Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, combat training in Ukraine, wildfires in France and Iga Swiatek at Wimbledon: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing
Angela Rayner has urged Labour colleagues to “step up” and make the case for why the party should be in power as the government attempts to draw a line under a tumultuous first year in office and shift towards a more upbeat approach.
The deputy prime minister urged Labour MPs to focus on the party’s achievements over the last 12 months rather than always thinking about failures, saying they should all be “message carriers” for what had been done well.
Nearly 100 lawmakers claim the agency’s recent actions put veterans’ healthcare at risk. Department of Veterans Affairs chief says ‘no one is being discriminated against at VA’
The US Department of Veterans Affairs has enthusiastically joined Donald Trump’s war on DEI – demanding that staffers report colleagues who engage in diversity initiatives, banning LGBTQ+ pride flags from VA hospitals and shuttering an office investigating why Black veterans are more likely to have their mental health disability claims rejected.
Last week, VA secretary Doug Collins tweeted that “VA is now squarely focused on Veterans – not out-of-touch, woke causes such as DEI and gender dysphoria treatments.”
Ukrainian seeks to unify the heavyweight division again at Wembley on Saturday before putting family time first
Boxing, as Oleksandr Usyk knows, gets everyone in the end. It is a harsh and pitiless business and earlier this week, at the end of a long afternoon answering the same old questions in front of a line of television cameras, Usyk sat down with a small group of familiar faces who have written about him for years. During his last assignment for the day he opened up a little more as he spoke about the sacrifices boxing demands.
He told us how much he wanted to see his wife, Yekaterina, as she had just flown into London and they would be reunited that evening. Three months had passed, in a gruelling training camp, since they had been together and Usyk spoke about missing her and their four children.
If Israel’s prime minister accepts a ceasefire deal soon, it will only be because the timing suits him. He, like his country, will face a reckoning
Will the war in Gaza last for ever? It’s not a wholly rhetorical question. There are days when I fear that the death and devastation that has gone on for 650 days will never stop, that it will eventually settle into a constant, low-level attritional war inside the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a war within a war – that becomes a background hum to world affairs, the way the Troubles in Northern Ireland endured for 30 years. In this same nightmare, incidentally, I see Benjamin Netanyahu, who has already sat in Israel’s prime ministerial chair for nearly 18 years, on and off, staying put for another 18 years or more, ruling the country until he is 100.
Israelis don’t want either of those things to happen. Polls show that only a minority trust Netanyahu, while an overwhelming majority – about 74% – want this terrible war to end. As the leader of one of the ultra-orthodox, or Haredi, parties that this week quit Netanyahu’s ruling coalition – over the government’s failure to pass a bill permanently exempting Haredi youth from military service – recently put it: “I don’t understand what we are fighting for there … I don’t understand what the need is.”
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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Foreign secretary says two agents were involved in planting spyware on a device used by poisoning victim Yulia Skripal
The UK has exposed 18 Russian spies and their units responsible for cyber-attacks in Britain and hacking one of the victims of the Salisbury poisonings, David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has said.
Announcing individual sanctions, Lammy said Russia had targeted media, telecoms providers, political and democratic institutions and energy infrastructure in the UK in recent years.
The US president is struggling to close down speculation about the case that those close to him have promoted
Donald Trump has thrived on conspiracy theories – “birtherist” lies that Barack Obama was born outside the US; the lunacies of the Q-Anon movement; false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. All centred on the idea that the “deep state” was lying to, and thus cheating, ordinary people. Mr Trump was their tribune.
It’s hard not to feel schadenfreude now that he’s at the sharp end of a theory that he at times encouraged and allies eagerly pushed: claims that the prison death of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein might not be suicide after all, and that wealthy and well-connected associates were trying to hush up connections to the financier. Mr Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, promised that “truckloads” of documents would help reveal the truth and claimed that a client list was “sitting on my desk right now”.
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Pam Bondi says federal agents at scene of explosion as reports say three killed were sheriff’s deputies
An explosion at a law enforcement training facility in Los Angeles has killed at least three people.
The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, told reporters that federal agents were at the scene of Friday’s explosion and were working to learn more. She said her information came from US attorney Bill Essayli’s office, whose jurisdiction includes Los Angeles.
Threat of rain and absences of Hodgkinson, Hassan and Ingebrigtsen are blows but record tilts will enthrall fans
One of the major issues athletics faces is the relative lack of importance that the overwhelming majority of events hold. It is one of the reasons why Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track is yet to catch alight: the pay is great for the athletes, but a win or loss counts for little in the overall scheme of a season or career.
The much-maligned Diamond League has fought against such (ir)relevance throughout its existence. In such a context, it is a notable achievement that the London leg of athletics’ premier season-long competition is a 60,000 sellout for what could turn out to be a thunderstorm-threatened Saturday afternoon.
Mikel Arteta’s latest signing from Chelsea is a driven individual, confident in his ability, according to his fitness coach
If Noni Madueke finds time to head to Marbella for his annual personal pre-season training camp this summer, you probably won’t find Arsenal’s new signing frequenting any of the Spanish seaside city’s glamorous hangouts. “His peers are all partying – they’re at the beach clubs and stuff like that,” says the winger’s fitness coach, Saul Isaksson-Hurst. “But he’s turning up every day. Even I’m telling him: ‘You need one rest day, a couple of days.’ But Noni is so driven. He understands the importance of working hard – the more you put in, the more you get out. The reality is that he wants to do more.”
Madueke was spotted letting his hair down with Jadon Sancho at the Wireless festival in north London’s Finsbury Park last weekend, which was understandable given the week he had. Having been used sparingly by Enzo Maresca during Chelsea’s first five games at the Club World Cup, the 23-year-old flew back from the US last Friday, before the final, after an agreement was struck for him to become the sixth player Mikel Arteta has signed from Stamford Bridge since the Spaniard became the Arsenal manager in late 2019. Kepa Arrizabalaga trod the same path at the start of this month.
A breathless Jonas Vingegaard slumped exhaustedly over his bike on another baking Pyrenean afternoon, after Tadej Pogacar inflicted a further crushing defeat in the mountain time trial to the altiport at Peyragudes.
The second time trial in the 2025 Tour was expected to further confirm Pogacar’s supremacy over the peloton and so it proved, as the defending champion extended his lead to over four minutes with his fourth stage win in this year’s race and the 21st Tour stage of his career.
Experts say this year has produced the fewest new hit songs in US history – and it might signal the end of a singular seasonal smash
A spectre is haunting America – the spectre of Shaboozey.
Despite it coming out in April 2024, Shaboozey’s huge hit A Bar Song (Tipsy) is still, billions of streams later, at No 5 on this week’s Billboard chart. Its country-tinged refrain of “everybody at the bar gettin’ tipsy,” an interpolation from J-Kwon 2004 hit Tipsy, has stuck around well past closing time.
When the chips were down against Sweden, the right-back scored, scrapped and strapped her way to a semi-final spot
Lucy Bronze pinned up a picture of herself after the 2019 Women’s World Cup bronze-medal match against Sweden, which England lost 2-1, for her teammates to see on a wall in the team hotel where players and staff share inspirational images. She was, in her words, “absolutely exhausted” in it, hairband round her neck, shirt crumpled, hair awry, the physical, emotional and mental pain of the preceding 90 minutes visible.
That photo represents so much to Bronze, England’s stalwart right-back who no one has come close to replacing and likely never will. “I will give anything and I will give everything when I play in an England shirt,” she says of that image of her at her most broken. ”I wanted all the girls to know that that’s my why. My why is to give everything for this team because I just love playing for England so much.”
I scoured longevity research on wellbeing – and the deeper I dug, the more I recognized a profound underlying pattern
Anyone who says “age is just a number” has not reached the high numbers. Ageing is not easy, and “forever young” is not a plan. Regardless of how many burpees you can do or protein smoothies you chug, the passing of time brings challenges. Roles that you relished change, words on menus seem to shrink, necks sag, diagnoses arise.
On the other hand, ageing is not the downhill slide that people believe it is. A multibillion-dollar antiageing industry profits when you feel awful about yourself and fear ageing like the plague. The tragedy of ageing is not that we will all grow old and die, but that ageing has been made unnecessarily, and at times excruciatingly, painful and humiliating. Ageing does not have to be this way.
Donald Trump on Friday morning launched a fresh defense of his conduct in the Jeffrey Epstein case after the scandal deepened on Thursday following a Wall Street Journal report that he had written the sex offender a bawdy note with a sketch of a naked woman.
“If there was a ‘smoking gun’ on Epstein, why didn’t the Dems, who controlled the ‘files’ for four years, and had Garland and Comey in charge, use it? BECAUSE THEY HAD NOTHING!!!” Trump said in a Truth Social post early on Friday.
The guy who treats collapsing timelines like a crossword puzzle has one extra superpower this time around: he’s played by Pedro Pascal
The Avengers need a new leader, and given how many potential candidates for the gig have either died, retired, or turned evil, they need it soon. The multiverse is collapsing, timelines are unravelling, box office numbers are wobbling, the Kang plan is in tatters and Blade is on its ninth script. So, naturally, Marvel’s answer is to hand the reins to a stretchy man in sensible shoes who once broke the entire multiverse.
Yes, according to The Fantastic Four: First Steps director Matt Shakman, the awesome foursome’s Reed Richards is being lined up as the new leader of Earth’s mightiest heroes. Or at least, he is (at times) in the comics, and it looks increasingly like he might be the only reality-straddling, buttoned up polymathable to take on this job on the big screen.
Donald Trump has renewed his attacks on Jerome Powell, calling the US central bank chair a “numbskull” and accusing him of “making it difficult for people, especially the young, to buy a house”.
The US president accused Powell of preventing the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates to make housing more affordable.
Once a haven for the world’s rich and famous, the landmark hotel was burned down this month as violence gripped Port-au-Prince
There was an outpouring of grief in Haiti when the Hotel Oloffson, a cultural and architectural landmark in Port-au-Prince, was set ablaze on the night of 5 July, in what local media described as retaliation by armed gangs after a police operation in its vicinity.
For many, its ruins are a stark and sobering symbol of the state of a capital city on the verge of collapse, and a sign that a once vibrant culture may be fading as violent criminal armed groups continue their reign of terror.
Proposal heads to president’s desk to be signed after party-line vote was delayed by Jeffrey Epstein controversy
House Republicans passed Donald Trump’s funding cut proposal just after midnight on Friday – clawing back $9bn in federal dollars.
The vote was split on party lines, 216-213, with two Republicans, Mike Turner of Ohio and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, opposing the package alongside all Democrats. The proposal will now go to the president’s desk to be signed and codified.
President’s latest effort to contain fallout comes after he directs Pam Bondi to request release of grand jury transcripts and threatens to sue Wall Street Journal
It was a friendship that spanned three different decades. To Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein was a “terrific guy”. Epstein believed himself to be Trump’s “closest friend”, and praised the future president as “charming”.
The relationship would eventually break down, the men falling out over a bidding war on a property in Florida. And after Epstein was convicted of child sex offences in 2008, Trump distanced himself from the financier, claiming he was “not a fan” and wondering, in recent days, why his supporters would “waste time and energy” on demanding that FBI and Department of Justice files on Epstein be released.
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned by talking to older women, it’s that being a ‘bad girl’ shouldn’t faze you – it should embolden you
I remember the thrill I felt when someone would tell me that I was a “good girl”. I understood from a young age that, as a girl, goodness would be my supreme achievement – my calling in life. But what that looked like or how I might embody its essence took time to decode.
I remember being in the back seat of our brown HJ Holden when I was young, leaving a family party and being reprimanded by my parents for my “behaviour”. I was mystified. I had no idea what I had done that had caused them such embarrassment. Had I run when I was told not to? Or had I misunderstood an instruction? Was I a “bad girl”, I remember wondering.