Peter Gerhardsson: This tournament will mark the end of the Sweden head coach’s eight-year spell in charge of his country, a period in which he led his team to third plac e in two World Cups, an Olympic silver medal and a semi-final place at the Euros. Despite these impressive achievements, he will, however, be best remembered as the bloke who accidentally wandered into a broom cupboard following a press conference at the last World Cup.
As Ella Lindvall pointed out in her team guide to Sweden, it was an error which was immortalised in cartoon form by the legendary David Squires, much to the genuine delight of Gerhardsson. After this tournament, he – Gerhardsson, not Squires – will be replaced by the former Australia head coach Tony Gustavsson.
Voters may feel hotter summers are ‘too much’ but they appear to tolerate roll-back of policies to stop global heating
“It’s just too much, isn’t it?” says Julie, a retiree in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, about the 42C (107.6F) heat that her brother had seen scorch Spain last week. The former local government worker has felt summers get hotter over her lifetime and says she “couldn’t stand” such high heat herself.
But like many who experienced Europe’s first heatwave of the summer, Julie does not sound overly alarmed. She worries about climate breakdown for young people, but is not concerned about herself. She thinks more climate action would be nice, but does not know what can be done about it. She does not have much faith in the government.
A life of passive ‘perfection’, in which you minister to your partner and don’t speak unless spoken to, is a nauseating prospect that leaves women dangerously vulnerable
Do you wish you were a princess? Do you crave being cosseted and showered with gifts, having every door opened and every chair pulled out? Perhaps you’d rather not pay for your clothes; maybe you’re sick of deciding what to eat and where.
Courtney Palmer can help. The self-proclaimed housewife princess has a series of TikTok videos on “princess treatment” and how to get it. It’s a matter of accepting compliments graciously, dressing the part, being unapologetically good to yourself (disappointingly, this seems to mean exercising and drinking water) but mostly ministering to your partner, who is treated as a weirdly needy and highly suggestible man-baby. Would-be princesses should create a calm, frictionless domestic paradise for their provider prince, “speaking in a feminine way – we’re not screaming, yelling; we’re not cursing”, thanking him for picking up his dirty underwear. Princess treatment is the reward and it comes in the form of diamond earrings, Chanel flats, flowers and old-school chivalry.
Whether Nazi-punching your way through an Indiana Jones sequel or losing yourself in a beautiful fantasy world, you told us your best video game experiences of the first half of the year • The best video games of 2025 so far
Enshrouded is a beautiful combination of Minecraft, Skyrim and resource gathering that makes it at least three games in one. My daughter told me I would love it and I ignored her for too long. I’ve tackled Elden Ring, but much prefer the often gentler combat of Enshrouded. It sometimes makes me feel like an elite fighter, then other times kicks my arse in precisely the right measures.
Using emojis in text messages enhances connection and fun in close personal relationships, US study finds
The secret to a good relationship may be staring smartphone users in the face.
A new study published in the journal Plos One found that using emojis in text messages makes people feel closer and more satisfied in their personal lives.
Baking: it’s part science, part craft, part magic. A mindful escape or total mystery, depending on who you ask.
In writing The Bakers Book, a collection of recipes, kitchen notes and wisdom, I asked 36 Australian bakers for an essential piece of baking advice – a lesson that changed everything, a tip that’s always in their back pocket.
A row has broken out over restrictions imposed on how newspapers, magazines, TV broadcasters and digital publishers can use pictures taken at Oasis reunion gigs, as the band prepare to play the first night of what is expected to be the most profitable tour in UK history.
Photo agencies and publishers have been told they can use shots of the first concert, which takes place in Cardiff on Friday, for one year and then the rights revert back to the band and management.
Ex-BBC presenter criticises failure to show documentary, accusing people at ‘the very top’ of failing over the conflict
Gary Lineker has said the BBC should “hold its head in shame” over its failure to show a documentary about the plight of medics in Gaza.
The former Match of the Day presenter said people at “the very top of the BBC” had been failing over the conflict, after the corporation’s controversial decision to drop Gaza: Doctors Under Attack.
Cycling’s governing body accused of dangerous inaction
‘People with real knowledge are pushed to the outside’
A leading Tour de France team manager, Jonathan Vaughters, has launched a scathing attack on cycling’s governing body on the eve of the race, accusing the UCI of being “unable to make good decisions when it comes to safety or the governance of the sport”.
Vaughters, who leads EF Education-Easypost and raced in four Tours as a professional, described cycling’s governing body as “managed by politicians and bureaucrats who do not understand the reality of the sport” and added that “they were put in place by the votes of other politicians who have never had their skin ripped off by the road”.
Nayib Bukele disputed claims of Ábrego García’s lawyers that he was tortured and deprived of sleep while in custody
The president of El Salvador has denied claims that Kilmar Ábrego García was subjected to beatings and deprivation while he was held in the country before being returned to the US to face human-smuggling charges.
Nayib Bukele said in a social media post that Ábrego García, the Salvadorian national who was wrongly extradited from the US to El Salvador in March before being returned in June, “wasn’t tortured, nor did he lose weight”.
Awake in the night again? From box breathing to standing on a cold bathroom floor, experts and readers offer tried and tested tips on how to calm your mind and drift back off …
Bad news for that old favourite, counting sheep. “It has been studied and it doesn’t work,” says Dr Eidn Mahmoudzadeh, a Manchester GP and co-founder of The Sleep Project, which offers support for sleeplessness at all ages. “It is too simple and mundane; people don’t carry on, they just get bored and their thoughts wander to worrying about sleep.” Counterintuitively, you should go for something more mentally challenging, he says, to distract the brain.
Five charges of rape and one charge of sexual assault
Partey denies all the charges against him
The former Arsenal footballer Thomas Partey has been charged with five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
The allegations relate to three women who reported incidents between 2021 and 2022. Partey has been charged with two counts of rape of one woman, three counts of rape of a second woman, and one count of sexual assault of a third woman. He will appear at Westminster magistrates court on 5 August.
After initial concerns, pupils are said to be more focused and have better social interactions with each other
Bans on smartphones in Dutch schools have improved the learning environment despite initial protests, according to a study commissioned by the government of the Netherlands.
National guidelines, introduced in January 2024, recommend banning smartphones from classrooms and almost all schools have complied. Close to two-thirds of secondary schools ask pupils to leave their phones at home or put them in lockers, while phones are given in at the start of a lesson at one in five.
Jeremy Corbyn has confirmed he is in discussions about creating a new leftwing political party, hours after the MP Zarah Sultana announced she was quitting Labour to co-lead the project.
Sultana, the MP for Coventry South who had the Labour whip suspended last year for voting against the government over the two-child limit on benefits, said on Thursday night she was quitting Labour and would “co-lead the founding of a new party” with Corbyn.
Dortmund’s pursuit of younger brother included hotel visit and talk of a Club World Cup meeting with Real Madrid
Jobe Bellingham was furious when he found out that the early yellow card he had been shown for a tackle on Nelson Deossa against Monterrey meant missing the next game of the Club World Cup and he was still furious the following day.
The news hit hard when he heard it at half-time heading down the tunnel, and the hurt wasn’t going away in a hurry. This was not just the next game, it was the game: Borussia Dortmund versus Real Madrid, the Bellingham brothers on the same pitch for the first time, and the match so special Dortmund used it to convince him to move to Germany in the first place. That and a disguise.
Rachel Reeves has not given herself enough fiscal headroom to manage public finances, Charlie Bean, the former deputy of the Bank of England has said, and has to “neurotically fine tune taxes”.
About £10bn – that’s a very small number in the context of overall public spending. Government spending is about one and a quarter trillion so £10bn is a small number … and it is a small number in the context of typical forecasting errors.
You can’t forecast the future perfectly both because you can’t forecast the economy and you can’t forecast all the elements of public finances …. The forecasts are imprecise and there is no way you can avoid that. That is a fact of life.
In light of reports of atrocities committed by the Israeli government in Gaza and reports of the UK’s collaboration with Israeli military operations, it is increasingly urgent to confirm whether the UK has contributed to any violations of international humanitarian law through economic or political cooperation with the Israeli government since October 2023, including the sale, supply or use of weapons, surveillance aircraft and Royal Air Force bases.
Arsenal’s hopes of one day signing Nico Williams have taken a blow after the Spain forward agreed an eight-year contract extension to stay at Athletic Bilbao until 2035. Mikel Arteta is a long-term admirer of Williams and Arsenal’s sporting director, Andrea Berta, held talks with the player’s representatives this year over a potential move.
The 22-year-old had looked set to join Barcelona until this week. Barcelona, despite the sales of Ansu Fati to Monaco and Clement Lenglet to Atlético Madrid this week, have yet to satisfy La Liga’s financial requirements to register new players.
Family of Dr Marwan al-Sultan says the Israeli airstrike ‘precisely’ hit the apartment block the cardiologist and his relatives occupied
The children of Dr Marwan al-Sultan, director of Gaza’s Indonesian hospital and one of the territory’s most senior doctors, said they believed their father was deliberately targeted in the Israeli airstrike that killed him on Wednesday.
Sultan died when an Israeli missile was fired into the apartment block in Gaza City where he and his extended family were staying after their displacement from northern Gaza. His wife, daughter, sister and son-in-law were also killed in the attack.
The yearly commemoration has always marked a contradiction. But despair is not a strategy: this is a moment to create change
The Fourth of July celebration of freedom rings hollow this year. The contradictions built into a national commemoration of our triumph over autocracy feel newly personal and perilous – especially to those who have, until now, felt relatively secure in the federal government’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law.
But the contradiction is far from new. Black, brown and Indigenous communities have always seen the gap between the ideals of American democracy and the lived reality of exclusion. Frederick Douglass’s 1852 address What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? demanded that Americans confront the hypocrisy of celebrating liberty while millions were enslaved. Today, those contradictions persist in enduring racial disparities and policies that perpetuate segregation, second-class citizenship and selective protection of rights.
Deborah N Archer is the president of the ACLU, the Margaret B Hoppin professor of law at NYU Law School, and the author of Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality. L Song Richardson is the former dean and currently chancellor’s professor of law at the University of California Irvine School of Law. She previously served as president of Colorado College. Susan Sturm is the George M Jaffin professor of law and social responsibility and the founding director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School and author of What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions.
From scoring so badly at Eurovision it made Terry Wogan resign to having Paul Hollywood call your cake ‘tough as old boots’, here are the contestants who lost big on the nation’s favourite shows
We often hear about the people who win TV contests. As well as the glory of victory, they might earn an enviable cash prize, a lucrative record deal or a life-changing career boost. But what about those who finish last? Are they philosophical in defeat or throwing tantrums behind the scenes? We tracked down five TV losers to relive their failure in front of millions, reveal how they recovered from humiliation and share what they learned.
Advocates in Springfield, Ohio – a city thousands of Haitians now call home – fear the fallout of Trump’s DHS revoking temporary protected status for Haitian nationals
Inside a church a few blocks south of downtown Springfield, Ohio, about 30 concerned Haitians, church leaders and community members have gathered on a balmy summer evening to try to map out a plan.
It’s been just a few days since Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, announced that Haitian nationals with temporary protected status (TPS) would face termination proceedings in a matter of months. By 2 September, they would be forced out of the US.
In an Arctic reshaped by the climate crisis, less ice really means more as countries face risks in push for more ships
For millennia, a mass of sea ice in the high Arctic has changed with the seasons, casting off its outer layer in summer and expanding in winter as it spins between Russia, Canada and Alaska. Known as the Beaufort Gyre, this fluke of geography and oceanography was once a proving ground for ice to “mature” into thick sheets.
But no more. A rapidly changing climate has reshaped the region, reducing perennial sea ice. As ocean currents spin what is left of the gyre, chunks of ice now clog many of the channels separating the northern islands.
When the Leicester band were forced to drop their old name after a legal threats from a certain budget airline, it could have been curtains. But frontman Murray Matravers’s trip to Japan has prompted a bold new outlook – and an upbeat new album
When writing songs, “95% of the time” Murray Matravers starts with the title. It’s a tactic he picked up from Gary Barlow: a producer once told him the Take That man tends to arrive at sessions touting a load of prospective song titles “cut out on little pieces of paper, and he’d put them on the table and you could just choose one. I was like: that’s fucking brilliant. Ever since I’ve always had loads of titles in my Notes app. It actually changed the way I wrote music,” he says with genuine enthusiasm. “Shout out to Gary Barlow!”
Names are clearly very important to the 29-year-old – but in recent years they have also caused him untold stress. By 2023, Matravers’ band Easy Life was thriving, having scored two No 2 albums on the trot by fusing upbeat, synthy bedroom pop with wry emo-rap. But that same year, his career came to a screeching halt when easyGroup – owners of the easyJet brand name with a long history of taking legal action against businesses with the word “easy” in their branding – decided to sue the Leicester band for trademark infringement.
Rachel Reeves’s distress may help destigmatise an emotional response to pressure or professional frustration
Rachel Reeves’s tears this week triggered a fall in the pound and attracted widespread derision from political columnists, mostly male. “What is wrong with Rachel Reeves?” the Telegraph asked. In an article headlined “The meaning of the chancellor’s tears”, a New Statesman columnist told readers that Reeves’s authority was “beginning to melt away”. The Daily Mail spoke disdainfully of her “waterworks”.
But in the longer term the chancellor’s display of distress may prove to have an unexpectedly positive legacy, helpfully normalising a still hugely stigmatised phenomenon: women’s tears in the workplace.
With audiences ‘more fashion aware than ever’, being worn on a TV show can be life-changing for small brands
The Bear is back for season 4, but never mind Carmy’s famous white T-shirt. All eyes are on Sydney, the quietly competent sous chef played by Ayo Edebiri, who has been breaking the internet with her own white tee.
Designed by a small independent US brand called Everybody.World, and worn as she is prepping in the opening episode, it mirrors the tight white T-shirt by Merz b. Schwanen preferred by her erratic boss. His crashed the company’s website – and helped propel Jeremy Allen White to become the face (and body) of Calvin Klein.
Alejandro Garnacho and Marcus Rashford are among five players who have asked to leave Manchester United and been told they do not need to return for pre-season training next week. Antony, Tyrell Malacia and Jadon Sancho have also requested transfers and been given more time away from the club to sort their futures.
Rashford, whose No 10 shirt has been given to the new signing Matheus Cunha, was sent on loan last season with Malacia, Antony and Sancho and it was always unlikely they would have a future under Ruben Amorim. Garnacho struggled for minutes in the latter part of the season and was a substitute in the Europa League final defeat by Tottenham. “I played 20 minutes today – I don’t know,” he said after that game. “I’m going to try to enjoy the summer and see what happens next.”
Mouth by Mona Arshi; The Anchorage by Bernard O’Donoghue; Guaracara by Fawzia Muradali Kane; Bunting’s Honey by Moya Cannon; Old World by Robert Crawford; Joy Is My Middle Name by Sasha Debevec-McKenney
Mouth by Mona Arshi (Chatto & Windus, £12.99) We open with Mouthed, a hideous image of forced speech in which a tongue is bitten out, a head hacked off. The stakes for language here – who is allowed to bear witness, and who is not – are high. The book’s opening section also includes scenes of near drowning, parental bullying, breakages, loss and childish torturing of animals. Only gradually do we realise we’re being prepared for the second section, Palace, in which Antigone mourns the death of her brother; as the poet mourns the brother who is her book’s dedicatee. This vivid collection forces us to witness the violence inherent in grief. Mourning may be socially inconvenient; Mouth opens up some of the space it needs. But by the end of the book, set at Cley nature reserve, bereavement has been neither resolved nor made tenable.
The Anchorage by Bernard O’Donoghue (Faber, £12.99)
These masterly portraits of rural Irish farming life, and of community life in Oxford, explore place, time and belonging; they are full of human feeling, yet never sentimental. Walking the Land tells how the family farm was sold off, “that cold March of 1962”, and lovingly lists old field names that mean nothing to the “shrewd and thoughtful men” lining up to buy it. In the title poem’s study in neighbourliness, “all the farmers in the parish” rally round to replace a year’s hay harvest lost in a barn fire. Such interconnected kindness matters, O’Donoghue shows us, yet cannot “repair the loss” of the chained dog burned along with the barn. A collection valedictory in tone and full of dedications, homages and memories reminds us that, after the craic is over, we will all be “free to pack up and make for home”.
New study finds troubling levels of Pfas near wastewater plants and sludge sites in 19 states
Sewage sludge and wastewater treatment plants are major sources of Pfas water pollution, new research finds, raising questions about whether the US is safely managing its waste.
A first-of-its-kind study tested rivers bordering 32 sewage sludge sites, including wastewater treatment plants and fields where the substance is spread as fertilizer – it found concerning levels of Pfas around all but one.
Hallé Orchestra/Adès (Hallé) This brings together new works of his own and by composers he admires that Thomas Adès has conducted at Bridgewater Hall during his residency with the Hallé
Since 2023 Thomas Adès has been artist-in-residence with the Hallé Orchestra. He has featured as composer, conductor and pianist in his appearances with the orchestra, and all his concerts have included new or nearly new works, both his own and by composers he admires. As the residency comes to an end, this collection brings together pieces he has conducted in Manchester; there are four by Adès himself, alongside William Marsey’s Man With Limp Wrist and Oliver Leith’s Cartoon Sun.
Of the four pieces by Adès, only one is substantial. Aquifer, which he wrote last year for Simon Rattle and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, is a densely packed 17-minute movement, which contains enough ideas to power a symphony at least twice as long, before being brought to a halt by the most common-or-garden of cadences. Tower – for Frank Gehry is a fanfare, and both Shanty and Dawn, composed during lockdown in 2020, are pieces that work wonders with repeated phrases. Marsey’s musical narrative, in eight “scenes”, is a strangely evocative succession of musical ghosts, inspired by paintings by Salman Toor, while Leith’s wacky processional, punctuated by enormous climaxes, leaves an exhilarating impression.
Blackweir Fields, Cardiff The thrash legends’ first UK gig in six years is a lean and unforgivingly mean set – no breathers, no ballads, only teeth-rattling bangers
‘Forty years ago, dude. Duuuuude,” Tom Araya exhales, reflecting on Slayer’s maiden, gob-spackled UK show at London’s Marquee Club in 1985. They were just kids then, on the verge of becoming the most belligerent force in thrash metal’s “big four” with Reign in Blood, but time hasn’t dulled their blade. The bassist-vocalist’s mane might be streaked with grey as he addresses the heaving pit but he still has bile to spare, immediately calling up a take on War Ensemble fit to loosen teeth a dozen rows from the front.
Orbiting their contribution to Black Sabbath’s forthcoming final show in Birmingham, this is Slayer’s first UK date in six years after a final tour that, not unsurprisingly given metal’s spotty record in this regard, wasn’t so final after all. There’s little sense of a sheepish re-emergence, though, with a lengthy video package on the history of the band teeing up South of Heaven’s inimitable riff, which is immediately in the throats of the crowd before drummer Paul Bostaph’s double-kick sparks kinetic mayhem.
A piece of history burned down in the Los Angeles wildfires. Project Chimney is salvaging what’s left to honor the architecture – and eventually create a memorial
By mid-morning last Thursday, Evan Hall was standing near the top of Monument Street in Los Angeles’s Pacific Palisades, looking out over the Pacific Ocean. He was running out of time.
Hall stood in the charred ruins of a 1953 home designed by the modernist architect Richard Neutra. Beside him, a handful of hard-hat-clad preservationists, masons and construction workers all looked up at the same thing: a chimney.
The lesson the Americans once taught the British, they are teaching the rest of the world: there are no permanent global orders
This year, like every other year, Americans will celebrate Independence Day with flag-waving, and parades, and fireworks. The political system the flag and the parades and fireworks are supposed to represent is in tatters, but everybody likes a party. It was 249 years ago, when the United States separated from the British Empire. Over the past year it has separated from the world order it built over those 249 years, and from basic sanity and decency as well. For Americans, the madness gripping their country is a catastrophe. For non-Americans, it is an accidental revolution. This Independence Day, the world is declaring its independence from the US.
As the United States retreats from the world, it is reshaping the lives of its former trading partners and allies, leaving huge holes in its wake. For Canada, where I live, the sudden absence of a responsible United States has been more shocking and more terrifying than for other countries. Americans are our friends and neighbours, often our family. We have been at peace with them for 200 years, integrating with their security apparatuses and markets. Now they are explicitly planning to weaken us economically in order to annex us.
Stephen Marche lives in Toronto and is the author of The Next Civil War and On Writing and Failure
Peter Kyle calls for new leadership at Alan Turing Institute and greater focus on defence and national security
The technology secretary has demanded an overhaul of the UK’s leading artificial intelligence institute in a wide-ranging letter that calls for a switch in focus to defence and national security, as well as leadership changes.
Peter Kyle said it was clear further action was needed to ensure the government-backed Alan Turing Institute met its full potential.
From residents of Gondomar, where the footballer grew up, to the president a country has been engulfed by sorrow
Ana Oliveira can barely get through a sentence before breaking down in tears. She has lived most of her life across the street from Diogo Jota’s family home in Gondomar, a town a short drive east of Porto. The sorrow that has engulfed the country since the Liverpool forward’s death is felt particularly acutely there.
Ana can still picture Diogo clearly as a boy, dropping his backpack after school and spending hours kicking a ball against the wall of his house. His younger brother, André Silva – who perished in the same car crash in north-west Spain on Thursday – quickly followed in his footsteps, sharing his love for the game. The brothers would often invite Ana’s brother, Ângelo, for a quick match in the street before dinner.
Devendra Banhart finds mysticism in Acquiesce, Snail Mail gets chills from Stand By Me and Johnny Marr chooses an absolute curveball as 17 musicians analyse the reunited band’s genius
There are a lot of similarities between us and Oasis: two brothers in the band, Creation Records, working-class kids, guitar band, etc. In the mid-90s, we couldn’t get arrested and had to watch their meteoric rise, but I couldn’t dislike the great music. Rock ’n’ Roll Star was on a compilation tape on the ill-fated US tour when we broke up. We’d had a punch-up on stage at the House of Blues in Los Angeles and back in my hotel room we were hanging around with a bunch of druggies. I was thinking “Where did it all go wrong?” when this song came on. I knew I’d remember that moment for the rest of my life. To me, Rock ’n’ Roll Star is like Johnny Rotten singing with Slade. It’s punk rock, but in 1994. I love the self-belief: Noel [Gallagher] wrote it before he was a rock’n’roll star but knew it was gonna happen. The difference between the Mary Chain and Oasis is that when we reformed we’d buried the hatchet a good few years before we got back together. I’m not sure if they have, but it used to amaze people how William [Reid] and I could be screaming with hatred at each other in the studio, then 10 minutes later it would be: “Do you want a cup of tea?”
The leviathan of competitive eating returns for Nathan’s Fourth of July hotdog eating contest after year’s ban for promoting rival plant-based wieners
A rerun of Jaws will be the blockbuster attraction in Coney Island this Fourth of July holiday, but not the classic Steven Spielberg movie enjoying a new lease of life on the 50th anniversary of its release.
The jaws here belong to Joey Chestnut, the undisputed all-time champion of hotdog consumption, and a leviathan in the world of competitive eating that has grown as a sporting spectacle to the point where it is a regular fixture on ESPN.
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