Feel free to email me or matchday.live@theguardian.com with any thoughts or feelings today. Score predictions are welcome too. It would also be good to know who you think deserves to start for England when the Lionesses take on France tomorrow.
You can keep up to date with the race for the Euro 2025 Golden Boot here:
(Relentless Records) The UK collective have been reimagining south Asian music since 2020, and their new compilation splices junglism and Afro-house onto gems in Sony India’s catalogue
Since their formation in 2020, the Daytimers collective have been trying to establish a new imagining of British south-Asian music. Taking their name from the daytime parties held by second-generation immigrants in the late 80s and 90s, Daytimers have spent the past five years throwing raucous parties of their own, with residents such as Yung Singh, Rohan Rakhit and Mahnoor mixing everything from jungle and Bollywood vocals with dubstep, grime instrumentals and Punjabi folk for a new generation born and raised in the UK.
Following in the footsteps of their Asian underground forebears such as Nitin Sawhney and Talvin Singh, who mixed the sounds of 90s Britain with the south-Asian music they grew up listening to, Daytimers’ latest compilation has 13 south-Asian producers remixing Bollywood hits from the Sony India catalogue with an eye on today’s dancefloor culture.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib condemns major policy bill as ‘disgusting’ as party vows to ‘mobilize and fight back’
Democrats have erupted in a storm of outrage over the passage of the Donald Trump’s budget bill, delivering scathing critiques that offered signs of the attack lines the party could wield against Republicans in next year’s midterm elections.
Party leaders released a wave of statements after the sweeping tax and spending bill’s passage on Thursday, revealing a fury that could peel paint off a brick outhouse.
Eni has filed at least six defamation suits against journalists and NGOs since 2019 in what critics say is intimidation campaign
When Antonio Tricarico was summoned to his local police station in October and told he was being investigated for defamation, he was stressed but not shocked. Months earlier, Tricarico, the director of the Italian environment NGO ReCommon, had filed a joint legal challenge against the country’s biggest oil company, Eni, which he knew had a history of using lawyers to clamp down on critics.
The company had previously limited itself to civil defamation lawsuits, including against ReCommon, but in Tricarico’s case it initiated criminal proceedings over statements he had made in a television interview.
The bill steals from the sick, elderly and hungry, and gives to billionaires and jackboots. But Republicans will follow their leader anywhere
The budget reconciliation bill that passed the US House of Representatives on Thursday and was promptly to be signed into law by Donald Trump represents the particular perversity of national politics in America: seemingly no one wants it, everyone hates it, and it is widely agreed to be devastating for staggering numbers of Americans. And yet, the bill felt inevitable: it was a foregone conclusion that this massive, malignant measure was something that everyone dreaded and no one had the capacity to stop.
They didn’t really even try. In the Senate, a few conservative Republicans made noise about the bill’s dramatic costs: the congressional budget office estimates that the bill will add $3.3 tn to the deficit over the coming decade, and the senator Rand Paul, a budget hawk from Kentucky, declined to vote for it for this reason. But other Republicans, who used to style themselves as fiscally responsible guardians against excessive government spending, engaged in a bit of freelance creative accounting in order to produce an estimate that falsely claimed the cost of the bill would be lower. Most of them quickly found themselves on board.
Donald Trump has said that the US will start sending out letters to trading partners on Friday setting tariff rates that countries will have to pay from the beginning of next month.
The US president told the media that about “10 or 12” letters would be sent out initially, with further letters sent out over the “next few days”.
Hamas leaders are close to accepting a proposed deal for a ceasefire in Gaza but want stronger guarantees that any pause in hostilities would lead to a permanent end to the 20-month war, sources close to the group have said.
Hamas officials met on Thursday in Istanbul to discuss the ceasefire proposals and later issued a statement confirming they were talking to other “Palestinian factions” before formally announcing a response.
A poor outing from Ian Nepomniachtchi brought up an unlikely first but Serjey Karjakin made a strong comeback at Blitz last week
It would have been inconceivable in the glory days of the Soviet chess empire. For the first time since 1971 when Fide, the world chess body, began publishing its rating lists – then annually and now monthly – there are no Russians ranked in the classical world top 10. Bobby Fischer was No 1 in the first Fide list, published on the eve of his Reykjavik match with Boris Spassky, but after Fischer gave up active play Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov took over.
In 1970, when the USSR team defeated the Rest of the World, or in the decades when Mikhail Botvinnik, Karpov, and Kasparov were the game’s supreme masters, it would have been a joke to suggest that Russian supremacy would disappear within half a century and be replaced by a rivalry between India and the United States.
It’s the time of year when out-of-contract players go from club to club to prove themselves worthy of a new deal
Players are returning for pre-season up and down England and Wales. There will be little time for catching up about holidays and families before each has their fitness tested and boots are laced to see whether they remember how to kick a ball. Among the regular faces and new signings, there will be some interlopers in the form of the mystical trialist.
“It is life or death,” says Gboly Ariyibi, who has had trials at six clubs. Football League and National League teams are offered out-of-contract players from all angles, regularly needing to pick through up to 20 to decide whether any deserve the chance to prove themselves for what remains of the budget. From agents suggesting clients to players putting forward a friend in need of work, managers and heads of recruitment are inundated with names and clips sent on WhatsApp by those hoping for a golden ticket.
The ‘lad from Portugal’ was celebrated by those who watched him at Anfield for his brilliance and commitment to the cause
Initially it was hard to make out the words. Then when I knew the words I found it hard to sing them. Mainly because there seemed to be too many, leading to lines being tripped over and bafflement with the sound of everyone around me sticking with it. But they were, so I did too, and eventually I got it, and loved it, and, as such, I sang it, over and over again.
“Oh, he wears the No 20 / He will take us to victory / And when he’s running down the left wing / He’ll cut inside and score for LFC / He’s a lad from Portugal / Better than Figo don’t you know / Oh, his name is Diogo!”
Originally scheduled for the 1960-61 European Cup, political tension meant Northern Irish side Glenavon FC could not host German outfit Erzgebirge Aue – until now
It has taken 65 years, the end of the cold war and some deft social media networking for Glenavon Football Club to finally complete their tie against the former wunderkinds of East Germany, Erzgebirge Aue.
The two teams will meet at the Northern Ireland club’s Mourneview Park stadium in Lurgan, County Armagh, on Saturday to play the second leg of a tie originally scheduled for 1960 and 1961.
Proposal is latest in a series of rules and legislation that have cracked down on the city’s pro-democracy movement
A new code of conduct in Hong Kong will require legislators to “sincerely support” Beijing’s jurisdiction on the city and the chief executive, and prohibits anything that might “vilify” the government.
The proposal for the new code, introduced on Wednesday, included tiered penalties for legislators who breach the code, including suspension without payment for the most serious offences.
England trail India by 510 runs after second day of Test
Assistant coach Patel: ‘There’s a lot of cricket to go’
England may have dragged themselves from the field at the end of day two 510 runs behind, but they also ended it declaring their absolute belief that this is still a game they can win.
Under Ben Stokes’s captaincy England have won all three matches when their opposition has scored 500 or more runs in an innings – something that had happened only six times in the previous 145 years – and Jeetan Patel, the team’s assistant coach, insisted the feeling in the dressing room is “100%” that this is a daunting but potentially also a winning position – and that nobody was so much as contemplating a draw.
British No 1 has poor record against top-seeded players
‘Playing slam champions … it’s a different ball game’
Hours after Emma Raducanu’s latest convincing defeat by Iga Swiatek just a few weeks ago at the French Open, the 22-year-old was understandably still seething. Once again, she had given herself an opportunity to face one of the best players in the world, and once again she simply could not keep up, losing 6-1, 6-2.
Her uncomfortable afternoon on Court Philippe-Chatrier at the end of May was reflective of a pattern that has defined her recent months. Raducanu has performed admirably when facing the players she should defeat, compiling a 14-3 record against lower-ranked players over the past year. Against the elite players, however, she has consistently been flattened.
A subtle, intriguing sequel revisits two girls as they grow into adults and question the impact of their unconventional upbringing
Esther Freud’s childhood on the Moroccan hippy trail inspired her 1992 debut Hideous Kinky. That novel was told through a young child’s limited perspective, so daily life was described vividly – almond trees and coloured kaftans – while bigger issues, such as why she didn’t see her father, remained vague and mysterious.
Some 30 years later, Freud has returned to the same narrator, Lucy. But in this accomplished new novel, she explores how Lucy grows up and starts to question the impact of her unconventional upbringing. My Sister and Other Lovers opens with teenage Lucy, her mother and sister once again on the move. It’s the 1970s, her mother has a new son from another failed relationship, and they are on a ferry to Ireland, as they have no money and nowhere else to go.
The brusque, unsmiling American rocket scientist returns with a bigger budget and more action alongside an entertaining turn from Sid James as an inebriated journalist
Here is the 1957 sequel to Hammer’s box office smash The Quatermass Xperiment from 1955; it is enjoyable, though the law of diminishing returns is coming into play. Like the first film, it is based on the original BBC drama (the second series, in fact) and Brian Donleavy is back as Quatermass himself: the brusque, unsmiling American rocket scientist working closely with the British government and permanently exasperated with them.
Once again, Quatermass finds himself at the centre of a deadly alien attempt to take over Planet Earth. While debating whether or not to fire a nuclear powered rocket up into space, Quatermass comes into contact with a woman whose boyfriend has been injured by what appear to be football-sized meteorites, which his white-coated assistants have been already tracking on their radar scopes. It appears that these sinister rocks are marking the skin of those humans unlucky enough to come into contact with them, the victims becoming brainwashed by the aliens.
Between Aberystwyth and Cardigan the quiet coastline is sublime, with incredible sunsets, dizzying and spectacular coastal paths, gorgeous quiet beaches and dolphins. Start in Dylan Thomas’s old stomping ground, New Quay, and follow the coastal path south along cliffs and past Cwmtydu beach before finishing at gorgeous Llangrannog, where you get two beaches for one (perfect Cliborth beach requires a lower tide to access). Kayaking and surfing are great, and the Pentre Arms provides refreshments with a view. Matt Lunt
At a rally in Iowa, the president said he ‘hates’ lawmakers who opposed his signature bill, and looked ahead to plans to mark the 250th anniversary of America
Donald Trump has celebrated the passage of his signature tax and spend legislation by declaring “there could be no better birthday present for America” on the eve of the 4 July holiday.
The US president took a victory lap during an event in Des Moines, Iowa, that was officially billed as the start of a year-long celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, in 2026.
Japanese negotiators have just days before the end of Trump’s 90-day pause on punishing tariffs to pull off a breakthrough
It all seemed to be going so well. In April, Japan’s chief trade negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, sat opposite Donald Trump in the Oval Office after “positive and constructive” talks, sporting a Maga baseball cap and giving a thumbs up for the cameras.
Japan’s economic revitalisation minister drew criticism back home for the gesture, forcing him to insist there was “no political significance” behind it. But the backdrop to the offending photo was far more significant than the uncomfortable optics.
The Treasury focuses on numbers when what’s needed is vision. The party and the country are crying out for leadership, but it’s nowhere to be seen
She is not the first chancellor to cry in public, and may not be the last. But Rachel Reeves is the first whose tears have moved markets. No sooner had the realisation dawned that she was silently weeping – over a personal sorrow she won’t be pushed into revealing, she insisted later, not a political one – as she sat beside Keir Starmer at Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions, than the pound was dropping and the cost of borrowing rising. The bond traders who forced out Liz Truss’s hapless chancellor still clearly rate her judgment and want her to stay, even if (perhaps especially if) some Labour MPs don’t. Yet it is an extraordinary thing to live with the knowledge that a moment’s uncontrolled emotion can drive up the cost of a nation’s mortgages, just as a misjudged stroke of the budget pen can destroy lives.
The most striking thing about her tears, however, was Starmer’s failure to notice. Intent on the Tory benches opposite, the prime minister simply ploughed on, not realising that his closest political ally was dissolving beside him. Though within hours, a clearly mortified Starmer had thrown a metaphorical arm around her, and Reeves herself was back out talking up her beloved fiscal rules as if nothing had happened. But it’s the kind of image that sticks: her distress and his oblivion, an unfortunately convenient metaphor for all the times he has seemed oddly detached from his own government.
A make-ahead summertime dessert featuring silky panna cotta topped with strawberry jelly. Serve with a ta-daaa!
There’s a certain charm to jelly in summer: its playful wobble, its glassy sheen, its ability to delight adults and children alike. This dessert leans into that charm and the unbeatable pairing of a softly set strawberry jelly with a silky vanilla panna cotta. It’s light and cool, and ideal for long, warm evenings when no one wants anything too heavy: simple but balanced, the berries bright and tangy, the cream smooth and gently sweet. Best of all, everything can be made ahead, so all that’s left to do is unmould and enjoy the wobble.
Winnie Byanyima tells the Guardian she considered resigning when Donald Trump cancelled Pepfar funding
The head of the global agency tackling Aids says she expects HIV rates to soar and deaths to multiply in the next four years as a direct impact of the “seismic” US cuts to aid spending.
Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAids, said that if the funding permanently disappeared, the world faced an additional 6 million HIV infections and 4 million Aids-related deaths by 2029.
Railway infrastructure was also damaged in the attack, the latest in a series of intensifying Russian assaults on the Ukrainian capital
At least 14 people have been injured in an overnight drone attack on Kyiv that also damaged railway infrastructure, and set buildings and cars on fire throughout the city, the mayor has said, while separate explosions were reported in a city near Moscow.
The attack was the latest in a series of Russian airstrikes on Kyiv that have intensified in recent weeks and included some of the deadliest assaults of the war on the city of three million people.
Ahead of the first tour date tonight, the poet laureate explores the ‘brotherhood and chemistry’ that forged the band, repelled the Gallaghers and brought them together again
In retrospect it all seems so obvious. Form a band, plunder the Beatles’ back catalogue for riffs, guitar tabs, chord changes and song structures, then bang it out in a key that a stadium crowd could put their lungs into but which suited the subway busker, too.
The resulting success now looks so inevitable. In 1994, dance music flooded the UK charts but not everyone thought a rave DJ wearing oversized headphones and playing records counted as a gig. Some people – a vast number, it turned out – still yearned for meat-and-two-veg pop-rock with guitars and drums, and for songs played by groups. Throw in some Manc bluster, the death throes of a Tory government that had occupied Downing Street since for ever, and the first glimmers of a cooler Britannia, and hey presto: Oasis.
He bit through my left arm. Bones crunched. I could hear them, feel them
It was a chilly autumnal morning in October 2009 when I woke in my tent in Primorsky Krai, Russia, near the border with North Korea and China. My team of six had been catching wild Siberian tigers with snares and putting radio collars on thembefore releasing them, so we could better understand their behaviour and protect the endangered species.
I’d been working as a tiger biologist for 14 years, and had tagged about 70 tigers with my team. Each morning, we’d travel in pairs to check the snares – they consisted of heavy-duty cables attached to a tree. Each was equipped with a radio transmitter that would alert us to a capture so we could anaesthetise the animal as quickly as possible to minimise their stress, before fitting a collar and releasing it back into the wild.
Chic’s bandleader and the Last Dinner Party are among the curators selecting from the 90,000+ items in the late star’s archive to go on display when the new London venue opens in September
From the Thierry Mugler suit he got married in to his costumes from the Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane era, David Bowie’s most iconic looks will be available for fans to see up close as the V&A museum opens its David Bowie Centre on 13 September.
Part of the V&A’s wider archival project, the V&A East Storehouse, the Bowie archive comprises more than 90,000 items – which won’t all be on display at once. Instead, in details revealed today, visitors will be able to order up items to look at closely, while V&A archivists and star curators will make selections to go on display in a series of rotating showcases. Tickets will be free.
Support is lowest in France, Spain and Poland, while 21% back authoritarian rule under certain circumstances
Only half of young people in France and Spain believe that democracy is the best form of government, with support even lower among their Polish counterparts, a study has found.
A majority from Europe’s generation Z – 57% – prefer democracy to any other form of government. Rates of support varied significantly, however, reaching just 48% in Poland and only about 51-52% in Spain and France, with Germany highest at 71%.
After US jury said it should pay oil pipeline firm $660m, Greenpeace is hoping to reclaim funds via EU anti-Slapp law
The outcome of a court case in the Netherlands could shape the right to protest around the globe for decades to come, campaigners have warned, as figures show a dramatic rise in legal action taken by fossil fuel companies against activists and journalists.
Greenpeace International is using a recently introduced EU directive to try to reclaim costs and damages it incurred when a US jury decided it should pay the oil pipeline corporation Energy Transfer more than $660m in damages earlier this year.
Sell-offs of public housing and the right’s promotion of home ownership has left too many unable to afford accommodation
Csaba Jelinek is an urban sociologist based in Budapest
When I left my family home to study at university in 2007 and moved to downtown Budapest, housing costs were hardly a topic of conversation among my friends. I rented rooms in centrally located flats for £80-£100 per month. Fast forward to 2025 and a similar room in a shared flat would set you back at least £200 – double the price of 15 years ago. Talk to anyone in their 20s in Budapest today, and the deepening housing crisis will inevitably come up as one of the defining struggles of their lives.
The statistics paint an equally grim picture. Between 2010 and 2024, Hungary saw the largest increase of the housing price index among EU member states. While the EU average rose by 55.4%, Hungary’s housing price index rocketed by 234%. Meanwhile, per capita net income only grew by 86% in the 2010s. Budapest, the capital, is the centre of this crisis. According to the Hungarian National Bank, residential property prices are overvalued by 5-19%. This is partly explained with the high proportion of investment-driven purchases: these accounted for 30-50% of all transactions in the last five years in Hungary. Unlike in many other EU capitals, property investors in Budapest are not primarily foreign nationals – who accounted for just 7.3% of transactions between 2016 and 2022 – nor are they institutional players. Instead, they are typically individual Hungarian citizens. As real estate has become an increasingly appealing investment for upper- and middle-class households amid growing economic uncertainty, the result has been a deepening polarisation within Hungarian society.
Ward Sakeik, 22, who came to US aged eight, tells of ‘joy and a little shock’ after more than four months in detention
Ward Sakeik, a stateless Palestinian woman who was detained in February on the way back from her honeymoon, was released from immigration detention after more than four months of confinement.
“I was overfilled with joy and a little shock,” she said at a press conference on Thursday. “I mean, it was my first time seeing a tree in five months.”
Russia launches drone attack on Kyiv hours after presidents’ phone call; US company Techmet to bid in first pilot project of US-Ukraine minerals fund. What we know on day 1,227
With narrow majorities and intra-party splits, Republicans faced a battle to give Trump his bill to sign – but they did it
Just a few months ago, analysts predicted that Republicans in Congress – with their narrow majorities and fractured internal dynamics – would not be able to pass Donald Trump’s landmark legislation.
On Thursday, the president’s commanding influence over his party was apparent once again: the bill passed just in time for Trump’s Fourth of July deadline.
Democratic leader spoke for more than eight hours to rail against Trump’s sweeping tax-and-spending bill
The Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries broke the record for the longest House floor speech ever on Thursday after he spoke for more than eight hours to delay a vote on Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill.
Early on Thursday, after a marathon night of arm-twisting, cajoling and pressure by tweet, House Republicans said they were finally ready to vote on Trump’s $4.5tn tax-and-spending package – a colossal piece of legislation the president wants passed by Friday, the Independence Day holiday.
The team battled a notoriously strong current and used the stars as their guide to reach an island in an unstable vessel made of Japanese cedar
Dr Yousuke Kaifu was working at an archaeological site on the Japanese islands of Okinawa when a question started to bubble in his mind. The pieces unearthed in the excavation, laid out before him, revealed evidence of humans living there 30,000 years ago, arriving from the north and the south. But how did they get there?
“There are stone tools and archaeological remains at the site but they don’t answer those questions,” Kaifu, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Tokyo, says.
Costa Rica-based inter-American court of human rights says states have obligation to respond to climate change
There is a human right to a stable climate and states have a duty to protect it, a top court has ruled.
Announcing the publication of a crucial advisory opinion on climate change on Thursday, Nancy Hernández López, president of the inter-American court of human rights (IACHR), said climate change carries “extraordinary risks” that are felt particularly keenly by people who are already vulnerable.
Until 1992, when people heard Stuck in the Middle With You by Stealers Wheel on the radio, they might smile and nod and sing along to its catchy soft-rock tune and goofy Dylan-esque lyrics. But after 1992, with the release of Quentin Tarantino’s sensationally tense and violent crime movie Reservoir Dogs, the feelgood mood around that song forever darkened. That was down to an unforgettably scary performance by Michael Madsen, who has died at the age of 67.
Stuck in the Middle, with its lyrics about being “so scared in case I fall off my chair”, was to be always associated with the image of Madsen, whom Tarantino made an icon of indie American movies, with his boxy black suit, sinister, ruined handsomeness and powerful physique running to fat, playing tough guy Vic Vega, AKA Mr Blonde. He grooved back and forth across the room, in front of a terrified cop tied to a chair, dancing to that Stealers Wheel number, holding his straight razor, which he had removed from his boot – smirkingly preparing to torture the cop (that is, torture him further) by cutting off his ear.
Court halts ruling that allowed migrants to challenge removal to countries where they could be in danger
The supreme court has allowed the Trump administration to deport the eight men who have been held for weeks at an American military base in Djibouti to war-torn South Sudan, a country where almost none of them have ties.
Most of the men are from countries including Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Laos, Cuba and Myanmar. Just one is from South Sudan.
An initial £45m bid was rejected by Forest last week
Newcastle look to bolster squad for Champions League
Newcastle United are optimistic of striking a deal to sign the Nottingham Forest forward Anthony Elanga after submitting an improved offer worth about £55m. Last week Newcastle had a £45m bid rejected but have returned with an increased offer.
Newcastle and Eddie Howe are long-term admirers of Elanga, who featured for Forest in every Premier League match last season, scoring six goals and providing 11 assists as Nuno Espírito Santo’s side qualified for the Europa Conference League, returning to European competition for the first time since 1995-96. Newcastle qualified for the Champions League after finishing fifth.
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