“Alcaraz has won every slam final he has played in,” writes Peter Slessenger. Federer won his first seven slam finals. That is quite some target to aim at. Looking forward to the match and hoping for that smile!”
Sinner has too, but both times on hards, whereas Alcaraz’s three have come on the slippier surfaces, clay and grass. He’s the better mover, as we said before, but he doesn’t hit as powerfully or as cleanly, so he’ll need to work angles to prevent the Italian planting his feet and sitting down on his shots.
OVO Hydro, Glasgow On a kitschy 1970s chatshow set, the Sheffield band play hits from across their career – and fans welcome their just-released album tracks like old friends
A thick velvet curtain cocoons the stage as a cool disembodied voice projects over the audience: “This is an encore. An encore occurs because the audience wants more.” Since their initial breakup in 2002, Pulp have re-formed twice, for sold-out tours and festival sets played to loyal, rapturous audiences. Tonight, the stakes are higher: for the first time in 24 years, Pulp have a new album, More, released just one day before tonight’s opening show. The audience want more – but do they want More?
Any anxiety about new material is quashed when set opener and comeback single Spike Island is received like an old friend. Jarvis Cocker rises from the back of the stage flanked by cardboard cutouts of his bandmates – recognisable from the cover of 1995’s Different Class – before joining their real-life counterparts, guitarist Mark Webber, drummer Nick Banks and keyboardist Candida Doyle, downstage. Continuing this mood, old and new songs on the setlist complement each other: the spacious psychedelia of More’s Farmer’s Market leads into the wide-eyed wonder of Sunrise from We Love Life; and the high stakes disco of O.U. (Gone, Gone) is echoed in its new counterpart Got to Have Love. With its illuminated staircase, kitschy backdrops and full string section, the stage is reminiscent of a 1970s chatshow set, with Cocker holding court in a corduroy suit, taking a seat – and occasionally laying down – during the spoken word sections, but always captivating.
Don’t let the lack of a traditional clay oven stop you from making this ‘king of kebabs’ at home
When was the last time you had tandoori chicken? Described by the Liverpool Daily Post in 1962 as “roast chicken Indian fashion”, this delicately seasoned, but often luridly coloured, dish was once the mainstay of the British Indian restaurant menu; yet, always greedy for novelty, I can’t remember when I last had the pleasure.
The loss is mine, because it’s one of the very best ways to eat chicken – rich and tender, thanks to its yoghurt marinade, tangy with lemon and perfumed with spice. Vivek Singh argues that “no Punjabi celebration can be complete without tandoori chicken”, while J Inder Singh Kalra went as far as to crown it the “king of kebabs”, a sentiment echoed by Rohit Ghai.
Hip-hop star says he wants to show food at sports stadiums can be good – and ‘Celtic fans are gonna love it’
The rapper Snoop Dogg is reportedly looking to branch out from gin and juice and open a burger van at Celtic Park in Glasgow.
The 53-year-old hip-hop star has previously spoken of investing in Celtic FC in a manner similar to the Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds’ involvement with Wrexham AFC.
The Girl, Woman, Other author has this week been awarded a one-off Women’s prize award for her outstanding contribution. She talks about her long road to recognition, and using her profile to support other writers
Back in 2013, Bernardine Evaristo gave a reading in a south London bookshop from her novel Mr Loverman. Only six people showed up, a couple of them were dozing and she realised they were homeless people who had come to find somewhere comfortable to sleep. Last month, the hit TV adaptation Mr Loverman, about a 74-year-old gay Caribbean man set in Hackney, east London, won two Baftas, including leading actor for Lennie James, making him the first Black British actor to win the TV award in its 70-year history. “I checked Wikipedia!” Evaristo exclaims of this shocking fact when we meet in London.
Evaristo’s long career is one of firsts and creating them for others. In 2019, at the age of 60, she became the first Black woman to win the Booker prize – shared with Margaret Atwood – for Girl, Woman, Other, 12 interwoven stories of Black, female and one non-binary character. She is also the first Black woman to become president of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) – only the second woman in its 200-year history, not to mention the first not to have attended Oxford, Cambridge or Eton. And this week she became the recipient of the Women’s prize inaugural Outstanding Contribution award.
Coach learned his trade under Vincent Kompany at Anderlecht, now he leads Wales back to Belgium for a World Cup qualifier
The last of Craig Bellamy’s 78 Wales caps came in Brussels in October 2013 and although that 1-1 draw concluded an underwhelming World Cup qualifying campaign, the Belgian capital is where he considers his coaching career achieved liftoff. He spent a little more than two years working at Anderlecht alongside his former Manchester City teammate Vincent Kompany, first as the under-21 coach and then as Kompany’s assistant, a springboard that has led him to representing his country at the King Baudouin Stadium for another qualifier, this time as a manager.
It is a city Bellamy remembers fondly, despite leaving Anderlecht in September 2021, before the end of his contract, to return to Cardiff to deal with depression after struggling being away from his family. “I loved living in Brussels,” he says. “It gave me a good step back. I was completely unrecognisable – no one had a clue who I was, which was nice. I enjoyed that peace.
US institutions have been doing Trump’s bidding before he even comes after them. Here’s the counterstrategy
During the first 100-plus days of his presidency, Donald Trump has done his damnedest to remake the US in his image. Fearing Hurricane Donald, a host of universities, law firms, newspapers, public schools and Fortune 500 companies have rushed to do his bidding, bowing before he even comes calling. Other institutions cower, in hopes that they will go unnoticed.
But this behavior, which social scientists call “anticipatory compliance”, smoothes the way to autocracy because it gives the Trump regime unlimited power without his having to lift a finger. Halting autocracy in its tracks demands a counter-strategy – let’s call it anticipatory noncompliance.
The Last Dive tells how a relationship with a giant Pacific manta ray turned a big game fish hunter into a conservationist
Located about 500km off the southern coast of Baja California lies a group of ancient volcanic islands known as the Revillagigedo Archipelago. Home to large pelagic species including whale sharks and scalloped hammerheads, the rugged volcanic peaks were also once the site of an unlikely friendship.
It began in December 1988 when Terry Kennedy, a now 83-year-old American sailor with a storied past, met a six-meter-wide giant Pacific manta ray off San Benedicto island’s rugged shore. He would go on to name him Willy. “When I saw him beside the boat, as massive as he was, I just had to get in the water just to see him,” says Kennedy. “I threw a tank on and jumped over, but I didn’t see him anywhere. He couldn’t have vanished that quick. And then I looked straight down and he was coming up underneath me. He was about four feet away and rising so I had no way to get off his back.”
When Fear of Flying, her autobiographical novel about women’s sexual desires, came out in 1973, Erica Jong was suddenly big news. But growing up as her only child, I had a very different experience
In August 1978, I was born in a hospital in Stamford, Connecticut. I came out with red hair. This was proof to my mother that I was special. The fantasy of my specialness continued my entire life. I was special even though I was dyslexic. I was special even though I got kicked out of college. I was special even though I was a drug addict. I was special despite my fatness. I was special despite all the evidence to the contrary. I was special because I was a piece of her.
I read an interview with my mother in which the interviewer described me as a “stout” toddler. “Stout” means “kind of fat”. I never thought of a toddler as being able to be fat, but there it was.
Seventeen years ago Nathan Dunne was locked out of his body, or at least that’s how it felt. He talks about his battle with depersonalisation disorder – and his sudden fear of water
On a cold winter’s night, in a “fit of spontaneity”, Nathan Dunne and his girlfriend went for a midnight swim on Hampstead Heath in London. They had been living together for a few months and, although it was dark and chilly, they “had a summer feeling in that first flush of the relationship”, Dunne says. They shed their clothes and waded into the shallows. After diving into the icy water, Dunne’s girlfriend put her lips to his cheek, and as they pulled apart, his life changed beyond all recognition. “It was like being struck. Like something came down,” he says, slicing the air with his hand. “The flip of a switch.”
Dunne’s transformation sounds like a fairytale in reverse: one kiss, and his life turned into a nightmare. Seventeen years have passed since that night, and he still mostly explains the change in himself in metaphors and similes. His eyes filled with soot. His voice was a robot’s. He felt as if he were locked outside his body, which became a sort of “second body”. Any form of water, from a raindrop to a warm bath, made everything worse. His terror and panic were so great that the next day he smashed a vase and used a shard to cut himself. An “attempt to not live any more”, is how he describes it.
During Sunday mass in St Peter’s Square, the pope asked that God ‘open borders, break down walls [and] dispel hatred’
Pope Leo has criticised the emergence of nationalist political movements and their “exclusionary mindset”, without naming a specific country or leader.
Leo, the first pope from the US, asked during a mass on Sunday with tens of thousands in St Peter’s Square that God “open borders, break down walls [and] dispel hatred”.
Musk isn’t the first – or last – billionaire to pour big money into US elections
Elon Musk said, very loudly and very publicly, what is usually the quiet part of the role of money in US politics.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude,” he wrote on his X social media platform amid an ongoing feud with Donald Trump.
Many cities said to have imposed prohibition in recent days that echoes 2019 police directive in Tehran
Iranian authorities have expanded a ban on walking dogs in public to many cities nationwide, citing public health, social order and safety concerns, domestic media have reported.
The ban, which echoes a 2019 police directive that barred walking dogs in Tehran, was expanded to Ilam city in the west on Sunday, according to reports.
Bold use of colour and wallpaper stuck up with double-sided tape among tricks for tenants as rents surge
The dance pole bang in the middle of Georgie Webster’s living room is one of its less eye-catching features. The lounge has striking pink and peach walls, a sideboard painted in cubes of purple and orange, and an olive-green sofa, all of which come together to create a kaleidoscope of colour.
On paper, it really shouldn’t work, but the 36-year-old artist and interior designer has more than pulled it off. Thousands of other people seemingly agree. Webster is one of a growing number of small-space interior influencers who has had a boom in interest from young renters and first-time buyers looking to spruce up their compact homes.
Lazzaretto Vecchio, Venice On the site of a hospital for leprosy patients, audience members are invited to wander in near darkness among twitching body bags into a choreographed scene of ritualised tyranny
There are strong Death in Venice vibes to the setting of Romeo Castellucci’s site specific production at the Venice Biennale Teatro. The show, by the Italian writer-director and his company, inhabits its own island – a long, lizard-like colony. The audience boards a shuttle and skims across the water to arrive at a building that was once a lazaretto – a hospital for leprosy patients. Associations with fatal infection and social isolation are chillingly resonance of the Covid pandemic. But as you wander into this disturbing promenade piece, things turn chilly in more ways than one.
The building’s interior is stripped of its skin so that its brick and rafters lie bare, and there is a low electronic rumble of sound along its corridors which is as disquieting as the near darkness. Windows are boarded up, as if deliberately concealing activity inside. Further along, there are bags lying in empty rooms that at first look empty but which twitch with still-living and breathing bodies inside them.
Parties denounce lack of public debate on move to make it easier for Italian-born children of foreigners to be citizens
Italians are voting in a referendum on whether to make it easier for children born to foreigners in Italy to obtain citizenship, with activists saying apparently low public awareness of the vote risks rendering the result invalid if turnout is not high enough.
Campaigners for the change in the citizenship law say it will help Italians born in the country to non-EU parents better integrate into a culture they already see as theirs.
Twenty years ago, a group of Scandinavian chefs announced a culinary revolution. But as Norway’s National museum celebrates the New Nordic manifesto’s impact on dining and the arts, has the movement betrayed its own ambitious ideals?
When is gastronomy about more than just recipes? When it is New Nordic cuisine: to its advocates, the most influential culinary movement of the 21st century; to its detractors, a school of foodie puritans who have spent the last two decades sucking the joy out of dining and injecting it with po-faced declarations.
If a decade of breathy Netflix food programming is to be believed, you could delicately tweezer some edible petals and micro-herbs on to locally foraged mushrooms and a bed of ancient grains, serve it with a naturally fermented lemonade, and you’ve got yourself a cracking (if not hugely substantive) New Nordic meal.
Former Spurs boss has been leading USA since late 2024
Tottenham job open after sacking of Ange Postecoglou
Mauricio Pochettino pushed back against suggestions he is a candidate to take over the newly-vacant Tottenham Hotspur managerial position, telling reporters on Saturday that it was “not realistic” for him to leave his current role as US men’s national team manager.
Pochettino had been considered a possible candidate to replace Ange Postecoglou, who was sacked by Tottenham on 6 June despite him leading the club to Europa League glory – the club’s first trophy in 17 years. However, Tottenham finished 17th in the Premier League, their lowest position since 1977.
Signing Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo are leaps of faith, as is hoping Ruben Amorim can solve all the problems
In publicly rejecting the overtures of the Saudi Pro League, Bruno Fernandes has made it clear he wants to continue playing football at the highest level. That he wants to challenge for trophies. That he has no interest in wasting what remains of his peak years jogging around aimlessly in the service of a vast public relations project, providing lucrative content for a cruel and heartless regime. Despite all this, he’s more than happy to remain at Manchester United for now.
There were other angles to this decision. In a sense, Al-Hilal’s courtship of Fernandes represented a kind of catch-22 for United, desperate to reinforce their underperforming squad while remaining compliant with profitability and sustainability rules. Only a player who truly loved United could contemplate leaving in order to help balance the books. But in signalling his willingness to leave, Fernandes merely demonstrated why United could not possibly let him go.
Given these sides’ catastrophic meeting in Belgrade almost 11 years ago, the real measure of success was its smooth completion
Inside Arena Kombëtare, more than 20,000 supporters caught their breaths and trained every last squint of focus on Rey Manaj. Outside, the legions who had flooded into Tirana all day just to be part of things, some queueing at borders before racing to bars and public viewings through the heat, clasped their beers. Albania had been awarded a penalty and nobody cared that it was soft; if Manaj kept his nerve then maybe a football hero could finally be born, the accursed feel around this fixture banished at long last.
Manaj straightened up, perhaps a little too much, and approached the ball head on. If he needed any reminder of the context he could always heed the reverberations of “Serbia, Serbia, f*ck your sister” that had formed much of the day’s soundtrack and had only just paused before he stepped up. The shot was low, far too close to Djordje Petrovic and firmly pawed to safety. The half-time whistle sounded immediately, members of Serbia’s delegation making a beeline for the pitch to embrace their keeper. For Manaj, all that lingered was the frozen image of a moment he had failed to meet.
Collapse of once-feared security apparatus, coupled with widespread poverty, has triggered a gold rush
They come by night. Armed with pickaxes, shovels and jackhammers, looters disturb the dead. Under the cover of darkness, men exhume graves buried more than 2,000 years ago in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra, searching for treasure.
By day, the destruction caused by grave robbers is apparent. Three-metre-deep holes mar the landscape of Palmyra, where ancient burial crypts lure people with the promise of funerary gold and ancient artefacts that fetch thousands of dollars.
Hawks, spikes and sonic repellants are among the measures used to deter these birds. Perhaps we should try sharing our planet
At this year’s Cannes film festival, some unexpected hires joined the security detail at luxury hotel the Majestic. They were clad not in kevlar but in deep chestnut plumage, with wingspans up to four feet, talons for toes and meat-ripping ebony beaks. The new recruits were Harris hawks and their mission was clear: guard stars from the aerial menace of gulls daring to photobomb or snatch vol-au-vents.
This might sound like an extreme solution to a benign problem – after all, haven’t most of us lost sandwiches to swooping beaks and come out relatively unscathed? But as these notorious food pirates come ashore in growing numbers, cities around the world are increasingly grappling with how to manage them. Hiring hawks from local falconer Christophe Puzin was the Majestic’s answer to curbing gull-related incidents (such as Sophie Marceau’s 2011 wine-on-dress situation). But in metropolises such as New York, Rome, Amsterdam and London gulls are widely considered a menace, too, as they take up permanent residence on urban stoops.
Sophie Pavelle is a writer and science communicator
What was once simply a garment that declared your affiliation to a club is now a global business earning millions from collectors of vintage kits
On the second floor of an unprepossessing building on the outskirts of Amsterdam, there is a metal cabinet that destroys footballers’ DNA. The contraption belongs to MatchWornShirt and was part of a deal to sell the kits of Real Madrid players to the public. To allay concerns that the genetic material of Cristiano Ronaldo might escape into the wild, the steel wardrobe was built so that every shirt could be blasted by a germicidal lamp.
For new, read old, because MatchWornShirt sells precisely what the company’s name suggests: kits that have been stuck to the bodies of professional athletes. Want the jersey Son Heung-min pulled on against Manchester United in the Europa League final? You can have it, if you beat the current auction price of £22,000. The very shirt Cole Palmer had on when he scored four first-half goals against Brighton last season? That went for £34,000.
Forget luxury escapes: it’s more fun to share time and space with people of all ages and from all walks of life
I’ve never been in a band. But I have been to a youth hostel with four babies, which is sort of the same thing. Everywhere we turned there was singing, selfies, strangers coming up to us in the street and women getting their boobs out – it was the Small Faces, but with actual small faces.
My God, how I love youth hostels. In all their strange, intergenerational, shared washing-up sponges and boot-room glory, they are the best of us. You can keep your sponsored hotel stays and luxury apartments as far as I’m concerned. Give me a fluorescent-lit kitchen with five electric hobs and a roll of stickers to label your milk any day.
Tskaltubo enjoyed years of prosperity as a jewel of Soviet architecture. But after the collapse of the USSR in December 1991 the sanatoriums were abandoned, and in 1992 people fleeing the war in Abkhazia found refuge here. While efforts continue to restore the spa town to its former glory, silence and greenery prevail as a few families hold out amid the rubble
The right to rest for workers was enshrined in the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union. Article 119 guaranteed “annual vacations with full pay for workers and employees and the provision of a wide network of sanatoriums”. Fourteen years earlier, the 1922 labour code had established that every worker was entitled to two weeks of annual leave and hundreds of sanatoriums were built across the vast territory that made up the Soviet socialist republics. These establishments, conceived as a combination of health resorts and medical centres, served as places for workers to rest and recuperate, thus helping to optimise their productivity.
Bath House No 8, located in Central Park where the hot springs spring forth, is the UFO-shaped Tskaltubo spa with a curved, circular roof and a central opening that lets in light.
Norway will set up state payment scheme for families of 123 men killed in Kielland disaster, but some feel it comes too late
“I think we all feel like we’ve had a bit of a weight lifted off our shoulders,” said Laura Fleming after an important milestone in one of Europe’s longest-running industrial disaster sagas. “It is just 45 years too late.”
Fleming’s father, Michael, was one of 123 men who were killed when the Alexander L Kielland accommodation rig capsized during a fierce storm in the Norwegian North Sea oilfields on 27 March 1980.
The UK government is desperate to show it is preventing small boat crossings, but its PR-heavy approach may cause more problems with voters than it solves
A couple of years ago, I moved to a new city.The pandemic put my university plans permanently on hold, and I’ve recently started working full time. I built up a sizeable network of online friends during and after the pandemic, but I’ve found myself craving real-life friends to interact with more often.
I don’t drink and I’m struggling to find activities for people my age that I’m interested in. Apart from a few at my job, I haven’t been able to make any new friends, and my contact with old school friends has become less and less frequent.
Experts, Guardian readers and writers share ingenious solutions to life’s everyday irritations, from wobbly tables to persistent hiccups
Stuffed-up sieves Always use a dishwasher. If one isn’t available, soak in the sink first, to loosen particles, then take a dish brush or nail brush to it. Rinse under a fast hot tap. Aggie MacKenzie, TV presenter and author
The UK’s strategic defence review risks normalising nuclear warfare. Don’t believe the PR hype: these weapons are immoral, irrational and catastrophic
Plans by Keir Starmer’s government to modernise and potentially expand Britain’s nuclear weapons arsenal, unveiled in the 2025 strategic defence review (SDR), seriously undermine international non-proliferation efforts. They will fuel a global nuclear arms race led by the US, China and Russia. And they increase the chances that lower-yield, so-called tactical nukes will be deployed and detonated in conflict zones.
Canada’s most famous astronaut on his unusual party trick, predictions on extraterrestrial life and favourite space movies
What’s the most chaotic thing that’s ever happened to you in space?
Launch – you go from no speed at all to 17,500 miles an hour in under nine minutes. The chaos is spectacular, the power of it is just wild, the physical vibration and force of it is mind-numbing – and it all happens so blisteringly fast. In the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, you go from lying on your back in Florida to being weightless in space. It’s just the most amazing, chaotic, spectacular, rare human experience I’ve ever had.
Donald Trump’s extraordinary threats have angered Canadians and Europeans, and the idea of a new kind of transatlantic alliance is gaining traction
Joachim Streit has never stepped foot in Canada. But that hasn’t stopped the German politician from launching a tenacious, one-man campaign that he readily describes as “aspirational”: to have the North American country join the EU.
“We have to strengthen the European Union,” said Streit, who last year was elected as a member of the European parliament. “And I think Canada – as its prime minister says – is the most European country outside of Europe.”
Miguel Uribe said to have entered ‘critical hours’ after attack allegedly by 15-year-old who is in custody
The Colombian presidential candidate who was shot in Bogotá has successfully undergone a first operation after being flown to hospital in critical condition, the city’s mayor has said.
Miguel Uribe, a 39-year-old senator who has been running for the presidency in 2026, “overcame the first surgical intervention”, the mayor of Bogotá, Carlos Fernando Galán, said on Sunday. Uribe had entered “the critical hours” of recovery, he added.
Florida evens final as Marchand nets 2OT breakaway
Panthers erase deficit after Perry ties it with 17.8 left
Bobrovsky stops 42 shots; Game 3 Monday in Florida
Brad Marchand scored on a breakaway in double overtime and the defending champion Florida Panthers punched back against the Edmonton Oilers in Game 2 of their Stanley Cup final rematch, winning 5-4 on Friday night to even the series.
Marchand’s second goal of the night 8:04 into the second OT allowed Florida to escape with a split after Corey Perry scored to tie it with 17.8 seconds left in the third period and Stuart Skinner pulled for an extra attacker. Each of the first two games this final have gone to overtime, for the first time since 2014 and just the sixth in NHL history.
Women recount alleged behavior, including flirting with teenagers, as ‘predatory, terrifying and unacceptable’
Multiple women have accused Jared Leto of impropriety, with some calling the 53-year-old actor and musician’s behavior “predatory, terrifying and unacceptable”.
In a new report by Air Mail on Saturday, nine women have come forward to accuse Leto of engaging in inappropriate behavior over the years, including flirting with teenagers.
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