‘The explosion is what I remember’: man nearly sucked out of Ryanair plane recounts ordeal

Exclusive: Ljubisa Karović tells Guardian the fact that he lived to tell the tale is nothing short of a miracle

It is the explosion just before he was nearly sucked out of the aircraft that Ljubisa Karović remembers. The thunderous noise of the window shattering that roused him from slumber in 11F, his window seat on the early morning Ryanair flight from Greece to Germany.

Eleven days and 11 nights later, it remains the prelude “to the chaos, the catastrophe” that keeps him awake at night.

Published: July 21, 2026, 11:26 am

Could the World Cup be back in the US as soon as 2038? Absolutely

Explosion in ticketing and hospitality revenue goes along with a Fifa desire to recoup lost TV income in future deals

As is often the case, it has been left to Donald Trump to say the quiet bit out loud. “We have to do this again and we have to do it while I’m around, you hear that Gianni?” the US president told Fox News in an interview broadcast in the buildup to the World Cup final.

An American bid for the 2038 World Cup has been the talk of the hotel lobbies populated by administrators from around the world over the past month, who have watched this country’s seemingly limitless appetite for major events and willingness to pay whatever it takes to attend them.

Published: July 21, 2026, 12:00 pm

Social Darwinists to tech bros: tracing the long fight against equality in US

Historian Kim Phillips-Fein’s book Country of Lords looks back at the many men who have tried to fight against egalitarianism, from John Adams to Peter Thiel

The historian Kim Phillips-Fein’s new book is published amid celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence and its truth “self-evident, that all men are created equal”. Country of Lords, however, is a history of Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America.

Concise and hard-hitting, the book arrives at a time of glaring social and economic inequality, Phillips-Fein seeing Elon Musk “emerging as a trillionaire very much on people’s minds, with a deep level of discomfort, both fear and anger about what this portends”.

Published: July 21, 2026, 3:00 am

Hunter Biden for president? Stranger things have happened | Arwa Mahdawi

Once Republicans’ favourite punchline, Joe Biden’s son is now building an online following by trolling JD Vance, taunting Trump and embracing the absurdity of US politics

What sort of longshot candidate do we reckon is going to run for US president in 2028? The Rock? Kim Kardashian? Kermit the Frog? US politics has become so debased that being rich, famous and a natural-born citizen (sorry, Zohran Mamdani) now seem to be the only qualifications required for a job in the White House.

Which is why you shouldn’t entirely write off murmurings that Hunter Biden might be interested in following in his daddy’s presidential footsteps. When asked by a Fox News reporter about Hunter’s 2028 odds last month, Donald Trump suggested Joe Biden’s prodigal son might “do well”. If other “basket case[s]” in the Democratic party could do well, Trump added, then Hunter probably had a shot. Various analysts appear to agree. “Could Hunter Biden run for office? Don’t rule it out,” a recent Times headline blared. The article quotes a Biden biographer saying: “With a character like Hunter Biden in a populist, social media-driven political environment, you have to never say never.”

Published: July 21, 2026, 8:06 am

Tick bites are on the rise in the US and UK. Here’s how to protect yourself

Experts share tips to avoid the blood-sucking pests that can transmit Lyme disease and other illnesses on to humans

I won’t go into gory detail about the tick I found latched behind my ear approximately 35 hours after a hike in early June. Suffice it to say, the parasite was well fed, and I was horrified.

I am far from alone in making such a disgusting discovery. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), emergency room visits for tick bites have been unusually high in the US this year. Thirty-one million Americans are bitten by ticks annually – and the number has been trending up for over a decade. In the UK, ticks appear to be rising in number and species variety.

Published: July 21, 2026, 9:00 am

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should run for president | Bhaskar Sunkara

The congresswoman can run a serious national campaign on the left and pull a movement in behind it. She should get in early

In the summer of 2018, almost no one thought Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could beat Joe Crowley. Crowley was a 10-term incumbent, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, a man some thought would one day be speaker. A 28-year-old former bartender and democratic socialist was the longest of long shots to succeed him. But ever since she did, the political establishment has been trying to decide whether to take her seriously.

For a while it decided not to. The Missouri representative Emanuel Cleaver said the Democratic caucus did not need her “sniping”, while the then senator Claire McCaskill dismissed her as a “bright and shiny new object”. Ocasio-Cortez seemed to enjoy the response. Asked on 60 Minutes whether she wanted people to underestimate her, she said: “Absolutely. That’s how I won my primary.”

Published: July 21, 2026, 5:00 am

‘We were at their mercy’: inside the Amazon tactics that hiked prices across the internet

Internal emails revealed in court and interviews with ex-employees describe how Amazon’s practices drove up prices for competitors like Walmart and Target. Amazon denies price-fixing claims and says it works to lower costs for consumers

A “modern leather” table lamp, listed online at Walmart, shot up from $24.99 to $39.

The price of an air fryer on a retail site called Newegg went from $84.99 to $149.99.

An electric ice-cream maker was listed at just $17.99 at Amazon and Best Buy. Then it became unavailable at Best Buy, and more than tripled in price to $59.99 at Amazon.

Published: July 21, 2026, 9:39 am

Houthis threaten to attack shipping tankers if they use Saudi Arabian ports on Red Sea

Warning to shipping companies, on top of Iran’s chokehold on strait of Hormuz, may severely affect Saudi oil exports

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Yemen’s Iranian-aligned Houthis have warned shipping companies that their tankers risk being attacked if they use Saudi Arabian ports, as the militia moved quickly to enforce a blockade announced the previous day.

The Houthi warning for the Red Sea, coming on top of Iran’s threat to shipping on the other side of the Arabian peninsular in the Gulf, could affect the substantial Saudi oil exports that have so far been unscathed by the months-long conflict and deepen the rapidly escalating crisis in the region.

Published: July 21, 2026, 10:27 am

RFK Jr pauses $1bn Medicaid funding to California and Minnesota

Trump’s health secretary says AI used to identify potential fraud in Democratic-run states

The Trump administration has paused more than $1bn in Medicaid funding to California and Minnesota, citing “suspected fraud and noncompliance” – withholding of funding that follows a $243m pause in Medicaid payments to Minnesota earlier this year.

“If those states want that money, they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate,” said Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Published: July 21, 2026, 9:09 am

Pete Hegseth defends ongoing war in Iran and requests $88bn more to pay for it during Senate committee testimony – live

Protesters removed at start of testimony as defense secretary claims billions of additional funding are needed ‘sustain vital operations without disruption’

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US gas prices have continued to rise since the conflict with Iran resumed this month. According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), a gallon of fuel is now just over $4 – almost a dollar more than a year ago.

It comes as Brent Crude, the international oil benchmark, is now up by almost 2% to $90.92 a barrel.

Published: July 21, 2026, 1:30 pm

Zendaya faces backlash for wearing ancient Iranian jewellery at Odyssey event

Film star promotes Christopher Nolan film epic wearing gold artefacts dating back almost 3,000 years

The Odyssey is a story about a Greek king’s long journey home. But a pair of earrings worn on the new film adaptation’s press tour – and their long separation from their homeland – is sparking controversy.

At a photocall in London, Zendaya, who plays the goddess Athena in the Christopher Nolan film, wore a pair of earrings fashioned from Iranian artefacts dating back to 700BC.

Published: July 21, 2026, 8:01 am

Delaware judge dismisses UnitedHealth Group lawsuit against the Guardian

Healthcare conglomerate pursued a defamation lawsuit against the Guardian over 2025 investigative reporting

A state judge in Delaware has dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought against the Guardian by the UnitedHealth Group.

Delaware superior court judge Calvin Scott’s ruling stemmed from a lawsuit that the US’s largest health insurance conglomerate pursued against the Guardian in May 2025 over an investigation by the outlet which reported that UnitedHealth secretly made payments to nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers for residents.

Published: July 21, 2026, 8:47 am

Senate committee advances nomination of Trump intelligence pick Jay Clayton

Committee voted 9-8 to advance Clayton’s nomination to serve as intelligence chief despite Democratic opposition

The Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday advanced the nomination of Jay Clayton to serve as the US intelligence director, despite criticism from Democrats.

Donald Trump had nominated Clayton, now the top federal prosecutor in the southern district of New York, for the role of the director of national intelligence (DNI) last month after the departure of Tulsi Gabbard.

Published: July 21, 2026, 1:41 pm

Bill Gates foundation met with Jeffrey Epstein about 30 times, external review finds

Staff ‘raised on multiple occasions’ risks of tech mogul’s philanthropic body associating with disgraced financier

A new external review commissioned by the Gates Foundation has found that there were “roughly 30 meetings” between Jeffrey Epstein and foundation leaders and staff – including Bill Gates – between 2011 and 2014, even as foundation staff “raised on multiple occasions the risks of associating with Epstein because of his prior conviction”.

The Gates foundation commissioned the review in March, following the justice department’s release earlier this year of millions of documents related to Epstein. The files included numerous references to Gates, several photographs of him, and records showing that he met with Epstein on multiple occasions, which prompted renewed scrutiny of Gates’s past ties to the disgraced financier.

Published: July 21, 2026, 1:37 pm

Saxophonist Plas Johnson, known for solo on The Pink Panther Theme, dies aged 94

Jazz saxophonist – who recorded with artists Frank Sinatra, BB King and more – died in Los Angeles, reports say

The US jazz saxophonist Plas Johnson, best known for his solo riff on the timeless classic The Pink Panther Theme, has died at the age of 94, according to reports.

The native of Donaldsonville, Louisiana, died on 15 July, according to a report from the Los Angeles jazz radio station KKJZ.

Published: July 21, 2026, 11:41 am

US immigration agents arrested a record number of people in June, data shows

Guardian analysis shows officers arrested 43,138 people as quiet and steady operations ramp up across the country

The Trump administration arrested a record number of immigrants last month, according to newly released government data that reveals how US immigration agents are quietly but steadily ramping up operations across the country.

A Guardian analysis of the latest data published by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) found that federal immigration agents arrested 43,138 people in June – the highest number since Donald Trump took office in January last year and promised a campaign of mass immigrant deportations.

Published: July 21, 2026, 6:00 am

Two in five Americans believe stock market only serves the top 1%

Exclusive Harris poll for Guardian reveals Americans’ assumptions about stock market and wider economy

Two in five Americans believe the stock market isn’t for them and only benefits the top 1%, according to a new Harris Poll poll exclusive to the Guardian that surveyed investing habits and knowledge about the economy.

The poll found a similar share of Americans had incorrect assumptions about the relationship between the economy and the stock market. Nearly 40% did not know that the economy and the stock market were not the same thing. And two-thirds of Americans incorrectly believed that a growing stock market means the overall economy is growing.

This survey was conducted online by the Harris Poll from 9-11 July, among a nationally representative sample of 2,154 US adults, with 1,667 reporting some level of investing.

Published: July 21, 2026, 5:00 am

Muslim leader speaks out after more than 80 days in ICE detention: ‘It brought back memories from Palestine’

Salah Sarsour, president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque and a green card holder, has lived in the US for decades

The president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque said he was subjected to “dehumanizing” treatment during more than 80 days in federal immigration custody – treatment that reminded him of the time he spent in Israeli military prisons in occupied Palestine nearly four decades ago.

“It all brought back old memories of things that happened to me when I was tried in Palestine,” said Salah Sarsour in his first interview since being released last month. “The humiliation, the treatment by guards, the way they talk to people, the way they try to put people down.” He said he lost more than 30lb while in immigration detention.

Published: July 21, 2026, 6:07 am

Trump administration sought phone records of New York Times journalists and their relatives

Officials sought identity of sources ‘long before’ reporters wrote about the president’s Air Force One jet from Qatar

Donald Trump’s administration sought phone records of several New York Times journalists and even those of some of their relatives, according to a motion unsealed Monday – an unusually aggressive attempt to unmask the confidential sources of reporters who wrote about the president’s Air Force One jet from Qatar.

The Trump administration’s push to compel the identity of sources in the form of additional subpoenas comes at a time when the executive branch’s relationship with the press is increasingly contentious. The efforts, described in a letter-motion filed by the Times over the weekend, were more expansive than previously known, the newspaper noted – and also covered a time frame that exceeded the news articles in question.

Published: July 21, 2026, 5:31 am

US claims of Cuba’s ‘unique threat’ jar with reality of hunger and blackouts

State department’s 100-page report is latest push in Trump administration campaign to bring down government

The US government’s latest allegations that Cuba is behind “many of the most significant upheavals in recent American political history” and that its leaders pose “a unique threat to American homeland security” have come as startling revelations to those living under the six-month-long US oil blockade in Havana, where desperate people search through piles of uncollected rubbish for food, or else swelter at home in 24-hour-plus blackouts.

The unsigned 100-page report, Cuba: Capital of 21st-Century Communism, published by the US state department on Monday, blames Havana for everything from “the George Floyd riots to the rise of antifa to the explosion of pro-terrorist activism on American college campuses”.

Published: July 21, 2026, 6:33 am

‘No electricity, no water, no fuel’: Ukrainian drone strikes bring darkness to Crimea’s summer

Interviews with residents of Russian-held region point to frustration with Moscow as Ukrainian campaign to isolate it takes toll on daily life

First, the guests stopped coming. As Ukrainian drones and missiles pounded Crimea throughout the spring and into the summer, Russian tourists began cancelling their bookings at the small guesthouse Marina runs in Yevpatoria, a resort town on the peninsula’s Black Sea coast.

Then petrol became scarce, making it harder to stock the business with food and other essentials. Now, electricity and running water are cut off for much of the day, just as the summer heat sets in.

Published: July 21, 2026, 4:00 am

Small dog missing for weeks rescued while swimming in San Francisco Bay

Team of firefighters saved the pup from the water near East Palo Alto in a mission that utilized boats, trucks and a drone

Firefighters rescued a small dog that had been missing for weeks after finding it swimming into the San Francisco Bay.

The dog had gone missing over the Fourth of July weekend, according to the Menlo Park fire protection district. But someone called 911 on 16 July to say they had seen a dog enter the bay near the Dumbarton Bridge in East Palo Alto.

Published: July 20, 2026, 1:31 pm

United Airlines says it will ‘look into’ worker’s threat to call ICE in viral video

United staffer told customer ‘you don’t act like at a citizen’ during incident over wait time at San Francisco airport

United Airlines is “looking into” a viral video showing a United Airlines employee threatening to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on a Mexican American man at San Francisco international Airport last week.

The scene erupted after Julio Varela of San Ramon grew upset at United Airlines staff for taking a long time to correct an error his family made when entering his daughter’s name to buy a ticket for a flight to Canada, according to NBC News.

Published: July 20, 2026, 3:40 pm

Big Bear’s missing bald eagle believed to have been found alive but injured

Bald eagle found hurt in California after fight with other birds, says group, as eagle called Jackie not seen on cameras

A beloved female bald eagle missing for several days in California’s Big Bear Lake is believed to have been found alive but injured after a fight with other birds, according to the advocacy group that operates a live, viral nestcam.

Friends of Big Bear Valley said on Facebook on Sunday that observers first spotted the eagle on the ground last Thursday, then witnessed it involved a “short ground altercation with two other subadult eagles” on Friday.

Published: July 20, 2026, 7:36 am

‘Saved my bacon every summer’: 12 things our writers use to keep cool on hot, sticky days

Portable fans, a ‘cooling necklace’, sun protective hats and more products we reach for when the heat won’t quit

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If you’ve stepped outside lately, you know the heat isn’t letting up. With another round of triple-digit temperatures and heat advisories blanketing parts of the US, we asked our writers to share the things they rely on when summer gets unbearable.

They shared recommendations for portable fans, a powerful dehumidifier and shorts that keep you cool even after hours of walking. Multiple writers recommended REI’s Sahara hoodie. You’ll also find clever picks you may not have considered, such as reusable ice packs and a “cooling necklace”. Here are our 12 tried-and-true essentials that are keeping us from melting on hot, sticky summer days.

Published: July 21, 2026, 12:15 pm

Black lands, Mexican bands: how a southern rural family built a Latino cultural hub

As the Latino population of North Carolina booms, opportunities abound – and Donal Gooch is capitalizing on changing nature of his home region

Donal Gooch is not pleased about the trash on his arena floor.

“Shit, it’s pitiful,” he says.

Published: July 21, 2026, 7:00 am

‘She was almost a Batman figure’: Mexico’s avenging Mother Courage

After her son disappeared, Isabel Miranda de Wallace swore she would bring the culprits to justice. She became a national hero. But did she go too far?

When her son, Hugo, failed to answer his phone on the morning of 12 July 2005, Isabel Miranda de Wallace did not waste a moment. Everyone knew that kidnappings were rife in Mexico City, and Wallace immediately enlisted her brother and nephew to help with the search. They walked the streets near Hugo’s last known location until they came across his SUV. A passerby told them they’d seen someone being forced out of his car and into a nearby apartment, Wallace later said. She also described speaking to a boy who had heard gunshots and seen an injured man being led out of the apartment around 4am. “Within 24 hours, we found his car, then the building where they took my son. We had the case practically solved,” Wallace later said. “But the police didn’t believe us.”

At that time, many kidnapping cases went unreported, as families feared that the police couldn’t be trusted. Those who did go to the police often struggled to get them to take their complaints seriously. But Wallace was different. She was a successful businesswoman, who had set up an advertising agency that owned and operated billboards across Mexico City. “She didn’t beg or say please,” said Federico Döring, a politician and an early ally of Wallace. “She would point her finger at public officials not doing their job – and this was unheard of,” Döring told me. “In Mexico, a lot of people are often afraid to speak up because you don’t know if a politician is in bed with the cartels. That intimidates them, but it didn’t intimidate her.”

Published: July 20, 2026, 9:00 pm

Seth Meyers on Trump at the World Cup: ‘They’re going to have to sage the stadium’

The late-night host discussed the president getting booed at the final, his grudge against Spain and the enduring Iran war

On Monday night, Seth Meyers discussed Donald Trump getting booed at this weekend’s World Cup final, confusion over the Iran war and the mystery surrounding Mitch McConnell’s health.

On his NBC show, Meyers pointed out the irony of the US president celebrating with the Spanish football team after they won the World Cup.

Published: July 21, 2026, 7:53 am

The Dink review – Jake Johnson’s pickleball comedy serves up engagingly silly laughs

Johnson is delusional ex-tennis player The Hammer, who has to switch to the sport he loathes after injury

There’s some funny stuff here in this engagingly silly sports comedy from producer-star Jake Johnson about the world of pickleball, and how this (allegedly) facile pseudo-tennis game for children and old people threatens to infantilise and dumb down the world of tennis itself.

Dusty (Johnson) is a middle-aged loser, delusionally nicknamed The Hammer, who once showed early promise at tennis before getting crushed by a humiliating teen encounter with the young Andy Roddick (playing himself in cameo). These days Dusty coaches at the tennis club owned by his dad (Ed Harris), who is scowlingly contemptuous of everything Dusty says and does. Only one thing allows poor Dusty to reclaim his self-respect as a man and a tennis player: his utter loathing for pickleball, whose followers are grudgingly permitted one of their toytown mini-courts at the club – and he duly gets a meet-cute quarrel with pickleball enthusiast Candace (Mary Steenburgen).

Published: July 21, 2026, 9:00 am

Meta’s smartglasses mean any child can be covertly filmed. In the age of AI, how do we tackle that risk?

The company argues that it’s for individuals to ensure they don’t ‘actively exploit’ this technology. That won’t keep children safe

It took me a while to realise what the man sitting next to me on the train was doing. He was flicking through pictures of a little girl on his phone; zooming in on some, cropping the images. Hardly unusual, of course, except that on closer inspection the pictures were very clearly of the toddler sitting opposite us, playing with her parents. On a crowded train of people mostly staring obliviously at our own phones, a stranger had been covertly photographing that little girl over and over again. And if it hadn’t been for that very visible phone screen giving him away, he wouldn’t have been caught.

That encounter was a while ago but my memory was jogged last week listening to a clip of Meta’s VP of wearables, Alex Himel, talk fondly to the BBC about using his new smartglasses to film his daughter singing in a talent contest. They let him capture the memory without having to watch her through a screen, he said, freeing him to be “kind of living in the moment, head up and hands free”. So far, so sweet. But what about the risk of creeps potentially using them to film other people’s daughters covertly, heads up and hands free? Meta’s smartglasses have a tiny flashing warning light on the frame to indicate when the wearer is recording, but the technology is still new enough that many people don’t think to look for it. And in the age of AI, stolen images of children matter. Taken in real life or scraped from the internet, they’re the raw material for generating realistic-looking child abuse material of the most extreme and disturbing kind. (If that sounds like a grim but ultimately fairly victimless crime, the Internet Watch Foundation warned in a recent report that AI-generated material risks fuelling sexual interest in children, normalising violence and increasing the risk of real-life offending.)

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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: July 20, 2026, 10:00 pm

We’ve been desperate for someone to take on Donald Trump. Who knew it would be Coldplay’s Chris Martin? | Simon Price

The World Cup left us with some surprising heroes. Kudos to pop’s leader of the bland and his very public rebuke to hatred and division

Long before the United States turned the World Cup final into an orgy of pop music and advertising, the signs were already there that this year’s co-hosts should never have been allowed within a thousand miles of the tournament. The garish half-time show curated by Chris Martin of Coldplay seemed to reinforce that – but then came a moment of improbable genius.

I was surprised. The last time America hosted, the problem wasn’t commercial overkill so much as sheer shrugging apathy. I was in New York during USA ’94. Apart from a few flapping banners outside the Nike store, you wouldn’t have known one of the world’s biggest sporting events was taking place. This, in hindsight, was a blessing. Football was allowed to football.

Simon Price is a music journalist and author

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: July 21, 2026, 6:25 am

Gen Z is living in an intimacy economy, where connection is commodified | Alice Lassman

My generation is struggling to find safety in our human relationships. AI companionship is filling the gap

“There are parts of myself I only share with my AI,” Jerome told me. “Your AI?” I asked.

He was 27, three months out of a breakup, and entirely aware that his AI relationship was, as the psychotherapist Esther Perel put it, “a business product”. Still, he confided in it more than he ever had his friends. I mention Jerome because, in the four years I’ve been reporting on gen Z, I have watched my peers become him, one by one. We are the first generation of digital natives and the last generation to have experienced human-to-human intimacy exclusively. Now the attention economy’s younger sister, the intimacy economy, has monetized the connection and affection that make us feel human.

Published: July 21, 2026, 3:00 am

Football, golf … behold the future of world sport: Donald Trump as referee-in-chief | Marina Hyde

After his dubious intervention at the World Cup, the president is now an arbiter of high-level fairway disputes. There’s one word for that: SAD!

For so many of us around the world, the final scenes of the World Cup were a chance to switch off the TV with an eye-roll and observe mildly: “Well, I think that’s quite enough America for us all for a while now.” And yet: there can and must always be more. It is simply the way of things. If you thought the World Cup being carried on to the pitch ahead of Sunday’s final in some kind of Louis Vuitton sex trunk was the nadir of hysterical trashiness in sport, then simply recall the lesson of the past few years and expand your mind. It can always get trashier.

To the parched fairways of Royal Birkdale, then, the host of this year’s Open Championship, which – yesssssss! – was won by someone other than Bryson DeChambeau or Scottie Scheffler or any of the other radioactively ghastly US golfers you’d cheerfully head-flush in a Mar-a-Lago loo just as long as you could clear the classified documents out of it first. It has now been revealed that, during his heated row over a two-shot penalty he was handed for improving the area for his backswing, DeChambeau has been accused of threatening to call the US president unless it was all resolved in his favour. To repeat: threatening to call Donald Trump.

Published: July 21, 2026, 5:15 am

Google wants to release 32 million sterile mosquitoes. Our Australian tests offer a valuable lesson | Nigel Beebe for the Conversation

Google’s ‘Debug’ project in California and Florida aims to reduce mosquito numbers by releasing millions of sterilised males

In the United States, Google’s (now Alphabet) Debug initiative has asked the federal government for permission to release up to 32 million sterilised male mosquitoes in California and Florida.

Male mosquitoes don’t bite or carry disease. The hope is these millions of male mosquitoes will mate with disease-carrying females, the eggs won’t hatch and mosquito numbers will fall.

Published: July 20, 2026, 6:53 pm

My stepmother compliments everything I do – and my ego is getting out of control | Zoe Williams

She praises me whether I’m heaving a plant pot into the air or pairing a phone to a Bluetooth speaker. It’s enough to make me start believing I am, in fact, quite magical

After about five minutes of my stepmother’s company, I’m always in a good mood. It’s not because of our beautiful harmony, though please think that too if it makes me sound good. In her 80s, and feeling the ravages of time ever so slightly, she makes a constant litany of benevolently envious remarks. There’s a lot of general observation about the condition of being me, and how fabulous that must be: “Oh to be 50 again”; “It must be wonderful to have an appetite”; “I wish I could still sleep in”. Ordinarily I don’t give much thought to the singular pleasures of human maintenance activities – eating, sleeping, having a shower – and when you really look at it, it isn’t a bad life, to be 52.

Then she’ll move on to admire my particular skills: “Look at that!”; “What?”; “Look how fast you got out of the car.” It’s a fact, I’m incredibly good at this: I don’t grunt while I’m doing it; it doesn’t take 17 minutes. I’m pretty good at all sitting to standing manoeuvres. “That’s nothing,” I think. “You should see me get out of a squat.”

Published: July 21, 2026, 3:00 am

The Guardian view on Ukraine’s challenges, inside and out: tensions at home arise from the struggle against Russia | Editorial

The row over the sacking of the popular defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, highlights questions about the country’s military and political direction

Even as Ukraine’s civilians endure brutal strikes by Russia, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets to call for the departure of the commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi. Demonstrators are furious that Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week sacked Mykhailo Fedorov, the popular young defence minister, after he clashed with the general.

The 35-year-old politician, widely credited for significant improvements in Ukraine’s military performance and reducing corruption, made a scathing attack on the general after his dismissal – accusing him of blocking reforms and refusing to cooperate. Now it is widely rumoured that Gen Syrskyi will depart. The general claims to have been “surprised to learn …[of] a conflict” but seems to have seen the minister as exceeding his remit and effectively taking control of units. The pair also butted heads over Mr Fedorov’s plans to improve recruitment and training to reduce the deep anger created by the conscription system. A Soviet-schooled military officer deeply embedded within institutions has tussled with a young civilian disruptor taking a more agile, improvisational approach.

Published: July 21, 2026, 11:04 am

In the US, the 2026 World Cup’s legacy will be an invitation to do it all again | Leander Schaerlaeckens

Fifa’s gargantuan revenue influx from the tournament, with little left over for locals, will beget more exploitation

You do not, under any circumstance, have to hand it to Fifa.

You do, however, have to acknowledge that the 2026 World Cup was successful in all of the ways it was intended to be successful. The soccer was interesting and competitive and dramatic, albeit mostly not great – not that this really a necessary ingredient for a compelling sporting product. People came and watched in overwhelming numbers. There was fun and folklore; underdog surprises; heroic storylines that might have been hackneyed had they been works of fiction. The whole thing made vast sums of money for its organizer. More money, by an order of billions, than even Fifa itself had projected, per the Guardian’s reporting.

Published: July 21, 2026, 8:30 am

David Squires on … Spain winning the World Cup final in the shadow of Trump

Our cartoonist looks back at the final game of the 2026 World Cup as Donald Trump watched Spain triumph again

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Published: July 21, 2026, 4:08 am

Nico Williams, Ferran Torres and Spain’s adaptable World Cup excellence | Jeff Rueter

The two substitutes combined on the World Cup winning goal not by changing the game, but by offering it what it needed, when it was needed

As Spain built into the second half of extra-time of Sunday’s World Cup final, it was already clear that Argentina hoped to make them suffer. Every challenge left no stud unshown. Their defenders labored to block striker Mikel Oyarzabal from his typical lanes of service, with Spain taking 11 of their 20 attempts from beyond the box.

Lionel Scaloni’s side may have been aggressive, but they were also just structured enough to withstand the endless monsoon of Spanish pressure. After the 62nd minute, when Luis de la Fuente brought his first two charges off the bench, Spain adapted to find new avenues to attack, adjusting with Enzo Fernández’s sending-off near the end of normal time.

Published: July 21, 2026, 1:00 am

The big World Cup 2026 quiz

Did you catch the little details as 48 teams played 104 matches in 16 cities across 39 days?

Published: July 21, 2026, 12:00 am

Argentina players face bans as Fifa opens investigation into World Cup final brawls

• Leandro Paredes was shown red card after final whistle

• Fifa looking into Falklands banner at England game

Fifa has opened an investigation into the violent scenes that followed Spain’s World Cup final win on Sunday, with several Argentina players facing bans.

Nahuel Molina appeared to strike Spain’s captain Rodri in the stomach as he ran on to the pitch following the final whistle, while there was also a large melee on the halfway line, where Leandro Paredes appeared to grab Eric García by the throat before throwing Gavi to the ground.

Published: July 20, 2026, 1:42 pm

Neuer to Neymar: 11 World Cup players who retired from international football

Germany’s 2014 World Cup winning goalkeeper and a Brazilian icon are among those who have have called time after the 2026 tournament

First participated in the World Cup in 2010 before winning the trophy four years later. Germany have had little success since and their penalty shootout defeat by Paraguay marked the end of Neuer’s international career. He initially retired after Euro 2024 but reversed that decision a few weeks before this tournament. “Despite the bitter end, I don’t regret this decision,” he said after his 23rd and final World Cup appearance. The former Germany defender Robert Huth criticised the decision to bring Neuer out of retirement: “I think the big one that really unsettles the squad was the Neuer inclusion. I think [it was] really unexpected, he came late to the table.”

Published: July 21, 2026, 12:00 am

NBA Summer League takeaways: an outstanding top four, a Warriors gem and a Cavaliers steal

The midsummer party in Vegas is a showcase for the next wave of NBA talent. Our correspondent in the desert empties her notebook

The hype heading into this year’s draft was tremendous, and through the small sample size of 10 or so days in the Las Vegas summer heat, this year’s class has lived up to its billing.

Published: July 21, 2026, 2:15 am

NFL pundit Ryan Clark informed of ESPN firing mid-show amid wider layoffs

• Clark informed during on-air appearance

• Cuts follow ESPN’s NFL Network integration

• Disney also trimming jobs across company

ESPN is undergoing a significant round of layoffs for the first time in three years after taking over NFL Network in April.

Chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in a memo to employees Tuesday morning, obtained by the Associated Press, that most moves are the result of ESPN’s acquisition of NFL Network and other league digital assets last year.

Published: July 21, 2026, 11:08 am

Evenepoel pips Pogacar again as Tour de France night-time doping test row deepens

• Belgian wins time trial, says chase of leader ‘not over yet’

• Florian Lipowitz, third last year, quits race after crashing

Remco Evenepoel took back-to-back stage wins in the Tour de France, and eroded some of Tadej Pogacar’s overall lead, with victory in the stage 16 time trial from Evian to Thonon-les-Bains.

The Olympic road and time trial champion, now second overall in the Tour, won on the Belgian national day from Pogacar by 28 seconds, to reduce the Slovenian’s advantage to just over four and a half minutes. It was the third Tour time trial win of his career.

Published: July 21, 2026, 12:19 pm

French Open becomes first grand slam to offer players share of tournament revenue

• Move is significant step in row over prize money

• US Open will come under pressure to follow suit

The French Open has become the first grand slam tournament to offer players a share of the event’s revenue in a significant step forward in the row over prize money. Officials from Roland Garros made the offer to the players’ representative, Larry Scott, in talks at Wimbledon a fortnight ago in a move that will increase pressure on the US Open, which is due to announce its prize fund for this year’s tournament at the start of next month.

While an agreement has yet to be reached, the French Open’s willingness to commit to a revenue-share model to determine prize money is a major development, and sets Roland Garros apart from the three other grand slam tournaments.

Published: July 21, 2026, 8:34 am

DeChambeau accused of threatening to call Trump in row over Open penalty

• DeChambeau given two-stroke penalty after his second round

• Golfer alleged to have used US president’s name during row

Bryson DeChambeau has been accused of threatening to call Donald Trump during a row with senior R&A officials on Friday after the American golfer was handed a two-shot penalty at the Open.

DeChambeau’s alleged use of the US president’s name as he argued his case marks the latest bizarre turn in what was already the dominant story of the 2026 Open. DeChambeau was handed a two-stroke penalty for improving the line of his swing by standing on long grass behind his ball on Royal Birkdale’s fifth hole during round two. The 32-year-old argued his case furiously, including insisting upon returning to the scene of the incident with the R&A’s head of governance and a senior referee.

Published: July 20, 2026, 6:14 am

Angel Reese accepts Brondello’s apology after ‘protected species’ comment lands ban

• Toronto coach made comment during Friday’s game

• Term common in Australia but could be seen as racist

Angel Reese has accepted Toronto Tempo coach Sandy Brondello’s apology for an inappropriate comment about the Atlanta Dream star.

The WNBA suspended Brondello one game for being overheard calling Reese a “protected species” during the Dream’s win over the Tempo on Friday.

Published: July 20, 2026, 3:50 am

F1’s algorithms spark driver fury as number neuters thrills of Spa-Francorchamps | Giles Richards

Computer-controlled energy deployment now dictates races – it turns out drivers don’t like Skynet controlling their cars

Another race down another classic circuit, in this case Spa-Francorchamps, left neutered for drivers and so their slow, dissonant discontent rumbles ever onward. In the wake of the Belgian Grand Prix, there was an overwhelming sense they wished to simply escape. Not so much from Spa but away from the numbers.

George Russell was at the centre of attention in Belgium, the Mercedes driver’s championship hopes taking a severe blow as, inexplicably to him and his team, his engine did not recover energy through turn one and he was left with no electrical power to deploy. He was swallowed up by the Ferraris and vying with Lewis Hamilton, who clipped him through Les Combes, was pitched out of the race.

Published: July 20, 2026, 11:12 am

D4vd appears in Los Angeles court over death of teen girl found in his Tesla

Prosecutors seeking to try musician, born David Anthony Burke, for murder over death of Celeste Rivas Hernandez

Singer-songwriter D4vd appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom on Tuesday as prosecutors aim to prove sufficient evidence exists for him to stand trial for the murder and sexual abuse of, Celeste Rivas Hernandez, a minor whose body was found in his car.

Los Angeles county prosecutors accuse the musician, born David Anthony Burke, of stabbing Hernandez to death at his Los Angeles residence last April to silence her from divulging the sexual nature of their relationship as his career was on the rise , according to court documents. Prosecutors say the sexual abuse began in November 2023, when Burke was 18 and Hernandez was 13.

Published: July 21, 2026, 2:00 am

Airbus to test folding wings for next generation of bestselling planes

Such technology solves problem of longer, thinner, energy-saving wings not fitting in airports around the world

Airbus has said it will test folding wings for the next generation of its bestselling planes, as the world’s largest planemaker races to work out the shape of future commercial aircraft by the end of the decade.

Longer, thinner wings made of light but strong composite materials offer the promise of energy savings but present a problem for manufacturers because they will not fit in airports around the world, many of which are already at or near full capacity.

Published: July 21, 2026, 10:50 am

‘Buy-cott’ boosts Memphis pizza shop after owner refuses to serve national guard

The city rallied behind Tamboli’s despite online boycott calls, as frustration grows over the Trump administration’s federal taskforce following multiple deaths

You can measure the disconnect between angry internet commentariat and real life Memphis residents by the length of the wait for a table at Tamboli’s Pasta & Pizza.

In early July, Miles Tamboli, the owner of the midtown pizza spot, made a decision: he would not serve the national guard deployed to the city by the Trump administration, which the US president claimed would reduce the city’s crime rate. Tamboli’s video announcement came days after troops killed two city residents, bringing the total to four since the initiative started in September.

Published: July 21, 2026, 6:00 am

RFK Jr says cyclospora outbreak is ‘under control’ after FDA recall reversal

Health secretary says source has been identified despite experts warning infections are likely to keep rising

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has said the ongoing outbreak of cyclosporiasis – the illness caused by the cyclospora parasite that causes watery and explosive diarrhea – is “under control”.

Kennedy made the remarks one day after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did an about-face on a 27-state recall of shredded iceberg lettuce, calling the reported product a “false positive”.

Published: July 21, 2026, 10:53 am

France becomes first European country to ban social media access for under-15s

Parliament votes to stop children using apps such as TikTok in policy championed by Emmanuel Macron

France’s parliament has approved a bill banning social media access for children under 15, making it the first European country to bar children from apps such as TikTok.

The president, Emmanuel Macron, has championed the ban as a key reform of his final term in office and pledged to enforce it by September.

Published: July 21, 2026, 12:14 pm

India’s Cockroach movement protesters show no sign of backing down

Thousands of people again on the streets of Delhi calling for education reforms despite police violence on Monday

Taru had come to the protest prepared this time. In one hand was an anti-government poster and in the other was a bicycle helmet. “We need to have protection in case Delhi police beat us up again,” said the 25-year-old, who stood among her friends. “We are not scared of them and we won’t run away, no matter what they do. We’ll stay here till they listen.”

On Tuesday, central Delhi still thronged with thousands of protesters, as an unprecedented expression of dissent against the powerful ruling Narendra Modi government showed no sign of abating.

Published: July 21, 2026, 9:13 am

Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk sues US rival over ‘materially misleading’ ads

Danish pharma company says Eli Lilly using outdated trial data to make its weight-loss drugs appear more effective

Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk said on Tuesday it is suing arch US rival Eli Lilly over “false and materially misleading” adverts for its competing weight-loss and anti-diabetes treatments.

The Danish pharmaceuticals heavyweight complained that the US group – which makes rival weight-loss treatments Zepbound and Mounjaro – “intentionally selected outdated studies” that compared Lilly’s highest doses against lower doses of Novo Nordisk’s medicines.

Published: July 21, 2026, 10:21 am

Tropical Storm Bertha strengthens as Gulf coast braces for flooding and surge

Storm warnings stretch from Florida to Louisiana as Bertha brings heavy rain, flooding risk and possible tornadoes

Tropical Storm Bertha strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico and was moving slowly toward the Florida Panhandle and Alabama, causing a tropical storm warning and storm surge watches, forecasters said.

The storm was about 125 miles (201km) south-east of Mobile, Alabama, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Tuesday afternoon. It was moving north-west at 5mph (8km/h) with maximum sustained winds of 60mph.

Guardian staff contributed

Published: July 21, 2026, 11:53 am

Godzilla v Kong actor Kaylee Hottle dies aged 18

The deaf actor, who played a major role in Godzilla v Kong and its 2024 sequel, was killed in a car crash in Maryland

Kaylee Hottle, who played a major role in Godzilla v Kong and the sequel Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, has died at the age of 18.

Her death was confirmed by her father, Joshua, in a video shared on Facebook. The stream was in American Sign Language (ASL) as the Hottle family is all deaf. “I am taking a flight that I never would like to take,” is the name of the video.

Published: July 21, 2026, 9:17 am

Millions face long-term coastal flooding risk in UK without climate action, scientists warn

A ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ suggests need for large-scale movement of populations away from reshaped coast

Up to 13 million people in the UK face the long-term risk of coastal flooding due to the climate crisis, scientists have warned, with a “reasonable worst-case scenario” suggesting the need for the large-scale movement of populations away from a dramatically reshaped coast.

Even if today’s global pledges to cut carbon pollution are met, about 1.4 million more people will be exposed to coastal floods in 2200 and 1.7 million in 2300 due to the sea level rise driven by melting ice caps and warming oceans.

Published: July 21, 2026, 10:00 am

On a Colorado farm, solar panels bring shade for plants, power – and cash: in pictures

More than 3,000 solar panels power Jack’s Solar Garden, cool the land and help it turn a profit

The Guardian receives support for visual climate coverage from the Outrider Foundation. The Guardian’s coverage is editorially independent

Published: July 20, 2026, 5:00 am

Slowdown in Arctic ice melt ends after largest winter decline on record

Scientists recorded slower reduction over past 20 years, but study finds this was ‘temporary rather than sustained’

A previously recorded slowdown in Arctic sea ice decline has ended, according to a new study, with the largest year-to-year wintertime reduction ever recorded.

In a study published last summer, researchers found that melting sea ice in the Arctic had slowed down over the past 20 years, with no statistically significant decline in its extent recorded between 2005 and 2024.

Published: July 20, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘A public health emergency waiting to occur’: how US industry groups spent years fighting who gets to measure toxic air

Air polluters try to ensure toxic emissions happen far from monitors – but the people who live nearby still feel it

Kimbrelle Kyereh lives just a few hundred feet from the massive chemical storage tanks in St Rose, in south-eastern Louisiana. Oily fumes sometimes drift into her home, bringing headaches, nausea and insomnia. On one such night, she grabbed her son at 3am and fled to an all-night Ihop.

In 2023, after years of coping with the noxious odors, Kyereh began collecting air samples in her yard for a local environmental justice group. But soon after, Louisiana passed an industry-backed law that sharply restricted how that kind of data could be used.

Ten of Louisiana’s heaviest air-polluting facilities, based on self-reported data shared with the EPA, operate without a single public air monitor within five miles.

This list includes Dow Chemical’s plastics factory in Plaquemine, which is about eight miles from the nearest air monitoring station. The station measures only ozone even though the plant releases an array of toxic pollutants including ethylene oxide, a known carcinogen.

No public monitors measure ammonia – despite the fact that CF Industries’ Donaldsonville plant emits more than 7m lb of the hazardous chemical each year, according to EPA data.

The three chemicals that researchers have concluded “together account for the large majority of total cancer risk” in the area – ethylene oxide, chloroprene and formaldehyde – aren’t monitored by the state at all.

Published: July 20, 2026, 7:00 am

Fourth person dies in New York City legionnaires’ disease outbreak

US health officials say source of Upper East Side cluster has probably been eliminated after 76 people fell ill

An outbreak of legionnaires’ disease in New York City has claimed a fourth life, officials have said, as they again expressed confidence the source of the exposure had been eliminated.

A statement from the city’s health department on Monday said the outbreak, which was traced to cooling towers in buildings in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, had sickened 76 people – with 53 discharged after hospital treatment, and 12 others managing their recovery at home.

Published: July 21, 2026, 6:46 am

Suspect who sent anonymous tip to Alaska police charged with 1993 killing

Christopher Popps, 54, arrested in Michigan on second-degree murder charge in death of Patrick Dearth

A Michigan man suspected of having murdered a co-worker in Alaska in 1993 was arrested recently after he called in what he intended to be an anonymous tip revealing where he had hidden the victim’s long missing body, according to investigators.

Christopher Popps, 54, faces charges of second-degree murder in the death of Patrick Dearth, Alaska state police said in a statement detailing the latest developments in a case that had remained unsolved for more than three decades.

Published: July 21, 2026, 2:00 am

‘It needs to end now’: Democrats urge Trump to halt Iran war after US troop deaths

President accused of having ‘lost control of this war’ as deaths of trio in Iranian military strikes fuel rising concern

Democrats have seized on the deaths of three US troops killed in Iranian strikes to urge Donald Trump to urgently reverse his resumption of the war with Iran amid widespread anxiety over climbing casualties.

Even as US forces launched a 10th consecutive wave of attacks against Iranian targets, concern over the deaths of American service personnel threatened to complicate moves to escalate the conflict, which has reignited after he last week walked away from a memorandum of understanding agreed with Iran in June.

Published: July 20, 2026, 2:45 pm

Trump says Benjamin Netanyahu ‘will not be arrested’ if he visits the US

Israeli prime minister is subject of an arrest warrant issued by international criminal court over alleged war crimes in Gaza

Donald Trump has said Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, “will not be arrested” if he visits the US.

His comments came days after Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, said he was exploring whether his administration could arrest Netanyahu if he visits the city during the UN general assembly in September.

Published: July 20, 2026, 2:08 pm

Milky Way flipped in collision with dwarf galaxy 10bn years ago, astronomers say

Durham University researchers find cataclysmic direct hit with Gaia Sausage sent Milky Way into its current position

Astronomers have found evidence that the Milky Way was flipped on its side following a direct hit from a wayward galaxy long before the solar system was born.

The cataclysmic collision took place about 10bn years ago when the Milky Way was struck head-on by an incoming dwarf galaxy known – for purely astronomical reasons – as the Gaia Sausage.

Published: July 21, 2026, 8:00 am

Abandoned monkey found in laundry bag on London bus

Animal welfare charities say marmoset could be ‘first of many’ since new law on primate licenses and microchipping

A “stressed and dehydrated” monkey has been found in a laundry bag on a London bus in what animal welfare charities warn could be the “first of many” abandonments now owners must obtain primate licenses.

The female common marmoset was discovered on a 302 bus waiting in Kensal Rise, north-west London, on Friday by a passenger whose buggy was obstructed by the bag containing the monkey in a cage. The monkey has since been named Oyster after the London transport payment system.

Published: July 21, 2026, 8:05 am

We received no alert, say leaders of First Nations communities razed by Canadian wildfires

Chiefs in Ontario say they were left to self-evacuate before homes burned to ground, after being told there was no imminent threat

Fast-moving wildfires have burned two First Nations communities in Canada to the ground, as members said they were left to self-evacuate without government help or emergency alerts.

Thirteen communities in Ontario province have been ordered to evacuate because of wildfires, most of them First Nations. The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, told reporters on Monday that close to 2,000 people had been evacuated so far to cities including Toronto and Niagara Falls.

Published: July 21, 2026, 4:45 am

Healthy diet too expensive for one in three people globally, UN report finds

Global hunger declined for the third year in a row in 2025 but experts call for action to bring down costs of fruit, vegetables and dairy as report shows 2.69bn people can’t afford to eat well

One in three people cannot afford to eat a healthy diet, a new report has found, prompting calls for urgent action on food affordability.

There are 2.69 billion people unable to afford a diverse diet that meets their energy and nutrient needs, and it will take “immense” amounts of work to achieve the global target of zero hunger by 2030, the annual report from five UN agencies warned.

Published: July 21, 2026, 3:00 am

‘Witty, engaging and absurd’: LensCulture critics’ choice award winners – in pictures

Is that a rooftop crocodilian? Can you cause a forest fire in a matchbox? Things are not always as they seem with the winners of this year’s Lensculture critics’ choice awards

Published: July 20, 2026, 11:00 pm

‘New Girl was so scary I had to stop smoking pot’: Jake Johnson on perseverance, pickleball and Prince

As Nick in the blockbuster TV comedy, the actor was adored by millions. So will his new comedy The Dink, which he jokes is a ‘sexier Challengers’, make him even more popular?

You might assume that Jake Johnson would know a little something about pickleball. The actor is starring in The Dink, a sort of spiritual heir to Dodgeball – it has a Ben Stiller cameo – and he plays Dusty Boyd, a former tennis pro turned plucky pickleball upstart. Presumably Johnson took the gig because he has a deep love of the sport, a fondness for its pockmarked balls and weirdly smooth paddles? “No experience of it whatsoever,” says the actor, cheerfully, on a video call from Los Angeles.

Yet this underdog of a racket sport, loved by retirees, found him anyway. At the climax of the movie, Dusty must play against an old foe, which meant Johnson had to undertake months of real-life training in pickleball and tennis, so it looked as if he could play. “It was like WWE. They call it fake wrestling. The outcome is there, but you still have to wrestle. That was probably the most stressful part of the film to me.”

Published: July 20, 2026, 9:00 pm

Shin Kamen Rider: who wouldn’t want to watch an action flick about a grasshopper-man hybrid?

Based on a 70s series, this film by Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno is a thrilling lesson in standing up to evil (and driving very fast)

Writer and director Hideaki Anno – the visionary behind cult anime hit Neon Genesis Evangelion – grew up watching tokusatsu: Japanese live-action films and TV shows that lean heavily on practical special effects.

One of his idols was Kamen Rider, the protagonist of the 1971 series of the same name, a genetically augmented man-grasshopper, riding around and fighting evil on the back of a souped-up motorcycle.

Published: July 21, 2026, 8:00 am

‘We didn’t want him to be punchable!’: Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

‘Alan and I have neat hair because we’d both just been in a military play. If we’d had crazy 1980s mullets, it wouldn’t have become a timeless classic’

I’d done WarGames and Ladyhawke and was getting sent a lot of “young guy” parts. I was a little concerned at first because Ferris talks to the audience – I’d done that in two plays and didn’t want to it to seem like that’s all I could do. Meanwhile, my agent said: “You’ve been asked to do a John Hughes movie. You’re doing it.” I didn’t know much about John at the time but I kept hearing him being referred to as the “Spielberg of teen films”.

Published: July 20, 2026, 5:58 am

The Fires review – volcanoes and passions erupt in Iceland disaster-romance

A volcanologist and a photographer try to save Reykjavik in impressive and plausible drama

This scientifically plausible, CGI-tastic disaster film will either do wonders for Iceland’s tourist industry or destroy it completely. Vigdís Hrefna Pálsdóttir stars as a volcanologist called Anna, who is descended from a short line of volcanologists (just her dad). When mini volcanos start erupting and earthquakes get more frequent, Anna begins to suspect the subterranean systems everyone thought were separate might all be fed from one big magma lake deep underground. Great gaseous clouds of geologic mumbo jumbo get spewed into the dialogue, backed up with sombre graphs on computer screens and people drawing stuff on blackboards. But the gist is that Reykjavik is in danger.

Of course, the powers that be are sceptical about Anna’s theories and don’t want to cut off the island’s supply of sweet, sweet tourist money. Pretty soon, though, the signs are too numerous to ignore. And a big eruption either could last a day or two, or as Anna points out, for 30 years, like a volcano that erupted in the 9th century. (Good thing Icelandic history goes back that far.)

Published: July 21, 2026, 1:00 am

‘Justice, morality and triumph’: why Matilda is my feelgood movie

The latest in our series of writers picking their most meaningful comfort watches is a tribute to the inspiring power of the 1996 Roald Dahl adaptation

When I think about what makes me feel good, it isn’t fantasy or escapism; it’s justice, morality and triumph – sizing up to a bully bigger than you and prevailing against the odds. I never fail to be charmed by the story of an underdog, someone who shouldn’t win but finds a way through resilience, determination or sometimes a genius loophole and a little bit of magic, and no film hits those attributes harder for me than Danny DeVito’s Matilda.

The zany adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1988 children’s novel came out in cinemas in December 1996, four months after I came into the world. The film, set (unlike the supremely British source text) in a leopard-print-clad edition of suburban California, focuses on the titular character (played by Mara Wilson), who grows up unseen and unheard by her grifter, TV-obsessed parents, Harry and Zinnia Wormwood, played by DeVito and his then-wife Rhea Perlman.

Published: July 20, 2026, 2:00 am

‘His chords are like sheets of diamond ice’: the beguiling psych-folk of late cult songwriter Ed Askew

The late songwriter released around 50 records, writing gay love songs and effortless folk songs from folk’s fringes. Fans including Bill Callahan explain his singular brilliance

In a grainy television clip from 1986, a flame-haired and neckerchiefed troubadour plucks away at a lute-like instrument, harmonica under chin, the gentle ripples giving way to a voice full of longing. This performance, uploaded to YouTube in 2010, has generated only a handful of comments, but peruse any of them (“Ed the Great!”; “pure gold”) and you begin to understand the passion that Ed Askew – an under-the-radar US poet, artist and musician – has inspired over the years.

“He was living in a world that was for people who didn’t fit in,” Askew’s collaborator, Jerry David DeCicca, says on the free-spiritedness of his friend, whose musical life began with discovering the 10-stringed tiple as a teenager in the 1950s and ended with his death a year ago, aged 84, on the verge of him releasing his album The Final Painting, now being released posthumously this month.

Published: July 21, 2026, 3:00 am

Shania Twain: Little Miss Twain review – rootsy revival strays from the dirt track to the middle of the road

(Republic Nashville)
The country legend’s seventh album revisits her troubled early life but plays it safe with zany humour and fluffy songs about young love

‘When I was a kid, I started on stages just like this,” Shania Twain told the 200 fans sardined into a London pub back in June, trailing her seventh album Little Miss Twain. A reintroduction to the Canadian country legend, the record mines memories from her Ontario childhood for hints of the arena-filling star she would soon become.

Over wistful Mellotron and pedal steel, the title track marvels at little Eilleen, as she was called back then, escaping the rural north and making it big in Nashville. Yet, somehow, it all feels inevitable – as if Twain’s career was conjured into being by the conviction of her mother, who drove her to those tiny bars in a beaten-up Chevy. And yes, from the vantage point of 2026, it’s difficult to imagine it going any other way. Twain’s icon status is certified by five Grammys and the way her free-spirited hits have become karaoke classics – not to mention the fact that her 1997 album Come on Over remains the highest-selling studio album by any female artist in history.

Published: July 20, 2026, 12:16 am

Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead review – final part of the Harlem Trilogy is freewheeling fun

The grit and grandeur of 80s New York drive this rollicking story of an underground wheeler-dealer

In the summer of 1977 a bolt of lightning struck a substation on the Hudson River, knocking out power across New York City. Two nights of darkness sparked a wave of looting as Harlem and Bronx teenagers swiped high-end items from the downtown stores. They took speaker systems and turntables to experiment with at home. They taught themselves how to scratch and mix, and sang self-styled scat lyrics into stolen microphones. Hip-hop, according to urban legend, was the child of a lightning strike and a robbing spree.

It’s art from crime, thinks Ray Carney, the hardscrabble hero of Colson Whitehead’s rollicking Cool Machine, the final part of his Harlem Trilogy. Or possibly vice versa, given that the man dislikes rap music and nurses a sneaking affection for old-school smash-and-grab. For years Carney has led the sort of intrepid double life that would make Spider-Man proud, supplementing his furniture business on 125th Street with a lucrative sideline as an underworld fence. In his stealthy, dogged fashion, he helps facilitate a process he describes as “the churn”: the movement of stolen goods through New York. The churn fuels the economy and helps refresh the culture. It’s the city’s equivalent of an endocrine system.

Published: July 20, 2026, 11:00 pm

These Wild English by Nicola Wilding review – explaining a mother’s drift to the far right

A documentary-maker probes family history and the darker corners of the internet to solve an urgent political puzzle

When Sandra Forsyth began marching in support of the English Defence League, her daughter Nicola Wilding hoped it was a phase. The Cumbria-bred, Dover-dwelling Sandra was about to turn 60 and had been dealing with a lot of stress. Not only had her son been sentenced to two years in prison for armed robbery, but she was working at a home for adults with complex needs. She liked the job, but it could be gruelling – especially when clients hurled furniture at her or ripped sinks off walls.

Then, in May 2013, came the death of Lee Rigby, a drummer with the Second Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers who was murdered by two Islamist terrorists using machetes. Sandra didn’t know Rigby, Wilding notes, but his death nonetheless brought her pent-up rage to the surface. She began watching videos on Facebook by a man named Tommy Robinson, who wanted to know why the country’s brave soldiers were being murdered. By September of that year, she was protesting on the streets of London.

Published: July 21, 2026, 2:30 am

Yellow Pine by Claire Vaye Watkins review – messy portrait of protest subculture

Watkins should have been the ideal writer for this sympathetic take on new age spirituality and desert eco-activism – but the results are confusing

Rose, the protagonist of Claire Vaye Watkins’s latest novel, has retreated from the world to live in Nothingness Flats, a cinder-block cabin in the Nevada desert. On indefinite leave from her job at an environmental organisation, Rose works on her Al-Anon recovery, goes hiking and joins protests against the Yellow Pine of the title: a solar array being built over a fragile desert ecosystem. She writes in her journal: “I am on this side of the portal. I have compassion in my heart for anyone back on the other side, sending emails, bickering, buying useless shit, getting run by the algorithm, living in the past.” As the story begins, she is reunited with her first love, Miles, who has “fallen apart beautifully: bopped in and out of law school, then spent six years in what’s left of the redwoods reading horny 400-year-old poems before bailing on his PhD”. Soon, Rose realises what she truly wants, this side of the portal, is to have his child.

You don’t often see a sympathetic take on the subculture of 21st-century hippies, with their eclectic leftwing philosophies, new age spirituality and earnest striving to do good and be kind. It’s an important strain in modern life, and one typically dismissed with facile mockery and condescension. As a serious treatment of it, Yellow Pine has notable strengths. The love story between Rose and Miles is very real and specific to this world, and gives a backbone of plot to material that otherwise tends to sprawl. Watkins’s prose can be musical and keenly attentive, and she excels at conveying starry-eyed love. “[Miles] was brilliant, peaceful, grounded as a mountain, kind even when he was blue, an unabashed loner agog at the whole burning world.”

Published: July 20, 2026, 1:00 am

Bub – living an artist’s dreams and dreads in New York

An autobiographical game about the devastating effects of chronic illness on an artist’s creative life gives players the chance to slow the pace right down

Bub does not look like a traditional video game. Artist and stop-motion animator Case Jernigan spends hours, days, months in his studio drawing, painting and delicately cutting out pieces of collected paper, while coder and gameplay designer Todd Anderson builds scripts and physics simulations to make them into a game.

In Bub, you play through the life of an artist in New York City, making art but also diving into his early memories and imaginative dreams. “You go from present day New York City into his childhood, or different sort of visions, which are all rendered in stop motion,” says Anderson. “His story is told in the present day, but also how he’s making sense of his past.”

Published: July 21, 2026, 2:33 am

Splatoon Raiders review – Nintendo’s inky shooter fades to grey

Nintendo Switch 2
The single-player offshoot of the quirky and colourful multiplayer series is disappointingly run-of-the-mill

Splatoon is among Nintendo’s most ingenious inventions of the last decade: a series of shooting games whose paint-splattered turf war nature means being bad at shooting is just as valuable as – if not more so than – being good. It is also blessed with an abundance of personality, with vibrant characters, a richly imagined world, and a hipness that the competition can only dream of achieving. Unfortunately, Splatoon Raiders makes it difficult to remember all of this.

The first spinoff in the ink-soaked franchise, Splatoon Raiders is advertised as a single player-focused entry in this primarily multiplayer series. While this is true enough – one can play through the entire game solo just fine – Raiders is clearly best enjoyed cooperatively with up to three others. Players start each session on a hideout ship where they can upgrade their equipment and tweak their play style before heading out on bite-sized repeatable missions, and this structure is tailor-made for teaming up with friends or helping out strangers (the game lets you do either), as each person works towards creating their ultimate squid-kid avatar of chaos.

Splatoon Raiders is out 23 July; £41.99

Published: July 21, 2026, 6:00 am

The Odyssey: jaw-dropping action, dark magic and dolphin cameos – discuss with spoilers

Inside all the blink-and-you-miss-it moments, subtle easter eggs and poignant takeaways from Christopher Nolan’s ancient epic

• This article contains spoilers for The Odyssey

The Odyssey looks set to be the blockbuster hit of the summer, with global opening weekend grosses of $264m, critical rave reviews including five stars from the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, and reports of fans traversing continents to experience Christopher Nolan’s epic tale of gods and monsters in one of the few dozen screens worldwide with the capability to screen Imax in 70mm. It also has the potential to rule the box office for the coming weeks, with few other true blockbusters to be released this summer, with the exception of Spider-Man: Brand New Day (hence the cast’s humiliation ritual of a press tour). Read on for a spoiler-packed breakdown of the epic battles, narrative twists and out-of-nowhere cameos that bring richness to Nolan’s idiosyncratic vision of ancient life.

Published: July 21, 2026, 2:00 am

Sam Neill fans send sales of his Two Paddocks wine soaring in tribute to late actor

Thousands of dollars’ worth of donations also flood in to charity that Neill joined in protest against a controversial mine near his vineyard

• ‘He made wine and he shared it. What more do you want?’: Sam Neill remembered by his co-stars

New Zealand stores have been selling out of Sam Neill’s wine label, and the causes he held dear have had an influx of support, as fans find ways to pay tribute to the adored late actor.

The 78-year-old New Zealander died on 13 July of pneumonia, just three months after Neill revealed he was finally cancer-free since being diagnosed with stage three angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, in 2022.

Published: July 20, 2026, 9:01 pm

Acting the fool: why have Hollywood press tours become so gimmicky?

From playing would you rather to ranking snacks, A-listers navigating the promo trail are now forced on a set schedule of silliness

This summer, we’ve been blessed with new movies from the legendary director Steven Spielberg and one of his biggest and most beloved successors, Christopher Nolan. In both cases, the movies have been heavily sold on the directors’ names, and, befitting two of the most famous film-makers to ever do it, Spielberg and Nolan have been making the press rounds. This has meant a wealth of interviews and insights – a bonus feature unfolding alongside the selling of the actual movies that will delight movie nerds the world over.

So at first, when I saw a 60-second video of Christopher Nolan answering a barrage of yes-or-no questions come across my social-media feed, of course I stopped and watched as a famously buttoned-up (if obviously still passionate) film-maker attempted some spontaneity with no danger of follow-up questions (or obligation to follow-up answers). From this, there is admittedly plenty of information to be gleaned: he has no designs on retiring, Tarantino-style. He will not make another superhero movie or a TV show. He’s fine with people watching movies on their phones or laptops. He will neither confirm nor deny that Interstellar is his favorite of his films. He will also neither confirm nor deny that he would like to make a Star Wars movie. (Perhaps the most intriguing, given that you’d rather expect that to be a firm “no”.)

Published: July 20, 2026, 3:00 am

Exploring Germany’s East Frisian islands: mudflats, marshes and millions of birds

The seven inhabited isles off the North Sea coast, part of a Unesco world heritage site, are a sanctuary for wildlife – with great hotels and restaurants too

‘Can you hear that?” my guide Andrea Wellmeyer asks as I sink a little deeper into the wet ground, cold mud seeping between my toes. When the wind drops, I detect a faint but distinct crackling, similar to the rustle of a sweet wrapper or the bubbling of sparkling water. “That’s the Wattknistern,” she says, “a natural phenomenon caused by the tens of thousands of mud shrimp that live here.”

We’re standing in the Wadden Sea mudflats on Norderney, an island just off Germany’s North Sea coast. It’s Friday evening at low tide. In the town centre, bars are pumping with music, but here, just 15 minutes along the southern edge of the island, it’s a completely different story.

Published: July 20, 2026, 11:00 pm

Board short summer: why everyone suddenly wants to look like a surfer

Surfboards, knee-length shorts, wetsuits, flip-flops: all have been seen on the catwalks this year. But what do actual surfers think of the trend? We went to Newquay to find out

Summer is here, and with it the annual scramble to decide what kind of season we’re supposed to be having. What will it be? On offer in 2026 are “freaky sandal summer”, which requires you to wear weird shoes, and “euromaxxing”, which is presumably about making the most of the easyJet sale without considering the environmental impact. Maybe “poet girl summer” is for you, whereby you listen to Gracie Abrams while wearing a silk camisole. Or simply “no mascara summer”, which I won’t spell out but sounds quite appealing.

The most plausible contender is “board short summer”, a phrase coined by Marie Claire, which broadly involves dressing like you surf even if you’ve never set foot on a board.

Published: July 21, 2026, 2:00 am

The rave secret: why middle-aged women are larging it – and seeing big health benefits

For those who are burned out, perimenopausal, or both, dancing all night can be a panacea. It’s great exercise, lowers stress, boosts energy and provides connection. No wonder so many are doing it

It’s 4am and I’m in a club – the first time I’ve done this in years. I’m 51 and in my sandwich era, meaning I’ve got teenage and elderly loved ones on my mind – a situation that generally calls for early nights. But when you’re responsibilities-maxxing, sometimes you need the opposite. A blowout. A huge, transcendent, resetting release. A rave.

I don’t know what took me so long to get around to it. Misplaced parental guilt? Internalised ageism? Exhaustion? It’s not as though I didn’t know other gen-Xers who have been regularly getting blissfully – ceremonially, even – lost in house, techno or drum’n’bass, and they’re not alone. A 2025 study by the University of Leeds went viral: “Women aged 40-65 are turning to raves for real mental health,” said one of many Instagram posts and press headlines. “Why many women over 40 still go to raves,” read another. But surely the question should be: why the hell wouldn’t they?

Published: July 20, 2026, 2:00 am

‘Pasta windows’: a charming Italian restaurant tradition – or the sign of a terrible tourist trap?

A woman ostentatiously making her own pasta in an eaterie in Florence or Rome might seem the height of authenticity. But travellers, beware ...

Name: Pasta windows.

Age: Pretty new.

Published: July 21, 2026, 8:51 am

‘We need to talk about how difficult it is’: why one couple are pinning surrogacy hopes on Mexico

Jules Von Hep and Mark Beverlo, who have been trying to become parents since 2020, are now seeking help abroad

• Rise in overseas surrogates ‘increases risk of stateless babies’

• Why Mexico is at the heart of ethical debate over global surrogacy

Jules Von Hep has wanted a baby ever since he can remember. For many people that dream is straightforward to realise – but, as a gay man, he has always known it would take years of saving and searching.

The only way he can have a biological child is to use a surrogate, which costs tens of thousands of pounds, and it often takes years of searching to find the right match. For Von Hep, it has been an “incredibly painful, incredibly expensive” process.

Published: July 20, 2026, 1:00 am

Houseplant hacks: does dividing supermarket basil help it survive?

Seeds are packed into shop-bought pots, meaning they compete and wear themselves out. The best bet is to divide and conquer

The problem
We’ve all done it: picked up a lush, generous-looking pot of basil from the supermarket – full of promise and pesto plans, and within a fortnight it has collapsed into a dried-out, leggy mess. You assume you did something wrong. In reality, the plant was set up to fail before it even reached your kitchen.

The hack
That full, bushy pot is not actually one plant; it is dozens of basil seedlings crammed into a single container to look bushy on the shelf. Packed that tightly, they compete for light, water and root space, and exhaust themselves within days. The fix is to divide the overcrowded mass into smaller, separated clumps and give each one room to actually grow.

Published: July 21, 2026, 2:00 am

From Bernie to Mamdani, how the Occupy movement transformed American politics

Yotam Marom, who helped lead Occupy Wall Street, discusses why power must be built through movements, not simply through elected officials

Yotam Marom knows why the Occupy Wall Street movement fell apart 15 years ago. The New York-based organizer and author was a key participant in the nationwide constellation of encampments and rolling protests that brought tens of thousands of people into its fold. But the movement could not withstand police raids, evictions, a bitter winter and, as Marom sees it, an internal “politics of powerlessness”, which mistook a healthy distrust of institutional power for a failure to build a strong, coherent strategy for political change. Occupy splintered within a few short months and never seriously revived.

As he recounts in his new book, For Louder Days: Reaching Beyond a Politics of Powerlessness, Marom has again and again seen similar dynamics weigh down social movements in his work as an organizer and facilitator. He founded the Wildfire Project, a training organization for grassroots groups, and has worked with organizations including the Sunrise Movement agitating against climate decimation, the abolitionist Dream Defenders fighting for racial justice, the Uncommitted movement to end Democratic party support for Israel’s war crimes, tenants unions battling landlords, and more.

Published: July 21, 2026, 4:00 am

How AI may drive union-resistant tech workers to the bargaining table

Tech workers are increasingly unionizing, trading Silicon Valley’s myth of exceptionalism for collective bargaining to contest the corporate deployment of artificial intelligence

For decades, the technology industry was a fortress that labor unions couldn’t breach. Tech workers already had cushy compensation packages, dream benefits like unlimited vacation and free lunch, and a flat corporate hierarchy that made engineers feel as powerful as their bosses, all of whom dressed down in sneakers and hoodies. So why unionize?

Now, that fortress is cracking from the inside. Unions have become increasingly popular for tech employees. After months of mass layoffs tied to artificial intelligence and mounting anxieties about how it’s being deployed, some tech workers say they’ve been saddled with higher workloads while facing the threat of job loss caused by the very products they’re building. Workers from Google DeepMind and Meta in the UK are also objecting to how their companies’ AI products are being used, such as for military purposes or to monitor employee productivity. Those same workers are now attempting to unionize.

Published: July 21, 2026, 4:00 am

The disturbing rise of ‘gooner’ assaults at Dollar Tree stores: ‘They find it funny to degrade women’

In dark corners of the internet, men are goading each other to masturbate in public – and on female shoppers – and post the footage

This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault.

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Published: July 20, 2026, 4:00 am

Share your thoughts on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey

We would like to hear your thoughts on Christopher Nolan’s adaption of Homer’s epic

The Odyssey has stormed the global box office, taking US$264m (£196m, A$378m) in its opening weekend, according to studio Universal Pictures.

Starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway and Zendaya, the blockbuster is an adaptation of Homer’s epic, which follows Odysseus as he makes his 10-year journey home after fighting in the Trojan war. It’s also the first feature movie to be filmed entirely with Imax cameras – a system of very heavy and loud cameras that capture a sharper, brighter and higher-resolution content.

Published: July 21, 2026, 4:03 am

Milky Way splendour, Beluga whales and Larry the cat: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Published: July 21, 2026, 9:33 am