At least 34 people were killed across Gaza by Israeli strikes, health staff say
Emirates extended its cancellation of flights to and from Iran’s capital Tehran until July 5 due to the “regional situation“, it said in a statement on Saturday, Reuters reports.
The Dubai-based airline said it will recommence operations to Baghdad on 1 July and Basra on 2 July.
The tortured progress of the president’s tax-and-spend bill is likely to bring his supporters a big, ugly surprise – little wonder he was so keen to turn the focus to Iran and Nato
“Daddy’s home.” So said a social media post from the White House, accompanied by a video featuring the song Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home) by Usher and images of Donald Trump at the Nato summit in The Hague.
The US president’s fundraising allies were quick to market $35 T-shirts with his image and the word after Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, referred to Trump’s criticism of Israel and Iran over violations of a ceasefire by quipping: “And then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get [them to] stop.”
The Moroccan photographer intended this portrait of his sister, taken during the Covid pandemic, to bring optimism in uncertain times
Ismail Zaidy took this image, with the help of his siblings, in the gardens of the famous La Mamounia hotel in Marrakech. The Moroccan photographer received special authorisation to shoot there in 2021, when Covid restrictions were in place. He took his brother, Othmane, as shoot assistant and his sister, Fatimazahra, was the model in the image, wearing a vintage dress their mum had bought at a flea market. The small team fixed flowers to a plastic sheet and took a number of shots over a three-hour period; Othmane appeared in some, too.
Zaidy recalls what a treat it felt to be outside. “Getting access to open spaces was limited, so being outdoors – even briefly – felt refreshing and special,” he says. “ It was a fairly chaotic period for all of us, but over time things calmed down and we found a rhythm. It actually gave us more time to create together.”
What does our chief perfectionist choose as a birthday treat? This sumptuous coffee and walnut cake, which you, too, can whip up in less than an hour
Today is my birthday, so I’m celebrating with a classic that, for all the sticky tres leches and sophisticated sachertortes I’ve enjoyed in recent years, remains my absolute favourite, my desert island cake: that darling of the WI tea tent, the coffee and walnut sandwich. The greatNigel Slater once named it his last meal on Earth, and I’m hoping to have it for tea.
The choreographer on a treasured biscuit tin, the Biba dress she splashed out on and a late-night police chase
Born in Lancashire, Arlene Phillips, 82, created the dance group Hot Gossip in the 1970s. She went on to become a world-renowned choreographer, and was a judge on Strictly Come Dancing from 2004-8. In 2021, she was made a dame for her services to dance and charity and in 2024 received an Olivier award for her work on Guys and Dolls. Her current shows include Starlight Express and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in London. She is an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society and is supporting its Forget Me Not appeal. She lives with her partner in London and has two daughters.
What is your most treasured possession?
An old biscuit tin, which was my mum’s jewellery box – she passed away when I was a teenager.
That outburst of exasperation at the White House felt very human. Perhaps other politicians should cautiously take note
Gary Nunn is a freelance journalist and author
I did not get out of bed this morning expecting to praise the public use of an expletive, but such is 2025. If any president was going to break this presidential norm, as NPR put it, it was always going to be Donald Trump.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” the president told a group of reporters this week. “Do you understand that?” he asked, before storming off.
We’ve got into a mess with extreme content because nobody wants to talk about pornography, says Gabby Bertin
When the Conservative peer Gabby Bertin arrived for a meeting with the the science and technology secretary, Peter Kyle, earlier this year she startled him by laying out an array of pornographic images across his desk.
“They were screengrabs showing little girls, their hair in bunches, and massive, grown men grabbing little girls’ throats,” she says. She had selected images which appeared to depict child abuse, and yet were easily and legally available on a popular website.
Regulator tells Sally Westcott to pull product that allegedly has undeclared levels of prescription-only melatonin
An NHS manager has been stopped from selling children’s gummies allegedly laced with undeclared levels of a prescription-only sleeping drug, the Guardian can reveal.
Magnesium glycinate gummies for children who have trouble sleeping have been sold since March last year by Nutrition Ignition, an Epsom-based company owned by Sally Westcott, whose other job is a clinical therapy lead at Epsom and St Helier NHS trust.
From Van Gogh’s starry skies to the nocturnal workings of Louise Bourgeois and Patricia Highsmith, sleepless nights have long inspired heightened creativity. Could those artistic impulses actually help us to sleep?
I can’t remember when I first stopped sleeping soundly. Maybe as a child, in the bedroom I initially shared with my brother, Tariq. I would wait for his breathing to quieten, then strain to listen beyond our room in the hope of being the last one awake, and feel myself expanding into the liberating space and solitude. By my early 20s, that childhood game of holding on to wakefulness while others slept began playing out against my will. Sound seemed to be the trigger. It was as if the silence I had tuned into as a child was now a requirement for sleep. Any sound was noise: the burr of the TV from next door, the ticking of a clock in another room. When one layer of sound reduced its volume, another rose from beneath it, each intrusive and underscored by my own unending thoughts. Noise blaring from without and within, until I felt too tired to sleep.
The artist Louise Bourgeois suffered a bad bout of insomnia in the 1990s, during which she created a series of drawings. Among them is an image that features musical notes in red ink, zigzagging across a sheet of paper. They look like the jagged score of an ECG graph that has recorded an alarmingly arrhythmic heartbeat. It sums up the torment of my insomnia: there is a raised heartbeat in every sound.
While Copenhagen’s fortunes grow alongside rise in Swedish commuters over 16km bridge, benefits for Malmö are proving less obvious
After 19 years of commuting to Denmark from Sweden,Helen Sjögren is so used to crossing the bridge that she identifies as Scandinavian rather than Swedish. The researcher at a Danish pharmaceutical company lives in the Swedish university town of Lund with her three children but has become accustomed to Danish working practices, and the idea of working in Sweden is now difficult to imagine.
“Because I’m Swedish, colleagues would expect me to behave like a Swede,” she said, referring to their reputation for seeking consensus. “So I would be seen as rude – too direct to fit in Sweden.”
The new Brad Pitt F1 movie offers a glossy exhilarating ride but its 1960s predecessor Grand Prix goes beneath the bonnet
‘Let’s try to get the season off to a good start, shall we? Drive the car. Don’t try to stand it on its bloody ear.”
Have you watched the movie? It’s about a rule-breaking American Formula One driver, the kind who blows past blue flags and crashes into his own teammate. You must have heard of it. They shot it in real race cars, across some of the most prestigious circuits in the world. It even had contemporary world championship drivers making notable cameos on the track.
England, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands are the teams to beat but the tournament in Switzerland will be incredibly tight
You only have to wind the clock back two full major-tournament cycles, to Euro 2017, and there were no fully professional women’s leagues in Europe. Thanks to increased investment in the women’s game, there are now more than 3,000 full-time female players across the continent, and that professionalisation is why my overriding feeling about this summer’s Euros is that the quality is going to be so much higher than we have seen before. And it will be so tight.
In Spain, England and Germany there are three strong favourites who are all capable of going on to win it and I would add the Netherlands to the top four. I was so impressed when we [the United States] played the Dutch in December. They will need everybody fit but, on their day, they are a top side. Beyond that, this tournament is going to show the prowess of the Nations League, which was introduced since the most recent Euros, and the impact that tournament is having on equality.
Saucy Books in London has become the go-to destination for romance readers – but fans say misogyny is stopping the genre getting the recognition it deserves
Whether you want a brooding billionaire, a queer awakening, a dragon rider (yes, really) or an old-fashioned enemies-to-lovers tale, there’s a romance novel for everybody at Saucy Books.
England’s first romance-only bookshop opened last week in Notting Hill, west London, instantly becoming a go-to destination for readers and turning into a meeting spot for like-minded folk to share their love stories.
The world has been too optimistic about the risk to humanity and planet – but devastation can still be avoided, says Timothy Lenton
Timothy Lenton is a professor of climate change and Earth system science at the University of Exeter. He started working on tipping points in the 1990s, making him one of the first scientists in the world to study this form of planetary risk. In an upcoming book, Positive Tipping Points: How to Fix the Climate Crisis, he argues the Earth has entered an “unstable period” but humanity can still prevail if we can trigger positive social and economic tipping points to reverse the damage that has already been done. On 30 June, he will host a global conference on tipping points.
From Summoner’s Rift to Scotland’s other national drink, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 What is celebrated, mathematically, on 14 March and 22 July? 2 Which form of Chinese originated in Guangzhou? 3 Summoner’s Rift is the main battleground in what game? 4 What is advertised as “Scotland’s other national drink”? 5 Which archipelago is home to Norway’s polar bears? 6 Which activist was arrested in Rochester, NY, in 1872 for voting? 7 What was the first martial art to become an Olympic sport? 8 Which organ produces insulin? What links:
9 Dominic McLaughlin; Jamie Parker; Daniel Radcliffe? 10 Riviera’s second city; goddess of victory; Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight? 11 Star patterns; time travel in Hill Valley; piano; neo-Nazi code? 12 Lime Rickey; Arnold Palmer; Shirley Temple; Virgin Mary? 13 Political Wife (Sarah Vine); Politician (Rory Stewart) Professional Footballer (Paul Merson); Boy (Robert Webb)? 14 Ghost; Lordi; Pussy Riot; Sleep Token; Slipknot? 15 Ancelotti; Enrique; Guardiola; Happel; Heynckes; Hitzfeld; Mourinho?
Move over Julia Davies and Sharon Horgan – this devastating, ruthless sitcom is basically the British psyche on a screen. It’s just the medicine
I love watching real-life siblings on-screen. They bring a knotted history to every interaction, the way they look at one another, or don’t. They may love each other; they’re definitely stuck with each other. Daisy May and Charlie Cooper were the last to bottle such contradiction; I’m delighted we now have Such Brave Girls (BBC One, Wednesday 2 July, 11.40pm), returning for a second series, in which creator Kat Sadler stars alongside her sister Lizzie Davidson. Cattier than Longleat, it features some of the most savage writing on TV, and makes me yowl with pleasure.
It’s about traumatised women making terrible choices. Bear with. The ever-excellent Louise Brealey plays Deb, whose husband abandoned his family 10 years ago after popping to the shop for teabags. In financial trouble, she spends her time trying to lock down relations with drippy, slippery widower Dev, played by Paul Bazely, explicitly for his big house. Single-mindedness has made her grim, grasping and less maternal than a stressed hamster. Bad news for daughters Josie and Billie, who give off the stench of joint captivity, and have split into twin coping strategies: one depressed and passive, the other overconfident, bullish and equally lost.
As celebrations become more lavish, those invited face higher costs. Here’s how some people juggle spending and expectations
By the time Layla had paid for flights, booked a hotel, bought a dress and contributed to the honeymoon fund, her friend’s wedding had cost her more than £1,600 – and it is just one of three she is attending this summer.
With more couples planning bigger celebrations – often with multiple events, and with some away from home, guests are left footing ever bigger bills.
The vampire slayer’s tenacity and independence freed me from the judgment and violence of my conservative relatives – and now my mum appreciates me for who I am
I was 10, cross-legged on the floor of my parents’ living room in Newcastle, bathed in the blue light of a TV. The volume was set to near-silence – my dad, asleep in another room, had schizophrenia and frontal lobe syndrome, and I didn’t want to wake him. Then, like some divine interruption to the endless blur of news and repeats, I stumbled across Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show may have been barely audible, but it hit me like a lightning bolt.
Before Buffy, life was like a pressure cooker. I secretly yearned for a more alternative lifestyle, but even wearing jeans would have been a big deal in my family. I had an assisted place at a private school as my parents were quite poor. Mum would say: “If you don’t study, we’ll have to put you in the other school, and you’ll just get beaten up.” It sounds like fear-mongering, but she was right: the students in the local school were known to beat Pakistani people up every Shrove Tuesday. So I dedicated my life to working hard.
Music executives have condemned Irish rappers and Keir Starmer says appearance is not ‘appropriate’, but 100 musicians have signed letter in support
Kneecap will be taking to the Glastonbury stage on Saturday afternoon in front of a packed crowd eagerly anticipating what could be one of the most controversial sets in the festival’s history.
The Irish rap group are performing at 4pm on the West Holts stage, amid criticism from music industry executives and from the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, who said it was not “appropriate” for the band to perform.
As white South Africans arrive in US to escape ‘unjust racial discrimination’, many progressives feel angry at Trump’s portrayal of them as victims
For some white Afrikaner South Africans, Donald Trump’s offer of refugee status in the US has been seen as a godsend. For others, it has provoked anger and frustration that they are being falsely portrayed as victims of a “white genocide”, 31 years after their community’s own oppressive minority rule ended.
In February, Trump signed an executive order claiming Afrikaners, who make up about 4% of South Africa’s population, or about 2.5 million people, were victims of “unjust racial discrimination”. The order cut aid to the country and established a refugee programme for white South Africans. The first group arrived in May.
Loyalists hope for boost after apparent victory, but political divisions and 7 October security failures still loom large
When Benjamin Netanyahu described the opportunities for peace that Israel’s successes in its brief war with Iran might bring, supporters took him at his word.
“This victory presents an opportunity for a dramatic widening of peace agreements. We are working on this with enthusiasm,” Israel’s longest-serving prime minister said on Thursday in a pre-recorded statement.
Forever young Brad Pitt breaks all the motor racing rules, while the final series of the dystopian Korean thriller welcomes a mysterious new contestant. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews
Understanding your brain on sale is the first step. Here are some practical measures to ensure you only buy things you need – or items that truly bring you joy in the long term
Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint
Whether the discount is offered on social media, via email or in a banner on your favourite website, if a business you’ve ever been a patron of is having a sale you can be sure they’ll find a way to tell you.
“Temporary sales events are aimed at leveraging FOMO,” says Jason Pallant, a senior lecturer in marketing at RMIT University. “The idea is to make consumers feel like they will miss out on a great bargain if they don’t buy something right away.”
Faith Kipyegon remains convinced that a woman will break the four-minute mile barrier within 10 years, despite falling more than six seconds short in her record attempt in Paris.
It was a disappointing result for Kipyegon and her sponsor Nike, who had hoped that aerodynamic skinsuits, lighter super spikes and a team of 13 pacers would help the 31-year-old Kenyan get within touching distance of the famous mark.
It started as a group of activists on a budget – now it could be banned under terrorism laws. But were lobbyists behind the proposed ban?
If this interview had taken place in a week’s time, Huda Ammori might have been arrested. If this interview had been published in a week’s time, the Guardian might also have been breaking the law.
Ammori, a co-founder of Palestine Action, said she was finding it “very hard to absorb the reality of what’s happening here”. She said: “I don’t have a single conviction but if this goes through I would have co-founded what will be a terrorist organisation.”
This scandalous story gives lie to the claim that the biggest threat to country life comes from city dwellers
Power hides by setting us against each other. This is never more true than in the countryside, where the impacts of an extreme concentration of ownership and control are blamed on those who have nothing to do with it. Rural people are endlessly instructed that they’re oppressed not by the lords of the land, but by vicious and ignorant townies – the “urban jackboot” as the Countryside Alliance used to call it – stamping on their traditions.
Near Bridport in Dorset right now, an entire village is facing eviction, following the sale of the Bridehead Estate for about £30m. The official new owner, Bridehead Estate Ltd, is registered to the same address, with the same officers, as a company called Belport. The Telegraph reports that the estate “was bought by Belport, a private equity firm, on behalf of a wealthy client last autumn”, but no one knows who the client is. So far I’ve received no response to the questions I sent to Belport.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
On Tuesday 16 September, join George Monbiot, Mikaela Loach and other special guests discussing the forces driving climate denialism, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at Guardian.Live
Rice noodles topped with a rubble of tempeh and walnuts and tossed in garlic oil and a sweet, salty and tangy hot sauce
Up until now, I was sceptical about viral recipes. Is anyone still making the baked feta pasta from 2021? Has the “marry me chicken” resulted in an uptick in matrimonies? But the tossed noodles (guay tiew klook) currently doing the rounds on Thai social media platforms really whet my appetite. In short, they’re noodles tossed with mince, garlic oil and a dark, sweet, salty and tangy hot sauce, and they just make so much sense that they really couldn’t not be great. I love them, so I’m passing on the baton to you using a combination of crumbly tempeh and walnuts instead of the mince.
Next week, a UN summit in Seville will discuss the future of financing the world’s poorer nations. It should first concede that the old methods have failed
It is 2025, and the architecture of economic power remains grossly tilted against the nations of the global south. Nowhere is this imbalance more acute – and more enduring – than in the debilitating impact of sovereign debt.
From the vast countries of Africa to the scattered but strategically vital small island developing states (Sids) of the Caribbean and the Pacific, debt has become a modern form of bondage – the chains that restrict growth, sovereignty and the basic human dignity of nations struggling to define their own path to development.
I’m slightly alarmed that my wife, who is driving, has mistaken the mist on her glasses for actual mist
It is early in the morning, and my wife and I are setting off on a long car journey. My wife is driving; I am looking at my phone. It is my plan to look at my phone for at least the first hour, even though it is unlikely my wife will allow this.
Breasts have always been political – and right now they’re front and centre again. Is it yet another way in which Trump’s worldview is reshaping the culture?
It was, almost, a proud feminist moment. On inauguration day in January, the unthinkable happened. President Trump, the biggest ego on the planet, was upstaged by a woman in a white trouser suit – the proud uniform of Washington feminists, worn by Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in solidarity with the traditional colour of the suffragettes. In the event, the white trouser suit barely got a mention. The show was stolen by what was underneath: Lauren Sánchez’s cleavage, cantilevered under a wisp of white lace. The breasts of the soon-to-be Mrs Jeff Bezos were the ceremony’s breakout stars. The only talking point that came close was Mark Zuckerberg’s inability to keep his eyes off them.
Call it a curtain raiser for a year in which breasts have been – how to put this? – in your face. Sydney Sweeney’s pair have upstaged her acting career to the point that she wears a sweatshirt that says “Sorry for Having Great Tits and Correct Opinions”. Bullet bras are making a sudden comeback, in sugar-pink silk on Dua Lipa on the cover of British Vogue and nosing keen as shark fins under fine cashmere sweaters at the Miu Miu show at Paris fashion week. Perhaps most tellingly, Kim Kardashian, whose body is her business empire, has made a 180-degree pivot from monetising her famous backside to selling, in her Skims lingerie brand, push-up bras featuring a pert latex nipple – with or without a fake piercing – that make an unmissable point under your T-shirt. Not since Eva Herzigova was in her Wonderbra in 1994 – Hello Boys – have boobs been so, well, big.
Tope, 27, a doctor, meets Eden, 28, a software engineer
What were you hoping for?
A lot of good food and for the evening not to turn into an edition of Dining Across the Divide.
First impressions?
Blond! Blue eyes!
What did you talk about?
The Bible. Judith Butler. Susan Sontag. Patti LuPone. Poetry. Squash. Musicals. Deciding whether or not to name our Pokémon (I’m pro). The cookbook club I’m in. The scavenger hunt I went on before our date. The Manosphere.
Most awkward moment?
When we exchanged numbers, I glimpsed his contact list. The moniker that was above my name is not suitable for publication. (We laughed about it!)
Good table manners?
Faultless. We ordered lots and shared everything.
Best thing about Eden?
He has a poet’s soul.
Would you introduce Eden to your friends?
Happily.
Describe Eden in three words
Cool, calm and collected.
What do you think Eden made of you?
Probably that I’m excitable and garrulous. He said I was “erudite”.
Pyramid stage Perhaps joking, or perhaps not, Matty Healy pronounces himself ‘the greatest songwriter of my generation’ – and that’s only a slightly ridiculous statement
The 1975’s first Glastonbury headlining slot arrives preceded by some intriguing rumours about what’s going to happen. Some fairly eye-popping figures are being bandied about regarding the cost of their set’s staging – which allegedly vastly outweighs the fee the band are being paid – while one dubious online source insists Healy has shaved his head for the occasion. He hasn’t (he appears onstage tonsorially intact), but clearly large sums of money have been spent somewhere along the way.
What ensues isn’t quite as complex as their last tour, which featured lead singer Matty Healy eating raw steak, doing push ups, climbing through a television and Prince Andrew’s face appearing on a bank of television screens accompanied by the strains of Mahler’s 5th Symphony. Nevertheless, there are huge video screens everywhere: not just behind the band, but above them and at either side of the stage, and indeed below the actual video screens that Glastonbury traditionally provides. The treadmill that ran across the front of the stage during their 2018 tour – there for Healy to glide around on, something he does with admirable insouciance – makes a reappearance, while, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the rear half of a car makes an appearance stage right at one point. Healy sings from within it.
The global order is being dismantled by a generation that will not live to see the wreckage they leave behind
Let’s attempt something delicate: talking about age without slipping into ageism. Never before in modern history have those with the fate of the world in their hands been so old. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are both 72. Narendra Modi is 74, Benjamin Netanyahu 75, Donald Trump 79, and Ali Khamenei is 86.
Thanks to advances in medical science, people are able to lead longer, more active lives – but we are now also witnessing a frightening number of political leaders tightening their grip on power as they get older, often at the expense of their younger colleagues.
David Van Reybrouck is philosopher laureate for the Netherlands and Flanders. His books include Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World and Congo: The Epic History of a People
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Long-awaited ILC report examines what should happen to vulnerable countries as sea levels rise
States should be able to continue politically even if their land disappears underwater, legal experts have said.
The conclusions come from a long-awaited report by the International Law Commission that examined what existing law means for continued statehood and access to key resources if sea levels continue to rise due to climate breakdown.
Record numbers expected at march despite Hungary’s leader saying those attending will face ‘legal consequences’
Record numbers of people are expected to take part in Budapest Pride on Saturday, with Hungarians joining forces with campaigners and politicians from across Europe in a march that has become a potent symbol of pushback against the Hungarian government’s steady rollback of rights.
“This weekend, all eyes are on Budapest,” Hadja Lahbib, the European commissioner for equality, told reporters in the Hungarian capital on Friday. “This is bigger than one Pride celebration, one Pride march. It is about the right to be who you are, to love who you want, whether it is in Budapest, in Brussels or anywhere else.”
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