Saturday’s strikes come after Israeli ambassador tells UN ‘we will not stop’ until Iranian nuclear threat eliminated while Iran vows to keep defending itself

• Israel and Iran launch new attacks as Tehran says it will not negotiate nuclear programme while under threat

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has arrived in Istanbul, Tasnim news agency reports, for a meeting with Arab League diplomats to discuss Tehran’s escalating conflict with Israel.

About 40 diplomats are slated to join the weekend gathering of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) as Israel and Iran continue to exchange missile strikes, Agence France-Presse reports.

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© Photograph: Florion Goga/Reuters

© Photograph: Florion Goga/Reuters

One theater fan was taken to the hospital after falling ill as another was treated on scene.

Bearly a scratch.

Singer trains underwater like Frank Sinatra once did and scientists say it may be useful in maintaining vocal prowess

Frank Sinatra did it his way, taking to the pool to boost his vocal prowess, and it seems Rod Stewart is singing from the same songsheet. Now scientists say the approach might not be somethin’ stupid.

Stewart, 80, is still entertaining fans with his raspy vocals and energetic stage performances and earlier this month he revealed that as well as running and playing some football, swimming also played a key part in his campaign to stay forever young.

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© Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

© Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

Commuters share their views at the junction with the highest number of cycling accidents

It’s 8am in Clapham, the area of south-west London where young professionals and well-off homeowners are crammed into 2 sq miles of buzzy high streets, a leafy common and rows of terraced houses.

The popularity of the neighbourhood lies in its proximity to the city centre. A 4-mile hop to central London makes for an easy journey to work, especially for one kind of commuter: cyclists.

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© Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

© Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

As the big day approached, I tried to brush aside feelings of uncertainty. But the 90s romcom reminded me that I didn’t have to settle for anyone

When my boyfriend proposed, I said yes – not because I was madly in love with him, but because it seemed like the correct thing to do. We’d been together for eight years and all of our friends were getting engaged; my life felt like a constant cycle of hen nights. I knew something was wrong but I suppressed it. Sometimes I’d get these flashes of anxiety. I’d worry about the fact that I no longer felt excited when my boyfriend walked into a room, or that we didn’t have sex any more – but I was 28, which at that point felt ancient to me, and I was frightened of being alone. I told myself I was experiencing nothing more than a classic case of pre-wedding jitters. I threw myself into buying the big white dress and designing the invitations. I planned to stash a bottle of gin in the church, so I could have a shot to calm my nerves before I walked down the aisle.

About three months before the wedding, I was home alone one evening and decided to watch Sleepless in Seattle. It was my father’s favourite film – he loved the classic jazz soundtrack and Nora Ephron’s dialogue. It had been on in the background a lot during my childhood and teenage years, so I was expecting it to be a comfort watch; something to almost lull me to sleep. I’d remembered the film as being about a man (Tom Hanks) and his cute son grieving the death of his wife. But that night I interpreted the film completely differently. I was sucked into the perspective of Meg Ryan’s character, Annie, who is engaged to a perfectly decent but slightly boring man – and deciding whether or not to call it off. I’d always seen Sleepless in Seattle as being about bereavement, but that night on my sofa, it felt like a film about one woman’s decision whether to get married, and play it safe, or give it all up and take a leap.

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© Illustration: Martin O'Neill/The Guardian

© Illustration: Martin O'Neill/The Guardian

In the first in a series, the Guardian maps out the rise in support for Farage and how parties are targeting the UK’s deindustrialised areas

When Nigel Farage called for the nationalisation of British Steel on a visit to the Scunthorpe steelworks this spring, it was a marked change in direction for a man who had spent almost all of his political career campaigning for a smaller, Thatcherite state.

Two years earlier, he had questioned why British taxpayers’ money should be thrown into keeping the fires of the very same blast furnaces burning. Back in 2018 he told an interviewer: “I supported Margaret Thatcher’s modernisation and reforms of the economy. It was painful for some people, but it had to happen.”

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© Composite: Guardian Design, Getty Images, Alamy, PA

© Composite: Guardian Design, Getty Images, Alamy, PA

In the Baltic nations, midsummer celebrations are rooted in pagan traditions around fire and fertility. They are also a good excuse to meet up with family and friends for a party in the forest

Towards dusk a bonfire was lit and, one after another, the friends we were eating and drinking with hurdled the leaping flames, a pagan ritual thought to provide benefits including improved physical and mental strength, prosperity and fertility.

Further heat came from a sauna we made using five sacks of logs – too many, we agreed afterwards. When it got too hot, we escaped into the cool shallows of the pond just a few metres away, repeating this cycle several times.

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© Photograph: Johnny Green

© Photograph: Johnny Green

The South Korean smash hit drama that gripped global audiences returns for a final instalment. It’s brutal, cruel and, sadly, brings back the animal-mask wearing VIPs whose season one appearance caused global mockery

Look alive – Squid Game returns this week! There’s still no sign of any squid, which is the kind of false advertising that ruined The Pink Panther. But that’s good, because squid are terrifying. Once, showing off on holiday, I offered to cook for a group of friends. I didn’t speak the language where we were, and ended up leaving the fishmonger with a big bag of tentacles. As I attempted to remove the head, guts, beak and skin of the creatures, their internal sacs burst, coating me in viscous black ink. I suffered an allergic reaction, don’t eat squid any more, and don’t see those friends.

Squid Game the TV show (Netflix, Friday 26 June) has proved even more traumatising. Set on a hidden island, the competition pits hundreds of desperate, indebted people against each other in a series of children’s games. The winner gets millions, while the losers are executed by guards, or die via gruesome, in-game accidents. The show’s brilliance is the way it amplifies the emotional stakes of each set-up. Players bond, form alliances, then have to murder each other to survive. The weak are ganged up on, cowards exploit loopholes in the rules to screw over everyone else, while those who make selfless choices are punished. Usually.

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© Photograph: ./Netflix

© Photograph: ./Netflix

From Disney World, Oasis and the Magic Roundabout to Mini-Me and Oddjob, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which lines of latitude are defined by the midnight sun and polar night?
2 Who was the first female head writer at Saturday Night Live?
3 Which band have had a one-armed drummer since 1986?
4 90% of the world’s advanced semiconductors come from which island?
5 Which entertainment venue is at 82 Boulevard de Clichy, Paris?
6 What is the heaviest naturally occurring element?
7 What mysterious device was discovered in 1901 by Greek sponge divers?
8 Which Shakespeare play is partly set in Lebanon?
What links:
9 Disney World in 2010; GWR; Magic Roundabout; Oasis?
10 Politician Leanne Wood, poet Simon Armitage; artist Cold War Steve; writer Mari Hannah?
11 Dumbo; Gromit; Michael Myers; Mini-Me; Oddjob?
12 Bay; general mines; holy spirit; St Paul; thick forest?
13 First Nephi; Second Nephi; Book of Jacob; Book of Enos; Book of Jarom?
14 Birmingham (trades); Cairo (minarets); Lon Chaney (faces)?
15 James; My Jim; Becky; Adventures of Mary Jane?

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© Photograph: photoman/Getty Images

© Photograph: photoman/Getty Images

Iranian missile strikes on Israel, protests in Los Angeles, teenagers training in Lviv and Kneecap in court: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

• Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

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© Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images

The vessel is scheduled to be lifted out of the water in the final phase of the recovery on Saturday, TMC Marine, the company leading the salvage operation, said.

A Michigan high school bowling coach fatally murdered one of his former bowlers, who had recently graduated, inside her home before turning the gun on himself in a horrific murder-suicide last week.

Avian invaders have coastal communities in Britain and beyond in a flap – but people are learning how to live with them

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© Photograph: Ali Smith/The Guardian

© Photograph: Ali Smith/The Guardian

How easy is it to adapt to the continental rules of child rearing?

Stuart Heritage embraces Italian family life

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© Photograph: David Vintiner/The Guardian

© Photograph: David Vintiner/The Guardian

We bought our three sons the same boots I’ve always worn. You can guess what happened next …

A few years ago someone asked me to write a quick 300 words on “bin shoes” – dedicated footwear you leave by the door to put out the bins. At the time I was experiencing a degree of sloth I decided to dress up as indignation: I emailed back saying I knew nothing of so-called bin shoes, that I had one pair of stout boots that served me in all circumstances.

This was more or less true – I’m on my sixth pair of identical pull-on ankle boots, which suit both formal and informal occasions, and all seasons. I wear them on long hikes, even though I probably shouldn’t, and I slip them on late at night, without socks, when I have forgotten to put out the bins.

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© Illustration: Selman Hosgor/The Guardian

© Illustration: Selman Hosgor/The Guardian

You may well be knocked sideways by the sheer punch of this apparently simple sandwich – and it’s great for picnics, too

Last month, while on a book tour in New York, I ate a sandwich that moved me to utter profanities. It was unusual behaviour from me, and more so because the sandwich in question was packed with an excessive amount of spring greens, but then, that is the genius of Brooks Headley, chef/owner of Superiority Burger: like Midas, he has an ability to turn the ordinary into gold. Here, I’ve tried to recreate it by cooking down a kilo of spring greens until they are melting, soft, collapsed and buttery, before tossing them with sharp cheddar. It’s pure picnic gold.

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© Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian. Food styling: Emily Kydd. Prop styling: Jennifer Kay. Food styling assistant: Lola Salome Smadja.

© Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian. Food styling: Emily Kydd. Prop styling: Jennifer Kay. Food styling assistant: Lola Salome Smadja.

Within Israel, Iran is seen as the ultimate threat. The prime minister knows this is his chance to rewrite his bloodied legacy

“It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany … The Jewish people will not allow a second Holocaust.” Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, recited slogans like these incessantly for decades, urging action against the gravest threat to the Jewish state – a nuclear-armed Iran. He conveyed the message to successive US presidents. He presented a bomb cartoon at the UN. At countless Holocaust memorial events he described Iran’s nuclear ambitions as the present-day “final solution”.

Netanyahu talked and talked about the pressing Iranian threat, but his listeners were not convinced. They dismissed him as an alarmist whose deadline Iran crossed year after year without deploying a nuclear weapon (it still hasn’t). Netanyahu’s critics at home taunted him as a chicken who would never dare to attack Iran’s nuclear installations – unlike his more decisive predecessors, who had ordered the bombing of nuclear reactors in Iraq and Syria.

Aluf Benn is the editor-in-chief of Haaretz

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© Photograph: Marc Israel Sellem/Reuters

© Photograph: Marc Israel Sellem/Reuters

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© Illustration: Edith Pritchett/The Guardian

© Illustration: Edith Pritchett/The Guardian

Health organisations have written to Keir Starmer urging him to force drinks producers to include warnings

Cans and bottles of beer, wine and spirits should explicitly warn drinkers that alcohol causes cancer, an unprecedented alliance of doctors, charities and public experts have said.

Warning labels would tackle “shockingly low” public awareness in the UK that alcohol is proven to cause seven forms of cancer and 17,000 cases a year of the disease, they claim.

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© Photograph: Carl Dickinson/Alamy

© Photograph: Carl Dickinson/Alamy

Annice, 30, an actor and voice coach meets Benjy, 30, a scientist

What were you hoping for?
Someone to give me a little bit of hope after dating app-induced burnout.

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© Composite: Christian Sinibaldi & Linda Nylind

© Composite: Christian Sinibaldi & Linda Nylind

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

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© Composite: Simone Noroha / Guardian Design

© Composite: Simone Noroha / Guardian Design

"Coming to grips with the idea, that fear that we could lose Karen to incarceration given the charges is now gone, that fear has abated."

That was neither a bird nor a plane sailing over the right-field wall Friday night. It was Aaron Judge’s first home run in a week.

Neither Walz nor Klobuchar responded directly to the information contained in the letter.

This was hardly the return Luke Weaver or the Yankees were hoping for. 

The “rampant telework abuse” was the result of “compliance failures and weak internal oversight” at former President Joe Biden’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM), according to the agency’s inspector general, which sampled the badging data, timesheets and remote-work agreements of dozens of federal employees. 

A deal freezing frontlines would be unacceptable for Serhiy Serdiuk, who was taken to Georgia in handcuffs with his family after refusing to teach the Russian curriculum

Earlier this year, Serhiy Serdiuk was deported from Russia, along with his wife and daughter. He was given a 40-year ban from re-entering the country.

Serdiuk’s home town of Komysh-Zoria, in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, was part of the territory occupied in the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion in spring 2022. According to Moscow, it is now part of Russia. And because Serdiuk, the headteacher of a local school, refused to work for the new authorities, they decided he had no place living there.

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© Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian

© Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian

Residents of a Portuguese rural idyll where four vast mines are planned are among those who feel they will pay too high a cost for the energy transition

Filipe Gomes had been craving fresh air and quiet routine when he and his partner quit the chaos of London’s catering industry for the fog-misted hills of Covas do Barroso, the sleepy Portuguese farming village in which he was raised.

But his rural idyll has been disturbed by miners drilling boreholes as they push to dig four vast lithium mines right beside the village. The prospecting has sparked resistance from residents who fear the mines will foul the soil, drain the water and fill the air with the rumbling thunder of heavy trucks.

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© Photograph: Ajit Niranjan/The Guardian

© Photograph: Ajit Niranjan/The Guardian

Surge in deaths would not be occurring without human-caused global heating, scientists say as analysis published

Almost 600 people are expected to die early in the heatwave roasting England and Wales, a rapid analysis has found.

The surge in deaths would not be occurring without human-caused global heating, the scientists said, with temperatures boosted by 2C-4C by the pollution from fossil fuels.

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© Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/Shutterstock

• Group C: Bayern Munich 2-1 Boca Juniors

• Merentiel equalises for Argentinians before Olise scores late winner

Harry Kane ended the night in Miami bruised, sweat-soaked and perhaps a little weary from repeatedly picking himself up off the ground. Along the way Kane also scored one, made one and walked off with the Superior Player Of the Match laurels as Bayern Munich edged their way to a relentlessly entertaining 2-1 defeat of Boca Juniors in front of a high-energy full house.

As a result, Bayern are now though to the knockout stage of the Club World Cup. A European team has also finally beaten a South American opponent at this tournament. But defeat still leaves Boca effectively in charge of their own destiny, with the fall-guys of Auckland City to come. They basically need to win by a spectacular margin and rely on Bayern to beat Porto.

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© Photograph: Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images

© Photograph: Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images

Adult websites back online after court suspended decision requiring platforms based in the EU to verify users’ ages

Major adult websites Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube were back online in France Friday after a court suspended a decision requiring pornographic platforms based in the European Union to verify users’ ages.

The three platforms’ owner, Aylo, based in Cyprus, had made its websites unavailable in France in early June as a protest against the French decree. Failure to comply could have lead to sanctions including fines or the blocking of the websites.

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© Photograph: Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

Trump had set a deadline for diplomacy – but few expected the Israeli sucker punches that have left Tehran reeling

In the week since Israel first unleashed its surprise attack on Iran, many of the assumptions underpinning the balance of power in the Middle East have been swept away, leaving the fate of the region more uncertain than at any time since the Arab spring.

Iranian defences, which had once seemed so formidable, crumbled in the first minutes as the bombs began to fall soon after 3.30am on the morning of Friday 13th.

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© Photograph: Majid Asgaripour/Reuters

© Photograph: Majid Asgaripour/Reuters

Hours of talks aimed at de-escalating fighting between Israel and Iran have failed to produce a diplomatic breakthrough as the war enters its second week with a fresh round of strikes between the two adversaries

© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

As the United Nations marks its 80th anniversary, its humanitarian operations are increasingly in doubt as its top donor — the United States — has cut funding under the Trump administration and some other top Western countries have followed suit

© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

As high temperatures have become more common in recent years, some people are adjusting, including by investing in air-conditioners.

© Kin Cheung/Associated Press

A New Hampshire city that served as the backdrop for “Jumanji” is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the film this weekend

© ASSOCIATED PRESS

With the Trump administration aggressively trying to increase the number of immigration arrests, raids are now being conducted at all hours and more Americans are witnessing people being hauled off

© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

A holiday and a juror's illness shortened the sixth week of the Sean “Diddy” Combs' sex trafficking trial as prosecutors nearly concluded their case, setting the stage for the defense presentation

© 2018 Invision

Fans flocked to Huntington Beach on Friday to watch top canine athletes compete in the Purina Pro Plan Incredible Dog Challenge surf contest. Dogs ranging from 2 to 13 years old — Corgis, Dalmatians, Pit Bulls, Labradors and more — showed off their skills riding waves, drawing cheers from beachside spectators as they aimed to “hang ten” and secure a spot in K9 surfing history.

© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.