PSG: The European champions are enjoying themselves under Luis Enrique, a world away from their last game against Bayern Munich, whose manager Vincent Kompany could scarcely have been more complimentary about his opposite number in the build-up to today’s game. Words: Sid Lowe in Atlanta.
We have the legendary Chelsea manager, WSL icon and United States women’s national team head coach Emma Hayes on board as a columnist this month. Here is what she had to say in her column this week…
Sophie Ingle defied the odds to return from an ACL injury just in time to make the Wales squad for Euro 2025. The 33-year-old midfielder tore her cruciate ligament during a pre-season friendly against Feyenoord last September. She was subsequently sidelined for the entire 2024-25 season but did enough in training to impress Rhian Wilkinson and persuade the head coach to give her a place on the plane to Switzerland. Speaking to ITV Sport about her return, Ingle said: “I’m just loving being back with the team, being back on the grass, feeling like a footballer again after nine months, it’s just really special. To be back with the girls after such a long time and spend proper, quality time with them, I can’t wait. It’s the Euros and we’ve never been before.”
The Birmingham band are back together for one last concert at Villa Park, entitled Back to the Beginning – joined by the cream of heavy metal, from Mastodon to Anthrax – plus a host of special guests. Follow every song here
You’ll be thinking: show me photos of all these starry metal shenanigans! I’m really sorry but Live Nation have told me there won’t be any photos available until the end of the gig, and the livestream doesn’t allow screengrabs. Use the power of your mind, I guess.
There are a notable number of empty seats there, but remember this was all going on two hours ago which is quite an early start for a massive stadium show. “Stadium really pretty full from the beginning – testament to the depth of the line up,” Michael says. “Maiden a fortnight ago had a higher proportion of battle jackets though.”
Hopes that pause to the killing may be agreed were boosted despite 24 Palestinians being killed including 10 seeking aid
Israel has continued to launch waves of airstrikes in Gaza, hours after Hamas said it was ready to start talks “immediately” on a US-sponsored proposal for a 60-day ceasefire.
The announcement by the militant Islamist organisation boosted hopes that a deal may be done within days to pause the killing in Gaza and possibly end the near 21-month conflict.
World champion fastest by a 10th from Piastri and Norris
Russell fourth for Mercedes, Hamilton fifth for Ferrari
Max Verstappen claimed pole for the British Grand Prix for Red Bull, a blistering run beating the McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris into second and third. Mercedes’s George Russell was fourth, with Lewis Hamilton very much in the mix, taking fifth for Ferrari.
The pole was somewhat against odds for Verstappen, who absolutely wrung the neck of the Red Bull to beat a very strong assault from both McLaren and an improved Ferrari. The world champion has not been particularly happy with his car all weekend, having struggled with its balance all season. With the team using a trimmed back low-downforce configuration at Silverstone, it required every bit of his considerable skill to wrangle across the old airfield. As he has demonstrated previously this season, sometimes he can be the ultimate differentiator.
England Under-21 winger joins on contract until 2032
Forest sign Igor Jesus and Brighton seal De Cuyper deal
Chelsea have completed the signing of Jamie Gittens, with the Borussia Dortmund winger joining on a contract until 2032 in a deal expected to be around £55m. The England Under-21 international has made more than 100 appearances for the Bundesliga club and has featured in the Champions League.
“It’s a great feeling to join such a big club as Chelsea,” Gittens told the club’s website. “I can’t wait to learn from everyone in the team and to push myself to the max here.”
Billionaire said his ‘America party’ would try to turn attainable House and Senate seats to decide major issues
The new US political party that Elon Musk has boasted about possibly bankrolling could initially focus on a handful of attainable House and Senate seats while striving to be the decisive vote on major issues amid the thin margins in Congress.
Tesla and SpaceX’s multibillionaire CEO mused about that approach on Friday in a post on X, the social media platform which he owns, as he continued feuding with Donald Trump over the spending bill that the president has signed into law.
Old Glory Club has at least 26 chapters with participants including military personnel, lawyers and civil servants
A nationwide US network of dozens of far-right, men-only fraternal clubs has what members describe as “literally hundreds” of participants who include past and currently serving military personnel, lawyers, civil servants, and prominent antisemitic influencers, a Guardian investigation can reveal.
The Old Glory Club (OGC) – which has at least 26 chapters in 20 US states and until now has drawn little attention – exemplifies the alarming rise of organized racist political groups in the past few years but especially during the rise of Donald Trump and his return to the White House.
In Beever-Jones, Hampton, Russo and James, Sarina Wiegman has a core of quality players in a squad brimful of experience
I would always rather enter a competition as champions than underdogs because you’ve got something to hold on to. Once you win, you know what winning looks like. England know how to do it and as the defence of their European title gets under way on Saturday do not underestimate how powerful that feeling is.
When you are the holders, the most important thing to get right is your internal hunger and understand you’ve got a target on your back in every fixture. To counter that, you have to find another level in yourself because a title cannot be won the same way you won it before.
Fiona Eastwood says real-life experiences that bring people together are vital amid a battle for attention in the digital era
Artificial intelligence is in the process of upending the business models of companies all over the world, but when it comes to the $100bn (£73bn) global theme park business the thrill of “big metal” rollercoasters is still the biggest draw.
Fiona Eastwood, the boss of the sector’s second biggest operator, Merlin Entertainments, says that in a world dominated by battles over screen time it is real-life experiences that provide families with an “antidote to phones and digital technology”.
Pressure grows on Pedro Sánchez to call snap election as latest resignation adds to corruption allegations
Pedro Sánchez’s efforts to reset Spain’s ruling socialist party after damaging corruption allegations that threatened to topple his coalition government have suffered a severe setback after a party official resigned over accusations of sexual harassment.
The prime minister had hoped this weekend’s meeting of the federal committee of his Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) would help the party move past weeks of scandals that have undermined the ethical and anti-corruption pledges on which it came to power seven years ago.
Almost 300 researchers have applied for for positions at Aix-Marseille University after Trump unleashed his attack on academia
It was on a US-bound flight in March, as Brian Sandberg stressed about whether he would be stopped at security, that the American historian knew the time had come for him to leave his home country.
For months, he had watched Donald Trump’s administration unleash a multipronged attack on academia – slashing funding, targeting international students and deeming certain fields and even keywords off limits. As his plane approached the US, it felt as though the battle had hit home, as Sandberg worried that he would face reprisals over comments he had made during his travels to the French media on the future of research in the US.
Emboldened by Trump, the right is trying to chip away the legacy of the trailblazing politician Harvey Milk. Activists say it’s a sign of a wider assault on the LGBTQ+ community
As San Francisco’s pride festivities came to a close last week, a cloud hung over the otherwise joyful celebrations as the city’s LGBTQ+ community learned that the US government had stripped a naval ship of its name honoring the gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk.
Donald Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, claimed the action showed the administration’s commitment to “taking the politics” out of military naming conventions. San Francisco’s queer community saw things differently.
The courts have failed to reckon with coercive control and survivors’ trauma. Same with the court of public opinion
Wouldn’t it be nice if, just now and again, bad things happened to bad people? Wouldn’t it be refreshing if violence against women was taken seriously instead of being treated like one big joke?
Huw Jones claims two first-half tries in scrappy affair
So much for the theory that the British & Irish Lions are building smoothly towards the start to the Test series against the Wallabies. Exactly how many members of this Lions team will feature in the first Test starting XV remains to be seen but here was a reminder that Australian opposition are not necessarily going to wave their visitors through when the bigger games come around.
It took a 54th-minute try by the scrum-half, Alex Mitchell, to save his side’s blushes in an encounter that will sit uneasily with the management at this delicate stage of the trip. Two first-half tries from the alert Huw Jones, some strong scrummaging and a typically energetic display from Ben Earl in the back row were among a rather short list of positives with the first match of the best-of-three Test series less than a fortnight away.
Concerns raised about council appointments, including 19-year-old overseeing children and family services
Reform UK’s local election wins have led to teenagers being put in charge of vital public services, including a 19-year-old who is overseeing children and family services while at university.
Two months after the elections in which Nigel Farage’s party took overall control of 10 councils, concerns have been raised about the experience of candidates who have been appointed to roles with wide-ranging responsibility.
The spiritual leader has said his inner circle of monks will find an heir, but China believes the choice is in its hands
Few celebrations have the hills of Dharamshala abuzz like the birthday of the Dalai Lama. But this year, as monks and devotees flooded into the mountainous Indian city before the Tibetan spiritual leader turns 90 on Sunday, the mood of anticipation has been palpable.
For years, the Dalai Lama had promised that around his 90th birthday he would make a long-awaited announcement about his reincarnation. Finally, in a video broadcast to Tibetan monks and leaders on Wednesday, he laid out what the future would hold. It came amid fears of a ruthless succession battle between the Tibetan community and the Chinese government, which for decades has sought to control the institution of the Dalai Lama, revered as the highest teacher in Tibetan Buddhism.
European champions are enjoying themselves under Luis Enrique, a world away from their last game against the German club
The last time they crossed paths, Vincent Kompany was on his way in and Luis Enrique was on his way out. It was late November at the Allianz Arena and Bayern Munich’s new manager waited by the press room while his opposite number at Paris Saint-Germain spoke to the media; as he listened in, he could hardly believe what he heard. “It was completely over the top,” Kompany recalled in Atlanta when he again followed Luis Enrique into a chair lined up before the cameras, and before another big night, seven months later and more than 7,000 miles away. “Now we’re talking about the same game from a totally different perspective; it’s interesting to press fast forward and see how much things can change.”
That night, Bayern beat PSG 1-0 in the Champions League. Five games into the competition, PSG had won just once, against Girona at the Parc des Princes and that was their third loss, fear growing that even with the new, extended format they might not get out of the group. “I heard all these big statements: ‘it’s all over’,” Kompany said. “Most games they should win 5-0 and somehow it’s 1-1, or they lose and it didn’t reflect their dominance. You look at the team now, the evolution, and it’s nice to see that in those moments the consistency paid off. He was strong enough to continue. And that’s not a compliment, that’s just a fact.”
According to the Tour’s live coverage, the peloton has stopped at Porte de Paris, one of Lille’s city gates, where an orchestra is playing the Marseillaise, the French national anthem.
And the Tour de France 2025 is off! Well, the controlled, 11km slow rollout before the official race starts is on. There are 184 riders taking part and the TV coverage is showing quite a few smiling faces as they parade around during the neutralised start in Lille.
Day six updates as the third round continues at SW19
Play on Centre Court starts at 1.30pm (BST) | Mail Alex
While we wait, let me delve into my reserves of Wimbledon anecdotes and pick one out from middle Saturday in 2012. Five hours and 31 minutes I sat on Court 2 watching Jack Draper’s conqueror, Marin Cilic, drag out a five-set epic against Sam Querrey in the third round.
In the end it was 7-6, 6-4, 6-7, 6-7, 17-15 to the Croatian – the second longest match in Wimbledon history. The umpire, Mohamed Lahyani, had also been in the chair for that Isner v Mahut marathon two years earlier.
Their jobs are seen as glamorous but the new reality for many is workplace stress and ‘complete fatigue’
The life of a social media creator can be high in glamour and status. The well-paid endorsement deals, the online followers and proximity to the celebrity establishment are all perks of the industry.
But one hidden cost will be familiar to anyone coping with the 21st-century economy: burnout. The Guardian has spoken to five creators with a combined audience of millions who have all experienced degrees of workplace stress or fatigue.
Sought-after status moves in mysterious ways that elude rules and norms, say the initiated
It has puzzled philosophers, scholars and those aspiring to be cool for generations: what is it that makes someone cool? Now it appears that the alchemical code has finally been cracked.
There are six specific attributes needed to be cool, according to a study published this week by the American Psychological Association.
ChatGPT
Pretending not to be “on the pen” (using weight loss jabs) when you are
Cowboy boots
Labubus
Using corporate jargon outside work. For example, posting holiday photos on Instagram with the caption “highlights from Q1”
Longstanding tradition set to resume as new pontiff opts to spend summer holiday in Castel Gandolfo
When, soon after being elected in 2013, Pope Francis broke from longstanding Vatican tradition by choosing not to spend his summer holiday in the papal retreat of Castel Gandolfo, a sleepy hilltop town overlooking a lake about an hour south of Rome, residents were taken aback.
One shopkeeper, Anna, compared the perceived rejection to a divorce, while another said it slightly ruptured a sense of belonging.
Logging, drug trafficking and the climate crisis endanger the world’s largest isolated Indigenous group, on the border with Brazil
In 1999, Beatriz Huertas, then a young anthropologist, travelled deep into the Peruvian Amazon to investigate reports of uncontacted Indigenous peoples. Along the Las Piedras River, people in Monte Salvado, a Yine Indigenous village, described how every summer, “aislados” – those who avoid sustained contact with outsiders – would appear across the river.
“They were coming into the fields and taking bananas,” says Huertas.
Not long after Jenny Evans was brutally attacked by a high-profile figure, all the details appeared in the press. Her mission to find out what happened would reveal tabloid spying, phone hacking, police misconduct – and lead to a dramatic change of career
Jenny Evans had just starred in her first film when everything came crashing down. Twin Town was a riot of drugs, fast cars and bad behaviour labelled the “Welsh Trainspotting”. She had a wonderful time making the movie, which was released in 1997. There was a feelgood atmosphere on set, and she got on brilliantly with her fellow actors (Twin Town launched the careers of Rhys Ifans and Dougray Scott). “Friends of the cast and crew were coming down from London to Swansea because the vibe was so good,” she says. “It was a great group of people doing something fun. It was a blast.” Twin Town became a cult success, and the 19-year-old from Abergavenny found herself hanging out with celebrities and looking forward to a career in the movies. Then she was sexually assaulted by a high-profile figure and his friend.
Almost 30 years on, she has written a powerful memoir. The assault is just the starting point. Don’t Let It Break You, Honey is the astonishing story of her fight for justice and how it led to a career in journalism, exposed corruption in the British press and the Metropolitan police, and played a role in the phone-hacking scandal that resulted in the closure of the News of the World.
This blackly comic debut is an astute and funny examination of the pain and pleasure of first love
The heart is a peculiar organ. It wants what it wants, as Emily Dickinson wrote. Especially when you’re young and have no previous experience of love and desire, or the deleterious effects of time on both. This is the core subject of 24-year-old Harriet Armstrong’s debut novel, To Rest Our Minds and Bodies, published by the consistently adventurous independent press Les Fugitives.
When the unnamed narrator, a third-year psychology student, meets fellow student Luke in their campus kitchen, she falls hard. They begin sharing meals and confidences in her room, which bears a “suicide beam” running the length of the ceiling. This memento mori is archly juxtaposed with the narrator’s breathless infatuation, which feels as if “some great transition was occurring inside me, something was aligning, I could actually feel it”. She finds herself “wide open and completely soft like a small trembling animal held in two hands, two hands which could crush it completely but which would not”.
The Turkish photographer on outsmarting the tourists to get the perfect shot
Mustafa Seven and his friend Hazem were attempting to escape the tourists in an Austrian village when they took this image. Rumoured to have inspired Disney’s Frozen franchise, Hallstatt has been known to attract up to 10,000 visitors a day during high season. Seven had seen many Instagram shots of the place and was curious to visit. He was taken aback by what he found.
“There were tourist buses and people everywhere,” he says. “Frankly, neither of us like taking landscape photos, but the fairytale surroundings pulled us along. When I realised every image I’d shot had someone in the frame, we decided to change our route and walk up the slips of the village instead.”
At least 27 people have died and 27 girls who were at a Christian summer camp are missing
We have more from the Associated Press on Camp Mystic, the all-girls Christian summer camp from which up to 25 people are missing.
Chloe Crane, a teacher and former Camp Mystic counsellor, said her heart broke when a fellow teacher shared an email from the camp about the missing girls.
At least 24 people have died and up to 25 people are missing after torrential rain caused flash floods along the Guadalupe River in Texas on Friday.
Rescue teams are searching for the people who were attending the Christian all-girls Camp Mystic summer camp just outside the town of Kerrville 104km (64 miles) north-west of San Antonio.
As of Friday night, emergency personnel had rescued or evacuated 237 people, including 167 by helicopter, Reuters reports.
The Texas Division of Emergency Management had 14 helicopters and hundreds of emergency workers, as well as drones, involved in search-and-rescue operations.
A month’s worth of heavy rain fell in a matter of hours. In less than an hour the river rose 26 feet (7.9m) in what Kerr county sheriff’s office called “catastrophic flooding”.
The flooding swept away mobile homes, vehicles and holiday cabins where people were spending the 4 July weekend, the BBC said.
A state of emergency has been declared in several counties.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, US President Donald Trump said, “We’ll take care of them,” when asked about federal aid for the disaster.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the top local elected official, said a disaster of such magnitude was unforeseen. “We had no reason to believe this was going to be anything like what’s happened here,” he said. “None whatsoever.”
More rain is expected in the state, including around Waco, and flooding is anticipated downriver from Kerr county.
The model and activist on grinding her teeth at night, cancel culture and the weird things hotel guests leave behind
Born in Essex, Munroe Bergdorf, 37, studied at the University of Brighton and worked in fashion PR. In 2022, she became the first trans model on the cover of UK Cosmopolitan and in 2023 she published her book Transitional. She hosts the podcast The Way We Are and presents MTV UK’s Queerpiphany. She is a UN Women UK Changemaker and a founding consultant of the UK Diversity and Inclusion Board of L’Oréal Paris. Her latest book is Talk to Me; her documentary, Love & Rage, launched in the UK last month and is available to stream from 14 July. She lives in London.
Describe yourself in three words
Passionate, loving, driven.
The double standards and hypocrisy used to justify Israel’s aggression will not be forgotten here, or in other countries
A trembling ceasefire has brought a pause to what had become the familiar sounds of explosions over Tehran. I was born in 1988, a year before the Iran-Iraq war came to an end. For my generation, war was something that belonged to the past – an impossible event, until this summer.
For 12 days, we lived in the capital under incessant Israeli attacks, and what we saw has changed us for good: dead neighbours, buildings gutted and worry – endless, deep-etched worry – on the faces of people.
Hossein Hamdieh holds a joint PhD in Geography and Anthropology from Humboldt University of Berlin and King’s College London. He is currently based in Tehran, where he works as a social researcher
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Virgil van Dijk and Andy Robertson carry floral tributes
Portugal forward Jota and his brother died in car crash
Liverpool players and staff joined the family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother André Silva for their funeral in the siblings’ hometown of Gondomar. People lined the streets as mourners arrived from across the globe to bid an emotional goodbye.
Jota’s widow, Rute Cardoso, who married the footballer 11 days before his death, and the brothers’ parents, Joaquim and Isabel, were comforted by family throughout.
A decade ago I watched MMA being used to curry favor with Putin. Now Trump is using the UFC to project a nationalist cult of masculinity on America’s front lawn
Ten years ago – before I became an investigative journalist – I found myself working as a color commentator for a Russian mixed martial arts organization bankrolled by an oligarch deep in Vladimir Putin’s orbit.
The job took me around the Russian Federation and its neighboring states, allowing me to pursue unique stories that would otherwise have been out of my reach. I met a Latvian fighter who escaped a black magic cult run by his coach, attended an MMA show with the president of Ingushetia (now Russia’s deputy minister of defence), and knocked back vodka shots with ex-KGB officers and Russian oligarchs.
Demon Copperhead, the author’s retelling of Dickens during Virginia’s opioid crisis, was a global success. Now she has used royalties from the novel to open a recovery residence
In the spotless kitchen of a white clapboard house in the Appalachian mountains, a retired deacon, a regional jail counsellor and I form an impromptu book club. The novel under discussion is Barbara Kingsolver’s bestselling, Pulitzer prize-winning Demon Copperhead, which is set in this area, Lee County, Virginia, during the 1990s, at the beginning of the opioid epidemic. I say that I loved the novel, that it was vivid and brilliant, heart-warming and tragic. Their reaction is more complex – there’s a real sadness behind it. Julie Montgomery-Barber, the jail counsellor, tells me she found the book “hard to read”. The Rev Nancy Hobbs agrees that reading it was painful, “because I felt like: I knew these people. At every level, from foster care to the football coaches to Demon. I knew Demon.”
Hobbs and Montgomery-Barber sit on the board of Higher Ground, the recovery residence recently established by Kingsolver using royalties from the novel. We are viewing the house together as part of its official launch party, on a sunny Saturday in June. The house is a bright and welcoming space. It provides a safe place to live for women whose lives have been torn apart by addiction, who are seeking long-term recovery. Some of its residents have come directly from prison; one was living in a tent before she moved in; current ages range from 33 to 65 years old. Higher Ground gives residents a roof over their heads and supports them in myriad ways, from transport to AA appointments (most have lost their driving licences), to access to education and help with finding employment. The women can stay for between six months and two years. It opened in January and will be at full capacity later this month, when its eighth resident arrives, though there are plans for expansion.
Rapid expansion of Brics has diluted its coherence as a body offering an ideological alternative to western capitalism
Russia and China are not sending their leaders to a Brics summit starting in Brazil on Sunday in what may be a sign that the group’s recent expansion has reduced its ideological value to the two founding members.
China’s 72-year-old leader, Xi Jinping, has attended Brics summits for the past 12 years. No official reason has been given for sending the premier, Li Qiang, other than scheduling conflicts.
As fashion empire hits middle age, it’s cutting costs and closing stores, shifting to larger outlets and new products
In Arteixo, northern Spain, workers are putting the final touches to a gigantic white box of a building, fixing windows and planting greenery in the new global headquarters of the fashion brand Zara, which turned 50 this year.
The site, complete with a private high street where the retailer will test out its latest store concepts, is not far from the small store on the corner of a nondescript street in the centre of nearby La Coruña where, in 1975, Amancio Ortega opened his first fashion store.
Connexion
