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'A shameless cash grab': can the World Cup be saved?
DC reflecting pool before-and-after photos show Trump’s ‘beautiful’ renovation
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McTominay should be fit for Scotland’s World Cup opener despite stomach bug
Midfielder missed final training session before Haiti game ‘Hopefully that doesn’t spread,’ said Kenny McLean Scotland are confident Scott McTominay will be fit to face Haiti on Saturday despite the midfielder sitting out training on Thursday due to a stomach complaint. McTominay, widely considered Scotland’s most influential player, was a notable absentee as Steve Clarke put his players through their paces for a final time in North Carolina before departing for Boston. There, Scotland will play their first World Cup match in 28 years. Continue reading...
‘Out of reach’: George Russell refuses to think about F1 title after Antonelli surge
British driver says pressure is off following bad run Antonelli 68 points ahead of Mercedes teammate George Russell insists the pressure is off in the battle for the Formula One drivers’ championship after a succession of mishaps this season – combined with the exemplary form of his Mercedes teammate, Kimi Antonelli – left him 68 points off the pace. Sunday’s round seven is the newly styled Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, with the Spanish Grand Prix shifting to a new venue in Madrid in September. Mercedes are expected to excel again this weekend, but it is the 19-year-old Antonelli who has established a firm grip on the drivers’ championship after five consecutive victories. Continue reading...
Real Madrid confirm José Mourinho’s return as manager after 13 years away
63-year-old leaves Benfica to move back to the Bernabéu Marco Silva agrees deal to replace him at Portuguese club José Mourinho’s blockbuster return as Real Madrid manager has been confirmed. The 63-year-old, who was in the dugout at the Bernabéu from 2010 until 2013, joins the 15-times European champions from Benfica on a three-year contract. Mourinho’s appointment comes after a torrid season at Real Madrid, with Xabi Alonso sacked in January amid player unrest. Álvaro Arbeloa came in as interim head coach, but failed to turn around the campaign as Real exited the Champions League to Bayern Munich at the quarter-final stage and Barcelona cantered to the La Liga title. Disharmony within the squad also continued, with Fede Valverde taken to hospital to have stitches after a confrontation with his teammate Aurélien Tchouaméni. Continue reading...
Women’s prize: Virginia Evans wins for fiction and Lyse Doucet takes award for nonfiction
Evans’s The Correspondent and the BBC journalist’s ‘people’s history’ of modern Afghanistan, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, win £30,000 prizes Debut novelist Virginia Evans has won this year’s Women’s prize for fiction, while the BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet took home the nonfiction award, also for her debut. Evans’s The Correspondent and Doucet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul were announced as the winners at a ceremony in central London on Thursday evening, with each author awarded £30,000. Continue reading...
The Guardian view on John Healey: the defence secretary’s resignation undermines Labour as well as Keir Starmer | Editorial
The party stalwart’s blistering attack is not just a problem for the prime minister – it makes the task of a successor far harder John Healey’s resignation as defence secretary on Thursday morning was genuinely shocking. Mr Healey is not just a veteran minister, but a Labour loyalist who previously served both Tony Blair and Jeremy Corbyn. In an interview in March, he observed that he didn’t toil to rebuild confidence in Labour “just to see that wasted with internal chatter and commentary”. Now he has maximised external chatter with a withering denunciation of the prime minister and chancellor. In his resignation letter, Mr Healey said that Sir Keir Starmer was “unable” and the Treasury “unwilling” to provide the budget needed to protect the UK – forcing him to make decisions that increased the risk to personnel and could make the country less safe. Having spent years rebuilding Labour’s credibility on national security, he appears to be demolishing it, weeks before Sir Keir faces a Nato summit. Doubtless he feels the damage was done by the repeated failure to publish the defence investment plan (DIP) – originally due last autumn – or match the armed forces’ expectations. 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...
The Guardian view on the analogue resurgence: the shock of the old | Editorial
Long-abandoned formats such as cassettes and VHS tapes are finding new life as consumers seek a digital detox Ten years after the last video recorder manufacturer ceased production, the first straight-to-video movie for two decades – This Is How the World Ends – was released this month. The resurgence of vinyl began long ago; sales are at their highest level for over 30 years. But record buyers enthuse about the warmth of their sound and the generous visual expanse of album covers. In contrast, the new movie is shot in HD; the director acknowledges that those watching it on video will see a cropped, fuzzier image. The point of the exercise – beyond creating a buzz – lies not in the inherent qualities of VHS, but the effect of its rarity on the viewer. When everything is available in high definition with one swipe of your screen, cumbersome physical formats that must be hunted down appear both nostalgically inviting and strikingly fresh. Last year, Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl was released in multiple physical formats, including cassette and CD – technically digital, but also enjoying a revival thanks to its retro feel. The title track of her previous album, The Tortured Poets Department, mocked a lover’s attachment to his typewriter, notoriously favoured by hipsters. Continue reading...
Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length, study finds
First ever global mapping of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi shows scale of hyphal systems that sustain plant life Our planet’s soils contain enough of the subterranean fungi that sustain plant life and help regulate the climate to stretch from the Earth to the sun almost three-quarters of a billion times, a groundbreaking new study has found. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are networks of tubular cells called hyphae that sustain life on Earth by forming critical partnerships with more than 70% of plants. The networks, which have been forming for about 475 million years, provide nutrients and water in exchange for the carbon produced by the plants, and help to regulate the climate by drawing carbon into soils. Continue reading...
‘They are adults’: Tuchel grants England players day off with few strings attached
Manager says team must ‘live up to the trust’ on rest days German suggests Bellingham may play as a ‘free role’ No 9 Thomas Tuchel is confident that his England players will not abuse his trust, as he granted them time off with few strings attached at the end of their pre-World Cup training camp in Florida. The manager said he was happy for them to do whatever they wanted – as long as it did not involve air travel – before they fly on Saturday to Kansas City, their base for the tournament. Tuchel oversaw a training game against the amateur club Miami United in Palm Beach Gardens on Thursday before giving the players the rest of the day and Friday off. Continue reading...
US supreme court overturns conviction of Twitter employee accused of spying
Unanimous ruling says US secured conviction of Ahmad Abouammo for spying for Saudi Arabia in the wrong state The US supreme court overturned on Thursday an obstruction conviction of a former Twitter employee accused of spying for Saudi Arabia, saying he was tried in the wrong state for knowingly falsifying a document to impede an FBI investigation. The justices unanimously ruled that the US justice department wrongly in 2022 secured Ahmad Abouammo’s conviction in California from a jury in San Francisco, when his only interactions with FBI agents had been at his home in Seattle in Washington state. Continue reading...
Ben Jennings on the World Cup and the US war on Iran – cartoon
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The UK defence minister's shock resignation is a warning for all of Europe | Paul Taylor
John Healey is right about the risk of wars. But it has become politically treacherous for Nato leaders to borrow for defence Since the historic Nato summit in The Hague one year ago this month, European leaders have pledged massive increases in defence spending in the face of increasingly acute threats of Russian aggression. Yet the reality is that key west European governments – especially the UK, France and Italy – are not putting their money where their mouth is for fear of undermining lenders’ confidence in their national debt. Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Giorgia Meloni are behaving as if they were more scared of the bond markets than they are of the Russians. The dramatic resignation of the UK defence secretary John Healey in protest over Starmer’s reluctance to ramp up investment highlights how politically treacherous it has become to find these much-needed resources. Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre 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...
Alleged rape of girl ‘simply not true’, Jeffrey Donaldson tells trial
Former DUP leader also rejects suggestion wife knew about or witnessed abuse, saying ‘there was nothing to know’ Jeffrey Donaldson is “crystal clear” that an allegation he raped a girl several years ago is “simply not true”, the former Democratic Unionist party leader has told a court. Giving evidence in the third week of his trial on sexual abuse charges, the ex-MP said an allegation that he had touched the same girl’s breasts was “just unbelievable”. Continue reading...
Canadian mother sues OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT led her daughter to kill herself
Suit filed in US alleges chatbot told Alice Carrier, 24, ‘maybe this is just the end’ as she struggled with suicidal thoughts A Canadian mother sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, in US court on Thursday, alleging that ChatGPT encouraged her daughter to commit suicide. The lawsuit is the latest in a slew accusing the company of failing to address dangerous conversations between users and the company’s chatbot. Kristie Carrier said in a lawsuit filed in San Francisco state court that her daughter, Alice, told ChatGPT about her suicidal ideations more than a dozen times leading up to her death but that OpenAI’s safety systems never flagged the conversations for human review or terminated them. Continue reading...
Burnham’s momentum builds in Makerfield as byelection nears
Hundreds of Labour activists and MPs have ‘made the pilgrimage’ to the seat, where they are pounding the streets For a few short weeks, the centre of political gravity in Britain has shifted from the Palace of Westminster to the bar of a former Labour club in Wigan. In London, even as Keir Starmer insists he will fight to stay in No 10, the walls seem to be crumbling around him, especially with Thursday’s resignation of the defence secretary, John Healey. Continue reading...
John Healey quitting defence puts a time bomb under No 10. He is a loyalist: this is no ordinary departure
He served through the eras of Blair, Brown, Miliband and Corbyn in a party that knows and respects him. It will matter that even his patience has run out John Healey is not a rash man. Slow to anger, calm in a crisis, loyal and yet beneath it all, formidably determined. He stuck at it through the Jeremy Corbyn years, much as he privately despaired of where the party was heading, keeping his thoughts to himself because all he wanted was for Labour to win again. When it did, under Keir Starmer, he became the understated anchor to a frequently gale-tossed ship of government; the solid citizen everybody liked and nobody distrusted, a natural choice for caretaker leader had Starmer ever fallen under a bus. Or, perhaps, been pushed under a tank. Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Mexico v South Africa: World Cup 2026 opening match – live
⚽️ Kick-off time: 1pm local/8pm BST/3pm EDT/5am AEST ⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Wallchart | Email Daniel Quiz time: name that tune! Ahhhh! Ding! Ding ding ding ding! Neow! Ding ding ding ding! Ta bam bam bam bam bam bam! Continue reading...
Bananas could vanish from US school meals. Here’s why
New Farm Bill places caps on non-US foods; nutritionists say it restricts availability of healthy meals for kids School nutrition workers and advocates have “lots of concerns about bananas”, said Erin Ogden, policy associate for federal child nutrition programs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Bananas are nutrient-dense foods that many children like. That makes them popular offerings in school cafeterias, since any healthy food that a kid will eat prevents waste and ensures that child isn’t eating either nothing or something less wholesome instead. Continue reading...
Defence secretary quits with ‘blistering’ swipe at Starmer - The Latest
John Healey has resigned as defence secretary over the government’s military spending plans, in another significant blow for Keir Starmer. In a scathing letter to the prime minister, Healey said the long-awaited defence investment plan “falls well short of what is required for defence” and that he would have had to take decisions that “could make Britain less safe”. Nosheen Iqbal speaks to the Guardian’s policy editor, Kiran Stacey Continue reading...
Helen Mirren speaks out about being called ‘evil Zionist’ on the street in London
Responding to an incident in which she was verbally abused, the actor said that that ‘evil forces are rising everywhere’, as well as expressing support for MobLand co-star Tom Hardy Helen Mirren has commented on being called an “evil Zionist bitch” while being harassed in the street in London, saying she was “attacked by mistake by a man who was maybe a little over passionate or maybe mentally not quite stable”. Footage circulated last month of an incident, believed to have taken place last year, while Mirren was walking with her husband, film-maker Taylor Hackford. They were approached and filmed by an unidentified person, who commented on Mirren’s support of Israel and then launched a volley of abuse at her. Continue reading...
Pope Leo rails against migrant deaths on visit to Spain’s ‘dock of shame’
Pontiff calls on leaders to treat migrants more humanely as he concludes week-long Spanish tour in Gran Canaria The constant flow of people embarking in small, rickety boats to migrate abroad should force a reckoning as to why we have built a world where so many “must risk death to seek life”, Pope Leo has said as he warned: “We cannot grow accustomed to counting the dead.” Thursday’s speech in the Canary Islands, on the final leg of the pontiff’s week-long tour of Spain, contained Leo’s most pointed comments to date on migration. Continue reading...
Video shows angler freeing great white shark after surprise catch at Nantucket
Footage shows Elliot Sudal hauling the shark from the surf before releasing it within seconds, sparking online reaction An angler who reeled in a rare great white shark at a Nantucket beach said he posted extraordinary video of the encounter to social media as an example of how to safely catch and release one of the ocean’s greatest predators. Elliot Sudal said he was “testing the waters” off the Massachusetts beach he regularly uses when he inadvertently snagged the shark on Sunday. Continue reading...
More than one in five pupils in England have special educational needs, figures show
Data shows sharp increase in number of children receiving extra support and highlights pressure on schools, families and councils More than one in five pupils in England have special educational needs, as the latest official figures show a sharp increase in the numbers of children receiving extra support in school. The annual data from the Department for Education (DfE) confirms predictions of an increase in families seeking education, health and care plans (EHCPs) – the individual agreements detailing extra support – before the government’s efforts to overhaul funding and provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send). Continue reading...