The three things Democrats must do to regain rural America’s trust | Anthony Flaccavento

After decades of alienating working-class and rural voters from the Democratic party, it’s time the left bridges the divide

It was a warm morning in rural Virginia. I was cutting into a pile of downed logs – wild cherry, oak and black locust – left behind when a piece of land was cleared for a small house.

A young guy pulled up, stepped out of his truck and gave me a nod, the way people do out here. Chainsaws in hand, we quickly figured out we both knew the owner and had her permission to take the wood – me for our home and greenhouse, him for much the same. Then we got to it – work.

Published: June 7, 2026, 6:00 am

Trump’s failure to maintain ceasefires is part of the new world disorder – and ordinary people pay the price | Simon Tisdall

The US president brags about ending wars but look at Ukraine, Gaza, Iran and Lebanon to see what his casual disregard for diplomacy and obsession with instant results have achieved

There are visionary statesmen and high-minded negotiators, pragmatic mediators and professional diplomats – and then there are meddling fools. As ceasefires implode, vast numbers of civilians die or flee, and wars Donald Trump started, fuelled or pledged to resolve rage unchecked, there’s no doubt which category he belongs to. In baseball parlance, in Ukraine, Iran-Lebanon and Israel-Palestine, Trump is “0 for 3”. He boasted he alone could cut deals and bring peace. He’s delivered neither. In striking out, he mostly makes matters worse.

The heroic age of 19th-century diplomacy, typified by Prince Metternich’s great power-balancing “concert of Europe” and Benjamin Disraeli’s Balkan “peace with honour”, is history now. But it’s not that long since Nobel-winning peacemakers such as the UN chief Kofi Annan and the Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari, or the US senator George Mitchell, who brokered Northern Ireland’s Good Friday agreement, were troubleshooting intractable conflicts the world over. Where are the successors to Desmond Tutu, Andrei Sakharov or Yitzhak Rabin when you need them?

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

Published: June 6, 2026, 10:00 pm

Piecework’s jigsaw puzzles are making ‘grandma hobbies’ cool

From maximalist pizzas to retro beaches, Piecework brings canvases with a coffee-table book flair to gen Z’s homes

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Is gen Z boring? We barely leave the house, hardly drink alcohol and rarely go on dates. Instead some of us are emulating the hobbies of our elders – crocheting, starting book clubs and even birdwatching.

Among younger demographics, “grandma hobbies” are cool. Perhaps that’s why I, a member of gen Z, recently felt called to pick up a jigsaw puzzle for the first time in over a decade. It came from Piecework, a puzzle brand that has become a Zoomer favorite.

Published: June 7, 2026, 7:15 am

North America’s wide and wild World Cup will be an experience like no other | Emma Hayes

Teams must be prepared for challenging travel and a cauldron of heat but will also encounter fantastic fans and a beautiful football culture

This World Cup will be incomparable to anything we have seen before. Why? The pure scope of the tournament: 104 matches in three different countries played across 16 venues in three different time zones.

If you have not travelled around the United States, it is hard to imagine just how vast this country is. The land mass of England could fit comfortably into the state of Georgia. Imagine a World Cup being played across Europe. Imagine having to playing a game in Siberia and then your next match in the Algarve. Fifa has done its best to minimise it, but travelling around America, Canada and Mexico will be intense. Fun, for sure, but it will be taxing for fans who are already being squeezed by high ticket prices.

Published: June 7, 2026, 12:00 am

Mildred Howard on her first retrospective in a major museum: ‘My art is part of who I am as a person’

The octogenarian artist has recently seen her star rise within the art world – now the Oakland Museum of California will exhibit works from her 50-year-long career

The artist Mildred Howard keeps Junipero Serra, the Spanish missionary who brutalized Native Americans throughout California, bound and blindfolded in her garage next to her black Mercedes.

The 10ft-tall sculpture is part of her Untold Histories / Hidden Truths series (2025), in which she recreates monuments to slaveholders and colonizers and wraps them in what she refers to as “Make America Great Again red”. Serra, symbolically mummified and holding his signature cross aloft, cuts a haunting figure in the dimly lit garage surrounded by U-Haul storage boxes, cans of paint and abandoned furniture.

Published: June 7, 2026, 5:00 am

The best Steven Spielberg films, chosen by directors, critics and super-fans: ‘pure popcorn perfection’

From franchise hits to historical epics, joyous musicals to autobiographical family sagas: Steven Spielberg has done it all. As his latest sci-fi film Disclosure Day is released, film-makers, authors and Guardian critics reveal which of his movies means the most to them

Steven Spielberg is often described as the inventor of the “event movie” – or as the creator of our new age of IP supremacy, in which the genre property is more important than any above-the-title film star. But that isn’t quite it. He came of age in the American new wave era but in spirit belonged neither to that nor fully to Hollywood’s golden age studio system that preceded it.

In fact, he synthesised both into a directing style that was audacious and fluent. He availed himself of the subversiveness of the new wave, and yet was classically oriented, drawing upon his love of – and alienation from – the all-American suburb, making him the Edward Hopper or the Andrew Wyeth of the movies. Tellingly, it was François Truffaut, the most emollient and Hollywood-friendly of France’s Nouvelle Vague masters, whom Spielberg cast in a cameo in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Published: June 7, 2026, 2:00 am

Pete Hegseth’s D-day speech on immigration condemned as ‘grotesque stupidity’

Historians and campaigners accuse US defence secretary of desecrating memory of soldiers who fell in Normandy

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has been accused by historians and rights campaigners of “grotesque stupidity” and desecrating the memory of the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy after he sought to link immigration to the D-day anniversary, saying Europe was facing a different “invasion” of its shores.

Speaking in north-west France on Saturday to mark the 82nd anniversary of the D-day landings, Hegseth seized on the moment marking the wartime liberation of Europe to reiterate the US administration’s longstanding attack on European immigration policies.

Published: June 7, 2026, 5:22 am

Middle East crisis live: Iran threatens ‘painful’ response to Israeli strikes on southern Beirut

Tehran responds after Israel launches strikes that have killed at least two people and injured 11, reports say

• Israel escalates war against Hezbollah with airstrikes on Beirut suburbs

Donald Trump also aggressively pushed back against claims that he broke a key campaign promise to keep the US out of new foreign conflicts.

“Well, well, first of all, I didn’t guarantee no war,” Trump said during the Meet the Press interview. “Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?”

Published: June 7, 2026, 9:08 am

Scott Pelley says Bari Weiss wanted 60 Minutes to say Renee Good was ‘driving toward officer’

Fired journalist accuses CBS News chief of interfering with report because it echoed what Trump said of the shooting

Fired CBS 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley has accused editorial management at his old network of interfering with a broadcast segment looking at an immigration officer’s killing of Minneapolis protester Renee Good in January.

The veteran broadcaster, who was recently dismissed from the show, said CBS News’s editor-in-chief Bari Weiss had sent an email to his supervisor requesting changes be made soon before the airing of the segment in question.

Published: June 7, 2026, 8:47 am

‘A driver of political violence’: how the breakneck AI boom is fueling anti-tech extremism

Backlash against AI is taking an extremist turn, following in the footsteps of earlier techno-pessimist militants

When a 20-year-old man from Texas was arrested earlier this year for allegedly trying to burn down OpenAI’s headquarters and Sam Altman’s house, authorities found an anti-AI manifesto alongside his lighter and a jug of kerosene. It was one of a spate of attacks that has caused alarm among researchers, the tech industry and law enforcement about the rise of anti-tech extremism.

In April, an Italian “nature pilled” Instagram influencer was arrested in Rome and charged with plotting a series of anti-tech attacks that took inspiration from Ted “The Unabomber” Kaczynski. Two self-described “ecofascists” that carried out a deadly anti-Muslim attack on a mosque in San Diego last month also cited “AI slop” and JD Vance’s ties to Palantir as motivations for their violence in their manifesto. An Indianapolis city councilor woke up earlier this year to gunshots being fired into his home before finding a note that read “NO DATA CENTERS”.

Published: June 7, 2026, 3:00 am

Search for suspects continues after 12 people shot near festival in Toledo, Ohio

Search enters second day after Saturday shooting that wounded 12, two reported in critical condition, police say

Organizers of a festival in the historic center of Toledo, Ohio, have cancelled planned events on Sunday as police continue the search for at least two shooters who wounded 12 people a day earlier.

The Toledo police deputy chief, Joseph Heffernan, said the shooters were “probably shooting at each other” when gunfire erupted just after 5.30pm near the Old West End festival, an annual gathering of live music and architectural home tours.

Published: June 7, 2026, 7:17 am

FBI fires several analysts tied to disputed ‘Catholic ideology’ memo

Firings are part of a broader personnel purge under under the leadership of director Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist

Several FBI analysts tied to the creation of a 2023 memo warning of a potential threat from Catholic “violent extremists” were fired on Friday, according to their lawyer, the latest wave of terminations under the leadership of its director Kash Patel.

The fired employees included four intelligence analysts and a supervisory analyst. The FBI declined to comment.

Published: June 7, 2026, 6:27 am

‘We are upset’: Iran players hit out at US visa delay after World Cup arrival in Mexico

• Team are based in Tijuana with all group games in US

• Iran FA labels visa issues ‘political interference in sport’

Iran’s World Cup 2026 squad landed in Mexico on Sunday amid a bitter diplomatic row, after the United States refused to issue visas for some team support staff.

The Iran coach, Amir Ghalenoei, complained on arrival at Tijuana airport that “we should have been here last week because a 12-hour time difference needs two weeks of adjusting. Usually in these tournaments, before technical matters, ethical and human considerations must be respected – which I think for us it was not the case.”

Published: June 7, 2026, 8:55 am

Simone Biles resting after serious health scare: ‘Almost dying wasn’t on my bingo card’

• Gymnast says experience was one of scariest of her life

• 29-year-old says she will give more details at later date

Simone Biles suggested she came close to death after a medical emergency that left her in hospital.

“I’m not one to normally share things like this because I value privacy in today’s age, but almost dying wasn’t on my bingo card earlier this week,” Biles wrote in an Instagram story on Saturday. The story also showed a photo of her wrist encircled by several hospital bracelets.

Published: June 7, 2026, 6:28 am

French Open 2026: Flavio Cobolli v Alexander Zverev, men’s singles final – live

• Game-by-game tennis updates from 2pm UK time

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Our players, in the locker room together, are ready … and here comes Cobolli. This is the biggest moment of his life: he’ll never have experienced anything like this.

Five weeks ago, Cobolli beat Zverev 3 and 3 in the semis at Munich. It’s true that, subsequently, the outcome was reversed in Madrid, but that was on a much faster court than Chatrier – which is more similar to the one in Germany.

Published: June 7, 2026, 9:22 am

Manhole mystery grips New York – just what are city’s ‘mole people’ up to?

Video of figures clambering in and out of manholes sparks intrigue – and comparisons with crime-fighting turtles

It started in early May. Under cover of darkness, three people pried open a manhole cover in Queens, New York, and clambered down into the sewer.

The incident might have gone unnoticed, but the subterranean quest, which was caught on film, captured New Yorkers’ interest when it happened again, and again, in the same month, with two other groups filmed making their way in and out of the sewer system in Brooklyn. The string of events have seen those involved dubbed “mole people” by the local press.

Published: June 7, 2026, 5:00 am

As US turns 250, Trump adds fuel to battles over monuments and memory

Proposed memorials have become flashpoints in a wider struggle over history and political power

Disputes provoked by public monuments, flags and symbols are intensifying as the US’s 250th birthday approaches next month, and none are so contentious as those proposed by Donald Trump.

Among the recent projects planned by the US president are a Garden of Heroes, a monumental “Freedom” arch, a massive ballroom and turning the reflecting pool at the Washington monument the color of a Bahamian luxury hotel pool.

Published: June 7, 2026, 6:00 am

Case of Texas woman on death row over grisly murder back in spotlight

New film revives story of Taylor Parker, convicted in 2022 of cutting unborn daughter from womb of friend she killed

In an America so often saturated with brutal crime stories, it takes special circumstances to truly register shock.

But the story of Taylor Parker, now sitting on a Texas death row after being convicted of murdering her pregnant friend Reagan Simmons-Hancock in 2020 and cutting her unborn daughter Braxlynn from her womb, is horrific in part because it appears almost against nature itself.

Published: June 7, 2026, 7:00 am

How Xavier Becerra turned around his campaign to be California’s governor

In late March, his polling hovered near 3%, but in a stunning reversal Becerra has advanced to the general election

Xavier Becerra, the former Biden cabinet official whose California gubernatorial campaign survived a deeply underwhelming start, has advanced to the general election, in a stunning reverse of political fortune.

If he prevails in November, Becerra would make history as the state’s first Latino governor since 1875, when California was briefly led by Romualdo Pacheco, who was born in the territory when it was still part of Mexico.

Published: June 6, 2026, 4:07 pm

Stevie Nicks donates $3m to medical school to recognize her voice doctor

Musician donates to USC to help create endowed chair to recognize Dr Joseph Sugerman, who treated her for years

Legendary singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks has given $3m to the University of Southern California’s medical school to recognize the physician who has helped care for her voice throughout much of her career.

The major donation supports the creation of an endowed chair in otolaryngology at USC’s Keck School of Medicine in honor of Dr Joseph Sugerman, an ear, nose and throat specialist from Beverly Hills who has treated the singer – along with other performers and patients – for many years.

Published: June 6, 2026, 9:53 am

Park ranger dies after falling into a crevasse on Alaska's Mount McKinley

Robin Pendery died after she fell while climbing on patrol on the mountain known locally as Denali

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A ranger in Alaska died after falling into a crevasse on North America’s tallest mountain, the US National Park Service said.

Robin Pendery fell on Thursday while on climbing patrol on the mountain whose locally given name is Denali. She died despite immediate rescue efforts, the park service said.

Published: June 6, 2026, 6:31 am

Trump cries ‘steal’ over slow California vote count, but anti-fraud system works, say experts

State’s tortoise-like pace is byproduct of system of verifications and opportunities for voters to fix errors

California’s slow vote counting has frustrated political observers eagerly awaiting results, and handed Donald Trump and others an opportunity to claim “election rigging”. But experts say the system is working as designed: to protect against fraud and assure every vote is counted.

Within a day of the polls closing in California’s primary election this week, Trump started accusing Democrats of “trying to steal” the elections for the state’s governor and the mayor of Los Angeles. The justice department sent a federal prosecutor to observe the ballot-counting process in Los Angeles this week.

Published: June 6, 2026, 7:00 am

Should we ditch the idea of three meals a day?

Our rigid eating habits date to the Industrial Revolution – it’s time to embrace culinary spontaneity

‘One of the stupidest things in an earnest but stupid school of culinary thought is that each of the three daily meals should be ‘balanced’.” So argues American food writer MFK Fisher in her 1942 book How to Cook a Wolf. She goes on: “In the first place not all people need or want three meals each day. Many of them feel better with two or one and one-half, or five.”

Fisher wrote her book ostensibly as a guide on how to feed yourself pleasurably and nourishingly during a period of food shortages caused by war, but there is much in her insightful advice to inspire and provoke us today. More than 80 years later, threats to the sacred breakfast-lunch-dinner mode of eating can still make the news: “A nation of snackers: Britons no longer eat three meals a day”, gasped one recent headline in the Times. Deviations from the “standard” model are the subject of research by academics and health professionals, and food retailers commission studies in an attempt to understand (and shape?) when and how customers consume their food.

Published: June 7, 2026, 4:00 am

How do I know when I’ve hit perimenopause?

Doctors say diagnosis is usually clinical and doesn’t rely on a blood test, with symptoms often starting in the mid-40s

There’s a special frisson to period changes in your mid-forties. Every deviation from your usual pattern can feel like a harbinger of the menopause transition, also known as perimenopause.

One might spend years staring at their underwear, wondering: am I or aren’t I?

Keren Landman MD is an independent health reporter who is also trained as an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist, with experience serving as a disease detective at the CDC and conducting HIV and malaria research in resource-poor countries. Her public health newsletter is called Landmansplained

Published: June 7, 2026, 9:00 am

A priceless book of Yiddish songs from the Holocaust lay in a Sydney cupboard for decades – now it has been rescued

The family of Olga R almost threw out the collection of 20 songs written by concentration camp prisoners after her death, before discovering its incredible history

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Even under conditions of extreme inhumanity, humanity has the capacity to find solace in creative expression.

In the concentration camps and ghettoes of Europe under the Nazi regime, music became a sanctuary, a way to preserve Jewish identity, process trauma and maintain a historical record. A small chapter of this vast record, which resurfaced in Sydney, represents one of the earliest printed collections of Holocaust songs.

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Published: June 7, 2026, 8:00 am

Hello, goodbye: the Beatles’ chaotic, controversial final tour – as never seen before

Tired, emotional and besieged by fans and enemies alike, by 1966 the Fab Four were ready to quit touring for good. A new collection of images by rock photographer Jim Marshall captures their last gigs

The Beatles played their last official concert on 29 August 1966, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Jim Marshall’s pictures capture the group at a pivotal moment, when they are already feeling nostalgia for what they are leaving behind.

Two months earlier, the Beatles had finished precording Revolver, a glittering collection of pop gems. The next day they boarded a plane to begin a global tour during which they would play nothing from it. They were not being perverse; it was simply that none of the songs lent themselves to live performance. On stage, they were a four-piece band. They could hardly play anything as complex as Eleanor Rigby or Tomorrow Never Knows to tens of thousands of fans.

Published: June 6, 2026, 10:00 pm

This is how we do it: ‘I joined a hook-up app for widowed people, and discovered the strongest chemistry I’ve ever felt’

Nicky and Dan share an outlook on life shaped by their experiences of loss – and it has ignited their sex lives
• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

I thought: I’ve found someone else who wants to live every moment like it’s their last – he gets it

Published: June 7, 2026, 3:00 am

Could this one man have been behind terrorist attacks on Jewish communities across Europe?

Legal papers, expert investigations and social media posts tell story of how a 32-year-old Iraqi appeared to run ‘proxy’ campaign

On Monday, a slightly dishevelled Iraqi man, shackled and dressed in beige prison overalls, was ushered into a Manhattan courtroom.

Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, 32, pleaded not guilty to a series of terrorism-related offences, then gestured toward the judge and prosecutors. “I’m a prisoner of war. I’m not a threat,” he told them. “Children and women are being killed by your rockets.”

Published: June 6, 2026, 10:00 pm

Why are so many Black women dying at the hands of their partners?

Black women are two and a half times more likely to be murdered by men than white women are. This is a public health crisis

In April alone, at least half a dozen Black women were allegedly killed by their partners, including the high-profile cases of Cerina Fairfax, estranged wife of the former Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax, and Nancy Metayer Bowen, vice-mayor of Coral Springs, Florida. Shaneiqua Elkins survived a shooting by her husband, Shamar Elkins, that wounded her and killed seven of her children and one of their cousins in Shreveport, Louisiana.

These tragedies are shining a light on the killings of Black women and the systems that allow that violence to continue.

Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist

Published: June 7, 2026, 4:00 am

Nicola Jennings on Donald Trump, JD Vance and civilisational decline – cartoon

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Published: June 7, 2026, 8:55 am

Credit cards aren’t evil – if you know how to use them the right way | Gene Marks

Using a credit card is no different than having a drink or two at dinner or a Big Mac once in a while. It’s fine, just don’t overdo it

The percentage of credit card balances that were at least 90 days delinquent rose to 13.12% in the first quarter of this year, according to data released in May by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As the Wall Street Journal reported: “That’s the highest level in 15 years, and the most since the period following the 2008 financial crisis.” The report went on to highlight cases of individuals drowning in too much credit card debt.

There’s no argument that this is a concern. Delinquent credit card balances are rising. And some people are struggling. But are Visa and Mastercard to blame?

Published: June 7, 2026, 7:00 am

Can trees boost our creativity? My daily forest walks have changed how I write | Ilka Tampke

Ideas come more quickly, my thoughts roam freely, and I’m reminded I am not the main form of life on the planet

I park my car near the trail head and leash up my labrador. Mist coils around the stringy trunks of the manna gums and I breathe in a lungful of cold, peppery air. With notebook in hand, I begin to walk.

I learn a lot by walking in the forest every day. It’s like catching up on the daily news, but with a focus more ecological than political. I see which trees have fallen, what flowers have burst into bloom, which animals have been busy overnight, what weather is coming in. Most of all, surrounded by growing, breathing things that aren’t human, I learn that I am not the main form of life on the planet, but just one note in a vibrant choir of living beings. Importantly, I learn this with my brain, but also my heart, lungs, muscles and skin.

Published: June 7, 2026, 8:00 am

Jill Biden’s book is the last thing we need right now

CNN anchor Jake Tapper joined a chorus of voices accusing the former first lady of rewriting history and dodging accountability for the 2024 loss

Forget the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fight being held on the White House lawn, if you want to tune in to a far more amusing brawl, may I suggest Hunter Biden v Jake Tapper? The CNN anchor is categorically unimpressed with Jill Biden’s new memoir, View from the East Wing, and has joined a chorus of voices accusing the former first lady of rewriting history and dodging accountability for the 2024 loss. In response, Hunter has accused Tapper of having the wrong priorities.

“So let me get this straight,” Hunter wrote on Twitter/X on Wednesday. “Jake Tapper is focused on attacking my Mom. Jared and Ivanka are building a private island paradise on Albanian protected land. Don Jr married the daughter of Epstein’s banker, and a startup his fund backs just got a record $620M Pentagon loan. Eric is taking an Israeli drone company public for $1.5B in the middle of a war with Iran that nobody wanted. And I know: ‘But what about your paintings, Hunter?’ Please.”

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Published: June 6, 2026, 5:00 am

Tom Gauld on book lies – cartoon

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Published: June 7, 2026, 8:00 am

My most capable clients are becoming prisoners of their phones – but there is a way out | Modern Mind

The first step is making scrolling a little harder by creating an obstacle, giving your rational brain time to catch up with your impulsive thumb

• The modern mind is a column where experts discuss mental health issues they are seeing in their work

In my clinic, a woman in her early 40s recently described something she called “brain lapse”. She is an academic and sharp as a blade, a voracious reader and someone who has held many tasks front of mind for many years. She told me that now, however, she finds herself struggling to follow a television drama. She loses the thread of conversations with her partner and states that she picks up her phone to check one thing (a single thing, she swears) and emerges 40 minutes later having watched a stranger assemble a complicated recipe from scratch and cried at a video of a dog reuniting with its family after a weather disaster. “I feel like my brain has been replaced with a knock-off,” she said. “It’s like I’m running on low-power mode all the time.”

She’s not alone. Across my practice, clients of all ages from teenagers to people in their mid- 50s are reporting the same symptoms: reduced memory, shortened attention spans, reduced ability to concentrate. Nearly all of them trace the decline to the same source – the smartphone that lives in their pocket, their palm, their bedside table, their bathroom counter, sometimes even the toilet. The almost permanent fixture in the space between them and every moment of potential boredom.

Published: June 7, 2026, 8:00 am

Kimi Antonelli holds nerve to win chaotic F1 Monaco GP after late red flag

• Italian teenager becomes youngest winner of race

• Lewis Hamilton second but Russell pays penalty

Kimi Antonelli won the Monaco Grand Prix for Mercedes with a dominant drive from pole to flag, becoming at 19 the youngest victor on the streets of Monte Carlo, in only his second F1 race at the circuit. In a dramatic close to the race he held his nerve through two restarts under immense pressure.

The Italian delivered a consummate exhibition to take victory from Lewis Hamilton in second and the Red Bull of Isack Hadjar in third, though neither really challenged the Mercedes. However, Antonelli had to weather nervelessly the tense final moments of a safety-car restart and then a full standing start after a red flag because the track itself was breaking up at the final corner.

Published: June 7, 2026, 9:05 am

Knicks tell fans to arrive at least two hours early for NBA finals Game 3 due to Trump’s attendance

• Enhanced security will be in place for game at MSG

• New York City hosting first finals game since 1999

The New York Knicks are warning fans to bring as little as possible to Monday night’s Game 3 of the NBA finals, which Donald Trump plans to attend.

The Knicks are encouraging fans to arrive at least two hours before tipoff as part of enhanced security measures due to the president’s attendance.

Published: June 7, 2026, 6:05 am

US show the fight Pochettino wanted – just in time for the World Cup

The defeat hurt, but the Americans’ response to an early German goal provided perhaps the clearest evidence yet that their manager’s message is taking root

A sunshower began dousing the fans at Soldier Field as Matt Freese picked the ball out of his net. It was only the second minute of the United States’ final friendly before the World Cup, and mighty Germany had already opened the scoring with plenty of talent to turn the occasion into a rout.

On this occasion, however, “when it rains, it pours” did not befit the US performance. By the time the precipitation subsided after 10 minutes or so, Pochettino’s starters stepped into the sunlight, determined to not be embarrassed by the four-time world champions. The hosts seldom looked over-run despite trailing, setting the stage for Antonee Robinson to volley an emphatic equalizer past Hoffenheim’s Oliver Baumann in the 37th minute.

Published: June 7, 2026, 3:00 am

David Sullivan: how did the pornographer rise so high in modern football?

Sullivan hoped football would legitimise him but claims about historical conduct have led to his resignation from West Ham

• Sullivan steps down at West Ham to fight claims about private life

When David Sullivan was growing up in a council house in Cardiff, he dreamed of becoming a professional footballer. Short and squat, he would never be a player, but later in life the fortune he built through the pornography industry and the property world gave him a route into the sport. The only problem, Sullivan discovered, was finding a club willing to roll out the welcome carpet for him and his business partners, David and Ralph Gold.

They were fans of West Ham United and bought a stake in the east London club in 1991, only to find entry to the boardroom closed. “We had no contact with the board,” the late David Gold wrote in his autobiography. “They simply did not want David Sullivan and the Golds at their football club.”

Published: June 6, 2026, 7:40 am

Ticket pain and Trump anger, but still room for ‘magic’: how readers feel about the World Cup

With this summer’s tournament nearly upon us, Guardian readers share their mixed emotions - unease and apathy, but also excitement and optimism

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The 2026 World Cup is nearly upon us. Across 39 days beginning Thursday, 104 matches will be played throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada until a champion is crowned 19 July in New Jersey.

Amid the quadrennial excitement around the world’s biggest sporting event, there has also been intense controversy and scrutiny. Ticket prices, transport costs, climate threats and security concerns have left fans with mixed emotions.

Published: June 7, 2026, 3:00 am

An Australian in the US: national identity is one thing, but it’s hard to cheer for either World Cup team | Tom Hawking

The Socceroos playing on football’s biggest stage in my adopted country would normally have me racing to book tickets. Not this year

Is “USA! USA! USA!” a more fundamentally obnoxious chant than “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!”? As an Australian who has spent most of the last 15 years living in the United States and is now a permanent resident, the Socceroos’ World Cup group match against the USA raises some questions. Has my adopted nation dethroned my homeland as the world’s foremost exponent of being unconscionably terrible to immigrants? And on a more personal level … who do I support here?

Well, look, OK, there’s really only one answer to that second question. I’m not an especially patriotic type, but if anything does bring out my Australian-ness, it’s the World Cup – perhaps because it’s one of the few events at which we can still claim to be underdogs. And now, two decades after I rose at dawn to watch Australia’s dreams dashed by the intersection of Lucas Neill’s leg and Fabio Grosso’s general vicinity, I find myself living in a country hosting the tournament.

Published: June 7, 2026, 8:00 am

Norway World Cup 2026 team guide

Ståle Solbakken leads country to first major tournament in 26 years knowing that, with Erling Haaland up front, anything can happen

This article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June.

Published: June 7, 2026, 12:00 am

Stanley Cup final: Vegas win Game 3 in double OT as epic Carolina comeback falls short

• Theodore’s 2OT winner gives Vegas 2-1 series lead

• Hurricanes erase four-goal deficit before falling short

• Marner records fastest hat trick in Cup final history

Shea Theodore scored at 5:38 of the second overtime, avoiding what could have been a potentially devastating loss for the Golden Knights after they blew a four-goal lead, and Vegas beat the Carolina Hurricanes 5-4 on Saturday night for a 2-1 series lead.

Theodore’s goal, which went off goalie Brandon Bussi’s skate, came long after teammate Mitch Marner had the fastest hat trick in Stanley Cup Final history.

Published: June 6, 2026, 9:49 pm

‘It leaves a bad taste in my mouth’: Columbus embraces NWSL while questioning the cost

A $205m expansion team is the latest step in the league’s rapid growth, but conflicts over funding and facilities show the tensions of public-private unions in sports

Sports fans’ connection to their team of choice is usually strengthened by high points – wins, championships and the like. For Emily Kegg and thousands of other Columbus Crew fans, their connection was reinforced by a potential loss of their team itself. When the Crew’s then-ownership group and Major League Soccer threatened to relocate the team to Texas in 2017, Kegg and her family were eager to join the grassroots movement to Save the Crew. They made friends through the effort to keep the team in the city, bonding over a shared love of soccer.

In late 2018, when a new ownership group announced it intended to buy the team and keep it in Columbus, Kegg decided to stay involved. Now she’s the community director of the Nordecke, the supporters’ group of just under 600 members that coalesced during Save the Crew.

Published: June 7, 2026, 4:00 am

Sophia Wilson’s return spoiled as USA women beaten by Brazil in friendly

• Wilson scores in first US appearance since 2024

• Brazil answer with two goals in three minutes

• Americans begin World Cup cycle with defeat

The US national team scheduled a pair of matches in Brazil in preparation of a return for the 2027 Women’s World Cup.

After quick start for the Americans, the hosts scored twice in three minutes for a 2-1 win at Sao Paulo on Saturday.

Published: June 6, 2026, 5:29 pm

More than 1 million join Pope Leo for outdoor mass in Madrid

Pontiff urges followers to dedicate themselves ‘to our brothers and sisters, to the poor, to those who suffer’

More than a million people filled the streets of Madrid to join Pope Leo in an open-air mass where the American pontiff appeared to emphasise the disconnect between Christian values and far-right politics, telling worshippers: “No one can kneel before the Lord and despise their brother.”

Queues to access the mass began forming hours before the sun rose on Sunday as people scrambled to secure a spot for what was billed as the biggest gathering of the pope’s week-long visit to Spain.

Published: June 7, 2026, 8:44 am

Peru’s discontented voters face straight left-right choice in election runoff

Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of 1990s leader Alberto, is vying with a congressman to become country’s ninth president in a decade

Peruvians go to the polls on Sunday in an election runoff that pits a perennial rightwing candidate, Keiko Fujimori, against a leftist congressman, Roberto Sánchez. Amid rising crime, chronic political instability, corruption scandals and voter apathy, they are vying to become Peru’s ninth president in a decade.

Fujimori, who is the daughter of the late president Alberto Fujimori, won 17% of the vote in the first round in April. Sánchez, a former trade and tourism minister, took 12 % of the vote, edging out Rafael López Aliaga, an ultra-conservative former Lima mayor. The stage is set for a polarised left-right replay of the country’s last election in 2021.

Published: June 6, 2026, 10:00 pm

Triple-action diabetes jab shown to reduce blood sugar and body weight

Retatrutide is designed to control appetite and blood sugar but also increase body’s energy expenditure, unlike other drugs

A new triple-action weekly jab for type 2 diabetes could significantly reduce blood sugar and body weight, according to phase 3 trial results.

Patients in the trial receiving weekly retatrutide injections for 40 weeks lost more than four times as much weight as those on placebo, while the average drop in long-term blood sugar (HbA1c) was more than twice that of the placebo.

The triple hormone drug mimics three gut hormones that help control your appetite, blood sugar and metabolism: GLP-1, GIP and glucagon. Unlike other diabetes medications such as Ozempic and Wegovy, which primarily target the GLP-1 pathway to suppress appetite, or Mounjaro, which contains GLP-1 plus GIP to control blood-sugar levels, retatrutide also engages the glucagon receptor, which helps increase energy expenditure.

Published: June 7, 2026, 2:16 am

Thousands march for French schoolgirl murdered after police failed to question suspect

Jérôme Barella had been accused of rape in months before murder but series of delays meant police had failed to summon him for questioning

Thousands of mourners have turned out for a silent march for a 11-year-old schoolgirl whose murder prompted widespread outrage when it emerged police had failed to question the suspected killer about previous child sexual abuse allegations.

The parents of the girl, who has been named only as Lyhanna, led the cortege on Sunday in the south-western village of Fleurance behind a banner reading “Never again”. Most of those who marched, including children, wore white shirts or T-shirts, many bearing a smiling portrait of the young victim.

Published: June 7, 2026, 8:48 am

Russian drone hits building storing spent nuclear fuel near Chornobyl

Attack was ‘extremely vile’ and deliberate, says Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy

A Russian Shahed drone has substantially damaged a building used to store spent nuclear fuel close to the disused Chornobyl nuclear power plant, in what Ukraine’s president described as a deliberate and “extremely vile” attack.

While the structure – the reception building of the spent fuel storage facility – was empty of containers at the time, the targeting of the sensitive site appeared to be direct messaging from Moscow amid an intensifying battle of long-range aerial strikes in which high-profile locations on both sides have been hit.

Published: June 7, 2026, 4:39 am

Arkansas sheriff’s candidate focused on ‘family’ after dismissal of murder charge

Aaron Spencer never denied fatally shooting Michael Fosler, 67, the sexual abuser of his daughter, aged 13

An Arkansas sheriff’s candidate who was alleged to have killed his teenaged daughter’s sexual abuser says he is focused on “family and getting back to a normal life” after the dismissal of a murder charge filed against him.

“I’m grateful this chapter is closed,” Aaron Spencer also said in a statement after the dismissal on Thursday.

Published: June 7, 2026, 4:00 am

‘Repression and resistance’: a historian uncovers the history of migrant protests in US detention

As protests flare at New Jersey’s Delaney Hall, Jessica Ordaz examines the US’s complex relationship with migration and detention

For more than two weeks, at least 300 detainees at the Delaney Hall immigration detention center have been on a hunger and labor strike. They describe “horrible” conditions at the Newark, New Jersey, facility: spoiled food, inadequate medical care and poor living conditions. Others have alleged physical abuse by guards, including being beaten and pepper-sprayed by a riot squad, causing some detainees to be rushed to the hospital. They’re calling for a meeting with the New Jersey governor, Mikie Sherrill, to urge the immediate release of all detainees from the privately operated 1,000-bed center. As of now, the Department of Homeland Security has partly restored family visitation at the center and released pregnant detainees.

To raise the alarm, protests have persisted outside Delaney, and violent clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement officials have escalated. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have wielded batons and used pepper spray and stun guns against protesters, journalists and a US senator. Federal authorities arrested demonstrators on allegations of assaulting law enforcement officers, and Sherrill deployed the New Jersey state police to the protests, leading to the arrests of more than 60 people in a single night. Meanwhile, ICE officers abruptly transferred Martin Soto, a detainee held in solitary confinement for being a suspected strike leader.

Soto’s story, and that of the hundreds of detainees on strike, fits into a long history of immigrant incarceration – and how detainees resisted – said Jessica Ordaz, a historian and professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and the author of The Shadow of El Centro: A History of Migrant Incarceration and Solidarity. Strikes have been reported at other facilities across the country, including in New Mexico and California, where detainees are protesting over water quality, mold and a lack of medical care.

Published: June 7, 2026, 6:00 am

How the ‘Picasso of ponds’ went from shaping golf courses to making freshwater homes for wildlife

Shaun Hancox has created scores of ponds for rewilding projects across Britain – and he says there’s a lot more to it than digging a hole

He is known as “the Picasso of ponds” but the tableaux being created by Shaun Hancox in a boggy field in Somerset currently looks more like a building site. An orange and black excavator is rhythmically removing lumpy clay soil and sculpting it into brown banks.

The result looks like a scar of bare earth on what was once green pasture – but the magic happens as soon as rain fills the newly created depressions. Plants seed swiftly, invertebrates and amphibians rapidly find the water, and life explodes.

Published: June 6, 2026, 12:00 am

‘It’s like they’re kidnapped there’: families tell of distress over ‘inhumane’ ICE jail

As detainees go on hunger strike over conditions at Delaney Hall, relatives describe concern for loved ones’ wellbeing

In mid-May, Elder Guerra was showering inside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility when he slipped and fell.

Guerra, a Guatemalan immigrant, has been locked up in the New Jersey jail for nearly five months. He was arrested by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in Newark in January while helping a friend move his snowed-in car. Officers had approached and asked a few questions, according to a relative who spoke with the Guardian.

Published: June 6, 2026, 9:00 am

Second flesh-eating screwworm infection reported in cattle in Texas

Governor issues disaster declaration as agencies move to stop spread of parasite, including release of sterile flies

A second case of the flesh-eating screwworm fly has been confirmed in Texas by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), days after an initial case in a one-year-old calf set off an aggressive response to stop the spread of the parasite in the dominant cattle-producing state.

Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, said on Friday that state officials were working with the federal government to slow the spread of the fly and the infestations caused by larvae that feed on the living flesh of warm-blooded animals and humans.

Published: June 6, 2026, 7:00 am

‘We should not have to sacrifice’: New York could become first state to temporarily ban large datacenters

Kristen Gonzalez, a state senator who authored the bill, said moratorium would target ‘hyperscale’ datacenters over 20MW

New York moved closer toward becoming the first US state to enact a moratorium on large datacenters this week. On Thursday, the state legislature approved a one-year ban on the facilities powering the AI boom.

The measure now heads to Kathy Hochul, the governor, who will decide whether to sign it into law. The Guardian spoke to a state senator in the wake of the historic vote about authoring the bill and the wider US backlash against datacenters.

Published: June 6, 2026, 5:00 am

‘It’s time to move forward’: Armenians vote in election closely watched by Russia and EU

Voters to choose between pro-Russian opposition and incumbent Nikol Pashinyan, who is more closely aligned with the west

Armenians are going to the polls in an election that could cement the country’s shift towards Europe and away from its traditional alliance with Russia.

Prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party enters the vote as the favourite, ahead of three opposition candidates who advocate for closer ties with Moscow. Pashinyan’s main challenger, Samvel Karapetyan, a Russian-Armenian billionaire who built much of his fortune in Russia, has been forced to campaign from house arrest at his mansion outside Yerevan.

Published: June 7, 2026, 2:56 am

‘Görli is our garden’: Berliners fight to stop mayor locking their park at night

Kreuzberg campaigners win court ruling against €2m fence aimed at shutting out drug dealers

The “hollow” in Görlitzer Park was heaving with revellers who had gathered in reaction to a court ruling against Berlin’s mayor who wanted to lock it up at night. “Görli is our garden,” said Monika, a retired psychiatric nurse who lives nearby and had joined the crowds on Monday night for a beer and a bop on the popular deep bowl-shaped meadow in the Kreuzberg district.

“Görli is where we socialise and where my daughter grew up,” she said, using the affectionate nickname for the centrally located green space covering 14 hectares (35 acres).

Published: June 7, 2026, 4:00 am

‘Racist mindsets’: Congolese in Ireland feel fear in wake of Yves Sakila’s death

After a death in Dublin with echoes of George Floyd, people of colour sense rising hostility

When Kembetia Bissa fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo and moved to Ireland in 2003 he found not only sanctuary but beauty, friendship and a home.

The asylum seeker settled in Bandon, west Cork, and found work as a landscaper. He opened an African dance school with Congolese drumming and taught local people the rhythms of his homeland. “It was very positive, very welcoming. I felt like I was in my own country,” Bissa, 55, said this week in Dublin.

Published: June 7, 2026, 1:00 am

‘So rogue’: country superstar Shania Twain turns London pub into saloon

Fans from across UK descend on Shacklewell Arms for intimate gig that leaves them wanting one more song

In the Shacklewell Arms in east London, the usual crowd of hipsters and indie music fans had been replaced by a throng dressed in leopard print, double denim and cowboy hats to pay tribute to the night’s headliner: Shania Twain.

“We thought we might have been scammed when we saw the ticket announcement,” said Jack, 28, who came with his sister Amy. “Why would she do a pub this small?”

Published: June 7, 2026, 1:43 am

‘Far right groups prey on it’: Olivia Laing on the weaponisation of loneliness

A decade after The Lonely City was first published, the writer reflects on what’s changed – and how the feelings that drove them to write their bestseller are key to understanding our turbulent politics

I first had the idea of writing a book about loneliness in 2012. I was 35 and had just moved to New York City when I became lost in a labyrinth of isolation and misery. A love affair had ended abruptly while I was still sky-high with expectation, buoyant with relief that I was finally entering settled coupledom. To have failed in this transition, to have been rejected and left alone, filled me with a shame that felt literally unspeakable.

So there I was: alone in the city, an exile condemned to watch the world go by. It was a humiliating and very frightening feeling. The pain was intensified, as a broken leg or even a broken heart would not have been, by the fact that my loneliness felt inadmissible, a thing that could not be said for fear of repelling other people. This was the most alarming aspect of the experience, in that the need for concealment further entrenched the isolation, so that loneliness grew ever more inescapable, a fortress of solitude whose bulwarks and ramparts would not stop growing.

Published: June 7, 2026, 4:00 am

Anthony Head obituary

Stage and screen actor best known for playing Rupert Giles in the US television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Anthony Head found fame as half of the Gold Blend couple in commercials that captured the imagination of the British public in the late 1980s and 90s. They paved the way to success for him on US television in the supernatural horror series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), playing the “watcher” and mentor of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s title character.

As the prim English librarian Rupert Giles at Sunnydale high school, he is assigned to Buffy Summers, a cheerleader there, by the secret Watchers’ Council of Britain, which oversees slayers who use their superhuman skills to fight evil forces. Increasingly, he becomes a father figure to Buffy and her friends Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Xander (Nicholas Brendon). Together, he and those students form the core of a group known as the Scooby Gang (or Scoobies).

Published: June 7, 2026, 5:30 am

‘At my funeral I want people dancing in the aisles to Madness’: David Gray’s honest playlist

The singer knows all the words to Grease and channels Kenny Rogers at karaoke. But which classic musician does he liken to Picasso?

The first song I fell in love with
When I saw Night Boat to Cairo by Madness on Top of the Pops as an 11-year-old, something happened to me on a molecular level. There was something about the way they moved.

The first single I bought
I Don’t Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats, from Swales Music in Haverfordwest, a 15-mile bus trip from the little fishing village in west Wales I lived in when I was eight.

Published: June 7, 2026, 1:00 am

Top 100 reader novels

After critics and authors picked their top 100 novels we asked for your favourites. From Uruguay to the Isle of Skye, more than 3,000 readers cast their votes. Here’s your list – topped by a new number 1

• Read about your choices here

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100

Published: June 6, 2026, 1:00 am

‘People are still isolated and obsessive’: De Niro, Scorsese, Foster and Schrader reunite for Taxi Driver at 50

The director, screenwriter and stars of the 1976 classic film spoke about its making and parallels to the internet age at New York’s Tribeca film festival

It’s a half-century-old film so darkly prophetic and viscerally relevant that even its makers are still unpacking it.

“It’s a sense of being isolated, it’s about being lonely and not being able to communicate or connect,” said Taxi Driver’s director, Martin Scorsese, last night. “For me, that’s universal. It’s always going to speak to young people.”

Published: June 6, 2026, 9:19 am

Milo Rau turned tribunals into theatre. Now his own moral judgement is on trial

The Swiss director has staged court cases against Pussy Riot, mining companies in Congo and Gisèle Pelicot’s abusers. But after his invitation to Palantir founder Peter Thiel caused a row in Vienna, is Rau’s method eating itself?

Milo Rau, once the enfant terrible of continental European theatre, is a little less buoyant these days. The Swiss theatre-maker has done something he says he explicitly hates: he has cancelled a guest. “Yes, we hit a wall,” he says. “But at least it made the wall visible.”

In his capacity as the artistic director of the Wiener Festwochen theatre festival, Rau, at the end of last month, first invited, then disinvited, the American tech billionaire Peter Thiel. The Austrian weekly Falter called it a fiasco.

Published: June 6, 2026, 9:00 pm

The kindness of strangers: I was lost in the pouring rain – then a man came along with a big rainbow umbrella

He walked out of his way to get me on to the right street, then handed me the brolly saying, ‘Here, you take this’

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

It was bucketing down, absolutely pouring. I was on my way to a birthday dinner but got lost in central Sydney’s labyrinth of streets, so I ducked into an internet cafe to look up directions to the restaurant. I then wrote those directions down by hand – such were the times!

As I stepped out of the cafe, I realised just how bad the weather had become, and how ill-prepared I was for the rain. As I stood waiting to cross the road, swiftly getting wet, a man waiting for the lights in the opposite direction offered up his big rainbow umbrella to share. I gratefully accepted and, still a little unsure of where I was going, asked if he knew the way to the restaurant.

Published: June 7, 2026, 8:00 am

‘I don’t think we’ve ever felt closer’: five writers on their most memorable family holidays

Rallying the kids can be chaotic and frustrating, but from Interrailing all the way to Turkey to Vespa rides in Naples, these trips brought families together

Finland has been named the world’s happiest country for nine years running, but arriving in Helsinki, dishevelled from one of my first flights with my nine-month-old baby, I was less interested in national rankings and more in having a nice nap. My husband, Jake, and I had emerged from the fog of newborn life and the idea of a holiday felt possible again. My ambitions were small: a sunset beer, a walk in the woods, reading a few pages of my book uninterrupted.

Published: June 6, 2026, 11:00 pm

‘My partner's mum is cruel towards him and I worry how she’ll be with our future kids' | Annalisa Barbieri

She sounds awful and I would absolutely minimise her contact with any children you do have unless she radically changes

I’m a 30-year-old woman who has been with my partner for almost four years. We’re very happy and we want to spend the future together.

The most significant problem in our relationship is his mother’s treatment of him and her behaviour affects both of us. She is cruel towards him.

Published: June 6, 2026, 10:00 pm

The moment I knew: He was five hours late to Christmas lunch – then I realised why

Samantha Ross was suspicious about Adam’s sweet disposition. Then a surprising act of kindness brought her guard down

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

It was the year 2000 and my belief in love was crushed. I’d been in a five-year relationship, only to find out my ex had cheated the entire time. In some small part, I saw it as my own fault – I’d always been attracted to proverbial bad boys. Adding to the angst of being betrayed, I’d been writing novels – mysteries set in the Australian wilderness – that kept being rejected.

I was not in a sunny place. And then I met Adam.

Published: June 6, 2026, 1:00 pm

Should your dog have its own bedroom? Does your cat need a bathroom? The rise and rise of the pet nook

More and more of our furry friends are getting their own living spaces, complete with soft furnishings and decorations. We asked some of the owners why

Lox is sprawled out on a green sofa, bathed in warm light from a standing lamp, framed art on the wall behind him.

This may sound like a relatively ordinary description of someone in their living room – except that Lox is a cat, not a human, and the “living room” he shares with another cat, Lottie, is a converted cupboard in a New York apartment.

Published: June 6, 2026, 9:00 pm

Readers reply: If an alien asked you: ‘What is music?’ what would you play for them?

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions comes up with an epic extraterrestrial playlist for Earth’s first contact from beyond the stars

• This week’s new question: Experts say we should use passkeys, but can a smartphone PIN really be safer than a password?

If an alien landed and asked you: “What is this thing you call music?” what would you play for them? And why? Heather, Kent

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Published: June 7, 2026, 6:00 am

From Korean chicken to Egyptian street food: international recipes inspired by the World Cup

No need to make do with oranges at half-time. Here are seven mouth-watering mains and snacks to spice up the tournament

• Drinks and snacks to match all 48 teams

Double-frying gives this spicy chicken its famous crunch.

Published: June 6, 2026, 7:00 am

Zohran Mamdani plays the Guardian's Bracketology to predict World Cup winner – video

The New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, briefly stepped away from City Hall to tackle the ultimate soccer challenge: predicting the entire World Cup bracket In the Guardian's exclusive interactive game. From shocking early exits to his definitive pick for the final, see how Mamdani maps out the world’s biggest tournament

• Bracketology: predict a path to World Cup victory

Published: June 6, 2026, 4:03 am

On China, Trump picked the right battle but the wrong strategy

A long trade war looms. Trump’s scattershot protectionism, chaotic tariffs and belligerence against our natural allies guarantees that US trade policy will remain a hot mess

We are in for a long trade war.

In the months since “Liberation Day” last year, when Donald Trump let loose a volley of tariffs against imports from everywhere, countries have rushed to build new relationships in the hope of maybe circumventing the US to protect the global trading system.

Published: June 6, 2026, 4:00 am

A Mexican waver and a giant pencil sharpener – the weekend in pictures

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

Published: June 7, 2026, 6:30 am