With that, I shall pass over to Taha for the rest of the morning.
Mark Levy gets in touch: “In Ben’s list of the top 10 players in the Under-21 tournament, 7 are over 21, 2 are 21, & only 1 is actually under 21! Does the competition need a new name? The under & over 21s? Mark (sitting on my balcony in the Madrid Sierra, with nothing more pressing to do!)“
Republican and Democratic senators have offered starkly contrasting interpretations of Donald Trump’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities after a delayed behind-closed-doors intelligence briefing that the White House had earlier postponed amid accusations of leaks.
Exclusive: Research finds about 1 million people are living with ‘triple threat’ that increases risk of diseases such as cancer or diabetes
One in 50 people aged 16 or older in England is at risk of an early death because they smoke, drink too much and are overweight, research has found.
This “triple threat” increases the risk of diseases such as cancer and diabetes and in some cases dying as much as 20 years earlier than they should, a senior doctor has said.
12.7% of people in England (5.9 million) are overweight and drink more than 14 units but do not smoke.
5.5% (2.5 million) are overweight and smoke but drink less than 14 units.
1.4% (600,000) smoke and drink more than 14 units but have a normal weight.
British No 1 meets teenage debutant in tough half of draw
Jack Draper faces world No 38 Sebastian Baez
Emma Raducanu will take on young British wild card Mimi Xu in the opening round of Wimbledon. Xu, 17, is one of three home teenage debutantes in the women’s draw, and she will get a first shot at British No 1 Raducanu.
The former US Open champion reached the fourth round last year but faces an uphill battle to do so again, with top seed Aryna Sabalenka and former Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova both in her section.
Hungary and Slovakia oppose measures and separate EU proposal on phasing out Russian energy imports
Meanwhile, Russia summoned German ambassador Alexander Graf Lambsdorff to protest Berlin’s alleged “persecution” of Russian journalists, Russian state media reported.
The row began after Russia’s top media official in Berlin accused German police of confiscating his family’s passports, prompting Moscow to warn of retaliation, AFP said.
Israeli government orders closure of Zikim crossing, which is most direct route to food distribution points located in central and south Gaza
Israel’s air force carried out intense airstrikes on mountains overlooking the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh on Friday, in an attack that the Israeli military claimed targeted underground Hezbollah assets.
Israeli warplanes dropped “powerful concussion missiles” on multiple areas of southern Lebanon this morning, causing “massive explosions” that reverberated across the region, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported.
The mysterious new artist’s thrillingly complete sound world is glitchily complex but beguilingly light on its feet
From Sheffield, via Leeds Recommended if you like Mark Fell, Jlin, Beatrice Dillon Up next Live set at No Bounds festival in October
It’s thrilling and satisfying when an artist’s debut album is so fully realised: as if they have their own hyperlocal dialect, and are saying something genuinely new with it. So it is with NZO, a mysterious Sheffield-based electronic artist whose album Come Alive is a defibrillating jolt of vitality. You can find affinities with other artists and styles here, for sure: the bookish but playful minimalism of another Sheffield musician, Mark Fell; Objekt’s trickster vision for bass music and techno; the white-tiled cleanliness of some of Sophie’s work; Jlin’s paradoxically static funk. But the way it’s all pulled together is totally NZO’s, making for music that’s so light on its feet despite its incredible complexity.
Environmental groups, immigration advocates and Native Americans decry idea to set up the outdoor detention camp
Environmental groups, immigration rights activists and a Native American tribe have decried the construction of a harsh outdoor migrant detention camp in the Florida Everglades billed by state officials as “Alligator Alcatraz”.
Crews began preparing the facility at a remote, largely disused training airfield this week in support of the Trump administration’s aggressive goal of arresting and incarcerating 3,000 undocumented migrants every day.
Key takeaways from two weeks of negotiations aimed at setting out stall for November’s Cop30 in Brazil
Two weeks of negotiations on the climate crisis have just concluded in Bonn in preparation for the Cop30 summit taking place in Brazil this November. What did we learn?
Low pressure system tracking over intensely heated land results in large hailstones and frequent lightning
After several days of intense heat, large parts of France were hit by a major outbreak of severe thunderstorms on Wednesday night as powerful supercells swept north-east across the country.
A low pressure system that originated near Portugal tracked over the unusually warm Bay of Biscay towards northern France late on Wednesday, bringing a strong upper-level disturbance over land that had been intensely heated through the day. As a result, several long-lived supercells formed, producing large hailstones, frequent lightning, damaging winds and torrential rainfall.
Springsteen obsessives rejoice! The Boss has released seven lost albums, made between 1983 and 2018. Where to start? Let our Bruce scholars light you through the darkness …
Bruce Springsteen is opening his treasure trove: Tracks II: The Lost Albums features 83 previously unheard songs – unless of course you’re one of the close friends that Springsteen has apparently been playing them to “for years” – from unreleased albums made in the gaps between his storied catalogue, spanning 1983 to 2018. To make sense of this vast tranche of new material, we got “tramps” Michael Hann and Laura Barton to pull apart the risks, regrets and riches in this landmark box set.
Michael Hann I saw the trailer for Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere the other day, which shows the symbolic moment in which the young Bruce buys his first new car, a 305 V8. “It’s awfully fitting for a handsome devil rock star,” the salesman says, leaning through the window. “I do know who you are.” Springsteen looks up and says, wistfully. “Well, that makes one of us.” I think that captures what Tracks II: The Lost Albums are, with Springsteen making sense of himself in those years when the world had decided on a very clear idea of which Bruce Springsteen it wanted, thank you very much. My feeling is that now, he’s very clearly delineated the Boss from another, more nuanced version of Bruce Springsteen. The Boss tours with the E Street Band; Bruce Springsteen writes a memoir, performs a Broadway one-man show, makes left-field records following his muse. Now he’s maybe able to do what he wanted to do in the late 80s and through the 90s because he’s secure in being able to switch between those two ideas – and he does know “the Boss” is an idea that he created – and also secure that his audience trusts him enough not always to be the Boss.
After Dune director Denis Villeneuve was confirmed to be the next 007 director, we asked you which actor you think should join him
Bond should have an element of danger about him. So yes Tom Hardy immediately springs to mind. I also think Tom Hiddleston would be good at a more lighter touch Bond though, the Roger Moore to Hardy’s Connery. All the other candidates either sound way to young or in the case of Idris Elba, great actor though he is, a bit old for the role. machinehead
Whilst Idris and Tom Hardy would undoubtedly have been excellent – Tom Hardy, in particular, has that undercurrent of menace that Connery always carried – as, I think, would Christian Bale, their time has passed. I did think Nicholas Hoult might be a reasonable pick, though possibly too “pretty”. But were I casting it, my money would go on Jack O’Connell: right age, English, dashing and could probably do rugged, thuggish violence if SAS Rogue Heroes is any guide. EvanByrne2
The Booker-winning author on taking inspiration from Kafka, and a youthful passion for Jackie Collins
My earliest reading memory My mother reading Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows to me – and reading it again and again, because I loved it and her. I was perhaps three. We lived in a little mining town in the middle of the rainforest. It was always raining and the rain drummed on the tin roof. To this day that’s the sound I long to hear when I relax into a book – a voice in the stormy dark reminding me that I am not alone.
My favourite book growing up Books were an odyssey in which I lost and found myself, with new favourites being constantly supplanted by fresh astonishments. Rather than a favourite book I had a favourite place: the local public library. I enjoyed an inestimable amount of trash, beginning with comics and slowly venturing out into penny dreadful westerns and bad science fiction and on to the wonderfully lurid pulp of Harold Robbins, Henri Charrière, Alistair MacLean and Jackie Collins, erratically veering towards the beckoning mysteries of the adult world.
Residents on British Columbia island fiercely divided over whether to relocate, euthanize or ignore ‘Tex’ the bear
Most visitors to Texada Island, a 30-mile sliver of land off the west coast of British Columbia, choose one of two main methods of arrival: a provincial ferry service with 10 daily sailings or a 3,000 foot air strip which welcomes the occasional chartered plane.
But a four-year-old grizzly bear recently took a far more challenging route, braving strong currents and frigid water to swim nearly three miles across the Malaspina Strait.
Haitian Lourda Jean Pierre died shortly after giving birth at home after seeing images of pregnant women and new mothers being rounded up in hospitals by immigration agents
About an hour after giving birth on the floor of her one-room shack in the Dominican Republic, Lourdia Jean Pierre, 32, started gasping for breath.
Her husband, Ronald Jean, knew something was seriously wrong, and shouted for help from the neighbours.
A new cadre of agit-prop campaigners has been cleaning the London underground, but there is more to the political stunt than meets the eye
Britain, let’s face it, is crap. Crap, I mean, in quite a specific sense: we might not be teetering on the brink of civilisational destruction, as the post-Brexit right can often seem to think. But there nonetheless remains a vast, ambient sense of rubbishness. Everything is expensive but nothing works. Our streets are full of potholes; our houses are full of mould. All the shops are shut, except for a Tesco Express, where there are security tags on the eggs. It takes about a million years to build a railway line.
Up to now, the response to Britain’s enshittification has, by and large, seemed remarkably fatalistic: Keir Starmer spent the first year in government repeatedly insisting that there just wasn’t any money, and so really nothing could be done. Thank God then, one might think, for Looking for Growth, a new campaign group led by young (well, late 20s, early 30s) Londoners Lawrence Newport and Joe Reeve, who have reportedly been advised by Dominic Cummings, and who have taken it on themselves to rid the tube of the scourge of graffiti.
Tom Whyman is an academic philosopher and a writer
(Blue Note) The US saxophonist pulls back the vocals of his last record to present a new ensemble and all-original repertoire, resulting in an ideal balance of ingenuity and rapport
Joshua Redman has been such a brilliant saxophone improviser for more than three decades that his unerring flawlessness at a spontaneous art almost becomes a tic. But his playful delight in music-making, a quality that swept from his eponymous debut release in 1993, has never faded. Redman’s 2023 first album for Blue Note was the covers-packed Where Are We, his first predominantly vocal venture, featuring the frail, borderline-tearful voice of young New Orleans-based singer Gabrielle Cavassa, herself a new Blue Note signing.
Perhaps to deflect this from looking like a label-steered career reset, Redman has cannily entitled its successor Words Fall Short, and included only one Cavassa vocal. Even more smartly, he has introduced a terrific new young road band on an all-original repertoire, and added acclaimed Chilean saxophonist Melissa Aldana and 19-year-old west coast trumpet phenomenon Skylar Tang as guests. The result is an album that feels more like an ideal balance of Redman’s own ingenuity and his ensemble rapport.
The much-loved painter, designer of stamps and creator of anti-war posters shares tips from a 90-year career
You know the art of David Gentleman even if you don’t know you know it. Anyone who’s passed through London’s Charing Cross tube station has seen his life-filled black-and-white mural of medieval people, enlarged from his woodcuts, digging, hammering, chiselling to construct the Eleanor Cross that once stood nearby. His graphic art has graced everything from stamps to book covers to Stop the War posters in a career spanning seven decades. He says he’s been making art for 90 years, since he was five.
His parents were also artists, and in his latest book he reproduces a Shell poster by his father to show he follows in a modern British tradition of well-drawn, well-observed popular art. Perhaps it is because he learned from his parents as naturally as learning to speak – “Seeing them drawing tempted me to draw” – that Gentleman dislikes pedagogy. He’s proud that he never had to teach for a living, always selling his art. So his guide to the creative life, Lessons for Young Artists, is anything but a how-to manual or didactic textbook.
Nick Woltemade enjoyed a solid season for VfB Stuttgart in the Bundesliga, scoring 12 times and providing two assists. He really came alive in the DFB-Pokal; Stuttgart won the cup and he finished as top scorer. Having made his senior debut for Germany against Portugal in their Nations League semi-final earlier this summer, Woltemade has been outstanding at the Under-21 Euros in Slovakia. The 23-year-old leads the way for both goals (six) and assists (three) at the competition. Already a wanted man, Woltemade’s stock is on the rise this summer – and will soar if Germany win the tournament on Saturday and he collects the Golden Boot.
It offers the silhouette of a vest top but with more structure and looks good when you layer (just don’t use a cardie)
What with being neither a page boy nor a snooker player, I had not given much thought to waistcoats until recently. I guess I thought of them as belonging to a wardrobe that didn’t concern me: a world of braces, cravats and flat caps. Of Guy Ritchie films, wedding rentals and carnation buttonholes.
Well, I guess the joke’s on me now, because waistcoats aren’t novelty or naff any more. They are happening, and I need to get up to speed on how to wear them. The waistcoat has entered the fashion chat in the slipstream of the trouser suit. Women have been wearing them for decades, but until the last decade it remained a slightly niche move – not weird or eccentric, just a bit of a statement. It is only in the past few years that suits on women have become unremarkable.
(Bella Union) The US singer’s seventh album takes his meta-theatrical style almost into showtune territory, with songs about repression, depression and anger
‘Some people face the music,” Brian Christinzio sings on The Tent. “Some people face the floor.” On this outlandish seventh album, the Manchester-based US singer-songwriter makes a bold bid for the former. That song alone excavates childhood memories, with Christinzio crunching leaves and finding caterpillars, cutely illustrated by twinkling piano, only for abrupt tonal shifts (siren-like drones, distorted vocals, heavenly choirs) to crash in like intrusive thoughts. It’s a queasy, visceral introduction to a record which confronts the summer he was abused, as a child, by an adult camp counsellor.
A Sober Conversation is an eccentric rock opera about repression, depression and anger told with the meta-theatrical, tragicomic style that has won Christinzio a cult following. The title track veers into showtune territory, shimmying in double time as he employs a kooky variety of voices to tease a “big secret”, but also has a gorgeous, melancholy vocal melody that Sufjan Stevens would be proud of. Single Two Legged Dog, a glam piano-pop duet with the Last Dinner Party’s Abigail Morris, sticks a middle finger up to pity and culminates in a howling crescendo. Best (or most galling) of all is Where You Taking My Baby?, a chilling, jaunty confrontation of his abuser with sparse, lovely guitar underpinning the song’s gut-churning question.
Gary Imlach prepares for one final race as La Grande Boucle moves behind a paywall after 40 years on ITV and Channel 4
When the last rider rolls across the Tour de France finish line in Paris on 27 July it will mark more than the end of the world’s most prestigious bike race. Once Gary Imlach and team have wrapped up, it will conclude four decades of free-to-air Tour coverage for British TV viewers.
While the sport, and the technology used to broadcast it, have transformed since the 1980s, the excellence of the ITV programme (previously on Channel 4) has been constant.
The world No 1 abandoned his attempts to reach the round number at classical chess in 2023, but achieved it this week on the first Freestyle rating list
For years the world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, tried to achieve a 2900 classical rating but he always peaked 10-20 points short of the round figure. The Norwegian, 34, had a personal best of 2889, achieved in 2014. That was 33 points ahead of Garry Kasparov’s highest figure and 100 ahead of Bobby Fischer. Carlsen made later attempts but could never get past the 2880s, while the numbers had an eerie similarity to the 28,000s and 29,000s at the top of Everest where George Mallory and Andrew Irvine perished in 1924.
In the new Freestyle rating list Carlsen at 2909 is nearly 100 points ahead of Hikaru Nakamura in second place, with his performance boosted by his perfect 9/9 at Grenke Karlsruhe. In contrast, the Fide world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, ranks a lowly 26th with 2701 points.
The west African country seems to be a dumping ground for thousands of people pushed back from north Africa after trying to reach Europe
There is no shade from the sun nor protection from sandstorms in the deserts of Niger and so, for almost 300 days, the refugees stranded there have stood in protest with a single message: “We don’t want to stay here.”
About 15km (8 miles) from the nearest town of Agadez, the 2,000 refugees in the camp feel they have been isolated from the world, kept out of sight and earshot and abandoned by those they feel should be helping them – the Nigerien government, the EU and the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR.
Fifpro Africa general secretary Kgosana Masaseng wants a reaction after all four sides from the continent made an early exit
It is a familiar take on the Club World Cup, but comes from a different perspective. “From the games I have watched, football has taken a lot away from the players,” says Kgosana Masaseng, the general secretary of Fifpro Africa.
“You are talking about teams that have just completed their domestic leagues, who were playing continental club championships. Players were also representing their national teams. So the schedule has been demanding. It has taken a toll and, now, there’s no break; it’s straight away into another competition.”
After singing with everyone from Tina Turner to the Small Faces, she takes your questions on her Glastonbury plans, life as an Ikette and getting a leg up from Mick Jagger
You’ve played with a lot of incredible artists – Tina Turner, the Small Faces, Nick Drake, Dr John, George Harrison, Peter Gabriel, Roger Waters, the KLF, Ocean Colour Scene and so many more. If you could collaborate with absolutely anyone, who would it be? Harrison1986
I love to collaborate – basically, I like collaborating with people who want to collaborate with me. I’ve just worked with Paul Weller and Cast, but a lot of people I’d love to have worked with are no longer with us. Top of my list on a production level would be Quincy Jones. Vocally, how about something with Prince?! And I love Mavis Staples, who’s still with us; I’ve met her. It would be great to do something with Mavis.
Of all the artists you’ve collaborated with, who stands head and shoulders above the rest? Aubrey26
Tina Turner. Simply the best – and what a joy to have her start a career I never planned on. I was in a very abusive teenage marriage. I said a prayer to ask God to take me out of that situation and a couple of hours later I was in Tina’s living room, singing Dancing in the Street. I’d gone there to help some other ladies – Gloria Scott and Maxine Smith – get the gig, but another girl didn’t show up for the audition. Maxine remembered I used to sing in church and the rest is history. My whole career is all about the unexpected. It think it has a lot to do with manifesting dreams, although being called a “legend” doesn’t pay the bills.
After a wild new player is forced to join the game without consent, the action gets even more operatic and bloodthirsty. But if you can get on board with the twists – and that’s a big if – you will not believe what happens in the last minute
The two main talking points of the third and final season of Squid Game are both massive spoilers. This means that I won’t be able to mention the final minute of the whole thing, which contains a moment so WTF and genuinely surprising that I bet my editor a serious amount of money she wouldn’t be able to guess what happens. She couldn’t, thankfully, but such reckless gambling is the sort of behaviour that would land me in Squid Game in the first place, so it just shows that nobody here has learned any lessons from it whatsoever.
Nor should I talk about another key development, though in this case, it becomes so central that it needs to be mentioned somehow. So, vaguely speaking, a new player is forced to enter the games, without being capable of giving their consent, and becomes the focus of later episodes. It is odd to criticise Squid Game for not being credible, given that it is a hit show about an underground tournament in which children’s games are played until many or most of the participants die, but introducing this new player is completely out there, even by the standards of “hide-and-seek … but with knives?”
Compromises include exempting those currently receiving disability benefits and increasing health element of universal credit in line with inflation
Downing Street has announced major changes to its welfare bill in an attempt to win the support of more than 120 Labour rebels who had threatened to vote against it next week and hand Keir Starmer a damaging first defeat as prime minister.
Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, wrote to Labour MPs on Thursday night to lay out the concessions, which were thrashed out over 24 hours of negotiations between senior rebels and government officials.
Everyone t’up north (London) wants Eberechi Eze. Fierce rivals Tottenham and Arsenal are ready to battle it out for the winger, eager to procure his dazzling dribbling and finishing. Crystal Palace know their position in this and are willing to sell, but he will set any suitors back around £68m. Last season the England international scored and created eight goals in 34 league appearances to make him one of the most sought-after attackers in the country.
Spurs do not plan to fund any of their summer business by selling Europa League winner Cristian Romero on the cheap. Atlético Madrid are flirting with the idea of signing him but the £60m sale demands will almost certainly put them off.
A revelatory cultural history of our relationship with native wildlife, from newts doing handstands to Mrs Tiggy-Winkle
When newts go a-wooing, sometime in the spring, their signature move is the handstand. Girl newts cluster round to watch, while the boy newts flip on to their creepily human hands and shake their tails in the air. The waggiest newt is the winner, although the actual act of love is a strictly no-contact sport. The male deposits a packet of sperm on an underwater leaf for the female to collect and insert into her own reproductive tract. The whole business is best thought of, says Karen R Jones, as a “sexually charged game of pass-the-parcel”.
This kind of anthropomorphising often strikes naturalists as unscientific or even downright distasteful. But Jones is an environmental historian and her methodology allows, indeed impels, her to start from the principle that Britain’s human and animal populations are culturally entwined. Consequently, we cannot “see” a fox, hedgehog or newt without bringing to it a rich stew of presumptions and fantasy, drawn from childhood picturebooks, out-of-date encyclopedias and, in my case, the 1970s TV classic Tales of the Riverbank, in which small critters say funny things in the West Country burr of .
Readers revel in extraordinary landscapes from black sand deserts in Iceland to haunting forests in Poland, spotting wolves, bears and honey buzzards along the way • Tell us about a trip to Turkey – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher
The Julian Alps are mostly in Slovenia, but I have gone on many trips to the little known Italian portion of this mountain range to visit old friends in the ski town Sella Nevea. The scenery is awesome: pointed white, limestone peaks above deep and mysterious pine-forested valleys. The books of mountaineer Julius Kugy romantically describe this large wilderness, the obscurity of which amazes me. Nature is abundant with various large mammals, bird life and flora. If you love alpine adventure but don’t like tourists then seek it out, there’s nobody there! Paul
Grafton man faces 20 charges after police uncover embryos, a tank of semen and the alleged deceptive sale of wagyu cows
Bull semen worth $100,000 is part of a haul of allegedly stolen wagyu cattle uncovered by police in regional Australia.
A 34-year-old man from Grafton, in northern New South Wales, faces 20 charges including cattle theft and obtaining financial advantage after allegedly stealing more than 100 cattle from his employer.
Buying vintage and bespoke is great, but when you do need to buy off the rack, start with a few UK brands making sustainable and affordable garments
Last year, in the interest of sustainable fashion, I joined a pledge only to buy five new pieces of clothing. Despite thinking of myself as someone who doesn’t really shop, I found the restriction a real chore. Unless you’re buying vintage or spending a fortune, the dilemma of how to engage in the fun and newness of fashion without contributing to its environmental footprint is, it turns out, nearly universal: data in a new report reveals 74% of people want to dress more sustainably but most don’t know how to go about it.
The report – released by multi-brand retailer Zalando – found that 39% of consumers find sustainable garments too expensive and 27% say they are hard to identify. It’s little wonder sustainable fashion remains plagued by vague claims, convoluted supply chains and a call-out culture that’s left brands reluctant to promote initiatives to customers on the lookout for greenwashing.
MP Jess Brown-Fuller says at the current rate it could take more than a decade to complete the compensation process
An MP has raised alarm at the slow pace of a scheme to compensate LGBT service personnel dismissed or discharged from the forces because of their sexuality, saying that at the current rate it could take more than a decade to complete the process.
Jess Brown-Fuller, the Liberal Democrat MP for Chichester, said she began examining the LGBT Financial Recognition Scheme, formally launched in December, due to the experiences of a constituent, who is one of just 69 people to have been compensated, of more than 1,200 who have applied.
National Audit Office questions viability of many routes, with half of all operator income from public subsidy
Local bus services in England have continued to decline despite attempts by successive governments to bolster investment in services, according to a National Audit Office (NAO) report.
The spending watchdog found that efforts to revive routes and attract more passengers had so far failed, with a 15% fall in the total miles operated by buses outside London since 2019 and passenger numbers still 9% below pre-Covid levels.
Extreme air pollution from farming fires meets high population density, causing substantial harm to health
The post-monsoon period in Delhi has become a time of smog. In November, the city’s pollution index reached its highest levels, classified as “severe plus”, cloaking the city in thick, brown smog and forcing schools and offices to close.
Prof Andre Prévôt, of the Paul Scherrer Institute, who led a group of scientists investigating the causes, said: “The visibility drops drastically – often to just a few hundred metres – and it feels as if standing in a heavy soup of pollution.
Report finds black offenders less likely to receive mentoring to help them avoid getting criminal record at early age
Black children detained by police are 15% more likely to be “criminalised”, that is charged and put into the criminal justice system, than white children detained for similar types of offences, a study has found.
The report by the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), which tackles youth violence, found that black children were 14.8% less likely to be offered diversion, which can include mentoring or counselling, that usually results in them avoiding getting a criminal record at an early age.
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