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‘A moral crisis in Turkish football’

Turkish prosecutors said on Friday they had ordered the detention of 21 people, including 17 referees and the chairman of an unnamed Super Lig club as part of an investigation into alleged betting on football matches.

Maybe I was a bit unfair with that comment (about downing tools). Maybe I was a bit unfair because I don’t know him that well as a person.

From a performance point of view I think I was speaking what I felt and what I was seeing and I felt I was right.

Drone sightings reported near Brussels and Liège airports just hours after national security council meeting on the emerging threats

Just to add a word on Orbán’s potential domestic motives for getting closer to Trump…

Close watchers of central eastern European politics will know that there is a precedent for what some experts believe Orbán is trying to achieve here.

Bob Birarda, jailed in 2022 for assaulting players, is not listed by Canada Soccer or BC Soccer. The country’s new Safe Sport director says the omission exposes a major gap — and is calling for a global registry of banned coaches.

Two years after receiving an 18-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting players under his care, a former Canada women’s national team coach is yet to appear on any public sanctions list published by Canada Soccer or BC Soccer, the regional governing body for soccer in British Columbia, where the crimes took place.

The revelation has prompted the executive director of the Canadian organization newly appointed to manage reports of abuse and misconduct to call for an international registry of offenders to track individuals who have been banned from sports for misconduct.

From Sierra Leone to Milan, cities are introducing their own rules and innovations in the face of rising temperatures

Wooden stakes bearing pictures of young men were driven into the yellow sands of Copacabana beach this week, opposite Rio de Janeiro’s swanky hotels on Avenida Atlântica where 300 mayors and their entourages were staying during the C40 World Mayors Summit.

Smiling up at the mayors in their hotel suites were photographs of four officers killed in what was the deadliest police raid in Brazilian history, just a few days before the summit. A further 117 people were killed in the operation in two of Rio’s largest clusters of favelas – the Complexo do Alemão and the Complexo da Penha – in what the police said was a clampdown on organised crime.

Young French defender believes Ruben Amorim’s changes are finally having an impact and a visit to Spurs is a timely reminder of their European goal

A little under six months ago, Leny Yoro was sat on the San Mamés turf, head slumped, anguished by the Europa League final defeat to Tottenham. It extinguished Manchester United’s last flicker of hope of Champions League qualification in a desperate season, the Frenchman’s first in England.

United visit the same opponents on Saturday, with optimism finally creeping back at Old Trafford after a run of four games without defeat. Yoro, who turns 20 next week, was one of the few successes of a grinding campaign. Ruben Amorim’s attempt to turn the behemoth around is starting to see results and a win at Tottenham would be a further indication of progress as the head coach begins his second year in charge.

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

From night walks with children to switching off streetlights and rewilding areas, naturalists are working to save Europe’s dwindling populations

An hour or so after sunset, green twinkles of possibility gleam beneath the hedgerows of Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset. Under an orange August moon, the last female glow-worms of the season are making one final push at finding a mate.

For almost 20 years, Peter Bright and other volunteers have combed the village’s shrubberies and grasslands, searching for the bioluminescent beetles as part of the UK glow-worm survey. Most years, they have counted between 100 and 150, rising to 248 in 2017.

Ben Cooke, a National Trust ranger, places a glow-worm trap near Winspit Quarry in Dorset. Photograph: P Flude/Guardian

Firm released names of the three victims on the plane and investigators confirmed plane’s left wing caught fire

The death toll in the explosion that saw a UPS cargo plane lose an engine and burst into flames, has risen to 13, Craig Greenberg, the Louisville mayor, has confirmed as UPS released the names of the three victims on the plane.

“On my way to the Teamsters’ vigil, I learned of a 13th person that died as a result of the UPS flight 2976 plane crash. My heart is with the families, friends and colleagues of all who were lost in this week’s tragedy. We will get through this together,” Greenberg wrote in a social media post.

Scheme aims to raise $125bn to invest in bonds, with returns used to reward tropical countries for conservation

As a battle-scarred veteran of the war against nature, Garo Batmanian has spent 45 years trying to defend the Amazon rainforest. For most of that time, the resistance he leads has been outfunded and outgunned by those who profit from destruction. The most Batmanian felt he could achieve was to slow the advance of the chainsaws and tractors.

But the director-general of Brazil’s forest service feels there could be a chance at the Cop30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, next week, not just of an even fight, but perhaps a victory. There is one condition: world governments must rally behind an initiative being launched by the host nation – the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF).

Political analyst Michael Lange, a born and raised New Yorker who predicted Zohran Mamdani would win, discusses election night’s trends and surprises

• US politics live – latest updates

Two days before the New York mayoral election, Michael Lange made a big electoral prediction – not just of who would win overall, or in each borough or neighborhood, but block by block. Lange, a political analyst born and raised in New York City, has spent over a decade in progressive politics and has become something of a local celebrity this year for his deep dives into city data and polling.

He published his highly detailed prediction map – which correctly forecast that Zohran Mamdani would win although failed to predict Andrew Cuomo’s strong performance – on his Substack, the Narrative War. Lange has a flair for witty coinages. He highlighted, for instance, the divide between the “commie corridor”, stretching from Park Slope to Bushwick to Astoria, where he predicted (accurately) that Mamdani would win by huge margins, and the “capitalist corridor” on Manhattan’s Upper East and Upper West Sides. There, “the Free Press and Wall Street Journal outrank the New York Times” in readership and most voters leaned toward Cuomo, who ran as a conservative-courting independent.

The 22-year-old history student spent almost two years on a popular French quiz show – becoming a multimillionaire in the process. He discusses the importance of curiosity, frugality and 10-11 hours sleep a night

Being a TV general-knowledge quiz champion is a funny kind of fame, because random strangers want to test you on all sorts of trivia. “Sometimes I’ll be walking down the street, a car slows, the window goes down and someone screams: ‘Capital of Brunei?’ I answer and they drive off – it’s amusing really,” says Émilien, a 22-year-old history student who this summer became not only the most successful French gameshow contestant of all time, but the biggest gameshow winner in European history and the world record-holder for the most solo consecutive appearances on a TV quizshow.

And everyone, of course, wants to know how he did it.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

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Midway through the Broadway run of Waiting for Godot with his Bill & Ted co-star Keanu, the actor-director talks about his new film, Adulthood, overcoming the abuse he endured as a young performer, and why we’re wrong about artificial intelligence

Six weeks ago, Alex Winter was on stage at the first night of previews for Waiting for Godot – the latest Broadway revival of Samuel Beckett’s absurdist masterpiece, in which Winter plays the puttering Vladimir to Keanu Reeves’s equally aimless Estragon.

Winter is an old pro at live performance: he spent almost all of his middle and high school years on Broadway, eight shows a week. He and Reeves, his longtime friend and most righteous co-star of the Bill & Ted movies, had the idea for the revival three years ago and have been prepping ever since.

Some of them are not old enough to drive to training but they are driving results for the biggest clubs in the country

By WhoScored

When Max Dowman came off the bench for Arsenal against Leeds earlier this season, he became just the third 15-year-old to play in the Premier League. A few days later, when 16-year-old Rio Ngumoha scored Liverpool’s winner against Newcastle, it felt like a confirmation of a trend: teenagers are not just filling gaps in squads, they are driving results.

At a time when clubs can spend more than £100m on a player – Liverpool did it twice in the summer – the Premier League is witnessing a quiet revolution: the rise of the teenagers. Teenagers made 430 appearances in the league last season – the highest in 19 years – and they have already made 130 appearances this season.

Ian Nepomniachtchi was a world title challenger, Wesley So is ranked No 8, and Hans Niemann has huge ambition, but all lost to unheralded opponents

The $2m (£1.5m), 206-player World Cup taking place in Goa, India, has a brutal format designed to maximise the chance of shock results. Its knockout matches consist of the best of just two classical games, followed by rapid and blitz tiebreaks at increasingly fast speeds, then a final Armageddon game where White has more time but is obliged to win. The major incentive besides the prize money is three places in the 2026 Candidates, the pathway to the world title.

The Russia No 1, Ian Nepomniachtchi, who twice played for the global crown, the USA’s world No 8, Wesley So, and Hans Niemann, who has huge ambitions, were the high profile casualties in Thursday’s second round of 128, which was the first round for the top 50 seeds. After losing to the little-known Indian Diptayan Ghosh, Nepomniachtchi posted a laconic message: “There’s nothing to say about the chess part. Goa is one of those places you don’t feel sad about leaving.”

When I heard it was dumbing down education, my heart sank. In fact, it’s outspoken about the chaos of Michael Gove’s reforms and the changes needed

Schooling in Britain today is where medicine was in the days of bleeding and leeches. It is trapped in the past, between teachers wedded to their subjects and politicians obsessed with tests. Doctors generally know if they have cured you, lawyers know if you are found not guilty. Educators have only exams to measure their professional success. The result is that English schools cower beneath an examination mountain – a global outlier in terms of the volume of assessment.

This week’s report on reforming the curriculum in England was greeted by conservative critics with cries of wokery, dumbing down and falling standards. My heart sank, until I read its 200 pages. As a former education correspondent, I can only say I found it uplifting. There was the odd reference to diversity but it was hardly “woke”. What shocked me was its outspoken commentary on the existing system, a curriculum that is overly academic and culturally barren, and with teachers treated as robots.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Sweet pears sink into and cut through this rich, fudgy, nutty treat

Unlike lighter, flour-based cakes, tortes are traditionally rich and dense. Often made with ground nuts instead of flour, this gives them a fudgy, moist texture. Here, ripe pears sink gently into a dark chocolate and hazelnut batter, with the flavours of vanilla, almond and cardamom subtly enhancing the depth of the chocolate and teasing out the fruit’s perfume.

Iraq 2003-2004

Exclusive: Tory leader has plans to reinstate group that provided top donors with direct access to senior ministers

Kemi Badenoch is relaunching the Conservative party’s “advisory board” for high-value donors in a different guise, the Guardian has learned.

The Tory leader has drawn up plans to reinstate the exclusive group, which provided top donors with regular direct access to senior ministers, according to two people briefed on the plans.

The Choral depicts an amateur choral society in wartime Yorkshire taking on Elgar’s trailblazing and controversial work. But how much does Alan Bennett’s fiction reflect actual fact?

Nicholas Hytner’s new film, The Choral – in UK cinemas today – culminates in an unconventional rendition of Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. Alan Bennett’s screenplay is an affectionate portrayal of a choral society in a small Yorkshire town during the first world war. Searching for non-German repertoire, the chorusmaster Dr Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes) settles in desperation on Gerontius.

Perhaps it is Elgar’s reputation as a pillar of the British establishment – he appears briefly in the film, a cameo from an extravagantly moustachioed Simon Russell Beale – that reassures Bennett’s fictional committee members that this will be a safe choice. But as Guthrie starts to teach the unfamiliar score, they realise Sir Edward’s patrician persona has deceived them. They expected something staidly English, but instead encounter music they find disturbingly Catholic, foreign and theatrical.

From Pride and Prejudice to Fifty Shades, a writer’s paean to the literature of desire

Eva Ibbotson, a doyenne of 1980s romantic fiction, once said self-deprecatingly that her books were aimed at “old ladies and people with flu”. To which Ella Risbridger, who is in her early 30s, sniffle-free and a devotee of Ibbotson’s “sexy and sweet” novels, has this cracking comeback: “If love is the most important thing, and to me it was and is, I want books that think that too.”

From here Risbridger plunges into what she charmingly calls “a field guide to delight”. Jane Eyre rubs shoulders with Ice Planet Barbarians (the bright blue aliens who inhabit the ice planet turn out to be sexy in a Mr Rochester kind of way). Pride and Prejudice makes its inevitable appearance, flanked by its many modern iterations, including the ones with dragons. Mills & Boon novels of every stripe are accorded the kind of sustained attention more usually given to Proust, while Judith Butler’s theories of gender are buttressed by a deft analysis of Rupert Campbell-Black, caddish hero of the Rutshire chronicles by the late, great Jilly Cooper.

Our tipsters rummage through thrift stores and markets from Budapest to Bologna

• Tell us about a lesser known corner of Italy or a winter stay in the UK – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

W Armstrong in Edinburgh is a true institution. There are several locations, but the Grassmarket spot is a treasure trove. Frequented by locals, students and tourists alike, there is a price point for all. Whether I’ve been on the hunt for vintage cashmere, denim, fabulous 1950s dresses, garb for a fancy dress party or even a kilt, this store has sorted me out. It is always a favourite for when friends visit the city, and whether you are looking to buy or not, it is worth a visit just to see its eclectic collection.
Amy

Exclusive: Nunn, one of PM’s most trusted advisers, will play key role linking No 10 and No 11 operations

One of Keir Starmer’s closest allies has been appointed as Rachel Reeves’s chief of staff in an effort to further strengthen ties between Downing Street and the Treasury, the Guardian understands.

Ben Nunn, who worked with the prime minister in opposition and is one of his most trusted advisers, will begin his new role with immediate effect.