In less than a decade, surrounded by screens, I lost my ability to read some of the best books ever written. But, inspired by the Guardian’s 100 best novels list, I was determined to get it back It is a privilege to be surrounded by books. My parents hail from the literary working class, a subsection of society that believes great works lead to a richer life. Reading for them was an inverted form of class snobbery. My dad could read as well as anyone. He’d prove it on package holidays, sitting on the balcony the entire time, head bowed, cigarette in hand, flicking through the pages of Jane Austen or Herman Melville. The only difference between my old man and an old Etonian was the drudgery of employment. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: work is the bane of the reading class. As for my own reading life, my mum wore me down, shouting “Read a book!” any time I dared say I was bored. I soon capitulated. I was nudged towards the classics, defined by Italo Calvino as books people say they should “reread” because they’ve either read them or do not want to admit they have not. In my late teens and 20s, I worked my way through the greats. I fell in love with a woman called George and thought Middlemarch was magic. I was a smart lad, prone to bad decisions, unsure of my place in the world. It is perhaps no surprise that I identified with Dorothea. Continue reading...

Son and stepson of Cameroon’s Paul Biya are seen as main contenders to be vice-president Since taking power in Cameroon 44 years ago, Paul Biya has done without a vice-president. In 1972, a decade before he first won the presidency, the role had been scrapped as the central African country transitioned from a federal to unitary state. Now, at the age of 93, people close to the world’s oldest head of state appear to have had a change of heart, and – according to their critics – they have one thing on their mind: the creation of a dynastic system that would transfer power to his son or his stepson. Continue reading...

For tens of thousands of years, these Palaeolithic artworks were unseen. When they were rediscovered, onlookers marvelled at their vivid beauty. One of the world’s leading experts took me up close The aurochs, the mammoth and the steppe bison are long extinct, but their painted likenesses still look relatively fresh across the walls and roofs of Altamira. Or so said Diego Garate Maidagan, who is one of the very few humans allowed to enter that exalted cave in northern Spain. I met Garate last summer in a small Basque village called Gautegiz Arteaga. A professor of prehistory and Palaeolithic art at the University of Cantabria, he told me he’d been inside Altamira as recently as the week before, furthering his lifelong investigations of the prep work, tools and methodologies developed by early Homo sapiens painters. Continue reading...

In Scandinavia and the Baltic region, citizens are signing up to do their bit as non-combatants. Other Nato allies should take heed Wars, these days, target digital infrastructure as well as military installations. The very fact that large chunks of daily life can be knocked out without a single shot being fired is the reason Russia seems interested in doing exactly that. It is, for example, already dangerously interfering with aviation and shipping around the Baltic Sea. Imagine the impact of larger, more successful cyber-attacks on our modern lives. Ordinary citizens would have to survive without texting, banking apps, public transportation and most modern office work. The government, though, would need to keep operating. In an offline world, the logistics of running a country would require many people. Some of these people, Sweden suggests, could ride motorcycles. Continue reading...

It takes a brave person to write about a gang of 20-somethings navigating life and love in neighbouring Manhattan apartments. Sadly this is not an instant classic – it’s a slice of schmaltzy pudding flopping on to a plate More than three decades after Friends launched, it is still a brave writer who puts out a show about a gaggle of twentysomethings learning to navigate life and love in a brace of unfeasibly palatial apartments in Manhattan. Brave or, perhaps, foolish. The new sitcom from Mindy Kaling (who began her writing and acting career on the US version of The Office and most recently created high school comedy Never Have I Ever and university sitcom The Sex Lives of College Girls) gives us five rather than six friends split between two apartments across a hallway. Two of them are people of colour rather than maintaining the Kauffman-Cranes’ now infamously melanin-free approach to city life, but the keen eye can still trace the ancestry. The ear may have more trouble. Kaling’s scripts try hard but rarely shine, let alone dazzle as the Friends’ dialogue almost unfailingly did. Continue reading...

Karen Holmes lost a son to cancer, then her home in Yorkshire to a fire; the house is now refurbished but its meaning has gone Karen Holmes is sitting in her newly renovated lounge in a house she has lived in for 28 years, but she cannot live here now. She cannot leave, either. The house looks good. Better than good, people tell her. There are new walls, new floors, new windows. French doors where there used to be a window. Continue reading...

Kyiv, Dnipro and Kharkiv hit, with apartment buildings among the targets according to officials, after president said intelligence predicted ‘massive strike’ Russian air raids on major Ukrainian centres including Kyiv, Dnipro and Kharkiv killed at least five people and wounded dozens by early morning on Tuesday, authorities said. Four people were killed and 16 injured in a Russian attack on Dnipro, in Ukraine’s east, said the regional governor, Oleksandr Hanzha. All those injured were taken to hospital, he said, posting pictures of heavily damaged residential buildings, burnt-out vehicles and a destroyed children’s playground. Continue reading...

Lively’s legal team are suing her It Ends with Us co-star for legal fees and damages, reigniting a years-long court battle Attorneys for US actor Blake Likely were back in front of a New York judge on Monday to demand legal fees and damages from It Ends with Us co-star Justin Baldoni, after a settlement was reached last month in their years-long legal battle. The 38-year-old actor’s legal team argued that the defamation lawsuit brought against her by Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, was a retaliatory move prohibited by California law. Continue reading...

Democrats decry president’s ‘most brazen act of self-dealing yet’ and vow to challenge fund in Congress Donald Trump is reconsidering whether to keep pressing for a $1.8bn fund to compensate his allies, a person familiar with his thinking said on Monday, as the justice department paused the program to comply with a court order. Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund has faced legal setbacks since it was announced two weeks ago. The idea has also faced a mounting political backlash from Republicans concerned by a lack of oversight and the possibility of payouts to participants in the January 6 2021 riot at the US Capitol. Continue reading...

Budanov backs Zelenskyy call to capitalise on Kyiv’s strong position on battlefield; Kyiv under heavy attack into Tuesday morning. What we know on day 1,560 A deal to end the war against Russia by winter is a “realistic” outcome, Kyrylo Budanov said. The celebrated former Ukrainian spymaster, now Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said on Monday: “This is the president’s instruction: to try to end this war as soon as possible … preferably before winter. In my opinion, this is absolutely correct, timely, and realistic.” Zelenskyy in an interview aired on Sunday called for reviving stalled talks with Russia before the onset of winter to take account of Kyiv’s improved strategic position. A senior Ukrainian commander said last week that Ukraine had a six-month window in which to seize the battlefield initiative and strengthen its hand for peace talks. Budanov said he expected a US delegation to visit Moscow and Kyiv in the near future, without giving details. Kyiv came under heavy Russian attack early on Tuesday with authorities urging residents to seek shelter. The Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said a fire broke out in the Podil district on the grounds of a non-residential property, and a nine-storey apartment building was on fire after debris apparently struck the roof. “In the Obolon district, cars are burning after being struck by falling missile debris. There are also fires at two locations in open areas, including one near a kindergarten,” Klitschko posted. Reuters and Agence France-Presse reported that air defences were at work in Kyiv according to their journalists and witnesses. Zelenskyy on Monday reiterated warnings of a possible massive Russian strike and urged residents to pay special attention to air raid alerts. A suspected Russian “shadow fleet” oil tanker has been detained by France in the Atlantic, Angelique Chrisafis writes. The Tagor was detained on Sunday morning in international waters more than 400 nautical miles (740km) west of Brittany with the help of the UK and other partners, said the French president, Emmanuel Macron. French authorities said the ship had departed Murmansk in north-west Russia, and was headed for Cameroon under a false Cameroonian flag. It was being escorted to an anchorage for further inspection. Moscow complained of piracy. Macron said everything was conducted “in strict compliance with the law of the sea … It is unacceptable for ships to circumvent international sanctions, violate the law of the sea, and finance the war that Russia has been waging against Ukraine for more than four years.” Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s military was capable of hitting Russian military logistics “across virtually the entire depth of the temporarily occupied territories … In practice, there are almost no safe roads left for the occupier in the south and east of our country.” The Russian government intends to increase fuel supplies from Belarus and tighten oversight of exports of gasoline and diesel because of domestic fuel shortages, the RBC news outlet reported on Monday. RBC also reported that a complete ban on gasoline exports for two months, including under some inter-governmental agreements, is under discussion. Fuel sales in Sevastopol in illegally Russia-occupied Crimea would be limited on Tuesday, said Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed de facto governor, amid gasoline rationing caused by Ukrainian attacks. Russia on Monday also banned the export of aviation fuel until the end of November. Dozens of countries denounced Russia at the UN on Monday after a Russian drone hit a Romanian apartment building, injuring two people. “Such behaviour is unacceptable under international law and must stop,” said the Romanian foreign minister, Oana-Silvia Toiu, in a statement representing 56 UN members, including from the EU and Nato. Continue reading...

Marine Rescue NSW volunteer coaxes distressed dog on to jetski after it paddled to Snapper Island in Batemans Bay Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast On Monday, radio operators in Batemans Bay along the New South Wales south coast got a call they hadn’t had before: a dog had been swept off the rocks and was in the ocean in distress. Rod Ingamells, the unit commander of the local Marine Rescue NSW team, was one of the first to hop in a rescue vessel. But by the time his team reached the area, the dog had swum nearly 800 metres across the bay to nearby Snapper Island. Continue reading...

Government cites crime and drunken antics of foreigners as it shortens their stays – with ordinary Thais welcoming the crackdown It’s late afternoon at Bangkok’s Khaosan road, the city’s backpacker strip. Bar staff are calling after passersby, enticing them inside with drinks promotions. The smell of cannabis, widely sold in the city, wafts into the street, where vendors sell anything from fake tattoos, flip-flops and icy fruit shakes. This street, and its famously noisy nightlife, has attracted visitors from around the world for decades. But increasingly, some in Thailand are growing tired of the country’s party-loving visitors. Continue reading...

Net zero industry accounts for more than a million jobs and benefits whole country, according to CBI Economics More than a million jobs, higher wages, nearly half a trillion pounds in investment in the pipeline – the UK’s green economy is powering ahead, according to research by the country’s leading business organisation. The net zero economy, which is worth more than £100bn a year, benefits all of the UK, according to the CBI Economics analysis commissioned by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, despite critics who want to abolish the UK’s net zero targets. Continue reading...

Sebastián Beccacece has established a miserly defence and Moisés Caicedo’s ability in midfield could help team take the next step 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...

Party could struggle to push ratings as strategy increasingly focuses on views held by minority of voters, research finds Reform UK is becoming increasingly reliant on socially conservative views for political support, and therefore could struggle to push its poll ratings much higher, a large-scale research project led by the leading psephologist John Curtice has found. A study of Nigel Farage’s party carried out as part of the British Social Attitudes report found that while Reform supporters were disproportionately more likely to be unhappy with politicians and public services, recent recruits had seemingly more robust attitudes in areas such as diversity and welfare. Continue reading...

More than 1,000 pages of emails and WhatsApp messages have been released relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment as the UK’s ambassador to the US. The documents show Mandelson’s criticism of Keir Starmer, and his desperation to become the Oxford University chancellor – but the controversial vetting file from when he was appointed ambassador is missing. Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey explain what these files show us Continue reading...

World No 1 wins 7-5, 6-3 to reach quarter-finals ‘Really important they put match as night session’ Three years after the Roland Garros organisers last declared a women’s match worthy of being called the best of the day in Paris, the total collapse of one half of the men’s draw and a fourth round between two of the three most successful active women’s players not named Williams finally allowed women to return to centre stage. Finally ushered into the marquee night match on Monday evening, Aryna Sabalenka and Naomi Osaka traded nuclear ground strokes in an intense, high-quality slugfest before Sabalenka showed why she remains the best player in the world by elevating her level in the most important moments and marching into the quarter-finals with a hard-fought 7-5, 6-3 win. Continue reading...

Clash began when teachers broke through metal barrier at entrance to Zocalo plaza, where fans will watch game Mexico City police hurled teargas at protesting teachers to keep them from reaching the historic square where the “Fan fest” for the 2026 World Cup is under construction, according to AFP journalists. The clash started when teachers broke through one of the metal barriers that have been set up at the entrance to the Zocalo plaza, a block from the government palace and a giant screen where fans will watch Mexico’s first World Cup game on 11 June. Continue reading...

London mayor says Soho Society’s decision to challenge all new licensing applications ‘bad’ for city Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, has suggested he will overrule a residents’ society which has vowed to challenge all new applications for pubs and bars in Soho. The Guardian revealed last week that the Soho Society, a residents’ group established in 1972 and aimed at “preserving the character of Soho”, voted for a new licensing mandate, meaning it will challenge all new applications for bars and restaurants in the area, including renewals of existing licences. Continue reading...

The BBC presenter has a horrific illness which leaves her and so many other women in a lifelong hell with no cure in sight. Barnett is at the absolute end of her tether … can she change millions of lives? Endometriosis is like someone taking a drill to your organs. The pain resembles a tsunami in every one of your cells – or the movement of tectonic plates inside your body. Years spent contending with the condition is “not life”. Endometriosis may not literally kill you, but suffering from it can feel like a living death. In Emma Barnett: Fighting Endometriosis, the Today presenter provides all these unflinching insights and many more into the condition, which involves cells resembling those that line the uterus growing elsewhere in the body. There is no cure, the only available treatment is hormones (predominantly the contraceptive pill), to mask symptoms, or surgery – including a total hysterectomy, although that won’t necessarily provide relief on a permanent basis. Endometriosis is extremely painful and little understood. It’s also incredibly common: one in 10 women of reproductive age in the UK have it. Continue reading...

Club slashed women’s team budget despite near-promotion Head coach resigned after decision players called ‘cold and impersonal’ Plymouth Argyle have said they “did not take lightly” their decision to significantly reduce their women’s team’s budget and tell the squad via email that their contracts were not being renewed. The Guardian reported on Sunday evening that the vast majority of the squad had received a letter, via email, which began abruptly with: “Hi all. Following our end-of-season review and planning for 2026-27, we wanted to let you know that we won’t be renewing contracts for the players included in this message.” Continue reading...

Revelations appear in second tranche of released files about Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador Peter Mandelson was receiving sensitive security briefings about the Foreign Office’s work, and was in discussions with the head of MI6, before he had completed the developed vetting process, newly released documents reveal. Declassified emails show the ambassador designate and Richard Moore, the former chief of MI6 – a role known as “C” – had agreed to meet in early January 2025 before Mandelson went to Washington. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Mukund Krisha says he is ‘proud’ of his record at staff association after allegations of fraud The former head of the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) who was arrested on suspicion of corruption has told the Guardian he is confident he will be “entirely exonerated” and is “proud” of his record at the organisation. Mukund Krishna, who was the chief executive of the staff association, is facing claims of financial wrongdoing and had his contract terminated on Sunday. Continue reading...

Company asks US government to release army of sterile male mosquitoes to lower number of illness-spreading bugs Google wants to “stop bad bugs with good bugs”, and it’s not talking about coding. The tech company has asked the US government for permission to release up to 32 million sterilized mosquitoes in California and Florida. As part of its successful “Debug” program, Google is tapping into its tech expertise to raise an army of sterile male mosquitoes to lower the number of illness-spreading bugs. Mosquitoes – the world’s deadliest animal – kill more people than any other creature in the world every year by spreading lethal diseases such as dengue, West Nile virus, Zika, chikungunya and malaria. Continue reading...

Emails and WhatsApp messages reveal string of exchanges with ministers when he was president of Global Counsel Peter Mandelson, as president of his then advisory firm Global Counsel, lobbied hard for ministers to attend his events and to meet his firm’s staff in the months following Labour’s general election win, newly released documents reveal. Emails and WhatsApp exchanges show how active the Labour peer was in the wake of the election to work his contacts within government to the potential advantage of both his company and his then campaign to be chancellor of Oxford University. Continue reading...