Is the Sabrina Carpenter album art really that offensive?

The internet has been divided over the suggestive cover of the pop princess’s new album, but it’s possible some might be missing the point

By all accounts, Sabrina Carpenter is in control.

The 26-year-old singer, who signed a record deal with Disney at 12 and became a star in her teens, worked through 10 years and five albums before Espresso, a cheeky and dementedly catchy single from her album Short n’ Sweet, became the song of summer 2024. She writes or co-writes all of her songs with a signature imprint – saucy, clever, unabashedly horny and in on the joke of being both attracted to and disappointed by men. (“Did you say you’re finished? Didn’t know we started,” she teases in new single Manchild.) A recent Rolling Stone cover profile espoused her intelligence, craftiness and deadpan humor. (Asked which famous ex Manchild is about, she answered, “It’s about your dad.”) She’s taking the now-unusual step of releasing a new album only a year after her breakout for no more reason than she has ideas, feels creative, and wants to – “my brain is sharp, let’s write”, she told Rolling Stone.

Published: June 14, 2025, 9:19 am

Dinosaurs in the driveway: the Nevada man delighting kids with his free prehistoric theme park

Steve ‘Dinoman’ Springer turned his suburban home into a makeshift carnival and public education center: ‘You come here to get away from the world’

Amid the endless winding streets of Henderson, Nevada, one house breaks the mold. Its front yard – no grass, just desert rock – is home to 62 rainbow-painted dinosaurs, dragons, turtles and spiders. A sign on the garage reads: “Shan-gri-la Prehistoric Park”, complete with visiting hours.

On a recent spring Friday at noon, the garage door hums open, letting in the harsh sun. Steve Springer, or “Dinoman” as he’s lovingly known by regulars of the park, ties a short black apron printed with cartoon dinosaurs around his waist. At 72, he likes to wear flip-flops with black socks and round glasses that make his eyes look tiny.

Published: June 14, 2025, 4:00 pm

Dumb and Dumber To or Idiocracy? What to watch instead of Trump’s big boy birthday party

A helpful list of films to watch other than Donald Trump’s birthday parade – from a dystopian thriller to a terrible sequel to a prophetic cult hit

What are you up to this weekend? If you’re American, then there’s only one right answer to the question: celebrating the 79th birthday of our lord and saviour, Donald John Trump. As you will know, and already have marked in your calendar, there’s a big military parade happening in Washington DC on Saturday 14 June. Nominally this is to mark the US army’s 250th anniversary, but thanks to the machinations of time and space it happens to fall on Trump’s birthday: the parade has been widely branded as a big boy birthday party for the president.

If you can’t get to DC to physically watch Trump’s parade then I’m sure you’re desperate to watch it on TV. ABC News, which recently dropped its correspondent Terry Moran for a social media post calling Stephen Miller, the Trump administration deputy chief of staff a “world class hater”, plans to cover the parade across programs and platforms, beginning 6pm on Saturday. Networks such as CBS and NBC seem to have relegated coverage to their streaming channels. Fox and NewsNation, meanwhile, will be going all out for dear leader’s celebrations. Which will be lavish: the event is costing as much as $45m, not including all the damage that military vehicles are going to do to the roads in DC. And the best part of all this? You, the taxpayer, are footing the bill! Who needs money for schools and infrastructure, eh? We the people want to see big tanks, goose-stepping soldiers and missiles that go boom.

Published: June 14, 2025, 1:08 pm

Americans disagree on much – but this week, we have been coming together | Robert Reich

Trump’s crackdown in LA and his planned military parade have united people in opposition. As we resist, we gain courage

We are relearning the meaning of “solidarity”. This week, across the US, people have been coming together.

We may disagree on immigration policy, but we don’t want a president deploying federal troops in our cities when governors and mayors say they’re not needed.

Published: June 14, 2025, 11:00 am

Why female athletes are challenging the NCAA’s $2.8bn settlement

Eight women have appealed the NCAA’s antitrust deal, arguing it violates Title IX and unfairly favors men’s sports. Here’s what the settlement does and what’s next

College athletes spent decades fighting for the right to make money from their name, image and likeness (NIL). In 2021, they won. Now, a $2.8bn NCAA settlement is set to compensate hundreds of thousands of current and former athletes who missed out on those earnings. But not everyone thinks the deal is fair.

Eight female athletes filed an appeal this week, arguing the agreement violates Title IX, the US law banning sex-based discrimination in education. They say the way the money is divided, largely favoring football and men’s basketball players, shortchanges women by more than $1bn.

Published: June 14, 2025, 8:30 am

My unexpected Pride icon: Adriana from The Sopranos fought for acceptance and safety. I can relate

The mob character’s survival was dependent on her achieving a standard of femininity – and as a trans woman, I empathise. When her body fell short, her protection disappeared

I have never been excited about fancy dress, but when I received the invitation to a Sopranos-themed party a couple of months ago, I knew immediately who I wanted to go as: Adriana La Cerva. As a transgender woman, I empathised deeply with Adriana. I loved her wit, naivety, garish glamour and scandalous moments – the same reason I admire so many of the women in my trans community. Just look to Hunter Schafer or Alex Consani if you want a masterclass in all the above.

Some of Adriana’s one-liners – “If you think I’m gonna blow this guy for your sick purposes, you are sadly mistaken” – contain the sort of lewd, campy bravado of a ballroom queen. This is not the aspiration of gender transition, of course. But it does approximate to some of the ways trans women respond to their exclusion by a culture that expects women to be respectable, polite and discreet about their sexualities.

Published: June 14, 2025, 5:00 am

Trump’s military parade under way amid mass protests across US; some rallies thwarted by violence and threats - live

Millions show up to thousands of anti-Trump demonstrations despite killings in Minnesota; Virginia and San Francisco report vehicles driving into crowds

• Full report: Millions across US turn out for anti-Trump protests

• Tanks to roll through Washington as Trump hosts US military parade

It will be a parade fit for a king – which is precisely why critics worry what message it will send the rest of the world about the future of democracy in America.

On Saturday, there will be tanks on the streets of the nation’s capital as Washington hosts a celebration of the US army’s 250th anniversary, which happens to coincide with Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.

North Korea: military parades. China: military parades. Russia: military parades.

These aren’t parades to celebrate a victory and it’s certainly not to celebrate the United States army’s birthday. This is a parade to aggrandise Donald Trump’s ego. No one who knows either Trump or his pattern of behavior would think for a minute this is anything else.

Published: June 14, 2025, 11:43 pm

Two Democratic lawmakers shot, one fatally, in ‘politically motivated assassination’ in Minnesota

FBI names Vance Boelter, 57, as a suspect, and police say he dressed as law enforcement

• US politics live – latest updates

A prominent Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota and her husband have been killed, and another Democratic state lawmaker and his wife were shot, in the early hours of Saturday.

State representative Melissa Hortman has died, as has her husband, Mark, the state’s governor, Tim Walz, confirmed at a press conference on Saturday. He said the shooting “appears to be a politically motivated assassination”. Hortman was the top Democrat in the Minnesota house and the former speaker. The Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were both shot multiple times and are out of surgery, and Walz said he was “cautiously optimistic” both will survive.

Published: June 14, 2025, 11:27 pm

Missiles reported over Jerusalem after Israeli military resumes strikes on Iran – live

Several missiles seen over Jerusalem, a witness told Reuters; Israel’s police say several casualties reported after fallen device explodes in the north

• Israel claims it has gained control of airspace over Tehran

Emma Graham-Harrison, the Guardian’s chief Middle East correspondent, has spoken to families who live in a Tel Aviv neighbourhood that was struck by Iran’s retaliatory attacks.

At midnight on Friday Sveta’s four-year-old daughter was asleep on the floor outside their shattered apartment block, as the rest of the family weighed up where they should spend the night.

A missile from the first Iranian salvo fired at Tel Aviv had landed a couple of blocks away, killing at least one person, injuring at least 16 others and damaging hundreds of shops and homes in this quiet residential area.

The 37-year-old was sanguine about her own losses, and backed the government decision to attack Iran even though it had so quickly cost her family their home.

Published: June 14, 2025, 11:37 pm

Ice reportedly shifting away from immigration raids on farms and hotels

Workplace raids will be stopped after Trump conceded that deportations are hurting agricultural and hospitality industries

The Trump administration deportation campaign is reportedly shifting its focus away from raids on the agricultural and hospitality sectors after Donald Trump conceded this week that his immigration policies are hurting the farming and hotel industries.

The New York Times reported that an internal email was sent on Thursday by Tatum King, a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), to regional department leaders at Homeland Security Investigations, directing them to stop workplace immigration enforcement actions unless related to criminal investigations.

Published: June 14, 2025, 5:08 pm

US experts fear all vaccines at risk as Trump officials target mRNA jabs

Administration’s actions signal move away from technology as health agencies see vaccine-related shakeups

As top US health officials turn against some mRNA vaccines, experts fear for the country’s preparedness for the next pandemic and worry that other vaccines will be targeted next.

Donald Trump’s administration recently canceled a $766m award to Moderna on the research and development of H5N1 bird flu vaccines, and officials have announced new restrictions and regulations for Covid mRNA vaccines – actions that signal a move away from the breakthrough technology.

Published: June 14, 2025, 3:00 pm

Air India captain sent mayday less than minute before crash, say authorities

Aviation ministry says Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner reached height of 650ft before rapidly descending and hitting ground 2km from airport

“Mayday, mayday,” was the final radio message sent by the pilot of the Air India 171 flight bound for London, moments before it crashed to the ground, killing more than 270 people.

In a briefing by India’s aviation authorities on Saturday, authorities confirmed that Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, who was piloting the flight, sent a distress call to air traffic control less a minute after it took off from Ahmedabad airport at 1.39pm on Thursday.

Published: June 14, 2025, 3:27 pm

JD Vance threatened to deport him. The ‘menswear guy’ is posting through it

Derek Guy, a popular fashion writer, revealed his family escaped to the US without documentation. It sent the far right into an online frenzy

Derek Guy was a relatively unknown menswear writer with 25,000 followers on Twitter in 2022. Now, in 2025, Guy has 1.3 million followers on the platform, now called X, where this week both the vice-president of the United States and the Department of Homeland Security posted threats to deport him from the US – the country he has called home since he was a baby.

“Honestly didn’t expect this is what would happen when I joined a menswear forum 15 years ago,” Guy quipped on X on Monday. “Was originally trying to look nice for someone else’s wedding.”

This article was updated on 14 June 2025 to correct that the movie the gif of Jack Nicholson was from was Anger Management, not The Departed.

Published: June 14, 2025, 2:00 pm

EPA drops case against prison company that has donated heavily to Trump

Geo Group faced up to $4m in fines for violations involving the use of a toxic disinfectant at an immigration facility

The Donald Trump administration has dropped up to $4m in potential fines against the private prison operator Geo Group over the latter’s use of a toxic disinfectant in a detention center that allegedly put employees’ and detainees’ health at risk.

The administration made the move after Geo donated over $4m to the president and Republican leadership, as well as Trump’s inauguration fund.

Published: June 14, 2025, 1:00 pm

How US cities have long planned for a Trump-led escalation against protests

The US president hinted at a crackdown on demonstrations long before his inauguration, and it’s finally here

The White House’s escalating response to street protests echoes talk before Donald Trump’s inauguration of forcibly quelling resistance in urban America. Those plans are now the present.

After the use of federalized national guard units and marines in response to protests in Los Angeles, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) plans to deploy Swat-style special response teams to Seattle, Philadelphia, northern Virginia, New York and Chicago – cities led by Democrats that have long been the target of Trump’s invective – before expected protests this weekend, according to reports by NBC and others.

Published: June 14, 2025, 5:53 pm

From Gaza to Ukraine to Iran, Trump’s ‘peacemaker’ promise collapses

A president who vowed to end global conflicts has instead presided over their escalation – his agenda is in disarray

In his inaugural address this January, Donald Trump declared that his proudest legacy would be that of “a peacemaker and unifier”, pledging that US power would “stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent, and totally unpredictable”.

Five months later, his second presidency is witnessing the spectacular unraveling of that lofty aspiration.

Published: June 14, 2025, 10:00 am

We are no longer free. But we can win our freedom back

To meet this moment in US history, we need to revisit the rich – and successful – tradition of nonviolent disruption

Most of us are no longer free.

People are aware of this condition to varying degrees. Some, nostalgic for the world that was, reject “unfreedom” as an exaggerated description of our situation. Others, seeing reality clearly, nevertheless hide from the unnerving implications.

Published: June 14, 2025, 11:00 am

‘This moment was thrust upon him’: Gavin Newsom steps up to parry Trump’s ‘wrecking ball’ attacks on American democracy

California’s governor has responded forcefully to the many threats Trump has imposed upon his state – and the country

When Donald Trump landed in Los Angeles to tour the ruins left by January’s devastating wildfires, just days after being sworn in for a second term, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, was waiting on the tarmac to greet him. The surprisingly warm exchange between two longtime political rivals seemed to reflect a new reality: with a vengeful Trump back in the White House, fire-ravaged California – and its Democratic governor – had a great deal at stake.

In the weeks that followed, Newsom met with Trump at the White House to lobby for federal disaster relief, then approved funding to strengthen the state’s legal defenses against challenges from the Trump administration. He invited Maga-world fixtures on to his podcast, including Steve Bannon, and infuriated progressives, and even some allies, when he said that it was “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports – a wedge issue central to Trump’s conservative agenda. All the while, his state was suing the Trump administration – over executive actions on immigration, federal funding and tariffs – at a rate of more than one lawsuit a week.

Published: June 14, 2025, 3:34 pm

Raids and fear cast a large shadow over Club World Cup’s big launch

Governing body cannot avoid the dark political backdrop to its tournament opening as Trump’s authorities flex their muscles

“When Donald Trump came in the laws just changed and it’s hard for immigrants now … you’ve got a lot of people being deported, people who have been in the United States for two decades. It’s not nice, it’s not right when someone who hasn’t committed a crime has to go back somewhere.

“I just don’t respect somebody like [Trump] that deports so many people and hurts so many families … this country was built on immigrants. Nobody’s from here.”

Published: June 14, 2025, 7:00 am

Leaders at G7 summit need to challenge Trump without ganging up on him

America’s allies fear US policy is risking a global recession but they have to take care not to alienate the president

The G7 summit in Kananaskis, Canada is likely to be dominated by efforts to persuade Donald Trump to dilute an America-first strategy, which world leaders fear may put the global economy into recession, and entrench the war in Gaza, Ukraine and Iran – three conflicts Trump once promised to solve.

The summit represents the first collective opportunity for western leaders to challenge Trump with the consequences of his unilateralism, but with the world on a knife-edge, the six leaders cannot risk being seen to gang up on him and spark a presidential explosion.

Published: June 14, 2025, 7:01 pm

The moment I knew: I worried he was a playboy, then a friend reassured me

From the first offer of breakfast mimosas, Jens Radda knew Lachie was a kindred spirit – but he was cautious. Then a mutual friend confirmed his feelings

• Find more stories from The moment I knew series

During Melbourne’s sixth lockdown in 2021, I was bored out of my mind in my suburban sharehouse and craving connection. I’d been following an Instagram account for a drag performer called Iva Rosebud at the behest of a mutual friend who felt our work was similar.

I’d been watching them from a distance for some time when one Friday night a message arrived suggesting a collaboration. Obviously it piqued my interest; it’s not like I had anything else to do – who knew how long the lockdown would go on for?

Published: June 14, 2025, 8:00 pm

Grilled cheese shop offers Minnesotans a second chance after prison

The Minneapolis restaurant All Square exclusively hires formerly incarcerated people

All Square, a neon-lit diner in Minneapolis, specializes in grilled cheese sandwiches with a twist. Variations on the menu include Jamaican jerk chicken with guava jam, brown sugar bacon doused in ranch dressing, and Granny Smith apple slices coated in brie and mozzarella.

But the sandwich shop offers more than elevated comfort food. All Square, which also operates a food-truck catering service, exclusively hires formerly incarcerated Minnesotans.

Published: June 14, 2025, 1:00 pm

From tradwife to radwife: abandoning perfection in favour of the ‘good enough’ life

No they don’t cook from scratch, sometimes forget the sunscreen and often miss work deadlines, but at least their kids are wearing secondhand clothes … Meet the new gen of radically normal mums

Most mornings, I’m woken at 6am by my alarm (the baby crawling on to my head). I stretch, go downstairs, fill a bowl with iced water and, the theme of Transformers playing in the background, write my journal (a list of emails-I-forgot-to-reply-to). I drink hot water with cider vinegar to regulate my blood sugar levels, followed by tea using the baby’s leftover milk. Dragging a chilled jade gua sha spoon across my face in an attempt to reverse the ageing process, I then make my young sons’ porridge. While they eat, I plunge my face into the iced water until I can’t breathe, and begin my three-step routine (two La Roche-Posay serums followed by SPF). Some mornings, I run. Others, I cry into a coffee, albeit one made with organic milk, before taking a mushroom gummy to take the edge off the day. My partner and I divide childcare dropoffs – we’re late for both and broadly OK with that – and each have one day a week with the youngest.

This is my routine. You might think it’s elaborate and weirdly specific, and you’d be right. Yet we live in an age of routines shared online, often in pursuit of some sort of personal optimisation – I’m aiming for somewhere between writing 2,500 words before breakfast (Anthony Trollope) and 5am cold plunge (fitness guru Ashton Hall). And however elaborate my morning seems to you, to me, it is nothing compared with the pernicious routine of the tradwife.

Published: June 14, 2025, 8:16 am

‘Tennis repairs you’: the 101-year-old fuelled by iced coffee who still plays competitively | Jo Khan

Henry Young is proud to have played on centre court during the Australian Open but does not want to be seen as remarkable just for playing at all

Henry Young doesn’t mind being asked about his secret to a long, active life – it comes with the territory when you’re a 101-year-old competitive tennis player. It has its perks, like getting to play on centre court during the Australian Open, but what he does mind is that it’s considered so remarkable that he is playing at all. That he is seen as extraordinary and there must be some magic trick that keeps him going.

“What bugs me is that people give up their tennis when they have some kind of injury,” Young says. “I’m a monument to the medical profession because I’ve had so many injuries and I just persevere, and then tennis repairs you.”

Published: June 14, 2025, 8:00 pm

Netanyahu outplayed Trump on Iran. Now the US risks being mired in another war | Mohamad Bazzi

If Trump wants to be the peacemaker he claims to be, he must negotiate a new deal with Tehran

Before dawn on Friday, Israel unleashed a wave of air strikes against more than 100 targets in Iran, including nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories and air defense systems. The surprise Israeli attack also killed some of Iran’s most senior military commanders and nuclear scientists. The Iranian regime called it a “declaration of war” – and western powers raced to prevent a wider regional conflict that could draw in the US along with other countries in the Middle East.

While the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claims that he’s trying to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, the attack is as much intended to blow up ongoing negotiations between Tehran and Donald Trump’s administration. While Trump’s overall foreign policy has been a disaster, for months he had resisted Netanyahu’s pleas to give Israel a green light to attack Iran, with US assistance. Trump insisted he wanted a chance to negotiate a deal with Iran’s leaders that would compel Tehran to give up its nuclear program in exchange for relief from US and other international sanctions.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University

Published: June 14, 2025, 9:00 am

Let women be horny – but Sabrina Carpenter’s album cover isn’t helping | Arwa Mahdawi

The Man’s Best Friend image has reopened a debate: sex-positive feminism or soft porn for the male gaze?

Please join me for a quick game of “is this sex-positive feminism or just a lazy repackaging of the patriarchy”? Today’s protagonist is Sabrina Carpenter, a pop star whose music videos have got a Brooklyn priest demoted and might have played a small role in getting the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, indicted.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Published: June 14, 2025, 1:00 pm

Gen Z and gen Alpha brought a raw, messy aesthetic to social media. Why does it feel as inauthentic as ever? | Eugene Healey

The glossy perfection of millennial content gave way to something that felt more ‘real’. But that was a mirage – and brands quickly caught on

• Eugene Healey is a brand strategy consultant, educator and creator

Authenticity is the great mirage of the modern age. Its promise – to live unmediated, in full accordance with our values and beliefs – feels like the ideal we’re always reaching for before it vanishes beyond the horizon. And ironically, the more we try to prove we’re authentic online, the more we seem to accelerate its disappearance.

As Generations Z and Alpha joined social media, they responded to the cultural demand for perfection with chaos – raw, unfiltered, deliberately messy content. The curated feed of flatlays gave way to the sloppy photo dump; the finstas; the bedrotting. Finally, our real lives represented on screen. Finally, something real.

Eugene Healey is a brand strategy consultant, educator and creator

Published: June 14, 2025, 6:00 am

Trump is deeply obsessed with US history – but he has learned all the wrong lessons from it | David Reynolds

His ostentatious birthday parade is his latest reimagining of America’s past. He’d do well to remember that pride must be rooted in honesty

• David Reynolds is the author of Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the leaders who shaped him

Today the US army will parade in style along the National Mall in Washington DC to celebrate its 250th anniversary. This also just happens to be the 79th birthday of President Donald J Trump. As commander-in-chief, he will take the salute from a viewing platform on Constitution Avenue.

But this is not a mere vanity project, as some critics have claimed. History really matters to the US’s 47th president. One of Trump’s last acts before reluctantly leaving the White House in January 2021 was to publish a report by his “1776 Commission”, created to “restore understanding of the greatness of the American Founding”. Deliberately, the commissioners included few university historians because universities were described as often being “hotbeds of anti-Americanism, libel, and censorship that combine to generate in students and in the broader culture at the very least disdain and at worst outright hatred for this country”.

Published: June 14, 2025, 5:00 am

Benjamin Netanyahu must be stopped | Moustafa Bayoumi

War is the prime minister’s doctrine. Israel’s strikes on Iran – falsely described as pre-emptive – are the latest example

Benjamin Netanyahu must be stopped. The Israeli prime minister’s lust for war as a solution to his myriad problems is nothing short of a threat to us all, one that extends far beyond Israel’s neighbors. Netanyahu knows no other way. War is his doctrine. War is his reflex. War is his answer. He believes the power of war will unite Israeli society and will stifle any American criticism of him, necessary since the machinery he needs to make his wars comes mostly from Washington. And, with his aggression against Iran, he seeks to drag the United States further into another endless military quagmire in the region and light the world on fire.

Early on Friday morning, Israel launched a series of unprovoked strikes against Iran, targeting Iran’s nuclear energy facilities, its top scientists, its military commanders, and parts of its military and civilian infrastructure. Television images show a residential building in Tehran damaged by what looks like a missile attack. Iran, which has not suffered an assault this severe since its war with Iraq in the 1980s, is reporting at least 70 people killed and 320 injured thus far. Meanwhile, Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza continues out of the public eye, as an internet blackout halted most aid operations.

Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist

Published: June 13, 2025, 5:19 pm

Al Ahly v Inter Miami: Club World Cup 2025 opening match – live updates

• MLS side host Egyptian champions in Club World Cup

• Explainer: all your Club World Cup questions answered

• Reach Beau at beau.dure.freelance@theguardian.com

Formations, schnormations …

Fifa and TBS/DAZN disagree on how these teams will line up. ESPN disagrees even more. They have Al Ahly in a 4-3-2-1, the old “Christmas tree” formation, and they say Inter will play in a 4-2-3-1 with Suarez as the lone forward. MLSSoccer.com agrees, but they switch a couple of Al Ahly’s players.

Published: June 14, 2025, 11:33 pm

US Open golf 2025: day three at Oakmont Country Club – live

• Moving Day at Oakmont in the year’s third major

• Official live leaderboard | Send Scott your thoughts

Back-to-back birdies for Sam Stevens. The 28-year-old from Wichita picks up shots at 3 and 4 to move to +1 overall. All together now: ♫♪ I know I need a small vacation, but it don’t look like rain ♪♫ … except … “Those clouds are not looking friendly,” notes Rich Beem on Sky, snapping us out of our Campbell-Webb reverie. Indeed they do look dark and menacing in the middle distance. A fair chance we could have an enforced weather break sooner rather than later. Fingers crossed it doesn’t happen, but it doesn’t look promising.

This is Matt Wallace’s first appearance at a US Open for four years. The 35-year-old Londoner is grabbing the opportunity with both hands: decent opening rounds of 72 and 74, and he’s on the move today, with birdies at 4, 11 and now 13, the latter the reward for a glorious tee shot sent over the flag to six feet. He’s +3 overall.

Published: June 14, 2025, 11:44 pm

Caitlin Clark spectacular in return from injury as Fever hand Liberty first loss

• Clark drops 32 as Fever end Liberty’s 9–0 start

• Indiana hit 17 threes, shoot 48.1% from field

• Performance draws praise from LeBron James

Caitlin Clark totaled 32 points, nine assists and eight rebounds in a spectacular return from a left quad injury on Saturday leading the Indiana Fever to a 102-88 victory over the New York Liberty, snapping their season-opening nine-game winning streak.

After missing five games, Clark scored 25 points in the first half to help Indiana (5-5) rally from an early 11-point deficit. Clark made 11-of-20 shots and tied a career high by hitting seven threees, including several from well beyond the arc.

Published: June 14, 2025, 9:55 pm

Verstappen lashes out at critics after Russell snatches Canadian F1 GP pole

• Mercedes’s George Russell shares front row with Red Bull rival

• ‘It is really pissing me off,’ Verstappen says of media scrutiny

A furious Max Verstappen lashed out at criticism of his driving, saying it was “childish, annoying and pissing me off” after his nemesis George Russell beat him to pole position for Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix.

Russell snatched top spot with a brilliant final lap at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve to leave Verstappen trailing by 0.160sec, with the McLaren pair Oscar Piastri third and Lando Norris a disappointing seventh. It means Mercedes’s Russell and defending champion Verstappen will line up on the front row together, a fortnight after their collision in Spain.

Published: June 14, 2025, 9:27 pm

Ben Ainslie’s choppy seas: SailGP, the America’s Cup and a split with Ineos

The Olympic great is rebuilding after a messy divorce with billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, all while trying to bring SailGP to the masses and win the sport’s ultimate prize

Just off Manhattan last weekend, a dozen 50ft catamarans soared across the water at speeds of up to 52mph. Navigating a precariously tight course, in the shadow of the city’s myriad skyscrapers, teams battled challenging conditions in a series of rapid, hectic races.

“A lot of people don’t really know what SailGP is about,” says Sir Ben Ainslie, the four-time Olympic champion sailor. “And when they see it, it blows their mind. It’s not what anyone would think sailing is about.”

Published: June 14, 2025, 2:16 pm

Natural entertainer Rayan Cherki ready for test of maturity at Manchester City

France international impressed with his flicks and tricks from a young age at Lyon. Now City hope he can fire their creative rebuild

“To win the Ballon d’Or and the Champions League,” came the response from Rayan Cherki to the Lyon academy director Jean-François Vulliez’s question. Even as a 15-year-old the playmaker was ambitious, knowing his talent would take him to the top. He might have expected to reach the Premier League earlier but he is ready to take the next steps at Manchester City.

Vulliez worked at Lyon for 12 years and from the moment he witnessed an eight-year-old Cherki he knew the club had a glorious talent on their hands. This week City paid £30.5m for the France international, who could make his debut against Wydad AC on Wednesday at the Club World Cup. Lyon’s academy coaches were soon gossiping about the two-footed generational talent who dribbled past opponents, created chances and plundered goals in the youth setup.

Published: June 14, 2025, 12:00 pm

37-year-old Tatjana Maria storms into Queen’s final after stunning Madison Keys

• Veteran qualifier beats third top-20 player at event

• Australian Open champion outclassed in straight sets

Tatjana Maria knows a thing or two about fairytales, coming from the land of the Brothers Grimm and the Pied Piper of Hamelin. But not even she can quite comprehend the impossible magic of her last seven days at Queen’s Club.

When the 37-year-old arrived in west London she had lost nine matches in a row and looked in danger of dropping out of the world’s top 100. Now, unfathomably, she has powered into a WTA 500 final after winning six matches in a row – including two in qualifying – and beaten three players in the world’s top 15.

Published: June 14, 2025, 2:58 pm

Need for speed: how sport’s risk takers recognise deadly danger and do it anyway | Emma John

In a stable and affluent society, it is possible to declare that ‘life is for living’ through pursuits that shorten your odds of dying

Last year I visited St Moritz’s infamous Cresta Run. You know the one – the vertiginous skeleton course that has killed a number of its participants and maimed many more. I was with a group of friends who were attempting it for the first time, and who quickly became addicted to the adrenaline fix. I stubbornly refused to even contemplate it.

It’s not just that my mates are braver than me – they are – but they’re all decent athletes, cricketers, hockey players, marathon runners and Channel swimmers. They have rapid reflexes and hand-eye coordination: I barely have a sense of where my arms and legs end. There are endless ways to hurt yourself on a crushingly heavy toboggan with razor-sharp runners that’s hurtling at 50mph between sheer walls of solid ice, and if anyone was going to slice off a finger or break their head landing upside down, it was me.

Published: June 14, 2025, 7:00 am

‘Venice is worn out’: locals see Jeff Bezos wedding as symbol of city’s ills

City leaders claim days-long event will bring in riches but opponents say it will not benefit ordinary Venetians

Marta Sottoriva, a teacher in Venice, has tirelessly campaigned for various causes in her cherished lagoon city, from railing against giant cruise ships to battling soaring rents. Now she is busy preparing banners, handing out flyers and shouting through megaphones in squares as she joins dozens of activists in whipping up resistance to the “umpteenth gigantic event” she says that risks turning the world heritage site – which has long suffered from the effects of excessive tourism – into a playground for the rich.

Sottoriva is referring to the star-studded nuptials between the billionaire Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and Lauren Sánchez, a former TV journalist. The days-long shindig, expected to begin from 24 June, will be the biggest wedding held in Venice since George Clooney married Amal Alamuddin in 2014.

Published: June 14, 2025, 9:00 am

Shark nearly bites off 9-year-old girl’s hand in attack near Florida coast

Leah Lendel was snorkeling with her mother and younger siblings when the animal bit her

A 9-year-old girl nearly lost her hand after a shark attacked her while she swam just off the coast of Florida recently, according to her family and witnesses.

The harrowing attack served up a grim reminder that the Sunshine state is a world leader in unprovoked shark bites against humans – though such cases remain rare and were evidently waning as of late.

Published: June 14, 2025, 11:00 am

Washington Post in talks with Substack about using its writers

Newspaper could join legacy media brands in embracing newsletter platform

The Washington Post has held talks with Substack about hosting pieces by its writers, the site’s co-founder has said, as a host of legacy media brands embrace the newsletter platform in the battle for readers.

In an interview with the Guardian, Substack’s Hamish McKenzie said he had spoken to the Post about its plans to widen the types of opinion pieces on its website.

Published: June 14, 2025, 10:00 am

UK moves jets to Middle East as Starmer refuses to rule out defending Israel

Military assets to provide ‘contingency support’ as PM repeats call for de-escalation after Iran’s retaliatory strikes

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The UK is moving jets and other military assets to the Middle East, Keir Starmer has said, refusing to rule out defending Israel from Iranian strikes despite Tehran’s threat that such an action could lead to British bases in the region being targeted.

Speaking to reporters on the plane to the G7 summit, Starmer reiterated his call for de-escalation, saying he had held a series of calls with other world leaders in the hours after Israel’s attack on Iran, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump.

Published: June 14, 2025, 5:00 pm

‘There’s nothing else like it’: the Ritz is crowned best restaurant in the UK

Described by judges as ‘London’s most decadent dining room’, the 119-year-old venue topped the National Restaurant awards’ list this week

It is lunchtime in central London and hungry patrons are filing into the newly crowned best restaurant in the country.

This time, it is not a sparsely furnished warehouse conversion where you have to squint to see your natural wine. Nor is it a buzzy A-list hotspot, where the chefs will vet your social media before you have even arrived.

Published: June 14, 2025, 12:00 pm

Is the ocean ‘having a moment’? This was the UN summit where the world woke up to the decline of the seas

A slew of global leaders met in the south of France to discuss the future of the oceans. There was ‘momentum’ and ‘enthusiasm’, but there were critical voices too

The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope … and we are all in the same boat.” So said Jacques Cousteau, the French explorer, oceanographer and pioneering film-maker, who notably pivoted from merely sharing his underwater world to sounding the alarm over its destruction.

Half a century later, David Attenborough, a year shy of his 100th birthday, followed Cousteau’s trajectory. In the naturalist’s acclaimed new film, Ocean, which highlights the destructive fishing practice of bottom trawling, he says he has come to the realisation that the “most important place on Earth is not on land but at sea”.

Published: June 14, 2025, 6:00 am

Trump’s ‘gas-guzzling’ parade will produce planet-heating pollution costs, analysis says

Among other concerns, the US military parade will produce as much pollution as created to heat 300 homes for a year

Donald Trump’s military parade this weekend will bring thousands of troops out to march, while dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers roll down the streets and fighter jets hum overhead.

The event has prompted concern about rising autocracy in the US. It will also produce more than 2m kilograms of planet-heating pollution – equivalent to the amount created by producing of 67m plastic bags or by the energy used to power about 300 homes in one year, according to a review by the progressive thinktank Institute for Policy Studies and the Guardian.

Published: June 13, 2025, 6:26 pm

‘A small but mighty program’: little-known US light pollution agency threatened by Trump funding cuts

The Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division strives to provide ‘full sensory experience’ in country’s national parks

The Trump administration appears poised to cut the US Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division (NSNSD), a little-known office that works to rein in noise and light pollution in national parks, a task that is seen as a vital environmental endeavor.

Advocates say the division’s work is quiet but important – many plants and animals rely on the darkness, and light pollution is contributing to firefly and other insect die-offs. The office led efforts to reduce light pollution at the Grand Canyon and snowmobile noise that drowned out sounds emanating from the Old Faithful geyser, among other initiatives.

Published: June 13, 2025, 10:00 am

A map, a myth and a pre-Incan lagoon: the man who brought water back to a drought-ridden town

When historian Galo Ramón uncovered a long-forgotten pre-Incan water system in Ecuador, he set about restoring it, and helped transform the landscape and livelihoods

One day in 1983, while studying a hand-drawn map from 1792 of his home town in Ecuador, Galo Ramón, a historian, came across a dispute between a landowner and two local Indigenous communities, the Coyana and the Catacocha. The boundary conflict involved an ancient lagoon, depicted on the map.

“The drawing depicted a lagoon brimming with rainwater,” says Ramón. Ravines were depicted forming below the high-altitude lagoon, indicating that it supplied watersheds further down – contrary to the typical flow where a watershed feeds into the lagoon.

Published: June 13, 2025, 11:02 am

Mahmoud Khalil: US judge denies release of detained Palestinian activist

Setback for former student held since March as lawyers condemn government’s ‘cruel, transparent delay tactics’

A federal judge declined to order the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a setback for the former Columbia University student days after a major ruling against the Trump administration’s efforts to keep him detained.

Khalil, a green-card holder who has not been charged with a crime, is one of the most high-profile people targeted by the US government’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism. Despite key rulings in his favor, Khalil has been detained since March, missing the birth of his son.

Published: June 14, 2025, 1:42 am

Trump signs executive order to clear way for Nippon-US Steel deal

Companies hail ‘historic partnership’ to bring ‘massive investment’ but details of agreement remain unclear

Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order paving the way for a Nippon Steel investment in US Steel, so long as the Japanese company complies with a “national security agreement” submitted by the federal government.

Trump’s order did not detail the terms of the national security agreement. But US Steel and Nippon Steel said in a joint statement that the agreement stipulates that approximately $11bn in new investments will be made by 2028 and includes giving the US government a “golden share” – essentially veto power to ensure the country’s national security interests are protected.

Published: June 14, 2025, 12:55 am

Tulane University scientist resigns citing environmental censorship

Kimberley Terrell’s research into health and job disparities had triggered a backlash from state and Tulane leaders

This story is co-published with Floodlight

Environmental advocates are questioning the actions of a private university in Louisiana after the resignation of a scientist who researches the health and job disparities in a heavily industrialized part of the state known as Cancer Alley.

Kimberly Terrell served as a director of community engagement and a staff scientist with Tulane University’s Environmental Law Clinic before resigning and accused university leaders of trying to censor the work she is doing to spotlight the harms to local communities plagued by industrial pollution.

Published: June 13, 2025, 9:46 pm

Director of National Portrait Gallery resigns after Trump’s effort to fire her

Kim Sajet’s departure comes after the Smithsonian Institute rebuffed the president’s attempt to fire her over DEI

The director of the National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet, has resigned just two weeks after Donald Trump attempted to fire her and accused her of being “highly partisan and a strong supporter of DEI”.

“We thank Kim for her service. Her decision to put the museum first is to be applauded and appreciated. I know this was not an easy decision. She put the needs of the Institution above her own, and for that we thank her,” Lonnie Bunch, the Smithsonian secretary, wrote in a Friday internal email that was obtained by multiple outlets.

Published: June 13, 2025, 8:02 pm

KGB defector turned to Britain only after US rejected him several times, book reveals

Vasili Mitrokhin defected in 1992 after spending years copying top-secret documents on Soviet spies and operations

One of the most consequential Russian defectors in history was turned away several times by the US before he was eventually accepted by Britain and exfiltrated with his family from Russia, according to revelations in a new book.

Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist who spent years copying top-secret documents on some of the most sensitive Soviet spies and operations, was brought out of Russia in 1992 by MI6. His archive of copied documents was exfiltrated separately. But London got hold of his trove only after Mitrokhin gave up trying to get the US to take him seriously.

Published: June 14, 2025, 9:00 am

‘Where are the foreigners?’: does a facile explanation lie behind Ballymena’s outbreak of hate?

Northern Ireland faces stark questions over the racism, xenophobia and intolerance that has forced families from abroad to flee

First came the shouts as the crowd worked its way through narrow terraced streets, proclaiming its mission to rid the town of “scum”. Then came the shattered glass as rocks exploded through windows. Then the flames, licking up curtains and spreading to sofas, carpets, books and framed pictures until smoke billowed into the summer night.

They might have been scenes from another century, another country, but they played out in Northern Ireland this week in the glare of rolling news and social media, which recorded a soundtrack of glee and hate. “Where are the foreigners?” the mob shouted.

Published: June 14, 2025, 7:00 am

Canada and India to share terrorism intelligence despite 2023 murder plot, says report

Accord comes as Mark Carney seeks shift in Ottawa’s relationship with New Delhi after long diplomatic spat

Canada and India plan to share intelligence in an effort to combat the rising threat of international crime and extremism, according to a new report from Bloomberg, days before a meeting between the two countries’ leaders.

Canadian officials declined to comment on the report, which, if confirmed, would represent a dramatic shift in relations between the two countries which for nearly two years have been locked in a bitter diplomatic spat after Canada’s federal police agency concluded that India planned and ordered the murder a prominent Sikh activist on Canadian soil.

Published: June 13, 2025, 7:41 pm

Bristol student missed boarding Air India flight due to traffic

Bhoomi Chauhan says she was 10 minutes late and asked airline staff to let her through but was turned away

A student who was booked on the Air India flight to London Gatwick that crashed on Thursday missed boarding the plane by 10 minutes due to traffic.

Bhoomi Chauhan, a Bristol-based business administration student, was on holiday in western India and had booked to travel home on flight AI171.

Published: June 13, 2025, 4:45 pm

‘A giant parenting group’: how online comedians are making a living by laughing about the chaos of kids

Comedians like the UK’s George Lewis, Farideh Olsen from Canada and Sean Szeps in Australia have huge audiences because ‘if we can’t laugh … we’re going to sob uncontrollably’

Many Instagram-frequenting parents of small children will have seen George Lewis’s sketch about two toddlers discussing their feelings of abandonment and relief wrapped in a game of peekaboo.

“It was a normal day, I was just playing with Dad. And then he put his hands in front of his face and he was just gone,” the British comedian and father says in the widely shared video. “He was behaving so erratically.”

Published: June 14, 2025, 8:00 pm

‘The risk was worth it’: All Fours author Miranda July on sex, power and giving women permission to blow up their lives

The artist and author’s hit book had so much in common with her own life that even her friends forgot it wasn’t real. How did this revolutionary portrayal of midlife desire come to inspire a generation of women?

When Miranda July’s All Fours was published in May last year, it triggered what felt like both a spontaneous resistance movement and the sort of mania last experienced when the final Twilight book dropped, except this time for women in midlife rather than teenage girls. Two friends separately brought it to my house, like contraband dropped out of a biplane. Book groups hastily convened, strategically timed for when the men were out of the picture.

The story opens with a 45-year-old woman about to take a road trip, a break from her husband and child and general domestic noise. She’s intending to drive from LA to New York, but is derailed in the first half hour by a young guy, Davey, in a car hire place, to whom she is passionately attracted. The next several weeks pass in a lust so intense, so overpowering, so lusciously drawn, it’s like a cross between ayahuasca and encephalitis. The narrator is subsumed by her obsession, and disappears her normal life. The road trip is a bust from the start, but the effort of breaking the spell and going home looks, for a long time, like way too much for the narrator, and when she finally does, to borrow from Leonard Cohen (perhaps describing a similar situation), she’s somebody’s mother but nobody’s wife.

Published: June 14, 2025, 5:00 am

Lie, cheat, steal, repeat: will the Traitors knockoffs ever cease?

The hugely popular reality competition series has led to a string of similarly devious yet undeniably lesser copycats

This is a punt, but Fox might have started to commission new shows via the power of online thesauruses. Take its new reality show The Snake. It’s a game of secrets and betrayal, of feigning one emotion to gain trust while you stab your new friends in the back. In other words, it’s basically The Traitors.

I don’t know whether any of you have ever searched Merriam Webster for synonyms of ‘traitor’, but ‘snake’ is literally second on the list. And this laziness is indicative of the show itself, which is such a painfully halfhearted retread of The Traitors that it ends up being exhausting to watch.

Published: June 13, 2025, 5:15 pm

The Kardashians of history: why are we so obsessed with the Mitford sisters?

They were impossibly glamorous, fatally flawed and turned up at every significant moment of the 20th century, but underneath it all is a highly relatable family drama – without the infamous friends

The rise and fall of the Mitford sisters is like one of those earthquakes we’re due on a regular rotation: eight years out from Gucci’s much-documented Never Marry a Mitford jumper, four years after the BBC drama The Pursuit of Love, a new TV show appears fortuitously to bring them back into the public consciousness again.

Here they come, out of the mists of time, the seven children of a minor member of the House of Lords: Nancy, of course, the author of Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love and probably the most famous in her own right; followed by Pamela, the least famous and fond chiefly of chickens and horrible men; then Tom, the only boy, with a weakness for the Nazis and, as far as history is concerned, no personality.

Published: June 13, 2025, 4:17 pm

Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story review – dazzling glamour and true grit

This indulgent but madly watchable documentary showcases Minnelli’s tremendous star wattage alongside the tragedy of a life lived in the full glare of show business

To watch this indulgent but madly watchable documentary about the life and times of Liza Minnelli is like snorting a pound of uncut showbiz glitter through a rolled-up copy of Variety off Joel Grey’s naked back on the Studio 54 dancefloor – though as ever with documentaries about celebrities facing the destructive power of drink and drugs, there is no mention of the limelight and praise addiction which they are expected to maintain.

I was sorry that Minnelli’s marvellous, underrated film New York, New York with Robert De Niro is passed over relatively quickly – conveying the wrong impression that, aside from the iconic song, it’s a blip on her CV – and sorry also that her late-masterpiece comic performance on TV’s Arrested Development gets hardly a mention. But otherwise this is a richly sympathetic and thoroughly enjoyable portrait of an authentic queen of American musical theatre and movies; there is some wonderful modern-day interview footage of Minnelli, talking with waspish candour about herself, and apart from a slight vocal tremor, very robust. There is a great moment when, after having a FaceTime conversation with Mia Farrow, Minnelli is shown looking sharply at her own face in the little box in a corner of the screen: she instinctively frowns, pouts, assessing herself.

Published: June 13, 2025, 6:00 am

Call Me Izzy review – Jean Smart is better than her one-woman show

Studio 54, New York

The Hacks star is magnetic but the show, where she plays a woman finding herself late in life, can’t match her

We seem to be in the midst of a solo show boomlet on Broadway, with established screen actors testing their mettle via the downright athletic feat of carrying a production alone. On Sunday, the Succession actor Sarah Snook won the Tony for best actress in a play for her 26 roles in The Picture of Dorian Gray; two years earlier, Jodie Comer won for her equally kinetic solo performance in Prima Facie and just this week, John Krasinski’s (mostly) solo show Angry Alan opened off-Broadway. The appeal is clear: the one-man show is a flex, a feat of performance under a significant amount of pressure. It takes a village, always, but it all comes down to the person on stage.

Luckily for Call Me Izzy, writer and journalist Jamie Wax’s debut play on Broadway, that person is Jean Smart. The 73-year-old actor, most famous, at least at the moment, for her starring turn on the Max comedy Hacks, possesses the kind of seasoned verve and magnetic presence that is never less than fun to watch, even if the material can’t match her. Like her Emmy-winning Hacks character Deborah Vance, Smart is making the most of a late-career renaissance, surfing a wave of goodwill to the bright lights at Studio 54 for her first Broadway role in a quarter century, where she plays a woman with starkly different means – though no less resilience.

Published: June 13, 2025, 3:00 am

Andrew Lloyd Webber is ‘hot again’ –with help from new kids on musicals block

Veteran composer’s work is everywhere, but generation who grew up admiring him say he has never been out of touch

When Andrew Lloyd Webber walked on stage to collect the Tony award for best musical revival for Sunset Boulevard, it was the first time in 30 years he had been recognised by the American Theatre Wing.

The Jamie Lloyd-directed revival was the star of the show at American theatre’s big night last Sunday with its three wins signifying a return to prominence for the veteran composer.

Published: June 14, 2025, 7:00 am

Killing Heidi are back, 25 years on: ‘Growing up in rock’n’roll gives you a shitload of grit’

After a ‘quiet little break’ of 20 years, the band is back to celebrate their 2000 debut Reflector – then the fastest-selling Australian album in history

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In 2022, Ella and Jesse Hooper, siblings and bandmates in Australian rock band Killing Heidi, lost both of their parents in the space of two weeks. Their father, Jeremy, died first after a shock cancer diagnosis and a quick decline; a fortnight later, their mother, Helen, passed away after a long struggle with breast cancer.

The grieving siblings took the weekend off, then went straight back out on to the road.

Published: June 14, 2025, 12:00 am

Endless summer: how Brian Wilson soundtracked California

The late Beach Boys musician created a sound that became synonymous with the state’s breezy, laidback vibe

• Whether wistful or euphoric, Brian Wilson made pop’s most overwhelmingly beautiful music

• Twelve of Brian Wilson’s greatest songs

In July 1963, Jan and Dean’s Surf City spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the first surf rock song to top the charts. Co-written by Brian Wilson, the tune describes a halcyon place where there’s always a party brewing and the romantic odds are in the narrator’s favor – two girls for every boy!

In this rock’n’roll era just before the Beatles shook up the US, surf culture had gone mainstream via films (the Annette Funicello-Frankie Avalon vehicle Beach Party) and music (the ferocious guitarist Dick Dale, quirky hits like the Surfaris’ Wipe Out). Wilson’s own Beach Boys were arguably the driving force behind this movement, having debuted in late 1961 with Surfin’, a single that doubled as an early mission statement: “Surfin’ is the only life, the only way for me.” The fresh-faced band members struck wholesome poses in magazine ads, wearing matching plaid shirts while standing in a line clutching a surfboard, as they sang pristine, intricate harmonies that radiated warmth.

Published: June 13, 2025, 8:18 am

‘They entrusted me with their daughter’s memory’: Women’s prize winner Rachel Clarke on her story of a life-saving transplant

The Story of a Heart, which won this year’s award for nonfiction, tells how one child saved the life of another. The author talks about the amazing families involved, campaigning for a better NHS, and how being a doctor frames the way she writes

To read Rachel Clarke’s The Story of a Heart, which has won this year’s Women’s prize for nonfiction, is to experience an onslaught of often competing emotions. There is awed disbelief at the sheer skill and dedication of the medical teams who transplanted the heart of nine-year-old Keira, who had been killed in a head-on traffic collision, into the body of Max, a little boy facing almost certain death from rapidly deteriorating dilated cardiomyopathy. There is vast admiration for the inexhaustible compassion of the teams who cared for both children and their families, and wonder at the cascade of medical advances, each breakthrough representing determination, inspiration, rigorous work, and careful navigation of newly emerging ethical territory. And most flooring of all is the immense courage of two families, one devastated by the sudden loss of a precious child, the other faced with a diagnosis that threatened to tear their lives apart.

To write such a story requires special preparation. “I was full of trepidation when I first approached Keira’s family,” Clarke tells me the morning after she was awarded the prize. “I knew that I was asking them to entrust me with the most precious thing, their beloved daughter Keira’s story, her memory.” The former journalist trained as a doctor in her late 20s, and has spent most of her medical career working in palliative care. Subsequently, she has also become an acclaimed writer and committed campaigner, publishing three memoirs: Your Life in My Hands, Dear Life and Breathtaking. She turned to her medical training for guidance when writing The Story of a Heart. “I said to myself, my framework will be my medical framework, so I would conduct myself in such a way that they would, I hoped, trust me in the same way that someone might trust me as a doctor. And if at any point they changed their mind, then they could walk away from the project.”

Published: June 13, 2025, 5:16 pm

Women’s prize winner Yael van der Wouden: ‘It’s heartbreaking to see so much hatred towards queer people’

The winner of this year’s fiction prize on growing up as an outsider, why we’re all guilty of complicity, and using her acceptance speech to reveal that she is intersex

It has been a dramatic couple of years for 37-year-old Dutch author Yael van der Wouden: her first novel, The Safekeep, a love story that deals with the legacy of the Holocaust in the Netherlands, was the focus of a frenzied bidding war and shortlisted for the 2024 Booker prize. Last night it won the Women’s prize for fiction.

“I wrote this book from a place of hopelessness,” she says when we meet. “I was looking for a ray of sunshine.” This morning in London the sun is blazing. She could never have expected that her novel would see off shortlisted authors including Miranda July (of whose work she is a big fan) and Elizabeth Strout.

Published: June 13, 2025, 5:15 pm

The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup

Awakened by Laura Elliott; Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by VE Schwab; Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang; Esperance by Adam Oyebanji; The Quiet by Barnaby Martin

Awakened by Laura Elliott (Angry Robot, £9.99)
A debut novel set in an apocalyptic 2055, following the development of a neural chip dispensing with the need for sleep. At first it seemed a blessing: it ramped up people’s metabolisms, made them stronger and more productive workers, but when they ignored the advice to turn it off and sleep for at least a few hours a week, they turned into ravenous monsters. Thea is one of a group of scientists who developed the chip and are now barricaded in the Tower of London, struggling to reverse the damage they have caused, when two survivors turn up seeking shelter: a silent, traumatised woman and her protector, a nameless man who shows signs of having once been Sleepless himself. Thea comes to question her own values and past actions in a dark and gripping gothic tale with echoes of Frankenstein and The Yellow Wallpaper.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by VE Schwab (Tor, £22)
The latest by the author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue spans centuries, and is focused on three women: Maria, born in 16th-century Spain; Charlotte, in Victorian England; and 21st-century Alice, who grew up in Scotland and is struggling to adapt to life as a university student in the US. All are sexually drawn to women and are isolated from their families. Other, darker connections are revealed as their separate stories become more closely interwoven. A fresh and addictively readable take on a much-loved horror/fantasy trope.

Published: June 13, 2025, 11:00 am

MindsEye review – a dystopian future that plays like it’s from 2012

PC (version tested), PlayStation 5, Xbox; Build a Rocket Boy/IOI Partners
A lot of work and ambition have gone into this strange, sometimes likable cover-shooter throwback

There’s a Sphere-alike in Redrock, MindsEye’s open-world version of Las Vegas. It’s pretty much a straight copy of the original: a huge soap bubble, half sunk into the desert floor, with its surface turned into a gigantic TV. Occasionally you’ll pull up near the Sphere while driving an electric vehicle made by Silva, the megacorp that controls this world. You’ll sometimes come to a stop just as an advert for an identical Silva EV plays out on the huge curved screen overhead. The doubling effect can be slightly vertigo-inducing.

At these moments, I truly get what MindsEye is trying to do. You’re stuck in the ultimate company town, where oligarchs and other crooks run everything, and there’s no hope of escaping the ecosystem they’ve built. MindsEye gets this all across through a chance encounter, and in a way that’s both light of touch and clever. The rest of the game tends towards the heavy-handed and silly, but it’s nice to glimpse a few instances where everything clicks.

Published: June 13, 2025, 12:25 pm

‘Misshapes, mistakes, misfits’: Pulp’s signature secondhand style has stood test of time

Band’s ‘on the edge of kitsch’ aesthetic is still relevant three decades later as young people focus on vintage clothing

Thirty years ago this month Pulp played the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury and took their reputation to another level. If part of this was due to a storming set taking in their new hit Common People, debuts for their future hits Mis-Shapes and Disco 2000, and the star power of singer Jarvis Cocker, it was also down to their look.

There was Steve Mackay, bass guitarist, in a fitted shirt and kipper tie, Russell Senior on violin in a blue safari shirt, keyboardist Candida Doyle in sequins and – of course – Cocker, in his now signature secondhand 70s tailoring.

Published: June 14, 2025, 5:00 am

Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst: ‘There was a time I wished I’d never made music’

In the last few years, the singer-songwriter has weathered divorce, grief and false allegations of sexual assault. Now, he’s back writing, performing – and rediscovering his political rage

In the mid-90s, Omaha made a pretty decent tour stop for up-and-coming bands. Nebraska sits near-plum in the US’s middle, and in its most populous city, once famed for its fur trade, stockyards and railroads, there had grown a thriving subculture that centred largely on a book and record store named the Antiquarium and a small venue named the Cog Factory.

Conor Oberst spent much of his early teens puttering between these locations, filling his young brain with music and literature. By 12, he had begun writing his own songs, and by 13 he had recorded his first album, releasing it on his older brother’s label and selling it in the record store. Sometimes he would take to the stage at the Cog Factory, a small, pale boy with an acoustic guitar and a lot of words.

Published: June 13, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘I’m not The Rock, right?’ Julianne Moore on action movies, appropriate parenting and twinning with Tilda Swinton

Ahead of her new film – in which she fights, dives and wrangles horses – the Oscar-winning actor discusses sunburn, age-gaps and hanging from helicopters

Julianne Moore has played some right mothers in her time. There was Amber Waves in Boogie Nights, whose pornography career and cocaine addiction costs her access to her child. Or Maude, the outre artist – “My work has been commended as being strongly vaginal” – whose determination to conceive drives much of the plot in The Big Lebowski. Moore was the infernal, domineering mother – the Piper Laurie role – in the 2013 remake of Carrie, and a lesbian cheating on her partner with the sperm donor who fathered their children in The Kids Are All Right. In May December, the most recent of the five pictures she has made with her artistic soulmate, the director Todd Haynes, she became pregnant by a 13-year-old boy, then married and raised a family with him after her release from prison. Shocking, perhaps, but then she had already played a socialite with incestuous designs on her own son (Eddie Redmayne) in Savage Grace. Imagine that lot as a Mother’s Day box set.

Her latest screen mum is in the jangling new thriller Echo Valley. She has a lot of heavy lifting to do as Kate, a morally compromised rancher whose farm is falling apart, along with her life. Some of that lifting is emotional: Kate left her husband for a woman (“I’m the one who ‘ran off with the lesbo ranch hand’,” she sighs) who then died. To add to her woes, Kate’s daughter (Sydney Sweeney), who has addiction problems, calls on her for help after accidentally throwing away $10,000 worth of drugs belonging to a dealer (Domhnall Gleeson).

Published: June 13, 2025, 4:00 am

Heroic indifference: was Thunderbolts* always doomed at the box office?

A cast of indie darlings and the critics’ seal of approval hasn’t saved this supervillain spin-off – but that asterisk is a sign of monumental instalments to come

There’s no such thing as a sure thing in Hollywood. Just ask Marvel Studios – once the box office equivalent of a cashpoint duct-taped to a golden goose, now resembling a busted slot machine in Skegness. Reports this week suggest that Thunderbolts*, the studio’s latest attempt to turn supervillain also-rans into marquee gold, has officially faceplanted at the box office despite strong reviews, a cast stacked with rising stars and indie darlings, and enough emotional baggage to ground a Sundance drama.

In theory, Jake Schreier’s rowdy ensemble piece had it all: Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell’s jawline, a marketing campaign whispering “this isn’t your dad’s Marvel film”, and the sort of melancholic indie sheen that usually comes free with a Bon Iver soundtrack. Critics even liked it. And yet audiences, perhaps stung by a mercurial ride for the once pristine superhero studio simply couldn’t be bothered to find out what all the fuss was about. With a production and marketing tab pushing $275m (£203m), Thunderbolts* needed to soar like Iron Man. Instead, Variety suggests its $371m (£273m) global take after six weeks in multiplexes is likely to leave it some way short of the $425m (£313m) the film needs to break even by the time it slips quietly on to Disney+.

Published: June 13, 2025, 12:29 pm

My unexpected Pride icon: Pokémon, small fluffy monsters battling in a gender-fluid world

As a queer child in the early 2000s, I never fitted in with the hyper-masculine world of Action Man. But in the gender-nonconforming Pokémon universe, I found safety

Woolworths, Woking, Surrey. I’d walk up to the till, place my Barbie or Britney Spears CD player on the counter, and before the cashier had the chance to ask if we wanted a bag, I’d blurt out: “This is a present for my sister, it’s not for me!” Sharing a smirk with my mum, they’d offer replies such as, “Wow, she’ll love it!” and “Aren’t you a kind brother?” (If you hadn’t already guessed, I do not have a sister.)

This was a regular occurrence in my childhood in the early 2000s. I was acutely aware, even as early as the age of five or six, that these were not the usual toys a little boy should be playing with. Where was my Action Man or Scalextric track? Why were my bedroom walls covered in posters of pop stars wearing crop tops and not footballers with muddy knees?

Published: June 14, 2025, 12:00 pm

Blind date: ‘It felt more like two people having a friendly conversation at a conference’

Matthew, 48, an international English teacher, meets Emma, 40, a lecturer

What were you hoping for?
A serious-minded woman with a great backstory and fine taste in food who could share thoughts and opinions. All of those things happened.

Published: June 14, 2025, 6:00 am

‘On a peak under a blue sky’: the joy of summer in Europe’s mountains

Our writer recalls his favourite mountain experiences, from hard-won views to splendid isolation and the comforts of simple refuges

After a tough scramble to the summit of Rhinog Fach, we look down into the deep valley holding the chilly waters of Llyn Hywel, then west across several miles of heather, bilberry and bare rock to the Welsh coast. Turning my gaze north, there is the entire Llyn peninsula leading east to the peak of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), no doubt weighed down by thousands of visitors. Up here there are just two of us in an utterly peaceful landscape. No clouds on the horizon. No surprises.

I lie down for a few minutes and feel myself drift off. There are no human voices to be heard, only birds. Summer has come early to these mountains and I wouldn’t be anywhere else, drinking in that particular kind of tranquillity to be found on a peak under a blue sky.

Published: June 14, 2025, 6:00 am

Tim Dowling: Why are my friends erasing me from their holiday memories?

I try to think of another detail from the weekend that will convince them of my presence, but absolutely nothing comes to mind

After a sometimes fraught four-hour car journey, my wife and I and three friends arrive at a remote, sea-facing house in Greece. I’ve been here once before, a couple of years ago, but my memory of the place is fragmentary. I’ve remembered, for example, that you can’t get the car anywhere near the house – you have to lug your stuff across a beach and over some rocks – and have packed accordingly. But the view from the top of the rocks still comes as a disheartening surprise.

“I forgot about the second beach,” I say, looking at the house in the distance.

Published: June 14, 2025, 5:00 am

Meera Sodha’s vegan recipe for grated tomato and butter beans with olive pangrattato | The new vegan

Few things in life are as simple and mouthwatering as tomatoes on toast sprinkled with salt, but here they hit new heights with olivey breadcrumbs, garlic and butter beans, too

My favourite breakfast is sliced tomatoes on rye bread sprinkled with sea salt. The best bit is neither the tomato flesh nor the bread, it’s the salted tomato water that runs down the back of my hands and threatens to meet my elbows. It’s liquid electricity and one of my favourite earthly flavours. It could make a great stock, or a delicious martini, perhaps even a marinade for ceviche, but here it’s thrown in at the end to refresh a dish of gently cooked tomatoes, beans and dill. Perfect for dunking anything but elbows into.

Published: June 14, 2025, 5:00 am

Brian Wilson was a musical genius. Are there any left?

In pop, which equates genius with innovation, recent artists have not pioneered new forms like those from the 60s. Has the digital age sidelined invention and promoted the derivative for ever?

By all accounts, Brian Wilson was a genius. His fellow greats Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney both used the word in their tributes to the creative force behind the Beach Boys, who died this week aged 82. So did John Cale, Mick Fleetwood and Elton John. And so did Wilson’s bandmates, who wrote in a joint statement: “The world mourns a genius today.”

You may imagine Wilson gradually accrued such a vaunted standing. Artistic legacy is largely dependent on the longevity of mass appeal, and the fact that the Beach Boys’ opus Pet Sounds remains one of the most celebrated and beloved records of all time almost 60 years since its release is proof enough of his incredible talent.

Published: June 14, 2025, 9:17 am

Trophy wives, subversive reading and ejaculation: lessons from 2025’s best graduation speeches

Percival Everett, Simone Biles, Kermit the Frog and Donald Trump deliver words of wisdom, and a few of grotesque stupidity, at commencement ceremonies across US

America’s higher education may be under attack from the federal government – but students from the class of 2025 still have to graduate. And so commencement season, somehow, occurred, with the world’s best and brightest politicians, entertainers and athletes, plus a frog, presenting their hard-earned wisdom. From Percival Everett to Simone Biles to President Trump himself, here are 10 lessons we’ve learned from the year’s graduation speeches.

Published: June 13, 2025, 11:00 am

‘He stole a piece of our souls’: Christian music star Michael Tait accused of sexual assault by three men

Tait posted on Instagram days ago that for 20 years he lived a ‘double life’ but is working on ‘repentance and healing’

The Christian music legend Michael Tait, whose hit song God’s Not Dead became an anthem for Donald Trump’s Maga movement, has been accused of sexually assaulting three men, two who believed they were drugged by the rock star in the early 2000s, according to a months-long Guardian investigation. Four other men have alleged that Tait, a founding member of DC Talk and later a frontman for Newsboys, engaged in inappropriate behavior such as unwanted touching and sexual advances.

The Guardian is publishing these allegations days after Tait posted an extraordinary confession on his Instagram account, admitting that for 20 years he had been “leading a double life”, abusing alcohol and cocaine, “and, at times, touched men in an unwanted sensual way”, according to his statement.

Published: June 13, 2025, 10:00 am

Tell us about your football match friends

We’d like to hear from people who have struck up friendships with the person they sit next to at football matches

We’d like to hear from people who have become football match friends.

Watching the ups and downs of your team next to the same person at the ground can lead to strong bonds. Has the perfect stranger you meet only at the football become a close friend or an important person in your life just from your time in the stands? If so, we’d like to hear all about it.

Published: June 13, 2025, 7:58 am

‘The rain brings out a cinematic quality’: Eric Van Nynatten’s best phone picture

A neon sign reflected in a puddle in New York City’s Theater District inspired this enigmatic shot

It had been raining all day in New York City. After meeting a friend in a coffee shop near Manhattan’s Theater District, professional photographer Eric Van Nynatten decided on a spontaneous street photography session.

“The rain had been nonstop, which most people would find messy and chaotic, but I feel it brings out a cinematic quality in the city,” he says. “The wet streets become shiny and reflective, and at night it looks a lot like a painting. I ended up walking down Broadway as evening fell. It’s an area that’s already a visual spectacle – there are all these amazing retro marquees, billboards and neon signs. I spotted this sign reflected in a puddle just off the sidewalk and set up my composition.”

Published: June 14, 2025, 10:00 am