A Palestinian American writer’s story of exile, addiction and surrogacy: ‘I had to do something with the fragments’

In her new memoir, Hala Alyan reflects on her fractured lineage and having a child against all odds

In the poem Hours Ghazal, published in 2024, Hala Alyan writes: “The cost of wanting something is who you are on the other side of getting it.” The line is a glimpse into the mind of a woman, who, at 38, has paid a high price for desire and emerged intact after living through what might feel like several lifetimes for the rest of us.

Alyan is a Palestinian American poet, novelist, clinical psychologist and psychology professor at New York University. She is also the author of a memoir published this week titled I’ll Tell You When I’m Home.

I have never not been a Palestinian. That has never not been written upon my body. In Lebanon, in Kuwait, in Oklahoma – I am what my father is, and my father is a man who was once a boy who was born to a woman in Gaza. Who speaks with the accent of that place.

Published: June 3, 2025, 12:00 pm

Have we passed peak Trump? | Kenneth Roth

Since Trump returned to the White House, the checks and balances of US democracy have proved remarkably resilient

Have we reached peak Trump? Is it possible that we have arrived at a moment, a mere four months into his second term, when the president’s capacity to do harm is diminishing?

That is undeniably a provocative question. Like any US president, Donald Trump remains immensely powerful. It is early days; he can still cause plenty of damage – and certainly will.

Trump’s attacks on the restraints on his power should be viewed not in isolation, but as part of a deliberate scheme to build an autocracy. Each step matters. He is attacking not just big law or Ivy League universities but democracy.

Early opposition is important because resistance becomes harder over time as checks on presidential authority weaken.

The temptation to save one’s own skin should be resisted because it plays into the autocratic strategy of divide-and-conquer. A collective defense works best.

Appeasement may seem like a way to calm the bully, but bullies see it as weakness, an invitation to demand more.

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, was published by Knopf and Allen Lane in February

Published: June 3, 2025, 10:00 am

‘The Mozart of the attention economy’: why MrBeast is the world’s biggest YouTube star | Mark O’Connell

He’s spent 24 hours immersed in slime, two days buried alive – and showered vast amounts of cash on lucky participants. But are MrBeast’s videos simply very savvy clickbait – or acts of avant garde genius?

Jimmy Donaldson, the 27-year-old online content creator and entrepreneur known as MrBeast, is by any reasonable metric one of the most popular entertainers on the planet. His YouTube channel, to which he posts his increasingly elaborate and expensively produced videos, has 400 million subscribers – more than the population of the United States of America and equivalent to the total number of native English speakers currently alive. It’s close to twice as many subscribers as Elon Musk has X followers, and over 100 million more than Taylor Swift has Instagram followers. And that number, 400 million, does not account for the people who watch MrBeast’s videos in passing, or who are aware of his cultural presence because of their children, or who just sort of know who he is but don’t have any intricate awareness as to why he is famous.

That number is the number of people who have made the volitional move of clicking that subscribe button, to ensure that they will a) not miss his latest videos and b) can be literally counted by potential advertisers as a more-or-less guaranteed audience. One last fact, before we move away from numbers and into more nebulous modes of consideration: his 2024 Amazon Prime reality competition show, Beast Games, in which 1,000 contestants competed for $5m (£3.7m), the largest cash prize in television history, reportedly cost $100m to produce, making it the most expensive unscripted show in history. Jimmy Donaldson, at the risk of belabouring the obvious, is an incredibly big deal.

Published: June 3, 2025, 4:00 am

‘Our fantasy of love has to do with need and dependency’: Melissa Febos on her year of celibacy

Febos’ life flourished while taking a year off sex and dating. In a new memoir, The Dry Season, the author explores the strong hold romance had on her

When Melissa Febos decided to be celibate for a year – after what she describes as a “ravaging vortex of a relationship” and “five other brief entanglements” – she felt “pretty self-conscious and kind of weird”. But other people’s reactions surprised her.

“I thought people were going to laugh at me or be like, that sounds boring, but so many people would lean in and either get this eager look on their face or this sort of dreadful look on their face, and they would say, ‘Oh, I think I should probably do that too,’” she says.
“I had no idea how many people had been in relationships for their whole adult life.”

Published: June 3, 2025, 4:00 pm

‘Nobody wants a robot to read them a story!’ The creatives and academics rejecting AI – at work and at home

Is artificial intelligence coming for everyone’s jobs? Not if this lot have anything to do with it

The novelist Ewan Morrison was alarmed, though amused, to discover he had written a book called Nine Inches Pleases a Lady. Intrigued by the limits of generative artificial intelligence (AI), he had asked ChatGPT to give him the names of the 12 novels he had written. “I’ve only written nine,” he says. “Always eager to please, it decided to invent three.” The “nine inches” from the fake title it hallucinated was stolen from a filthy Robert Burns poem. “I just distrust these systems when it comes to truth,” says Morrison. He is yet to write Nine Inches – “or its sequel, Eighteen Inches”, he laughs. His actual latest book, For Emma, imagining AI brain-implant chips, is about the human costs of technology.

Morrison keeps an eye on the machines, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and their capabilities, but he refuses to use them in his own life and work. He is one of a growing number of people who are actively resisting: people who are terrified of the power of generative AI and its potential for harm and don’t want to feed the beast; those who have just decided that it’s a bit rubbish, and more trouble than it’s worth; and those who simply prefer humans to robots.

Published: June 3, 2025, 4:00 am

‘The high commissioner found us a bassinet!’ Jacinda Ardern on bringing her baby to the UN

New Zealand’s former PM made history as the first world leader to attend the general assembly meeting with a newborn. In the second extract from her book, she writes about her worry that the image would become a banner for ‘women doing it all’

• Read our exclusive interview with Jacinda Ardern here
• ‘I was pregnant and unwed. I was also new to the job’: read the first instalment of her memoir here

Seventy-two hours after our daughter, Neve, was born, Clarke and I held a press conference to introduce her to the world. We planned the whole thing before I gave birth, and I’d been sure it would be fine. Kate Middleton did it, I’d thought. I can make it work.

Now that I’d just given birth, it did not feel fine.

Published: June 3, 2025, 9:00 am

Millions of legal immigrants’ lives upended after social security freeze

Program halted suddenly, leaving legal immigrants unable to work due to lack of US social security number

Millions of legal immigrants may be left unable to work after the US Social Security Administration quietly instituted a rule change to stop automatically issuing them social security numbers.

The Enumeration Beyond Entry program is an agreement between the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, where US Citizenship and Immigration Services would provide social security with information from applicants for work authorization or naturalization.

Published: June 3, 2025, 4:05 pm

Trump administration uses Colorado suspect’s status to push deportation agenda

Trump blames attack on Biden’s ‘ridiculous open border policy’ as Miller claims attack committed by ‘illegal alien’

The immigration status of the man who allegedly attacked people with a makeshift flamethrower and other incendiary devices at an event for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, has become further fodder for the Trump administration’s deportation agenda.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old who came to the US in 2022 from Egypt and overstayed his initial tourist visa, according to the US government, allegedly planned his attack on the event specifically to target Zionists, federal authorities said. He shouted “Free Palestine” while carrying out the attack, which the FBI has called an “act of terrorism”, and he was charged on Monday with a federal hate crime.

Published: June 3, 2025, 11:00 am

Ukraine hits bridge linking Crimea to Russia with underwater explosives

Operation ‘severely damaged’ base of Crimean bridge, opened by Putin in 2018, Kyiv’s SBU security service says

Ukraine has detonated a massive underwater blast targeting the key road and rail bridge connecting the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula to Russia, damaging its underwater supports.

The operation, for which Kyiv’s SBU security service claimed responsibility, is the second high-profile operation by Ukraine in days striking significant Russian assets after a sophisticated drone raid on Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet on Sunday.

Published: June 3, 2025, 1:16 pm

At least 27 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire at food point, Gaza officials say

Gaza spokesperson says Israel fired with tanks and drones as Israeli military acknowledges troops shot at ‘suspects’

At least 27 people were killed by Israeli fire as they waited for food at a distribution point set up by an Israeli-backed foundation in Gaza, according to health officials in the strip.

It is the third such incident in three days, with Israel admitting on Tuesday for the first time that its forces shot at individuals who were moving towards them.

Published: June 3, 2025, 4:39 pm

Blake Lively moves to drop two claims about Justin Baldoni

Actor withdraws claims of infliction of emotional distress about Baldoni, her co-star in It Ends With Us

Blake Lively has made moves to withdraw two of the claims she made about the actor and director Justin Baldoni, who worked with her on the 2024 romantic drama It Ends With Us.

The two actors have been engaged in a legal dispute since Lively sued Baldoni in December 2024 following the release of the film based on the bestselling novel by Colleen Hoover. Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and a public smear campaign.

Published: June 3, 2025, 3:45 pm

Dutch government collapses as far-right leader pulls party out of coalition

Coalition leaders call decision by Geert Wilders to withdraw from alliance over immigration policy ‘irresponsible’

The Dutch government has collapsed after the far-right leader Geert Wilders pulled his party out of the ruling coalition in a row over immigration and asylum policy.

The prime minister, Dick Schoof, on Tuesday handed in his resignation and that of his 11-month-old cabinet to King Willem-Alexander. Remaining ministers will stay on in a caretaker capacity until new elections, most likely in October.

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:46 pm

Meta signs deal with nuclear plant to power AI and datacenters for 20 years

Facebook and Instagram parent’s deal follows other big tech companies signing agreements with power companies

Meta on Tuesday said it had struck an agreement to keep one nuclear reactor of a US utility company in Illinois operating for 20 years.

Meta’s deal with Constellation Energy is the social networking company’s first with a nuclear power plant. Other large tech companies are looking to secure electricity as US power demand rises significantly in part due to the needs of artificial intelligence and datacenters. Google has reached agreements to supply its datacenters with nuclear power via a half-dozen small reactors built by a California utility company. Microsoft’s similar contract will restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, the site of the most serious nuclear accident and radiation leak in US history.

Published: June 3, 2025, 3:34 pm

Rome’s taxi drivers outraged at claim they drive like F1’s Max Verstappen

• Mercedes chief Wolff made comparison after Spanish GP

• ‘It would be better if Wolff focused on his own team’

Rome taxi drivers are in uproar at the suggestion they drive as badly as mad Max Verstappen, with some challenging Formula One drivers to navigate the traffic and potholes of the Italian capital as skilfully as they do.

Verstappen, a four-time F1 champion, was issued with a penalty on Sunday after crashing into George Russell’s Mercedes in the Spanish Grand Prix.

Published: June 3, 2025, 3:56 pm

Dutch museum to display 200-year-old condom probably made from sheep’s appendix

Rijksmuseum exhibition includes contraceptive featuring erotic etching of a nun and three clergymen

A 200-year-old illustrated condom will go on display with Dutch golden age masters in Amsterdam this week, after the 19th-century “luxury souvenir” became the first-ever contraceptive sheath to be added to the Rijksmuseum’s art collection.

The condom, which was probably made of a sheep’s appendix circa 1830, is thought to have come from an upmarket brothel in France, most likely in Paris. It features an erotic etching depicting a partially undressed nun pointing at the erect genitals of three clergymen, as well as the phrase Voila, mon choix (“There, that’s my choice”).

Published: June 3, 2025, 1:55 pm

Newark mayor sues New Jersey’s top US prosecutor over detention facility arrest

Ras Baraka was arrested for trespassing last month while trying to visit center with Democratic Congress members

• US politics live – latest updates

Newark’s mayor, Ras Baraka, sued New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor on Tuesday over his arrest on a trespassing charge – which was later dropped – at a federal immigration detention facility.

Baraka, who leads New Jersey’s biggest city, is a candidate in a crowded primary field for the Democratic nomination for governor next Tuesday. The lawsuit against Alina Habba, interim US attorney for New Jersey, coincided with the day early in-person voting began.

Published: June 3, 2025, 4:04 pm

Trump’s education secretary Linda McMahon questioned by Senate committee – US politics live

Former wrestling executive questioned about budget cuts critics say will hurt students at all levels of education

Donald Trump has threatened to impose “large scale fines” on California over the participation of a transgender athlete taking part in a high school competition.

The president wrote on Truth Social:

A Biological Male competed in California Girls State Finals, WINNING BIG, despite the fact that they were warned by me not to do so. As Governor Gavin Newscum fully understands, large scale fines will be imposed!!!

Published: June 3, 2025, 4:50 pm

Trump extendss sympathy after Biden cancer diagnosis – but it doesn’t last long

The president wished his predecessor well but has since reverted to attacks – and dabbled in conspiracy theories

After Joe Biden revealed his cancer diagnosis, Donald Trump offered an uncharacteristically empathetic and simple response.

“Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis. We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery,” the president wrote on social media.

Published: June 3, 2025, 1:00 pm

How the far right seeks to spread its ideology through the publishing world

Efforts raise questions about the far right’s place in the broader culture wars waged by the Trump administration

The far right US publisher Passage Press is now part of Foundation Publishing Group and it is connected via a Foundation director, Daniel Lisi, to Network Press, whose only title to date is an “effective accelerationist” manifesto by the tech-right venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

Another rightwing publisher, science fiction publisher Ark Press, appears connected to Chapter House which Lisi, a literary scenester in Los Angeles, originally co-founded as an independent publisher of poetry, sci-fi and esoterica, but which now presents itself as a homeschooling resource.

Published: June 3, 2025, 10:00 am

‘God gave us Israel, all of it’ | Along the Green Line: episode 1 – video

Since the war in Gaza and the expanding occupation of the West Bank, a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians feels more distant than ever. In this three-part series, the reporter Matthew Cassel travels along the 1949 Armistice border, or ‘Green Line’, once seen as the best hope for a resolution. He meets Palestinians and Israelis living just kilometres apart, but shaped by vastly different realities. This first episode begins in East Jerusalem, a city at the heart of the conflict

Published: June 3, 2025, 9:01 am

Community groups helped shield youth from gun crimes. US funding cuts have put them at risk again

Mississippi’s Operation Good engaged teens in a range of programs, protecting them from violence – but that work is now in jeopardy

Most days, Fredrick Womack and his team can be found scattered throughout Jackson, Mississippi, talking to groups of young Black men and teens – whether they’re working, which bills need to be paid at home and if any brewing conflicts are at risk of turning violent. Through these conversations with young men, who are both perpetrators and victims of much of the city’s violence, Womack hopes he can help steer them in a different direction.

Womack, 51, is the co-founder of the non-profit Operation Good, which, in addition to this work on the streets, hosts a youth summer program and trash cleanups, and helps teen boys find odd jobs, like cutting lawns, so they can earn a few dollars instead of resorting to crime for income. It also offers critical resources for the community, like buying school clothes for kids and paying utility bills for families that can’t afford them through its It Takes a Village program. “That is the main underlying factor for violence,” Womack said, “people living in impoverished situations.”

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘Rust in peace’: why are Germany’s bridges and schools falling apart?

Problems caused by underinvestment are being seized on by the far right as evidence of ‘state failure’

Waiting for the M49 bus to the zoo, Wolfgang, 82, peers down at the crumpled concrete and metal rubble below, the remains of a Berlin bridge recently demolished after wide cracks were discovered.

Over the loud pounding of a hydraulic hammer crushing the concrete, the retired technician says he watched its construction about 60 years earlier from the window of his nearby flat. “Now we have to hope they’ll get their act together to build a new one, though I have my doubts I’ll be alive to see it finished,” he says.

Published: June 3, 2025, 4:00 am

‘Barbaric’: wildlife advocates criticize Florida bear hunt proposal

Controversial plans could see the slaughter of almost 200 black bears, about 5% of the state’s estimated total

It’s tough to be a bear in Florida these days, where only a year ago a Republican state congressman was accusing the ursine population of shooting up crack cocaine and trashing people’s houses.

Then came a controversial new law that allows anybody to shoot and kill any bear perceived as a threat without fear of consequences, which animal advocates say could be bad news for any creature that inadvertently wanders into a back yard.

Published: June 3, 2025, 12:00 pm

Jon Stewart on Elon Musk: ‘Doge has finally rooted out one of America’s least efficient government workers’

Late-night hosts discuss Elon Musk leaving his government role with a black eye, a golden key and a dismal public rating

Late-night hosts celebrated the end of Elon Musk’s tenure with the Trump administration as the head of the “department of government efficiency” (Doge).

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:23 pm

My ex-girlfriend used me for sex. How do I move on from the betrayal?

I told her we’d have to be in a relationship to be lovers again. So we got back together – and two weeks later she ditched me

My last relationship felt like the best sexual relationship I’d ever had. After my marriage ended, exploring intimacy with a new partner with a well-matched libido felt liberating and life-affirming. After a brief split last summer, she reappeared and said she wanted to have sex again but not to resume as a couple. I declined, explaining that intimacy worked for me only in the context of a relationship. She then said she wanted to get back together, so our relationship briefly resumed.

Two weeks later she said she wanted out again, leaving me feeling I had been duped and manipulated. The destruction of trust has eroded much of the confidence I had gained. I have found it impossible to consider starting a new relationship. How do I move on from this feeling and untangle the damage?

Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.

If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:39 pm

AI, bot farms and innocent indie victims: how music streaming became a hotbed of fraud and fakery

Fraudsters use fake artists to juice royalties from streaming services – but real musicians are getting blamed. Might they be better off without Spotify et al?

There is a battle gripping the music business today around the manipulation of streaming services – and innocent indie artists are the collateral damage.

Fraudsters are flooding Spotify, Apple Music and the rest with AI-generated tracks, to try and hoover up the royalties generated by people listening to them. These tracks are cheap, quick and easy to make, with Deezer estimating in April that over 20,000 fully AI-created tracks – that’s 18% of new tracks – were being ingested into its platform daily, almost double the number in January. The fraudsters often then use bots, AI or humans to endlessly listen to these fake songs and generate revenue, while others are exploiting upload services to get fake songs put on real artists’ pages and siphon off royalties that way.

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:00 pm

Remote religion and poisoned arrows – readers’ best photographs

Click here to submit a picture for publication in these online galleries and/or on the Guardian letters page

Published: June 3, 2025, 3:00 pm

Move over Harry and Meghan: Britain’s real royal family are now dominating the US headlines | Arwa Mahdawi

Family fallout. Two feuding brothers. An ambitious American actor wife … the Beckhams certainly seem to have a lot in common with the Sussexes

So long, and thanks for all the jam. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and queen of Montecito, recently announced that she is reimagining As Ever, her raspberry spread and “flower sprinkle” business. In an interview with Fast Company, which Meghan conducted in fluent buzzword, the actor and entrepreneur said she is thinking bigger than jarred goods and partnering with Netflix to bring forth a vision in which “content and commerce meet, not in a product placement way, but rather in an ideological way”. (I think the ideology she is referencing here is capitalism). Meghan is now involved with so many different projects that she notes: “If I had to write a résumé, I don’t know what I would call myself.”

It looks as though her husband, Henry Charles Albert David Mountbatten-Windsor, doesn’t know what to call himself either. The big Harry news from recent days is that the Duke of Sussex had a moment where he considered changing his double-barrelled last name to “Spencer”, in a nod to his late mother and a middle finger to the rest of his family.

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.

Published: June 3, 2025, 1:53 pm

Democratic party leaders just met for the first time in months. When will they take real action? | Norman Solomon

Countless Americans want the party leadership to stand up for democracy. Instead, the executive committee remains in a bubble

People with the power to change the direction of the Democratic party – the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) – met last Friday for the first time in five months.

They took no action.

Norman Solomon is the director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book is War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:00 pm

Online brothels, sex robots, simulated rape: AI is ushering in a new age of violence against women | Laura Bates

When social media first exploded, we missed our chance to protect women and girls. Now history is repeating itself

Society is sleepwalking into a nightmare. The rate of global investment in AI is rocketing, as companies and countries invest in what has been described as a new arms race. The Californian company Nvidia, which dominates the market in the chips needed for AI, has become the most valuable in the world. The trend has been dubbed an “AI frenzy”, with the components described by analysts as the “new gold or oil”.

Everyone is getting in on the act, and politicians are desperate to stake their countries’ claim as global leaders in AI development. Safeguards, equitable access and sustainability are falling by the wayside: when countries gathered for the Paris AI summit in February 2025 and produced an international agreement pledging an “open”, “inclusive” and “ethical” approach to AI, the US and the UK refused to sign it.

Laura Bates is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project and author of The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny.

In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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.

Published: June 3, 2025, 11:00 am

I told the truth about the West Bank and was threatened and assaulted. Now I'm relying on you to act | Issa Amro

Our lives are blighted by illegal settlements, and 22 more have just been approved. Unless Israel is held to account, we will be erased

• Issa Amro is a Palestinian human rights defender

Each of the 22 illegal settlements approved by Israel last week is another nail in the coffin of the peace process, hammered in by the complicity of western governments and corporations. Israeli settlements are not benign civilian neighbourhoods – they are primary instruments of dispossession, control and apartheid. Settlements are closed militarised zones on Palestinians’ stolen land, cutting off our access to our resources, our farms, our schools, our jobs and each other. Palestinian lands rapidly shrink, our livelihoods are devastated, our rights are systematically violated and our identity is undermined.

Western lawmakers look on, expressing commitment to peace through a two-state solution but choosing to do nothing to achieve this goal. Instead, their policies and inaction enable yet further settlement activity.

Issa Amro is a Palestinian human rights defender and co-founder of Youth Against Settlements

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.

Published: June 3, 2025, 4:00 am

My mentor and friend died suddenly while I was at work. The memory of his kindness kept me going | Ranjana Srivastava

After a serious stroke, Mike’s friends rallied around, helping to bring some joy back into his life. His death came as a shock

We are going through the list of overnight admissions when my phone beeps. Expecting a medical request to do something or see someone, my chest cramps at the message.

I must be sufficiently distracted for the trainee to ask, “All OK?”

Published: June 3, 2025, 3:00 pm

French Open: Musetti beats Tiafoe; Swiatek sets up Sabalenka semi – as it happened

Iga Swiatek defeated Elina Svitolina while Aryna Sabalenka saw off Zheng Qinwen, and Lorenzo Musetti beat Frances Tiafoe in four sets

Zheng breaks: Sabalenka 1-2 Zheng* (*denotes next server)

A lovely touch drop volley from Zheng and she’s got a sniff at 0-30 on Sabalenka’s serve. “It’s a good tactic on the slow clay,” says Chris Evert on the commentary. I could listen to her all day. And there’s an “ooooh” from Chrissie when Zheng’s forehand smacks the sideline for a winner! 15-40, two break points. Zheng unwinds with an inside-out forehand … and then comes forward a few steps to wallop another inside-outer and there’s the break!

Published: June 3, 2025, 4:44 pm

The Belgian lab shaping modern soccer’s data revolution

A small corner of one of the world’s oldest universities has moved the sport forward, and made the argument for research institutions writ large

If you hope to grasp why modern soccer looks the way it does, or the long strides we’ve made recently in understanding how it actually functions, it helps to know about what’s been happening at one of the world’s oldest universities, in Belgium.

That’s where you’ll find the Sports Analytics Lab at the Catholic University of Leuven, headed up by Jesse Davis, a Wisconsinite computer science professor. Davis grew up going to basketball and football games at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and didn’t discover soccer until college, during the 2002 World Cup. When he was hired in Leuven in 2010 to research machine learning, data mining and artificial intelligence, a band of sports-besotted colleagues brought him back to soccer.

Published: June 3, 2025, 11:41 am

Former world No 5 Max Homa carries own bag at US Open qualifier after split from caddie

• American parted ways with caddie in recent weeks

• Homa misses out on US Open after fading down stretch

Max Homa stood out more than usual on Monday in a US Open qualifier filled with PGA Tour players. He was the only one carrying his own bag.

Homa didn’t have a caddie and didn’t feel like talking about it, regardless of how much attention it was getting on social media.

Published: June 3, 2025, 1:36 pm

Chicago Fire announce plans to build 22,000-seat stadium near downtown

• The $650m project will anchor an incoming development

• Stadium would be the 22nd soccer-specific venue in MLS

This Chicago Fire on Tuesday announced plans to build a $650m, soccer-specific stadium in the South Loop of Chicago – a venue that will be part of a large development project called “The 78.”

The club aims to open the stadium in the spring of 2028, with the building of the venue itself requiring no public money, according to an announcement by the team’s owner, Joe Mansueto. It is planned to hold 22,000 spectators.

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:53 pm

Why are members of the Super Bowl champion Eagles promoting a right-wing Christian wealth scheme?

Saquon Barkley and other Philadelphia stars lent their names to Life Surge, a controversial faith-based financial seminar. What were they doing there?

The thousands who gathered on Saturday at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia weren’t there for a basketball or hockey game. Instead, the 21,000-seat arena played host to a very different spectacle. The stage was bathed in lights, Christian pop thundered from the speakers and the congregation filed in to hear not just sermons, but also strategies: how to get right with God and get rich doing so.

The billed headliners were five current and former members of the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles. Head coach Nick Sirianni, star running back Saquon Barkley, second-year cornerback Cooper DeJean, and longtime fan favorites Brandon Graham and Brian Dawkins all appeared on promotional materials for Life Surge, a touring Christian financial seminar that promises attendees a blueprint “to grow and use wealth for Kingdom impact”. Ticket packages offering photo ops with the players sold out in advance.

Published: June 2, 2025, 2:11 pm

From Dembélé to Salah: six contenders in an open race for men’s Ballon d’Or

Two of PSG’s Champions League winners are strong contenders but are up against Mohamed Salah

George Weah remains the only African to win the prize and the Liverpool forward’s form in the past year has put him in a similar bracket to the Liberian. “The Egyptian King” scored 29 goals and assisted a further 18 to lead the Reds to the Premier League title, but he could not take them further than the last 16 in the Champions League. Arne Slot played Salah in every league match, a sign of his importance and his stupendous fitness. “He’s had very, very, very good seasons at Liverpool but this one probably stands out in terms of numbers,” Arne Slot said of Salah’s Ballon d’Or chances. “If there’s ever a chance for him, it would be this season. If not, then he’s going to try to push even harder next season”. Turning 33 in mid-June, this might be Salah’s final chance to achieve the highest personal accolade in the game, even if his head coach thinks otherwise.

Published: June 3, 2025, 11:00 am

Olympic champion Gabby Thomas followed and heckled by gambler at Grand Slam Track meet

• Sprinter has reported multiple incidents of verbal abuse

• Growth of betting has been linked to abuse of athletes

Three-times Olympic champion Gabby Thomas said she was verbally abused at the Grand Slam Track meet in Philadelphia last weekend, the latest incident of harassment she has reported this year.

Thomas, who won gold in the 200m, and 4x100m and 4x400m relays in Paris, said in a post on X that a man followed her around the track shouting insults while she was taking photographs with fans and signing autographs.

Published: June 2, 2025, 5:06 pm

Manchester United’s debacle in Asia boosts case against post-season tours

Clubs want to make money and engage fans, but what of the physical toll on tired players and environmental costs?

As the dust settles on Manchester United’s post-season tour of Malaysia and Hong Kong, the question must be asked: was it worth it? United may have pocketed around £10m from their six-day, two-match visit to Asia but what they lost was arguably worse. And no, we’re not just talking about their 1-0 defeat against the “Asean All Stars” in Kuala Lumpur, a scratch, invitational side that had never previously played together.

Omar Berrada, United’s chief executive, had excitedly hailed the tour as an “opportunity for us to collaborate with our valued commercial partners, and to deepen relationships with our fans”. That vision probably didn’t include Amad Diallo sticking his middle finger up at supporters, a gesture for which he refused to apologise, the winger insisting he did it in response to insults about his mother. Nor did it allow for Alejandro Garnacho sulking and yawning through his various off-pitch duties. It remains to be seen how many key performance indicators were met by the Argentinian, who finished the tour by posting a one-word caption on the runway as United departed home to Europe: “finally”.

Published: June 3, 2025, 7:00 am

Lee Jae-myung wins election as South Korean president

Man who led campaign to oust Yoon Suk Yeol wins race as conservative opponent race

Liberal candidate Lee Jae-myung has won the vote to become South Korea’s new president after a snap election triggered by a brief period of martial law imposed by the now-impeached former leader Yoon Suk Yeol.

His closest rival, the conservative Kim Moon-soo, conceded as Lee, of the Democratic party, was comfortably ahead on 48.523% with 70% of the vote counted in the race to lead Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.

Published: June 3, 2025, 4:51 pm

Massachusetts students and teachers protest teen’s ‘inhumane’ arrest by Ice

Milford high school students walk out to support classmate Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, with teachers following: ‘We are inspired by the brave young people’

Students at Massachusetts’s Milford high school staged a walkout on Monday to show support for their classmate Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, who was headed to volleyball practice when he was detained over the weekend by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents who were actually looking for his father.

Gomes Da Silva, a Brazilian national, entered the US in 2012 on a student visa, according to a court document since filed by his lawyer. The filing states that Gomes Da Silva’s student visa status has since lapsed – but that he is eligible for and intends to apply for asylum.

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:49 pm

Obama says Republicans are putting millions of Americans’ healthcare at risk

Rare intervention from former president urges people to call their senators to oppose Trump tax bill

Barack Obama has warned that Congress is putting millions of Americans at risk of losing healthcare coverage, in a rare intervention from the former president as the Republican party advances legislation that would gut major provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

“Congressional Republicans are trying to weaken the Affordable Care Act and put millions of people at risk of losing their health care,” Obama posted on social media. “Call your Senators and tell them we can’t let that happen.”

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:12 pm

Walt Disney’s granddaughter denounces animatronic portrayal of animation legend

Joanna Miller said her grandpa would hate the mechanical replica to be debuted in July, calling it an ‘imposter’

Walt Disney’s granddaughter has condemned the entertainment giant he founded for re-creating the late entrepreneur as a soulless “robotic grampa” for the 70th anniversary celebration of California’s Disneyland theme park in July.

Disney, who died in 1966, will appear as an animatronic figure in a new attraction called Walt Disney – A Magical Life in the park’s Main Street Opera House that commemorates the resort’s 17 July 1955 opening.

Published: June 3, 2025, 4:46 pm

‘Multiple casualties’ reported after attack on UN aid convoy in Darfur

Trucks carrying food for 2m people in famine-threatened El Fasher targeted in RSF-controlled Al Koma, western Sudan

A UN aid convoy carrying critical food supplies to a famine-threatened city in western Sudan has been targeted in an attack that killed five people and injured several others.

Trucks belonging to the UN’s food and children’s agencies were struck as they headed towards El Fasher, capital of North Darfur, which has been besieged by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for more than a year.

Published: June 3, 2025, 3:49 pm

Caribbean beaches blighted by record masses of stinking seaweed

Scientists puzzled by huge amounts of prickly sargassum suffocating shorelines from Puerto Rico to Guyana

A record amount of sargassum has piled up across the Caribbean and nearby areas in May, and more is expected this month, according to a new study.

The brown prickly algae is suffocating shorelines from Puerto Rico to Guyana and beyond, disrupting tourism, killing wildlife and even releasing toxic gases that forced one school in the French Caribbean island of Martinique to temporarily close.

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:44 pm

France opens terror case after Tunisian hairdresser shot dead in ‘racist act’

Inquiry is first since anti-terrorism prosecution unit set up to investigate potential links of crime to ultra-right

French prosecutors have opened a terrorism investigation after a man in the south of France, who they say posted racist videos online, allegedly shot dead his Tunisian neighbour.

Hichem Miraoui, 45, a Tunisian hairdresser who lived in the village of Puget-sur-Argents, near the Mediterranean town of Fréjus, was shot five times near his home late on Saturday and died at the scene.

Published: June 3, 2025, 1:06 pm

Portuguese and German police renew search for Madeleine McCann

Teams expected to use radar equipment that can scan beneath ground as they look for evidence that could implicate prime suspect Christian Brückner

A new search for Madeleine McCann is under way in Portugal with police officers gathering a few miles from where the British toddler was last seen in 2007.

Portuguese and German police are carrying out the search 18 years after the three-year-old disappeared from the resort of Praia da Luz while her parents were having dinner out, leaving her sleeping in a nearby room with her toddler twin siblings.

Published: June 3, 2025, 1:33 pm

Rarely seen metres-long ‘doomsday’ oarfish washes up on Tasmania’s wild west coast

‘King of herrings’ is one of ocean’s longest fish and can grow to eight metres long, living at depths up to 500m in the open sea

At first it looked like a great silver streak on the sand. An oarfish, fantastically long and rarely seen, had washed up on Tasmania’s rugged west coast.

Oarfish, one of the ocean’s longest fish, are astonishing creatures that grow up to eight metres long. Nicknamed the “king of herrings” or more unkindly the “doomsday fish”, some legends and stories consider the animals to be harbingers of disaster.

Published: June 3, 2025, 8:17 am

‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects

A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides

Daniel Janzen only began watching the insects – truly watching them – when his ribcage was shattered. Nearly half a century ago, the young ecologist had been out documenting fruit crops in a dense stretch of Costa Rican forest when he fell in a ravine, landing on his back. The long lens of his camera punched up through three ribs, snapping the bones into his thorax.

Slowly, he dragged himself out, crawling nearly two miles back to the research hut. There were no immediate neighbours, no good roads, no simple solutions for getting to a hospital.

Published: June 3, 2025, 7:00 am

Trump officials open up millions of acres in Alaska to drilling and mining

Doug Burgum says Biden order that banned drilling in 23m-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska will be reversed

Millions of acres of Alaska wilderness will lose federal protections and be exposed to drilling and mining in the Trump administration’s latest move to prioritize energy production over the shielding of the US’s open spaces.

Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said on Monday that the government would reverse an order issued by Joe Biden in December that banned drilling in the remote 23m-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), the New York Times reported.

Published: June 2, 2025, 10:35 pm

Fema chief tells staff he did not know US has hurricane season

Staff reportedly baffled after remark from David Richardson – but spokesperson says comment was a joke

Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled on Monday after the head of the US disaster agency said during a briefing that he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season, according to four sources familiar with the situation.

The US hurricane season officially began on Sunday and lasts through November. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast last week that this year’s season is expected to bring as many as 10 hurricanes.

Published: June 2, 2025, 11:05 pm

Outrage over Peru’s decision to nearly halve protected area near Nazca Lines

Shock decision has raised fears ancient site with almost 2,000-year-old geoglyphs will be exploited by illegal miners

Archaeologists and environmentalists have expressed their outrage at a shock decision by Peru’s culture ministry to cut by nearly half the protected archaeological park around the Nazca Lines, excluding an area nearly the size of urban Lima, the country’s capital city.

The Unesco world heritage site attracts thousands of tourists to see the vast hummingbird, monkey and whale figures in the desert in Peru’s second-biggest tourist attraction after Machu Picchu. Last year, archaeologists using AI discovered hundreds of new geoglyphs dating back more than 2,000 years, predating the famous lines in the sand.

Published: June 2, 2025, 10:36 pm

Will AI wipe out the first rung of the career ladder?

Generative AI is reshaping the job market, and it’s starting with entry-level roles

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week, I’m wondering what my first jobs in journalism would have been like had generative AI been around. In other news: Elon Musk leaves a trail of chaos, and influencers are selling the text they fed to AI to make art.

New AI test can predict which men will benefit from prostate cancer drug

‘One day I overheard my boss saying: just put it in ChatGPT’: the workers who lost their jobs to AI

US lawyer sanctioned after being caught using ChatGPT for court brief

Published: June 3, 2025, 1:21 pm

UK will slump to 1% growth next year as Trump tariffs bite, says OECD

US, Mexico and Canada economies likely to be worst affected by ongoing tariff battles, says forecast

• Business live – latest updates

The UK’s economic growth will be slower than expected this year and next as the damage caused by Donald Trump’s tariff war hits trade and investment, according to a gloomy forecast by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The international body downgraded its expectations for this year and next from a forecast made in March, pushing down UK growth from 1.4% to 1.3% in 2025 and from 1.2% to 1% next year. Constraints on Whitehall spending and higher than expected inflation also played a part in a downgrade, the OECD said.

Published: June 3, 2025, 8:57 am

Florida sandwich shop staffer helps free kidnapped domestic violence victim

Jersey Mike’s employee reportedly called county sheriff’s office after finding note in store bathroom that read ‘HELP’

A Navarre, Florida, sandwich shop employee reportedly helped authorities save a domestic violence victim who had allegedly been kidnapped by her abusive, pro-wrestler boyfriend after the worker recently found a note in a store bathroom that read “HELP!”

At the center of the incident is Eleanor Coffee, who was at her job making sandwiches for a shop belonging to the Jersey Mike’s chain when she noticed a “little piece of crumpled up paper” that had been discarded next to one of the business’s toilet paper dispensers, as she put it to the local news station WEAR-TV.

Published: June 3, 2025, 11:00 am

‘I was let out’: New Orleans man who escaped jail pleads case on social media

Man identifying himself as Antoine Massey, one of 10 who escaped in May and who is still at large, protests innocence

A man still at large after escaping from a New Orleans jail last month appears to have taken to social media to plead his case to the public.

In a video that quickly went viral, the man identifying himself as Antoine Massey – one of 10 prisoners who fled from the Orleans Justice center (OJC) on 16 May – said he was wrongfully accused and held up papers he said corroborated his innocence.

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:05 am

Outrage over arrest of Kenyan software developer as regional repression grows

Rose Njeri charged with breaching cybercrime law over tool for people to show opposition to proposed tax changes

A Kenyan software developer who was arrested last week after creating a tool for people to express their opposition to a proposed law has been arraigned in court and released on bail, amid public anger at her detention and growing signs of repression in the east African country and its neighbours.

Rose Njeri was charged on Tuesday with “unauthorised interference with a computer system” in violation of the country’s computer misuse and cybercrime law.

Published: June 3, 2025, 1:34 pm

Nato to force UK to lift defence spending to 3.5% of GDP to appease Trump, say sources

Starmer bound to accept Mark Rutte’s higher target after announcing ‘Nato-first’ defence strategy, insiders say

Defence sources believe that Britain will be forced to sign up to a target of lifting defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 at this month’s Nato summit after a campaign by the alliance’s secretary general to keep Donald Trump onboard.

One senior insider said Britain would “without a doubt” sign up to a proposal from the Nato chief, Mark Rutte, to lift allies’ defence spending, which would represent a real-terms increase of about £30bn from the Labour government’s plan.

Published: June 3, 2025, 11:00 am

‘What a girl!’ Lost dog returns after swimming to island on 100-mile journey

Adventurous Amber spotted by two men in a boat in Poole Harbour after travelling across Hampshire and Dorset

An adventurous dog who went missing for 36 days and covered about 100 miles before swimming to an island, has returned from her extended walkies after being rescued by a passing ferry.

Amber, a five-year-old retriever cross, had been rescued as a street puppy in Qatar by a charity and moved to the UK but went missing after only one night with her new foster family near Bramshaw, in the New Forest.

Published: June 3, 2025, 8:44 am

Google working on AI email tool that can ‘answer in your style’

Demis Hassabis, head of Google DeepMind, says he wants AI to clear inboxes by making ‘some of the easier decisions’

The march of artificial intelligence is predicted to bring monumental changes on a par with the advent of the internet or even the Industrial Revolution. But before all that, one of the technology’s leading figures wants it to solve a more urgent problem – the tyranny of the email inbox.

Demis Hassabis, the head of Google DeepMind, has revealed he and his team are working on “next-generation email” that will deal with the daily grind of sorting through emails, replying to the most mundane ones and avoiding the need to apologise profusely for missing an important message.

Published: June 3, 2025, 7:33 am

‘British feminism needs reshaping’: Kate Nash on her new single about trans rights

The British pop musician questions the gender-critical movement in her new song Germ, and argues that cis women need to stand up for the trans community

In Kate Nash’s new single, released last week, the 37-year-old musician and actor has coined a new acronym, Germ: “girl, exclusionary, regressive, misogynist”. In the lyrics, she states: “You’re not radical … You’re not rad at all,” and that “using feminism to erase the rights of others and endanger them is inherently un-feminist”. It arose from Nash seeing “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” – the contentious term “terf” – as something of a misnomer. Those who espouse gender-critical views are, in her opinion, neither radical nor feminist.

The song was written in response to last month’s supreme court ruling that the legal definition of “woman” ought to be based on biological sex (a judgement that doctors at the British Medical Association have called “scientifically illiterate”). “I have a lot of trans people in my life that I care about,” Nash tells me on the day the track is released. “This feminist-trans ‘debate’ – it’s not a debate to me. A friend of mine was the victim of a hate crime last year. I took the ruling very personally.” She says the time felt right for her to speak out. “The LGBTQIA+ community supports women so much, and they have been there for me in my life and career. That’s why I think cis women really owe it to trans people to step up at this moment. This song is for that community.”

Published: June 3, 2025, 10:00 am

‘Hard for me to understand’: grappling with the Charlottesville tragedy eight years on

Author and Charlottesville native Deborah Baker revisits the devastating events of 2017 and examines how they speak to a difficult past

Deborah Baker’s new book, Charlottesville, is about her home town in Virginia, where in summer 2017 white supremacists marched, violence erupted and a counter-protester was murdered. In dizzying detail, Baker charts and reports the chaos. In interludes, she examines the dark history of a city long linked to racist oppression, from the days of Thomas Jefferson, Robert E Lee and slavery to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and resistance to civil rights reform.

Putting it all together was a new challenge for a writer whose books include In Extremis, a biography of the 20th-century poet Laura Riding, and A Blue Hand: The Beats in India.

Published: June 3, 2025, 9:29 am

The Encampments review – account of pro-Palestine student protests overtaken by events

Documentary on Columbia unrest of April 2024, when students set up an outdoor camp, is fascinating but much has been superseded by the arrest of student organiser Mahmoud Khalil after the re-election of Trump

The horror of Gaza is approached in this documentary via a story from the Joe Biden era – and it has arguably been overtaken by events. In 2024, students at New York’s Columbia University set up outdoor pro-Palestinian protest encampments, filling East Butler Lawn with tents; this was in the boisterous tradition of the 1960s anti-Vietnam-war campus demonstrations and the Occupy Wall Street movement, demanding an end to Columbia’s direct and indirect investment in Israel. The protests were led by the calm and personable figure of student Mahmoud Khalil and protesters were entitled to point out that Columbia had, after all, divested from Russia over Ukraine.

The protests carried on and spread to other universities in the US, and Columbia president Minouche Shafik came under immense pressure. The encampment escalated to the occupation of a university building, which gave the university authorities the pretext they needed for sending in the NYPD, and the protest was violently, acrimoniously (but not completely) halted.

Published: June 3, 2025, 8:00 am

Dangerous Animals review – shark-bait thriller boasts a gnarly Jai Courtney

A badass surfer on Australia’s Gold Coast takes on a villainous tour guide who is ferrying unwary sightseers to view the sharks

Sean Byrne’s gonzo horror thriller premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section of this year’s Cannes film festival, in the sidebar where Cannes traditionally finds a place in its heart for genre or offbeat fare. Yet despite this stamp of authority – and a lead turn from Jai Courtney that could best be described as “gnarly” – I couldn’t get behind this movie, which has a bargain-basement straight-to-streaming feel to it.

The scene is the Australian Gold Coast where surfers come to catch gigantic waves. Hassie Harrison (from TV’s Yellowstone) plays a badass surfer named Zephyr, who travels around in her van as free as the wind sampling the most outrageous swells. She meets-cute with Moses (Josh Heuston), a nerdy guy who is very sweet and yet also kind of hot. When they part, Zephyr is to come fatefully into contact with the film’s horrible villain, a beefy, bullish guy called Tucker, played by Courtney, who has a business taking attractive twentysomething tourists wearing only swimming costumes out on his boat, promising them an intimate encounter with sharks. But the unspeakable Tucker, a great shark enthusiast himself, has some pretty unusual ideas about the food he wants to offer to bring these creatures up to his boat.

Published: June 3, 2025, 6:00 am

What It Feels Like for a Girl review – deeply disturbing and totally fearless TV

This extraordinary adaptation of Paris Lees’ memoir follows wild, witty teen Byron as they go from cottaging for cash aged 15 to finding solace in a raucous gang of trans and queer pals. You’ll never look at a loo brush the same way

The title suggests a generic experience of nascent womanhood, but What It Feels Like for a Girl is miles from your typical female bildungsroman. This adaptation of journalist Paris Lees’ excellent memoir about growing up in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire (or ’Ucknall, as the book, with its mesmeric phonetic dialect, has it) chronicles the coming-of-age of Byron, who is seen by others as a boy. Initially, our protagonist doesn’t really push back on that; despite some early gender dysphoria – angrily dismissed by their macho father – the prospect of one day openly living as a woman is completely outside their frame of reference. (Lees herself prefers to use “they/them” for Byron now.) On a visit to a nightclub, Byron (Ellis Howard) encounters future friend Lady Die, who makes a joke about someone being a transsexual. “What’s a transsexual?” asks Byron – smiling, mystified.

This is the early 00s, you see: pre Nadia’s Big Brother win, although a couple of years post Hayley Cropper’s Corrie debut. Still, in terms of the general public’s comprehension of trans issues, it is the dark ages. (Thanks to the current Y2K fashion renaissance, however, the aesthetics are positively aspirational: dumbphones, chokers, FCUK slogan tees, Kappa tracksuits.) Yet Byron’s eventual gender transition isn’t what makes this an extraordinary and at times deeply disturbing account of a partly misspent youth. The reason 15-year-old Byron is at the aforementioned club in the first place is because they are searching for their erstwhile boyfriend Max (Sweetpea’s Calam Lynch). But Max isn’t just Byron’s first love – he’s also their pimp. A chance encounter in a public toilet introduced Byron to cottaging; they then begin performing sex acts on strangers for money. Byron’s success in the field – and enthusiasm for the job – means they are soon headhunted by Max to meet the demands of wealthier clients.

Published: June 3, 2025, 5:00 am

Bogieville review – trailer-park vampire thriller is filled with prosthetic fangs

Director Sean Cronin also acts, but the real star is teenager Poppie Jae Hughes – which doesn’t say much for its more senior players

Something has definitely gone awry when the best acting in a film comes from a little kid playing a supporting vampire. In this case, it’s Poppie Jae Hughes, having the time of her life hissing and snarling, caked in makeup and rocking some evil looking prosthetic fangs. Perhaps Hughes outclasses the adults so easily because her role doesn’t require much in the way of dialogue. The rest of the cast are mostly British actors hamming it up with absurd sounding “southern” American accents that range widely across the territory below the Mason-Dixon line. Compelled to deliver way more dialogue than they can feasibly handle given their meagre performing skills, it’s not pretty.

Otherwise this is a cheap as chips but not unamusing farrago that unfolds in a wee vampire community known as Bogieville, a trailer park where visitors either become lunch or never leave. The latter seems to be the fate of unlucky couple Ham (Arifin Putra) and Jody (Eloise Lovell Anderson) who stumble on Bogieville accidentally, and are chosen by the sole non-vampiric resident, caretaker Crawford (Hanathan Hansler), to look after the community after he dies someday. While the young lovers are subjected to vast wodges of verbal exposition and clunky flashbacks from Crawford, the film occasionally cuts away to the police and a doctor (Angela Dixon) who have cottoned on to the bloodsuckers’ presence in the vicinity and are out to hunt them down.

Published: June 3, 2025, 12:00 pm

WTF with Marc Maron is ending. Here are five of the podcast’s best interviews

After nearly 16 years the veteran standup comic is calling time on the show that redefined podcasting

It’s the end of an era: Marc Maron has announced that he’s ending his popular and influential podcast WTF with Marc Maron after nearly 16 years and more than 1,600 episodes. The final episode will be released later this year.

“Sixteen years we’ve been doing this, and we’ve decided that we had a great run,” Maron says on Monday’s episode. “Basically, it’s time, folks. It’s time. WTF is coming to an end. It’s our decision. We’ll have our final episode sometime in the fall.”

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:48 am

Pulp: More review – anthems and rage for the next life stage

(Rough Trade)
Jarvis Cocker and the band’s first album in 24 years delivers a refreshing take on middle age, with all the the skewed observation and joyful melodic flourishes of old

Time has been particularly kind to Pulp. As Jarvis Cocker points out on Spike Island, the lead single from their first album in 24 years, their 2002 split went largely unlamented: they had already succeeded in considerably reducing the size of their audience with 1998’s claustrophobic album This Is Hardcore and 2001’s Scott Walker-produced We Love Life. An ostensibly valedictory greatest hits album spent a single week in the lower reaches of the Top 75. And the year after their demise, John Harris’s Britpop history The Last Party noted tartly that Pulp’s music had “rather dated”. “The universe shrugged, then moved on,” sings Cocker, which is a perhaps more poetic reiteration of what he said at the time: the greatest hits album was “a real silent fart” and “nobody was that arsed, evidently”.

But subsequent years significantly burnished their memory. It was frequently noted that, besides the Manic Street Preachers’ A Design for Life, Common People was the only significant hit of the Britpop years that might be described as a protest song, a bulwark against the accusation that the era had nothing more substantial to offer than flag-waving and faux-gorblimey. At a time when ostensibly “alternative” rock bands had seemed suddenly desperate for mainstream acceptance, Pulp had become huge by sticking up for outsiders and weirdos. Mis-Shapes, for example, hymned the kinds of people one suspected some of Oasis’s fans would have happily thumped.

Published: June 2, 2025, 7:27 am

From hedgehog attacks to a supernatural voyage into colonialism: best podcasts of the week

Do sharks have best pals? Can cute-seeming animals be vicious? And does ancestry matter any more? The answers lie in this week’s finest listens

“Who really gives a shit about roots any more,” asks Dashon (Caleb McLaughlin), a Detroit teenager who, in this audio drama, is begrudgingly in Zimbabwe with his family. He is indifferent towards their African ancestry, leading to uncomfortable conversations about race, colonialism and privilege. That could be a provocative enough story, but the supernatural twists that follow really elevate this production. Hannah J Davies
Audible, all episodes out now

Published: June 2, 2025, 6:00 am

‘Yes, there was a riot, but it was great’: Cabaret Voltaire on violent gigs, nuclear noise – and returning to mark 50 years

They made music like sonic warfare, using steamhammers for drums and annoying anyone they could. As the band return, they relive the mayhem years – and their soundtrack spinoffs, from Attenborough to Chernobyl

Fifty years ago, Cabaret Voltaire shocked the people of Sheffield into revolt. A promoter screamed for the band to get off stage, while an audience baying for blood had to be held back with a clarinet being swung around for protection. All of which was taking place over the deafening recording of a looped steamhammer being used in place of a drummer, as a cacophony of strange, furious noises drove the crowd into a frenzy. “We turned up, made a complete racket, and then got attacked,” recalls Stephen Mallinder. “Yes, there was a bit of a riot, and I ended up in hospital, but it was great. That gig was the start of something because nothing like that had taken place in Sheffield before. It was ground zero.”

Mallinder and his Cabaret Voltaire co-founder Chris Watson are sitting together again in Sheffield, looking back on that lift-off moment ahead of a handful of shows to commemorate the milestone. “It is astonishing,” says Watson. “Half a century. It really makes you stop, think and realise the significance.” The death in 2021 of third founding member Richard H Kirk was a trigger for thinking about ending things with finality. “It’ll be nice if we can use these shows to remind people what we did,” says Mallinder. “To acknowledge the music, as well as get closure.”

Published: June 2, 2025, 4:00 am

Going Nuclear by Tim Gregory review – a boosterish case for atomic energy

Safety concerns demand more space and consideration in this otherwise excellent work of popular science

There is something biblical about the fraternal relationship between the atomic bomb and the nuclear reactor. Both involve bombarding uranium-235 atoms with neutrons to produce a chain reaction via nuclear fission. Both were made possible in the same instant, at 3.25pm on 2 December 1942, when the Manhattan Project’s Enrico Fermi orchestrated the first human-made chain reaction in the squash court of the University of Chicago. “The flame of nuclear fission brought us to the forked road of promise and peril,” writes Tim Gregory.

The bomb came first, of course, but atomic dread coexisted with tremendous optimism about what President Eisenhower dubbed “atoms for peace”: the potential of controlled fission to generate limitless energy. As David Lilienthal of the US Atomic Energy Commission observed, atom-splitting thus inspired a pseudo-religious binary: “It would either destroy us all or it would bring about the millennium.”

Published: June 2, 2025, 8:00 am

The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey review – beyond the bounds of fiction

You can read it from either end, and go round again, as memoir collides with invention in a brilliant interrogation of art, faith and relationships

From her debut, Nobody Is Ever Missing, to 2023’s Biography of X, Catherine Lacey’s work has tested the forms and fabric of the novel with brilliant unease. In The Möbius Book, her experiment crosses the blurred border of fiction into something else. Life writing, autofiction, memoir? Whatever you call it, The Möbius Book is deeply serious and engrossingly playful, and it lavishly rewards serious, playful attention.

A Möbius strip is a length of any material joined into a loop with a half twist. It’s an uncanny shape, common and obvious, easily created and yet awkward to describe geometrically. For literary purposes, a Möbius is interesting because there’s intricate structure and constraint but no ending. It goes around again, mirrored with a twist. Lacey’s book takes this literally, the text printed from both ends, with memoir and fiction joined in the middle. Twin stories experiment with plotlessness and irresolution, while remaining aware of the way fiction attaches itself to linear plot and reverts to romance and quest. Characters find and lose love, find and lose meaning.

Published: June 2, 2025, 6:00 am

Poem of the week: Two sonnets by Claude McKay

The Harlem Renaissance poet brings classical craft to a pair of works reflecting on the ‘cultured hell’ of a black US citizen

America

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, nor a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Published: June 2, 2025, 9:00 am

Survival Kids proves Nintendo Switch 2 isn’t just about Mario Kart World

Everyone might be talking about the new title from gaming’s favourite plumber, but there’s at least one other interesting original launching with the new console this week

The interesting thing about console launches is that you never know what unexpected treasures will emerge from the first batch of games. Who could have foretold that the hero of the PlayStation launch would be a fireworks simulation (Fantavision), or that the most joyous title in the initial GameCube lineup would involve simians racing each other in giant transparent globes (Super Monkey Ball)?

The latest example could well be Konami’s Survival Kids, the only new third-party game in the Switch 2 opening wave. It’s the latest in the publisher’s cult series of tropical island survival sims, which began on the Game Boy Color and, despite never really attracting vast global success, continued on to the Nintendo DS under a new name, Lost in Blue. Now it’s back as a familyfriendly co-op survival adventure, in which groups of up to four players are shipwrecked on a mysterious archipelago, and must survive by gathering resources, crafting tools, finding food and exploring a series of lush, cartoonish environments. Four people can play online, but the game also supports Switch 2’s game sharing, which lets one person who owns the game connect wirelessly with other consoles to play together.

Published: June 3, 2025, 9:00 am

‘Five years from now, these readers will be soldiers’: The Russian literature encouraging teens to enlist

Master-race stories of heroic characters battling against zombie Nazis and western spies to recover imperial grandeur are a bleak new spin on an old propaganda tradition

‘Z literature”, a subgenre of Russian fantasy fiction characterised by nationalistic, pro-war storylines, has been on the rise since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began three years ago and may be pushing young readers towards enlisting in combat.

Z literature – named after the “Z” symbol of support for the invasion – often features popadantsy, or “accidental travel” narratives, involving a protagonist being transported to pivotal moments in Russia’s past and using modern knowledge to intervene and alter history in Russia’s favour.

Published: June 3, 2025, 3:41 pm

Video stars: the booming VJ scene localising Hollywood films for Ugandans

Part-interpreters, part-comedians, video jockeys translate and contextualise western movies for audiences at home

On a recent Saturday afternoon in an informal settlement in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, dozens of young men sat on benches in a dark shack to watch a bootlegged version of the Hollywood comedy-horror film The Monkey.

As the English-language action unfolded on the screen, a voiceover translation in the Bantu language Luganda by VJ Junior, one of Uganda’s top video jockeys, boomed into the room.

Published: June 3, 2025, 12:12 pm

Glastonbury announces full lineup for 2025 … but who are Patchwork?

Festival adds secret sets to lineup at prime slots on Pyramid and Park stages, as it reveals full timings and artist details

Glastonbury festival has announced its full lineup of over 3,000 performances between 25 and 29 June, adding a number of new artists to the main stages along with timings and a series of tantalising secret sets.

Installed in a plum spot at 6.15pm on the Pyramid stage on Saturday night, after John Fogerty and before Raye and Neil Young, is an act called Patchwork – unlikely to be the “alternative country fusion” band from British Columbia or Tennessee’s “occult emotional hardcore” outfit of the same name. In 2023, Glastonbury hosted a similarly unheard-of band called the Churnups playing on the Pyramid stage, who ended up being Foo Fighters.

Published: June 3, 2025, 9:14 am

‘We need new numbers’: Comedian David Cross cracks jokes to spread climate crisis awareness

The Emmy award winning comic teams up with renowned scientist Michael Oppenheimer for a new video campaign

David Cross is many things: a famed comic, an Emmy award winner, and a New York Times bestseller. But he is not a climate scientist.

That fact might make him the perfect person to communicate the urgency of global heating to mass audiences.

Published: June 2, 2025, 12:00 pm

I was ghosted at 54. Here’s why I choose to think of it as empowering

I may never know what happened, but I’ve decided my story is a comedy – and I have an amazing group of friends to tell it to

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I’m a 21st-century spinster: last year, I turned 54 and hadn’t had a relationship (or a good date!) for almost five years.

Before that, I’d taken dating for granted. Marriage was never my goal, and I don’t have children. Since college, there’d been a steady pattern of long-term, wonderful relationships. I’m lucky; I’m a woman who’s been loved.

Published: June 2, 2025, 4:00 pm

What’s worse than being ghosted? Dating a ‘submariner’

There is a new type of toxic dater in town – one who disappears, then resurfaces

Name: Submarining.

Age: The first contraption that could really be called a submarine was built by a Dutchman, Cornelis Drebbel, in 1620 for King James I, and tested on the Thames.

Published: June 3, 2025, 2:03 pm

Therapy isn’t about life hacks. The best solutions are simpler – and more complex

What we want is quick, clever fixes. What we need is quite different: the ability to tolerate intolerable feelings, to sustainably change and grow

When people seek therapy – and I know this, because I too was once a person seeking therapy – we often want strategies, techniques and tools for our toolboxes. We want to be asked questions and to know the answers; we want to ask questions and to be given answers. We believe that these are the things we need to build a better life.

Now that I am a patient in psychoanalysis, and I am a psychodynamic psychotherapist treating patients, I can see why my therapist needed to frustrate this desire, and offer me the opposite. What I wanted was to manage myself out of my emotions rather than feel them, to hack my life rather than live it – and that makes for a shallower existence, not a better one.

Published: June 2, 2025, 10:00 am

Which dips are OK to buy, and which should I make? | Kitchen aide

Our expert panel recommends the dips that are worth whizzing up fresh at home, and which shop-bought options are good to be titivated before serving

Dips are a great unifier, whether they’re married to a big bowl of crisps and crudites or served as a companion for a picnic spread. If there’s hummus, cacik or borani in the picture, then it’s a party. Happily, says David Carter, founder of Smokestak, Manteca and Oma in London, “you can get a lot of good stuff in stores these days”. That said, he adds, anything involving vegetables is “always going to be best when made fresh”.

If your dip needs lead you to the shops, the trick is to create contrast. Much like getting dressed, you first need to consider the temperature. “Let’s say you have some shop-bought hummus,” Carter says. “If you put that in a pan with a bit of hot water and maybe some lemon juice, then whisk, the hummus will loosen, turn creamy and completely change from the usual fridge-cold stodge.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Published: June 3, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘The walk is shot through with melancholy and romance’: a new trail to the north face of the Eiger

The hike offers dramatic views of the Swiss Alps’ ‘murder wall’ – and poignant insights into the climbers who first braved it. For the son of one of those pioneers, it had a special resonance

A few years ago, my dad told me of a mountain where I could easily sense another world. “There is a special air and light,” he had said, vaguely. “You just have to walk close to it to feel and see it. Stand in one place and just look up.”

The mountain on my dad’s mind that day was the Eiger, Switzerland’s 3,970-metre ogre of limestone and ice. Like few others, the peak exerts a gravitational pull on climbers and it remains the chief symbol of the Bernese Oberland; its most notable feature, the 1,800-metre north face, is the largest in the Alps. This gigantic slab looms over the village of Grindelwald, to the south-east of the town of Interlaken, appearing at sunrise as an immense black spectre in a valley of green.

Published: June 3, 2025, 6:00 am

Jonathan Anderson: the esoteric designer taking on the mantle at Dior

Appointment of Northern Irishman behind Loewe hype machine sets storied fashion house on experimental path

Long before the designer Jonathan Anderson stepped down from his role at Loewe in March, it was rumoured he would be heading for Dior. So when it was finally announced – six months after Dior’s menswear designer left, and four days after its womenswear head, Maria Grazia Chiuri, showed a collection in Rome – it surprised no one.

Yet Anderson’s newfound position at luxury’s centre of gravity still sets Dior, a grand fashion institution, careering down an experimental path. As Delphine Arnault, the chair and chief executive of Christian Dior Couture, told Vogue Business: “For any house, having new artistic direction can be a challenge.”

Published: June 2, 2025, 4:11 pm

College dorm room essentials: students and parents in the US, tell us your must-have items

Current students, recent students and parents, tell us your recommendations at thefilter.us@theguardian.com

We’re putting together a guide to dorm room essentials – and we need your help.

Students and parents alike, we want to know the must-have items that got you (or your child) through college. What small gadget made living in a tiny space more manageable? What do you wish you’d brought from home?

Published: June 2, 2025, 11:00 am

‘I’m in pain from smiling so much’: JoJo Siwa on surviving Mickey Rourke and finding love on Celebrity Big Brother

At 22, the singer and reality TV star has lived most of her life in the limelight. What’s it like to be managed by your mother, run a billion-dollar business in your teens and be dismissed as ‘the lesbian’ by a Hollywood legend?

A week before JoJo Siwa entered the Celebrity Big Brother house, she had a presentiment about it. “Something feels different,” she told her mother (and manager) Jessalynn. “I don’t think I’m gonna win, but I think I’m gonna change.” Siwa’s initial hunch was that the transformation would be in her career, she says. “Little did I know it was going to change my personal life so much. By a landslide, it is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Siwa may be only 22, but it’s still quite the statement. As the breakout talent of the American reality TV series Dance Moms, she was arguably the biggest child star of the 2010s, at 11 years old instantly memorable for her larger-than-life personality and equally outsized hair bow. By the time she turned 15, in 2018, Siwa was a cross-platform tween sensation, with 5 million YouTube subscribers (now 12 million), a Nickelodeon deal, a burgeoning pop career and a staggeringly successful hair accessory business.

Published: June 2, 2025, 4:00 am

Operation Spiderweb: a visual guide to Ukraine’s destruction of Russian aircraft

In a spectacular attack planned over 18 months, Ukrainian agents moved drones and explosives deep inside Russia to strike four airbases

A Ukrainian drone attack has destroyed billions of dollars worth of Russian aircraft stationed at bases across the country, including at locations as far away as Siberia, in what Kyiv claims is its longest-range assault of the war.

The spectacular operation, known as Spiderweb, was prepared in secret over 18 months. Ukraine’s agents moved short-range drones and explosives inside Russia before they were launched remotely for a coordinated strike on Sunday that was intended to strike at Moscow’s air superiority.

Published: June 2, 2025, 12:57 pm

Livestock markets and praying hands: photos of the day – Tuesday

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Published: June 3, 2025, 3:39 pm