In a statement on X, the IDF says its air force has attacked the Quds force headquarters in Tehran.
Air Force fighter jets struck Quds Force headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian army, guided by precise intelligence from the Intelligence Directorate. In these headquarters, Quds operatives planned terrorist operations against Israel through proxies of the Iranian regime in the Middle East.”
The Tour de France stage winner talks in detail for the first time about transitioning when her cycling career ended, growing up in the Gorbals and alienation in the peloton
Pippa York used to be Robert Millar, a stage winner and king of the mountains in the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia. Millar was also a podium finisher, in both the Vuelta a España and the Giro, a British national champion, and Tour of Britain winner. But Millar had also wanted to be a girl since the age of five, a secret that remained buried throughout childhood in Glasgow, the subsequent racing career, and beyond, into mid-life.
In her new book, The Escape, written in collaboration with David Walsh, the 66-year-old unflinchingly documents the long and painful process towards transition and the isolation, fear and loneliness that went with it.
The two players are among those collaborating with artists to create the Football City, Art United exhibition
“Everybody needs his own ritual or way of preparing,” says the former Dutch footballer Edgar Davids. “Those minutes that you’re in the tunnel is where we’re going to start.”
Davids is talking about a piece he has worked on alongside the artist Paul Pfeiffer in which the pair recreate the tension of the tunnel before a big game.
The Iranian supreme leader is backed into a corner, a situation he has spent his life doing his best to avoid
When he appeared in public for the first time in five years in October, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, had an uncompromising message. Israel “won’t last long”, he told tens of thousands of supporters at a mosque in Tehran in a Friday sermon.
“We must stand up against the enemy while strengthening our unwavering faith,” the 84-year-old told the gathering.
He is the rapper’s rapper, adored by Jay-Z, and once called ‘the most beautiful thing to happen to hip-hop’. So why has he taken so long to release his new album? And can we please see his diamond-crusted Virgin Mary medallion?
Slick Rick is tucking into a late room-service breakfast in his Park Lane hotel room. He is back in London, the city his family emigrated from when he was a boy, because he’s launching a new album, Victory, his first since 1999’s The Art of Storytelling, which featured an array of guest artists – including Outkast, Nas and Snoop Dogg – paying homage to one of hip-hop’s legendary figures.
Even today, he remains the rapper’s rapper, the most-sampled hip-hop artist in history. Ghostface Killah has called him the greatest of all time. Eminem described himself as “a product of Slick Rick”, Jay-Z likened him to Matisse and Mark Ronson once gave a Ted talk dissecting his work. Questlove called his voice “the most beautiful thing to happen to hip-hop culture”.
Marci Shore made news around the world when her family moved to Canada. She discusses Trump, teaching history and how terror atomises society
She finds the whole idea absurd. To Prof Marci Shore, the notion that the Guardian, or anyone else, should want to interview her about the future of the US is ridiculous. She’s an academic specialising in the history and culture of eastern Europe and describes herself as a “Slavicist”, yet here she is, suddenly besieged by international journalists keen to ask about the country in which she insists she has no expertise: her own. “It’s kind of baffling,” she says.
In fact, the explanation is simple enough. Last month, Shore, together with her husband and fellow scholar of European history, Timothy Snyder, and the academic Jason Stanley, made news around the world when they announced that they were moving from Yale University in the US to the University of Toronto in Canada. It was not the move itself so much as their motive that garnered attention. As the headline of a short video op-ed the trio made for the New York Times put it, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US”.
Public opinion is clamouring for closer EU cooperation. The last thing we need is Ursula von der Leyen pandering to the far right
Donald Trump’s “America First” policies are undermining decades of transatlantic cooperation just as Putin’s Russia destabilises Europe with direct military aggression. But these twin shocks have unintentionally accomplished something the EU institutions never could. They have made European integration feel not just important, but existential – a matter of democratic survival – for ordinary citizens.
From Helsinki to Lisbon, people are suddenly experiencing the same existential unease. Trade wars, defence threats and military aggression don’t respect borders. More and more Europeans now recognise that their small, individual nations cannot withstand simultaneous pressure from both Washington and Moscow. They find themselves caught between economic coercion and military intimidation.
Alberto Alemanno is the Jean Monnet professor of EU law at HEC Paris and the founder of The Good Lobby
Combination of two targeted drugs found to produce better outcomes and was more tolerable than chemotherapy
A groundbreaking UK-wide trial has found a chemotherapy-free approach to treating leukaemia that may lead to better outcomes for some patients, with the results being hailed as a “milestone”.
Led by researchers from Leeds, results from the Flair trial, which took place at 96 cancer centres across the UK, could reshape the way the most common form of leukaemia in adults is treated, scientists said.
Vance Boelter accused of killing legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband, and wounding John Hoffman and his wife
The man suspected of opening fire on two Minnesota legislators and their spouses on 14 June, killing one legislator and her husband, was apprehended late on Sunday night, officials told the Associated Press and New York Times.
The officials said Boelter was detained in Minnesota, but didn’t immediately give further details.
Australia is to hold formal negotiations on joining a new defence agreement with the European Union, with the prime minister preparing to discuss plans for enhanced security cooperation at this week’s G7 summit in Canada.
Amid the deteriorating international security landscape, Anthony Albanese will use the talks with EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the European Council president, António Costa, in Alberta to explore a security and defence partnership, proposed at the inauguration mass of Pope Leo XIV in Rome last month.
Victorian woman, 50, has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one of attempted murder following a fatal beef wellington lunch in Leongatha in 2023. Follow live
Factory making Iranian-designed Shahed drones is hit, far from Russia-Ukraine border; Russian strikes damage energy and other civilian facilities in Poltava oblast. What we know on day 1,209
Ukraine’s military said on Sunday it had attacked a Russian drone factory in the city of Yelabuga in Russia’s Tatarstan region. The target is around 1,000km from Ukraine. The Ukrainian military general staff said the factory produced, tested, and launched drones at Ukraine, in particular against energy and civil infrastructure. Videos on social media showed an explosion said to be at the factory in Yelabuga, also known as Alabuga, which builds Iranian-designed Shahed drones. The Russian local governor confirmed the attack.
Russian forces hit the Kremenchuk oil refinery in Ukraine’s Poltava region with missiles and drones, Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denounced the attack on the central Poltava region as a vile strike against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, which he said occurred “after the Americans asked us not to strike at Russian energy facilities”. Ukrainian officials said the strikes mainly hit energy, agricultural and civilian installations.
Russian forces have advanced in northern Sumy Oblast and near Kupyansk, Siversk, Chasiv Yar, and Toretsk,according to the Institute for the Study of War. Russia’s defence ministry claimed on Sunday that its forces had taken control of the village of Malynivka in the Donetsk region, known in Russia as Ulyanovka. Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had recaptured Andriivka village in north-eastern Sumy as part of a drive to expel Russian forces from the area. Neither side’s claims were independently confirmed.
The Ukrainian office for the return of prisoners of war confirmed on Sunday that Russia had returned 1,200 bodies to Ukraine as part of continuing exchanges.
A building used by Boeing in Kyiv was badly damaged in a recent large-scale Russian air attack, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing two Boeing employees, three Ukrainian officials and the head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine. There had been “no operational disruption”, Andriy Koryagin, deputy general director of Boeing’s operation in Ukraine, told the newspaper, and none of its employees were harmed.
American finishes two shots clear of Bob MacIntyre
Spaun claims first major title of his career
Where on earth to start with this? A chaotic conclusion to the US Open should have carried an X-rated certificate. You will rarely see anything like it.
There will be analysis and lots of it over whether or not Oakmont delivered a great US Open, a pathetic US Open or anything in between. What cannot be denied was the level of drama as holes ticked down. JJ Spaun stood tallest to earn the biggest win of his career. One under par equals $4.3m.
Briton forced out of Canadian GP with three laps left
George Russell claims first win of season for Mercedes
McLaren attempted to play down any acrimony between its drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri after they collided at the Canadian GP, which saw the Briton crash out, as George Russell claimed a decisive victory for Mercedes after starting on pole.
Norris’s failure to finish, crashing out from fifth place with three laps left, means that the Australian, who finished fourth, increases his championship lead over his teammate to 22 points. Russell now sits in fourth in the standings, 62 points off Piastri.
Keir Starmer is beginning an urgent diplomatic push to try to head off the crisis in the Middle East, as the Foreign Office warned Britons not to travel to Israel after further retaliatory attacks by Iran.
Downing Street did not rule out the possibility of having to evacuate UK nationals from Israel if matters deteriorated, saying officials were keeping all contingency plans “under constant review”.
Malik Tillman scored twice in the first half in a dominant US performance to kick off their Gold Cup campaign
7 min: A lot of great seats still available at PayPal Park – another major Concacaf game involving the US that fails to meet attendance expectations.
5 min: Chance! Tillman plays through Patrick Agyemang, who beats his defender and the goalkeeper but his slow rolling effort ends up just wide. Had it gone it, he might have been flagged for offside – it looked like a close call from the broadcast.
New probe and statutory public inquiry will be a means to get ‘truth and justice’, home secretary says
Keir Starmer has launched a sweeping national operation to investigate grooming gangs and a statutory inquiry into institutional failure, marking a significant reversal after months of pressure on Labour to act.
The National Crime Agency (NCA), the UK’s top investigative body, has been tasked with leading a coordinated national push to reopen historic group-based child sexual abuse cases and identify offenders who slipped through the cracks of previous police efforts.
Metreweli, 47, has held series of director-level roles in foreign intelligence service and in domestic agency MI5
MI6, the UK’s foreign intelligence service, is to be led by a woman for the first time, Keir Starmer has announced.
Blaise Metreweli, a career intelligence officer who joined the service in 1999, will take over from Sir Richard Moore in the autumn, becoming its 18th chief.
Palmeiras, Porto battle to draw in half-full stadium
The Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain beat their fellow European heavyweights Atlético Madrid 4-0 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Sunday to get their Club World Cup campaign off to a winning start.
PSG landed the first blow when Fabián Ruiz fired home from distance in the 19th minute as they showed no signs of rust in their first match since trouncing Inter 5-0 to win their first Champions League title last month.
Argentina superstar steals limelight again at tournament where South America is saying ‘no mas’ to European hegemony
Javier Zanetti looked suitably awed as he read aloud from the label of a Limon Lime Mas by Messi drink, up on stage at the Chase Stadium VIP reception suite, dressed entirely in silky black tailoring, and looking like an elite hired assassin on his way to the opera, albeit one whose speciality is downing his victims in an ice bucket of the Future Of Hydration.
To be fair, Zanetti didn’t have many options when it came to striking a tone. A few moments earlier he’d been introduced by a marketing manager who spoke about Lionel Messi’s new energy drink in tones of high-performance evangelism, gazing with doe-eyed wonder at the small plastic bottle in his hand and predicting that the “official hydration partner of the Argentine FA” (water: you’re out) would go on not just to make you less thirsty or become a popular choice in petrol stations, but to “inspire generations”. Here was a guy who has really drunk the Mas.
When an Iranian missile bound for the industrial port of Haifa dropped out of the sky on the town of Tamra on Saturday night, it fell on Israel’s most vulnerable, and in one devastating flash, lit up the country’s deepest divide.
The missile demolished a three-storey stone house and killed four members of the same family: Manar Khatib, and her two daughters – Shada, a university student, and Hala, a 13-year-old schoolgirl – as well as Manar’s sister-in-law, Manal.
Trump’s army parade was neither the totalitarian North Korean spectacle that critics had grimly predicted, nor the triumph of Maga nationalism fans craved
On Saturday, as a crowd of thousands of people near the Washington Monument listened, a loudspeaker dramatically announced the names of America’s secretary of defense, vice-president and president. The final name received a modest roar that surely flushed the watching commander-in-chief with validation. With that, and with the boom of a 21-gun salute, the military parade that Donald Trump had coveted for years finally began.
A protester, Nicky Sundt, kept a lonely and mostly silent vigil at the side of the road. She held a sign depicting a cartoon Trump brushing back his comb-over to reveal a swastika emblazoned on his forehead. The placard said “Save our democracy”. Standing near her – as a “counterprotest to the counterprotest to the protest, or something,” as one of them put it – a group of pro-Trump men held court. One was draped in an American flag. Another had a giant picture of Trump, in a crown, with the exhortation “Trump for king”.
“Paris Saint-Germain’s disappointing Champions League campaign continued on Wednesday as they slumped to a last-gasp 2-1 home defeat by Atlético Madrid that left the Ligue 1 leaders in the elimination zone.”
Driver accepts clash with Piastri was ‘stupid from me’
Antonelli claims first podium behind Verstappen
George Russell scored the first Grand Prix win of 2025 for both himself and Mercedes with a fine drive to win the Canadian GP.
The catalyst was a superb sixth career pole position which Russell described as “probably the most exhilarating lap I’ve ever done in my life because around this circuit you’ve got to be so committed.”
US officials say Israelis reported they had opportunity to kill Iranian leader, but Trump waved them off of plan
President Donald Trump vetoed an Israeli plan in recent days to kill Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, two US officials told Reuters on Sunday.
“Have the Iranians killed an American yet? No. Until they do we’re not even talking about going after the political leadership,” said one of the sources, a senior US administration official.
23-year-old has 11 points, 13 rebounds and 11 assists
Caitlin Clark holds record for youngest triple-double
Angel Reese recorded her first triple double, Hailey Van Lith led a dominant performance by the Chicago bench with a career-high 16 points and the Sky pulled away from the Connecticut Sun for a 78-66 win on Sunday.
Reese, at the age of 23, became the second-youngest WNBA player in history with a triple double. Only Caitlin Clark had a triple double at a younger age; she had two while she was 22.
Fueled by Reese’s 11 assists – more than double her previous career high – Chicago put five players in double figures. The Sky bench outscored the Sun reserves 36-2 in the Commissioner’s Cup game.
Keeping up with the pace of change in Maresca’s squad is far from easy and their US trip will be more of the same
This is the never-ending season but Chelsea show no sign of wanting to slow down. They intend to embrace Fifa’s newly revamped Club World Cup – a potential £97m prize pot for the eventual winners is quite the draw in an age of intense financial scrutiny, after all – and have travelled to the US knowing that the tournament gives them an opportunity to find out more about a squad that has evolved in the short space of time since Enzo Maresca’s side beat Real Betis in the Uefa Conference League final on 28 May.
There has been little time to pause for breath before Chelsea get up and running in Group D by facing the Major League Soccer side Los Angeles FC in Atlanta on Monday. Some players have had a 10-day break, others have been away on international duty and there has been no sign of anyone in the recruitment department taking a bit of annual leave.
It is 12th time the 25-year-old has set the record
Sweden’s Armand Duplantis broke the men’s pole vault world record on home soil as Georgia Hunter Bell claimed an 800m Diamond League win. Duplantis delighted the Stockholm crowd by clearing 6.28m on his first attempt after raising the bar from 6m.
It was the 12th time the two-time Olympic champion, who was born in the US but competes for Sweden, has broken the pole vault world record. In Stockholm he improved on his previous record, set in February, by 1cm on his first attempt.
New Zealand part-timers suffer through tough afternoon
The good news for Auckland City was that they stopped Harry Kane scoring on Sunday afternoon in Cincinnati. The bad news was that his Bayern Munich teammates were a little more prolific, scoring 10 between them in the opening match of their Club World Cup campaign.
If Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president, was hoping his expanded Club World Cup – now containing 32 teams, playing across four weeks in 11 US cities – would showcase the depth of talent in global football, this was not a good example. The statistics were excruciating: the German champions had 31 shots – 17 of them on target – to Auckland’s one, and enjoyed 72% of possession.
It was just past 4pm when Nahid’s* windows began to shake. An Israeli bomb hit a building nearby – she could not see where – and soon her house began to fill up with smoke. It was the third day of Israeli bombing of Iran and the situation in Tehran was just getting worse.
“This is a massacre. The blasts haven’t stopped. Children are crying and we fear many civilians have been killed. There’s a smell of death in the air. I can’t stop crying,” Nahid*, a 25-year-old finance analyst at an e-commerce company in Tehran, told the Guardian via text.
Slovenian beats rival Jonas Vingegaard into second place
France’s Lenny Martinez wins eighth and final stage
Tadej Pogacar wrapped up the Critérium du Dauphiné on Sunday with a podium finish in the eighth and final stage, which was won by France’s Lenny Martinez.
A winner of three stages in total, the Slovene dominated the 77th edition of the Dauphine to top the overall classification by 59sec ahead of the Dane Jonas Vingegaard – three weeks before the start of his Tour de France title defence.
2 min Slovenia are a good side, who finished top of their qualification group despite losing 4-0 at home to France*. They drew the return game – against a France team that included Desire Doue and Mathys Tel – and won five of the other six.
1 min England kick off from left to right as we watch. It really is warm out there, 28 degrees apparently. Little brisk.
It’s a hot day in Canada, and the cars are out and testing. As ever, the discussion is about tyres. When isn’t it? All that tech and it always comes down to rubber.
Feels like old times to kick off in Melbourne next season.
Robert MacIntyre starts the day just about within striking distance of the leaders. But at +3 he’s not got much margin for error. So he could do without sending a wild Hovland-esque drive towards the bushes down the right. It stops just short, but he’s still hacking out of the thick stuff, and the errant tee shot leads inevitably to bogey. He’s now +4 and the look on his face suggests he knows any slim hope of a sensational Arnold Palmer style comeback is gone. He’s +4.
Seems clearing out the pipes last night did Rory some good. A weight lifted. He should bollock the press pack more often.
Fly-half relishes end to his 10-year wait for a league title before homing in on British & Irish Lions challenge
Had Handrè Pollard done his homework he might have known what was coming – for Finn Russell has previous with intercepts when attacking Twickenham’s south stand. It was playing that way that he picked off Owen Farrell’s pass before streaking clear in the madcap 38-38 draw between England and Scotland in 2019. And he was at it again on Saturday, coming up with the decisive moment in Bath’s dogged Premiership final victory over Leicester.
On this occasion he did not finish off the try himself – you suspect he probably could have – instead flinging a nonchalant pass inside to the onrushing Max Ojomoh. In a final short on champagne moments, it put the fizz in Bath’s performance, extending their lead to 20-7 before a second penalty of the match proved pivotal in ensuring the 29-year wait for a Premiership title was over.
Relatives of Pooja and Harshit Patel, who were visiting from Leicester, want to cremate them together but have faced painful wait for identification
In the ramshackle, cramped lanes of Ambika Nagar in the Indian city of Gujarat, everyone spoke of Pooja and Harshit Patel with pride. The couple had done what none of their relatives or neighbours had managed to achieve before; they had moved abroad, settling among the thriving Gujarati diaspora community in the English city of Leicester.
Their lives in Leicester, where the couple had moved so Pooja could complete her business masters degree – later getting a job at Amazon alongside Harshit – seemed unimaginably glamorous to their relatives and close-knit community back in India.
Even in the most harrowing cases, a fair society must allow for review, and the possibility of judicial error
When Lucy Letby was found guilty of murdering seven babies, and attempting to murder seven more, the judge sentenced her to multiple whole-life terms for what he said had been “a cruel, calculated and cynical campaign”. The convictions shook public trust in the NHS and demanded a reckoning with a system and culture that had failed to prevent such horrors. In August 2023, this newspaper urged readers to look beyond individual guilt to the institutional failures that allowed such crimes to go undetected for so long. It remains the case that serious questions must be asked of NHS management and clinical staff in relation to the tragic events at the Countess of Chester hospital.
However, justice, like science, should not be afraid to re-examine its conclusions when reasonable doubt or fresh evidence emerge. Since Letby’s conviction, many have questioned the basis of the prosecution case. Leading experts have raised challenges about the reliability of key medical assumptions and the quality of statistical interpretations that led to Letby being jailed. Her guilt or innocence is not for the media to decide. But journalism plays a vital role in scrutinising government, parliament and the courts. When a serious body of concern arises around a conviction, particularly one so grave and emotionally charged, the state has a duty to respond not with defensiveness, but with clear candour.
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Having a separate award was good for female novelists. Now a medical author is blazing a trail with a true story
Female nonfiction writers are paid less on average, receive fewer reviews and win fewer prizes than men. Unsurprisingly, this means that women sell fewer books. So far this year, more than 60% of titles on the UK’s hardback and paperback nonfiction bestseller lists have been by men.
Kate Mosse wants to change this. Famously, she set up the Women’s prize for fiction after there was not a single woman on the 1991 Booker shortlist. This year Ms Mosse’s award celebrates its 30th anniversary. With previous winners including Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Maggie O’Farrell, it has changed the publishing landscape to the extent that some suggest it is now redundant: last year, five out of the six books on the Booker prize shortlist were by women, and the winner was Samantha Harvey. Indeed, such is the pre-eminence of female novelists that there is talk of a crisis in men’s fiction, and plans for an independent publisher, Conduit Books, especially for male authors.
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