European Council will also discuss broader enlargement policy of European Union towards the western Balkans
Ireland’s Martin also continues on the US trade situation:
“I do genuinely detect an atmosphere that’s focused on getting a deal, both on the US side and on the European Union side, and that’s where our focus in Ireland is.
Actually getting a deal is important for certainty so that we know the landscape out ahead of us and that industry knows the landscape ahead of it, so that we can protect jobs, which is our number one priority.”
More than 120 Labour MPs are poised to rebel against the government on Tuesday
In his final answer Starmer explained how he thought government and business should work together.
A true partnership is not two people or two bodies trying to do the same thing. It’s two people or bodies realising they bring different things to the table.
Government shouldn’t try to run businesses. It’s done that in the past and it doesn’t work particularly well.
Big summer bets such as F1 and The Smurfs are using stars like Rihanna and Tate McRae to appeal to a wider audience
Posters for the Brad Pitt Formula One race car drama advertise it, with a heavy dose of cheese, as F1 the Movie. But maybe the Spaceballs-like distinction is necessary, given the existence of F1 the Album, a soundtrack nearly as starry as the movie it accompanies. Maybe starrier: Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon and Shea Whigham probably can’t overpower the combination of Don Toliver, Doja Cat, Tate McRae, Ed Sheeran, Rosé, Dom Dolla and Chris Stapleton. This isn’t the only recent compilation to bring back the very early-to-mid-2000s moniker of “the Album”; Twisters: the Album, a 29-track country compilation, reached the Billboard top 10 in the US last summer. Rihanna, a massive pop star who hasn’t released an album in almost a decade, put out her first new song in ages on a little record called Smurfs Movie Soundtrack (Music From & Inspired By). (She plays Smurfette in the new cartoon.) Soundtracks, those mainstays of mall CD stores, are back – in streaming and vinyl form.
For decades, the idea of pop music soundtrack albums needing a comeback would have been deeply strange; they’ve been a presence more or less since the late 1960s new Hollywood inflection point of The Graduate, with its foregrounded Simon & Garfunkel hits and written-for-the-film Mrs Robinson. But by the late 2000s, soundtrack albums were perfectly engineered to go down with the music industry ship. For much of the 1990s, the industry did their best to steer music buyers away from cheap, easily attainable singles by often holding them from standalone release and forcing the purchase of a $19 CD for anyone who wanted a copy of a hit song. Soundtracks offered further scarcity, imprisoning non-album tracks that might have once served as B-sides on cheap 7in singles. Hardcore fans might be willing to fork over their money for a particularly good or rare one, getting exposure to some like-minded artists in the bargain. Popular ones could even inspire their own sequels.
Gaza City’s main high street has been destroyed but Palestinian memories of life before the ongoing Israeli assault survive. As those in Gaza face bombing, starvation and miserable living conditions, here’s how they try to hold both the past and the present in their minds
Before it was bombed into a long grey line of rubble and dust cutting across Gaza City, Omar al-Mukhtar street was full of life – shoppers in the day, friends and families on evening outings after dark.
Running from east to west through the city, this artery road is home to some of Gaza’s most significant landmarks.
From Lisbon to Amsterdam, housing policy has led to haves and have-nots. But, as our new series uncovers, it doesn’t have to be this way
Housing is as personal an issue as it gets. Homes are where we take refuge from the outside world, express ourselves, build relationships and families. To buy or rent a house is to project your aspirations and dreams on to bricks and mortar – can we see ourselves sitting outside in the sunshine on that patio? It can also be a deeply frustrating process – can we afford that house? For more and more of us, the answer is no.
Experienced at such an individual level, it’s easy to think that rising costs are a problem particular to your community, city or country. But unaffordable house prices and rents are a continent-wide issue. According to the European Parliament, from 2015 to 2023, in absolute terms, house prices in the EU rose by just under 50% on average. From 2010 to 2022, rents rose by 18%.
Kirsty Major is a deputy Opinion editor for the Guardian
Generative AI is causing new and unusual problems for developers as players become more sensitive to the use of artificially generated ‘slop’ images
In April, game developer Stamina Zero achieved what should have been a marketing slam-dunk: the launch trailer for the studio’s game Little Droid was published on PlayStation’s official YouTube channel. The response was a surprise for the developer. The game looks interesting, people wrote in the comments, but was “ruined” by AI art. But the game’s cover art, used as the thumbnail for the YouTube video, was in fact made by a real person, according to developer Lana Ro. “We know the artist, we’ve seen her work, so such a negative reaction was unexpected for us, and at first we didn’t know how to respond or how to feel,” Ro said. “We were confused.”
It’s not wrong for people to be worried about AI use in video games – in fact, it’s good to be sceptical, and ensure that the media you support aligns with your values. Common arguments against generative AI relate to environmental impact, art theft and just general quality, and video game developers are grappling with how generative AI will impact their jobs. But the unexpected problem is that the backlash against generative AI is now hurting even those who don’t use it. “I would rather people be overly cautious than not,” veteran game developer and Chessplus digital director Josh Caratelli said. “But being collateral damage does suck.”
Government move to regulate textile imports aims to curb clothing dumps in the Atacama and boost circular economy
In a dusty corner of the Atacama Desert, the driest non-polar region on Earth, mounds of used clothes are scattered across the sand, where they sit, bleached and tattered, under the sun.
As the sea mist drifts over a high coastal plateau above the city of Iquique in Chile’s far north, the breeze rustles plastic bags bursting with second-hand clothing.
After realising how much I interrupted other people, I decided I needed to make a drastic change. Here’s how starting to listen changed my relationships – and made me happier
I like to talk as much as the next man – and men like to talk. A now-famous study by the University of California, Santa Barbara, noted that, in a series of recorded public conversations between men and women, 48 interruptions occurred, 46 of which came from men. The 2024 Women in the Workplace survey by McKinsey found that nearly 40% of women experienced being interrupted or spoken over “more than others” at work, against 20% of men.
Men in public spaces, according to research, talk more than women, talk over women, and talk down to women, contributing to the rise of gender neologisms such as manologuing, bropropriating and mansplaining. So, aware that men tend to dominate and disrupt, aware that the world at large feels unbearably loud, aware that I, too, often add to that noise, I decided to learn to keep my mouth shut – starting in the general hellscape of social media.
This Catalonian tale of a botched pact with the devil has the demonic excess of a Hieronymus Bosch painting
Margarida is trapped in Mas Clavell, a farmhouse in the Catalonian mountains, with Bernadeta. Bernadeta is dying in an annoying way, with “deep, raspy snores”. Margarida herself has been dead for some time. Rather than ascend to heaven, she has been “dragged downstairs by the ghastly, insufferable women of the house”. Irene Solà’s teeming third novel, I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness, follows these women, both dead and alive, as they prepare for a party. They cook and scrub, tell stories and make fart jokes. The novel begins at dawn and ends at night, but the historical era jumps around without warning. Now the viceroy’s men are arriving on horseback. Now a teenager is calling everyone a “dumbass”. Now local women are fleeing from Nazi soldiers. Characters shape-shift as much as the timeline. A he-goat becomes a bull, then a cat, then “an unusually long, skinny man with the toes of a rooster”. Now the viceroy’s men are demons, dragging Margarida into a “sea of blood”.
I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness references Mrs Dalloway, and shares the modernist interest in formal experimentation and action that unfolds over a single day. Instead of tracking interior sensation, Solà presents a seemingly inexhaustible slew of bodily description, held together by the opaque, vindictive logic of a folk tale. There are wonderful lists: of the different kinds of shit on the mountain, of cheese-making equipment, of body parts fondled by hands in the dark. I read the book twice in quick succession and every time I opened it, I found something to savour. The prose has the demonic excess of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
Shell has said it has “no intention” of making an offer for the rival fossil fuel company BP after speculation it had been planning a £60bn takeover, ruling out a formal approach for the next six months.
In an official statement to markets on Thursday, the company doubled down on the previous day’s denials that it was planning a bid, after media reports that it was in early talks with its competitor to create a £200bn UK oil supermajor.
Irish hooker joins eight other first-timers in matchday 23
Northampton’s Henry Pollock handed start at No 8
Eight Ireland players have been selected in the British & Irish Lions starting XV to face Western Force in the first fixture of the squad’s Australia tour on Saturday. The Leinster hooker Dan Sheehan will lead out the team on his Lions debut with eight more first-time Lions featuring in the matchday 23 and 20-year-old Henry Pollock handed a start at number eight.
Sheehan will be among those making his Lions debut alongside his club-mates Garry Ringrose, James Lowe, Joe McCarthy and Josh van der Flier. The bench contains another four newcomers in the shape of England’s Ollie Chessum and Will Stuart, Scotland’s Huw Jones and Ireland’s Andrew Porter.
Every artist dreams of playing the world’s greatest festival, but what’s it actually like? Artists returning this year, including Fatboy Slim and Self Esteem, look back at their first shows
You can tell it’s 1984 by my shirt. I’d just played the Jobs for a Change festival, in the middle of London, easy to get to by tube. But Glastonbury was like being on an island. You had to deal with the weather, the food and the toilets. It was also mainly populated by Bristolians. I performed once solo, but also got up on the Pyramid stage with [country and western singer] Hank Wangford to do (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66. The original Pyramid was made from corrugated iron and doubled as a cowshed. I remember it being swampy backstage. There were no bars, you had to bring in your own beer. Keith Allen and [Scottish poet] Jock Scott blagged their way in, pretending to be a Belgian film crew, and sold cans of Red Stripe for 50p.
Writers accused Facebook owner of breach over using books without permission to train its AI system
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has won the backing of a judge in a copyright lawsuit brought by a group of authors, in the second legal victory for the US artificial intelligence industry this week.
The writers, who included Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, had argued that the Facebook owner had breached copyright law by using their books without permission to train its AI system.
The Navigators are hopeful of reaching the knockout stage for the first time but recent form has tempered expectations
This article is part of the Guardian’sEuro 2025 Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 16 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from two teams each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 2 July.
Wall Street Journal reports deal would see Trump accept sum to resolve suit over Kamala Harris interview on 60 Minutes
Donald Trump and CBS could settle their legal battle over a contested interview with Kamala Harris for $20m, as the dispute continues to shadow a major media merger.
A mediator has proposed the settlement figure to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News over alleged deceptive editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Harris during last year’s presidential campaign, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
It’s outgrown the ‘Yes, chef!’ rages and screaming matches in the pantry and morphed into something more tender, beautiful – and endlessly moving. Let the happy tears flow
Recalibrate your palate: The Bear is not the show it used to be. The relentless drama you were stunned by in season two – when you finished an episode and said it was the best show you had ever seen, then played the next one and said it again – is not coming back.
Season four starts with Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), the family friend who has invested in the fledgling Chicago eaterie The Bear, installing a countdown clock that says the business has 1,440 hours to save itself. But much of the new run isn’t even about the restaurant. The show is outgrowing its premise, leaving behind “yes, chef!”, lingering closeups of seared beef and screaming matches in the pantry in favour of a different intensity, one that draws even more deeply on the characters and how they fit together. Indulge it – and you will have to indulge it, in a few ways – and you will find this experience just as rich.
Freighters emit more greenhouse gases than jets, but a tech startup believes a simple and effective technique can help the industry change course
An industrial park alongside the River Lea in the London suburb of Chingford might not be the most obvious place for a quiet revolution to be taking place. But there, a team of entrepreneurs is tinkering with a modest looking steel container that could hold a solution to one of the world’s dirtiest industries.
Inside it are thousands of cherry-sized pellets made from quicklime. At one end, a diesel generator pipes fumes through the lime, which soaks up the carbon, triggering a chemical reaction that transforms it into limestone.
The uprisings in Russia, China and Cuba seen through the eyes of reporters John Reed, Edgar Snow and Herbert Matthews
If the word “revolution” implies, etymologically, a world turned around, then what unfolded in Russia in 1917 was just that. Everything changed. Old-school deference was dead; the proletariat was in power.
The communist American journalist John Reed witnessed a contretemps that captured the suddenness of the change. In simpler times, sailors would have yielded to senior ministers, but on the day of the storming of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, they weren’t having it. When, in a last-ditch effort to save the Provisional Government, two liberal grandees demanded that they be let in, one of the sailors replied, “We will spank you! And if necessary we will shoot you too. Go home now, and leave us in peace!”
Between January and May, China added 198 GW of solar and 46 GW of wind, enough to generate as much electricity as Indonesia or Turkey
China’s installations of wind and solar in May are enough to generate as much electricity as Poland, as the world’s second-biggest economy breaks further records with its rapid buildup of renewable energy infrastructure.
China installed 93 GW of solar capacity last month – almost 100 solar panels every second, according to an analysis by Lauri Myllyvirta, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Wind power installations reached 26 GW, the equivalent of about 5,300 turbines.
Number of babies born in April rises to 20,717 at a year-on-year rate last seen in 1991, though overall fertility rate remains below replacement levels
South Korea’s birthrate surged at its fastest pace in more than three decades in April, offering tentative signs of recovery in a country grappling with the world’s lowest fertility rate, official data showed.
The number of babies born in April reached 20,717, marking an 8.7% increase from the same month last year and the steepest monthly growth since April 1991, according to Statistics Korea.
Exclusive: Edi Rama attacks British return hubs scheme as looking for ‘places to dump immigrants’
A UK plan to send refused asylum seekers to “return hubs” in third countries shows post-Brexit Britain is “in a very dark place”, Albania’s prime minister has said.
In his first interview with the international media since leading his socialist party to a historic fourth term in office, Edi Rama said the idea of the UK wanting to “look for places to dump immigrants” would have been inconceivable a decade ago.
Recognition remains an ‘urgent safety risk’ and relatives’ concerns are too often ignored, says Health Services Safety Investigations Body
Sepsis is causing thousands of deaths a year, a charity has said, as the NHS’s safety watchdog warned that doctors and nurses are too often slow to identify and treat it.
“The recognition of sepsis remains an urgent and persistent safety risk”, despite previous reports highlighting the large number of deaths it causes when diagnosed too late, according to the Health Services Safety Investigations Body.
Study shows ice sheet gained mass from 2021 to 2023, due to extreme snowfall that was also an effect of climate crisis
A new study shows that after decades of rapid decline, the Antarctic ice sheet actually gained mass from 2021 to 2023. This is a reminder that climate change does not follow a smooth path but a jagged one, with many small ups and downs within a larger trend.
The research, published in the journal Science China Earth Sciences, showed that while the ice sheet lost an average of 142bn tonnes each year in the 2010s, in the 2021 to 2023 period it gained about 108bn tonnes of ice each year.
North Korean leader was accompanied by his daughter Kim Ju-ae, widely presumed to be his heir, at opening of Wonsan Kalma tourist zone
Kim Jong-un is more accustomed to overseeing ballistic missile launches and political purges, but this week the North Korean leader opted for a change of pace with a family visit to a new beach resort – the vanguard in a tourism drive that may one day include foreign visitors.
Kim, who had swapped his trademark Mao suit for a dark suit, white shirt and tie that matched the sandy expanse of Wonsan Kalma, hailed the coastal resort as one of the country’s “greatest feats” of the year, the state-run KCNA news agency said in a report issued on Thursday.
Stags in Bradgate Park, commissioned by 7th earl of Stamford after his marriage to an ex-circus performer, rediscovered decades after it was deemed lost
A stunning silver sculpture inspired by the defiant love between a Victorian aristocrat and a former circus performer has been rediscovered after decades during which it was thought to have been lost or melted down.
The work, crafted by royal goldsmiths and depicting two rutting stags, had a sensational reception when it was seen by millions at exhibitions in London and Paris in the 1860s. It featured in the pages of the Illustrated London News.
A growing number of scholars and lawyers are losing faith in the current system. Others say the law is not to blame, but the states that are supposed to uphold it
In late April, terrorists killed 26 civilians in the Indian town of Pahalgam, located in the mountainous border region of Kashmir. India swiftly blamed Pakistan for the attack, launched missile strikes towards it and announced that it was suspending the Indus waters treaty, effectively threatening to cut off three-quarters of Pakistan’s water supply.
Ahmad Irfan Aslam, a seasoned international lawyer who, until last year, was Pakistan’s minister for law and justice, water and natural resources, climate change and investments, watched the news unfold with a creeping sense of horror. India was raising the possibility that it could turn off the tap for 250 million people. This would violate not only the treaty, but also international laws around the equitable use of water resources.
The relationship with him is still volatile, the Ukraine strategy still unclear and Europe needs to ensure its collective defence
Nato’s Hague summit was an orchestrated grovel at the feet of Donald Trump. The originally planned two-day meeting was truncated into a single morning’s official business to flatter the president’s ego and accommodate his short attention span. The agenda was cynically narrowed to focus on the defence spending hikes he demands from US allies. Issues that may provoke or embarrass Trump – the Ukraine conflict, or whether the Iranian nuclear threat has actually been eliminated by US bombing – were relegated to the sidelines.
Instead, the flattery throttle was opened up to maximum, with Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte leading the assembled fawning. On Tuesday, Rutte hymned Trump’s brilliance over Iran; yesterday, he garlanded him as the vindicated visionary of Nato’s drive towards the 5% of GDP spending goal. No one spoiled the party. As the president’s own former adviser Fiona Hill put it yesterday, Nato seemed briefly to have turned into the North Atlantic Trump Organization.
Leighton Allen, who cannot bring his family to the UK, says it feels as if he is being punished for not earning enough
A British father separated from his partner, son and stepson by UK visa rules says he feels as if he is “being punished for being working class and in love”.
Leighton Allen met his partner, Sophie Nyenza, who is from Tanzania, while travelling in the country in 2022. The pair had a son, Myles, and planned to settle in the UK.
Broadcasters including Jamz Supernova will host more than 90 hours of coverage across radio, iPlayer and TV
“What makes me so proud to be part of the coverage is a very, very small minority of people actually get to go to Glastonbury,” says the BBC presenter Jamz Supernova. “It brings it into your homes, whether you have a desire to go one day or you never want to.”
The 6 Music DJ, also known as Jamilla Walters, is part of a small team of broadcasters bringing this year’s Glastonbury festival into the homes of people across the UK on television, radio and online.
Observers shocked at scale and speed of deregulation drive they say is watering down European Green Deal and laws
The European Union’s rollback of environment policy is gaining momentum, campaigners have warned, in a deregulation drive that has shocked observers with its scale and speed.
EU policymakers have dealt several critical blows to their much-vaunted European Green Deal since the end of 2023, when opinion polls suggested a significant rightward shift before the 2024 parliamentary elections. Environment groups say the pace has picked up under the competition-focused agenda of the new European Commission.
Some experts say we shouldn’t drink any fruit juices at all. Others point to the fibre, vitamins and anti-inflammatories they provide. Here’s what you need to know
When my sister saw me drinking a glass of orange juice at breakfast, she was horrified. “You’re drinking pure sugar!” she said.
Juice, once considered so virtuous people paid good money to go on “juice fasts”, has been demonised over the past decade. The epidemiologist and author Tim Spector has said orange juice should “come with a health warning” and he’d rather people drink Coca-Cola. Despite this, the global juice market is growing, with chains such as Joe & the Juice expanding rapidly – and in an umbrella review last year, Australian researchers found potential health benefits to drinking juice.
It has been 25 years since Bill Clinton announced one of humanity’s most important scientific achievements: the first draft of the human genome. At the time, there was a great deal of excitement about the benefits that this new knowledge would bring, with predictions about curing genetic diseases and even cancer. To find out which of them came to pass, and what could be in store over the next two-and-a-half decades, Madeleine Finlay is joined by science editor Ian Sample, and hears from Prof Matthew Hurles, director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute
Pianist Alexandre Tharaud performs previously lost material by experimental French composer on a new album
Twenty-seven previously unheard works by Erik Satie, from playful cabaret songs to minimalist nocturnes, are to be premiered a century after the death of the notoriously eccentric and innovative French composer.
Painstakingly pieced together from hundreds of small notebooks, most of the new works are thought to have been written in the bohemian bistros of Montmartre in Paris where Satie worked as a pianist in the early decades of the 20th century.
Hughie Vaughan widely hailed for ‘stalefish backflip’ manoeuvre
Central Coast teenager stuns with move at wave pool in Texas
A step change in the evolution of surfing brought about by an Australian teenager has electrified the world of extreme sport and drawn praise from the doyen of skateboarding, Tony Hawk.
Eighteen-year-old Central Coast surfer Hughie Vaughan produced what has been dubbed a “stalefish flipper” at a competition in a wave park in Texas this week that has already been viewed millions of times on social media.
Allies agreed to raise defence spending to counter likely prospect of Russian remilitarisation if Ukraine war ends
The price was high, but for now, at least, a crisis in Nato has been averted. Donald Trump may like to take the credit for almost all of the 32 allies agreeing to a sharp increase in defence spending, but the reality is that the dramatic change in the Nato mindset was as much brought on by Vladimir Putin.
The Russian president’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was the first jolt, but there is a second uncomfortable reality. If there is a sustainable ceasefire in Ukraine, it will mean the deployment of a European-led peacekeeping force in the country – and after a while, Russia’s military might will inevitably recover.
Donald Trump’s intervention into the Iran-Israel war, and brokering then announcing a ceasefire, has drawn a heated debate in Pakistan – where the government had formally nominated the US president for the Nobel peace prize as the US military was making its final preparations for a strike that threatened all-out war in the Middle East.
A statement in the early hours of Saturday local time – shortly before US B-2 bombers left the Whiteman air force base in Missouri and headed to Iran – had credited Trump for a “legacy of pragmatic diplomacy” and “pivotal leadership” for ensuring Pakistan’s ceasefire with India in a conflict that had begun with the killing of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir in April.
Tulsi Gabbard and the CIA director say Iran’s nuclear sites were ‘destroyed’, amid reports of White House efforts to limit sharing of classified information with Congress
Donald Trump’s administration ratcheted up its defence of the US’s weekend attacks on Iran, citing “new intelligence” to support its initial claim of complete success and criticising a leaked intelligence assessment that suggested Tehran’s nuclear programme had been set back by only a few months.
The growing row came amid reports that the White House will to try to limit the sharing of classified documents with Congress, according to the Washington Post and the Associated Press.
More than 80% of China’s rare earth reserves are located in Baotou, an industrial hub of 2.7 million people that abuts the Gobi desert
Central Baotou, an industrial hub of 2.7 million people that abuts the Gobi desert in north China, feels just like any other second-tier Chinese city. Large shopping malls featuring western chains including Starbucks and KFC stand alongside street after street of busy local restaurants, where people sit outside and children play late into the evening, enjoying the relative relief of the cooler temperatures that arrive after dark in Inner Mongolia’s baking summer.
But a short drive into the city’s suburbs reveal another typical, less hospitable, Chinese scene. Factories crowd the city’s edges, with chimneys belching white plumes of smoke. As well as steel and silicon plants, Baotou is home to China’s monopoly on rare earths, the metallic elements that are used in oil refining equipment and car batteries and that have become a major sticking point in the US-China trade war.
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