The public shaming won’t bring real justice. But it fulfills a fantasy of accountability we rarely experience in our own lives
It wasn’t just that a man got caught cheating on his wife. It was that he did it in public. With the whole stadium watching. With Chris Martin, unknowingly, teeing it up. With a camera zooming in at the exact wrong – or maybe karmically perfect – moment. The CEO. The HR director. The affair. The panic. The humiliation. All of it caught, dissected and shared a million times over.
We didn’t watch that video because we love Coldplay (though, don’t we?). We didn’t watch just for the scandal. We watched because – despite our small steps toward enlightenment – we’re all starving for the satisfaction of seeing someone finally get what they deserve.
Scarpaccia is a crunchy polenta flatbread that makes clever use of seasonal courgettes and other summery toppings
Anyone who has ever grown courgettes will know that, come peak season, you have to get inventive with the abundance and come up with new ways to use them before they turn to marrows or perish and melt back into the soil. One fabulous way to cook up a glut is scarpaccia, an Italian classic that’s similar to farinata and a distant cousin of pizza. Thinly sliced courgettes are degorged by tossing them in sea salt to extract their juices, then, true to Italian thrift, the flavourful liquid is used to make a batter that’s then reunited with the courgettes before baking into a thin, crisp slice.
Player served three-month suspension over positive test
Umberto Ferrara blamed incident on physiotherapist
The Wimbledon men’s singles champion Jannik Sinner has reappointed his former fitness coach Umberto Ferrara with immediate effect, the Italian world No 1 confirmed on Wednesday.
Sinner parted ways with Ferrara and physiotherapist Giacomo Naldi last year following the investigation into his positive tests for banned substance clostebol.
For a recent visa application for a family member, I submitted 32 documents. Africans aren’t liabilities, we are tourists and friends who deserve better
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, I reflect on the increasing difficulty of travel and immigration for many from the African continent, and how one country is plotting a smoother path.
Microsoft says Chinese “threat actors”, including state-sponsored hackers, have exploited security vulnerabilities in its SharePoint document-sharing software servers and are targeting the data of businesses that use it.
The US technology company said it had observed three groups – the Chinese state-backed Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon, and Storm-2603, which is believed to be China-based – using “newly disclosed security vulnerabilities” to target internet-facing servers hosting the platform.
On the podcast today: England were seconds from being knocked out of the Euros after another quite disappointing performance, but this is ‘Proper England’ and they’ll be lining up against either Germany or Spain on Sunday in Basel. The panel ask how Sarina Wiegman’s side have reached their third consecutive final and whether getting it launched will always be the answer.
No Greater Love strained to serve hungry patrons in Maine, New England’s most food insecure state. Then they lost more than 1,000lb of federally funded goods
One Sunday in June, it’s 20 minutes before opening time at the No Greater Love food pantry in Belfast, Maine, two hours north of Portland. A line of cars stretches down the block and curls around the corner. I lean into a car window and ask the driver if he will speak with me.
Stephanie Dinkins challenges the racialized AI space by highlighting Black ethos and cultural cornerstones
At the Plaza at 300 Ashland Place in downtown Brooklyn, patrons mill around a large yellow shipping container with black triangles painted on its side. A nod to the flying geese quilt pattern, which may have served as a coded message for enslaved people escaping to freedom along the Underground Railroad, the design and container serve as a bridge between the past and the future of the African diaspora. At the center of the art project by the Brooklyn-based transmedia artist Stephanie Dinkins, a large screen displays artificial intelligence (AI) generated images that showcase the diversity of the city.
Commissioned by the New York-based art non-profit More Art and designed in collaboration with the architects LOT-EK, the AI laboratory If We Don’t, Who Will?will be on display until 28 September. It seeks to challenge a white-dominated generative-AI space by highlighting Black ethos and cultural cornerstones.
Don Charles says: ‘It was more of a cultural gathering’
Trainer also praises Tyson Fury for backing his boxer
Daniel Dubois’ trainer Don Charles has played down reports that a party at the fighter’s home hours before his world heavyweight championship bout with Oleksandr Usyk at Wembley on Saturday night disrupted the boxer’s preparation.
Dubois was knocked out in the fifth round by Usyk and Charles does not dispute that his charge did not arrive until 8.20pm at the arena, 90 minutes before his scheduled ring walk time. Footage of what Charles describes as more of a “cultural gathering” than a party emerged on Tuesday, but the trainer insisted that Dubois and his entourage arrived within their allocated time, and had ample time to undergo all pre-fight preparations necessary to face Usyk.
From rebelling against a religious upbringing by memorising Beastie Boys lyrics, to soul-stirring discoveries about dead loved ones – Guardian readers share the musical compilations that defined them
It was 2005, and I had just started going out with a girl who was way out of my league. I called on an old trick – the mixtape. Having been a music nerd all my life, I decided I could use some help from Miles Davis, Cinematic Orchestra, Stereolab and more to woo her. Making the perfect mixtape is an art form. You have to start strong, but you don’t want to cram all the best bits into the first 10 minutes. I needed to show myself as a man of the world – some more obscure choices, a bit of jazz. I sequenced them so they all flowed together nicely, and all this was done in an era where I had to rip the tracks from CDs. And in a final touch, I had to put in a track from a band that were playing very shortly – in this case, The Go! Team! – so I could invite her to the gig.
A fascinatingly uneasy debut from Ryan J Sloan has hints of Lynch and Cronenberg with star and co-writer Ariella Mastroianni radiating suppressed anguish and rage
Here is a paranoid noir chiller from the US, shot on 16mm on the mean streets of Jersey City; it is a fascinating debut for first-time feature director Ryan J Sloan that premiered at Cannes last year and is now getting its much-deserved UK release. A genuine skin-crawling unease seeps out of the screen for every second of its running time, helped by a brooding, moaning electronic score by Steve Matthew Carter. This ineffably creepy, often unbearably tense and disquieting film has a little of early Christopher Nolan (the Nolan of Following and Memento), with hints of Lynch and Cronenberg in its hallucinatory episodes.
Sloan’s co-writer and partner Ariella Mastroianni (reportedly a very distant relative of Marcello) stars as Frankie, a woman living on the edge of poverty, suffering from the neurogenerative disorders ataxia and dyschronometria. This means that she is disoriented and cannot accurately judge the passing of time, a condition she attempts to manage by listening to 30-minute tapes on an old-fashioned Sony Walkman, and by gazing in at the windows of total strangers. Her pinched, sharp, intelligent and discontented face dominates the screen; she radiates suppressed anguish and rage at everything that has happened and will happen to her, and at the idea that her condition means she will have to resign herself to an assisted living facility. The scene in which a harassed doctor puts this to her is itself a masterly set piece of grimness.
Let’s try a pragmatic populism, with the stirring ideas of an AOC and the plainspoken appeal of a Marie Gluesenkamp Perez
“How the Democrats lost the working-class vote”, ran the headline on the New York Times’s front page on 6 January. According to the Times, the Democrats’ estrangement from the working class was decades in the making. The party’s enthusiastic embrace of trade and globalization led to the closure of factories across industrial America, eliminating jobs that had been a prime source of stability, identity and prestige.
While many Democrats attributed Trump’s success to the left’s embrace of “woke” language and causes like transgender rights, the Times observed, the economic seeds of his victories “were sown long ago”. A longtime AFL-CIO official was quoted as saying that “one of the things that has been frustrating about the narrative ‘the Democrats are losing the working class’ is that people are noticing it half a century after it happened”.
Don’t ask what’s the matter with Kansas.
Don’t ask how Trump voters can vote against their interests.
Don’t ask evangelical Christians how they can support someone like Trump.
Don’t claim that the facts and science are on your side.
Don’t claim that Trump voters are victims of disinformation.
Don’t blame the Democrats’ unpopularity on Fox News and other rightwing outlets.
Don’t campaign with celebrities.
Don’t sermonize when discussing climate change.
Don’t call Trump supporters stupid.
Michael Massing is the author of Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind. He is writing a book about money and influence
‘Active clubs’ that use martial arts to espouse far-right, fascist ideologies are proliferating in the US and abroad
More than a dozen men wearing black masks and sunglasses – obstructing any open source investigators from easily identifying them – appeared in a Telegram video in front of city hall in London, Canada, in June.
“Mass deportations now,” the men yelled in unison, holding up banners with the same slogan. “No blood for Israel.”
The entertainer, who has struggled to recall the names of all his offspring, has struck marketing gold. What next – Lauren Sánchez on budgeting advice?
If you Google “What does Nick Cannon actually do?”, 17 professions, ranging from rapper to businessperson, pop up. Which is just a few more gigs than the entertainer has kids: these days Cannon is most identifiable as the father of 12 children by six women. “I really think I’m a king,” Cannon, who has said he has been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, mused in June during an appearance on the influencer Bobbi Althoff’s podcast. Kings, he explained, need a lot of children for their courts. In the same podcast, King Cannon struggled to recall the names of all 12 of his children. But that’s what the court nannies are for, eh?
Cannon clearly enjoyed his chat with Althoff because he recently announced that he is starting his own podcast. It will be called Nick Cannon @ Night and he’s going to be giving relationship advice. “When it comes to his personal life, Nick has never shied away, unapologetically leaving the world curious about his views on dating, fatherhood and modern relationships. So, who better to offer advice?” the press release states. Clearly this is rage-bait designed to get people screaming: “Who better? Anyone who knows how a condom works would be better!” And you know what? It’s worked. Everyone is now roasting Cannon online and giving the podcast free publicity.
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Unpacking the president of Zimbabwe’s psyche felt urgent in 2001 when he remained in violent power. But the play has found fresh relevance today
I am standing outside the hallowed walls of the Market theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg. This is the place where Athol Fugard – surely the greatest of South African playwrights and one of my all-time theatre heroes – staged plays including Hello and Goodbye and The Island. The latter was co-written with fellow theatre greats, actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona. Now it’s the turn of a little-known English writerand his play Breakfast With Mugabe. This is, as they say, one of the days of my life.
In 2001 my script felt like urgent work. Elections loomed in Zimbabwe, and Robert Mugabe was reportedly unleashing terrible violence in his bid to cling to power. To many in the UK “President Bob” had long been a monster. But what, I wondered, created the monster?
We’d like to hear from people who have been inspired by a song, TV show, film or book to make a major change in their life
Whether it’s leaving a loveless relationship after watching Sex and the City or a punk band inspiring you to quit drinking, we’d like to hear about your moments of cultural awakening for a column in the Guardian’s Saturday magazine.
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Is this the best series in England since 2005? To borrow Shenseea’s line, “that’s a no for me” – I’m going for South Africa 2012, as that was two great teams playing for the mace, not to fine teams playing for the trophy – but it was only three matches, and we’ve got two more for this to usurp it.
On Kuldeep, Athers notes that England were always going to bowl – and when did describing it that way replace calling it fielding in the cricketing lexicon –if they won the toss, so Gill could’ve guaranteed having him wheeling away in the fourth innings. I bet England are pleased he’s not there.
More than 100 aid agencies, including Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children and Oxfam, say ‘our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away’
Irish premier Micheál Martin on Tuesday called for the war in Gaza to end, describing the images of starving children as “horrific”. Mr Martin called for a surge in humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza.
In a post on X, he said:
The situation in Gaza is horrific.
The suffering of civilians and the death of innocent children is intolerable.
In the third instalment of cinema’s shiny blue 3D eco fable, James Cameron drags us to the volcanic badlands to meet the ever so angry Ash People
Say what you like about James Cameron, but the man has somehow made three films, umpteen extraterrestrial biomes, and one endlessly grieving smurf wolf pack out of the phrase “don’t touch that tree”. Now, the veteran sci-fi film-maker returns with Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third instalment in cinema’s shiniest blue 3D eco fable. And from a preview of the trailer (to be released before showings of The Fantastic Four: First Steps this weekend) this is going to be yet another jaw-dropping, box-office smashing triumph of elemental, stereoscopic worldbuilding – or possibly a very long and very heavy bioluminescent deforestation story, depending on your point of view.
Where The Way of Water took us out to sea to commune with whales who cry in subtitles, Fire and Ash drags us into the scorched heart of Pandora’s volcanic badlands. Here we meet the Ash People – an angry, soot-streaked Na’vi clan who appear to have spent the last two films building up a healthy mistrust of outsiders. Imagine running into the scariest-looking Great Plains warriors Hollywood ever dreamed up, then dipping them in tar and relocating them to Mordor. They ride screaming banshees through smoke clouds, and if the trailer is anything to go by, they’ve had just about enough of Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully, his adoptive family and the entire colonial project of humanity in general.
Which is why it’s a little strange to see Stephen Lang’s Colonel Miles Quaritch, or at least the reborn recombinant that carries the returning villain’s memories, apparently sporting the same scarlet war paint as these newcomers to the franchise. Have the Ash People been conned by humanity into fighting their Na’vi brethren, or are they just the latest poor fools to fall victim to humankind’s time-honoured tradition of co-opting Indigenous resistance to fight its proxy wars?
Either way, this is a first glimpse of Fire and Ash that in terms of sheer scale, spectacle and blue-on-blue action looks likely to match anything the series has so far delivered. Oona Chaplin’s Varang, leader of the new clan, tells a terrified Kiri (the Na’vi born from the dormant Avatar left behind by Sigourney Weaver’s late Grace Augustine) that her goddess “has no dominion here”, which must be a pretty scary thing to hear when you’ve spent your entire life communing with Eywa-infused floating jellyfish. The Sullys appear to be caught up in their own family conflict, and at one point Sully basically tells Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri to stop trying to solve all their life problems with arrows and screaming.
First and foremost, if Ozzy Osbourne is destined to be remembered for anything, it’ll be his music. Few people can genuinely claim to have invented a whole new genre of something. But Osbourne, along with the other members of Black Sabbath, did exactly that.
However, Ozzy Osbourne isn’t destined to be remembered for just one thing. Because, for three short years two decades ago, for better or worse (and this is genuinely debatable) Ozzy Osbourne also changed television forever. That’s right, it would be rude to remember Ozzy Osbourne without at least acknowledging that he is the man who gave us The Osbournes.
If our overlords can’t handle being joked about on late-night TV, we don’t need new shows. We need new leaders
Last week – just a few days after Stephen Colbert called out his parent company for paying Donald Trump millions of dollars – CBS canceled the Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
Maybe now people will finally stop saying Trump is good for comedy.
Defender praises England’s spirit after victory over Italy
‘People on the outside think we have to win every game’
Lucy Bronze has said England have “nothing to prove” after reaching a third successive major tournament final with a dramatic extra-time win over Italy despite some unconvincing performances.
“Do we have something to prove? Not really,” the Chelsea right-back said. “That’s people from the outside thinking that teams have to win every single game. We’ve done six consecutive semi-finals, three consecutive finals, who else has done that? Nobody. [The current] Spain and Germany are fantastic teams but even they haven’t managed that feat.”
In the UK and the US, ‘direct cremations’ – where no mourners are present and relatives and friends can organise their own ceremonies – are on the rise. Is it time to rethink how we say goodbye our loved ones?
When my father-in-law, Cliff, died in March 2021 after being diagnosed with an aggressive and late-caught cancer, he didn’t leave any funeral plans. Nor was there money squirrelled away to pay for them, even if he had. He was an ardent atheist, so a church service was out of the question, and pandemic restrictions had been limiting guest numbers, so my wife, Hayley, and her siblings decided to opt out of having a traditional funeral. Instead, they chose “direct cremation”, a service that minimises formalities – and, crucially, the cost. There is no funeral service; the coffin is simply brought into the crematorium before it is cremated, after which the ashes are returned to the family.
During an online consultation with “death specialists” Farewill, Hayley was quoted £1,062 for a direct cremation, more than £3,000 cheaper than the current average cost of a basic funeral. The only catch was that no one would attend the cremation, aside from those paid to carry it out. It seemed a cruel choice to some, who could not get their heads around the idea that there would not be a funeral to attend. But Hayley explained why it seemed like the perfect option: they could obtain her father’s ashes without fuss and hold their own, intimate ceremony on the banks of the River Wye, where Cliff had loved to fish.
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