⚽️ Latest football news before a big weekend of action ⚽️ Get in touch: email Dave | And follow us on TikTok There’s only one place to start. The World Cup 2026: guide to all 1,248 players is a remarkable piece of work. Doffed cap to my colleagues who worked so hard to get this ready. It’ll take you a while to wade through so let’s get going straight away. How best to digest? Up to you. For some reason, my first clicks were to see how old Luka Modric is and then get more on Spain’s Mikel Oyarzabal because he’s going to win the Golden Boot. Good morning! Well, it’s now less than a week away! Six days and 11 hours to be precise before the World Cup kicks off with the Group A clash between co-hosts Mexico and South Africa. We’ve got an absurd amount of analysis to hit you with as the build-up continues and that includes news of last night’s friendlies. Oh, and if you love a wallchart and an online bracket to work out when England might play Spain, we have you covered there too. Continue reading...

The latest Pixar is a gloriously cute eco-tale packed with neat gags, robotic beavers and shark assassins named Diane … plus, Frances McDormand is astonishing in the Oscar-winning drama that is an instant classic “We’re all in this together.” It may seem an obvious eco message to be pushing at the kids who will flock to watch the latest Pixar animation. But when it’s done as charmingly as in Daniel Chong’s sci-fi comedy adventure, you’d be hard-pressed not to cheer along with the film’s endangered animals. Mabel (voiced by Piper Curda) is our teenage human guide to a biodiverse nook of woods and water near Beaverton. But when a proposed freeway causes the wildlife to scatter, she “hops” her mind into a robotic beaver (invented by her biology teacher) so she can track them down and save their glade. Crammed with neat gags, relatable villains and a shark assassin named Diane, it’s cute propaganda. Out now, Disney+ Continue reading...

(Matador) Better known as a formidable free jazz saxophonist, these thrashing songs about the artist’s Tennessee childhood home share a similar genre-pushing intensity On opening track OCD, Zoh Amba stops a twinkling, rootsy guitar melody and starts over, searching for the right way to tell the story of a boy diagnosed with “dreamin’ all the time”. Amba lands on a queasy combination of empathy and conspiracy (“said that mind needs fixin’ / gunna end up like everybody”), churned up by thrashing, violent strumming – the kind that causes blisters and wrecked strings. These cryptic postcards from Amba’s home town of Kingsport, Tennessee describe childhood memories with fresh eyes: they left at 17 and returned only recently, now in their mid-20s. Blending gruff reality with poetic licence, Eyes Full is a rugged, experimental country rock record that feels deeply lived in, despite representing an abrupt change in sound: Amba is best known as a prodigious free jazz saxophonist. Continue reading...

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...

In what has become one of the most chaotic primaries in recent years, elections in California are delivering a string of upsets. Elsewhere, establishment Democrats performed well and a Trump pick failed to make the cut. Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian’s Sam Levin about the big takeaways from the single busiest primary day of the year so far Continue reading...

Draft treaty claims sexual and reproductive health and rights are an existential threat to the African family An African treaty that rejects longstanding international human rights obligations moved a step closer to becoming policy this week as governments across the continent met in Ghana. The draft African charter on family, sovereignty and values, seen by the Guardian, asserts that African values and culture are under attack from “foreign ideologies” and urges states to withdraw from any agreements that do not align with the principles of the charter, including the 2003 Maputo protocol, which promotes gender equality and protects the reproductive and health rights of women and girls. Continue reading...

In Mona’s new permanent installation, visitors can breathe air so pure it ‘has not been touched by any being before you’ More than 2bn years ago, during the Paleoproterozoic era, the Earth’s atmosphere began to fill with free oxygen, enabling the rise of aerobic life and, ultimately, humans. It’s known as the Great Oxidation Event, and deep in the subterranean belly of the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Tasmania, a new artwork offers visitors the chance to inhale oxygen that’s been trapped in iron ore since then. When French-Swiss conceptual artist Julian Charrière came up with the idea, Mona’s owner David Walsh not only said yes but created a bespoke space for it. Continue reading...

(Felt) From birdsong to pool balls, this Lithuanian musician – a graduate of Copenhagen’s buzzy Rhythmic Music Conservatory – mixes beguiling found sounds into left-field pop and modern classical Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory has become associated with a specific gauzy, esoteric sound, which draws on, and reshapes, classical instrumentation and pop songwriting. Think ML Buch, Astrid Sonne and Erika de Casier, all of whom have graduated from the institution since 2019. Following in their footsteps is Lithuanian musician Gintė Preisaitė, who works with piano, voice and electronics to create atmospheric, unsettling ambient compositions. Instruments of Forgetting and the Singing Bone, Preisaitė’s first solo release under her own name, draws on her background in improvisational techniques and composing for large ensembles. With additional instrumentation from a cluster of collaborators – strings, woodwind, tape – she presents eight tracks that build in intensity through her collage-like assembling of strange sounds and effects. Continue reading...

Unexpected monthly drop of 0.1% in May leaves price of typical home at £298,806, says lender Halifax Business live – latest updates 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 compared with April, 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...

State department warns of ‘ideological conditioning’ in message of condolence to family of murdered student The US state department has criticised “two-tiered policing” in Britain in a message of condolence to the family of the murder victim Henry Nowak in a thinly veiled rebuke of the UK government. The 18-year-old student’s murder has been claimed by some as evidence of two-tier policing in the UK – the argument that some groups of people are dealt with more harshly than others for ideological reasons. Continue reading...

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...

Inside New York’s notorious jail complex, nearly 2,000 incarcerated people watched Game 1 of the NBA finals, arguing calls, roasting celebrity fans and sharing in a rare citywide moment It’s nearly half past eight on Wednesday evening and approximately 30 men in tan uniforms drift into the common area of a housing unit deep inside the George R Vierno Center, an 850-bed jail and one of eight active facilities on New York’s Rikers Island. Some hover around a folding table piled to the edges with snacks. Others make their way into the smaller rooms on the perimeter of the two-floor communal space and drag plastic chairs closer to the flat-screen televisions mounted inside. The excited chatter and nervous energy bubbles as a familiar refrain cuts through the din. Knicks in four. Pictured above: An exterior view of the Rikers Island jail complex on 3 June 2026. Pictured below: The bridge connecting Rikers Island to Queens crosses a sprawling employee parking lot before reaching the jail complex, which houses the vast majority of people held in New York City’s custody. All photographs by Lauren Caulk. Continue reading...

Councils are sending vulnerable kids to homes run by money-grabbing cowboys and private-equity vultures Bring your suitcase, your bin liner, your dumpy bag. They’re handing out money faster than you can stuff it in a sack. All you need do is join the market in what may now be England’s most lucrative commodity. A commodity with arms and legs, hearts and brains, thoughts and feelings. Children. Two years ago I stumbled into this issue after discovering that children in care who were being helped by a local charity I’m involved with were suddenly being whisked away, terminating the amazing progress they had been making, breaking their relationships, their sense of home, stability and security. When I began exploring why this was happening, I could scarcely believe what I was seeing: a highly lucrative trade in highly vulnerable young people. Children in “care” were being exchanged between private equity companies for £100,000 apiece. That figure is now wrong. Today they are worth far more. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Women coaches routinely overlooked, undermined and denied opportunities despite qualifications, say experts Women are being shut out of careers in sport by entrenched sexism, discrimination and workplace bullying, MPs have been told. Female coaches are routinely overlooked, undermined and denied opportunities despite their qualifications, experts told a parliamentary select committee on Thursday. Continue reading...

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...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news UK shoppers return to high street as warm weather brings respite from shadow of war A second takeover battle has ended without success for the pursuer. US-based Apollo Global Management has said it does not intend to make a firm offer for British thermal processing services company Bodycote, following talks between the two sides. Continue reading...

I’d much rather scoff the 100 best puddings… Sign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are published Get all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and prints Continue reading...

New manager achieved much at Bournemouth with style reminiscent of Jürgen Klopp’s counterpress There comes a point in most discussions when all the detail and complications fall away and the issue can be crystalised into a single straightforward question. For Liverpool that became: do they have more chance of challenging for the league title next season under Arne Slot or Andoni Iraola? Put like that, the answer was clear and so Slot was replaced. That answer may seem counterintuitive. Slot won the Premier League last year and Iraola has never so much as managed a club in Europe. There will be those who see the decision, and the widespread consensus that it was the right thing to do, as evidence of football’s impatience. Perhaps it is. Perhaps Slot next season at Anfield, in less testing circumstances, could have regained the confidence of the dressing room and reinvigorated the side. But in management that is very rare. Continue reading...

Print out and fill in our brilliant wallchart and follow the 48 teams at the tournament in USA, Mexico and Canada • All of our World Cup coverage in one handy place Continue reading...

The Russian world title challenger and the controversial American have personal issues but similar ratings, and drew 4-4 with a win apiece and six draws Ian Nepomniachtchi, who won two Candidates tournaments but then lost world title matches to Magnus Carlsen and Ding Liren, and Hans Niemann, whose controversial 2022 game with Carlsen is the subject of the Netflix documentary Untold: Chess Mates, tied an eight-game series in Belgrade this week with a win apiece and six draws. Nepo won the first game and Niemann the eighth, after the Russian missed an easy opportunity to win game seven. They played two games a day at a brisk time control of one hour per player plus a 30 seconds per move increment which Fide calls “Fast Classical”. The event was opened by Serbia’s minister of sport, Zoran Gajic, and the veteran grandmaster Ljubomir Ljubojevic made a ceremonial opening move. Continue reading...

Blue Sharks are in unchartered waters, making their finals debut after a meteoric rise 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...

Andy Burnham takes round one of the big byelection bout while Reform’s Rob Kenyon takes aim at himself Seconds out … Round one. In the left corner we have the middleweight King of the North … Andy Burnham. In the far-right corner we have the total lightweight … Rob “The Plumber” Kenyon. On the undercard, we have three nonentities we can barely bring ourselves to mention. Mike “The Tory” Winstanley, Sarah “The Green” Wakefield and Jake “The Lib Dem” Austin. And if you think these three are dopey, you should see some of the other candidates in the Makerfield byelection who we didn’t invite. Thursday night’s edition of BBC Question Time had come billed as the great showdown between Burnham and Kenyon with three no-hopers hung out as a veneer of impartiality. But no matter how much the presenter, Fiona Bruce, tried to hype up the programme as television gold, the excitement never really got started. The showdown was that the showdown never happened. Continue reading...

Producer of The Rest is … podcasts reports sales of £37.9m, boosted by rise in subscriptions and live events The media production company co-founded by the former England footballer Gary Lineker and behind The Rest is … podcasts is now the fastest-growing business in Britain in a new ranking. Goalhanger made £37.9m in sales in 2025, growing at an average annual rate of 321% over the past three years, according to the latest Sunday Times list of the 100 quickest-growing private companies. Continue reading...

Nicola Walker is a furious mother who decimates her best mate’s life after he sleeps with her daughter in an excruciating wrongcom. Plus, the LGBTQ+ adoption drama that has made waves There’s a brilliantly cringe take on intergenerational romance in this comedy starring Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement as the titular middle-aged best friends. Their relationship is shattered when Steve accidentally falls for Alice’s 26-year-old daughter Izzy (Yali Topol Margalith). Alice and Steve (created by Sex Education writer Sophie Goodhart) rightly doesn’t shy away from the messiness of the whole scenario and instead leans into it with great relish. Alice’s fury leads to some terrible behaviour on all sides – there’s a new contender for the most excruciating TV dinner party of all time. But the story is nuanced and sympathetic, too. And the cast, Walker in particular, are sublime. Phil Harrison Disney+, from Monday Continue reading...