Caraway review: is this the best saute pan that money can buy? I tested to find out

The premium cookware brand’s new 3qt sauté pan is nontoxic, nonstick and ridiculously pretty. I tried it to find out if it’s worth the price

• The seven best nontoxic cooking pans in the US, tested in a food lab

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Saute pans are the Swiss army knives of cookware. With tall, straight sides, they can, well, saute, but they also sear meat, shallow fry, braise, steam, and simmer sauces. Most come with a lid to trap moisture and steam. They make everything from glossy deglazed steak to fried onion rings to simple spaghetti with tomato sauce. If you cook a lot of one-pan dinners (which is basically every other recipe on the internet), they’re one of the most hardworking pans in the kitchen.

Caraway, the premium cookware brand, just released a 3qt saute pan. Like the brand’s other products, the saute pan has an aluminum core, a ceramic nonstick coating and stainless steel handles. It’s got a laundry list of nice features: nontoxic and free of Pfas, lead and other “forever chemicals”; induction-safe; oven-safe up to 550F; ridiculously pretty.

Published: June 9, 2026, 12:15 pm

A cage-fighting arena is just what Trump’s White House lawn needed. I have a suggestion on how to use it | Marina Hyde

The president’s new Craposseum is the perfect venue for Vance, Hegseth and others to battle for favour. Fight, fight, fight indeed

On behalf of the US administration, the American embassy in London has published a notice advising the UK government not to ban social media for the under-16s. Thanks, but … we didn’t ask? Or perhaps that’s uncharitable. It’s actually a privilege to take child protection lectures from a country where the leading cause of death in children and adolescents is gunshot wounds. Are we allowed to suggest a surprisingly obvious way to help with that grimly perennial problem – or is international advice just a one-way street?

Either way, lectures from Donald Trump’s administration have not been in short supply in recent days, with the US defence secretary deciding that a D-day commemoration address was a seemly moment to dump all over Europe. It’s always painful to be reminded of Pete Hegseth, with his fundamentalist “body art” and Mr Whippy hair – primarily because it dilutes the purity of one’s loathing for JD Vance. (Who, it won’t have escaped you, was also on the international lecture circuit last week.) But standing at the podium in Normandy, Hegseth had just phoned in some stuff about how wars are won, when he got to the needle-scratch subject-change you sensed he’d made the transatlantic journey for. “Sadly,” began this here-it-comes moment, “today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive.”

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Published: June 9, 2026, 6:50 am

At the NBA finals, the Very Important President showed his favorite sport is status

Donald Trump arrived at the Knicks’ biggest night in 27 years hoping to cement his status and power in his hometown. But the fans had other ideas

On Monday night, the most powerful man in the world crashed a citywide celebration 27 years in the making and almost shut it down, with barricades around midtown Manhattan, security lines outside Madison Square Garden and agents wanding Victor Wembanyama as if the San Antonio Spurs phenom were a threat off the court as well as on it. And when Donald Trump finally arrived for his grand entrance, it was in a half-mile-long motorcade. Anyone taking in the scene couldn’t help but ask the quintessential New York question: who does this guy think he is, some kind of big shot?

At this point in Trump’s presidency, it’s fair to wonder if he got into politics for the free tickets. On a night when he could’ve been dealing with far more pressing issues – soaring living costs, war with Iran, a global economy under strain – Trump flew to New York expressly to watch the Knicks play host to their first NBA finals game since he started making noises about running for office someday; he evidently couldn’t turn down the game after being invited by “numerous people.”

Published: June 9, 2026, 6:47 am

This LA neighborhood is choked by smog. The solution: a network of sensors on offices, homes and bags

Pacoima is hemmed in by highways and heavy industry, and its residents are fighting pollution with hyperlocal air quality monitoring

Jose Luis Salas looks up at the ladder. “Are you ready?” he asks Shance Taylor, an environmental project manager who’s holding a white container, about the size of a shoebox, covered with wires and numbers.

Taylor nods and climbs up to reach the side of Salas’s tidy house in Pacoima, a neighborhood in Los Angeles’s north-east San Fernando valley. The curious box in their hands is known as Aeroqual sensor – part of a community air-quality monitoring program run by Pacoima Beautiful, a local environmental group.

Published: June 9, 2026, 6:00 am

‘A man of great appetites’: what’s it like to be a dictator’s personal chef?

In an often chilling new documentary, the chefs of brutal leaders from Idi Amin to Saddam Hussein, talk about their unusual lives behind the scenes

Kim Jong-il loved pepperoni pizza. Saddam Hussein couldn’t resist a fish barbecue. Idi Amin reportedly had the capacity for an entire roasted goat. The menus may have differed, but the appetite was the same. For history’s most notorious strongmen, the dining table doubled as a stage for power. For the cooks who served them, every meal came with extraordinary stakes. “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.”

In his latest film, How to Feed a Dictator, which premieres at the Tribeca film festival this week, five private chefs recount their intimate experiences serving some of the world’s most feared dictators and the ever-present dangers that came with the job. Based on the 2020 book by the Polish journalist Witold Szabłowski, the 95-minute documentary probes the fraught terrain between morality and survival, asking viewers to consider the choices these chefs made – and the choices they never really had. Structurally, the film is something of a tasting menu, serving up sobering morsels of human atrocity within the trappings of a decadent cooking show. It makes for especially uneasy viewing on an empty stomach.

Published: June 9, 2026, 3:00 am

Cat ladies aren’t that ‘crazy’ after all – the social science behind the stereotype

Felines have long been associated with feminine power – and these women are embracing a cliche used to bring them down

To support 700 cats, you need roughly 1,350lb of food a week. But that’s just the dry stuff, which isn’t a balanced enough diet for a cat. You also need 1,000 cans of wet food.

Next, 600lb of litter, because cats, like all living things, need a place to do their business. Sixty rolls of paper towels to clean up the many messes that will occur. Nine gallons of laundry detergent, six gallons of dish detergent, 200 large trash bags and 400 kitchen trash bags.

Published: June 9, 2026, 4:00 am

Middle East crisis live: US military says it is launching strikes against Iran after Trump vowed response to downing of helicopter

Trump earlier said that US ‘must’ respond to Iranian downing of an American military helicopter

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are close allies with a deeply complicated and often strained relationship that has shown signs of fracturing over recent days. The Guardian’s senior international correspondent, Julian Borger, has looked into how the two leader’s diverging political priorities are undermining ceasefire negotiations. Here is an extract from his analysis piece:

Trump and Netanyahu went to war together against Iran on 28 February but fell out of step within days, as soon as it was clear that the quick victory and regime change promised by the Israelis was unlikely to materialise. From then on, their interests have increasingly diverged.

Once Iran closed the strait of Hormuz, the spike in the oil price and the interruption in the flow of globally traded chemical products became a political threat to Trump. Despite Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression, Democrats have a plausible shot at capturing at least one chamber of Congress in November elections, undermining his authority. More immediately, the president would clearly prefer to steer clear of global distractions while he hosts football’s World Cup.

Published: June 9, 2026, 2:58 pm

House Republicans approve $70bn bill for Trump’s immigration crackdown

Secure America Act passes largely along party lines in 214-212 vote, ending months-long standoff with Democrats

House Republicans on Tuesday approved a $70bn bill funding through the duration of his term the agencies leading Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, ending a months-long standoff with Democrats that at one point forced the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to shutter.

The Secure America Act passed in a 214-212 vote that was largely along party lines, with Kevin Kiley, an independent who aligns with the Republicans, joining all Democrats in voting no. The Senate approved the measure last week, which allocates $38bn to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), $26bn to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and $5bn more to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through September 2029. The legislation now awaits Trump’s signature.

Published: June 9, 2026, 2:47 pm

Maine voters weigh Graham Platner scandals on election day: ‘It’s not my job to judge’

Oysterman and marine veteran favored to win Democratic primary amid a string of controversies

• US politics live – latest updates

Voters are headed to the polls on Tuesday for primary elections that include a crucial Senate race involving the scandal-haunted Graham Platner.

In Maine, Platner is favored to win the Democratic primary after his main opponent, former governor Janet Mills, suspended her campaign. The incumbent senator, Susan Collins, remains safely at the top of the Republican ticket – just slightly behind newcomer Platner’s lead in polling.

Published: June 9, 2026, 10:44 am

Spyware firm targeted WhatsApp users in defiance of US court order, Meta says

Tech company says it ‘caught and disrupted’ NSO Group’s attempts to access accounts in Jordan and Lebanon

A spyware firm has been targeting WhatsApp users with malicious links in contravention of a US court order forbidding it from doing so, Meta has said.

In a post, Meta said WhatsApp had “caught and disrupted spear phishing attempts” by NSO Group, which a spokesperson said targeted a handful of users in Jordan and Lebanon. It had also caught the group creating “test accounts and groups” on WhatsApp.

Published: June 9, 2026, 9:20 am

‘Earth’s first starfleet’: Nasa reveals Artemis III crew and project’s next steps

Luca Parmitano to pilot all-male crew of four paving way for planned first human landing on Artemis IV in 2028

Jared Isaacman, the Nasa administrator, hailed the creation of “Earth’s first starfleet” on Tuesday as he revealed the Artemis III crew and details of the next stages of the space agency’s project to return humans to the moon.

An Italian astronaut, Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (ESA), will be the pilot of the planned two-week mission to lower Earth orbit next year that will test lunar landers from private companies Blue Origin and SpaceX.

Published: June 9, 2026, 10:07 am

Karmelo Anthony, 19, found guilty of murder of Austin Metcalf in one-week trial

Texas trial drew national attention due to race, as Karmelo Anthony is Black and Austin Metcalf was white

Following a trial that lasted just one week from jury selection to verdict, a Collin county, Texas, jury found Karmelo Anthony, now 19, guilty of murder in the fatal stabbing of Austin Metcalf last year. The closely watched trial drew national attention, with viral social media posts that highlighted the racial composition of the case: Anthony is Black; Austin was white. Attorneys selected 12 jurors and six alternates for the trial; none of the jurors was Black.

Anthony, of Centennial high school, and Austin, of Memorial high school, were both 17 when they met during a Frisco independent school district track meet in April 2025. A rain shower started and led to confusion – some athletes stayed on the field, while others ran for cover under team tents. Centennial did not have a tent that day, and when Anthony sought shelter under Memorial’s tent, a confrontation occurred resulting in Anthony stabbing Austin, who was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at a local hospital.

Published: June 9, 2026, 1:41 pm

Hard-right groups have expanded their influence across US government, report finds

Southern Poverty Law Center releases report as US government pursues federal fraud charges against group

A new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) finds hard-right groups have increasingly expanded their influence across the US government, which is pursuing a federal fraud case into the civil rights organization.

Tuesday’s report – which identified 1,263 hate and anti-government groups in operation throughout 2025 – comes less than two months after it was indicted by the government it says the hard right has infiltrated.

Published: June 9, 2026, 11:39 am

US judge finds man accused of killing woman on Charlotte train incompetent to stand trial

Decarlos Brown Jr to stay in custody while receiving treatment for remainder of case over Iryna Zarutska’s death

The man accused of fatally stabbing Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte commuter train in August has been found incompetent to stand trial in federal court for now, the US attorney’s office for the western district of North Carolina said on Tuesday.

Decarlos Brown Jr, 35, is accused of killing Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, on a Charlotte light rail train in a case that drew national attention after a surveillance camera video depicting the violent attack was released.

Published: June 9, 2026, 11:01 am

US stadium and hotel workers threaten strikes ‘to make things fair’ during World Cup

Low wages and fears of ICE crackdowns have set workers on edge of strike as thousands set to arrive during World Cup

Hospitality and food service workers in several US cities hosting World Cup games are warning of looming labor disputes and possible strikes as the largest single sport tournament in the world gets ready to kick off on 11 June.

In Los Angeles, California, cashiers, dishwashers, cooks, bartenders, concessions workers and food attendants at the SoFi stadium reached a tentative agreement on Tuesday afternoon, but the union noted it had a contractual right to walk off the job if it determines that federal immigration enforcement is threatening worker safety during the World Cup. The US’s opening match, against Paraguay, is scheduled to take place at SoFi Stadium – rebranded as the Los Angeles Stadium for the tournament – on 12 June.

Published: June 9, 2026, 12:19 pm

JD Vance accused of ‘political stunt’ after referring Tim Walz for Minnesota fraud investigation

House report alleged governor and state attorney general knew of ‘widespread taxpayer fraud’ in social programs

• US politics live – latest updates

The US vice-president, JD Vance, asked the Department of Justice to investigate Tim Walz, his rival in the 2024 election, after a congressional report renewed allegations of inaction and retaliation over fraud schemes in Minnesota.

In the Trump administration’s latest broadside against the midwestern state and its political leaders, Vance referred Walz, its Democratic governor, and Keith Ellison, its Democratic attorney general, for investigation.

Published: June 9, 2026, 9:12 am

Trump ‘inventing fraud’ in California, experts warn as president ramps up baseless claims

Critics say president using well-worn playbook – with loyalists in key positions ready to amplify his message

Donald Trump is “inventing fraud” in California’s primary elections, and likely to ramp up unfounded allegations when more races go against him, pro-democracy experts have warned.

While the US president has used this playbook for years – from his loss at the Emmys as a reality TV star to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election – election integrity campaigners fear this time could be different.

Published: June 9, 2026, 3:00 am

White House urges UK not to ban social media for under-16s

Trump administration says restrictions could impose ‘disproportionate’ burden on US tech companies

• UK politics live – latest updates

The White House has urged the UK not to impose a social media ban for under-16s, saying such restrictions could impose a “disproportionate” burden on US tech firms.

In a submission to a government consultation on online safety, the US government came out against “prescribed one-size-fits-all government restrictions” and “blunt regulatory instruments” to address online harms to children.

Published: June 9, 2026, 2:04 am

Ken Paxton’s ex-lawyer endorses rival James Talarico in Texas Senate race

Attorney Dan Cogdell backs Paxton’s Democratic opponent and says the Republican is too focused on appeasing Trump

A lawyer who represented Ken Paxton, Texas’s attorney general, for nearly a decade over accusations of corruption and securities fraud is supporting Democrat James Talarico – and not his former client – in one of the biggest US Senate races.

Talarico on Monday drew attention to his campaign winning the endorsement of Houston attorney Dan Cogdell, who was part of Paxton’s defense team during the Republican’s historic impeachment trial in 2023 that ended in acquittal.

Published: June 9, 2026, 5:10 am

This rural California county’s problem is all too common: how to reduce suicides when everyone has a gun

Shasta county has one of the state’s highest rates of suicide and gun ownership. Here’s how locals are trying to combat it

Like many men in the mountainous California county of Shasta, about 200 miles north of San Francisco, Bill Rocha loved to hunt and fish, spending the infernal summers out on the lake in his boat. For decades he made his living as a contractor, working hard with his hands every day. And like many men in rural parts of the state, Bill was a gun owner. He had several hunting rifles, some of which he kept locked in a safe, and another firearm that he kept unlocked in his car.

Kelly Rocha, his daughter, described him as extremely sociable, but in private things were starting to fray. She didn’t know the extent of what her father was struggling with until she got a call one night in 2019. She had slept through two voicemails from her father’s wife, but finally picked up when her own mother called. “It was after midnight,” recalled Kelly, who was then 43. “She told me that my dad went out to his truck and killed himself.”

Published: June 9, 2026, 8:00 am

Trumpworld shows no tragedy is off limits as it exploits UK teen’s killing

Senior administration officials jump on death of Henry Nowak – and statements echo language of the far right

Over a breathtaking few days that spanned Saturday’s 82nd anniversary of D-day, senior Trump administration officials have trampled over diplomatic protocol to tear into Europe’s immigration and anti-racism policies and argue that such actions could end western civilization.

From the United States, Vice-President JD Vance and other administration officials jumped on a controversial murder case in Britain to accuse Keir Starmer’s government of lacking the Trump administration’s “political will and leadership” to stop mass migration and defend national sovereignty.

Published: June 8, 2026, 2:04 pm

‘They are isolated … they are alone’: Zelenskyy on Russia, Putin’s lies – and fighting back

In a wide-ranging interview, an upbeat Ukrainian president also discusses Donald Trump, King Charles, and how Kyiv is prepared to share its experience of drone warfare with the west

Sitting down with the Guardian in London, Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems cheerful. More than four years after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, he believes Europe’s biggest war since 1945 appears to be slowly turning in Ukraine’s favour. The military situation is the most promising it has been for Kyiv for two and a half years, Zelenskyy says. “We can’t say Russia is losing this war. But we can say they are losing the initiative each day, day by day,” he insists.

Over the past week the Kremlin has suffered a series of setbacks. Long-range Ukrainian drones have hit Putin’s home city of St Petersburg, setting fire to oil terminals and sending smoke billowing above the skyline. Similar attacks have crippled occupied Crimea. A key supply road is littered with burning lorries and tankers and the peninsula seized by Russia in 2014 is experiencing severe fuel shortages.

Published: June 8, 2026, 10:00 pm

Nithya Raman: progressive who bested Spencer Pratt eyes Hollywood ending

Raman shook up LA mayoral race by entering hours before the deadline and now faces one-time political ally

• Raman advances to face Karen Bass in LA mayoral runoff

On election night, Nithya Raman seemed as if she was prepared to lose the second spot in the Los Angeles mayoral race to the reality TV star Spencer Pratt, whose viral campaign appeared on track to upend the contest.

“Many thousands of votes will be counted in the days ahead, and we may not get an answer we like. But regardless of what happens next, nobody can take away what all of us have built together,” Raman, a progressive Democrat who sits on the LA city council, told her supporters.

Published: June 8, 2026, 5:15 pm

Trial begins for man accused of sparking LA’s deadly Palisades fire

Jonathan Rinderknecht is accused of starting the blaze that became Los Angeles’s deadliest and destructive wildfire

The trial of a 29-year-old charged with sparking a wildfire that went on to become the deadly Palisades inferno, the most destructive blaze in Los Angeles history, is set to begin on Monday in a case that has gripped the city as Angelenos seek answers more than a year after the deadly fire.

Jonathan Rinderknecht, an occasional Uber driver, is accused of starting a small blaze on New Year’s Day 2025, later dubbed the Lachman fire. Although the Los Angeles fire department extinguished the fire on 2 January, it reignited five days later due to high winds and tinderbox conditions after burning undetected deep in the dry hillsides.

Published: June 8, 2026, 6:00 am

Vagina lasers, bananas and an awkward Cumberbatch: 10 surprising moments in Madonna’s new video

Sabrina Carpenter, a car crash, a urinal, Kate Moss and, of course, those perplexing green lasers: Confessions II has it all. Let’s make some sense of it …

Madonna’s new video is called Confessions II because it’s the follow-up to her album Confessions on a Dance Floor, released in 2005. Nope, wrong: that was not more than 20 years ago. That was last week. Years are for little people. Madonna can hold back the passage of time with the power of her imagination, and that has always been true. But what, exactly, in a 10-minute video that brought the house down at the Tribeca festival and has since been watched more than a million times on YouTube, is Madonna trying to say? It feels a bit rude to ask, like asking Jackson Pollock what all the squiggly lines mean. So think of it as a homage to the woman who invented rudeness.

Published: June 9, 2026, 9:18 am

‘We got banned from YouTube but they showed Saddam Hussein being hanged’: the wild viral visions of Romain Gavras

What will life be like in 2034? Will kids surf in quarries – or live in the woods since they think Earth is hollow? We meet the film-maker behind Gener8ion, whose dark predictions have a habit of going viral

One of the standout videos of Visions of 2034, a new audio-visual exhibition from film-maker Romain Gavras and musician Benoit Heitz (AKA Surkin), is a blackly comic twist on conspiracy theory culture. In God Hates Space, some young people have defected to the woods somewhere in middle America due to their fringe beliefs, chiefly the idea that the Earth is actually hollow: trenchant stuff in an age when twentysomethings are becoming off-grid libertarian homesteaders, and popular influencers claim that Kendrick Lamar sent “demons through the TV screen” during his Super Bowl half-time performance.

But here’s the rub: God Hates Space, with its creepy-crazy images of fascism and crackpot conspiracy, was made more than six years ago in Ukraine, before the war. Its aesthetic – which Surkin describes as a combination of “confederate” and “Monster energy drink” – is prescient, not referential. “We shoot these videos and sometimes it takes a while for them to get released,” Surkin says. “The future is catching up with us. It gets dumber way quicker than before!”

Published: June 9, 2026, 7:47 am

Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘About as popular in New York as pineapple on pizza’

Late-night hosts discussed the president attending a key Knicks game after he threw a ‘hissy fit’ during an interview

Late-night hosts covered Donald Trump’s unpopular presence in New York and his viral interview tantrum.

Published: June 9, 2026, 8:12 am

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was a flop – but 25 years later, it is an exquisite digital relic

Though it feels as if it has little to do with the games series it is based on, this groundbreaking film endures as a milestone for CGI animation, with a stellar voice cast

In 1987, after working on several games that were only moderate successes, Japanese game designer Hironobu Sakaguchi proposed a game that would be his last attempt to make a hit. Aptly titled Final Fantasy, Sakaguchi’s game achieved critical acclaim and commercial success, launching a franchise that has spanned 40 years and 16 core titles – as well as countless spin-offs, remakes and film adaptations. Sakaguchi himself directed one of the latter: the 2001 photorealist animation Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

Despite the fantasy its title and source material imply, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is really a military science-fiction film. Later cited as a major influence on the Mass Effect games, The Spirits Within may appeal more to fans of that franchise than to those of Final Fantasy. At times, it feels like a YouTube compilation of cutscenes from a game you can’t afford.

Published: June 9, 2026, 8:00 am

Ping-pong sponges, ‘black smokers’ and floating somethings: the secrets of the deep sea

The bottom of the ocean has barely been explored, but every journey to the deep reveals wondrous new lifeforms. As underwater mining gains momentum, we risk destroying one of the Earth’s last great wildernesses

On 8 March 2014, at 1.20am, Malaysian Airlines flight 370 veered off its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. An hour later, military radar spotted the plane heading west over the Andaman Sea. Six or seven hours later, it is presumed to have crashed somewhere over the southern Indian Ocean, one of the least studied bodies of water in the world.

Just how little we knew about this part of the ocean became clear during the subsequent search for the missing aircraft. Before a proper underwater search could even begin, a vast stretch of seafloor had to be mapped. Over the next three years, a team of ships from Australia, China and Malaysia scanned the bottom with a combination of submersible robots and ship-borne sonar. Together, they charted a swath of ocean roughly 1,500 miles long and 150 miles wide, encompassing an area the size of France. The maps produced from these scans revealed a lost world, full of undersea canyons, crevasses, volcanic plateaux and a single, enormous cliff taller than the Swiss Alps. Even the abyssal plains, thought to be some of the flattest areas on the planet, were home to previously uncharted hills.

Published: June 8, 2026, 9:00 pm

Iran federation says ticket allocation has been pulled days before start of World Cup

• Iran due to play group matches in Los Angeles and Seattle

• Federation says decision ‘raises questions about interference of non-sporting considerations’

Iran’s football federation said on Tuesday its ticket allocation had been pulled just days before the World Cup starts, leaving supporters who had already made travel plans unable to attend their team’s matches.

The World Cup begins on Thursday, with Iran playing their first two Group G games in Los Angeles, against New Zealand on 15 June and Belgium on 21 June, and then facing Egypt in Seattle on 26 June. In a statement, the Iranian federation said it had already begun the ticket sales process for the matches but could no longer provide them to fans.

Published: June 9, 2026, 5:38 am

World Cup 94 chief Alan Rothenberg: ‘We wanted Whitney Houston on the pitch but Fifa said no’

The man in charge the last time the US hosted the World Cup marvels at the transformation of football in America over the last 32 years

The Super Bowl-style half-time show curated by Chris Martin for the World Cup final will not be to everybody’s tastes, but one octogenarian American will have a wry smile on his face when Madonna and Shakira walk out on to the pitch at MetLife Stadium next month.

In his role as chair and chief executive of the 1994 World Cup, Alan Rothenberg wanted Whitney Houston to perform on the pitch at the final at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl, only to be overruled by Fifa, who insisted that the singer stay on the sidelines.

Published: June 9, 2026, 12:00 pm

David Squires on … the World Cup reimagined as Gianni Infantino’s West Side Story

As football’s greatest spectacle comes to North America, our cartoonist creates a heartwarming narrative around the Fifa president

• Buy a cartoon | David’s favourite works of 2025

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

Published: June 9, 2026, 4:38 am

Ranked! USMNT’s best World Cup goals: from Donovan at the death to a painful Pulisic finish

The US men have scored 24 goals (we’ll spare you the own-goals) in the World Cup since 1990. Ranking them requires some nuance

What makes a good goal? This was the question each of us pondered as we embarked upon the process of ranking every goal we’ve seen the US score at the men’s World Cup – a worthwhile bit of nostalgia before the national team kicks off their 2026 World Cup campaign hoping to add more to this list.

First, we had to narrow the field. The team have scored 40 goals at the men’s World Cup, but scant video evidence exists of 12 of those – appropriate, given they were scored in 1930, 1934, and 1950. Piecing together reports and descriptions can give you an idea, but they were always going to be judged differently than those we’ve seen, felt and heard. And so, with apologies to Aldo “Buff” Donelli and Joe Gaetjens, our pool is limited to US World Cup apearances from 1990 til the present.

Published: June 9, 2026, 5:00 am

Kane is in scorching form but England will need others to step up with goals | Jacob Steinberg

With fears about an overreliance on the goalscoring captain, Tuchel needs more from his other attackers

If Thomas Tuchel requires proof there are worse things to be than the Harry Kane team, he need only hear how underwhelming the future looked when an England second string bid farewell to the 2014 World Cup with a desperate 0-0 draw against Costa Rica in Belo Horizonte.

Those were dark times. England’s race was run after defeats in their first two group games in Brazil and the worry for the Football Association was that the humiliations no longer felt like a surprise.

Published: June 9, 2026, 12:08 pm

Wembanyama condemns apparent attacks on Spurs fans in New York during NBA finals

• Videos show Spurs fans having jerseys ripped off

• Players from both teams say incidents are unacceptable

Players from both teams in the NBA finals have condemned apparent attacks on San Antonio Spurs fans by supporters of the New York Knicks.

Videos circulating on social media showed Spurs fans having their jerseys ripped off on the streets of New York in the aftermath of the Knicks’ loss in Game 3 of the finals at Madison Square Garden.

Published: June 9, 2026, 12:46 pm

Serena Williams makes winning return to tennis with victory in Queen’s doubles

• 44-year-old victorious alongside partner Victoria Mboko

• Pair win 7-6 (2), 6-2 over Melichar-Martinez and Routliffe

At the most tense moment of Serena Williams’s comeback to professional tennis, the score uncertainly balanced at 5-5, 30-30, an audience member could no longer hold her tongue. Her voice booming across all corners of Andy Murray Arena, she shouted: “Come on Serena, come on Victoria. You got it!” From the stands, a sneering spectator responded by stating that he did not understand a single word of those cheers.

Williams, however, understood perfectly. She nodded warmly towards the fan, then she stepped up to the baseline and fired down a 120mph service winner en route to a decisive hold.

Published: June 9, 2026, 11:52 am

Meet Cooper Lutkenhaus, 17, the phenom who became 800m world champion while at school

Track and field’s youngest world champion on ‘wanting to change the sport’ and his admiration for Napoleon

We are in living in the era of teenage super talents. On Saturday, Mirra Andreeva won the French Open at 19. Spain’s Lamine Yamal, at 18, is one of the favourites for the World Cup’s golden ball. Then there is Cooper Lutkenhaus, the 17-year-old American already making the world’s best athletes gasp for air and reach for superlatives, who may yet prove the best of the bunch.

True, it is early days. But Lutkenhaus is already track and field’s youngest world champion, having won 800m indoor gold in March. On Sunday, he added to his CV with victory against a top-class field in his first Diamond League race. But it was what his rivals said afterwards in Stockholm that left the deepest mark.

Published: June 9, 2026, 12:00 am

Miles Russell, 17, qualifies for US Open with Tiger Woods’s son Charlie as caddie

• Pair are friends and will play golf together at college

• Tournament will start at Shinnecock Hills next week

Miles Russell was among two 17-year-olds who earned a spot in the US Open on Monday. Still to be determined was whether Russell brings his caddie from the 36-hole qualifier – the son of three-time champion Tiger Woods – to Shinnecock Hills next week.

Russell, the No 10 amateur in the world, survived a bogey on the first playoff hole and grabbed the fourth and final spot from the Florida qualifier. Charlie Woods is one of his close friends who has the same commercial agent and is following Russell to Florida State to play college golf.

Published: June 9, 2026, 6:39 am

Meet the philosopher-in-training who will be at the VAR monitor this World Cup

Joe Dickerson is one of North America’s best referees, but he’ll be off the field in a high-pressure position when the World Cup begins

• Predict the winner | Daily podcast | Download our app

Joe Dickerson never set out to be a referee. As a player, he was told that reffing would be to make money on the side, learn responsibility, and – more pertinent to his team – learn the sport and begin to understand it on a granular level.

Those early assignments in the San Jose area have blossomed into a career that saw Dickerson honored as US Soccer’s male referee of the year in 2025. All of it has been driven by his ability to drill into details – something he’ll be doing a lot of as a VAR official in the replay booth for this summer’s World Cup.

Published: June 9, 2026, 9:30 am

Atlético Madrid reject £129m bid from Real Madrid for Julián Alvarez

• Real Madrid reveal they have made offer for Argentinian

• Arbeloa departs club, paving way for Mourinho return

Real Madrid have revealed they have had a €150m (£129.4m) bid for Julián Alvarez rejected by city rivals Atlético Madrid. The Argentina striker has scored 49 goals in 106 appearances for Atlético since joining from Manchester City in 2024.

The 26-year-old, whose contract runs until 2030, reportedly wants to leave and has been linked with Arsenal and Barcelona. Florentino Pérez vowed before his reelection as Real’s president to submit a club-record offer for an unnamed “great player”.

Published: June 9, 2026, 11:21 am

‘They picked the wrong artist’: How a Dallas mural cover-up led to a $25m lawsuit against Fifa

Robert Wyland’s depiction of ocean life was covered up for a World Cup promotion – now he wants retribution

• World Cup newsletter | Daily podcast | Get the app

Florida-based artist Robert Wyland – who legally changed his name to simply “Wyland” years ago – was recently busy in his studio in the Florida Keys doing what he always does: painting or sculpting vibrant, vivid scenes of aquatic life. Then his assistant walked in.

Wyland, 69, has earned international acclaim for his “whaling walls,” a series of larger-than-life murals across the United States and abroad, many which have become iconic parts of the fabric of American cities. Peacefully depicting the largest mammals on earth on warehouses and office buildings, the murals’ whales lumber along gracefully, offering city goers a moment or two of tranquillity amid chaos.

Published: June 8, 2026, 4:00 am

Is the pope a Real Madrid fan? Leo’s admission upsets Barcelona faithful

Pontiff appeals in Catalan for harmony on Barcelona leg of Spain tour after making football foes in city

To the delight of many, Pope Leo XIV kicked off the Barcelona leg of his week-long visit to Spain with a few words in Catalan, calling on the faithful who had gathered in the city’s cathedral on Tuesday “to build harmony and communion beyond all polarisation”.

The pontiff’s familiar and commendable plea for people to set aside their differences may, however, have come a little late. Three days earlier, while chatting to journalists on the flight to Spain, Leo had made an awkward confession.

Published: June 9, 2026, 8:55 am

Think Musk the billionaire was bad? Brace yourself for Musk the trillionaire | Arwa Mahdawi

Becoming the world’s first trillionaire is only going to supercharge this sense of impunity and bring us one step closer to full-blown oligarchy

“Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about,” Elon Musk wrote in February on Twitter/X, the social network he bought for $44bn. He capped the statement with a sad face emoji.

Alas, Musk’s information is outdated. A 2024 study found a substantial difference in happiness between the wealthy and people who are low income. “A greater feeling of control over life can explain about 75% of the association between money and happiness,” the study’s author noted.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist and the author of Strong Female Lead

Published: June 9, 2026, 4:00 am

The World Cup is shedding new light on the pathology of the Trump regime | Zoe Williams

Players and fans denied visas, the spectre of ICE raids on stadiums, Pete Hegseth’s latest speech ... By the end of this contest, the nature of this US government will be even clearer

Whenever my kids and I are stationary in the same room, within five minutes they will have started talking about football. Every now and then, a name will float out that I recognise – Jude Bellingham, say – but most of the time it lacks the dramatic texture to hold my attention. Everyone is either a genius or an irretrievable loser.

There’s a lot of counting. “Would you watch a play in which everyone was either entirely wise or entirely stupid and the rest of it was mainly a body count?” I ask, trying to wedge myself back into the conversation. They reply: “Hello? Romeo and Juliet?!” then go back to the shortcomings of La Liga, so I go back to looking at my phone.

Published: June 9, 2026, 2:00 am

The spectre of gen Z socialism is haunting the world … according to the Economist | Normon Solomon

The magazine writes: ‘Resisting Gen-Z socialism is therefore an urgent task.’ That urgency must outweigh any urgency of feeding hungry people

A spectre is haunting Europe and America – the spectre of gen Z socialism.

That’s the urgent warning from the Economist in a new cover-story editorial, How to fight back against Gen-Z socialism. Alarmed by a youthful threat to the established order, the magazine is calling for heightened vigilance from defenders of private enterprise.

Norman Solomon is the director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy

Published: June 9, 2026, 3:00 am

I know it’s taboo – but I’m a big fan of marriage | Polly Hudson

If you like the idea, but are too ashamed to admit it in the midst of this hot divorcee summer, listen up! There are some very good reasons to get wed

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment something shifts from unfashionable to taboo, but it feels as if we’re there. With a “hot divorcee summer” on the horizon, more than half of single American women believing they’re happier than their spliced sisters, and nearly 70% of college-educated singles pessimistic about finding the right partner, what was once vanilla has become a baked alaska hot take. Even having a boyfriend has been deemed embarrassing, so steel yourselves: this is controversial. I write, dear reader, in praise of marriage.

Wait! Please! Put down your torches and pitchforks for a moment, and hear me out. I’m not advocating for any kind of tradwife nonsense, or unobtainable romcom fantasy. I’m talking normal, ordinary, messy, cosy, frustrating marriage.

Published: June 9, 2026, 8:29 am

‘Parasitic cleanses’ are the latest health trend to infest social media. But what does the evidence say? | Antiviral

Influencers are promising pills with all sorts of ‘natural’ ingredients, but do they actually work and could they cause harm?

• Read more in the Antiviral series

Parasitic infections are fairly uncommon among otherwise healthy people living in most major developed cities. But this hasn’t stopped a wave of social media influencers spruiking at-home “parasitic cleanses” for any number of symptoms such as constipation, fatigue, poor sleep and brain-fog.

“Just comment ‘deworm’ or ‘cleanse’ for more info,” they may say, promising more information about pills with all sorts of “natural” ingredients including wormwood, clove, turmeric, clove, thyme, and black walnut.

Published: June 9, 2026, 8:00 am

Ella Baron on social division and the spread of disinformation – cartoon

Continue reading...

Published: June 9, 2026, 10:45 am

I watched as Meta’s threats stopped Sarah Wynn-Williams from speaking – we must have stronger rights for whistleblowers | Tim Wu

The company is clearly trying to make an example of the author who wrote about her time at the company. Her free speech should be protected

This year’s Hay festival concluded with a strange spectacle. I was on a panel about the dangers of excessive tech power, alongside former Meta employee Sarah Wynn-Williams – who sat without saying anything on the advice of her lawyer. She had been silenced by Meta’s legal threats to bankrupt her if she spoke.

Wynn-Williams has written a book, Careless People, about her time at Meta (then Facebook), where she was an early director of global public policy. In the tradition of such books (usually written by former government officials), it is in parts flattering, more often critical and, above all, insightful.

Prof Tim Wu is professor at Columbia University Law School and the author of The Age of Extraction:
How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

Published: June 9, 2026, 4:29 am

The Guardian view on Ukraine and the prospects of peace: time to ramp up the pressure on Putin | Editorial

Russia’s ‘spring offensive’ is failing and Kyiv’s drones have brought the war to Moscow and other cities. Europe must strengthen Zelenskyy’s hand further

Last week, Vladimir Putin responded with characteristic disdain to an open letter from Volodymyr Zelenskyy calling for face-to-face talks. Declining to mention Ukraine’s president by name at an economic forum in St Petersburg, he said that he saw “no point” in a meeting and insisted that all Russia’s war aims, including the annexation of the entirety of the eastern Donbas region, were on course to be met.

Mr Putin is “in blood stepped in so far” that agreeing to a ceasefire while those messianic goals remain unachieved may seem more politically dangerous than continuing a war which has cost an estimated 500,000 Russian lives. But as a concerted Ukrainian drone attack on St Petersburg the next day vividly illustrated, his confident assertions are increasingly belied by facts on the ground and in the air.

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 9, 2026, 10:30 am

Anti-immigration protesters in Belfast set bins and vehicles on fire amid unrest over knife attack – live

Crowds gather at sites across Belfast after Sudanese man charged for attempted murder

• Full report: Man seriously injured in Belfast stabbing Starmer describes as ‘sickening’

Badenoch said, after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, it was right that people wanted to ensure this did not happen again.

It led to the Macpherson report, she said.

[It] wanted to put right what went wrong with policing in the 1990s.

However, in attempting to do so, it also enshrined a principle which I believe is wrong that a racist incident is racist if it is perceived as racist by the victim or any other person.

Equality law, properly designed, should protect us all in the same way. It should be a shield, not a sword.

It should protect people from discrimination. It should protect people from being treated differently because of their race, sex, religion, sexuality, disability or age.

Published: June 9, 2026, 3:00 pm

UK and allies impose sanctions on firms enabling West Bank settler violence

Labour backbenchers disappointed as new trade guidance over illegal settlements stops short of outright ban

The UK in alliance with a group of other western powers including Australia, France and Norway has announced it is imposing sanctions on six firms and one individual involved in enabling and financing the recent upsurge in settler violence in the West Bank.

However, the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, disappointed many of her own backbenchers by stopping short of banning trade, saying instead the government was only issuing updated advice to British firms not to become involved in any economic activity with the illegal settlements.

Published: June 9, 2026, 10:08 am

Florida shaken by 6.1-magnitude earthquake off coast of Cuba

Earthquake was region’s strongest tremor in nearly 150 years and was also felt in parts of Mexico including Cancún

An earthquake on Monday off the coast of Cuba, which was that region’s strongest tremor in nearly 150 years, could be felt in Florida and parts of Mexico.

The 6.1-magnitude earthquake, which struck in the afternoon, occurred approximately 65 miles (105km) north-west of Mantua, Cuba, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS added that the earthquake had a depth of 16 miles.

Published: June 9, 2026, 9:30 am

‘Woefully unprepared’: extreme heat will double US hospitalizations by 2040, study finds

Sharp rise in hospital visits will in turn drive up annual healthcare costs for heat-related conditions to over $1bn

People in the US are poised to endure another summer of unusually ferocious heat and there will be little respite in the years ahead, with a new study finding that the coming 15 years could see a doubling in hospitalizations due to heat-related illnesses.

The number of annual heat-related emergency department visits or hospitalizations across the US are set to rise from about 109,000 cases a year to as many as 237,000 cases by 2040, the new research has estimated.

Published: June 9, 2026, 6:00 am

Man shot dead during protest against proposed US Ebola quarantine facility in Kenya

Police dispersed demonstrators in Nanyuki, 120 miles from Nairobi, amid rising anger at US plans

Kenyan police have shot dead a man during a protest against a proposed Ebola quarantine facility for US citizens.

Patrick Wahome, who has organised protests in Nanyuki against the centre, told Reuters on Tuesday the man died from a gunshot wound to the head. Reporters from the agency saw his body lying motionless in a police van with a large head wound.

Published: June 9, 2026, 10:13 am

Former Air Canada pilot charged after allegedly flying without proper license for 16 years

Geoffrey Wall is alleged to have flown over 900 flights domestically and internationally between 2009 and 2025

A former Air Canada pilot has been charged after flying for years without a proper license, Canadian police have said.

Geoffrey Wall, of Barrie, Ontario, is alleged to have operated as an airline captain between 2009 and 2025 without a license to fly large commercial passenger planes, according to Peel regional police.

Published: June 9, 2026, 10:10 am

‘This is it’: mauled US hiker recalls moment grizzly locked eyes with him

Daniel Crago says he feels ‘extremely lucky’ after encounter with bear at Glacier national park last month

As the large roaring grizzly bear charged down at him from across a snow field in Montana and mauled him, hiker Daniel Crago had just enough time to put his arm up and think: “This is it.”

But two weeks after that perilous, exceedingly rare encounter in Glacier national park, Crago, 32, is still alive, recovering after three surgeries and feeling “extremely lucky”, he said on Monday in an interview with ABC News.

Published: June 9, 2026, 10:11 am

Whey protein shortage looms as use of weight-loss drugs fuels global demand

Price of dairy product has risen fivefold after users of GLP-1 medications advised to increase protein consumption

The growing popularity of weight-loss drugs has fuelled global demand for whey protein, sparking concerns among industry experts over a potential shortage.

The price of whey has risen fivefold to record levels as companies race to secure supplies amid a boom driven by growing use of GLP-1 drugs, such as Mounjaro, which often require higher protein intake to preserve muscle mass.

Published: June 9, 2026, 7:00 am

Man attacked by alligator in swamp while fleeing police in Louisiana

Suspect, charged with driving while impaired, was eventually captured and arrested with injuries to his arms

An alligator inserted itself into a police pursuit in south-eastern Louisiana, chasing and attacking an allegedly impaired driver who tried to evade law enforcement by leaping into a swamp.

The suspect, a 40-year-old man, was eventually captured and arrested with injuries to both arms. Deputy body-worn camera footage of the alligator swimming at speed towards the man and thrashing with him in the water was posted on YouTube by local CBS News affiliate and Guardian reporting partner WWL Louisiana.

Published: June 9, 2026, 5:46 am

The Galápagos is a wildlife haven. But is that enough to protect the rare scalloped hammerhead shark?

The species is abundant within the protected archipelago but when they migrate outside the marine reserve to give birth they run the gauntlet of industrial fishing

The unmistakable fluted T-shape of a scalloped hammerhead shark slides by, followed by a diver holding his breath and a metal spear like an extra-long snooker cue. The spear hits the fish behind its dorsal fin and the 2-metre shark darts away, disgruntled but otherwise unharmed.

Carlos Robalino, a marine biologist from the Galápagos Islands, trained as a shark researcher in Mexico but is now back home and working as a junior researcher at the Charles Darwin Foundation. When we meet in March, he is one of the divers on the foundation’s research expedition to Darwin and Wolf, the most northerly islands in the Galápagos marine reserve.

Published: June 9, 2026, 4:00 am

World’s first wind-powered underwater datacentre starts operating in China

Datacentre off Shanghai coast uses less power and water than land-based equivalent

The world’s first wind-powered underwater datacentre has started operations off the coast of Shanghai, as China presses forwards with solutions for energy challenges created by the country’s artificial intelligence boom.

The Shanghai Lingang undersea datacentre demonstration project, which launched in May, has a capacity of 24 megawatts. It is a joint effort between HiCloud Technology and China Communications Construction, a state-owned company.

Published: June 8, 2026, 10:00 pm

‘I fear people will go to war over water’: as wells run dry, farmers struggle to survive in Bangladesh

The arid Barind region was transformed by aquifer wells but now the water system is collapsing under the pressure of the climate crisis and decades of extraction

In the parched fields of north-west Bangladesh, where the earth hardens into cracked red clay beneath an unforgiving sun, farmers in the Barind region say they are watching the foundations of rural life disappear underground.

For decades, groundwater transformed Barind – one of Bangladesh’s driest regions – into a productive agricultural belt. Deep tube wells allowed farmers to grow rice, wheat, maize and vegetables year-round across land once defined by drought.

Published: June 9, 2026, 2:00 am

Serial rapist ex-NFL player transferred from prison to halfway house

Darren Sharper, who pleaded guilty or no contest to raping women in four states, is projected to be released in 2028

Admitted serial rapist and former National Football League champion Darren Sharper has been transferred from federal prison to a halfway house program with his projected 2028 release date nearing.

In a statement to the Guardian on Monday, a US Bureau of Prisons (BoP) spokesperson said Sharper, 50, was transferred on 27 May from a federal correctional institution near Elkton, Ohio, to “community confinement” overseen by the agency’s residential re-entry management office in Baltimore.

Published: June 9, 2026, 3:00 am

Surveillance drones deployment on US’s Great Lakes raises data collection fears

Rights groups and some locals worry that program to ‘track illicit activity’ could become a data collection project

The Great Lakes have rarely ever been considered a hotbed of illicit drug activity or center for illegal immigration.

But that hasn’t stopped US government agencies and the company behind surveillance sailing drones from treating the region as such. The US Coast Guard recently announced it had launched an armada of at least six sailing drones in the Great Lakes this summer in an attempt to, in part, “track illicit activity”.

Published: June 9, 2026, 6:00 am

James Blood Ulmer, adventurous US guitarist and vocalist, dies aged 86

Musician who spliced jazz, funk and blues, including in a spell on a major label in the early 1980s, was celebrated as ‘fearless’ by his family

James Blood Ulmer, the US guitarist celebrated for his avant garde splicing of jazz, blues and funk, has died aged 86.

A statement on social media said he died on 3 June. “His music was fearless, and so was his spirit,” his family added in another statement.

Published: June 9, 2026, 1:53 am

Gordon S Wood, Pulitzer-prize winning historian, dies after being struck by a car in Rhode Island

A renowned academic, Wood was hit by a car as he was crossing a supermarket’s parking lot and later died of his injuries

Gordon S Wood, a Pulitzer prize-winning author and historian, was killed on Sunday when he was struck by a car in a supermarket parking lot in Rhode Island.

Wood, 92, won the Pulitzer in 1993 in the history category for The Radicalism of the American Revolution, a landmark tome that advanced the theory of the break with Britain being at least as much of an internal social and political transformation as a desire to be rid of colonial masters.

Published: June 8, 2026, 6:14 pm

Alleged mastermind in murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira to stand trial

Brazilian judge rules there is enough evidence to try Ruben Dario da Silva Villar over killings of journalist and activist

The alleged mastermind and financial backer of the murders of the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira in the Amazon four years ago will stand trial before a jury, a federal judge in the state of Amazonas has ruled.

Judge Cristina Lazzari Souza found that, based on the charges brought by federal prosecutors, there were “sufficient indications of authorship” to try Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, known by his nickname “Colômbia”.

Published: June 9, 2026, 6:01 am

Two men jailed for violence at protest over police treatment of Henry Nowak

Leon O’Leary threw a smoke grenade and Connor Bishop a traffic cone at officers during disturbance in Southampton

Two men who threw a smoke grenade and traffic cone at police during the violence in Southampton that followed the sentencing of Henry Nowak’s killer have been jailed.

Leon O’Leary, 41, from Basingstoke, Hampshire, was sentenced to three years and one month after throwing a smoke grenade at officers.

Published: June 9, 2026, 11:53 am

EU plans to ban Russian soldiers from bloc in fresh sanctions on Moscow

Banks, crypto firms and Kremlin oil reserves also targeted in 21st set of measures since full-scale invasion of Ukraine

The EU hopes to ban Russian soldiers from entering its territory as part of further sanctions against Moscow that also target banks, crypto firms and the Kremlin’s oil revenues.

Announcing the proposals on Tuesday, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “We propose for the first time to ban from entry into the European Union anyone who has served in the Russian armed forces since the beginning of the war. So Europe stays off limit for anyone who has participated in the invasion of Ukraine, as simple as that.”

Published: June 9, 2026, 8:12 am

‘Nobody is pretending to like my work because of my fresh-faced good looks’: the pros of being a debut novelist at 51

There are some advantages to being an older debutant, including knowing what it’s like to fail and not having your new novel overshadowed by early literary promise

Recently I was at a film event where I was introduced to a big producer by a very nice actor. The actor said, “this is Patrick, he has a debut novel coming out soon.”

The producer looked me up and down and said, “You took your time.”

Published: June 9, 2026, 4:00 am

Peabo Bryson obituary

Singer of 70s and 80s hits including Tonight, I Celebrate My Love who broke through to a huge new audience with duets for Disney films

Peabo Bryson, who has died aged 75 after a stroke, earned himself the nickname of the Voice of Love, thanks to his smooth and mellifluous singing and his string of memorable duets with female singers, including Roberta Flack, Natalie Cole and Minnie Riperton. He credited Flack with giving him the key to the art of duetting.

“I think the secret to a really good duet is that you have to fall a little bit in love with your duet partner,” he told Tatler Asia in 2015. “I was very fortunate in finding a duet partner in Roberta Flack who really knew what a duet was, and knew how to play to a person’s strengths and weaknesses equally. I learned how to do a great duet from working with Roberta Flack because she’s that great.”

Published: June 9, 2026, 9:55 am

Disclosure Day review – close encounters of a deferred kind in Spielberg’s conspiracy spectacular

Humans have been secretly abusing aliens for almost 80 years in this big-hearted thriller starring Josh O’Connor as a worried whistleblower and a never-more-magnetic Emily Blunt as a weather forecaster channelling UFO chat

The old school is the new school in this very enjoyable and entirely ridiculous space-alien conspiracy adventure from screenwriter David Koepp and director Steven Spielberg; it is cheerfully mischievous and deadly serious in equal measure. It has something of Hitchcock from North By Northwest, Christopher Nolan from Inception and Spielberg from pretty much every other movie he’s ever made. Spielberg incidentally appears in the trailer for this film, disclosing that, hand-on-heart, he really believes in its contents, in the way I imagine CS Lewis believed in Aslan and the secret Narnian sovereignty of Peter and Susan.

Only Spielberg could get away with taking two of the world’s best-known hoaxes – Roswell and crop circles – and treating them with judicious deadpan respect. With heartfelt idealism, Spielberg also asks us to believe that should the ultimate truth come out, people everywhere would be terribly upset at the way captured aliens have been vivisected. (I suspect that would be very far down the list of our concerns.)

Published: June 9, 2026, 9:00 am

Signal One review – Dennis Quaid and David Thewlis ballast high-concept, low-risk first contact yarn

Sci-fi about the inventor of a device to communicate with aliens, in which scientists spend too much time talking astrophysics at each other

Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is not alone in the universe. It is now joined by another sci-fi about Earth’s first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life in the form of a high-concept, low-risk, talky drama from writer-director Jonathan Sobol. It stars Isabelle Fuhrman as Dr Annika Cask, a brilliant young computer scientist, already famous for taking the first photograph of dark matter.

Predictably for this kind of film, Annika has a tragic backstory (the death in childhood of her sister) which drives her single mindedness and has left her with a deep sense of the fragility of life. She takes a job for brash tech billionaire Dennis Quaid, working on a top-secret project on his private island in the Caribbean. On the helicopter she’s joined by another wonder-kid, electronics engineer Charlie (Josh Hutcherson). The pair have been recruited to keep an eye on the even more brilliant Perry Glassner (David Thewlis), who has invented a device called Littlemouth, a fancy-looking mini-pylon designed to communicate with other life in the universe. Glassner is an unbalanced narcissist, played by Thewlis in style of his character Johnny in Mike Leigh’s Naked: all fear and rage, though channelled this time through a PhD in quantum physics. Here he is on a rant about humanity: “Petty, cruel, prone to self-destruction, hellbent on rage-fucking our habitat out of existence.”

Published: June 9, 2026, 3:00 am

‘It soothes me’: why The Blair Witch Project is my feelgood movie

The latest in our series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort films is a dread-filled journey into the woods

I’m not sure I could blame anyone for choosing, as their feelgood film, a film in which the characters feel good. Cinema is supposed to manipulate us emotionally - that’s the whole point. Nemo feels good when he’s found, and we feel good for him. By this logic, horror films should make us feel bad. So, when it was released in 1999, why did The Blair Witch Project – a film in which three film students are hunted, terrorised and presumably killed by an unseen entity – make nearly $250m at the box office? That’s the same as Love Actually. Of all the millions of people who paid to sit and watch Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick’s claustrophobic found-footage nightmare, I’m sure that not a single one of them entered the cinema hoping for their day to be ruined.

I was technically too young to see The Blair Witch Project when it came out, but like so many other children of laissez-faire 90s parents, I found a way. And that way was a friend’s sleepover. Fingers slick with Pizza Hut grease, we slid the 15 certificate VHS cassette into the player and gleefully waited to have the shit scared out of us. And it did. But not in the way we were used to. Up until this point, I’d seen the likes of Hellraiser, Candyman and Nightmare on Elm Street – horror meant guts strewn across the screen like party streamers. But what Blair Witch lacked in viscera is made up for in pure, uncut dread. The fact that you never even see the titular witch somehow made it even more terrifying. Believe me, in the imagination of a child who’d been fed horror films like multipack breakfast cereals, that witch was scarier than Pinhead and Freddy Krueger’s bastard baby. And I … loved her?

Published: June 8, 2026, 2:00 am

A Murder Between Friends review – Joan Collins’s detective diva sparkles in trashy whodunnit

Hot tubs and high camp as a TV star dripping in rhinestones tries to solve a real-life crime in this fabulously flawed murder mystery. Who cares who did it

Here is a camply craptastic murder mystery that aims to offer queer-minded fans of trashy detection stories a treat for Pride month with a manifestly cheap and cheerful, amusingly badly performed, diva-centric exercise. Let us be clear: this is not well-made in the slightest, with a script as shonky as a flatpack gateleg table, with similarly slapdash direction by collaborators Trent Garrett and Jacob Young. (Clearly it takes two people to make something this inept.) But its flaws somehow make it endearing, mostly because it stars Joan Collins, looking insanely fabulous at whatever free bus-pass-qualifying age she is.

Collins plays Francesca Carlyle, a famous TV detective lady, lacquered in rhinestones, and always in faintly softer focus than everyone else. She rents her mansion to a gang of old friends getting together for a European holiday in an indeterminate country; this early-middle-aged gaggle, who supposedly have known each other since university, is comprised of a mix of Americans such as bullish Josh (Young), his vampy, fake-eyelash-wearing wife Kat (Nadia Bjorlin), and slightly more modestly attired Sonia (India Thain). There are Brits like Sonia’s husband Devin (Simon Cotton), and newcomer Sydney (Toby-Alexander Smith) who just married the core group’s friend, ambiguously accented Louisa (Hana Vagnerová). One of the cohort is killed on the first night after some carousing, during which two of the above blokes grope each other on a stairway, overseen by a third, and hot tubs are deployed.

Published: June 8, 2026, 5:00 am

The best albums of 2026 so far

From Thundercat’s all-star funk to Kacey Musgraves’ hymns to solitude, we look at some of our favourite music of the last six months from across the pop spectrum

• Listen to a Spotify playlist of every album here

Published: June 9, 2026, 2:00 am

‘I was dazzled. I thought the walls would fall down’: the oral history of DMZ, the label and club night that gave dubstep its soul

In an extract from Aftershock, a definitive new history of dubstep, DMZ’s Mala, Coki and Loefah recall the bass drops and pacifist mentality that went into their creation

By the turn of the millennium, British electronic music had some growing pains. The jungle and drum’n’bass scenes that energised the 1990s were running out of creative gas, and garage had shifted from the moody underground into champagne flash and chart hits. Across pockets of London, Croydon and Essex, a tiny group of artists coalesced around a new idea. After 15 years of high-octane beats, they decided to strip the breakbeats, hard partying and cliquishness out of dance music, focusing instead on soundsystem fundamentals: bass, space and togetherness. From there, dubstep was born.

As we approach the 25-year anniversary of dubstep’s beginnings, I’ve documented the genre in my book, Aftershock: The Seismic Impact of Dubstep: an oral history of its origin story told through 28 artists and key figures. Some of the most influential are part of DMZ, a record label and party series led by south London DJ-producers Mala, Coki and Loefah, and MC Sgt Pokes. With its anti-VIP ethos, DMZ became one of dubstep’s driving forces, and earlier this year, Mala and Coki performed at Fred Again’s residency at London’s Alexandra Palace: their influence is shifting to a new generation of fans.

Published: June 9, 2026, 6:30 am

‘We were going off the cliff’: Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil on inventing grunge – and losing Chris Cornell and Kurt Cobain

As he publishes a memoir, the pioneering guitarist talks about rejecting spandex and hair metal, his fears for breakthrough hit Black Hole Sun – and completing nine unfinished Soundgarden songs

Kim Thayil has always felt like an outsider. For example: the Soundgarden guitarist has lived in Seattle, a city infamously addicted to coffee, for more than four decades, but only started drinking the stuff himself during lockdown. “I was pretty against-the-grain to my Seattle friends, who always wanted to meet up at coffee shops,” he grins, cradling a freshly brewed cup of java in his kitchen. “My girlfriend in the 80s and 90s even worked at the original branch of Starbucks and made coffee with a French press every morning. But I drank tea, because my parents are Indian.”

Thayil’s Indian heritage also set him apart from his peers. In his new memoir, A Screaming Life, he writes that when he and bassist Hiro Yamamoto formed Soundgarden in 1984, the group was “two-thirds Asian”, and that “as liberal and accepting as the punk scene was, it was still largely white, and I was ever aware of that”. Nevertheless, Soundgarden went on to become pioneers of Seattle’s grunge movement, a multiplatinum-selling, critically acclaimed, Grammy-winning group whose breakthrough hit, Black Hole Sun, transcended their gnarly milieu to become an enduring anthem.

Published: June 8, 2026, 9:00 pm

‘You escape the slaughter. But there’s a long tail of sadness’: musician Bedouine on the strangeness of Arab life outside the Middle East

With roots in Armenia, Syria and Saudi Arabia, the singer-songwriter now lives in the US. But despite her Carole King-style sound, her homelands are never far from her mind

The title song to Azniv Korkejian’s fourth album as Bedouine, Neon Summer Skin, recreates a perfect day from childhood. “Being taken to the pool, where my only worry is being dragged away when the sun’s setting,” she says, calling from Los Angeles. “Later on, mom and dad wash me in the tub and put me to bed.” Steeped in dreamy 70s soft pop, the track isn’t merely an exercise in nostalgia. “I wanted to paint a picture of what it’s like to feel safe,” she says. “So much of the record is about not having the luxury to not consider your own safety. I think about this a lot when it comes to the children in Palestine and Lebanon, who are not afforded that right.”

The conflicts that have ravaged the Middle East are context for Neon Summer Skin, but the album’s themes of displacement, identity and insecurity – wrapped in the deceptively soft sound of 1970s-style MOR pop – are also personal. Korkejian’s family are Armenian, but she and her parents were born in Syria, while her brothers were born in Saudi Arabia, where the Korkejians lived, “on a US compound that was like a gated community”, until 1995. That year, unnerved by the proximity of the recent Gulf war, the family successfully applied for the green card lottery and relocated to the US. “And thank God, because we would eventually have had to return to Syria,” Korkejian says. “I don’t know what would have happened to us then.”

Published: June 8, 2026, 7:50 am

The End of Everything by M John Harrison review – near-future visions from an SF master

This bleak but brilliant tale of enigmatic alien entities and slow social collapse exposes the terrifying insecurity of life right now

M John Harrison’s prose has thrilled me since I was a teen. It has thrilled others, too, including Angela Carter, Deborah Levy and Robert Macfarlane, but snobbery about the genres in which he made his mark – science fiction and fantasy – has hindered the respect his achievement deserves. His rigorously realistic novel Climbers, published in 1989, looked as though it might change that, but subsequent work has remained genre-fluid and uncompromisingly peculiar.

In the 1970s and 80s, he wrote stories about Viriconium, a fabled city crumbling into decadence and anarchy. These swashbuckling yet sinister tales functioned as escapist adventures for readers who preferred a far-flung nightmare to the contemporary humdrum. But in the 21st century, the world we inhabit has become utterly fantastical and Harrison has no need to revisit Viriconium; his anarchic, disintegrated metropolis is London and The End of Everything is set in an unnamed town on the Kent coast.

Published: June 8, 2026, 11:00 pm

Flamboyance by Jack Parlett review – a serious study of the spectacular

What does it mean to push the boat out, and can peacocking be more than just a beautiful gesture?

A friend’s mother once told me that for a couple of years in the 1980s – as the Conservatives were waging war on the miners and she spent late nights at Marxist-feminist reading groups – she wore an almost daily uniform of jeans and a white T-shirt. On her wedding day she broke with habit and put on a dress she had bought, at great expense to her, that was fun, sexy and, although she didn’t use this word, flamboyant. The next week at the school she taught in she saw a colleague wearing it. “Nice dress,” she said. “It’s OK for work,” her colleague replied, “but I wouldn’t wear it out.”

I found myself recalling this anecdote as I read Jack Parlett’s memoir-cum-cultural history of our attempts to push the boat out. To make any effort is to risk embarrassment, to be seen either as ridiculous or hopelessly naive. One way to avoid those charges is to use playful or cynical irony. Parlett finds examples of this in Oscar Wilde and what the cultural critic Susan Sontag once described as camp, a worldview obsessed with artifice and performance. Although Flamboyance is not a polemic, it’s clear that its author sees something lacking in these efforts at self-fashioning. The book is couched as an alternative; Parlett presents flamboyance as a model for how to live a life that not only “burns with a resistant energy” but “puts politics back into the picture”. In practice, this means that he has little patience for the notion of art for art’s sake; he insists, for example, that there is no making sense of flamenco without understanding the history of fascism in Spain.

Published: June 9, 2026, 1:00 am

Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer review – fun in the Tuscan sun

The Pulitzer-winning author of Less has crafted a breezy confection of fish-out-of-water wit, insecurity and self-discovery set in an Italian paradise

‘There’s a place in Italy in need of someone. Why don’t you look into that?” Inspired by his two-year stint directing a writers’ residency, the Santa Maddalena Foundation outside Florence, with these words American author Andrew Sean Greer launches a hapless, clueless innocent into the Tuscan hills and the embrace of its eccentric aristocracy, in the person of the eponymous Coco, Baronessa Lisabetta.

Variously known as “our young man”, Gio and Giovedi, Villa Coco’s narrator is here to fill the post of “adjutant” for the Baronessa. His duties include pruning roses, emptying drains, hunting the Baronessa’s mortal enemy, the pine marten, and cataloguing the dilapidated Villa Coco’s contents. Among the camel saddles and hat racks, he is assured, lurk priceless works of art, including a Picasso and a Botticelli. He joins a staff consisting of a Sri Lankan cook, her husband and a Lebanese factotum; they share in the sisyphean task of keeping Villa Coco going, and the Baronessa out of harm’s way.

Published: June 8, 2026, 1:00 am

Summer Game Fest highlights: 34 new video games to look out for, from Alien Isolation to Crazy Taxi

Hundreds of video games were shown at June’s annual bonanza. After watching more than 15 hours of showcases, our video games editor picks the highlights

The sequel to a revered 2014 horror game from British developer Creative Assembly: this time you must evade the xenomorph on the surface of a storm-ravaged colony world.

Published: June 8, 2026, 9:46 am

Goals review – disruptor football game attempts to smash the competition

Released just before the World Cup kicks off, this upstart football game is positioning itself as a credible alternative to EA Sports FC

This month something extremely unusual happened in the video game world: someone launched a new football game. It used to be that the market could support a vast array of contenders, from arcade kickabouts such as Super Sidekicks and Hat Trick Hero, to serious simulations named Actua Soccer or This Is Football, to eccentric oddities such as Namco’s LiberoGrande which made you experience the whole match as a single onfield player.

For the past decade plus, however, the scene has been dominated EA’s Fifa series, now EA Sports FC. With the exception of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer, now eFootball, there have been few competitors – and few plucky upstarts.

Published: June 8, 2026, 3:40 am

Stranger Things: The First Shadow announces final curtain in London and New York

The theatrical prequel to the Duffer Brothers’ smash-hit Netflix series is to shut down in the West End and on Broadway this winter, after selling more than 1.5m tickets

The London and New York productions of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, the theatrical prequel to Netflix’s TV blockbuster, are to both close this winter. The stage spectacular will have run for just over three years in the West End, where it won two Olivier awards, and for just over 20 months on Broadway, where it won four Tony awards. The final performance at the Phoenix theatre in London will be on 27 December and the last show at the Marquis theatre in New York will be on 3 January.

The announcement, made on Tuesday, comes as a surprise considering the TV series’ phenomenal continued success. The November launch of the fifth and final season broke viewing records for an English-language series on Netflix, with 59.6m views in the first five days, and even caused the streaming service to crash within minutes of the episodes first becoming available. In February, it was widely reported that the New York stage production was being filmed for future release, but Netflix has made no such official statement.

Published: June 9, 2026, 11:00 am

‘Central to human identity’: exhibition at the Met connects bodies with musical instruments

Musical Bodies looks at 4,000 years of musical history and how humans have forged relationships with instruments

• ‘A kind of reconnecting with the past’: the Met celebrates the art of the portrait

Music is very much at the heart of what it is that makes us human. While there is debate over precisely why we first started making music – with leading theories arguing that it arose for purposes of hunting, communication, spiritual practice and forging community bonds – what’s not debated is that music-making is something we pour ourselves deeply into, forging intimate relationships with our instruments.

The Met’s compelling new exhibition Musical Bodies looks at 4,000 years of musical history, teasing out the complex web of interrelationships between the sounds made through human bodies and the many instruments we have used to alter and augment those sounds. From singing, whistling and bodily percussion to a vast array of constructed objects, the show is a rich exploration of how our musical identities contribute to the notion of what it is to be human.

Published: June 9, 2026, 2:00 am

Protests, picket lines and Indigenous pride: examining US democracy – in pictures

Partly inspired by the poem In This Place (An American Lyric) by Amanda Gorman, FotoFocus, a non-profit, has opened its inaugural exhibition at the new FotoFocus Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Titled Big Tent, the show is on view until 22 August 2026 and presents the work of more than 50 artists. The work created by each photographer reflects on the present state of US democracy and demonstrates the power of the image

Published: June 9, 2026, 4:00 am

‘The people made me a star’: 100 years of Marilyn Monroe – in pictures

The woman once known as Norma Jeane became an inspiration for artists and photographers – as a stunning new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery proves

Published: June 8, 2026, 11:00 pm

‘You’re treated like this is the end’: Meet the dementia rebels – diagnosed and determined to change people’s minds

Few things are more feared than a dementia diagnosis. Now people living with the condition are fighting against damaging stereotypes and demanding proper medical support

When Maxine Linnell, 78, a retired psychotherapist living in Leicestershire, learned that she had dementia four years ago, the diagnosis proved less challenging than some people’s reactions. “What was striking was how many people’s attitudes changed almost immediately … they stop seeing you as a person and see only dementia, some professionals included. Like this is the end and everything after will be devastating.”

The assumption that you go overnight from diagnosis to late-stage dementia isn’t confined to family and friends. Julie Hayden, a nurse and social worker from Yorkshire, was diagnosed nine years ago at the age of 54, long after sensing that something was wrong but being constantly told that it was depression or menopause; her doctors still associated dementia with old age and didn’t consider that she might have had young onset. “At the point of diagnosis,” she recalls, “most of us are told: ‘Well, it’s dementia, nothing we can do about that. Best go away and get your end of life affairs in order.’”

Published: June 8, 2026, 9:00 pm

‘Overconsumption isolates us’: how to start shopping less

Spending can be exciting – but how do you function outside of it? Experts share their tips for paring down buying

For years, I have been caught in a tiresome, expensive cycle: when I’m bored (or sad, or insecure) I scroll through my phone, looking for stuff to buy. In those moments, it feels like the right purchase will relieve me of ennui or unpleasantness. These shoes will make my life more glamorous! This face wash will make me feel forever beautiful!

Sometimes this rush lasts up to two days after I receive my item. But the excitement fades – sometimes as soon as I click “confirm purchase” – and I inevitably think: “Why did I do that?”

Published: June 8, 2026, 11:24 am

Can a $159 Bluetooth sleep mask actually help you snooze better? I tested to find out

Bluetooth sleep masks block out light and let you stream audio. I spent weeks testing some of the top-rated ones on the market

• The best sleep masks in the US: I spent nine weeks testing 32 masks, and these are my favorites

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

My sister has fallen asleep to the dulcet tones of Law & Order every night for years. I myself am partial to the sound of rain at bedtime. A friend, meanwhile, swears by sleepcasts. One gadget that could work for all of us – and may work well for you too – is a Bluetooth sleep mask.

If you like to listen to something as you nod off, earbuds specially designed for sleep are certainly an option. But some people (like my sister, who has a newborn) don’t want to block out all noise, which earbuds tend to do. Others just don’t like the feeling of having something jammed in their ear canals all night, especially if they sleep on their side or stomach.

I tested 42 pairs of wireless earbuds to find the best in the US

Published: June 9, 2026, 12:07 pm

Is it true that … sugar is ‘toxic’?

Influencers often brand sugar as inherently harmful – but not all sweet foods are created equal

‘It’s a common myth,” says Dr Emily Leeming, a dietitian at King’s College London – and one that thrives on social media. The confusion, she says, often comes from people cutting out sugary foods and feeling better. But that can be because removing ultra-processed sweet treats improves the overall quality of a diet (making more room for wholefoods).

Leeming says influencers who call sugar “toxic” often see it as inherently harmful – solely responsible for weight gain, poor blood sugar control and heart problems. But in controlled studies where calorie intake is kept the same, diets high in sugar don’t appear to worsen weight loss, metabolism or key health markers. “It’s not ideal nutritionally if you’re missing out on fruits, vegetables and whole grains,” Leeming says, “but sugar isn’t in itself directly harmful in that context.”

Published: June 8, 2026, 12:00 am

Practice dates: should you swipe right on people you’re not attracted to?

Still hoping to meet ‘the one’? While you’re waiting, one dating expert says you should romance someone you’re not totally smitten with. It could be the start of something beautiful

Name: Practice dates.

Age: The term date – to mean romantic dating – was inadvertently coined by American columnist George Ade in 1896, when he described a “date book” used by a shop cashier to record all her meetings with suitors. Practice dating is a 2026 concept.

Published: June 9, 2026, 9:05 am

Ideas for make-ahead vegetarian and vegan finger food | Kitchen aide

Keep things simple, outsource and prep ahead where you can, and never forget the golden rule of canapes …

My daughter is getting married: what vegetarian and vegan canapes can I make at least a day ahead?
Sue, by email
“Canapes need to be no more than two mouthfuls,” says Barney Desmazery, author of One Dish Four Ways, “unless you’re going to provide something to eat them from, but in my book they’re then no longer canapes.”

You’ll not want anything too labour-intensive. “Sue is going to be making them tens or hundreds of times over, so outsourcing some work with store-bought ingredients is an easy win,” says Richard Makin, AKA School Night Vegan and author of Stress-Free Dinners. Also remember that, as with most things in life, less is usually more: “Good ingredients always triumph over complicated recipes,” says Desmazery, who recalls a wedding he once attended in Liguria, Italy: “There was a round of aged parmesan with knives for guests to break off shards, and that was great.” Granted, parmesan isn’t one for Sue’s vegetarian/vegan spread, but you get the idea.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Published: June 9, 2026, 5:00 am

The British food scene was booming. Why has it suddenly gone bust?

Once mocked internationally, the UK became a gastronomic hotspot in recent decades – London was hailed as the foodie capital of the world. Now many Michelin-starred restaurants have closed and the rot is spreading

It’s 9am on a weekday morning and although I’ve just finished my porridge, the chef Richard Wilkins is making my mouth water. “My signature dish is soft Scottish langoustines wrapped in very thin, crispy pastry, served with Japanese sushi rice and a langoustine bisque.”

His other specialities include turbot in a spinach and champagne sauce, buttery wagyu steak with English peas, and raspberry millefeuille. Sadly, I won’t be able to sample any of them and neither will anyone else. At the end of April, Wilkins took the painful decision to close his west London Michelin-listed Restaurant 104 after seven years.

Published: June 9, 2026, 2:00 am

A job that changed me: I was teaching in a juvenile detention centre when a repeat offender’s poetry moved me to tears

On my first day, I was terrified. But I quickly came to realise these young people weren’t irredeemably bad

“Those who can’t, teach,” is the most unjust professional putdown. Unfortunately, it was true in my case. I’d lived a childhood dream for 25 years, as a sports reporter and producer in Australia, London and New York. When I moved back to Melbourne from the United States with my family in 2017, I started a media production company with an old friend. Had it been successful, I never would have entered a classroom again.

But our company went belly up after 18 months. I was 51. With two young kids and a hefty mortgage, my wife suggested it might be time to revisit the idea of teaching.

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Ralph Jackman’s memoir Detention: A rookie teacher, the toughest prison school in Australia is available now through Allen & Unwin (AU$34.99)

Published: June 8, 2026, 8:00 am

How do you give Britain’s hidden army of young carers a break? | Is Mum OK? Documentary

There are more than one million young carers in the UK – with an average age of 12 – which is the equivalent of two kids in every school class. Do they feel supported? In Walthamstow, east London, we meet a group of carers as they are collected for a rare night off that brings a sense of community and a glimpse of fun for a few hours every few weeks. It’s hosted by Satvinder, a tenacious council worker who fights to improve the recognition of young carers in her borough and provides them crucial emotional support.

This film is released during Carers Week in the UK, a campaign that celebrates unpaid carers across the country and calls for better recognition and support for them.

Published: June 9, 2026, 2:31 am

Izakaya economics: Japan’s traditional night out fights tooth and ale for survival

Hard times – and British-style pubs – are squeezing restaurant-bars that once thrived in cities everywhere. Can they innovate to keep pace with change?

From rowdy spit-and-sawdust joints to dimly lit high-end eateries, from chains equipped with tablets to family-run holes in the wall, Japan’s izakaya restaurant-bars are as varied as the cuisine they serve.

They are also a bellwether, reflecting strength and shifts in the wider economy. Now that economy is squeezing them harder than ever, pushing closures to record rates. The damage is spread unevenly: amid the struggles, some flourish, while a chain of unlikely alternatives expands.

Published: June 8, 2026, 7:43 pm

A religious hospital denied her a life-saving drug during an ectopic pregnancy. She lost her fertility

Harmonie Perrone, 28, is suing Advocate Good Shepherd in Illinois, where reproductive rights are enshrined in law

Harmonie Perrone, 28, knew she was probably having an ectopic pregnancy, and she knew exactly what she needed to do: seek medical care immediately, before life-threatening complications set in.

But she was denied that care twice as she feared for her life – and, after the delay in care, she lost her fertility, she says in a new lawsuit filed Monday.

Published: June 8, 2026, 4:00 am

Tell us: which Steven Spielberg movie means the most to you?

We’d like to hear about your favourite films made by the director and why you love them

On Sunday we published the best Steven Spielberg films chosen by directors, critics and super fans. Now we’d like to hear from our readers – what is missing from our list and which Spielberg movie means the most to you?

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Published: June 8, 2026, 7:05 am

A barbers’ contest and Pope Leo in Spain: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Published: June 9, 2026, 5:53 am