Ynys, Wales, the view was ravishing: the Italianate oddity of Portmeirion sparkled on the opposite shore; the peaks of Eryri (Snowdonia) rippled in the distance; and, within the River Dwyryd’s broad swirl, sat the tidal island of Ynys Gifftan. “No one’s lived there for years,” said a passerby pointing to the isle, “but it’s just been put up for sale – £350,000, if you fancy it.” I rather did, but sadly my modest savings don’t stretch that far. Wales’s “armpit”, geographically speaking – which is how some people refer to that chunk of Gwynedd where estuaries perspire into Cardigan Bay before it curves round the outstretched Llŷn peninsula – looked like a spectacular place to be marooned. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Country diary: A plough, a haybale – who would live in a house like this? | Nicola Chester (Sat, 06 Jun 2026)
Hungerford, Berkshire: In a nearby farm, ever-resourceful birds and bees are getting creative with where they build their nests There are some unusual nesting spots being utilised in the farm and stableyard, revealed by pauses between chores. My wheelbarrow trips to the muck heap are attended by pied and grey wagtail pairs that make small aerial assaults on insects, though I’ve yet to locate their nests. Swallows are well-served here by midges and flies swarming around warm-blooded animals, and there is always mud for nest repairs, with the regular slosh of water buckets and hosing down of sweaty horses. New bales of hay must be opened with caution. Tash, who keeps her shire cross Jack here, narrowly avoids pulling down a robin’s nest inside one (the adult happily resettles on her eggs) and two years ago, one side of a haystack had to be avoided completely until a tawny owl had raised two owlets in it. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Who’s headlining the Backslide Tribute Festival? It’s the National Socialisn’ts: the Stephen Collins cartoon (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Experience: I sat under an oak tree every day for a year (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
After a period of burnout, I realised that nature knows what you need, and is always ready to offer it – you just have to be quiet enough to receive it In 2022 I moved to Clevedon, near Bristol. As soon as I saw the oak tree behind my flat, I started sitting under it. It’s not in some beautiful, remote place – it’s on an urban hill surrounded by grassland – but as a solitary tree on the side of a hill, it drew my attention. I was burned out. For 10 years, I had run a nonprofit tackling plastic pollution. We had got the government to ban plastic cutlery and polystyrene takeaway packaging, and supermarkets to ban plastic cotton buds. They were major achievements, but it was hard work and I was exhausted. I was transitioning away from activism, and only working three days a week. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Swedes deserve a moment in the sun: here’s how to grow them (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
For a fairly low-maintenance crop, the root vegetable can yield an impressive and nutritious harvest, and is surely due an influencer-rebrand soon My third column on edible plants that I don’t actually grow myself is about one that I do not loathe, as I do celeriac, nor love, as I do sweetcorn. It is the swede, a root vegetable I would describe as “fine”. Also known as neeps or rutabaga, swedes are hardy vegetables, related to the turnip and part of the brassica family. For a fairly low-maintenance crop, they can yield an impressive harvest that tastes fairly sweet and is very nutritious. I would wager that they are in for an influencer-driven rebrand sometime soon. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Inside one man’s botched deportation: seven flights, two swallowed batteries and a staggering bill for the UK taxpayer (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Omar is married to a British woman, has a British son and was given a single non-custodial sentence nine years ago. Nonetheless, the Home Office was determined to deport him – whatever the cost A year ago, Omar was living in the UK with his British wife and was determined to be a positive, consistent presence for his 10-year-old son, a British citizen from his first marriage. Omar is devoted to his child and has always been committed to guiding him to adulthood. But today, Omar, 40, lives in Egypt, separated from his family, thanks to an extraordinarily determined, turbulent and expensive campaign by the Home Office to remove him from the UK. (Omar is not his real name.) Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘She gave the young a chance’: pioneering activist’s battle for Black equality in Manchester (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Locita Brandy, 91, has received a medal of honour to recognise her lifetime of campaigning in the city They both came from the Caribbean to Manchester, and they both dedicated their lives to the betterment of Black communities. Now, the legacies of two postwar pioneers, strangers to each other and from different walks of life, have been celebrated by one gesture. Locita Brandy, 91, never met the Nobel prize-winning economist W Arthur Lewis. She arrived in Manchester in 1956 from Nevis – via Southampton and a rough sea journey on the SS Irpinia – and spent much of her working life as a school chef. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

‘I wouldn’t flinch’: Burnham on social care, markets, Brexit – and the prospect of a general election (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
Exclusive: Greater Manchester mayor sets out his priorities before Makerfield byelection – and what might happen after the vote Andy Burnham has signalled he would begin transforming England’s broken social care system this year if he became prime minister, accusing Westminster of “flinching away” from tackling difficult policy problems. The Greater Manchester mayor said politicians must be willing to take on “the weight of the system” that stood in the way of radical change, as he began to set out his prospectus for government if he won the Makerfield byelection. Said Labour should be a broad church with more government ministers from the left of the party, but Jeremy Corbyn should not be allowed back in. Signalled there would be no snap election if he replaced Keir Starmer, but defended himself from criticism over a shadow leadership campaign. Defended his comments that politicians should not be “in hock” to the bond markets, and denied he was boxing himself in by sticking to Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules. Argued it would be a mistake to rerun the Brexit referendum but that he wanted the UK to rejoin the EU in his lifetime. Praised Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, for “facing up” to the big issues on immigration. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Farmers: tell us how you’re coping with rising costs and extreme weather (Thu, 04 Jun 2026)
From rising fuel, fertiliser and feed costs linked to the conflict in Iran to the impact of climate change, farmers around the world are facing a range of pressures. We want to hear how these challenges are affecting you Farmers are facing rising costs for fuel, fertiliser and animal feed as a result of the conflict in Iran, adding to existing pressures on the industry. The sector is also grappling with extreme weather after the UK’s hottest May day on record, alongside wider concerns about the impact of climate change. Europe also experienced record-breaking temperatures in late May and the UN has warned about the imminent return of El Niño – a powerful weather pattern that raises global temperatures and worsens some rainfall. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

We would like to hear from young people in the UK about their job hunting experience (Thu, 28 May 2026)
How has the search for work been for you? How many job applications have you made? The number of young people not in work or education in Britain could rise to 1.25 million by the early 2030s without urgent government action, a landmark report has warned. Alan Milburn, the leader of the review into why so many young people are economically inactive, said the UK risked opening up a “generational fault line” between young and old without urgent steps to overhaul schools, the health service, the welfare system and the jobs market. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Tell us: what’s the weirdest thing your pet has tried to eat? (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Tell us about your favourite European seaside hotels offering affordable glamour (Mon, 01 Jun 2026)
Tell us about your best coastal boltholes that won’t blow the budget – the top tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break Finding affordable hotel accommodation in Europe’s coastal hotspots in summer can be a challenge, especially if you’d rather not settle for a soulless budget chain or youth hostel. Whether it’s a grand old hotel on the French Riviera that oozes faded glamour or a charming guesthouse on the Amalfi coast, we’d love to hear about European seaside hotels that feel special without blowing the budget. The best tip of the week, chosen by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet wins a £200 voucher to stay at a Coolstays property – the company has more than 3,000 worldwide. The best tips will appear in the Guardian Travel section and website. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Sign up for the First Edition newsletter: our free daily news email (Tue, 20 Sep 2022)
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 Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Sign up for the Filter UK newsletter: our free weekly buying advice (Thu, 10 Oct 2024)
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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Sign up for the Feast newsletter: our free Guardian food email (Tue, 09 Jul 2019)
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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

Sign up to House to Home: our free interiors email (Wed, 28 Sep 2022)
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. Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite

The week around the world in 20 pictures (Fri, 05 Jun 2026)
Attacks on police in Southampton, Russian strikes in Kyiv, the Ebola outbreak and PSG win the Champions League – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists Warning: this gallery contains images some readers may find distressing Continue reading...
>> Lire la suite