“A draw is like kissing your sister,” Edward J Erdelatz said to the New York Times in 1954. Erdelatz was the United States Navy’s head football coach and his side had just drawn 0-0 against Duke University. “No one asked the mild spoken navy coach to explain,” the report adds. Well, quite. But sister or not, everyone knew what he meant.
At least 24 people have died amid torrential rains and dozens of people at an all-girls summer camp are among those still missing
The Associated Press reports on the rescue operation by Texas Game Wardens at Camp Mystic on Friday afternoon and evacuated campers who had sheltered on higher ground.
Elinor Lester, 13, said she was evacuated with her cabinmates by helicopter after wading through floodwaters. She recalled startling awake around 1.30 am as thunder crackled and water pelted the cabin windows.
Lester was among the older girls housed on elevated ground known as Senior Hill. Cabins housing the younger campers, who can start attending at age eight, are situated along the riverbanks and were the first to flood, she said.
Campers in lower cabins sought shelter up the hill. By morning, they had no food, power or running water, she said. When rescuers arrived, Lester said they tied a rope for the girls to hold as they walked across a bridge with floodwaters whipping up around their calves and knees.
“The camp was completely destroyed,” she said. “It was really scary. Everyone I know personally is accounted for, but there are people missing that I know of and we don’t know where they are.”
Her mother, Elizabeth Lester, said her son was nearby at Camp La Junta and also escaped. A counsellor there woke up to find water rising in the cabin, opened a window and helped the boys swim out. Camp La Junta and another camp on the river, Camp Waldemar, said in Instagram posts that all campers and staff there were safe.
Elizabeth Lester sobbed when she finally saw her daughter, who was clutching a small teddy bear and a book.
“My kids are safe, but knowing others are still missing is just eating me alive,” she said.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the top local elected official, said at a news briefing on the disaster hours earlier:
Everybody is doing everything in their power to get these kids out.
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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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 over the globe to say goodbye.
Jota’s widow, Rute Cardoso, who 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, former teammates Jordan Henderson and James Milner, and Manchester City’s Rúben Dias are all 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.
This is a week that will be forever remembered for the loss of Diogo Jota.
Suzanne Wrack sets the scene in Zurich, through the eyes of the captain and coach of the Lionesses.
“The team has been a bit in transition, of course,” the manager, Sarina Wiegman, said, “and we absolutely cherish what we have done before, and we never forget it, and those are lifetime experiences for us and for our families and also for the fans. But you have to move on and you have to be on top. Things are changing very quickly, so we have to, too. We came together in February and we said: ‘It’s a new challenge.’ The approach was there anyway, but we called it the New England.”
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 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.
Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey breathe new life into the near-extinct franchise, while Channel 4 steps up to showcase the horror inflicted on Palestinian medics. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews
Those appalled by Israel’s actions in Gaza, and the kind ofmedia frenzy prompted by Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury appearance, are finding their voice
If you are in the business of anointing monsters, you can see why your eyes would light up at a punk act called Bob Vylan. Until last weekend, sure, it might have been a tough sell to proclaim them as an avatar for Britain’s revolting youth: prominent though they might be on the UK’s punk scene, they had about about 220,000 monthly listeners on Spotify – a mere 1,000,000 away from a place in the top 10,000. But then, at Glastonbury, they made the most powerful possible case for broad media attention: they said something controversial about Israel’s assault on Gaza, and opened up a chance to have a go at the BBC.
And so the following morning, on the front page of the Mail on Sunday: “NOW ARREST PUNK BAND WHO LED ‘DEATH TO ISRAELIS’ CHANTS AT GLASTONBURY.” Pascal Robinson-Foster, aka Bobby Vylan, had started a round of “antisemitic chanting” that was broadcast live on the corporation’s coverage of the festival, the story explained. Keir Starmer called it “appalling hate speech”. The calls for the band members’ arrest were quickly picked up, and before long the Conservatives were suggesting that the BBC should be prosecuted as well. On Monday, the story splashed in the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express.
Archie Bland is the editor of the Guardian’s First Edition newsletter
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.
Elon Musk is obsessive about the design of his supercars, right down to the disappearing door handles. But a series of shocking incidents – from drivers trapped in burning vehicles to dramatic stops on the highway – have led to questions about the safety of the brand. Why won’t Tesla give any answers?
It was a Monday afternoon in June 2023 when Rita Meier, 45, joined us for a video call. Meier told us about the last time she said goodbye to her husband, Stefan, five years earlier. He had been leaving their home near Lake Constance, Germany, heading for a trade fair in Milan.
Meier recalled how he hesitated between taking his Tesla Model S or her BMW. He had never driven the Tesla that far before. He checked the route for charging stations along the way and ultimately decided to try it. Rita had a bad feeling. She stayed home with their three children, the youngest less than a year old.
MPs, aides and other party figures reflect on what went wrong and how they could still turn things around
In a stiflingly hot room at a health centre in East London, as he announced the government’s 10-year plan for the NHS on Thursday, Keir Starmer was confronted with a brutal assessment of his first year in power.
“You’ve U-turned on your reforms, your MPs don’t trust you, and markets worry that you’ve lost resolve on fiscal discipline. It’s the epitome, isn’t it, of sticking-plaster politics and chaos that you promised voters you would end?” a television journalist asked.
I thought the cartoonish thwack in the face from the garden tool was a once-in-a-lifetime act of stupidity. How wrong I was
On a weekend afternoon, with the temperature nudging 30C, my wife and I take the dog for a walk. Neither of us wants to go, so we go together, and agree to keep it short.
“Oh no,” my wife says when we get to the park. I look across the open expanse and see what she sees.
A Japanese-style take on the humble omelette, served with sushi rice, spicy mayo and quick pickles on the side
We eat a lot of omelettes in our house: they’re the perfect solution for an impromptu dinner, and they’re also endlessly customisable, so we never get bored with them. You can add butter, beat the eggs in the pan and roll to make it French, add spices, coriander and onion to make it Indian, or mirin and soy, as in today’s dish, for a trip to Japan. You could add any condiment or pickle from mayonnaise to ketchup and chilli oil to chimichurri, and bolster the meal with bread or rice. Today’s recipe is merely one of many wonderful scenic routes on which to take your omelette.
Fish or bird ownership showed no significant link to slower cognitive decline in study with implications for ageing societies
As global population ages and dementia rates climb, scientists may have found an unexpected ally in the fight against cognitive decline.
Cats and dogs may be exercising more than just your patience: they could be keeping parts of your brain ticking over too. In a potential breakthrough for preventive health, researchers have found that owning a four-pawed friend is linked to slower cognitive decline by potentially preserving specific brain functions as we grow older.
As the president’s attacks are met with a distinct lack of resistance, critics warn that freedom of the press is eroding in plain sight
Bernie Sanders, the venerable democratic socialist senator from Vermont, was not in a mood to pull punches.
“Trump is undermining our democracy and rapidly moving us towards authoritarianism, and the billionaires who care more about their stock portfolios than our democracy are helping him do it,” he fumed in a statement last week.
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