The Red Wall: Wales are expected to bring around a thousand supporters to Astana today but the odyssey undertaken by one bucket hat-wearing fan to get to his seat in the away end has really captured the public imagination.
John McAllister left his home in Barry over five weeks ago and on a largely overland journey of 5,000 kilometres involving 17 train journeys and 11 bus trips, has taken in 11 different football matches, an ice hockey game, some random Irish bloke’s stag do and a heavy metal festival en route while compiling a fascinating YouTube travel vlog.
Ahead of her debut in London’s West End with the musical Hadestown, Roberts answers your questions on navigating overnight fame as a teenager and why she would drop everything to work with Kate Bush
How does it feel to finally be making your West End debut in Hadestown, after City of Angels was cancelled due to Covid? LucyHampton6 Super exciting. It feels like I’m experiencing a new way of performing. I said to the director when we first started that I wanted to throw myself into this and to be pushed as far as I can. When you’re in a band, or you’ve been perceived a certain way for a very long time, it’s nice to go into something where you can shake off the Post-it notes that have been put on you by yourself, or by other people.
If there was to be a musical made with the Girls Aloud soundtrack like Mamma Mia!, or Here & Now, what do you think the plot should be? Sophieeh Our experience of going from complete normality into a talent competition and becoming somewhat famous overnight, and then the trials and tribulations that follow with teenagers trying to navigate new national fame, is enough of a plot. I don’t need to drum up some new far-fetched stories, because I feel like the things that were happening were far-fetched enough.
On the heels of their debut album Now Would Be A Good Time, the Melbourne indie band open up about life on the road, their global aspirations and ‘the pathetic little tragedies’ that occur in your 20s
As Folk Bitch Trio tell it, the music industry is a sadly predictable place.
“It’s exactly what everyone says it is, and exactly what everybody warns you about when you’re 18 and want to start working in music,” says vocalist and guitarist Jeanie Pilkington. “No one makes much money. The artist often ends up getting the shitty end of the stick. You have to work really, really, really hard, and sometimes it feels impossible.”
Trump’s health secretary faces tough questions on about department layoffs and budget cuts amid scrutiny over his plans to ‘make America healthy again’
Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr will appear before a congressional committee on Thursday, where he’s expected to face questions about turmoil at federal health agencies.
The US Senate finance committee has called Kennedy to a hearing about his plans to “Make America Healthy Again”.
Prosecution tells hearing Father Ted writer’s posts about Sophia Brooks, 18, were ‘oppressive and unacceptable’
Graham Linehan, the co-creator of Father Ted, “relentlessly” posted abusive and vindictive material on social media about an 18-year-old transgender activist, a court has heard.
Linehan’s posts about Sophia Brooks were “oppressive and unacceptable”, the prosecution told a hearing at Westminster magistrates court.
In an audacious move, director Kaouther Ben Hania reconstructs the killing of the five-year-old in Gaza using her real voice as she is bombarded by the Israeli army
There can be no doubt about which movie has set the Venice film festival ablaze – it is this one, from Tunisian film-maker Kaouther Ben Hania. The Voice of Hind Rajab is about the horrifying ordeal of the five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was killed in 2024 by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza in her uncle’s car along with six family members, and two paramedics who tried to come to her rescue. Rajab herself, who survived the original assault by the IDF which killed those around her, stayed on the phone for hours to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), desperately begging for help. With startling audacity, Ben Hania has used the real audio recording of Rajab’s heart-wrenching voice, while fictionally reconstructing the drama of the emergency responders in their call-centre office, with real people played by actors, talking, shouting and emoting in response to Rajab’s actual voice.
The result was greeted with a 23-minute standing ovation at Venice, about a quarter of the film’s running time, with journalists and festival attenders reportedly sobbing in the auditorium. Since that passionate reception, others have wondered if there is not something questionable or exploitative in presenting this authentic shattering recording in a Hollywoodised suspense drama, getting actors to cry and rage alongside a kind of docufictional hologram, almost instructing the audience in how they too should be responding. I wonder. Perhaps Ben Hania’s high-concept idea is debatable, and it might have been just as moving to present this extraordinary real-life recording in the straightforward documentary context of interviews with the responders and emergency workers. This might have made clearer what happened from their point of view, why they were impeded from helping Rajab and what continues to hinder them.
A simple, terrible and obvious mistake is being made. The more Labour echoes Reform’s talking points, the more it strengthens them
Britain isn’t sleepwalking into catastrophe; it’s charging towards it. Last year, a violent rightwing uprising tore through our streets – an attempted pogrom in which racists tried to burn asylum seekers alive, attacked homes and businesses thought to belong to migrants, petrol-bombed mosques and assaulted people of colour in broad daylight. That disgrace should hang permanently around the necks of the anti-migrant right, a warning of where scapegoating and toxic lies lead.
Instead, the revolt succeeded. Anti-migrant rhetoric in politics and the press has grown more venomous. Reform UK now tops polls by a decisive margin. Its leader, Nigel Farage, raises the spectre of “major civil disorder” unless anti-migrant demands are met. Lucy Connolly – who was jailed after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire and is married to a former Conservative councillor – has been recast as a martyr by rightwing outlets and politicians. I don’t believe in jailing people for such speech, but her canonisation is chilling.
Jean Innes says it is time for ‘new chapter’ at AI research body, after staff revolt and government calls for change
The chief executive of the UK’s leading artificial intelligence agency is stepping down after a staff revolt and government calls for a strategic overhaul.
Jean Innes has led the Alan Turing Institute since 2023, but her position has come under pressure amid widespread discontent within the organisation and a demand from its biggest funder, the UK government, for a change in direction.
A mother reflects on the breakdown of her marriage as she attends her daughter’s wedding, in a novella that brilliantly depicts family dynamics
At the start of Three Days in June, Gail Baines, a 61-year-old teacher, has a meeting with her school head, who informs her she is about to retire. Gail assumes she is next in line for the job, but the head tells her she doesn’t have the people skills and asks if she has considered retirement herself. Affronted, she walks out of the school and from her job without collecting the photo on her desk of her daughter, Debbie, who is about to get married. After Gail gets home, her ex-husband, Max, arrives. He is staying with her for the wedding weekend and tells her he has forgotten to bring a suit – although he has brought a cat. Not for the first time, Gail wonders “why it was that I had so many irritating people in my life”.
Set in Baltimore, Anne Tyler’s novella spans the before, during and after of Debbie’s wedding. Told through Gail’s eyes, the plot is deliberately slim as it explores subtle family dynamics and the mundanity of everyday life. Thus, we accompany Gail as she collects her outfit from the dry cleaners and visits a hair stylist with whom she declines to make small talk. J Smith Cameron, best known for her role as Gerri in Succession, is the narrator, and adeptly captures Gail’s social awkwardness that, unbeknown to her, can come over as chilly and detached. As she ponders the breakdown of her marriage to Max, we see that the headteacher had a point. Although we root for Gail and her future happiness, it is clear her people skills need work.
(Alpha) Spunicunifait (their name taken from a nonsense word used by Mozart) perform these six quintets with flexibility and easy athleticism
Formed by string players from some of Europe’s leading orchestras and ensembles specifically to give historically informed performances of Mozart’s string quintets, Spunicunifait takes its name from a nonsense word used by Mozart in one of his letters, the meaning of which remains a mystery. “We wanted to make a recording that would approach the quintets with the same reverence that [Mozart’s] quartets receive,” they say, and that approach results in performances of the six works that have transparency, flexibility and easy athleticism. There are the five well-known mature quintets, as well as the early B flat work K174, for which Spuncunifait play two versions of its finale. All are composed for a quintet of strings with two violas (unlike Boccherini’s quintets and Schubert’s famous C major quintet, which employ two cellos).
The players – Lorenza Borrani and Maia Cabeza (violin), Max Mandel and Simon Von Rahden (viola) and Luise Buchberger (cello) – use a mix of 18th-century instruments and 21st-century copies; the recorded sound is close and involving. Not all aspects of the group’s approach will be to all tastes: vibrato is very sparingly used, and its absence can often be starkly effective, but the tendency to link notes in phrases with tiny glissandi can sometimes seem a little overdone. These are minor quibbles, though. The performances reveal the group’s musicality and deep understanding of these under-appreciated works in every bar.
After New Orleans was ravaged 20 years ago, two places of worship teamed up to offer a space for devastated residents
Before the floods from Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city of New Orleans 20 years ago, Franklin Avenue Baptist church was booming.
“We had three morning services. We had a gymnasium, overflow rooms. Next door was the family center. There was an exercise room and library,” said the Rev Fred Luter Jr, pastor of Franklin Avenue. “We had just bought 90 acres of property. We were the talk of the town.”
FA already facing bill of about £1m for its legal expenses
Lucas Paquetá is planning to launch a legal claim for more than £1m in costs against the Football Association after the publication of the regulatory commission’s 314-page report that cleared the West Ham player of spot-fixing.
The Guardian has learned that while Paquetá is unlikely to sue the FA for damages for lost earnings from its two-year case against him, which led to the collapse of a proposed £85m transfer to Manchester City in the summer of 2023, the 27-year-old will make a claim to recover legal costs of between £1m and £1.5m.
On today’s pod: the international break is here, and England’s squad raises more questions than answers. No Trent Alexander-Arnold, no Phil Foden or Jack Grealish, but a surprise return for Ruben Loftus-Cheek and call-ups for Elliot Anderson and Djed Spence. The panel asks how good England must be for us to learn anything new against Andorra before Tuesday’s trip to Serbia.
The frontman advertised the sale of one of indie’s most significant catalogues in a shockingly cavalier manner. With estranged bandmates among the other stakeholders, legitimate bidders may be hard to find
There is a well-trodden line about assessing the trustworthiness of online bargains: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. It comes to mind when looking at the extremely unusual way in which Morrissey is apparently seeking to offload his business interests in the Smiths. This is not like the forensic and formal processes behind huge catalogue sales in recent years such as Sting, Bob Dylan, Queen, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd or Paul Simon.
A post on Morrissey Solo – the outlet for all official Morrissey communiques – says the singer has “no choice but to offer for sale all of his business interests in ‘the Smiths’ to any interested party/investor” and that he wants out. Maybe psychologically this is the closure he needs – the band will never reform, given bassist Andy Rourke’s death in 2023 and Morrissey’s clear personal and political differences with guitarist Johnny Marr – but, in straight business terms, this is shockingly cavalier.
His company announced death of designer synonymous with modern Italian style and elegance on Thursday
Giorgio Armani, the celebrated Italian fashion designer who built a global empire has died, his company said on Thursday. He was 91.
“With infinite sorrow, the Armani Group announces the passing of its creator, founder and tireless driving force: Giorgio Armani,” the fashion house said in a statement.
French federation calls exclusion ‘a profound injustice’
World Boxing insists it warned all competitors of policy
French female boxers have been barred from competing at the inaugural World Boxing Championships in Liverpool after failing to meet a deadline for a genetic sex test that the French boxing federation (FFBoxe) said was incompatible with French law.
World Boxing, which issued a list of competitors for Thursday’s opening rounds with no French entrants included, said it would not comment on individual cases but added it had warned all federations of the policy.
Report links Arizona-Sonora smuggling to rising homicide and overdose deaths in both countries
A new “golden triangle” of fentanyl and gun trafficking between Mexico and the US ties together the homicide and overdose crises of the two countries, according to a a new study.
The triangle spans Baja California, Sinaloa and Sonora – the three states where almost all fentanyl seizures in Mexico take place – and connects to Arizona through a quieter part of the US-Mexico border that has become a hotspot for trafficking in both directions.
As the comedy icon turns 86, we count down her best movie roles including Robert Altman collaborations, a musical duo with Meryl Streep and the start of a 45-year double act
To make a list of Lily Tomlin’s best performances, you run the risk of simply listing a bunch of Robert Altman films (they made four together; in The Player she just has a cameo). In the sprawling Short Cuts, even though she has a pivotal role – as the waitress involved in the accident from which the whole film hangs – Tomlin’s good-natured, moral performance has a habit of getting lost in the din of actors seeking to make their mark, only really coming to the fore after a few rewatches.
Israel’s president will visit London next Thursday just weeks before the UK is expected to recognise the state of Palestine at the UN general assembly, the Guardian understands.
Two sources have confirmed Isaac Herzog is expected to meet UK ministers and senior political figures – the first time a senior Israeli leader has been in Britain since the foreign secretary, David Lammy, met his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Sa’ar, on an unannounced visit in the spring.
Earl of Southampton may have given writer the miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, which has defaced heart on its reverse
The discovery of a previously unknown portrait miniature by one of Elizabethan England’s greatest artists would be significant enough. But a work by Nicholas Hilliard that has come to light is all the more exciting because it has a possible link to William Shakespeare, and a 400-year-old enigma of a defaced red heart on its reverse, suggesting a love scorned.
Hilliard was Queen Elizabeth I’s official limner, or miniature painter. His exquisite portraits, small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand, are among the most revered masterpieces of 16th-century British and European art.
The sun is shining though the hovercraft cover is still hanging about on the pitch.
It’s been one of those London days where they weather constantly gaslights you. It’s gloomy, it’s sunny, it’s wet, it’s dry, it’s balmy, it’s fresh. Make up your mind!
Daniel. Good afternoon,
Well, that didn’t go well, did it? A prediction that the match would start at 13:00 already overturned by events. Just goes to show that very little is predictable in international cricket, especially when England are involved. Let’s all cross our fingers, except when emailing you; though typing an email with crossed fingers might well become a rite of passage for OBOers.
British founder doubles value of stake in business with excitement growing over technology’s ‘transformative potential’
A British quantum computing entrepreneur has doubled the value of his stake in the business he founded to $2bn (£1.5bn), after the company achieved a $10bn valuation in its latest fundraising.
Ilyas Khan, 63, is the founding chief executive of Quantinuum, a UK-US firm that announced on Thursday it had raised $600m as investor interest builds in the cutting-edge technology.
Reese: ‘We need great players, that’s non-negotiable’
Rookie star later apologises for strong comments
Angel Reese aired her frustrations with the Chicago Sky as the franchise finishes another losing season.
The two-time WNBA All-Star told the Chicago Tribune that she “might have to move in a different direction and do what’s best for me” if the team doesn’t improve its outlook.
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