Iran said on Wednesday it had detained five suspected agents of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency on charges of “tarnishing” the country’s image online, Iranian news agencies reported.
“These mercenaries sought to sow fear among the public and tarnish the image of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran through their calculated activities online,” Tasnim and SNA news agencies quoted a statement from the Revolutionary Guards as saying.
Frustration after US president refuses to make Ukraine a priority at G7 despite appearance of Zelenskyy in Canada
EU’s Kallas continues:
On Ukraine, the European Union is doing its part here too, not least because Ukraine is Europe’s first line of defence. We know that Russia responds to strength and nothing else.
We have to do more for Ukraine, for our own security too.
To quote my friend Nato secretary general Mark Rutte: if we don’t help Ukraine further, we should all start learning Russian.
We are living in very dangerous tough times.
Russia is already a direct threat to the European Union.
Europe’s collective economic might is unmatched. I don’t believe that there is any threat that we can’t overcome if we act together and with our Nato allies.
I decided to ditch my sleek, neat hair for chemical-free afro styles and noticed how differently I was treated. Changing my hairstyle has never just been about fashion – what it symbolises culturally runs far deeper
At the start of 2023, a couple of months after a trip to Jamaica with friends, where we spoke extensively about our hair, I made my first new year resolution in more than a decade. I was going to try a wider variety of hairstyles. For most of my 20s, I had two styles: long, dark, medium-sized box braids (where hair is divided into square sections, and each is then braided into a single plait) or, very occasionally, a weave. Now, I decided, I would switch things up – whether trying a new colour, length or type of braid.
This may not seem groundbreaking but for me it genuinely was. It was never just about hair, it ran deeper than that. I had come to realise that my own understanding of stereotypes about Black women had been learned from years of experiencing microaggressions: from comments on how good my English was, despite being British, or being followed around supermarkets by security guards – as well as seeing how women who looked like me were portrayed on TV. Without my knowing, on some level, I had become increasingly conscious of the “vibe” I was giving off, before I even spoke. This, in turn, had influenced my hair, dress sense, and, at times, my very behaviour. I wanted to break free from internalised prejudices I didn’t even realise I had.
“During the Liechtenstein v Scotland game there was a reference to Billy Gilmour scoring more goals for Scotland (2) than his various clubs (0). But has a recognised striker ever finished their career with more goals for their country than their clubs?” asks Stuart McLagan.
The structure of women’s football in North America, particularly before the NWSL was founded in 2012, makes it the likeliest source of an answer to this question. There was no league at all in the US between 2003 and 2009, and to this day players sometimes appear more for their country than their club in a calendar year.
The death of Turki al-Jasser was the first high-profile killing of a journalist since the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi
The tweet posted by Saudi journalist Turki al-Jasser in 2014 was chillingly prescient: “The Arab writer can be easily killed by their government under the pretext of ‘national security’,” he wrote.
On Saturday, the Saudi interior ministry announced that al-Jasser had been executed in Riyadh, for crimes including “high treason by communicating with and conspiring against the security of the Kingdom with individuals outside it”.
Put in the proper wider context, the attendance issues that have emerged during the tournament perhaps aren’t quite as embarrassing as they seem
If there’s a lesson to be learned from the Club World Cup so far, it’s that images of nothingness can still generate hysteria. Empty seats – which are apparently a festering scourge upon the game of football, a tragedy representing the plastic bankruptcy of American soccer fandom and/or the Club World Cup, an issue demanding alarmist coverage delivered with brows fully furrowed – have been commonplace in the competition’s opening dozen games. Headlines (including from this very publication) have followed. Social media is awash in panoramic photos from a nation of press boxes, informing you incredulously that this image, so obscene in its emptiness, was taken a mere 45 minutes before kickoff – or (gasp) even closer.
Why do we, the fans, observers, journalists, and other people who simply watch these games, care? What is it about the sight of a whole lot of plastic folding chairs with nobody in them that inflames our passions? Since when did we all become Clint Eastwood at the 2012 Republican National Convention?
Stuttgart striker is tournament’s top scorer so far and could stand in way of England’s hopes of reaching the knockouts
If there was any doubting Nick Woltemade’s star quality, a brilliant hat-trick in Germany’s opening match of the European Under-21 Championship against Slovenia showed the beanpole striker with numerous nicknames is the real deal. Known variously as Woltemessi, the Tower of Stuttgart, Goaltemade or just plain old Big Nick, he has been the standout player of the first two rounds of matches in Slovakia, having helped to book his side’s place in the quarter-finals with another goal in their win over the Czech Republic on Sunday.
With England up next as Germany attempt to seal top spot in Group B and avoid a meeting with the favourites, Spain, in the last eight, the coach, Antonio Di Salvo, has a decision to make. Such has been Woltemade’s success this season that he was also called up by Julian Nagelsmann for the senior squad’s Nations League games and made his debut against Portugal in the semi-final less than a fortnight ago.
A young gay Black man escapes from grief into the hedonism of upper-echelon New York, in a lyrical tale of redemption
Lives can turn on one mistake. Smith’s comes when he is caught in the corner of a restaurant in the Hamptons on the last night of summer, snorting cocaine from a key. He walks calmly out with the two khaki-clad police officers, poses for a mugshot and posts his $500 bail.
Smith is Black, which won’t help, but he comes from wealth, which will. So he calls his sister, who calls his father in Atlanta, who tells his mother, who collapses on the floor in shock then starts calling lawyers. Smith prepares for his court date with a series of AA meetings and counselling sessions that will make it clear that this promising young man is on the road to redemption.
This people’s museum is crammed with curios donated by Dublin residents. A major facelift has added a library, archive and exhibition on ‘fearless women’
There are certain museums around the world that go beyond their role of housing artefacts and somehow seem to act as portals to the past. The Frick Collection in New York and Marcel Proust’s cork-lined bedroom at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris both hum with a timeless energy that transcends the exhibits on display. The Little Museum of Dublin is also such a space.
Within seconds of ascending the stairs of this beautiful four-storey Georgian townhouse at 15 St Stephen’s Green, a different era appears to take hold. The modern world disappears and I imagine myself back in Georgian times, when this red-bricked terrace was built along with so many of the beautiful squares and parks throughout the city centre.
From Greek customs to a Kenyan returning home, this year’s winners of the OpenWalls Spotlight award show how migration shapes our culture – and the power of ancient rituals
As international tensions mount and hackers grow more sophisticated and audacious, the Nordic Maritime Cyber Resilience Centre is constantly monitoring the global threat of war, terror and piracy
Ships being taken over remotely by hackers and made to crash is a scenario made in Hollywood. But in a security operations room in Oslo, just a few metres from the sparkling fjord and its tourist boats, floating saunas and plucky bathers, maritime cyber experts say not only is it technically possible, but they are poised for it to happen.
“We are pretty sure that it will happen sooner or later, so that is what we are looking for,” saysØystein Brekke-Sanderud, a senior analyst at the Nordic Maritime Cyber Resilience Centre (Norma Cyber). On the wall behind him is a live map of the ships they monitor and screens full of graphs and code. Two little rubber ducks watch over proceedings from above.
Act swiftly and these steps could help mitigate the damage from a sim-swap scam and prevent it happening again
Your mobile phone line is the artery through which data, calls and texts flow. It is also used to prove you are who you say you are for a plethora of accounts, from banks to messaging services.
But if it gets hacked or stolen, in what is known as a “sim swap” or “simjacking”, the consequences can be far worse than just being cut off from mobile data or calls. Unfortunately it is the kind of hack you don’t see coming. It happens in the background, with hackers using your personal data such as date of birth and address to con your network provider into swapping your phone number to a new sim in their possession.
Keep an eye on notifications from your mobile network, which are usually delivered by SMS. These include information about activity elsewhere and alerts of change requests, such as your phone number being activated on another device.
Be aware of scams. Fraudsters may and try to trick you out of information using fake notifications. If you receive a message asking you to get in touch, double-check that any number you are given is legitimate before calling, or use a number from the provider’s website or a bill.
Any loss of service that prevents calling, texting or accessing mobile data and is not explained by outages or missed payments may be a sim-swap attack.
Loss of access to various accounts such as your bank or social media linked to your phone number could indicate hackers are in the process of trying to break in or have already changed your password and stolen the account.
Frequently review statements and account for unexpected charges, which may be a sign that you’ve been hacked.
Call your provider on the customer service number listed on its site using another phone. Have your phone number and details ready, including any account passwords you may have set. Explain what has happened and make sure your provider begins the recovery process and investigates how this has happened.
Ask your provider to block any “charge to bill” activity.
Contact your bank, crypto and other financial services immediately to ensure the hackers cannot get into your other accounts, which are typically their primary targets.
Contact your immediate family and anyone who could fall victim to a scammer pretending to be you and texting from your number.
Check any account you use your phone number for two-step verification. Change the two-step method if you can and set a new strong password.
Check your WhatsApp and other messaging services that use your phone number as the user ID.
Activate any and all security measures on your provider’s account. This includes using a strong password and two-step verification, and setting a sim pin on your phone, as well as adding a telephone customer service password and a sim transfer pin, if available.
Find out from your provider how the hack happened, and if possible, what personal data was used to break into your account. Consider using fake security question answers that cannot be guessed rather than real ones, just make sure you store them safely such as in a password manager.
Set a spend cap on your phone account.
As soon as you are sure you have full control again, reactivate two-step verification on your accounts and transition any that you can to authenticator app-based two-step verification, which is more secure.
Set pins on messaging services such as WhatsApp or Signal to make it much harder for someone else to register new devices or take over your account.
Contact your financial services providers to reactivate your accounts but keep watching out for fraud and query any unexpected transactions.
Look at your social media and other public-facing accounts for any information that could enable criminals to steal your identity to perform hacks such as this.
Sympathetic docu-biography centres on the conceptual artist deemed ‘too shocking for punk’ who inadvertently spawned the industrial music genre
Genesis P-Orridge was the performance artist, shaman and lead singer of Throbbing Gristle who was born as Neil Megson in Manchester in 1950, but from the 90s lived in the US. P-Orridge challenged gender identity but it is clear from the interviewees that there were no wrong answers when it came to pronouns: “he”, “she” and “they” are all used. This is a sympathetic and amiable official docu-biography in which the subject comes across as a mix of Aleister Crowley, Charles Manson and Screaming Lord Sutch. The “P-Orridge” surname makes me suspect that Spike Milligan might have been an indirect influence, although there’s also a bit of Klaus Kinski in there as well.
Genesis P-Orridge, known to friends and family as Gen, started as a radical conceptual artist, rule-breaker, consciousness-expander and tabloid-baiter who with Throbbing Gristle influentially coined the term “industrial music”, a term later to be borrowed without acknowledgment by many. They were, in the words of Janet Street-Porter, shown here in archive footage, “too shocking for punk”. P-Orridge formed a new band, Psychic TV, in the 1980s, and then also formed a group of likeminded occultist provocateurs called Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. (The film tactfully passes over how very annoying that spelling is.)
As I punched and shouted, I knew I didn’t have to be demure, delicate or diplomatic. I could be as fierce as I wanted. Those three minutes set me free
On meeting me, you would never guess that I used to be an angry person. I’m talkative, sociable and self-possessed – but for nearly 20 years I lived with a quiet fury. It started with my parents, whose strict conservatism restricted everything in my life: what I ate, what I wore, where I went, what I thought. As immigrants from Bangladesh, they believed that control was the best way to protect their daughters, but it suffocated me.
I had to fight to go to university – for all the things that men in my community were given as a right. At first, my anger felt ambient – mild and ever-present – but it became something harder, more bitter, when I was pressured into an arranged marriage at the age of 24.
Aviation journalist Jeff Wise on the crash of flight AI171, in which at least 270 people died, and how one passenger in seat 11A managed to survive
Air India flight AI171 took off from Ahmedabad airport on the afternoon of 12 June with 242 people on board. Less than a minute later, it had crashed into a medical college about 1km away.
Including those on the ground, at least 270 people were killed. But one passenger miraculously survived. Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a British national sat in seat 11A, was able to walk away from the scene – though, as he found out soon after, his brother had died on board.
For over a decade, lab-grown meat has been hailed as the food of tomorrow – a plate changing technological innovation that is right around the corner. Now, in Australia, tomorrow has finally come.
After a two-year-long approval process, Food Standards Australia New Zealand has given Australian food technology startup Vow foods the green light to sell three products made from cultured quail cells.
Playmaker says he will stay on for the last year of deal
Silva says City players ‘very used to’ gruelling schedule
Bernardo Silva will captain Manchester City at the Club World Cup, with the Portuguese player saying he could leave the club when his contract expires next June.
The 30-year-old signed in the summer of 2017 and is one of Pep Guardiola’s most trusted players, a status reflected in the manager nominating him to lead the campaign to claim the inaugural 32-team competition in the US.
A tangy pea, potato and coconut curry, and a soupy, spicy delight from northern India – and both meat-free
The sweetness of fresh green peas works so well with Indian curries and spices, and June is the month to make the most of them, because they’re now at their peak. Even the empty pods have so much flavour and sweetness, which makes them perfect for a quick salad on the side (toss thinly sliced raw, blanched or even griddled pods with chopped tomato, sliced onion and coriander, drizzle over some fresh mint raita and sprinkle with chaat masala). Blanch the fresh peas without any seasoning before you make the curry, then add them to the simmering gravy near the end. You can swap them for frozen peas, too, if you like.
Tyranny is contagious – and western governments’ reluctance to name the threat is helping it spread
There is no founding charter or admissions process to the self-selecting group of “leading” economic powers that currently numbers seven. It was the G8 from 1997 to March 2014. Then Russia annexed Crimea and had its membership suspended, establishing the rule that participating nations should not seize their neighbours’ land.
The White House used to condemn that sort of thing on the grounds that “it violates the principles upon which the international system is built”. These days, not so much. On Sunday, shortly after arriving for a G7 meeting in the Kananaskis resort in Alberta, Donald Trump told his host, the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, that Vladimir Putin’s expulsion from the club had been a “big mistake”.
On 9 July, join Pippa Crerar, Rafael Behr, Frances O’Grady and Salma Shah as they look back at one year of the Labour government and plans for the next four years
Garments thrown out by consumers from Next, George, M&S and others found in or near conservation areas
Clothes discarded by UK consumers and shipped to Ghana have been found in a huge rubbish dump in protected wetlands, an investigation has found.
Reporters for Unearthed working with Greenpeace Africa found garments from Next in the dump and other sites, and items from George at Asda and Marks & Spencer washed up nearby.
The company said AI-made music accounts for just 0.5% of streams on the music streaming platform but its analysis shows that fraudsters are behind up to 70% of those streams.
In just a few days of war, Israel has killed more than a dozen of Iran’s top nuclear scientists, taken out much of its top military hierarchy and attacked key parts of its nuclear programme.
It has been a powerful display of Israeli military and intelligence dominance, but has not critically damaged Iran’s widely dispersed and heavily protected nuclear programme, Israeli military commanders and international nuclear proliferation experts agree.
Tinder is trialling a height filter, following in the footsteps of some other popular apps. What is behind the ‘6ft fixation’ in dating – and could it be scuppering the chance of true connection?
Height is often seen as a dealbreaker when it comes to romance, particularly within heterosexual relationships. But when Tinder recently said that it was trialling a feature that allows some premium users to filter potential matches by height, it quickly proved controversial. “Oh God. They added a height filter,” lamented one Reddit thread, while an X user claimed: “It’s over for short men.”
“I’ve experimented with not putting my height on my dating profile, or lying about it just to see, and the number of likes I get shoots up massively,” says Stuart, who is in his 50s and from the Midlands. “I know I get screened out by the majority of women from the off.” At 5ft 7in (170cm), Stuart is just two inches below the UK and US male average height of 5ft 9in, but a height filter would probably prevent him from receiving as many matches.
As the Trump administration’s security focus shifts towards countering China, European governments are living on borrowed time
Call it the five-for-five summit. When Nato leaders meet in The Hague next week, European allies will sign up to a phoney transatlantic bargain in which they pretend they will spend 5% of their economic output on defence and Donald Trump pretends in return that he is committed to Article 5 of the Nato treaty, the mutual defence clause that he has repeatedly undermined.
The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, is deploying all his considerable political wiles and powers of persuasion to contrive a short, “no surprises” summit at which fundamental differences over Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, trade, the Middle East and liberal democratic values are deliberately excluded.
Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre
The Florida Panthers repeated as Stanley Cup champions by beating the Edmonton Oilers 5-1 in Game 6 of the final on Tuesday night, becoming the NHL’s first back-to-back winners since Tampa Bay in 2020 and 2021, and the third team to do so this century.
Sam Reinhart scored four goals, becoming just the fourth player in league history to achieve the feat in a Stanley Cup final game. His third to complete the hat-trick sent rats, along with hats, flying on to the ice. Matthew Tkachuk, one of the faces of the franchise, fittingly scored the Cup clincher.
Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on the island of Flores, east of Bali, erupted on Tuesday afternoon, leading to several airlines cancelling flights
A volcano in eastern Indonesia has spewed a colossal ash tower into the sky, forcing the cancellation of dozens of flights to and from Bali.
Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki, a 1,584m twin-peaked volcano on the tourist island of Flores, east of Bali, erupted at 5.35pm local time on Tuesday, the volcanology agency said in a statement.
First civilian-led military simulation bringing together teams from the US, Taiwan and Japan revealed a series of potential vulnerabilities
A series of war games in Taiwan has highlighted significant vulnerabilities in how the island and its supporters would respond to a Chinese annexation attempt, as well as growing questions over how much reliance can be placed on the volatile Trump administration.
Last week former senior military and government officials from the US, Japan, and Taiwan convened in Taipei for a tabletop exercise, led by the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science Foundation. The event was described as the first civilian-led military simulation held in Taiwan, testing responses to a hypothetical attempt by China to annex the territory.
Relations between the two countries broke down in 2024, after Canada accused India of involvement in the assassination of a Sikh separatist
India and Canada have agreed to return ambassadors to each other’s capitals, turning the page on a bitter spat over an assassination, as Canada’s new leader welcomed his counterpart Narendra Modi.
Prime minister Mark Carney, who took office in March, invited Modi to the Canadian Rockies as a guest at the summit of the Group of Seven major economies.
Media mogul faces allegations of creating ‘coercive, sexually exploitative dynamic’ in lawsuit seeking $260m in damages
Tyler Perry has been accused of sexual harassment, workplace gender violence and sexual assault in a lawsuit from an actor who said the media mogul used his influence and power to create a “coercive, sexually exploitative dynamic”.
In the suit filed in Los Angeles last week and first reported on Tuesday, Derek Dixon, who worked on Tyler Perry’s shows Ruthless and The Oval, said Perry promised career advancement but subjected him to “escalating sexual harassment, assault and battery”. Dixon alleges he was subjected to harassment and abuse by Perry while he “held direct control over his employment, compensation, and creative opportunities” and that he faced retaliation when he did not respond favorably to his advances.
Exclusive: Video and documents give rare glimpse inside daily life of the imprisoned civilian leader as she nears her 80th birthday
Rare footage of Aung San Suu Kyi inside a Myanmar courtroom and detailed records of her daily prison routine have been seen by the Guardian, offering a glimpse into the life of the country’s ousted civilian leader as she nears her 80th birthday.
Since the military seized power in February 2021, little has been seen or heard of Aung San Suu Kyi, who led Myanmar for six years before her arrest. She is held in solitary confinement with access to the outside world strictly controlled and only rare supervised visits from her legal team.
California senator details being restrained and warns of how democratic norms can slip away when power is unchecked
Alex Padilla took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to deliver a deeply personal speech, formally entering into the congressional record his account of being restrained and forcibly removed as he attempted to ask a question at a press conference held by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, in Los Angeles last week.
In emotional remarks, Padilla described the encounter that he hoped would serve as a “wake up call” for Americans – a warning, he said, of how quickly democratic norms can slip away when dissent is silenced and power is unchecked.
Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, delivered a concise verdict during congressional testimony this March: the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and supreme leader Khomeini [sic] has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003”.
As he rushed back to Washington on Tuesday morning, Donald Trump swatted aside the assessment from the official that he handpicked to deliver him information from 18 US intelligence agencies. “I don’t care what she said,” said Trump. “I think they were very close to having one.”
Study suggests role of male parents may be under-appreciated in some primate species
If male baboons were subject to the same kind of cultural commentary as humans, the phrase “deadbeat dads” might be called for, such is the primate’s relatively limited involvement in raising their young.
But a study suggests that even their little effort might go a long way, with female baboons who experience a stronger relationship with their fathers when young tending to live longer as adults.
Ruling rebukes order from White House that said passports must conform to the sex citizens were assigned at birth
A federal judge in Boston has ruled that transgender and intersex people can obtain passports that align with their gender identity, in a rebuke to an executive order from the Trump administration that said passports must conform to the sex citizens were assigned at birth.
US district judge Julia Kobick issued a preliminary injunction that expanded an earlier order she issued in April that had stopped the US state department from enforcing the policy in the case of six people, after finding the order was likely unconstitutional.
US president said he had to leave to focus on Israel-Iran conflict, without addressing Russia-Ukraine ceasefire
Ukrainian diplomats have been left frustrated – and in some cases embittered – at Donald Trump’s refusal to make Ukraine a priority after Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew 5,000 miles to the G7 conference in Canada only for the US president to return home the night before the two leaders were due to meet. Trump said he needed to focus on the Israel-Iran conflict.
In a further blow for Kyiv the US vetoed a joint statement on Ukraine from the summit, on the grounds that the wording was too anti-Russian and could compromise negotiations with Vladimir Putin.
Suit alleges Stop Hiding Hate Act, which compels social media firms to disclose actions against hate speech, violates free speech
Elon Musk’s X Corp filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the state of New York, arguing a recently passed law compelling large social media companies to divulge how they address hate speech is unconstitutional.
The complaint alleges that bill S895B, known as the Stop Hiding Hate Act, violates free speech rights under the first amendment. The act, which the governor, Kathy Hochul, signed into law last December, requires companies to publish their terms of service and submit reports detailing the steps they take to moderate extremism, foreign influence, disinformation, hate speech and other forms of harmful content.
New lawsuits allege that the Infowars host tried to shield over $5m through a series of fraudulent asset transfers
The trustee overseeing Infowars host Alex Jones’s personal bankruptcy case is accusing the far-right conspiracy theorist of trying to shield more than $5m from creditors, including relatives of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Connecticut.
Three new lawsuits filed by the trustee on Friday alleging fraudulent asset transfers are the latest developments in Jones’s long-running bankruptcy case, which has been pending in federal court in Houston for more than two years. In financial statements filed in bankruptcy court last year, Jones listed his net worth at $8.4m.
US president triggers speculation about American military involvement after five days of Israeli bombing and retaliatory Iranian missile strikes
Israel’s war on Iran appeared to be approaching a pivotal moment on Tuesday night after five days of bombing and retaliatory Iranian missile strikes, as Donald Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” from Tehran and weighed his military options.
Trump convened a meeting of his national security team in the White House situation room after a day of febrile rhetoric in which the president gave sharply conflicting signals over whether US forces would participate directly in Israel’s bombing campaign over Iran.
Karen Bass had instated curfew on 10 June to protect businesses from vandalism during demonstrations
Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, lifted a curfew in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday that was first imposed in response to clashes with police and vandalism amid protests against Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the city.
The curfew imposed 10 June provided “successful crime prevention and suppression efforts” and protected stores, restaurants, businesses and residents from people engaging in vandalism, Bass, a Democrat, said.
Adriana Smith was declared brain dead in February and was kept alive to continue pregnancy
A brain-dead Georgia woman who was kept on life support to continue her pregnancy had her baby late last week, according to the woman’s mother.
The Georgia woman, Adriana Smith, gave birth prematurely via emergency cesarean section on 13 June, Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told the local news station 11Alive, which first reported Smith’s story. The baby, named Chance, is in the neonatal intensive care unit and weighs 1lb 13oz, 11Alive reported late on Monday night.
The player’s Club World Cup bow in Miami will surely be the most scrutinised pre-season debut any footballer has faced
On Tuesday morning the Miami Herald carried a story about a Local Man arrested in Florida’s Polk County for breaking into a stranger’s house to make himself dinner and have a bath rather than going home to face his wife after an argument.
The Local Man, who has no criminal history, was apprehended just as he was settling in for a relaxing soak. He has since been charged with burglary. So on balance, and while an entirely tempting, innovative option, this is probably not the way to go.
Man given restraining order in Dubai on ticket waiting list
All England Club employs fixated threat specialists
Emma Raducanu’s stalker has been blocked from buying tickets for the Wimbledon Championships this month in the public ballot, it has emerged.
Security staff at the All England Club discovered that the man, who has never been named, was on the waiting list when they did a re-sweep of the ballot, after he was given a restraining order in Dubai in February.
Judge rules Cristina Fernández de Kirchner can serve six-year sentence in apartment, citing age and security reasons
A federal court in Argentina has granted former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s request to serve a six-year prison sentence for corruption at her home in Buenos Aires.
Judges ruled that Fernández, 72, can serve time in the apartment, where she lives with her daughter and her granddaughter, citing her age and security reasons. Fernández was the victim of an attempted assassination three years ago.
Republican Thomas Massie joins with Democrats in effort to require Congress approval before Trump attacks Iran
As Donald Trump publicly threatens to join Israel in attacking Iran, an unlikely coalition of lawmakers has moved to prevent the president from involving US forces in the conflict without Congress’s approval.
On Tuesday, Republican congressman Thomas Massie, whose libertarian-tinged politics have often put him at odds with Trump, joined with several progressive Democrats to introduce in the House of Representatives a war powers resolution that would require a vote by Congress before Trump could attack Iran. Democrat Tim Kaine has introduced companion legislation in the Senate.
Monterrey draw with Champions League finalists Inter
Borussia Dortmund and Fluminense played out a 0-0 draw in the Club World Cup on Tuesday in rainy conditions at MetLife Stadium.
The match kicked off at noon local time, so it was perhaps unsurprising that the stadium was only half full. New York/New Jersey has a significant Brazilian population, and the crowd of 34,763 was tilted toward Fluminense, with fans waving flags and singing for their team.
The pair join choreographer, actor and director Debbie Allen and production designer Wynn Thomas, all scheduled to receive special Oscars at this year’s governors awards in November.
Lander, also the city’s comptroller, was ‘arrested for assaulting law enforcement’, says DHS
Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller and a mayoral candidate, was arrested by masked federal agents while visiting an immigration court and accompanying a person out of a courtroom.
In a statement to the Guardian, assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin from the Department of Homeland Security said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”.
As Farhad* and his friends left Tehran, they had plenty of time to survey the destruction. Smoke billowed from rooftops and flames flickered behind them as they inched their way through miles-long traffic to escape Israel’s bombardment of Iran’s capital city.
Despite leaving early on Tuesday morning, it took Farhad six hours to reach his ancestral village, a journey that usually would take no more than two-and-a-half hours.
As Palestinians starve amid the rubble, western governments defend Israel, fund armed aid and dismantle the very rules they claim to uphold
Gaza’s cries have been drowned out by Israel’s strikes on Iran, and the diplomatic pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu over the suffering has ebbed. Yet as the industrialised world urges de-escalation in the Middle East, the devastation continues. On Tuesday morning, witnesses described Israeli forces firing towards a crowd waiting for trucks loaded with flour, leaving more than 50 dead. These are not stray bullets in wartime chaos, they are the outcome of a system that makes relief deadly.
As Médecins Sans Frontières declared this week, what is unfolding in Gaza is “the calculated evisceration of the very systems that sustain life”. That includes homes, markets, water networks and hospitals – with healthcare continually under attack. Last week, a UN commission found that more than 90% of the Gaza Strip’s schools and universities have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli forces using airstrikes, burning, shelling and controlled demolitions. What’s happening is not the collateral damage of military necessity, it is a programme of civic annihilation.
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The UK still has ways to press for the release of the British-Egyptian writer and bring an end to the hunger strike endangering his mother’s life
Last month, Sir Keir Starmer promised to do “everything I possibly can” to free Egypt’s highest profile political prisoner, Alaa Abd el-Fattah. A few months earlier, the foreign secretary had described the case of the British-Egyptian writer and campaigner as the “number one issue”. In opposition, David Lammy had joined a protest in Mr Abd el-Fattah’s support outside the Foreign Office and demanded serious diplomatic consequences for Cairo if no progress was made.
Progress has not been made and time is running out. Arbitrary detention has stolen almost a decade of Mr Abd el-Fattah’s life, while that of his remarkable mother, Laila Soueif, may be drawing to its close. As of Tuesday, the 69-year-old, who lives in London, had not eaten for 261 days, as she demands her son’s release. After taking 300-calorie liquid supplements for a short period, she returned to a full hunger strike almost a month ago and has been hospitalised since the end of May. In Egypt, Mr Abd el-Fattah has been on hunger strike for more than 100 days.
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Royal Ascot’s uncanny ability to deliver performances to suit the occasion was to the fore once again on Tuesday as Field Of Gold, the odds-on favourite, overwhelmed his rivals in the St James’s Palace Stakes with a sustained burst of speed a quarter of mile out that put the result beyond doubt well before the furlong pole. If there is a better performance over a mile by a three‑year-old later on in the season, it feels long odds‑on that Field Of Gold will be the horse to produce it.
John and Thady Gosden’s grey colt was one of three Classic winners in the field, though his winning performance was further evidence that, had Ruling Court not been allowed first run in the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket, the fast-finishing Field Of Gold would surely have taken that too. Ruling Court was only third here, nearly four lengths behind Henri Matisse, the French 2,000 Guineas winner, who was in turn three and a half adrift of Field Of Gold at the line.
A harrowing new book looks back at a dark period of US history as the Johns committee targeted Black and queer Americans, drawing parallels to what’s happening now
With his second book, Robert W Fieseler casts new light on a dark episode: the years in the 1950s and 60s when the Florida legislative investigation committee, commonly known as the Johns committee, persecuted Black and queer Americans in the name of anti-communist red scare politics.
“The state of Florida has a very poisonous political system,” Fieseler said, promoting a book published as Ron DeSantis sits in the governor’s mansion, whose virulently anti-LGBTQ+ policies had fueled, if briefly, his presidential ambitions.
The actor used to point vaguely to the sky and suggest the government was watching when asked for a photo. Nowadays, that could lead to some very awkward conversations
Sarah Jessica Parker, the Sex and the City star and Booker prize judge, has a nifty trick for getting out of taking selfies with her fans. “I did this for a really, really long time and it worked for ever,” Parker said in an interview with Howard Stern. “I used to say, ‘I can’t, because of the government,’ and I’d do this,” Parker said, pointing up to the sky. “It really confused people. This was through different administrations, so it wasn’t political.”
It is not entirely clear why Parker – who has said she refuses to take selfies and would rather “have a conversation” instead because “it’s much more meaningful” – stopped using this brilliant excuse. But one does have to wonder whether it is because the US has become a nation of conspiracy theorists. Rather than backing away from the weird “the government is watching” woman, perhaps fans started to excitedly engage her with theories about how Bill Gates has implanted us all with mind-controlling microchips. Or maybe she just got tired of the joke. I don’t know. But I’m sure someone out there (the government) does.
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Fly-half is determined to enjoy his rugby again after injury-disrupted time in France but his international future remains up in the air
If either call were to come, does Owen Farrell want to go on tour with England or the British & Irish Lions this summer? It is both the question that most intrigues and the one that he steadfastly does not answer following his return to Saracens.
“There’s nothing for me to do other than concentrate on getting myself back here and getting myself in the best place I can and everything else is hypothetical,” is a typical example of his response. There were a number of others in the 20 minutes spent in his company, back at the StoneX Stadium after a torrid season with Racing 92, but all gave little insight into what his reaction might be if Steve Borthwick or his dad, Andy Farrell, wish to call him up for either England’s summer tour of Argentina and the US, or the Lions’ trip to Australia.
Club chair opens up on decision to sack Postecoglou
Levy: ‘We’ve won a European trophy but it’s not enough’
Daniel Levy has made clear his desire to win the Premier League and Champions League as he prepared to usher in a new era at Tottenham with the managerial hire of Thomas Frank.
In a rare public address, the longstanding chair opened up on the “emotionally difficult” decision to sack Ange Postecoglou, who ended the club’s 17-year trophy drought with the Europa League triumph against Manchester United but flatlined in the league.
In the two decades before he retired from concert-performances in 2008 at the age of 77, Alfred Brendel was arguably the best known classical pianist in the world. Yet regard for his playing was never by any means universal; what his many admirers found as searching, considered and profound in his interpretations, others heard as colourless and lacking in spontaneity. But Brendel’s lasting popularity is evidenced by his recorded legacy, which is certainly extensive enough for generations to come to make their own assessment of his stature. In a recording career that stretched well over half a century, he made more than 100 albums, which included three complete cycles of the Beethoven sonatas.
As his career burgeoned, Beethoven, and the other great composers of the Austro-German tradition - Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms - were increasingly the focus of Brendel’s recital repertory, but a glance at a chronology of his recordings reveals how wide his musical interests really were. If it is Brendel’s discs of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert that will be treasured above all, there is much else to be discovered among the myriad recordings he left us. The recordings that follow, therefore, are very much a personal choice; another day, it might be entirely different.
In the UK, a new era of pay openness could be about to begin. It is undoubtedly a positive step, but water-cooler discussions could be about to get considerably more messy …
Name: Pay transparency.
Age: Merely a twinkle in government ministers’ eyes.
Program with the defense department is first under the startup’s initiative to put AI to work in governments
The US Department of Defense on Monday awarded OpenAI a $200m contract to put generative artificial intelligence (AI) to work for the US military.
The San Francisco-based company will “develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains”, according to the defense department’s posting of awarded contracts.
Widely regarded as the ‘musicians’ musician’ Brendel was the first pianist to record all of Beethoven’s piano works during a much-garlanded career spanning 60 years
The celebrated pianist and author Alfred Brendel has died aged 94 at his home in London.
The musician was born on 5 January 1931 in Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic) and spent his childhood mainly in Croatia and Austria. “I was not a child prodigy or eastern European or Jewish as far as I know,” he told interviewers. “I’m not a good sight reader, I don’t have a phenomenal memory and I didn’t come from a musical family, an artistic family or an intellectual family. I had loving parents, but I had to find things out for myself.”
‘They come up with weird clauses … it’s just embarrassing’
Red Bull accused Russell of erratic driving in Montreal
The Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, has called Red Bull’s protest “petty” and “embarrassing” after George Russell beat the reigning world champion, Max Verstappen, at Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix.
Red Bull challenged Russell’s victory in Montreal for driving erratically and committing unsportsmanlike conduct behind the safety car, a claim rejected by the stewards. It was the second time they had launched a protest against the Mercedes driver this season after a claim he had failed to slow sufficiently under yellow flags in Miami.
Prime minister outlines plans to penalise countries that refuse to take back refused asylum seekers
The UK will look into penalising countries that refuse to take back people who are refused asylum by making visa applications for their nationals harder, Keir Starmer has said at the G7 summit in Canada.
Asked during a media Q&A about ways to reduce the number of people arriving irregularly, the prime minister said it would have a more “transactional” approach to granting visas for countries depending on their cooperation with returns.
The cherubic sixtysomething stars as a supercool old-school driver returning 30 years after a near-fatal crash to break all the rules of Formula One racing
With that amused-cowpoke face of his squashed into his safety helmet, making his sixtysomething cherubic chops bulge in towards his nose, Brad Pitt gets behind the wheel in this outrageously cheesy but fiercely and extravagantly shot Formula One melodrama. Along with a lot of enjoyable hokum about the old guy mentoring the rookie hothead (a plot it broadly shares with Pixar’s 2006 adventure Cars), F1 the Movie gives you the corporate sheen, real-life race footage with Brad as the star in an unreasonably priced car, the tech fetish of the cars themselves (almost making you forget how amazingly ugly they are) with brand names speckling every square inch of every surface, the simulation graphics writ large, and the bizarre occult spectacle of motor racing itself.
This is a movie which (like Barbie) has been licensed by the brand, with Lewis Hamilton credited as a producer; he gets a stately walk-on and plenty of big names are glimpsed. At one stage, Brad notices Max Verstappen out there on the track: “Damn, he’s good!” he mutters. Oh sure, yes, Max Verstappen is good, but is he a reckless, intuitive risk-taker and old-school motor race romantic who might get himself killed chasing some undefinable something out there on the burning, shimmering tarmac? We may never know.
Metabolic syndrome – popularized by two architects of Maha – is a real health issue, but messaging can take a turn toward scienceploitation
Metabolic syndrome is trending online. On TikTok, thousands of videos dissect the subject, also referred to as metabolic dysfunction or disorder. These often come with claims that healing mitochondria, often called the “powerhouses of cells”, is key to restoring metabolic health.
The concept was popularized by Calley and Casey Means’ bestselling book Good Energy. Some consider the Means siblings – Casey is Donald Trump’s surgeon general pick, and Calley is an entrepreneur and lobbyist – architects of Make America Healthy Again.
Spielbergian twists and an aggressive, deal-oriented alien are among the familiar beats of the Inside Out animator’s latest, about a lonely boy who finds friendship in space
There are some sweet retro-Spielbergian thrills in Pixar’s amiable new family animation, whose release was delayed a year due to the strikes; it also has some touches of Douglas Adams as well as John Lasseter’s Toy Stories. There are co-director credits for Pixar stalwarts Adrian Molina (who was the co-director and co-screenwriter of Coco) and feature first-timer Madeline Sharafian, and Pixar will be hoping for a handsome return here to match the success of its recent box office champ Inside Out 2.
Elio may well indeed do the business. It has charm, likability and that potent ingredient: childhood loneliness and vulnerability. Its opening act is set aboard a military base where an ambitious young officer has postponed or even abandoned her dream of being astronaut to look after her orphaned nephew. But once the film leaves planet Earth and its recognisably real, lump-in-the-throat emotional world and inhabits the goofy multi-voiced arena of space aliens, it loses, for me, a little (though not all) of its charge. There is occasionally something a little formulaic, a bit programmatic and … well … which two letters of the alphabet sum it up?
Keir Starmer said he rushed to pick up papers dropped by Donald Trump at the G7 summit in Canada mainly to avoid anyone else stepping forward to do so and being tackled by the US president’s security team.
Speaking to reporters in Kananaskis a day after Trump fumbled some of the documents about a UK-US trade deal, letting a sheaf of papers tumble to the ground, Starmer said he had little choice but to bend down and help out.
Convicted sex trafficker had been placed in solitary and given medication by prison staff, court filing alleges
Lawyers for R Kelly say in new court documents that the convicted sex trafficker and singer was recently rushed to hospital after medically overdosing in prison.
The 58-year-old reportedly collapsed on Friday at the federal correctional institute in Butner, North Carolina, which specializes in housing sex offenders, and was transported to Duke University hospital.
The rightwing media ecosystem spins up narratives to serve their agendas after tragic events, regardless of accuracy
Tina Smith, a Minnesota senator, confronted Mike Lee, a Utah senator, on Monday to tell him directly that his social media posts fueled ongoing misinformation about a shooting that killed her friend.
Lee’s posts, which advanced conspiracies that a Minnesota assassin was a “Marxist” and blamed the state’s governor for Melissa Hortman’s death, were among many threads of false or speculative claims swirling online after the killings.
A college physician allegedly abused at least 177 male students during his tenure, a story revived in a harrowing new film that highlights how he got away with it
Ohio State sets the standard in intercollegiate sports. The university’s athletics department, a statewide source of pride that includes 36 varsity sports teams (from pistol shooting to college football’s reigning national champion), rivals some Fortune 500 companies for scale. In 2024 Ohio State spent $292.8m on its sports programs, more than every school in the well-heeled Big Ten conference and every college in the country besides the University of Texas, while hoovering in more than $1.2bn in revenue over the past seven years. The Ohio State brand – flaunted through scarlet red block-O logos and buckeye tree iconography – is so synonymous with flush times inside and outside the lines that even now few really associate the university with one of most shocking and widespread sex abuse scandals in US history.
Eva Orner – the Australian documentary director behind Netflix’s Bikram and the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side – got an up-close view years ago on her first flight from Los Angeles to Columbus, home of the Buckeyes and the Ohio State campus. “We stopped somewhere,” she recalls. “There wasn’t a direct flight, and it was a game day weekend. When I got on to the connecting flight, everyone was in Buckeyes paraphernalia. I walked around the city, and everything was Buckeyes. I went to the game and watched the tailgating. It’s like a fever or a cult. It’s an incredible thing and a positive thing – but then when a story like this comes out, it can be very challenging.”
The US has stepped up its military presence in the Middle East since the weekend but has left certain details vague to preserve operational ambiguity for Donald Trump as he considers whether the US will intervene in the Israel-Iran war.
Critically, there has been no new information about the deployment of B-2 bombers that would be used to attack Iran’s deep-lying nuclear enrichment site at Fordow with 13.6-tonne (30,000lb) bunker-buster bombs, designed to penetrate 60 metres of rock.
From the Ohio pussy who triggered a wild conspiracy theory to the Brexit ‘Leave’ votes piling up, the great American photographer has turned her lens on election excesses. But what are those fake eyelashes doing in there?
In 2016, almost by accident, the US artist Taryn Simon ended up making a video work about the most important moment in recent British political history. While scouting for a location for another work, she visited Alexandra Palace in London just as a rehearsal for the Brexit ballot-counting was taking place. “I immediately asked if I could come back and film the actual count,” says Simon, whose request was approved, making her the only person in the world permitted to record a Brexit count.
She’s speaking with me from Paris, where the video has just gone on show. Presented on two screens, it is at first unremarkable: one view shows a wide frame of the historic Great Hall of the palace, with count staff seated at tables covered with black tablecloths and scattered with paper. A second screen offers a closeup view of two count staff in their official burgundy T-shirts, sorting papers into “Leave” and “Remain”. The tension mounts as each stack grows, but no climax is reached.
Mykola Lykhovydov is living his sporting dream with Ukraine’s Real Pharma, helped by a haka-like warm-up, local water and naps
Mykola Lykhovydov half-boils a kettle and, pausing slightly for dramatic effect, decants its contents into the waiting glasses. The water comes from an artesian well close to this small, rickety dressing room that doubles as a clubhouse. They say it flows from 80 metres underground and should be consumed just like this, served a little above body temperature and sipped gently so the body’s cells can properly hydrate. Nobody at FK Real Pharma would drink anything else before training and Lykhovydov swears by an extra benefit. “A doctor from Dynamo Kyiv told me this is the best water in Ukraine,” he announces. “It is the secret of eternal youth.”
Whether marvel or myth, the regimen is serving Lykhovydov well. He turned 59 in January and is, as far as anybody knows, the oldest active professional footballer in the world. At almost a year older than the Japanese great Kazuyoshi Miura he lays convincing claim to the record and has no intention of stopping here. He can still do a job in the Ukrainian third tier. “I was thinking I’d make it to 50,” he says. “But now I’m almost 60 I won’t put limits on myself.”
If the Pataudi Trophy had to be renamed then the rivalry between India and England’s two most-capped Test cricketers was worthy of the switch
Spring 2006 and India are batting against England at the Wankhede in Mumbai. The series is all square, one Test each with one to play. England, batting first, have made an even 400, thanks in large part to a century by Andrew Strauss and 88 from his Middlesex teammate Owais Shah, who is making his debut.
It is just past tea on the second day and India’s openers are already gone, bounced out by Matthew Hoggard. Sachin Tendulkar is at No 4 and England’s captain, Andrew Flintoff, has just thrown the ball to his first-change bowler, Jimmy Anderson.
Police say the man tested negative for alcohol but did not divulge whether or not he had been using a satnav
An 80-year-old man drove a car down the Spanish Steps in Rome early on Tuesday before getting stuck part way, municipal police said in a statement.
The man tested negative for alcohol, police said. They did not identify the driver or say if the car, a Mercedes-Benz, was his. Nor did they say whether or not he had been using a satnav.
Top players to vie for increased prize of £740,000
Couple Stefanos Tsitsipas and Paula Badosa will team up
There will be a sprinkling of stardust at the US Open mixed doubles with Carlos Alcaraz partnering the British women’s No 1, Emma Raducanu, in an event many top players have decided to give a try for the first time. Jannik Sinner will be with the world No 9, Emma Navarro, while the British men’s No 1, Jack Draper, will partner the Olympic women’s singles champion, Zheng Qinwen. Novak Djokovic has agreed to play with his Serbian compatriot Olga Danilovic.
The rush of big names comes after the US Open moved the mixed doubles to the qualifying week, with matches being played on Arthur Ashe and Louis Armstrong courts on 19 August and 20 August.
If he does nothing, the US president may alienate Israel’s fervent American allies. If he intervenes, he’ll undermine his own foreign policy
During his three presidential campaigns, Donald Trump ran as an opponent of serial military interventions and wars of “regime change” à la Iraq and Libya, which neoconservatives and liberal internationalists alike had embraced after the end of the cold war. He correctly sensed that many Americans had tired of “forever wars”.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s attack on Iran is a watershed moment for Trump. It will force him to reveal whether he truly represents a clean break with the foreign policy establishment, often referred to as “the blob”, or is in fact a continuation of it. It all depends on whether he decides to join Israel’s attacks on Iran.
Rajan Menon is a professor emeritus of international relations at the City College of New York and a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Israeli prime minister has no interest in Iran’s future beyond weakening and destabilising a regional rival
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, pontificated on a theme he has become increasingly attached to in recent years: that Israel under his leadership would not simply attempt to dismantle Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes through military attack, but in the process usher in regime change in Tehran.
The government in Tehran, he said, was “very weak”, adding that given the opportunity, “80% of the people would throw these theological thugs out”.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday afternoon, the country’s environment minister, Sara Aagesen, ruled out a cyber-attack as the cause of the outage on 28 April, saying it had been down to a “multifactorial” system failure caused by the network’s inability to control grid voltage.
Former president has denied wrongdoing as federal police accuse him of overseeing a spy network targeting rivals
Federal police have formally accused Brazil’s former far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, of presiding over an illegal spying network which allegedly snooped on political rivals, journalists and environmentalists during his administration.
Bolsonaro is already facing the prospect of jail time over his alleged role in masterminding a military coup plot designed to help him keep power after losing the 2022 election to the leftwing veteran Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. There is broad consensus among analysts that Bolsonaro’s conviction is a foregone conclusion and the 70-year-old populist is expected to face arrest in the coming months once a supreme court trial concludes.
It was a turning point in the push for African independence – and it took place in Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall. We meet the writer of a play about the fifth Pan-African Congress
On the facade of the building that once housed Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall in Manchester sits a plaque commemorating a turning point in the push for African independence. The fifth Pan-African Congress in October 1945 was attended by future global leaders as well as activists and scholars from across Africa and its diaspora. But despite the event’s international importance, it has been largely overlooked by mainstream British history.Now a biting new play is set to remedy this.
“I think a lot of Mancunians don’t know it happened,” says playwright Ntombizodwa Nyoni, who lectures in the same building, now part of Manchester Metropolitan University. “But it’s like: you’re part of such a phenomenal moment in history.” Eighty years later, her dramatisation of the event, Liberation, is about to receive its world premiere at Manchester international festival.
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