At times when other major countries – the US, Japan, Canada, China and India at various points – have stepped back, the EU has often stepped forward. There would be no Paris accord had the bloc not won a key battle at the Durban climate summit in 2011 that paved the way.
US president and UK prime minister team up for a well-modulated mix of action and comedy that deserved a theatrical release
Rather than give the world an escape, Heads of State, Amazon’s throwback buddy comedy, thrums the tension in US foreign relations. Suicide Squad veterans Idris Elba and John Cena are redeployed in this gun show from Nobody director Ilya Naishuller, respectively, as the UK prime minister and US president at loggerheads. President Derringer, barely six months in office, resents the PM for not doing more to help him get elected. Prime Minister Clarke, a six-year incumbent mired in an approval ratings slump, has already dismissed the president – a swaggering former action hero – as a Schwarzenegger knockoff. After a joint press conference goes sideways and spoils the announcement of a Nato-supported energy initiative, the pair are forced on an Air Force One ride to help repair the PR damage – but it gets worse when the plane is shot down.
As it turns out, the Nato energy thingy was cribbed from a nuclear scientist that alliance forces neutralized to head off the threat of another Hiroshima – and his father, a psycho arms dealer named Viktor Gradov (a rueful Paddy Considine), is bent on revenge. In fact, the two-hour film opens with Noel – a skull-cracking MI6 agent played by Priyanka Chopra – leading a covert strike on Gradov in the middle of the world famous Tomatina festival in Buñol, Spain, that turns upside down when she and her team are felled in the food fight. That botched operation – part of a wider sabotage, as we’ll learn later – is top of mind when the president and prime minister bail out of Air Force One (under attack from without and within) into a Belarusian wood. From there, they must find their way back to safe harbor – not knowing whom they can trust when they get there, of course. All the while they’re being chased by Gradov’s hell-raising henchmen Sasha and Olga “the Killers”, whom Aleksandr Kuznetsov and Katrina Durden play like Boris and Natasha, but eviler.
‘I use a hit and run approach when photographing inside casinos. On one occasion, the sound of my camera woke a guy up and he wanted a fight’
As a kid, I would see a new casino every time I visited Vegas with my family. They were huge, multimillion dollar investments and even then, I knew that money had come from people losing it in machines. That’s probably why I don’t gamble. My dad only actually took us into a casino a couple of times, but I remember him believing he would win and my mother being more rational about it.
Thinking about it now, it’s absurd to take your kids to Vegas. My friend Rich remembers his parents checking him and his brother in at the Circus Circus hotel and casino – I think there was maybe a trampoline for children to jump on while the parents gambled. Afterwards, they’d hand in their ticket and pick the kids up again, like you do with your coat at the theatre.
From the lab-born Tennis for Two to the console classics of Nintendo and Sega, the sport has been a constant, foundational force in gaming’s rise
With Wimbledon under way, I am going to grasp the opportunity to make a perhaps contentious claim: tennis is the most important sport in the history of video games.
Sure, nowadays the big sellers are EA Sports FC, Madden and NBA 2K, but tennis has been foundational to the industry. It was a simple bat-and-ball game, created in 1958 by scientist William Higinbotham at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, that is widely the considered the first ever video game created purely for entertainment. Tennis for Two ran on an oscilloscope and was designed as a minor diversion for visitors attending the lab’s annual open day, but when people started playing, a queue developed that eventually extended out of the front door and around the side of the building. It was the first indication that computer games might turn out to be popular.
The event of the oligarchical season showcased the carelessness of a couple who claim to care about the climate
If last week was the best of times for Zohran Mamdani and the working people of New York City, it was the worst of times for the billionaires who spent a small fortune trying to stop him from securing the city’s Democratic mayoral nomination. The media mogul Barry Diller, to name just one, donated a cool $250,000 to Andrew Cuomo’s campaign, only to see the disgraced former governor lose by a decisive margin.
But Diller would soon be able to drown his disappointment in Great Gatsby-themed cocktails as he joined Tom Brady, Ivanka Trump and at least three Kardashians for the cheeriest event on this season’s oligarchic social calendar: the Venetian wedding of the former TV journalist Lauren Sánchez and the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Research could help cut energy use and is latest example of AI being used for advances in materials science
AI-engineered paint could reduce the sweltering urban heat island effect in cities and cut air-conditioning bills, scientists have claimed, as machine learning accelerates the creation of new materials for everything from electric motors to carbon capture.
Materials experts have used artificial intelligence to formulate new coatings that can keep buildings between 5C and 20C cooler than normal paint after exposure to midday sun. They could also be applied to cars, trains, electrical equipment and other objects that will require more cooling in a world that is heating up.
Dozens of Bhutanese refugees are facing deportation from Nepal, a country that once gave them shelter
Ashish Subedi never imagined he would be deported once, let alone twice.
Subedi, 36, had grown up in the Beldangi refugee camp in eastern Nepal where his family, along with over 100,000 other ethnic Lhotshampas, ended up after being expelled from Bhutan in the early 1990s.
From distinctive dot paintings to ‘unflattering’ portraits of billionaires, via bloodstained reindeer skulls piled up outside parliament, the diverse work of Indigenous artists is thrilling the art world
Seemingly out of nowhere, Indigenous art is everywhere. We’ve gone decades – centuries, really – in this country with barely any exhibitions dedicated to the work of Indigenous artists, but recently, everything’s changed. Galleries, museums and institutions across the UK are hosting shows by artists from communities in South America, Australia, the US and Europe at an unprecedented rate.
Tate Modern in London is putting on its first-ever major solo show by a First Nation Australian artist in July, with a Sámi artist from Norway taking over the Turbine Hall in October. There are shows by Native American artists at Camden Art Centre in London and Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery, while painters and weavers from the Amazon and Argentina are coming to Manchester’s Whitworth and Bexhill-on-Sea’s De La Warr Pavilion.
Ward Sakeik was detained in February on her way home from her honeymoon in the US Virgin Islands
The US government has tried for the second time to deport a stateless Palestinian woman, according to court documents – despite a judge’s order barring her removal.
Ward Sakeik, a 22-year-old newlywed, was detained in February on her way home from her honeymoon in the US Virgin Islands. Last month, the government attempted to deport her without informing her where she was being sent, according to her husband, Taahir Shaikh. An officer eventually told her that she would be sent to the Israel border – just hours before Israel launched airstrikes on Iran.
He is eligible for Saturday’s Club World Cup quarter-final
Further Chelsea signings expected to hinge on sales
Chelsea have added João Pedro to their Club World Cup squad after signing the forward from Brighton in a deal worth up to £60m.
Enzo Maresca has been looking to add a versatile player to his attack and will have more options after the 23-year-old’s arrival. João Pedro, who has signed a seven-year deal, can play up front, as a second striker and on the left. The Brazil international scored 30 goals in 70 appearances for Brighton.
Whether you have an ice bath, exercise or stick the kettle on first thing, a new study has found that any deviation from your usual schedule comes with consequences
Detention of 18-year-old man part of anti-terror police force’s first case linked to involuntary celibate movement
An 18-year-old French man who claimed affiliation with the misogynist “incel” movement has been arrested and placed under formal investigation on suspicion of planning attacks targeting women, France’s national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office (PNAT) has said.
The arrest on Wednesday was part of PNAT’s first case linked to the “incel” (involuntary celibate) movement, an online network of men motivated to engage in violence against women they believe unjustly reject their sexual or romantic advances.
Chef with 10 Michelin stars has designed meals for Sophie Adenot’s trip to International Space Station next year
Even by the exacting standards of France’s gastronomes, it sounds like a meal that is truly out of this world. When the French astronaut Sophie Adenot travels to the International Space Station next year, she will dine on French classics such as lobster bisque, foie gras and onion soup prepared specially for her by a chef with 10 Michelin stars.
Parsnip and haddock velouté, chicken with tonka beans and creamy polenta, and a chocolate cream with hazelnut cazette flower would also be on the menu, the European Space Agency said on Wednesday.
Norman Cook estimates that he’s reached a centenary of sets at Worthy Farm, from big stages to tiny tents. Guardian photographer David Levene joined the celebrations in the DJ booth
Irreverent, bouncy and as suitable at 4am in a club as it is at 4pm in a field, the music of Fatboy Slim dovetails perfectly with Glastonbury. And the man himself, Norman Cook, seems to know it.
This year’s festival marked a big milestone: Cook has now played 100 Glasto sets – or thereabouts – over the years, popping up everywhere from vast stages to tiny tents. To document the occasion, Guardian photographer David Levene bedded in with the DJ for the weekend, while Cook explained why it holds such a special significance for him.
Cook tries to find his daughter for Burning Spear at the Pyramid Stage
Water shortages hitting crops, energy and health as crisis gathers pace amid climate breakdown
Drought is pushing tens of millions of people to the edge of starvation around the world, in a foretaste of a global crisis that is rapidly deepening with climate breakdown.
More than 90 million people in eastern and southern Africa are facing extreme hunger after record-breaking drought across many areas, ensuing widespread crop failures and the death of livestock. In Somalia, a quarter of the population is now edging towards starvation, and at least a million people have been displaced.
In other high stake talks, EU trade chief MarošŠefčovič will be in Washington today in another attempt to strike a tariff deal with the US before the 9 July deadline next week.
Our Brussels correspondent Jennifer Rankin takes a look at the EU’s longest-serving commissioner, who has built up a reputation as a reliable and trustworthy fixer.
CPS says it is considering more charges against former nurse after evidence from Cheshire police detectives
Detectives investigating the former nurse Lucy Letby have passed evidence to prosecutors alleging she murdered and harmed more babies.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) confirmed on Wednesday that it was considering further charges against Letby over alleged crimes at the Countess of Chester hospital and Liverpool Women’s hospital.
Donald Trump on Tuesday toured “Alligator Alcatraz”, a controversial new migrant detention jail in the remote Florida Everglades, and celebrated the harsh conditions that people sent there would experience.
The president was chaperoned by Florida’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis, who hailed the tented camp on mosquito-infested land 50 miles west of Miami as an example for other states that supported Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
Downing Street has insisted Rachel Reeves will stay in post and has not offered her resignation, after the chancellor was in tears at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday.
Reeves wiped away a tear after a series of questions from the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, who suggested Labour MPs had said she was “toast”. Badenoch suggested Keir Starmer had failed to confirm Reeves would stay in post until the election.
Elliot Daly forced off after taking a painful blow
For the second successive game in Australia there is bittersweet news for the British & Irish Lions. Another eight tries and a half-century of points was a decent return against initially spirited opponents but, once again, they look set to lose a potentially significant player to injury with the best-of-three Test series kicking off at this same venue in just over a fortnight.
For now there is no official confirmation but Elliot Daly’s tour is set to be cruelly curtailed following the nasty forearm injury he sustained in the second half. He was taken to hospital for X-rays on a suspected fracture which will almost certainly require the Lions to summon another replacement, having already lost scrum-half Tomos Williams to a torn hamstring.
Week of 20 June was highest level of risk for Fordham Tick Index as scientists remind people to take precautions
Ticks have been flourishing recently in the United States.
This year, as compared to recent years, there has been an increase in the reported number of blacklegged ticks, the number of such ticks that carry Lyme disease and visits to the emergency room because of bites from the tiny parasitic arachnid, according to data from universities and the US federal government.
Mark Carney’s Strong Borders Act would mean a crackdown on refugees as Canada seeks to bolster its relationship with the US
There are many stereotypes about Canada – that we are a nation of extremely polite people, a welcoming melting pot, and that we’re the US’s laid-back cousin who lives next door.
But right now, Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, is bucking all of that lore after pressure from the US in the form of Donald Trump’s “concerns” about undocumented migrants and fentanyl moving across the US-Canada border. In response, the recently elected Liberal PM put forward a 127-page bill that includes, among other worrying provisions, sweeping changes to immigration policy that would make the process much more precarious for refugees and could pave the way for mass deportations.
Many cultures use pickle brine as a seasoning, so it’s open season on salads, noodles, bloody marys … and for, er, ‘backslopping’
I’m an avid consumer of pickles, especially gherkins. When I’ve finished a jar, how can I use the brine in my cooking? Geoff, Sheffield Last year, Dua Lipa poured Diet Coke into an ice-filled glass, topped it up with the brine from both a tub of pickles (plus a few rogue pickles) and a tub of jalapeños, swirled it around, then drank it. While someone under the viral TikTok video asked, “Dua, is everything OK?”, the pop star is right about one thing: it’s time we start thinking of pickle brine as an ingredient, rather than a byproduct.
“The brine retains all of that delicious pickle flavour,” says Moon Lee, head chef of no-waste restaurant Silo in London, “and a mixture of sweet and savoury undertones”. Also, because it’s fermented, “it has an almost tangy, kombucha-like taste, too. I’m from Korea, and we always make use of kimchi juice, whether in a dressing, as a seasoning for noodles or in pancake batter. Why can’t pickle brine have the same potential?”
I can’t can’t quote a single line from a song in my book. So how can big tech legally feast on all the lyrics ever written?
In the 74,833 words of a book I am writing, there are six words that, when strung together in a specific 12-word sequence, I cannot say. It’s a single line from the song Bloodbuzz Ohio by the National, which goes: “I still owe money to the money to the money I owe.”
My book is a memoir about the psychological toll that what I term “desperation capitalism” took on millennials in particular, and how it pushed tens of millions of people to try to find a way out of financial precarity by engaging in high-risk financial activity. It’s told through the lens of my own experience of falling deeper and deeper under the spell as I spent 11 months trading a few thousand dollars into more than $1.2m, and then 18 months chasing my losses all the way down to zero. Well, more than zero, in fact, since by the end I owed the US government nearly $100,000 in taxes on phantom gains that no longer existed.
These dips are a colourful, low-waste way to eat the rainbow and save vegetable odds and ends from the compost bin
My friend Hayley North is a retreat chef whose cooking is inspired by the Chinese “five elements” theory: fire, earth, metal, water and wood. Each element corresponds to a colour and an organ in the body (earth, for example, is yellow and linked to the spleen). Years ago, Hayley made me the most deliciously vibrant and earthy bright-red dip from kale, and today’s recipe is a homage to her nourishing, elemental approach, while also saving scraps from the bin.
Karen Kneller resigns from Criminal Cases Review Commission, heavily criticised for bungling of Andrew Malkinson case
The chief executive of the miscarriage of justice watchdog for England, Wales and Northern Ireland has resigned after months of speculation after serious failings in the case of Andrew Malkinson.
Karen Kneller, who had held the position since 2013 and had been in senior roles at the organisation for two decades, has left the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) after one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history, it was announced on Wednesday.
On the 50th anniversary of the first Tour finish on the Champs-Élysées, we could be in for a cliffhanger finish
The climbs of Mont Cassel and Le Mont Noir won’t be enough to split the peloton, so this is almost guaranteed to be a bunch sprint, unless it gets windy. A strong westerly would make this a nightmare with more than 140km of crosswinds, but if it stays calm it’s a first big test for Jasper Philipsen, Tim Merlier and the other fast men. For the favourites, a first day of trying to stay upright.
We’d like to hear from older people about their pets and how important they are to them
Whether you have a two-month-old puppy or an ageing cockatoo, we’re interested in finding out more about people over the age of 60 and their pets.
What type of pet do you have and how long have you had them? Is it your first pet or have you owned several over the years? We would also like to know what your relationship with your pet is like.
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This weekend I was at Glastonbury reviewing the bands with the Guardian’s music team; it was my second year at the legendary arts and music festival, and I’ve become a total convert, preaching the glory of Worthy Farm after years of assuming that an event like it wasn’t for someone like me.
Video shared on social media shows drone attacks, which some say have helped pacify gangs inflicting violence on Port-au-Prince
Warning: this story contains footage that readers might find distressing
The earth beneath Jimmy Antoine’s apartment shuddered and for a split second he feared another natural disaster had struck, like the 2010 cataclysm that brought Port-au-Prince to its knees.
“The ground shook like it does during an earthquake. You tremble like everything might collapse,” said the 23-year-old trainee mechanic, recalling how he and his panicked neighbours raced out on to the street.
Family of Avtar Singh Khanda, who was thought to be on Indian authorities’ radar and died in 2023, call for inquest
The family of a Sikh activist who died suddenly in 2023 have made new calls for an inquest after a pathologist found the result of the postmortem exam “does not mean that a poisoning can be completely excluded”.
Avtar Singh Khanda, 35, died in June 2023, four days after being admitted to a hospital in Birmingham feeling unwell. The official cause of death was acute myeloid leukaemia, a blood cancer.
At its heart, football is about community. A feeling of shared identity and purpose. A place where supporters gather to watch their team. The games, goals and moments that live on in the club’s collective memory through a shared act of will. The people responsible for these defining moments – shrewd managers, inspiring captains, prolific goalscorers – are increasingly immortalised in statues.
A sculptor is enlisted to preserve their likeness in a single definitive pose. The subjects take on a size and form, literally larger than life, befitting the impact they had on the club and community that chooses to honour them. According to the Sporting Statues Project, which is run by Chris Stride and Ffion Thomas, there are more than 100 football statues in the UK. The vast majority have been made since the turn of the millennium and there are even more in progress. They have exploded in popularity, becoming the established means of commemoration.
One of the most popular acts in half-time entertainment sustained an injury Tuesday night in Minneapolis as Rong ‘Krystal’ Niu, better known under her stage name of “Red Panda,” needed to be assisted off the court after falling during half-time of the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup championship game between the Indiana Fever and the Minnesota Lynx.
Niu has delighted basketball fans in numerous NBA, college basketball and WNBA venues since her debut in 1993. The ‘Red Panda’ rides a seven-foot-tall unicycle while catching and balancing a large number of metal bowls on her head during her act.
Rarely will you be photographed as much, and be faced with the outcome for so many years. These products will give you coverage and comfort
I bristle at the expression “bridal makeup”, because it encourages the slightly weird idea that women’s faces should look very different on their wedding days. Brides these days might be wearing black or red, hair up, hair down, hi-top trainers or Dr Martens boots. Similarly, bride-appropriate makeup is however one feels most attractive, comfortable, confident and oneself.
But what I will concede is that the big day often calls for a new foundation. Rarely will you be photographed as much, over so many hours, and be faced with the outcome for so many years, so it’s worth wearing something a little higher-coverage and longer-lasting than for a day at the office.
When Tim Boxall went to the protest outside Westminster on the eve of the welfare bill vote, he knew the 32C heat would exacerbate his multiple sclerosis. But he felt he had to be there.
“The hour train here and the heat will cause me spasms, pain, fatigue, and set off motor and vocal tics,” he says. “It’ll take days bedbound to recover, but if we don’t fight our own corner, who will?”
Boxall, 50, has received the personal independence payment (Pip) for a decade and calls it a “lifeline”, particularly since he had to give up work as a credit controller for a high street bank. The benefit bought the wheelchair he’s using today. “It pays for care but also things that give me a life, not just an existence.”
When news of the government’s win off the back of a major climbdown on Pip reached him, Boxall felt “disappointed” but “not disheartened”. “The patchwork of desperate, last-minute face-saving concessions, legislating on the fly, is an absolute embarrassment,” he says.
Review led to profound changes, some of which made young people feel unsupported, yet new clinics are opening
At the heart of the controversy about how to meet the needs of young people questioning their gender has been the huge rise in referrals to the Tavistock – previously the only dedicated clinic in England and Wales treating children with gender dysphoria.
The clinic was closed one month before the Cass review into youth gender identity services, commissioned by NHS England and led by the British paediatrician Hilary Cass, which found that children had been “let down” by the NHS amid a “toxic” public discourse.
Farmers warn of risk to Britain’s food supply as more than three-quarters take hit to income from extreme weather
More than 80% of UK farmers are worried that the “devastating” effect of the climate crisis could damage their ability to make a living, a study has found.
Farmers have warned that global heating risks Britain’s supplies of home-grown food amid wild swings in weather conditions, in new research carried out by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
Connexion
