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 Billy
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 24 people have died amid torrential rain and dozens of children from Camp Mystic are among those still 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
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Portugal forward Jota and his brother died in car crash
Liverpool players and staff have joined family and friends in Gondomar to pay their final respects to Diogo Jota and his brother André Silva. The funerals are taking place in the brothers’ hometown in Portugal, where they were revered, with mourners travelling from around the world to say goodbye.
Jota’s widow, Rute Cardoso, whom the footballer had been married to for 11 days before his death, was greeted by family on Saturday morning before the event. The Liverpool head coach, Arne Slot, the captain, Virgil van Dijk, the defender Andrew Robertson, the midfielder Alexis Mac Allister, his former teammates Jordan Henderson and James Milner, and Manchester City’s Rúben Dias are among those in Portugal for the service.
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.
Via Manchester City’s social media: “We can confirm @kylewalker2 is to join Burnley on a permanent deal, bringing an end to a hugely successful eight-year stay with Manchester City. Wishing you all the best, Kyle!”
Doctors say Israel is blocking deliveries of formula urgently needed as mothers are either dead or too malnourished to feed their babies
Doctors in Gaza have warned that hundreds of babies are at risk of death amid a critical shortage of baby milk, as Israel continues to restrict the humanitarian aid that can enter the beleaguered strip.
Dr Ahmad al-Farra, the head of paediatrics at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, said his ward had only about a week’s worth of infant formula remaining. The doctor has already run out of specialised formula meant for premature babies and is forced to use regular formula, rationing it between the infants under his care.
As Joey Chestnut, the Ronaldo of speed eating, regains his world hotdog crown, he’s holding up a mirror to our world
The Big Dog is back. And the Big Dog is hungry. Hungry, above all, for dogs. Joey Chestnut has fulfilled his sporting destiny by reclaiming his world champion crown at the legendary 4 July hotdog eating contest in Coney Island, New York. Chestnut, AKA The Silent Warrior, is basically the Messi of elite eating. Or rather he’s the Ronaldo, relentless in his perfectionism, possessed of an alluring competitive arrogance, and with the GOAT-level numbers to back it up: winner of the Mustard Belt now 17 times and the world record-holder as of 2021, when he ate 76 hotdogs in 10 minutes, a huge uplift on his debut in 2005 when he ate a frankly pathetic 32 hotdogs.
Above all, Chestnut had a point to prove. He was banned from competing last year over a controversial sponsor deal with a plant-based hotdog alternative. Losing the title was a kind of Icarus moment. No one is bigger than the sport. Eating had to rein him in. And so this time around it wasn’t about the $100,000 (£73,000) prize. It was about legacy.
Bernard Hinault was the last home champion as the sport has gone international, with winners from Colombia and Slovenia
Age is not just about the policemen getting younger and trying to figure out how to operate an iPhone. It may also be when you are able to tell your children that you once saw an actual French cyclist wearing the actual yellow jersey of the Tour de France having actually just won la grande boucle.
It’s 39 years, 11 months and about three weeks since I watched a tired and slightly diminished-looking Bernard Hinault get out of a car in a backstreet in Lisieux – once the massive crowd pressing on the car doors had been moved on by the heavies – before pulling on that maillot jaune, getting wearily on to his bike, before spinning past, time after time in the late-evening sunlight in the town’s annual post-Tour critérium, an exhibition race which still takes place on the first Tuesday after the Tour.
Since the first time I saw Djokovic win at Wimbledon, in 2011, he has carried himself with the air of a born champion
Moments after he had beaten Dan Evans in almost perfunctory style on Centre Court to advance to the third round of the championships for a record 19th time, Novak Djokovic bumped into an old friend in the corridor on the way to his own match.
“Good day at the office?” Gaël Monfils inquired, smiling as old pros do. The French veteran paused before heading for Court 18 and a much smaller audience, adding: “At this age, we need these types of days.”
After Donald Trump banned Iranians from entering the US, one of the co-hosts, there are different views on what should be done
“It’s offensive for any football fan to be prevented from participating in the World Cup, not just Iranians,” Ali Rezaei of Tehran’s Borna news agency says. In March, the national team became the second to qualify for the 2026 World Cup that will be hosted by Canada, Mexico and the United States. In June, Donald Trump authorised the dropping of bombs on Iran and hit the country with a travel ban. As things stand, while the national team will be able to enter the US next summer, fans – and perhaps media – will not.
Residents of Tehran and other cities may have had enough to deal with of late, but still, being barred from entry stings, even if Iranians have long found it difficult to get into the US. “If the US government has issues with the Iranian regime for any reason, it should not result in discrimination against Iranian citizens,” Behnam Jafarzadeh, a writer for the leading sports site Varzesh3, says. “If someone hasn’t committed any illegal activity, why should they be punished? It’s not just about the World Cup – the policy needs to change in general.”
A14 in Cambridgeshire promised biodiversity net gain of 11.5%, but most of the 860,000 trees planted are dead. What went wrong?
Lorries thunder over the A14 bridge north of Cambridge, above steep roadside embankments covered in plastic shrouds containing the desiccated remains of trees.
Occasionally the barren landscape is punctuated by a flash of green where a young hawthorn or a fledgling honeysuckle has emerged apparently against the odds, but their shock of life is an exception in the treeless landscape.
Rose Jones was told to repay £2,145 after she unwittingly breached ‘draconian’ carer’s allowance regulations
A young carer who had looked after her disabled mother since she was eight said she was “amazed” and “overwhelmed” after Guardian readers paid off her £2,000 fine for a mistaken breach of widely condemned benefits rules.
Rose Jones, 22, was ordered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to repay £2,145 after joining a government youth employment scheme that meant she overstepped “draconian” carer’s allowance earnings regulations.
We may believe we see the world exactly as it is – but as studies of optical illusions show, it’s far more complex than that
Anil Seth is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex
Do people from different cultures and environments see the world differently? Two recent studies have different takes on this decades-long controversy. The answer might be more complicated, and more interesting, than either study suggests.
One study, led by Ivan Kroupin at the London School of Economics, asked how people from different cultures perceived a visual illusion known as the Coffer illusion. They discovered that people in the UK and US saw it mainly in one way, as comprising rectangles – while people from rural communities in Namibia typically saw it another way: as containing circles.
Anthony Albanese has pledged federal support for Victorian authorities after police reported a suspicious fire was lit at a synagogue in East Melbourne on Friday night.
Victoria police alleged an unknown man entered the grounds of the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation on Albert Street at about 8pm on Friday and poured a flammable liquid on the front door of the building and set it on fire.
Quest to create viable human sex cells in lab progressing rapidly, with huge implications for reproduction
Scientists are just a few years from creating viable human sex cells in the lab, according to an internationally renowned pioneer of the field, who says the advance could open up biology-defying possibilities for reproduction.
Speaking to the Guardian, Prof Katsuhiko Hayashi, a developmental geneticist at the University of Osaka, said rapid progress is being made towards being able to transform adult skin or blood cells into eggs and sperm, a feat of genetic conjury known as in-vitro gametogenesis (IVG).
US is on the brink of launching a trade assault on dozens of countries as 90-day pause on tariffs is set to end on 9 July
When Donald Trump unveiled his “liberation day” tariffs in the spring, only to pull the plug days later as panic tore through global markets, his officials scrambled to present the climbdown as temporary.
Three months of frenetic talks would enable the Trump administration to strike dozens of trade agreements with countries across the world, they claimed. “We’re going to run,” the White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox Business Network. “Ninety deals in 90 days is possible.”
There’s an astonishing cast of stars in this complicated, grownup love story about a New Yorker moving to London after a breakup. Richard E Grant! Andrew Scott! Rhea Perlman! And they’re the tip of the iceberg…
Too Much (Netflix, Thursday 10 July) opens with a montage of the kind of woman you could be, if you were a carefree New Yorker who upped sticks and moved to London on a whim. You could be a candlelit period heroine, roaming across the moors, or one of Jack the Ripper’s victims, or you could be a sturdy northern police sergeant, which leads to the slightly strange spectacle of seeing Megan Stalter from Hacks doing a French and Saunders-style parody of what looks a lot like Happy Valley.
The much-hyped new Lena Dunham comedy follows Jess (Stalter), an open-hearted American woman who moves to London to escape a broken heart. There, she falls for a messy indie musician called Felix, whom she meets when he’s playing a gig in a pub. Dunham co-created the series with her husband Luis Felber, and it is loosely based on their real-life romance and marriage.
From Jane Goodall, Steve Jobs and Immanuel Kant to Erik Satie and Mark Zuckerberg, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 Whose big mistake was to believe Sinon? 2 The Hungarian Mudi has been recognised as the 225th what? 3 What space station was launched by Nasa in 1973? 4 Claudia Jones and Rhaune Laslett were founders of which annual celebration? 5 What is Steven Spielberg’s only film musical? 6 What stands on the top of Mount Corcovado? 7 Which religion is based on the teachings of the 24 Tirthankara? 8 What County Durham town is named after a miners’ leader? What links:
9 British empire, 1833; Russia, 1861; US, 1865; Brazil, 1888? 10 Mbappé (4); Vavá, Pelé, Hurst, Zidane (3); Breitner, Messi et al (2)? 11 Jane Goodall; Steve Jobs; Immanuel Kant; Erik Satie; Mark Zuckerberg? 12 An Mhumhain; Connachta; Laighin; Ulaidh? 13 Udo Jürgens; Conchita Wurst; JJ? 14 The Birds; Working Girl; Fifty Shades of Grey? 15 Anguilla; Colombia; Libya; Montenegro; Tuvalu (online)?
Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, wildfires in Crete, the heat at Wimbledon and Charli xcx at Glastonbury: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing
Exclusive: Actor says Starmer’s party has caused ‘derogation of all principles they were supposed to represent’
Steve Coogan has accused Keir Starmer’s Labour government of a “derogation of all the principles they were supposed to represent” and said they were paving the way for the “racist clowns” of Reform UK.
The actor, comedian and producer said the party he had long supported was now for people “inside the M25” and described the prime minister’s first year in power as underwhelming.
At an Abramović art takeover I discovered the quiet strength of a political protester from Myanmar. It gave me a new father figure – and unblocked my creativity
On an unseasonably warm day in October 2023, I arrived, ahead of the queues, at London’s Southbank Centre for a conceptual art takeover by the world-famous Marina Abramović Institute.
I had recently read Marina’s memoir Walk Through Walls, which had resonated. So, when I’d seen the event advertised – hours-long performances by artists she’d invited, curated and introduced by Marina – I bought a £60 ticket and waited for my time slot to enter the Queen Elizabeth Hall. I hadn’t seen performance art before, and this was due to include her well-known work The Artist Is Present with an artist sitting, static and silent, in a chair all day, as Marina once did for an accumulated 736 hours and 30 minutes at the Museum of Modern Art. I felt certain that it would affect me, I just wasn’t sure how.
Saturday’s 10-hour concert will reunite original lineup of Black Sabbath and feature a multitude of metal bands
He is considered to be the godfather of heavy metal, but after more than five decades in the game, the “prince of darkness”, Ozzy Osbourne, brings his blistering performing career to an end with a highly anticipated final concert this weekend.
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