Burnley’s owner is in advanced negotiations about buying a stake in the Spanish club Espanyol in what would become the Premier League’s latest multi-club operation.
Espanyol would be the second club owned by ALK Capital, the investment company operated by Burnley’s owner, Alan Pace, whose website says its ambition is to establish a multi-club sports platform. The American businessman previously owned Real Salt Lake in Major League Soccer before selling up to buy Burnley, paying £170m for 84% of the club in December 2020.
Women advised to cover up on public beaches, prompting concerns about freedoms under new government
Syria’s government has asked women to wear “burkinis” or more modest swimwear while visiting public beaches this summer, although they later clarified there will be no legal consequences for those who wear bikinis.
A government directive on Tuesday asked women to wear a “burkini or swimwear that covers more of the body”, and loose-fitting clothing when out of the water. The decree also asked men not to be shirtless when not swimming.
As the original 1977 theatrical version screens in London this week, fans recall being ‘blown away’ by their first impressions of the mesmerising space opera
A relatively long time ago in cinemas near and far away, the first Star Wars film captivated a generation of children and adults. As the British Film Institute in London this week screens the original 1977 theatrical version of the space opera, which has rarely been shown since the 1990s, readers have shared their recollections of its groundbreaking special effects, iconic heroes and villains, and queueing around the block for tickets.
Most of those who responded to a Guardian callout recalled being mesmerised by the film’s opening crawl, then “blown away” by the first scene in which Princess Leia’s starship is captured by an immense Imperial Star Destroyer. “It loomed right over our heads in the theatre, immediately putting us in the action, alerting us to the huge stakes in this world,” said Marilyn Stacey, a 68-year-old paralegal and actor from Portland, Oregon, who saw the film with her boyfriend in Westwood, Los Angeles, soon after it opened in the US in May 1977.
Kevin De Bruyne has completed his move to Napoli on a free transfer after leaving Manchester City. The midfielder, who turns 34 this month, joins the Serie A champions three days after scoring a late winner for Belgium against Wales.
De Bruyne was greeted by excited fans chanting “Kevin” when he arrived for his medical and Napoli’s social media posts announcing the deal included one showing him on a throne wearing a crowd, with a Napoli shield by his right hand and a sword to his left. “King Kev is here,” the club wrote.
Sensing a golden opportunity to impart some Aussie folklore, I confidently told my kids about a Bunyip. I was unable to answer their follow-up questions
Recently, I bundled the family into our beaten up station wagon and set out on a 3,000km journey from Sydney to the outback to instil some core memories into the kids. We had an ambitious agenda. The distances we had to cover to achieve my red dirt dreams were, to a sane minded person with two small kids in the back, loopy.
And I will admit that, for the majority of this road trip, we were gripped with a palpable, vibrating rage towards each other, about the distance yet to travel, and the discomfort of every moment we were in the car.
Students say rise in prices was trigger but underlying anger was communist government’s increasing reliance on USD
Having endured electricity blackouts, water shortages, transport failures and the spiralling cost of food, Cuba’s students appear to have finally lost patience with their government over a ferocious price hike for the country’s faltering internet.
Local chapters of Cuba’s Federation of University Students (FEU) have been calling for a slew of measures, including attendance strikes, explanations from ministers and even the resignation of their own organisation’s president.
US-Israel logistics group claims workers were attacked by Hamas, while Israeli forces kill 22 people across the territory
The bloody chaos that has overtaken food distribution in Gaza has worsened with more mass casualties among Palestinians trying to reach humanitarian assistance, while the US-Israeli organisation tasked with aid deliveries claimed that five of its local workers had been killed by Hamas.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) claimed on Thursday that a bus full of its Palestinian staff was attacked by Hamas at 10pm local time on Wednesday, with at least five deaths and other workers taken hostage.
If the football doesn’t work out for him at Real Madrid, Trent Alexander-Arnold can try his luck as a regular panellist on the Spanish version of Just A Minute, a popular BBC Radio 4 comedy show, in which assorted comedians and luvvies are challenged to speak for one minute on a given subject without “hesitation, repetition or deviation”. Football Daily is prepared to concede that – written down like that – it actually sounds really boring, but readers who are unfamiliar with the show will just have to take our word for it when we say the show is actually very funny. Or at least it was when we last listened to it about 25 years ago. Of course there is no Spanish version of Just A Minute, almost certainly because most Spaniards of our acquaintance can speak for up to three hours uninterrupted on any given subject without hesitation, repetition or deviation. But we were certainly impressed when Alexander-Arnold stood behind a lectern in the bowels of the Bernabéu at his unveiling as a Real Madrid player, giving a welcome address of more than 60 seconds in what appeared to be perfectly fluent Spanish without once stuttering, pointing at a beer tap or bellowing “EGG AND CHIPS!!!” at the top of his voice.
If I send you £740,000, will you please send me $1bn, as per the exchange rate on yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs (full email edition) element about Gianni’s Club World Cup?” – Chris Hale (and 1,056 others).
The solution to England’s problems is staring the FA in the face: sack Thomas Tuchel immediately, appoint Ange Postecoglou now and, as usual, you’re guaranteed a trophy – mate, it’s the 2026 World Cup – in his second season” – Adrian Irving.
Re: Mike Slattery’s call on naming suggestions for Gianni’s latest behemothic construction (yesterday’s Football Daily letters), it seems to me that, at least for this edition, Top Trumps would be appropriate” – David Ford.
May I suggest Big Bucket? Or – with a bit more hype – the MegaMug?” – Derrick Cameron.
Re: the question ‘is it OK to play in vintage football boots’ (yesterday’s last line, full email edition), I still have my Puma boots bought in 1970 – and keep them in their original Puma box. These weren’t bought because Pelé was wearing such boots at the 1970 World Cup, but because Leeds United’s Allan ‘The Sniffer’ Clarke (surely the greatest player ever to bestride the Football League, and not to be confused with the lead singer in The Hollies) favoured a pair. I’m now 73, so unfortunately cannot test the OK-ness of playing in them” – Paul Sanderson.
Kenya’s Olympic champion, backed by Nike’s sports scientists, is striving for the perfect formula to set a new world record
Eight seconds. It’s barely enough time for most people to tie their shoelaces. But when you are Faith Kipyegon, and you are trying to become the first woman to shatter the four-minute mile barrier, those eight seconds constitute a chasm.
But now we know how the 31-year-old Kenyan, who set the mile world record of 4min 7.64sec in 2023, intends to close the gap and emulate Sir Roger Bannister’s historic feat.
Military dogs involved in attacks on Palestinian civilians – including children – are likely to have been exported from European countries, investigation finds
Warning: readers may find some of the details in this piece distressing
It was only seconds after soldiers entered the Hashash family’s home in the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank that the dog attack began. As military raids rolled out across her neighbourhood one morning in February 2023, Amani Hashash says she took her four children into a bedroom. When she heard Israeli military coming into their home she called out that they were inside and posed no threat.
Moments later the bedroom door was opened and a large, unmuzzled dog launched itself into the room, plunging its teeth into her three-year-old son, Ibrahim, who was asleep in her lap.
Sviatoslav Richter (Deutsche Grammophon) Sviatoslav Richter’s already huge catalogue is enriched by these rediscovered recordings of recitals of Beethoven’s piano sonatas from 1965
Though he claimed to dislike performing in a studio, Sviatoslav Richter became perhaps the most intensively recorded pianist of the 20th century. But while his studio work was extensive, it was the huge volume of recordings made officially and unofficially at his recitals across more than 40 years that really bulked out his discography, with multiple versions available of many of the core works in his repertory. For those reasons the rediscovery of “Lost Tapes” might not initially seem so remarkable. The performances, of four Beethoven piano sonatas, Opp 31 no 3, 90, 101 and 110, are taken from recitals that Richter gave in 1965. Op 110 comes from a performance at the piano festival he had founded the previous year at La Grange de Meslay near Tours, the others are taken from a concert in Lucerne three months later.
There are recordings of Richter’s performances of all four sonatas already in the catalogue, but the immediacy of these versions is startling. He was never content to keep on replicating the interpretation of a particular work; temperamentally, I suspect, he could not contemplate such lazy routine. Instead, each work was approached afresh each time he played it, always finding something new, whether it’s the joy that courses through the third of the Op 31 set, the myriad colours and subtleties he brings to Op 101, or the serene, almost liturgical seriousness with which he presents the fugues in the finale of Op 110.
The actor and musician takes your questions on devastating box office results, his love of Oliver Hardy, and his new vaudeville crooner alter ego
Your roles fluctuate wildly between the serious and silly. Does one necessitate the other? vammyp I’ve always thought it’s all the same. You just try to be as honest as you can, and if you’re being honest in absurd circumstances then you’re in a comedy. It’s not like I try to be funny or serious – just honest. If you’re watching someone play a bad guy and there’s nothing about the performance that makes you feel for the person or understand them in a deeper way, that’s a fail to me. Because the truth of life is that at a funeral someone always cracks a joke. There’s something so rich about being able to laugh at a funeral. That is what life is to me: all those grey areas, these contradictory things.
I’m impressed and baffled by this left turn with Mister Romantic [Reilly’s vaudevillian crooner alter ego]. How did you come up with the character? Why did you pick out the songs that you did? steve__bayley
Forest may go to Cas if Palace cleared for Europa League
New York Jets owner is former US ambassador to the UK
The New York Jets owner, Woody Johnson, has offered £190m to buy John Textor’s stake in Crystal Palace. The move comes with Uefa expected to delay until the end of the month a decision on whether the club will be allowed to compete in next season’s Europa League.
The offer from Johnson, the former US ambassador to the UK, has the backing of Palace’s co-chair Steve Parish and is believed to be under consideration by Textor despite falling significantly short of his valuation of about £240m for his 44.9% stake.
All England Club says welfare concerns need different solution
World’s top players had asked for greater prize money at slams
The All England Club has insisted that it has listened to the complaints of leading tennis players regarding prize money but it believes the solution to player issues lies in greater changes to the structure of the sport.
The prize money fund for the 2025 championships, which begin on 30 June, will rise to £53.5m, a 7% increase on last year and double the amount awarded in 2015. The men’s and women’s champions will receive £3m at this year’s edition, while players who lose in the first round will earn £66,000.
Following his death aged 82, Brian Wilson’s Beach Boys bandmates have been among those paying tribute to one of the great figures in American popular music.
Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme, Al Jardine described Wilson as “a real gentleman, a real musical intellect, who taught the world how to smile.”
There appear to be no survivors from a London-bound Air India flight carrying 242 people which crashed shortly after takeoff in the north-western city of Ahmedabad, a police commissioner has said.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was engulfed in a huge fireball after crashing into the Meghaninagar residential area minutes after taking off at 1.38pm local time.
Head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation says third site is ready to operate as UN watchdog finds Iran is not complying with obligations for first time in 20 years
The UN nuclear watchdog’s board of governors has formally found that Iran isn’t complying with its nuclear obligations for the first time in 20 years, AP reports.
It’s a decision that could lead to further tensions and set in motion an effort to restore UN sanctions on Tehran later this year.
JJ Spaun can’t make his birdie putt on 13. But he’s now sole leader of the US Open, because Ludvig Åberg makes a mess of the par-five 12th, going for the pin with his third and finding sand, then only splashing out into the rough. After bundling his chip eight feet past the hole, he does extremely well to make the putt coming back and limit the damage to bogey. Meanwhile Adam Scott bounces back from an opening bogey at 10 with birdies at 11 and 12, while Eric Cole does the same with birdies at 12 and 14. All change at the top!
-2: Spaun (4*)
-1: Cole (5*), Åberg (3*), Scott (3*), McIlroy (2*), S Kim (2*)
California governor also called US president a ‘stone cold liar’ as judge will hear arguments Thursday as part of lawsuit against president
A woman defiantly dances near police officers as protesters continue to march and chant in an approximately one-square mile area of downtown Los Angeles in response to a series of immigration raids.
Nerves are frayed in Los Angeles, as the second largest city in the US is flooded with more than 2,000 federal troops tasked with protecting immigration enforcement officials after thousands of people hit the streets to protest deportation raids.
Brazil forward, a childhood United fan, joins from Wolves
Jason Wilcox hails ‘exciting and productive’ signing
Manchester United have completed the £62.5m signing of Matheus Cunha from Wolves, with the forward intent on helping the club “back to the top”. The 26-year-old has a five-year contract with the option of a further year and will be paid about £150,000 a week.
Cunha said: “It is hard to put into words my feelings about becoming a Manchester United player. Ever since I was a child in Brazil watching Premier League games on TV at my grandmother’s house, United was my favourite English team and I dreamed of wearing the red shirt.
Nicholas Hyett, Investment Manager at Wealth Club, blames “a cocktail of headwinds to growth” for the 0.3% fall in UK GDP in April.
Hyett says:
In the very short term the change to Stamp Duty rules have put the legal and property services on ice - with legal activities down 10.2% month-on-month.
New barriers to trade with the US and changes to employment costs, from a higher living wage and increased national insurance contributions, are a longer term challenge.
“The 0.3% m/m fall in real GDP in April supports our view that the strength in Q1 was unsustainable. This won’t prompt the Bank of England to cut interest rates next Thursday. But it is one more piece of news pointing to another cut in August.”
We still expect the Bank Rate to be maintained at 4.25% in the June meeting, to allow still troubling earnings growth to continue to ease. We anticipate the next rate cuts to occur in the August and November meetings to 3.75%, prompted by mounting economic hardships.”
While there is little chance of any change at next week’s meeting, we see a strong possibility that the MPC ditches its hawkish bias, which could pave the way for an August cut.”
The Chinese manufacturer BYD has launched its cheapest model in the UK, in the latest stage of its efforts to overtake Tesla as the world’s biggest electric carmaker.
The Dolphin Surf will start at £18,650, a price that puts it among the cheapest new vehicles on sale in Britain.
Citizen Lab says it found ‘digital fingerprints’ of military-grade spyware that Italy has admitted using against activists
The hacking mystery roiling the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing government is deepening after researchers said they had found new evidence that two more journalists were targeted using the same military-grade spyware that Italy has admitted to using against activists.
A parliamentary committee overseeing intelligence confirmed earlier this month that Italy had used mercenary spyware made by Israel-based Paragon Solutions against two Italian activists.
An Air India passenger plane bound for London’s Gatwick airport with more than 240 people onboard has crashed shortly after takeoff from the north-western Indian city of Ahmedabad.
An Air India passenger plane bound for Gatwick airport with more than 240 people on board crashed shortly after takeoff from the north-western Indian city of Ahmedabad. The plane came down in the residential area of Meghani Nagar five minutes after taking off at 1.38pm local time. According to reports in the Indian media, the plane crashed into a building used as accommodation by doctors working in local hospitals. Footage shows burning buildings and debris scattered across the ground
(Polydor) The three LA sisters dwell on the bitter end of a relationship in tracks that range from replayable valley-girl rap to plodding country-pop
Haim’s 2013 breakthrough single The Wire was a swaggering, high-spirited breakup anthem. The slick, twanging pop-rock was correctly identified at the time by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow as echoing the oeuvre of Shania Twain (though this wasn’t the sick burn he thought it was), over which the LA trio copped to commitment phobia, communication issues and having their heads turned, before skipping into the California sunset with their hearts intact. Well, to commandeer the title of Haim’s debut album: those days are very much gone.
I Quit, the sisters’ fourth album, still has plenty of breakup songs, but these are no cheerful odes to dumping dudes in your 20s. Instead, the record fixates on the bitter end of a deeply flawed long-term relationship; at least some of these songs are informed by the love lost between lead vocalist Danielle Haim and Ariel Rechtshaid, the garlanded producer who worked on all three of the band’s previous albums (I Quit is instead helmed by Danielle, Rostam Batmanglij and Buddy Ross). The mood is not desolate – the narrator instigated the split – but it is searching and pained. The ex is portrayed as careless and manipulative, and punches are not pulled (“I swear you wouldn’t care if I was covered in blood lying dead on the street”). There are many references to setting oneself free, reflected in the – perhaps too on-the-nose – sample of George Michael’s Freedom! ‘90, which is woven through the opening track, Gone.
The actor claims she was made to work 15-hour days without proper support and suffered a severe knee injury as a result of a scene where she was thrown into a wall
Kate Beckinsale is suing the producers of Canary Black, the 2024 action thriller in which she starred, over claims she suffered “severe and debilitating injuries” as a result of “unsafe conditions”.
DUP’s Gordon Lyons criticised for social media post about leisure centre before it was set on fire by masked attackers
A minister in Northern Ireland has rejected calls to resign, as the display of political unity amid three nights of violence fractured after a leisure centre in Larne was set on fire.
Staff and customers, including children learning to swim, were in the building at the time. The attack coincided with violent scenes amid tensions over immigration in the nearby town of Ballymena.
From coming-out fables and dancefloor make-outs to unsimulated sex and a madcap maternal quest, here is a feast of movies about LBGTQ+ lives
One detractor called it “a Shawshank Redemption for progressive millennials”. But the force of Céline Sciamma’s lesbian love story about an artist and her unwitting sitter on a remote island in 18th-century Brittany is undeniable. As is the integrity of its central dynamic, stripped of power imbalances, hierarchies – and men.
Sure, Rukmini Iyer’s recipes are not specifically aimed at queer people, but the first time I cooked one, it was with my girlfriend – and she is now my wife
Walk into a queer woman’s kitchen and the chances are that the lime-green spine of Rukmini Iyer’s The Green Roasting Tin will be poking out from a surface or a shelf – if it is not already on the counter and splattered with food. You are likely to find it in the homes of allies, too – this is the holy grail of what-to-feed-my-queer–vegetarian-offspring cookbooks.
Not only does The Green Roasting Tin play into stereotypes about gay and bisexual women – all vegetarian recipes, half vegan and supremely practical (the USP of The Roasting Tin series is that all the recipes are oven-cooked in one dish) – but it is also full of indulgence. The tarts, gratins, salads and bakes are dotted with pomegranate seeds or fresh herbs and drizzled with truffle oil or honey. One recipe even has an entire camembert plonked in a tray of potatoes. And that’s what makes it the perfect unofficial lesbian text: its unapologetic goal is pleasure.
Lebanon is one of the most ancient wine-producing regions of the world, so it’s well worth our attention
Lebanon has one of, if not the most ancient winemaking traditions in the world, so it stands to reason that we ought to drink more of it. This historic wine industry started way back with the Phoenicians, who spread viticulture throughout the Mediterranean, and then, in 1857, Jesuit monks planted vines from Algeria in the Bekaa valley, in an area that is today one of the country’s most prestigious wine-producing regions.
Today there are some 80 wineries in operation in the Bekaa, most of them with a decided focus on French grapes – cabernet sauvignon, cinsault, merlot, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay all get a lot of love – but native grapes such as obaideh, merwah, jandali and hamdali also feature in the production of wine and arak, a distilled anise spirit.
Britain is on track to become a “National Health State” where half of all public spending is allocated to the NHS and social care by the end of the decade, according to a leading thinktank.
Rachel Reeves used her spending review on Wednesday to prioritise billions of pounds for the NHS as she outlined Labour’s priorities up to the next general election, while squeezing funding for other areas.
Saifuzzaman Chowdhury’s assets frozen as authorities in Dhaka investigate alleged corruption of former regime
Britain’s serious crime agency has frozen UK property worth £170m belonging to the former land minister of Bangladesh amid a crackdown on former allies of Sheikh Hasina, the autocratic leader deposed in last year’s student-led revolution.
The Air India tragedy in Ahmedabad is the first time a Boeing 787 Dreamliner has crashed since the plane’s introduction in 2011.
While airlines using the Boeing plane have had widespread problems with engines on the 787 – resulting in many having to ground planes and reduce flights – its safety record in service has so far been good.
When a star dies, shows are left in a terrible quandary – carry on, use ham-fisted CGI or axe the thing entirely. As Payne appears in Building the Band, we delve into the unnerving world of posthumous television
At first glance, Netflix’s new series Building the Band comes off as a weird amalgam of every singing competition show you loved a decade and a half ago. There’s the core DNA of X Factor. The singers perform out of sight of everyone else, so it cribs from The Voice. Clearly, there’s heavy borrowing from Making the Band. Plus, this is Netflix, so everything looks a bit like Squid Game.
But this odd mishmash of a format isn’t what will keep you away from Building the Band. No, what will keep you away from Building the Band is the posthumous appearance of Liam Payne.
Millions of people are taking weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro. But with so many unanswered questions, are we in the middle of a giant human experiment? In this episode, journalist Neelam Tailor asks two doctors what these drugs are really doing to our bodies, our minds, and our society – from muscle loss and mental health to beauty standards and the blurred line between medicine and aesthetics.
A year after a student-led revolt unseated Sheikh Hasina, Muhammad Yunus is fighting to convince both sides of politics to agree to reform
A year on from the political uprising that swept the prime minister of Bangladesh into exile, people still see government as the enemy, according to the country’s interim leader, Muhammad Yunus.
Rooting out corruption at every level, from village to government, is the only way for people to believe in a “new Bangladesh”, he says.
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