No matter what Trump says, the US has gone to war – and there will be profound and lasting consequences | Simon Tisdall

Trump has fallen slap bang into the trap laid for him by Netanyahu. His reckless gamble makes a nuclear weapon for Iran more, not less, likely

Bombing will not make Iran go away. US bombs will not destroy the knowhow needed to build a nuclear weapon or the will do so, if that is what Tehran wants. The huge attack ordered by Donald Trump will not halt ongoing open warfare between Israel and Iran. It will not bring lasting peace to the Middle East, end the slaughter in Gaza, deliver justice to the Palestinians, or end more than half a century of bitter enmity between Tehran and Washington.

More likely, Trump’s rash, reckless gamble will inflame and exacerbate all these problems. Depending on how Iran and its allies and supporters react, the region could plunge into an uncontrolled conflagration. US bases in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the region, home to about 40,000 American troops, must now be considered potential targets for retaliation – and possibly British and allied forces, too.

Published: June 22, 2025, 11:28 am

‘I feel completely drained’: young professionals swamped by ‘infinite workdays’

For many, work starts before sunrise and stretches late into the night, with nearly 270 notifications a day, report finds

It is 10pm in Seoul, South Korea, but Hyun Jin Lee is not heading home. The recent college graduate – an employee in the IT industry – is at a mandatory team dinner.

“I end up working late almost every day,” laughs Lee. “By the end of the day, I feel completely drained, like I’ve used up all my energy [and] I can’t really do anything on weekdays after work.”

Published: June 22, 2025, 10:00 am

Not My Type by E Jean Carroll review – memoir takes a hatchet to Trump

The writer’s account of the Trump trials is packed with revenge and barbed wit. She has little to hide

At his wedding to Marla Maples in December 1993, two months after the birth of their daughter, Tiffany, Donald Trump got talking to Howard Stern. According to the shock jock, Trump allegedly opined, charmingly: “Vagina is expensive.” Trump and Maples split in 1997. Nearly 30 years later, E Jean Carroll, an adjudicated victim of Trump’s verbal and sexual abuse, might at least in one way concur with his crude and sexist analysis.

Carroll was assaulted by Trump in a changing room at Bergdorf Goodman, the New York department store. Thanks to court cases arising from that encounter, Trump owes her “slightly over $100m”, Carroll writes.

Not My Type: One Woman vs a President is published in the US by Macmillan

Published: June 22, 2025, 12:00 pm

This is how we do it: ‘I discovered my bisexuality when my husband and I started swinging’

Simon and Nicole’s intimacy had waned after three decades together. Having sex with other people allows them to fulfil their personal needs and strengthen their bond as a couple
How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

I thought Simon might leave me if I said no to swinging. I agreed to it for him, for our relationship

Published: June 22, 2025, 10:00 am

Hyper-realistic baby dolls spark moral panic and legislation in Brazil

About 30 bills concerning these figurines, known as ‘reborn’ dolls, have been introduced across the country

Even as a former president stands trial for attempting a coup and the current leader grapples with the worst popularity crisis of his three terms, many Brazilians have spent recent weeks focused on a very different subject.

On social media, in soap operas, and in newly proposed laws, it seemed that hyper-realistic baby dolls were everywhere.

Published: June 22, 2025, 10:00 am

The kindness of strangers: a gentle flight attendant made me feel I wasn’t alone

He didn’t try to tell me everything would be all right, because it wouldn’t have been. If he hadn’t been there, I would have been sobbing on my own

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I’d completely forgotten it was my little sister’s 40th birthday, so that morning I hurriedly arranged to send some flowers to her house. She died before she could receive them. My sister died at 11am and I got a text from the florist saying they’d delivered the flowers at 11.30am – how ridiculous. They must have sat on her doorstep for days.

I got the call as I was walking through the doors at Emerald airport in Queensland, about to fly home to Brisbane. My stepdad rang me and said, “I need to talk to you about something – your sister’s died.” I was like, “What? What do you mean?” I told him I was about to hop on a plane home and that I’d call him when I got on the ground. I hung up, stunned.

Published: June 22, 2025, 3:00 pm

Israel-Iran war live: Iran parliament votes to shut Hormuz strait in response to US attack raising fears of oil price shock

US defense secretary Pete Hegseth says attacks have devastated Iran’s nuclear programme

• Full report: US attacks on Iran inflicted major destruction, Pentagon officials say

We’re also still awaiting reactions from the Democratic leadership in the US.

Trump’s closest supporters have posted their support for the attack on social media.

South Carolina senator Lindsay Graham says:

Good. This was the right call. The regime deserves it. Well done, President @realDonaldTrump

To my fellow citizens: We have the best Air Force in the world. It makes me so proud. Fly, Fight, Win.

The prospect of an Iranian regime acquiring nuclear weapons represents the most acute immediate threat to America and our allies.

President Trump has persistently and unequivocally stated that those threats cannot be countered without dismantling the Iranian regime’s enrichment capacity.

Published: June 22, 2025, 8:25 pm

How effective was the US attack on Iran’s nuclear sites? A visual guide

Trump claims the assault ‘totally obliterated’ the key facilities, but what do we know about its impact?

• Middle East crisis – latest updates

Donald Trump was quick to claim that US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities had “completely and totally obliterated” them. Still, it remains unclear how much physical damage has been done or what the longer-term impact might be on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Published: June 22, 2025, 4:00 pm

US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities is Trump’s biggest gamble yet as president

Much could go wrong for the US and the Middle East as Trump and Netanyahu pursue the disempowerment of Iran

• Middle East crisis – latest updates

Donald Trump, a self-confessed risk-taker, has taken the greatest gamble – not just with his political reputation and the future of the Middle East, but arguably with the whole concept of military intervention as a way to solve intractable geopolitical problems.

If the US president succeeds – and there will be many rival interpretations and metrics of success in the weeks ahead – it is possible he will have disempowered Iran, and diminished the global influence of a regime that has for 40 years sponsored threats against the west. In the process his personal authority will have been enhanced, and his next three years in office will be a triumph that may exacerbate some of his worst authoritarian and impulsive traits.

Published: June 22, 2025, 7:39 pm

How the carefully planned US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities unfolded

Decoy B-2 flights and diplomatic misdirections meant Tehran was caught off guard by the overnight raids

• Middle East crisis – latest updates

Late on Friday night, eight US B-2 bombers took off from Whiteman air force base in Missouri and turned westwards towards the Pacific. Amateur flight trackers plotted their progress on social media as the black flying-wing warplanes joined up mid-air with refuelling tankers and checked in with air traffic controllers once they had reached the open ocean.

The movement of the B-2 bombers towards the US Pacific base on Guam triggered speculation that Donald Trump was arranging pieces on the board before a decision on whether to join Israel in bombing Iranian nuclear facilities.

Published: June 22, 2025, 6:28 pm

‘This friend of ours will soon be an enemy’: how Iran became Israel’s foe

Iran was once an ally of Israel and the US, but after the 1979 revolution that deposed the shah, alliances shifted

With the US now in open warfare with Iran in a long-heralded conflict triggered by fear for Israel’s existence, it is worth recalling the prescience of the Israeli spy in Tehran who saw it all coming.

As the Mossad station chief in Tehran in the late 1970s, Reuven Merhav was the Israeli foreign espionage agency’s man on the ground charged with safeguarding Israel’s sensitive intelligence relationship with its closest Middle East ally, Iran under the rule of its pro-western monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Published: June 22, 2025, 5:23 am

‘Ticking time bomb’: Ice detainee dies in transit as experts say more deaths likely

Guardian reporting reveals confusing and contradictory events surrounding death of Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado

A 68-year-old Mexican-born man has become the first Ice detainee in at least a decade to die while being transported from a local jail to a federal detention center, and experts have warned there will likely be more such deaths amid the current administration’s “mass deportation” push across the US.

Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado’s exact cause of death remains under investigation, according to Ice, but the Guardian’s reporting reveals a confusing and at times contradictory series of events surrounding the incident.

Published: June 22, 2025, 12:00 pm

Players and umpire fall ill during MLB games as heatwave grips US

• Elly De La Cruz vomits then hits two-run homer

• Seattle pitcher Trent Thornton forced out of game

Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz and Seattle Mariners reliever Trent Thornton fell ill on Saturday while playing in the extreme heat covering much of the United States.

De La Cruz vomited on the field with two outs in the fourth inning of Cincinnati’s extra-inning loss at the St Louis Cardinals.

Published: June 22, 2025, 12:32 pm

US senator Alex Padilla criticizes ‘petty’ JD Vance for calling him ‘Jose’

‘He knows my name,’ says California Democrat, as Newsom condemns US vice-president and challenges him to debate

JD Vance’s decision to refer to California US senator Alex Padilla by the name of a terrorist conspirator showed how “unserious” the Trump administration is, the lawmaker has said of the vice-president.

“He knows my name – he knows my name,” Padilla told MSNBC’s The Weekend on Saturday, 12 days after the FBI forcibly removed him from a 12 June news conference hosted by US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem amid anti-immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) protests in Los Angeles.

Published: June 22, 2025, 10:00 am

Trump’s plan to ban US states from AI regulation will ‘hold us back’, says Microsoft science chief

Eric Horvitz’s comments come despite reports that Microsoft is lobbying with Google, Meta and Amazon to support ban

Microsoft’s chief scientist has warned that Donald Trump’s proposed ban on state-level guardrails on artificial intelligence will slow the development of the frontier technology rather than accelerate it.

Dr Eric Horvitz, a former technology adviser to Joe Biden, said bans on regulation will “hold us back” and “could be at odds with making good progress on not just advancing the science, but in translating it into practice”.

Published: June 22, 2025, 10:00 am

Gun-wielding attacker killed at church in suburban Detroit

Gunman opened fire at CrossPointe Community church in Wayne, Michigan, but was shot by security guard

A gunman opened fire during a service at a suburban Detroit church on Sunday, wounding one person before he was shot and killed by a security guard, police said.

The person shot in the leg was the security guard, according to what the church’s pastor told the Detroit News. No one else was hurt in part because a church member ran the attacker over with a truck, said the CrossPointe Community church pastor Bobby Kelly Jr.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Published: June 22, 2025, 6:25 pm

Florida Republicans racially gerrymandered two state senate districts, court hears

GOP officials had previously manipulated districts as well to wrest voting power from Black electorate

Republicans in Florida racially gerrymandered two key state senate districts to disenfranchise Black voters and skew results in the Tampa Bay area, a panel of judges has heard.

In one district, they took a small chunk of St Petersburg heavy with minority voters and added it to an area of Tampa in a different county, and across a 10-mile waterway, leaving the remainder of its electorate “artificially white”, the court was told.

Published: June 22, 2025, 2:00 pm

Kevin Durant reportedly traded from Suns to Rockets in blockbuster deal

• Phoenix to receive draft picks plus Jalen Green

• 15-time All-Star had been seeking way out of Suns

Kevin Durant is set to swap Arizona for Texas, with ESPN reporting on Sunday that the Phoenix Suns and Houston Rockets have agreed a trade for the 36-year-old.

According to ESPN, the Suns will receive Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, the No 10 pick in this year’s draft and five second-round picks in return for Durant. If the trade goes ahead it will be formally completed when the new league year starts on 6 July.

Published: June 22, 2025, 5:02 pm

Six people dead and two missing after boat capsizes on California’s Lake Tahoe

Boat overturned after apparently being hit by a large swell, in a region that’s a popular spot with tourists

Six people have died and two others were missing after a boat capsized on Saturday on California’s Lake Tahoe, local authorities have said.

A 27ft-long boat overturned in the afternoon after apparently being hit by a large swell near DL Bliss state park, according to the Coast Guard. Lake Tahoe and its surrounding wilderness region is a hugely popular spot with tourists.

Published: June 22, 2025, 2:18 pm

Trump’s military attack on Iran reveals split among Maga diehards

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon lead voices on right seeing airstrikes as break with ‘America first’ doctrine

• Middle East war –live updates

Saturday’s US strikes on Iran provoked conflicting reactions from isolationist Republicans who support Donald Trump’s Make America great again (Maga) movement, catching them – like many Democrats – between supporting efforts against nuclear proliferation and opposing American intervention in foreign conflicts.

The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – a loyalist to the president – reacted to the strikes by urging those in the US to pray that terrorists do not attack “our homeland” in retaliation.

Published: June 22, 2025, 3:56 pm

Iran says US ‘must receive a response’ after Trump’s strikes on nuclear sites

Pentagon claims major damage inflicted, world leaders call for restraint and Israel continues to strike Iranian targets

• Middle East crisis – latest updates

Iran has warned the US to brace for retaliation after Donald Trump’s administration joined Israel in its war against Tehran, tearing up his isolationist foreign policy and launching the most consequential intervention in a conflict in a generation.

Almost a day after US strikes targeting three key Iranian nuclear sites, Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, told France’s Emmanuel Macron: “The Americans must receive a response to their aggression,” signalling a potential Iranian reprisal that could drag the US into a new, protracted conflict in the Middle East.

Published: June 22, 2025, 7:05 pm

Trump news at a glance: President praises attacks on Iran as lawmakers divided on US involvement

Trump calls attacks on Iranian nuclear sites a success, but some US lawmakers immediately called the attack unconstitutional. Key US politics stories from Saturday 21 June

Washington was in a flurry late on Saturday as Donald Trump announced that the US had completed strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran, directly joining Israel’s effort to destroy the country’s nuclear program.

American politicians reacted to the news of the US bombing of nuclear targets in Iran with a mix of cheering support and instant condemnation, reflecting deep divisions in the country, as Washington grapples with yet another military intervention overseas.

Published: June 22, 2025, 5:47 am

Key RFK Jr advisers stand to profit from a new federal health initiative

The Maha campaign seeks to warn Americans of the dangers of ultra-processed foods

Federal health officials are seeking to launch a “bold, edgy” public service campaign to warn Americans of the dangers of ultra-processed foods in social media, transit ads, billboards and even text messages.

And they potentially stand to profit off the results.

Published: June 21, 2025, 3:00 pm

Trump is terrified of Black culture. But not for the reasons you think

A look back at 1960s Black arts movement explains why Trump is obsessed with eliminating Black artistry and the museums and institutions that support it

By the time Jesse Owens bowed his head from the highest podium tier to be crowned with his fourth Olympic wreath in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Europe’s premiers knew they had a problem. In front of a record-setting crowd at games that should have been a lavish display of Aryan propaganda, Owens’s unmatched athleticism on the track humiliated the host Nazi regime and smashed one of the vital ideological pillars upon which European empires annexed the world into their racial order. Since the inception of race-based slavery and settler-colonialism in the 15th century, the novel idea that human beings could be stratified into distinct “races,” with superiority defaulting to white Europeans, was bolstered by the claim that white racial supremacy was the rational outcome of the “natural” biophysical, intellectual and aesthetic ascendancy of white people, and thus of whiteness itself.

Adolf Hitler watched Owens, the five-time world record holder and grandson of enslaved people, triumph in his first event from a lavishly decorated imperial box, and abruptly exited the arena thereafter rather than witness Aryan athletes stumble to place second. In his conspicuous departure, a reluctant admission heard around the world had been made. A pillar was smashed. European physical superiority had been proven an undeniable fallacy and, more insultingly, Black dominance on the track was now a quantifiable fact. The ideological stakes of white supremacy – that whites were the smarter race, the sole ones capable of higher thought, that white people were the most physically beautiful, and also that the cultural products of whiteness were the most artistically valuable to advanced civilization – had suffered a powerful blow and shifted on its heels.

Published: June 22, 2025, 1:00 pm

‘The risk is the lure’: subway surfing in New York City continues to claim young lives

Social media popularizes the deadly activity, and an 1847 law stymies families who try to hold the city to account

Jaida Rivera’s 11-year son, Cayden, was supposed to be in school at Brooklyn’s Fort Greene preparatory academy on the morning of 16 September last year. Staff saw him in the cafeteria after his grandmother dropped him off at 7.45am.

But 30 minutes later he was marked as absent. Cayden had somehow slipped out, boarded a G subway train traveling south and was riding on top of one of its carriages when he fell on to the tracks at the Fourth Avenue-Ninth Street station just after 10.00am. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Published: June 22, 2025, 12:00 pm

‘Our era of violent populism’: the US has entered a new phase of political violence

The political temperature is dangerously high – and shows few signs of cooling

It has been a grim couple of weeks in the US, as multiple acts of politically motivated violence have dominated headlines and sparked fears that a worrying new normal has taken hold in America.

Last Saturday, a man disguised as a police officer attacked two Democratic legislators at their homes in Minnesota, killing a state representative and her husband, and wounding another lawmaker and his wife. The alleged murderer was planning further attacks, police said, on local politicians and abortion rights advocates.

Published: June 22, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘You don’t brag about wiping out 60‑70,000 people’: the men who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

This summer will mark 80 years since the attacks stunned the world. Today, every one of the crew members who carried out the bombings is dead. Here, one of the last writers to interview them reopens his files

‘It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining on the buildings. Everything down there was bright – very, very bright. You could see the city from 50 miles away, the rivers bisecting it, the aiming point. It was clear as a bell. It was perfect. The perfect mission.”

I’m sitting in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco opposite the navigator of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The year is 2004, and Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, aged 83, has agreed to be interviewed for a book I’m writing for the 60th anniversary of that fateful mission. Van Kirk informs me, with the trace of a smile, that this will probably be the last interview in his life.

Published: June 22, 2025, 11:00 am

Israel is playing an outsized role in New York City’s mayoral race. Will it matter?

The election has turned into an Israel-Palestine proxy war of sorts, even as voters on both sides wish the focus remained on local issues

Speaking from a Jerusalem bomb shelter last week as Iran and Israel exchanged fire, a New York state senator posted a video message to New York City voters: “There is a mayoral primary coming up this week where one of the candidates does not believe the Jewish state has a right to exist,” said Sam Sutton, the senator from Brooklyn. “We don’t want to be in a situation like this in America.”

Sutton called on New Yorkers to elect a “great friend of the Jewish people”: Andrew Cuomo, New York’s former governor.

Published: June 22, 2025, 11:00 am

‘It’s thieving’: impersonators steal elderly people’s TikToks to hawk mass-produced goods

Fraudsters are manipulating content of older adults as ‘sadness bait’ to push sales. The videos are going viral

In April of this year, Daisy Yelichek was scrolling TikTok when something unusual appeared in her feed: a video of her 84-year-old father, George Tsaftarides, who runs an account sharing sewing videos from his small tailoring business in Ohio. But the video Yelichek was seeing was not from Tsaftarides’ actual page, which has nearly 41,000 followers – but instead originated from a profile of someone claiming to be a “sad old man” whose cat sanctuary was at risk of shutting down.

“Please stay 8 seconds so I don’t have to shut down my cat shelter I poured my love into,” the text on the video said, adding that the sanctuary would be selling slippers to raise additional funds. The bid for sympathy worked on many viewers, garnering millions of views and tens of thousands of users leaving concerned comments. “Just ordered two! Sending love to these kittens,” wrote one. Another commenter said: “thank you for all you do for these babies.” Others even asked if there was a GoFundMe link to donate directly to the cat shelter.

Published: June 22, 2025, 1:00 pm

Five of the best European city breaks for summer

With outdoor concerts, alfresco dining, rooftop bars and plenty of parks and places to swim outdoors, these cities make for a great summer getaway

Quite why the Latvian capital remains so under the radar is a mystery; the cobbled streets of the Vecrīga (old town) and the elegant art nouveau architecture make it one of the most beautiful cities in eastern Europe. Long summer evenings, with temperatures rarely topping 30C, form the backdrop for rooftop bars thrumming with live DJs, as well as alfresco concerts in leafy parks, while the beautiful sandy beaches of seaside Jūrmala are just a half-hour bus ride away.

Published: June 22, 2025, 6:00 am

‘I find it sad and difficult to listen to the Smiths’: Ana Matronic’s honest playlist

The Scissor Sister has a complex relationship with the Smiths and gets parties started with Grace Jones, but who’s her (not so) guilty pleasure?

The first song I fell in love with
I was obsessed as a child with the Muppets and Sesame Street. My grandmother made me a puppet of the Count to help practise my counting. I loved The Pinball Number Count with the Pointer Sisters counting up 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 / 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 / 11/ 12 which is prophetic because I still consider the Pointer Sisters one of my all-time favourite bands.

The first record I bought
I was playing Delirious by Prince for my mother in 1982, and she said: “He sounds like Little Richard.” I said: “Who is Little Richard?” and she said: “Get in the car, young lady,” and we went and bought a Little Richard greatest hits set. It was the start of a long conversation about music with my mom.

Published: June 22, 2025, 8:00 am

I study the history of Nazi resistance. Here’s what the US left can learn from it | Luke Berryman

Effective opposition calls for a laser focus on change, no matter how small. We should consider these activists’ examples

Around the end of 2022, I had an idea for a book about the history of resistance to Nazism. I wanted to show that Nazism has faced nonconformity, refusal and protest ever since it was born in 1920. I also wanted to explore beyond a handful of famous heroes and cast a spotlight on people who changed history without entering popular memory. When I began my research, Donald Trump had just announced his candidacy for the Republican ticket in 2024. When I gave the manuscript to the publisher a little over two years later, he was president-elect.

His comeback, the darker version of Maga that came with him, and the Democratic party’s collapse gave fresh relevance to the stories of resistance to far-right extremism that I was finding. Even as I was piecing them together, they began to intrude on the present. It was a haunting transformation – and it helped me to understand why the resistance to Trump has been flawed from the moment he stepped on to the political stage.

Published: June 22, 2025, 11:00 am

Like George W Bush, Trump has started a reckless war based on a lie | Mohamad Bazzi

The Iraq war was built on a lie. Now history is repeating itself

In May 2003, George W Bush landed on the deck of a US aircraft carrier to deliver a triumphant speech, declaring that major combat operations in Iraq had ended – six weeks after he had ordered US troops to invade the country. Bush spoke under a now infamous banner on the carrier’s bridge that proclaimed, “Mission Accomplished”. It would turn into a case study of American hubris and one of the most mocked photo-ops in modern history.

As Bush made his speech off the coast of San Diego, I was in Baghdad covering the invasion’s aftermath as a correspondent for a US newspaper. It was clear then that the war was far from over, and the US was likely to face a grinding insurgency led by former members of the Iraqi security forces. It would also soon become clear that Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq was built on a lie: Saddam Hussein’s regime did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not intent on developing them. And Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US, despite the Bush administration’s repeated attempts to connect Hussein’s regime to al-Qaida.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and an associate professor of journalism at New York University

Published: June 22, 2025, 8:00 pm

Los Angeles is not a hellscape – no matter how much Trump wishes for it | Dave Schilling

The administration is portraying the city as RoboCop-style anarchy. But the only people facing a war zone here are immigrants

The Los Angeles Dodgers lost on Thursday, 5-3, to the San Diego Padres. A mostly unremarkable game livened up by a hit batsman that led to a near-brawl between the two teams. But the real action took place well before the first pitch. Federal agents were seen attempting to enter Dodger Stadium’s parking lot earlier in the day, according to several reports. When asked, the agents declared they were with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). After the Dodgers said they had turned Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents away, Ice denied being at the stadium at all, while DHS said Customs and Border Protection vehicles “were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement”. Yes, but what about, you know, the videos? The eyewitness accounts? All that evidence? Never mind that, I suppose.

We’ve become quite immune to the confused realities of this administration. They could say the sky is purple, horses can carry on cocktail party conversation à la Mr Ed, and Justin Bieber is a recent Nobel laureate in physics and we’d respond: “Well, of course, carry on. Congrats to Justin, I suppose.” They’ve been doing it since Donald Trump’s first term, but really ratcheted up the bullshit during the immigration protests in Los Angeles. The administration’s party line is that Los Angeles was tipping into full-on, RoboCop-style anarchy and the only solution to that problem was a deployment of the national guard and the marines, against the wishes of the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom. This, despite the protests occurring within about 1 sq mile of a city that is, by my last count, absolutely enormous. Or, for those who don’t live here, 500 sq miles (1,300 sq km). To be exact.

Published: June 22, 2025, 1:00 pm

I know judging other parents is wrong. But when it comes to giving kids smartphones, I'm a lost cause | Polly Hudson

From feeding to bedtimes, toys to piercings, from the day your child is born, you’re monitored by other parents. And I’m as complicit as anyone else …

Not all heroes wear capes; some have a box in their bedroom instead. Dragons’ Den’s Sara Davies says she confiscates her kids’ friends’ phones when they come round, so instead of sitting glued to their devices, they talk to each other and play together.

“I have a box at the front door … they put their phones and iPads in the box and it stays in my bedroom,” she told the Daily Mail. “No one complains. They’re outside playing football, they merge so much better – and they communicate.”

Published: June 22, 2025, 1:00 pm

Small business owners aren’t jumping for joy about the US economy – but they still aren’t jumping ship

Small businesses are doing OK right now, even if there is a bit of concern about tariffs, inflation, labor shortages and higher costs

Small businesses in the US account for approximately half of the country’s jobs, so when small businesses are doing well, it’s likely that the economy is doing well. Media reports recently indicated that many small businesses are challenged by Trump’s tariffs, ongoing inflation, labor shortages and higher financing costs. So how are small businesses doing so far in 2025? Not great. But not that bad either.

In just the past two months, there have been no less than seven comprehensive surveys conducted by well-known companies and brands that altogether surveyed or drew from their internal data of tens – even hundreds – of thousands of small businesses. And they give a pretty good idea of how they’re doing.

Published: June 22, 2025, 2:00 pm

The Guardian view on Trump bombing Iran: an illegal and reckless act | Editorial

The US president has chosen war at Israel’s behest. He may imagine he has scored an easy win, but the world is likely to pay a steep price

Donald Trump was predictably quick to claim victory following the illegal US strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities: “Completely and totally obliterated,” he crowed. Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and sycophants at home rushed to fawn over his “courageous” and “brilliant” decision. The most senior US military official, Dan Caine, offered a more muted assessment: it was “way too early” to know the full outcome despite severe damage. We cannot yet know whether the blow has ended Iran’s nuclear aspirations – or will spur it to pursue the bomb. It may be weeks or months, too, before Iranian retaliation plays out, with all its potential repercussions.

Two nuclear-armed states have gone to war on the unevidenced claim that a third state is on the verge of acquiring its own nuclear arms. In March, the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said Iran was not building weapons (though she has now scrambled to align with Mr Trump). Israel is clear that its attacks will continue, and has increasingly talked of regime change. The price is being paid not only by a reviled regime but by the Iranian people.

Published: June 22, 2025, 5:11 pm

The Guardian view on extreme weather: build national readiness – or let everyday life keep breaking down | Editorial

Britain faces rising climate threats, yet lacks a country adaptation plan. Urgent, coordinated investment is needed to protect lives and infrastructure

Britain’s four-day heatwave – made 100 times more likely by the climate crisis – is expected to claim about 600 lives. Researchers say high temperatures from Thursday to Sunday would lead to a sharp rise in excess mortality, especially among older people in cities such as London and Birmingham. They forecast the deadliest day as Saturday, with temperatures above 32C and about 266 deaths. These are not abstract figures, but lives cut short by a threat we understand, yet remain unprepared for.

Young people seem to grasp this. In a YouGov poll last week, roughly a quarter of 18- to 24-year-olds said they hoped there wouldn’t be a heatwave – while more than two-fifths of older people welcomed the sunshine. That generational split isn’t just cultural. It reflects an entirely rational anxiety: younger people face a future living in a climate emergency. The generation that caused and benefited from the conditions driving global heating will be gone long before the worst costs – financial, environmental, social – have to be paid.

Published: June 22, 2025, 5:10 pm

Santi Cazorla and Real Oviedo pull off the most romantic of returns to La Liga

Twenty-four long years after their relegation, then tumbling lower into ‘the mud’, the club whose fans would not let them die witnessed their return to Spain’s top table

Somewhere in the middle of all those people, of all the shouting and the crying, the emotion and the endless embraces, Santi Cazorla said that this, this, was the dream of his life. It was the dream of all their lives. At 11.43pm on 21 June 2025, the man who was twice a European champion with the greatest generation Spain has ever seen, who has won at Wembley, the Camp Nou and the Santiago Bernabéu, was crouched at the side of the pitch at the Carlos Tartiere ready for one last run. And when the final whistle went – on this game and an entire era – he set off, 40 years old and a kid again leading them all on to the pitch and into primera.

From the touchline they followed, let loose at last. From everywhere else they did too, the stands where 29,624 fans had been through it again emptying on to the pitch. A quarter of a century later, Real Oviedo had returned to the first division. “It’s been many years in the mud,” Cazorla said: they had disappeared down to the second, third and fourth tier, twice they had almost disappeared entirely; here, against Mirandés in the playoff final second leg, the match he called “the biggest of my career”, they had conceded early, two goals down on aggregate, and were taken into extra time, tension tearing at them, even as they knew it was never going to be easy, but now they had actually done it; now they were back. In their centenary year.

Published: June 22, 2025, 5:39 pm

MLB investigates after wife of Giants’ Sean Hjelle alleges ‘abuse’ in TikTok video

• Caroline Hjelle accuses husband of adultery and abuse

• Pitcher says he has no comment on allegations

San Francisco Giants manager Bob Melvin said club officials have talked to Major League Baseball about allegations of abuse made by the wife of pitcher Sean Hjelle.

MLB is investigating claims made by Caroline Hjelle, who on Friday posted a TikTok of herself with the couple’s two children. It included the caption: “When my MLB husband abandons us on Mothers Day a week after [this video was taken] once I finally found out about his affairs and stopped putting up with his abuse, so I’ve been raising two boys alone.”

Published: June 22, 2025, 4:13 pm

Alcaraz beats Lehecka to extend win streak and regain crown as king of Queen’s Club

• Alcaraz overcomes Czech 7-5, 6-7 (5), 6-2 in final

• Spaniard stretches his unbeaten run to 18 matches

Carlos Alcaraz was not ready for the occasion when he moved within touching distance of another Queen’s Club title. In the final stages of a ­bruising second-set tie-break, the score at 5-5, Alcaraz betrayed his nerves with a double fault under pressure from a soaring Jiri Lehecka. He soon found himself battling in a final set he would have preferred to avoid.

Alcaraz handled this moment of adversity with the self-assurance and courage he has shown so many times before while demonstrating his growing maturity as he refocused to close out the in-form Czech 7-5, 6-7 (5), 6-2 and triumph at Queen’s Club for the second time in his career.

Published: June 22, 2025, 4:08 pm

Club World Cup: Yildiz scores twice against Wydad to put Juventus on verge of last 16

• Juve eliminate Moroccans after 4-1 victory

• Game played in sweltering conditions in Philadelphia

Kenan Yildiz scored two goals to lift Juventus to a 4-1 victory over Wydad on Sunday in their Group G match in Philadelphia.

Juventus started brightly in front of a crowd of 31,975 on a sticky afternoon at Lincoln Financial Field, taking the lead in the sixth minute. Yildiz was instrumental in the opener as his angled shot forced Wydad defender Abdelmounaim Boutouil to turn the ball into his own net. Ten minutes later, Yildiz unleashed a spectacular strike from the edge of the box into the top-right corner to give Juventus a 2-0 lead, but a mistake by the Italian defence gifted Thembinkosi Lorch a goal to reduce the deficit in the 25th minute.

Published: June 22, 2025, 6:27 pm

‘It was unbelievably skilled’: Pope hails Brook after swashbuckling innings

• Yorkshireman hits 99 with first Test on knife edge

• ‘He was pretty gutted to get out,’ says England No 3

Ollie Pope hailed the ability that the “unbelievably skilled” Harry Brook possesses “to flip a game” after the Yorkshireman’s quickfire 99 helped England to sprint to a total only six runs short of India’s first-innings 471 on day three at Headingley. With India reaching stumps on 90 for two the outcome of the first Test remains beautifully uncertain.

“Everyone knows what a fantastic player Harry is, and I think being able to put really skilled bowlers under that much pressure shows exactly the skills he has got,” Pope said. “But it is not just slugging, it is very well thought out. The ability to kind of flip a game – we were saying: ‘Oof, if he bats for another hour here we could be in an amazing position.’ That just shows the kind of skill he’s got, and power. It was unbelievably skilled.”

Published: June 22, 2025, 7:53 pm

Jon Jones, UFC’s greatest ever fighter, announces retirement from MMA

• Jon Jones announces retirement from UFC at age 37

• Aspinall elevated to undisputed heavyweight champ

• Jones retires with 28-1 record, 16-0 in UFC title fights

Jon Jones, a legend in mixed martial arts, has retired and interim heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall has been elevated to the undisputed title holder, UFC president and CEO Dana White said Saturday.

“Jon Jones called us last night and retired,” White said during a press conference in Azerbaijan, where UFC Fight Night was held. “Jon Jones is officially retired. Tom Aspinall is the heavyweight champion of the UFC.”

Published: June 22, 2025, 6:08 am

Marcus Rashford keen on linking up with Lamine Yamal at Barcelona

• Manchester United forward talks up 17-year-old

• Barça also retain interest in Nico Williams

The dream destination for Marcus Rashford after his exit from Manchester United appears to be Barcelona after he declared an interest in playing alongside Lamine Yamal.

An interview with the Spanish YouTuber Javi Ruiz revealed something of the 27-year-old’s thoughts on his future. Asked if he would like to be teammates with Lamine Yamal, Rashford said: “Yes, for sure. Everyone wants to play with the best. Hopefully … we’ll see.” Barcelona’s sporting director, Deco, told the Catalan radio station RAC1 in May that the club like Rashford.

Published: June 22, 2025, 12:37 pm

Islamic State suicide bombing in Damascus church leaves many dead and dozens injured

Evening attack is first major atrocity by Islamist terror group in Syria since President al-Assad was deposed

A suicide bombing by Islamic State (IS) targeting a church in Damascus has killed 20 people and wounded 52, Syrian authorities have said.

The attack on Sunday night was the first major IS operation and the first suicide bombing in Syria since former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was toppled in December and replaced by an Islamist-led government.

Published: June 22, 2025, 7:15 pm

Gaza slides into lethal chaos as desperate Palestinians fight to survive

Witnesses and NGO records reveal the tragic toll of hunt to secure the basics of life

Just after midnight on Thursday morning, Abdullah Ahmed left his sleeping wife and children in their small and crowded home in the battered al-Bureij camp in central Gaza and headed north. The 31-year-old vegetable seller had heard that the nearby aid distribution site recently opened by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a secretive Israeli- and US-backed private organisation that began operations in the territory last month, would be handing out food at 2am.

To get there early and maximise his chance of grabbing a box of flour, oil, beans and other basics, Ahmed and some friends set out across the dangerous rubble-strewn roads.

Published: June 22, 2025, 4:39 pm

Mahmoud Khalil reunites with family after more than 100 days in Ice detention

Columbia graduate and legal US resident was targeted by White House for speaking out against the Israeli war in Gaza

Mahmoud Khalil – the Palestinian rights activist, Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident of the US who had been held by federal immigration authorities for more than three months – has been reunited with his wife and infant son.

Khalil, the most high-profile student to be targeted by the Trump administration for speaking out against Israel’s war on Gaza, arrived in New Jersey on Saturday at about 1pm – two hours later than expected after his flight was first rerouted to Philadelphia.

Published: June 21, 2025, 6:23 pm

‘Wolves in sheep’s clothing’: how a neo-Nazi cell infiltrated a martial arts school in Tennessee

Across the US, the Active Club network uses combat sports to lure boys and young men into white nationalist circles

A neo-Nazi fight club that secretly infiltrated a Tennessee martial arts school where young children train has been banned from the facility, after an inquiry by the Guardian.

Last month, the South Central Tennessee Active Club published video footage on the messaging app Telegram showing its members participating in combat training at Shelbyville BJJ Academy, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu school in Shelbyville, Tennessee, that offers classes to students as young as three years old.

Published: June 21, 2025, 3:00 pm

Three people killed in North Dakota after tornado hits upper midwest

Officials say two men and a woman killed around town of Enderlin as region experiences powerful winds and hail

Powerful winds – including a tornado – that swept across parts of the upper midwest left three people dead and a regional airport heavily damaged, while nearly 150 million Americans were under a heat advisory or warning as the weekend warmed up in much of the US.

A complex storm system wreaked havoc in parts of North Dakota, northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin, with reported tornadic activity, large hail and strong wind gusts, according to Brian Hurley, meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.

Published: June 21, 2025, 10:20 pm

Pakistan to nominate Donald Trump for Nobel peace prize

Islamabad says US president helped resolve India conflict but critic says ‘Israel’s sugar daddy in Gaza’ not candidate for any prize

Pakistan has said it will recommend Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize for his work in helping to resolve the recent conflict between India and Pakistan.

The move, announced on Saturday, came as the US president mulls joining Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Published: June 21, 2025, 10:52 am

Brazil hot-air balloon crash kills at least eight people amid ‘desperate’ scenes

Witnesses say some of those onboard hurled themselves out to escape flames as reports say fire started from torch in balloon’s basket

At least eight people have died after a hot-air balloon carrying more than 20 people caught fire and plunged through the sky in Brazil’s deep south.

Footage posted on social media showed the moment the multi-coloured aircraft fell to earth, engulfed in flames, in the state of Santa Catarina on Saturday morning. At least two of the balloon’s occupants can be seen plummeting to the ground as the fire spreads. “My God!” one witness can be heard gasping as the basket hurtles towards the ground.

Published: June 21, 2025, 3:14 pm

Price of oil could spike after Iran’s parliament votes to close key shipping route

Move could cause a global recession and comes in response to the US strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites

• Middle East crisis – latest updates

Iran’s parliament has voted to shut down the vital Hormuz shipping channel in retaliation against Donald Trump’s attack on the country, prompting fears of a sharp spike in oil prices that could cause a global recession.

A barrel of Brent crude was selling for about $77 on Friday, having risen by more than 10% since mid-June when Israel’s attack on Iranian nuclear sites prompted missile strikes from Tehran against Tel Aviv.

Published: June 22, 2025, 5:49 pm

Court strikes down Louisiana law requiring display of Ten Commandments in schools

A win for civil liberties groups, but state attorney general says she will appeal ruling to supreme court if necessary

A panel of three federal appellate judges has ruled that a Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in each of the state’s public school classrooms is unconstitutional.

The ruling on Friday marked a major win for civil liberties groups who say the mandate violates the separation of church and state – and that the poster-sized displays would isolate students, especially those who are not Christian.

Published: June 21, 2025, 1:14 pm

‘It takes 25 years for a footprint to disappear’ – the secret, beguiling magic of Britain’s bogs

They are the air-conditioning units of the world – filtering water, preventing flooding, preserving history and providing habitat. Our human ancestors knew the extraordinary power of peatlands, so why are they still being destroyed?

I haven’t found an hour when I don’t love a bog. Recently, after a night of counting rare caterpillars in Borth in Mid Wales (they come out only after dark), walking back to the car under the glow of a flower moon, I wondered if 2am was my new favourite. I felt very safe, held by the bog’s softness, and everyone that was out at that hour seemed to have a sense of humour. I met a nightjar hopping around on the ground, pretending, I think, to be a frog.

But there is also something about the humidity of a languid afternoon on a bog, when everything slows and fat bumbles hum, that is surprisingly good. I have done freezing horizontal rain and thick, cold-to-your-bones fog and wind so howling that I couldn’t think. All of those were hard, but I did come away feeling truly alive.

Published: June 22, 2025, 10:00 am

The ‘sacrifice zone’: villagers resist the EU’s green push for lithium mining

Residents of a Portuguese rural idyll where four vast mines are planned are among those who feel they will pay too high a cost for the energy transition

Filipe Gomes had been craving fresh air and quiet routine when he and his partner quit the chaos of London’s catering industry for the fog-misted hills of Covas do Barroso, the sleepy Portuguese farming village in which he was raised.

But his rural idyll has been disturbed by miners drilling boreholes as they push to dig four vast lithium mines right beside the village. The prospecting has sparked resistance from residents who fear the mines will foul the soil, drain the water and fill the air with the rumbling thunder of heavy trucks.

Published: June 21, 2025, 4:00 am

Tesla set to unveil self-driving car service in Austin

Elon Musk’s autonomous robotaxis slated to hit the streets of the Texas capital on Sunday after delayed launch

Austin, Texas, is set to be the first city worldwide to see Tesla’s self-driving robotaxi service on its roads. Elon Musk, CEO of the electric carmaker, has said he is “tentatively” planning to roll out a small number of these autonomous vehicles on the streets of the Texas state capital on Sunday.

Details about the company’s robotaxi service have been scant since its unveiling in October of last year, and its launch has been delayed. Musk has told reporters that there may be fewer than a dozen cars in Austin on Sunday and that the vehicles will stick to specific neighborhoods. Some analysts believe that the robotaxis will only be available to employees and invitees initially.

Published: June 22, 2025, 10:00 am

New Texas law requires Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms

Governor Greg Abott signs bill into law but challenge expected from critics who consider it unconstitutional

Texas will require all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments under a new law that will make the state the nation’s largest to attempt to impose such a mandate.

The bill, which was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott, is expected to draw a legal challenge from critics who consider it an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state.

Published: June 21, 2025, 11:54 pm

Suspect in ‘No Kings’ rally shooting death in Utah released from jail

Police say Arturo Gamboa was carrying a rifle when safety volunteer fired on him and accidentally killed bystander

A man jailed on suspicion of murder for allegedly brandishing a rifle at a “No Kings” rally in Utah before an armed safety volunteer fired and inadvertently killed a protester has been released from custody.

Local district attorney Sim Gill’s office said on Friday that it was unable to make a decision on charges against Arturo Gamboa after the 14 June shooting that killed demonstrator Arthur Folasa Ah Loo – but that the investigation into the slaying continues.

Published: June 21, 2025, 3:35 pm

Suspect in Minnesota killings accused of being ‘prepper’ preparing ‘for war’

Vance Boelter texted family that they needed to flee their house before ‘people with guns’ showed up, filings allege

The man charged in connection with the recent shootings of two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses was a doomsday “prepper” who instructed his family to “prepare for war” as he tried to evade capture, according to new court filings.

Vance Boelter, 57, faces multiple federal and state murder charges after allegedly shooting dead the Democratic Minnesota state house speaker emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in the early hours of 14 June. Boelter is also accused of shooting and seriously wounding the Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, about 90 minutes earlier.

Published: June 21, 2025, 4:16 pm

Disneyland Paris calls in police over alleged fake wedding with child ‘bride’

Police questioning two people as prosecutor says event at theme park was staged with girl aged about nine and actors

French police were questioning two people on Sunday after Disneyland Paris was hired for an alleged fake marriage ceremony involving a girl aged about nine.

The theme park complex outside Paris had been hired for what was presumed to be a genuine private wedding early on Saturday morning before opening hours.

Published: June 22, 2025, 3:35 pm

Pope commits to weeding out church sexual abuse, praises role of press in democracy

In first public comments on topic, Leo XIV has now signaled zero tolerance for sexual abuser priests

The Roman Catholic church must “not tolerate any form of abuse”, sexual or otherwise, Pope Leo XIV has said in his first public remarks about the worldwide clerical molestation scandal that has long roiled the church.

In a statement read on Friday at the performance of a play which dramatizes the work of a journalist who endured harassment while investigating abuse scandals within a powerful Catholic group, Leo maintained that it was necessary to inculcate “throughout the church a culture of prevention that does not tolerate any form of abuse: abuse of power or authority, of conscience or spirituality, of sexual abuse”.

Published: June 21, 2025, 2:47 pm

Who’s the boss? The ousted car sales tycoon versus his private equity investor

Peter Waddell’s rags-to-riches story took a new twist when he was found to have been shockingly abusive at work. He insists he is a victim

In many ways, Peter Waddell is lucky to be alive, let alone a multimillionaire. His backstory involves him wandering the streets of Glasgow after parental abuse left him in a children’s home during the 1970s.

And yet Waddell went on to build a used car empire called Big Motoring World, accumulating an estimated £500m fortune, a historic home on the outskirts of London and a string of performance cars.

Published: June 21, 2025, 2:00 pm

Current heatwave ‘likely to kill almost 600 people in England and Wales’

Surge in deaths would not be occurring without human-caused global heating, scientists say as analysis published

Almost 600 people are expected to die early in the heatwave roasting England and Wales, a rapid analysis has found.

The surge in deaths would not be occurring without human-caused global heating, the scientists said, with temperatures boosted by 2C-4C by the pollution from fossil fuels.

Published: June 21, 2025, 4:00 am

Adeel Akhtar: ‘It seemed late in the day to start noticing Asian actors … we’ve been here a really long time’

He’s had supporting roles in almost every big TV show of the past few years, but now the man nicknamed Ideal Actor is taking the lead on stage, playing a top politician. He talks about challenging perceptions, being detained by the FBI and ‘redefining the idea of the everyman’

A decade ago, it would have been rare to have an Asian actor playing the British prime minister or leader of the opposition. But in the space of a couple of years, Adeel Akhtar has done both. He was the PM in the Netflix drama Black Doves, which took the world by storm last year, and now he’s stepping into the shoes of a man vying to be leader of the opposition at London’s National Theatre.

For Akhtar, who has been working as an actor for more than two decades, there has been an undeniable shift in the kind of roles he’s been offered in recent years. The British Asian experience is no longer a niche subject.

Published: June 22, 2025, 9:00 am

‘It’s hard to find work’: Marlee Matlin on making Hollywood history but waiting for change

The actor became the first and only deaf winner of the best actress Oscar and a new documentary reveals the highs and lows that came after

In 1987, at the age of 21, Marlee Matlin became the youngest person ever to win a best actress Oscar. Footage of her victory appears early in Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, a new documentary on the trailblazing actor’s life and career: Matlin, remarkably fresh-faced even for 21, in her very 80s purple dress, her brunette hair swept up by a floral headpiece, black-rimmed glasses on, appears stunned as William Hurt, her co-star in Children of a Lesser God and her boyfriend at the time, reads her name. Thunderous applause. The camera captures fellow nominee Jane Fonda mouthing “that’s so great” as Matlin, the first and still only deaf actor to win the award, approaches the podium and kisses Hurt. As she delivers her speech in American Sign Language (ASL), she seems almost too shocked to emote, overcome with the gravity of the moment.

Matlin’s win was indeed groundbreaking, a watershed moment for deaf representation. But as Not Alone Anymore explains, it was also much more complicated than a feelgood story of societal triumph, or a turning point for deaf creatives. Nor was it one of personal glory. Halfway through the film, the scene is replayed again, this time with the sound taken away – the thunderous applause muted to just a simulation of Matlin’s own thunderous heartbeat as she walked to the stage. “I was afraid as I walked up the stairs to get the Oscar,” Matlin recalls on screen in ASL. “I was afraid because I knew, in my gut, that he wasn’t that happy.” Hurt, 16 years her senior and an established Hollywood star, was intensely jealous of her success, and had already begun physically abusing her. Without sound and with context, what once read as overwhelming shock on her face instead appears as something darker, shaded with fear.

Published: June 21, 2025, 9:19 am

Squid Game: the show’s worst characters are back … and they’re as unbelievably wooden as ever

The South Korean smash hit drama that gripped global audiences returns for a final instalment. It’s brutal, cruel and, sadly, brings back the animal-mask wearing VIPs whose season one appearance caused global mockery

Look alive – Squid Game returns this week! There’s still no sign of any squid, which is the kind of false advertising that ruined The Pink Panther. But that’s good, because squid are terrifying. Once, showing off on holiday, I offered to cook for a group of friends. I didn’t speak the language where we were, and ended up leaving the fishmonger with a big bag of tentacles. As I attempted to remove the head, guts, beak and skin of the creatures, their internal sacs burst, coating me in viscous black ink. I suffered an allergic reaction, don’t eat squid any more, and don’t see those friends.

Squid Game the TV show (Netflix, Friday 26 June) has proved even more traumatising. Set on a hidden island, the competition pits hundreds of desperate, indebted people against each other in a series of children’s games. The winner gets millions, while the losers are executed by guards, or die via gruesome, in-game accidents. The show’s brilliance is the way it amplifies the emotional stakes of each set-up. Players bond, form alliances, then have to murder each other to survive. The weak are ganged up on, cowards exploit loopholes in the rules to screw over everyone else, while those who make selfless choices are punished. Usually.

Published: June 21, 2025, 6:00 am

Brandi Carlile review – country for the marginalised excels on the big stage

Royal Albert Hall, London
Elton John was a constant silent presence as Carlile veered from crooner ballads to hot-rubber-and-leather vibes

‘I’ve waited to stand on this stage since I was 12 years old,” said Brandi Carlile, and somehow, she made her achievement feel like everyone’s success. Within three songs of appearing at the Royal Albert Hall she had invited her 5,000-strong audience to sing along with her. You and Me on the Rock’s evocation of family life became the best wedding karaoke ever.

Carlile has been a voice for the marginalised in the rural roots scene for two decades. But her largest headline show in the UK – part of a five-date UK and Ireland tour climaxing at Glastonbury – suggests her outlier-country is now legitimately mainstream here. Her No 1 album with Elton John played no small part and this setlist paid gracious tribute to her collaborator. She even serenaded him with a yearningly harmonised version of its title track as he sat in his box like a silent angel.

Published: June 22, 2025, 11:20 am

Charles Dickens’s ‘sliding doors’ moment: how a cold turned an aspiring thespian into a writer

An exhibition explores the authors’ love of theatre, highlighting the dramatic impact of his works

As a sliding doors moment, it leads to arguably one of the greatest “what if?” questions in literary history. Passionate about the theatre, Charles Dickens, then just 20, wrote to the famous Covent Garden theatre actor-manager George Bartley seeking an audition, saying he believed he “had a strong perception of character and oddity, and a natural power of reproducing in my own person what I observed in others”.

Bartley responded saying they were producing “the Hunchback” and arranging an appointment. Dickens planned to take his sister, Fanny, to accompany him singing on the piano.

Published: June 22, 2025, 12:00 pm

Summer reading: the 50 hottest books to read now

From dazzling debuts to unmissable memoirs, prize-winning novels to page-turning histories … Plus our pick of paperbacks and children’s fiction

• Leading authors choose their perfect holiday reading

• The 10 best audiobooks for summer

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A rich exploration of female experience, Adichie’s first novel in 10 years charts the lives and loves of four women in Nigeria and the US, from a “dream count” of ex-boyfriends to a section inspired by Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s alleged rape of a Guinean hotel worker in 2011. Magisterial, wide-ranging and delicately done.

Published: June 21, 2025, 8:01 am

My perfect holiday reading, by Bernardine Evaristo, David Nicholls, Zadie Smith and more

Authors including Anne Enright, Michael Rosen, Samantha Harvey and Rutger Bregman reveal their books of the summer

• Summer reading: the 50 hottest books to read now

• The 10 best audiobooks for summer
  

Zadie Smith
For me summer reading is about immersion. Three novels fully absorbed me recently. Flesh by David Szalay is a very smart and stylish novel about the 1%, filtered through the life of a Hungarian bodyguard/driver in their midst. Cécé by Emmelie Prophète (out 23 September) vividly depicts the slums of contemporary Haiti via a very online young sex worker who lives her best life on Facebook. Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie features a series of unforgettable women trying to work out what love means. The summer read I’m looking forward to myself is Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, a true original.

David Nicholls
I would recommend two books, 800 pages and a shade under 150, depending on what you can carry. Helen Garner’s collected diaries, How to End a Story, are frank, gripping and revealing about family, marriage and the writing life, while Anthony Shapland’s debut, A Room Above a Shop, is a small, tender love story, almost a poem.

Published: June 21, 2025, 8:01 am

Aqua lungs: how Rod Stewart’s underwater swimming may help his singing

Singer trains underwater like Frank Sinatra once did and scientists say it may be useful in maintaining vocal prowess

Frank Sinatra did it his way, taking to the pool to boost his vocal prowess, and it seems Rod Stewart is singing from the same songsheet. Now scientists say the approach might not be somethin’ stupid.

Stewart, 80, is still entertaining fans with his raspy vocals and energetic stage performances and earlier this month he revealed that as well as running and playing some football, swimming also played a key part in his campaign to stay forever young.

Published: June 21, 2025, 6:00 am

Kneecap’s Glastonbury performance not ‘appropriate’, says Keir Starmer

UK prime minister criticises band’s inclusion in festival lineup after Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh allegedly displayed flag supporting Hezbollah

Kneecap’s Glastonbury festival performance next Saturday is not “appropriate”, Keir Starmer has said.

Kneecap member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh appeared in court on Wednesday after allegedly displaying a flag in support of the proscribed terrorist organisation Hezbollah and saying “up Hamas, up Hezbollah” at a gig in November last year.

Published: June 21, 2025, 9:18 pm

Graydon Carter: ‘The closest I’ve come to death? A tense argument with Russell Crowe at an Oscar party’

The former Vanity Fair editor on Hermès hankies, his daily 11am cigarette, and the ‘ugly lunacy’ of the Trump administration

Born in Canada, Graydon Carter, 75, moved to New York in 1978. He became a staff writer on Time magazine, followed by Life in 1983; in 1986, he co-founded the satirical publication Spy. He edited the New York Observer for a year before becoming editor of Vanity Fair in 1992; he retired in 2017. His memoir, When the Going Was Good, is out now. He lives in New York City with his third wife and has five children.

When were you happiest?
My first week in New York in 1978, when I was about to start as a writer at Time. And my first week in the south of France after retiring from my job of 25 years as editor of Vanity Fair.

Published: June 21, 2025, 9:00 am

‘My heart is pounding’: experiencing Rachel Zegler’s Evita balcony scene from the humble pavement

Paying theatregoers have bemoaned watching Don’t Cry For Me Argentina on livestream while passersby experience it live for free. But is it a seven-minute stunt worth waiting for?

Move over Romeo: theatre’s second most famous balcony scene has stolen the show.

Every night this week Rachel Zegler has emerged halfway through Jamie Lloyd’s production of Evita at the London Palladium to sing its biggest number to the Oxford Circus crowds. Last weekend the Hollywood ingenue was serenading surprised shoppers, but since her performance of Don’t Cry For Me Argentina went viral it’s become the hottest (free) ticket in the West End.

Published: June 21, 2025, 10:02 am

Italian late nights, French discipline, German bed-sharing: five UK writers try to parent like the Europeans

How easy is it to adapt to the continental rules of child rearing?

Stuart Heritage embraces Italian family life

Published: June 21, 2025, 5:00 am

‘Never out of fashion’: basket bags are accessory of the summer (again)

Spirit of Jane Birkin and her fisher’s basket is being channelled by luxury brands and high street alike

“When you start recognising that you’re having fun, life can be delightful,” said Jane Birkin. She was talking about champagne – but could equally have been talking about her popular basket, which is now arguably the accessory of the summer.

“It’s such a weird story, because as a useful bag it doesn’t really function,” says fashion historian Tony Glenville. The then CEO of Hermès, Jean-Louis Dumas, apparently watched as the contents of one of Birkin’s baskets spilled out on an Air France flight to London in 1984. The bag’s obvious design flaws – no zips or pockets – inspired Dumas to create the leather Birkin handbag.

Published: June 21, 2025, 7:00 am

The moment I knew: as I signed the waiver for his emergency brain surgery, I felt pure devotion

When his new boyfriend suffered a catastrophic medical episode, Andrew Gordon-Nicholls realised he couldn’t imagine life without him

• Find more stories from The moment I knew series

In 2022, I was going through motions. I was burned out after shepherding two restaurants through Melbourne’s Covid lockdowns and emotionally burned to the ground by a failed marriage. It had been a big few years; I had sworn off love and was taking life slowly.

Despite all this, in late spring I found myself chatting online with a charming gardener-cum-physicist called Scott. A few weeks later, our first phone call lasted until the sun came up. I had been captivated by his boundless capacity for a chat but I didn’t hear from him for a few weeks after that. I wondered if it was because I’d asked him on more than one occasion to pipe down so I could contribute to the conversation, or if my cynical side had made an unflattering appearance in my wine haze.

Published: June 21, 2025, 8:00 pm

How to make perfect cheese arepas – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to make the perfect …

Arepas are Latin American cornbreads of the most delicious kind. But there are so many variations, so let’s start with one that’s soft on the inside, crisp on the outside and oozing melted cheese…

When I first came across arepas, at a food market in Williamsburg, New York, almost a decade ago, I was attracted mainly by the fact that these stuffed South American corn breads were, as the stall proclaimed in big letters: “110% gluten-free!” which meant I could share one with a coeliac friend. One bite later, I regretted my generosity: crunchy, buttery and filled with sweetcorn and salty, stringy cheese, I could easily have polished off the whole thing without any help.

These, I later learned, were Colombian arepas de choclo, but arepas – flat, unleavened maize patties that pre-date European settlement – are found in many forms and flavours in many other countries, too, most notably Venezuela, but also Bolivia, Ecuador and parts of Central America. As J Kenji López-Alt notes on Serious Eats, to think of arepas like thick tortillas “is the equivalent of a Colombian native hearing about bread and saying: ‘Oh, it’s that European wheat cake, right?’” Within the first three days of his first visit to the country, he says he sampled more than a dozen different variations: “Arepas stuffed with cheese and baked on hot stones in coal-fired ovens. Arepas with sour milk cheese worked right into the dough. Arepas de choclo, made like a pancake with sweetcorn on a hot griddle. Arepas de huevo, golden yellow deep-fried puffy arepas split open and stuffed with an egg. Tiny arepitas eaten as a snack. Even packs of arepa-flavoured corn chips.”

Published: June 22, 2025, 12:00 pm

I can’t stand my sister’s husband. What can I do about him?

Does your brother-in-law remind you of someone else in your past? Or is the problem your changed relationship with your sister? Working that out could reduce your annoyance

• Every week Annalisa Barbieri addresses a problem sent in by a reader

I love my sister. But I can’t stand her husband. He is an idiot who thinks he is better than other people and talks down to them. I am a man in my 50s and I used to visit my sister a lot, but now I would rather do something else. I try to hide it, but it must be clear I am not keen on him. They have been married for eight years and things are getting worse; he used to work and contribute, but now he doesn’t even do that. What can I do? I want to support my sister while spending as little time as possible with her husband.

This happens in lots of families, unfortunately. Unless one’s parents split and remarry, it’s usually only when siblings partner up that a new person (a stranger!) is brought into the family and the dynamics change. We all wish these new additions bring joy and harmony, but sadly often they do not. And then we’re not only saddled with a person we don’t like, who is now part of the family, but we’re left looking at the person who brought them in and thinking, “Really?” This can lead to all manner of unravelling of childhood feelings when it’s a sibling.

Published: June 22, 2025, 5:00 am

Meera Sodha’s recipe for spring greens and cheddar picnic focaccia

You may well be knocked sideways by the sheer punch of this apparently simple sandwich – and it’s great for picnics, too

Last month, while on a book tour in New York, I ate a sandwich that moved me to utter profanities. It was unusual behaviour from me, and more so because the sandwich in question was packed with an excessive amount of spring greens, but then, that is the genius of Brooks Headley, chef/owner of Superiority Burger: like Midas, he has an ability to turn the ordinary into gold. Here, I’ve tried to recreate it by cooking down a kilo of spring greens until they are melting, soft, collapsed and buttery, before tossing them with sharp cheddar. It’s pure picnic gold.

Published: June 21, 2025, 5:00 am

My son has taken my boots. Well, at least one of them

We bought our three sons the same boots I’ve always worn. You can guess what happened next …

A few years ago someone asked me to write a quick 300 words on “bin shoes” – dedicated footwear you leave by the door to put out the bins. At the time I was experiencing a degree of sloth I decided to dress up as indignation: I emailed back saying I knew nothing of so-called bin shoes, that I had one pair of stout boots that served me in all circumstances.

This was more or less true – I’m on my sixth pair of identical pull-on ankle boots, which suit both formal and informal occasions, and all seasons. I wear them on long hikes, even though I probably shouldn’t, and I slip them on late at night, without socks, when I have forgotten to put out the bins.

Published: June 21, 2025, 5:00 am

One million and counting: Russian casualties hit milestone in Ukraine war

As grim tally of its invasion is reached, expansive propaganda campaign and state payouts are keeping grieving relatives onside

Over the past few years, Nikolai has seen the ups and downs of the funeral trade in his native Ufa, a Russian city in the plains west of the Ural mountains.

The coronavirus pandemic, which hit Russia with devastating force, brought an unexpected boom to his family-run business, forcing him to hire extra staff almost overnight to cope with the rise in funeral demand.

Published: June 22, 2025, 5:00 am

What a difference a week makes: Trump falls into the Netanyahu trap

People were starting to laud the US president for his resistance to the Israeli PM’s pull, but what now?

• Middle East crisis – live updates

When he was elected, Donald Trump suggested he could hammer out a new relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who was used to getting his way with the White House. But after just over 150 days in office, it appears Trump has fallen into the same trap as his predecessors – and launched the most consequential strike on Iran in generations.

From early suggestions that the Trump administration would rein in Netanyahu’s military ambitions, it now appears that the Israeli PM has manoeuvred the US into striking Iranian uranium enrichment sites directly after a series of military attacks that Washington was unable to deter the Israeli PM from. And the US is now bracing for a retaliation that could easily bring it into a full-scale war.

Published: June 22, 2025, 8:31 am

How does an Obama speechwriter befriend a Joe Rogan fan? Via surfing

David Litt’s new book It’s Only Drowning centres on an improbable friendship and how shared experience provides a neutral ground for connection

What do men want? Democrats need to know after their election drubbing by Donald Trump and the “manosphere” last year. They have responded by commissioning “Speaking with American Men”, a strategic plan that will study “the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality” in online spaces.

News of the two-year $20m project reinforced critics’ view that Democrats have become the party of an aloof, college-educated liberal elite whose pursuit of working-class men resembles a Victorian explorer wielding a butterfly net. Which makes the publication of David Litt’s book, It’s Only Drowning, a timely contribution to Democrats’ ongoing postmortem.

Published: June 21, 2025, 11:00 am

Strikes on Iran and Israel, a hoisted yacht and Jaws rides again - photos of the weekend

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world.
Warning: gallery contains sensitive images

Published: June 22, 2025, 1:55 pm