Playing on home soil and featuring a line-up loaded with players that are key cogs for some of the world’s biggest clubs, it’s not an unfair expectation that the Matildas win this game. Add to that that, under interim coach Tom Sermanni, the Australians secured back-to-back wins over the Taegeuk Warriors last April and, indeed, it will be a letdown if they don’t.
The Koreans, however, handily represent the best opposition that the Matildas have faced this tournament. Indeed, it’s arguable that the Matildas have only played one opponent of a greater quality, England last October, since that two-game series.
Guardiola joked he will go on holiday when serving his touchline ban. He said: “I will tell you something - we have all the records in this country, all of them, despite everything. We have the record of the manager with the most yellow cards. I want all records and now I have it, two-game ban now and I will go on holidays the next two games.”
Pep Guardiola was booked for a sixth time this season during Manchester City’s match against Newcastle yesterday. It means he is now facing a two-game touchline ban. The ban applies to Premier League and FA Cup matches but not domestic finals, meaning he will be in the dugout when City face Arsenal in the Carabao Cup final later this month.
Famous for combining true crime and political scandals into songs – and antagonising Silvio Berlusconi – Franco Trincale keeps the tradition alive in his nursing home
When Franco Trincale was a barber boy, he used to sing Sicilian songs in breaks between customers, his boss strumming the guitar.
Back then, he could never have imagined that he would grow up to become Italy’s last great cantastorie, a now dying tradition of wandering musicians who entertain audiences by recounting the news in song-form. And he could not have predicted he would still be performing at 90 – in a nursing home.
Decision follows release of Epstein files that have disgraced her father, the former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor
Princess Eugenie has stepped down as patron of the UK charity AntiSlavery International, the world’s oldest human rights organisation.
The decision follows the release by the US Department of Justice of millions of documents and emails relating to Jeffrey Epstein’s role in sexual abuse and trafficking women around the world, which have disgraced her father, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
As ‘political depression’ enters public discourse, therapists are encouraging people to engage with their communities
When Rebecca McFaul woke up in her small farmhouse in Logan, Utah, on a cold January day, she felt the same way she’d been feeling for months: “A certain kind of terror and horror at it all.” Most of her family lives in Minnesota, and for weeks, she’d watched from afar as families were taken by agents, activists were shot and tear gas hung in the air.
A music professor at Utah State University, she’d spent the day with her students, but struggled to focus. Then she came home and read more bad news, this time, a piece in the newspaper about two Maga influencers railing against the dangers of compassion in response to the detainment of 5-year-old Liam Ramos in Minneapolis. “It was such a betrayal on every level,” McFaul said. “Of sisterhood, of motherhood, of decency.”
From Gates to Musk and Altman, today’s ultra-rich steer AI and tech, raising questions about who decides the future
When Bill Gates became the first modern IT mogul to reach the apex of wealth and power in 1992, the world was a very different place. Gates joined the top 10 on Forbes magazine’s billionaires list alongside Japanese, German, Canadian, South Korean and Swedish billionaires, including those with family fortunes from Britain and America. A broad mix of industries was on the list: Retail and media, property management and packaging, an investment firm and a couple of industrial conglomerates. Their fortunes almost added up to $100bn – equivalent to about 0.4% of the US’s GDP that year.
The oligarchy has changed drastically since then. Bernard Arnault, of French luxury group LVMH, Amancio Ortega, the Spanish clothing mogul, and Warren Buffett, the US investor, were the only old-school billionaires among the top 10 in 2025. The rest largely made their money from high-tech: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer and Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The top 10 amassed over $16trn, which is about 8% of US GDP.
The Bridgerton star has told of her horror at being approached by a fan who only wanted to talk about her body. Surely it’s time we focused on something else
Nicola Coughlan is sick of the subject of “body positivity”, and thank God, because so am I.“The thing I say sometimes that pisses people off is I have no interest in body positivity,” she said in a recent interview. Like Coughlan and no doubt many, many other women, I’m sick of talking about it, thinking about it, reading about it, all of it (I do recognise a certain irony in my writing about it, but hear me out). In the same interview, Coughlan recounted an encounter with a fan: “I remember this really drunk girl once talking to me in a bathroom being like, ‘I loved [Bridgerton] because of your body’ and started talking about my body, and I was like, ‘I want to die. I hate this so much.’”
She continued: “It’s really hard when you work on something for months and months of your life, you don’t see your family, you really dedicate yourself and then it comes down to what you look like – it’s so fucking boring.”
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author of Female, Nude
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.
As the Oscar-winning Coen brothers classic reaches its three decade anniversary, stars of the film discuss the stories behind its production
William H Macy was originally slated for the modest role of a detective in Fargo. Then the film’s directors, Joel and Ethan Coen, asked if he would like to read for the lead part of Jerry Lundegaard. “I said: ‘Boy, do I!’,” recalls Macy. He memorised the script that night and impressed the Coens but needed to seal the deal.
Macy heard the pair were in New York, got his “jolly ass” on a plane and deployed some Coen-esque dark humour. “I said, I’m worried you’re gonna screw up your movie by casting someone else. I knew Ethan had just gotten a little puppy and I said: ‘Man, you don’t give me this role, I’m gonna shoot your dog.’”
Critics say brash, bombastic Fox News host out of his depth to guide US military through murky new Middle East conflict
Brash and bellicose, he sounded more like a cartoon bully than a sombre statesman. “Death and destruction from the sky all day long,” Pete Hegseth, wearing a red, white and and blue tie and pocket square, bragged to reporters at the Pentagon near Washington. “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”
Hegseth, 45, a former Fox News TV host who now commands the world’s most powerful military, has this week become the face of Donald Trump’s war in Iran. That has set off for alarm bells for critics who warn that the Secretary of Defense – pointedly rebranded “Secretary of War” – has rapidly transformed the Pentagon into the staging ground for an ideological and religious crusade.
Most residents of Canadian province wanted change for years; Trump’s unneighbourly rhetoric helped seal the deal
Since 1918, the clocks in Creston, a town in eastern British Columbia, ran an hour ahead of nearby communities for half the year. For the other six months, they slipped back into sync. Not because they town changed them but because its neighbours changed back and forth from daylight saving time.
Creston was an outlier: a community that effectively created its own time zone. But when residents in most parts of the province shift their clocks forward on Sunday, they will be doing it for the last time – and permanently joining Creston for the first time in nearly 70 years.
The closing of a cluster of leading creative venues has led to dismay and intensified fears the hubs that fostered Glasgow’s celebrated arts scene are disappearing
By the time Daisy Mulholland arrived, the locks had already been changed. The Glaswegian artist, had been organising the launch event for her new art shop at the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) when she got an email telling her the Sauchiehall Street venue – and cornerstone of the city’s art scene since it was founded as the Third Eye Centre in 1974 – was closing with immediate effect.
“The event was the following day: we had 250 tickets sold, we’d done so many rehearsals, and inside there were lighting rigs, performers’ equipment, shop stock. It was truly heartbreaking,” she says.
As a new book of his lyrics, poems and selected musings is published, the White Stripes’ singer, songwriter and general guitar hero reflects on poetry, politics and why writing a song is like reupholstering a chair
On the jacket of Jack White: Collected Lyrics & Selected Writing Volume 1, the poet and critic Hanif Abdurraqib writes: “I wish I read more people who talked about Jack White as a writer of lyrics.” He makes a good point. White is celebrated as a singer, guitarist, producer and generator of indelible riffs but not so much as a wordsmith. His new book, edited by official archivist Ben Blackwell, sets the record straight. Following 2023’s The White Stripes Complete Lyrics 1997-2007, it covers every song White has written outside that band, along with several poems, Instagram ruminations and scans from his notebooks.
White, 50, thinks fast and talks fast. He’s sitting in the Nashville headquarters of Third Man, a record label, recording studio, pressing plant, publishing house, shop and ever-expanding vessel for White’s vision of what is worth valuing and preserving in American culture. He’s a kind of historian of American vernacular, drawn to the relationship between pop and the avant garde, between maverick auteurs and the communal imagination. His own work proves that defiant eccentricity is no obstacle to stadium shows and Bond themes, and that being wildly prolific hasn’t diminished his mystique. With this book, he turns his curatorial eye on himself.
There is no tokenism in Ingolstadt hiring a female manager, and the German club’s pioneer recognises the power of her presence in the game
Home is indeed where the heart is. On Friday Sabrina Wittmann signed a new deal to stay at FC Ingolstadt, continuing a partnership whose roots go back nearly two decades but which became of wider public interest when the third-tier club appointed her as the first female coach of a German professional football team in summer 2024.
There is no tokenism in the club’s choice, underlined not only by the contract extension but by the 34-year-old’s recent completion of her coaching pro licence, awarded to her just over a month ago. “I’ll always be the first woman in Germany coaching a professional men’s team,” Wittmann says, “but I want to be seen as a coach.
Tech firms condemned for lack of controls with Meta AI and Gemini even offering advice on how to bypass UK gambling and addiction checks
AI chatbots are recommending illegal online casinos to vulnerable social media users, putting them at increased risk of fraud, addiction and even suicide.
Analysis of five AI products, owned by some of the world’s largest tech companies, found that all could easily be prompted to list the “best” unlicensed casinos and offer tips on how to use them.
Former striker recounts experiences of racism at Atlético Madrid but says he ‘didn’t have it as bad’ as Vinícius Júnior
The sad thing for Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink is that the cycle of racism feels endless. It was prevalent in football before his playing days and throughout his career as a prolific striker, and it has persisted since he retired in 2008.
Football’s racism problem has been thrust back into the spotlight in recent weeks after Vinícius Júnior accused Gianluca Prestianni of racially abusing him in Real Madrid’s Champions League tie with Benfica, and four Premier League players were racially abused on social media across a single weekend, prompting police investigations.
The Philomena Cunk star’s life was changed by the Fall and she knows a Spitting Image song inside out. But which haunting banger does she say is the best ever?
The first song I fell in love with
Baggy Trousers by Madness. I remember thinking it was the most brilliant thing I’d ever heard, partly because there was a man in huge trousers suspended from the ceiling playing a saxophone on Top of the Pops. That probably helped. It was hilarious!
The first single I bought
The Smurfs? I think I just asked for it rather than went out and bought it myself because I was three. Apparently I was mesmerised by both Kate Bush and the Smurfs, so I had great taste in music. The first single I bought with my own pocket money was probably I Should Be So Lucky, because I hadn’t become acquainted with the Fall yet.
Zelenskyy cites Ukraine expertise with ‘Shahed’ drones; deaths and casualties rise from Russian attack on Kharkiv. What we know on day 1,474
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday he had spoken to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the situation in Iran and the Middle East and restated Kyiv’s offer to help deal with Iranian drones. “Ukraine has been fighting against (Iranian-designed) ‘Shaheds’ for years, and everyone acknowledges that no other country in the world has such experience,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram of his conversation. “We are ready to help and expect that our people will also receive the necessary support.”
Ukrainian manufacturers of cheap interceptor drones designed to knock out enemy unmanned aerial vehicles say they have the capacity to export in large volumes, amid inquiries from the US and Middle East prompted by the Iran war. Hundreds of drones based on Iran’s Shahed model and now made in Russia fill Ukraine’s skies during frequent attacks, and many are downed by air defences including western missiles, fighter jets, truck-mounted guns and interceptor drones.
Reported deaths and casualties from a Russian missile strike on a five-storey residential building in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv have risen to at least 10 people, including two children, and 16 others wounded, officials said. Zelenskyy condemned Saturday’s attack and called for an international response. He said Russia struck Ukraine overnight with 29 missiles and 480 drones, targeting energy facilities in Kyiv and other central regions, with damage reported in at least seven other locations.
Police in Sweden have seized a false-flagged cargo ship off its southern coast believed to belong to Russia’s shadow fleet and suspected of transporting stolen Ukrainian grain, authorities said Saturday. The 96-metre (315-foot) Caffa left Casablanca in Morocco on 24 February and was headed for St Petersburg when armed Swedish police boarded it on Friday off the southern town of Trelleborg. “The vessel is on the Ukraine sanctions list. Information indicates that it has essentially been used to transport grain that is stolen, as we understand it, from Ukraine,” the coast guard’s acting head of operations, Daniel Stenling, told a press conference.
Questions about the America’s weapons stockpiles have grown as the US campaign against Iran escalates, with many Democratic lawmakers arguing that Trump is waging a “war of choice.” Missile defence systems are under the most strain, according to experts, with Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, interceptors in high demand in Ukraine and Israel, respectively. “I’m not particularly worried about us actually running out during this conflict,” said Ryan Brobst, a scholar focused on US defense strategy at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies. “It’s about deterring China and Russia the day after this conflict is over.”
The humiliation in Rome means it is now three defeats in a row for England, each more soul-destroying than the last
The haunted look writ large across the face of Maro Itoje said it all. England had burst into the Italy half, deep into the 80th minute, and Ollie Chessum was on the gallop, desperately trying to salvage something from the wreckage. Closer and closer they got before the shrill of the referee’s whistle confirmed England’s worst nightmare. Italy were about to put the seal on a first ever win in the fixture in 33 attempts and it was dawning on Itoje that he was powerless to stop it.
The final whistle blew and England players were, to a man, stunned. Shellshocked. Marcus Smith was on his haunches, Chandler Cunningham-South staring into the abyss. The camera panned to Tom Curry, ruled out after an injury in the warm-up, as he slumped on the bench wearing a look of despair. England in ruins. The empire that Steve Borthwick had built reduced to rubble. When responses to defeat are promised and repeatedly fail to materialise, the logical next step is regime change.
An inflation shock triggered by the US-Israel attack on Iran could wreck a fragile global economic recovery that had been expected to gain momentum this year.
With oil and gas prices spiking, despite a pledge from Donald Trump to protect tankers making their way through the crucial strait of Hormuz shipping chokepoint, central bankers and economists have warned that a prolonged conflict could increase retail prices around the world and force them to rip up growth forecasts for this year.
Wang Yi cautioned against a return to the ‘law of the jungle’ but stopped short of criticising Trump directly
War in the Middle East “should never have happened”, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has declared, even as he struck a more conciliatory tone with the US ahead of a highly anticipated visit by Donald Trump.
Regime change, a key stated aim of the US president as the US and Israel continue to attack Iran, “will find no popular support”, Wang said on Sunday. “A strong fist does not mean strong reason. The world cannot return to the law of the jungle,” he added.
Carlo Soracchi admits exploiting empathy of woman who had abusive father by claiming his father abused his sister
An undercover police officer told “grotesque and cruel” lies while emotionally manipulating two women he had deceived into long-term sexual relationships, the spycops public inquiry has heard.
Carlo Soracchi admitted he sought to elicit the empathy of one of the women by claiming that his sister had been abused by his father. He also told her that his father had died when he was actually alive.
On a tight budget, we stayed in a bothy, climbed a mountain, looked for Nessie and – best of all – made memories that money can’t buy
‘There! There – I can see it!” The cries of my four-year-old echoed around the ruins of 13th-century Urquhart Castle, causing a group of US tourists to come running over to the corbelled bartizans (overhanging turrets) where we stood. “It’s Nessie, I saw her,” he insisted, pointing at the ripples spinning out from the back of a sightseeing vessel on Loch Ness.
This was day four of a budget, week-long Scotland adventure for the two of us, and we were spending the day in Drumnadrochit, on the shores of the country’s most famous body of water, looking for the fabled monster.
Plastic, textiles, e-waste and more end up at the vast Dandora site, where waste pickers spend all hours sifting through toxic debris looking for recyclables
On my journey documenting environmental stories in Kenya, I attended the Africa Climate Summit in 2023. It ignited a deeper exploration into the lives of waste pickers, revealing a glaring omission in global recycling narratives: the invisibility of these essential workers.
Living and working in Nairobi, I immersed myself in Dandora, the largest dump in Kenya, spanning more than 12 hectares (30 acres) near the Nairobi River and receiving an estimated 2,000 tonnes of industrial and domestic waste daily. For months I witnessed first-hand how waste is devastating local ecosystems and human lives. Kenya’s waste streams are now overwhelmed by single-use plastics from companies shifting the burden on to informal workers.
Pre-sorting has reduced the amount of recylables in the waste brought by truck to Dandora
Rogue operators draw in customers by advertising low prices, but when the work is done they invoice 10 times that sum
Late on a Sunday night, you put your key into the front door and it snaps when you turn it. Unable to get in, you search online for an emergency locksmith and find one advertising a willingness to do the job for £69. You call it out.
When the locksmith arrives, they ask no questions, drills through the lock within minutes and replaces the fixture. You are then given a bill for more than £700 with an invoice detailing a breakdown of the costs – all in excess of the original quote.
Connexion
