Demi Vollering of FDJ-Suez will start today’s stage 4 despite a heavy crash on the approach to Angers yesterday. The 2023 Tour de France Femmes champion thus avoids the fate of several other high-profile riders in the first three stages: Marlen Reusser (Movistar), Charlotte Kool (Picnic PostNL) and Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) are among eight riders in the peloton who have abandoned already.
With every rattled excuse and deflection, Trump throws his administration into further chaos
Donald Trump’s evident panic over his intimate relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is a case study in damage control gone haywire. If he is trying to keep a scandal clandestine, Trump has instead shined a klieg light on it. His changeable diversions constantly call attention to what he wishes to remain hidden. His prevarications, projections and protests have scrambled his allies and set them against each other. His inability to remain silent on the subject makes him appear as twitchy as a suspect in the glare of a third-degree police interrogation.
The supine Republican Congress abruptly adjourned for the summer to flee the incessant demands for the release of files in the possession of the Department of Justice. But three Republicans broke to vote with Democrats on the House oversight committee to demand the Epstein files. The speaker, Mike Johnson, abandoning his assigned role as a Trump echo chamber, blurted, “This is not a hoax,” directly contradicting Trump. Johnson’s plain statement prompted widespread jaw dropping.
PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox; Weta Workshop/Private Division This high-fantasy life simulator is brimming with Hobbit-holes but lacks the Tolkienian depth to maintain your interest
After several hours toiling in the pastoral fields of Hobbiton, it finally started to sink in why two generations of Bagginses felt compelled to leave in search of dangerous adventure. Sure, the Shire has a hazy comfort to it, and there’s plenty of unique food to gorge on and friendly faces to meet. But once the saccharine novelty begins to wear off, this bucolic wonderland is actually a fairly dull place to live.
Tales of the Shire is set in the Third Age of Middle-earth, years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. As such, there are no Nazgûls or Uruk-hai – instead the “action” centres on the quaint town of Bywater, whose most pressing issue is its municipal status. Here, you play as a recent transplant from the nearby hamlet of Bree, who gets swept up in the process of turning the town into an official village by building infrastructure and befriending locals one odd job and home-cooked meal at a time.
I am limited to one pan and a burner when I camp. What would chefs recommend making? Maxwell, by email
Happy campers need supplies, and Ryan Cole, executive chef and co-owner of Salsify at The Roundhouse in Camps Bay, South Africa, doesn’t mess about. “We have three square boxes: one dedicated to dry goods, one to oil, salt, pepper and utensils, and the third to camping toiletries; we also have a dual compartment fridge-freezer.”
Whatever your set-up, a considered mobile store-cupboard of spices, stock cubes, good oil, grains, pasta, tins of coconut milk and the like will really come into its own. Got tinned tomatoes? Make shakshuka for a campside breakfast. “We always take a lightly spiced onion relish and add that to tinned tomatoes for the base,” Cole says. Otherwise, he’ll use long-life or nut milk to whip up some breakfast pancakes: “That’s super-simple.”
£35m deal for Bologna’s Ndoye done subject to medical
Nottingham Forest are interested in signing the Fulham winger Adama Traoré. If a deal can be done for the 29-year-old it would see him reunite with Nuno Espírito Santo, who he worked under at Wolves.
After selling Anthony Elanga and Ramón Sosa, Forest have been eager to recruit new wingers. A club-record deal was agreed for Bologna’s Dan Ndoye on Monday, with the Switzerland international set to join this week after a medical is completed. Personal terms are not thought to be an issue for Ndoye, who turned down the chance of moving to Serie A champions Napoli in favour of the Premier League.
He inspired their band name and played on Born to Run but left before it turned his bandmates into superstars. As the album turns 50, does the musician – who went on to tour with Sting and Eric Clapton – have any regrets?
It was a late spring night in 1971 and David Sancious had walked from his home on E Street in Belmar, New Jersey to the Upstage club in Asbury Park. He was 17 and he had been playing piano and guitar with local bands for four years. “I had walked to the Upstage because I wanted to play,” he says, “and as I’m coming in I see Garry Tallent, a bass player who I already knew from other gigs.” Tallent was with a fellow New Jersey musician, a 21-year-old guitarist called Bruce Springsteen, “the local guitar hero”, says Sancious, “very famous locally.” Springsteen told Sancious he was having a jam session and invited him to play. “I said: ‘Absolutely.’”
The band played until 5am. As they were walking out of the club, Springsteen told Sancious he was breaking up his current band Steel Mill to form a new one: would he be interested in joining? Sancious said yes. He went on to record with Springsteen on his first three albums, but left the group before Born to Run transformed Springsteen and his bandmates into superstars. As that album approaches its 50th anniversary next month, I have wondered whether Sancious regrets walking away.
The founding manager of rock band Evanescence claims he was fired after reporting that Tait assaulted him. An Evanescence co-founder denies he was fired for that reason
Two more men have come forward to accuse Christian rock superstar and Maga firebrand Michael Tait of drugging and sexually assaulting them – including Jason Jones, the founding manager of the American hard-rock band Evanescence.
Jones said he was fired from the band – which had ties to Tait – for speaking out about his alleged assault. Jones said the firing, which he claimed happened in 1999, cut him out of Evanescence’s massive success beginning in 2003.
The Black Sabbath singer’s hearse will travel along Broad Street to Black Sabbath Bridge in his home city on Wednesday
Ozzy Osbourne’s funeral cortege is to pass through his home city of Birmingham on Wednesday.
The hearse will travel along Broad Street to Black Sabbath Bridge and the Black Sabbath bench – the sites of thousands of messages, floral tributes and vigils following the metal star’s death last week at the age of 76 – at 1pm BST.
Cricket to return in LA Games after 128-year absence
Pakistan, New Zealand not happy with selection process
Team GB will be guaranteed a place in the men’s cricket tournament at LA 2028 after the International Cricket Council opted to use the regional qualifying format favoured by the Olympic movement.
The controversial decision is understood to have sparked a backlash from Pakistan and New Zealand, who are set to miss out on cricket’s return to the Olympics after 128 years, with India and Australia to be awarded spots from Asia and Oceania respectively based on the ICC rankings. The IOC favour regional qualifying to ensure all parts of the world are represented at the Games so it is a truly global event.
Developing snorkelling trails is part of my job, but I never tire of the teeming underwater life and seeing some of the least crowded parts of Britain’s coast
People always ask me: isn’t it too cold to snorkel in Scotland? And I reply that while it’s obviously much cooler than it would be in Spain, the sea does warm up from May, when the temperature rises from about 9C to as high as 12-15C by August and September.
I go snorkelling in Scotland all year round. I work for the Scottish Wildlife Trust, developing snorkelling trails on the Scottish coast and creating guides to the places you can go to enjoy snorkelling in a particular area. But even so, the Wildlife Trust always recommends wearing a wetsuit.
As Trump moves to strip over 1 million immigrants of legal status, factories grapple with slowdowns, say employees
Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration is piling pressure on US factories, according to employees and union leaders, as veteran workers from overseas are forced to leave their jobs.
As economists warn the administration’s full-scale deportation ambitions could ultimately cost millions of jobs, workers at two sites – in Michigan and Kentucky – told the Guardian that industrial giants are grappling with labor shortages.
Elected officials and law enforcement are starting to take threats more seriously in wake of political assassinations
“Tell Eric Swalwell that we are coming and that we are going to handle everyone. We are going to hurt everyone. We are coming to hurt them.”
The staff at representative Swalwell’s California district office had heard the man’s voice before. He had called twice in previous weeks to leave revolting, racist threats against the Democratic congressman and his wife in voicemails, according to an FBI criminal complaint released on Monday.
Unusual illustration, to be sold by Cheffins, was part of surrealist artist’s abandoned Arabian Nights project
It is not a painting that screams it is a masterpiece by Salvador Dalí to the untrained eye.
So when the unusual picture went up for auction in a house clearance sale in Cambridge two years ago, it attracted only two bidders – and sold for £150.
Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, John Brewin and Mark Langdon as Liverpool look to sign Alexander Isak, while the panel answer your questions from the pre-season mailbag
On the podcast today: Luis Díaz out, Alexander Isak possibly in at Liverpool. They are close to ‘winning’ the window, but will that make them favourites to win some of the actual silverware on offer this season?
The Vodafone chief executive has been asked how she sleeps at night by one of the 62 former store owners involved in a £120m legal action that claims the mobile operator “unjustly enriched” itself at their expense.
Donna Watton, one of the group of 62 franchisees that have taken their claim to the high court, challenged Margherita Della Valle at Vodafone’s annual general meeting on Tuesday.
Digital distribution platforms Steam and itch.io have tightened their rules about adult content – under pressure from payment processors. Why has this happened and where will it lead?
In the last two weeks, thousands of “adult only” and “not safe for work” games have disappeared from Steam and itch.io – two of the most prominent distribution platforms for PC video games – as they scrambled to comply with stricter rules mandated by payment processors such as MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal.
These rules were established after a campaign by the organisation Collective Shout, which urged payment processors to stop facilitating payments to platforms hosting “rape, incest and child sexual abuse-themed games”. But the new rules have affected a far broader range of games – including some award-winning titles.
Within weeks, 400 colleagues joined our organization. We say: it is not too late to save lives. End the genocide now
The world has stood by as Israel has murdered tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, wounded more than double that number, buried countless more under the rubble and devastated civilian infrastructure. The territory’s survivors, displaced repeatedly by the Israeli military, are in a state of enforced starvation and utter precarity. Despite Israel’s ban on international journalists, witnesses and victims are livestreaming unbearable images and videos of emaciated children and adults shot while desperately seeking aid. Israeli officials have proposed the construction of what would be concentration camps and the deportation of surviving Palestinians.
Motivated by our deep scholarly and ethical engagement with political violence and mass atrocity, including the Nazi genocide of Jewish people, we helped found the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network in April. More than 400 scholars of genocide and Holocaust studies from two dozen countries joined within weeks of its launch. The rapid growth of the group testifies to the urgency of this moment. Today, along with hundreds of humanitarian organizations, dozens of governments, and millions of protesting students and citizens across the globe, we call for immediate concrete measures to prevent further atrocity crimes and to protect civilians.
She’s a teenager and I’m most definitely not. But I’m not sure I’m ready to be Old Zoe
It’s weird that it should happen for the first time so late in life, but next week I’m going on holiday with someone else called Zoe. I wasn’t particularly worried about it, since it’s generally easy enough to distinguish who is meant by the context, even when two people are the same age and do exactly the same things, as you will know if your name is Ben.
In this case, the other Zoe is a teenager, so it will immediately be obvious who’s who, as our activities will scarcely overlap. Any Zoe who has made a serious error – lost someone else’s passport, backed into a tree – will be me and any Zoe who has forgotten her swimming costume or wants to go paddleboarding will be her.
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In this stop-motion animation from the director of My Life As a Courgette, our heroes stan up to deforestation with likable courage
Claude Barras is the Swiss animator whose 2016 debut My Life As a Courgette was a wonderfully tender study of childhood which won hearts (and an Oscar nomination). His followup is a likable, admirably intentioned if slightly more predictable entertainment, in which the good guys and the bad guys are more obvious. Again it is a stop-motion animation, now set in Borneo’s rainforest, threatened by commercial exploitation and destruction.
Kéria (voiced by Babette De Coster) is a teenage girl living on the edge of this rich and beautiful wilderness, with her widower dad (Benoît Poelvoorde), who is glumly employed by one of the palm-oil plantations that is eroding it. Kéria is partly of indigenous Penan heritage, and is irritated when her Penan cousin Selaï (Martin Verset) comes to stay after his home village is wiped out. Together they get lost in the forest with a baby orangutan called Oshi which Kéria and her dad rescued when the evil planters shot its mother. Their adventures take them to the truth about Kéria’s dad and her late mother, to her Penan heritage and to a fateful confrontation with the plantation officials, who are swaggering, gun-toting bullies.
Uber’s rival taxi operators will not have to pay 20% VAT on their profits outside London after the UK supreme court ruled that private-hire operators do not enter into a contract with passengers.
Uber had brought the case after a 2021 decision by the supreme court that its drivers were workers, which had an impact on Uber’s tax and other obligations.
Touring party enjoy themselves on and off the field, and despite series win the ebb and flow can continue to the end
What a richly rewarding few weeks it has been for the British & Irish Lions. Since their training camp in Portugal and pre-departure week in Ireland they have crisscrossed Australia and sampled the contrasting delights of Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Melbourne. Winning the series was the squad’s primary objective but they have been actively encouraged to enjoy their time on tour, too.
A Lions expedition is not just about what happens on the field. Henry Pollock, Duhan van der Merwe and Josh van der Flier have been to the Great Barrier Reef while Pierre Schoeman has been writing poetry. Others have headed to the golf course or strolled the beaches of Bondi and Coogee with their families. The squad’s eight games in Australia to date have whizzed past but the players will still return home with plenty of non‑rugby memories.
Airdrops are not enough to avert the humanitarian catastrophe, says the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative
The UN’s World Food Programme has warned that the disaster unfolding in Gaza is reminiscent of last century’s famines seen in Ethiopia and Biafra in Nigeria.
WFP emergency director Ross Smith told reporters in Geneva:
This is unlike anything we have seen in this century. It reminds us of previous disasters in Ethiopia or Biafra in the past century.
One England player who will not be on the bus today is Jess Carter, who has travelled back to the United States for her Gotham FC’s pre-season. Hopefully the defender will feel the love across the pond though.
After the player was subjected to vile racist abuse after England’s quarter-final win against Sweden, she decided to take a step back from social media. Sarina Wiegman opted to drop her for the semi-finals but she came back in the side against Spain and put in a commanding performance for 120 minutes.
The most heartwarming sight was the joy she was clearly feeling after putting a difficult two weeks behind her to be part of a rearguard that conceded only once against the world champions as the game ended 1-1 after extra time. Asked about having a giggle with the head coach, Sarina Wiegman, after the game she said: ‘That is normally me. Throughout this tournament I’ve not felt that. I’ve been really quite sad and disappointed at the fact that I’ve not been the relaxed Jess I know.
‘I’m someone that is ‘what will be will be’. We go out there, give our all, and either it’ll be enough or it won’t. That’s not how I’ve played this tournament until I got to this final where I thought: ‘I’m going to give it my all.’ If we lose, we lose, and if we win, great. In extra time Sarina was giving me a lot of information and we realised she just said a lot of words, and it was cool, like, we got this, and she’s been great.’
At the start of the Mall, just before the Lionesses reach Buckingham Palace, thousands of fans have gathered all adorned with the flag of England and shirts of their favourite players. It also looks like the former Lioness Jill Scott is setting the scene on top of the bus.
The FA are putting on quite the performance for us while we wait for the team to come out – the England mascot is dancing to some classics and really energising the crowd!
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