Watch Live: NASA names 4 astronauts for next Artemis mission

NASA's Artemis III astronauts plan to carry out rendezvous and docking procedures with commercial moon landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin.

DOJ finds EEOC violated law by pressuring employers to make race-based decisions

The Justice Department accused the EEOC of violating civil rights laws by issuing guidelines that effectively pressured employers to make race-based considerations in hiring and promotions.

Jeffrey Epstein's former assistant Lesley Groff interviewed by House panel

Groff worked for Epstein for nearly 20 years, and her name appears more than 150,000 times in the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice.

Social Security's insolvency date is projected for end of 2032

The report offers a fresh look at the finances of a program that provides benefits to more than 70 million Americans.

Home sales surged in May to the highest level since December

Home sales rebounded in May as mortgage rates dropped back a bit in April, but prices are still rising.

Middle East crisis live: Lebanese officials says Israeli strikes on Tyre have killed at least eight people

IDF earlier issued urgent evacuation order in Lebanon’s fifth biggest city

• Israel and Iran step back from renewed conflict after Trump calls for halt

• Complex relationship between Trump and Netanyahu continues to undermine Middle East ceasefire

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are close allies with a deeply complicated and often strained relationship that has shown signs of fracturing over recent days. The Guardian’s senior international correspondent, Julian Borger, has looked into how the two leader’s diverging political priorities are undermining ceasefire negotiations. Here is an extract from his analysis piece:

Trump and Netanyahu went to war together against Iran on 28 February but fell out of step within days, as soon as it was clear that the quick victory and regime change promised by the Israelis was unlikely to materialise. From then on, their interests have increasingly diverged.

Once Iran closed the strait of Hormuz, the spike in the oil price and the interruption in the flow of globally traded chemical products became a political threat to Trump. Despite Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression, Democrats have a plausible shot at capturing at least one chamber of Congress in November elections, undermining his authority. More immediately, the president would clearly prefer to steer clear of global distractions while he hosts football’s World Cup.

Police call for calm amid fears planned protests in response to Belfast knife attack could lead to disorder – UK politics live

PSNI give update on attack after the Northern Ireland secretary praised members of the public for intervening

• Full report: Man seriously injured in Belfast stabbing Starmer describes as ‘sickening’

Badenoch said, after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, it was right that people wanted to ensure this did not happen again.

It led to the Macpherson report, she said.

[It] wanted to put right what went wrong with policing in the 1990s.

However, in attempting to do so, it also enshrined a principle which I believe is wrong that a racist incident is racist if it is perceived as racist by the victim or any other person.

Equality law, properly designed, should protect us all in the same way. It should be a shield, not a sword.

It should protect people from discrimination. It should protect people from being treated differently because of their race, sex, religion, sexuality, disability or age.

World Cup 2026 news: Iran claim ticket allocation pulled; Platini files complaint against Infantino; Olise dazzles – live

• Latest news as World Cup countdown continues

• Player guide | Bracketology | Wallchart | Mail John

Away from the World Cup, the latest allegations against the now former West Ham chairman have alerted the new regulator, as PA Media reports:

The football regulator is in contact with West Ham after allegations were made against. the co-owner David Sullivan that he had pressured aspiring models for sex.

The 77-year-old recently quit as chairman of the east London football club to fight what he claimed were “false allegations” about his conduct.

According to the reporting, the claims about Mr Sullivan involve him pressuring young or aspiring models in their late teens or early 20s.

The Times said it was a two-year investigation, which involved its reporters interviewing dozens of former models and other industry sources.

Teenage sensation Gout Gout ready to dive in at Diamond League deep end

Young sprinter is ready to take on the ‘big boys’ for the first time as he takes life in the spotlight in his stride

Life comes at you fast, especially when you are Gout Gout. In April, the 18-year-old prodigy became the fastest teenager over 200m in history. Then last month, he finally got his own bedroom for the first time, having bought his family a new six-bedroom house in Brisbane. Now, in Oslo on Wednesday, he is one of the headline acts in his first senior Diamond League race.

Excited? You bet he is. “It’s definitely a special event, knowing that it’s my first race against the big boys,” he says, with a smile that lights up a drab summer’s day. “It’s a different ballgame for sure.”

Apple shares slide after big Siri AI reveal

Apple unveiled new artificial intelligence software at WWDC, highlighted by its long-awaited update to Siri.

EU plans to ban Russian soldiers from bloc in fresh sanctions on Moscow

Banks, crypto firms and Kremlin oil reserves also targeted in 21st set of measures since full-scale invasion of Ukraine

The EU hopes to ban Russian soldiers from entering its territory as part of further sanctions against Moscow that also target banks, crypto firms and the Kremlin’s oil revenues.

Announcing the proposals on Tuesday, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “We propose for the first time to ban from entry into the European Union anyone who has served in the Russian armed forces since the beginning of the war. So Europe stays off limit for anyone who has participated in the invasion of Ukraine, as simple as that.”

History and inspiration behind Uncle Sam

In the series "USA to Z," "CBS Mornings" breaks down the history of Uncle Sam and who inspired the national icon.

Meta launches program to train workers for data center jobs

Meta pledged to invest $115 million to train electricians, plumbers and other workers needed to operate data centers.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was a flop – but 25 years later, it is an exquisite digital relic

Though it feels as if it has little to do with the games series it is based on, this groundbreaking film endures as a milestone for CGI animation, with a stellar voice cast

In 1987, after working on several games that were only moderate successes, Japanese game designer Hironobu Sakaguchi proposed a game that would be his last attempt to make a hit. Aptly titled Final Fantasy, Sakaguchi’s game achieved critical acclaim and commercial success, launching a franchise that has spanned 40 years and 16 core titles – as well as countless spin-offs, remakes and film adaptations. Sakaguchi himself directed one of the latter: the 2001 photorealist animation Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

Despite the fantasy its title and source material imply, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is really a military science-fiction film. Later cited as a major influence on the Mass Effect games, The Spirits Within may appeal more to fans of that franchise than to those of Final Fantasy. At times, it feels like a YouTube compilation of cutscenes from a game you can’t afford.

‘Parasitic cleanses’ are the latest health trend to infest social media. But what does the evidence say? | Antiviral

Influencers are promising pills with all sorts of ‘natural’ ingredients, but do they actually work and could they cause harm?

• Read more in the Antiviral series

Parasitic infections are fairly uncommon among otherwise healthy people living in most major developed cities. But this hasn’t stopped a wave of social media influencers spruiking at-home “parasitic cleanses” for any number of symptoms such as constipation, fatigue, poor sleep and brain-fog.

“Just comment ‘deworm’ or ‘cleanse’ for more info,” they may say, promising more information about pills with all sorts of “natural” ingredients including wormwood, clove, turmeric, clove, thyme, and black walnut.

Why do the right’s Henry Nowak protests look like a party? Distasteful as it is, they’re having fun | Jonathan Liew

Booze, laughter and football chants: the British right are relishing in what they see as their George Floyd moment

Colombia World Cup 2026 team guide

Luis Díaz is the leading light of an extremely well-supported team still built around the 2014 golden boot winner James Rodríguez

This article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June.

Alligator attacks DWI suspect who was fleeing police

A man suspected of driving while impaired was attacked by an alligator after attempting to flee police in Louisiana, authorities said.

Trump family got about $500M from crypto venture — but investors saw steep losses

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. celebrated a deal with Alt5 Sigma that generated roughly $500 million for the Trump family. The company's shares are down 93%.

‘We got banned from YouTube but they showed Saddam Hussein being hanged’: the wild viral visions of Romain Gavras

What will life be like in 2034? Will kids surf in quarries – or live in the woods since they think Earth is hollow? We meet the film-maker behind Gener8ion, whose dark predictions have a habit of going viral

One of the standout videos of Visions of 2034, a new audio-visual exhibition from film-maker Romain Gavras and musician Benoit Heitz (AKA Surkin), is a blackly comic twist on conspiracy theory culture. In God Hates Space, some young people have defected to the woods somewhere in middle America due to their fringe beliefs, chiefly the idea that the Earth is actually hollow: trenchant stuff in an age when twentysomethings are becoming off-grid libertarian homesteaders, and popular influencers claim that Kendrick Lamar sent “demons through the TV screen” during his Super Bowl half-time performance.

But here’s the rub: God Hates Space, with its creepy-crazy images of fascism and crackpot conspiracy, was made more than six years ago in Ukraine, before the war. Its aesthetic – which Surkin describes as a combination of “confederate” and “Monster energy drink” – is prescient, not referential. “We shoot these videos and sometimes it takes a while for them to get released,” Surkin says. “The future is catching up with us. It gets dumber way quicker than before!”

Rivian is betting on its R2 EV to turn the automaker into a household name like Tesla

The R2 SUV is meant to transform Rivian from a niche EV manufacturer that sells luxury vehicles into a more mainstream brand like U.S. EV leader Tesla.

OpenAI says it filed confidential IPO as it positions itself for AI arms race

Going public will allow OpenAI, valued at $852 billion, to inject more cash into its business as the AI race quickens.

Man shot during protest against proposed US Ebola quarantine facility in Kenya

Police use teargas to disperse demonstrators in Nanyuki, 120 miles from Nairobi, amid rising anger at US plans

A man has been shot in the head during a protest in a town in central Kenya against a proposed Ebola quarantine facility for US citizens.

Photographs from the scene appeared to show a person lying motionless on the ground. Dozens of people had gathered near Laikipia airbase, the proposed site of the centre in Nanyuki, 120 miles from the capital, Nairobi, some wearing protective equipment and carrying a coffin with “Ebola” written on it.

Tempest in the stalls as baby disrupts Kenneth Branagh RSC performance

Audience members said baby’s cooing and gurgling ruined Branagh’s return to the RSC after 30 years, with some seeking refunds

Boatswain! The opening scene of Shakespeare’s seminal play The Tempest, in which Prospero conjures up a violent storm to shipwreck his treacherous brother, is enough to wake up anyone – let alone a baby.

Audience members at a matinee performance of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production, starring Kenneth Branagh as Prospero, complained after a baby gurgled and cooed its way throughout the entire first half.

Rob Reiner's son Nick seeks $1.5M from trust fund for defense in parents' killings

Nick Reiner is accused of stabbing his parents Rob and Michele Singer Reiner to death at their home in December.

Trump booed before Knicks lose to Spurs at Madison Square Garden in NBA Finals Game 3

Trump's decision to attend Game 3 of the NBA Final was controversial for Knicks fans, some of whom feared he would jinx what has been an epic playoff run.

Trump nominates Todd Blanche for attorney general amid controversy over DOJ fund

Blanche previously served as a criminal defense lawyer for President Trump.

Nigel Farage to headline Liz Truss’s UK CPAC conference after apparent snub

Reform had previously suggested Farage would be ‘steering clear’ of event, modelled on US conservative gathering

• UK politics live – latest updates

Nigel Farage will be headlining at an American conservative summit brought to the UK by Liz Truss next month alongside a raft of hard-right speakers, despite his party previously suggesting he would be “steering clear”.

The Reform UK leader has announced he will speak in July at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which claims it wants to “save Britain, save the west”.

House to vote on ICE funding, ending months-long impasse

The House will be voting on Republicans' $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies for the rest of the Trump administration.

XL bully owners face ban on leaving children under 12 alone with their dogs

New dangerous dogs law after spate of attacks in England and Wales could fine people or have their pet seized

A new crackdown on XL bullies and other dangerous dogs will make it illegal to leave children under 12 alone with them in England and Wales.

There has been a spate of attacks on children by dogs from certain dangerous breeds, including one on a 10-year-old girl who died last year after being attacked by the family pet, an XL bully. A nine-month-old baby was also mauled to death last year by a dog of that breed.

Whey protein shortage looms as use of weight-loss drugs fuels global demand

Price of dairy product has risen fivefold after users of GLP-1 medications advised to increase protein consumption

The growing popularity of weight-loss drugs has fuelled global demand for whey protein, sparking concerns among industry experts over a potential shortage.

The price of whey has risen fivefold to record levels as companies race to secure supplies amid a boom driven by growing use of GLP-1 drugs, such as Mounjaro, which often require higher protein intake to preserve muscle mass.

Can an AI agent cover for you while you're at the beach?

"AI can make everything that was on my plate visible to colleagues while I'm gone," one expert said.

A cage-fighting arena is just what Trump’s White House lawn needed. I have a suggestion on how to use it | Marina Hyde

The president’s new Craposseum is the perfect venue for Vance, Hegseth and others to battle for favour. Fight, fight, fight indeed

On behalf of the US administration, the American embassy in London has published a notice advising the UK government not to ban social media for the under-16s. Thanks, but … we didn’t ask? Or perhaps that’s uncharitable. It’s actually a privilege to take child protection lectures from a country where the leading cause of death in children and adolescents is gunshot wounds. Are we allowed to suggest a surprisingly obvious way to help with that grimly perennial problem – or is international advice just a one-way street?

Either way, lectures from Donald Trump’s administration have not been in short supply in recent days, with the US defence secretary deciding that a D-day commemoration address was a seemly moment to dump all over Europe. It’s always painful to be reminded of Pete Hegseth, with his fundamentalist “body art” and Mr Whippy hair – primarily because it dilutes the purity of one’s loathing for JD Vance. (Who, it won’t have escaped you, was also on the international lecture circuit last week.) But standing at the podium in Normandy, Hegseth had just phoned in some stuff about how wars are won, when he got to the needle-scratch subject-change you sensed he’d made the transatlantic journey for. “Sadly,” began this here-it-comes moment, “today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive.”

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Severe storms could impact more than 90 million across multiple states

States across the Midwest and northern Plains could see ongoing flooding as severe storms hit, forecasters say.

At the NBA finals, the Very Important President showed his favorite sport is status

Donald Trump arrived at the Knicks’ biggest night in 27 years hoping to cement his status and power in his hometown. But the fans had other ideas

On Monday night, the most powerful man in the world crashed a citywide celebration 27 years in the making and almost shut it down, with barricades around Midtown Manhattan, security lines outside Madison Square Garden and agents wanding Victor Wembanyama as if the San Antonio Spurs phenom were a threat off the court as well as on it. And when Donald Trump finally arrived for his grand entrance, it was in a half-mile-long motorcade. Anyone taking in the scene couldn’t help but ask the quintessential New York question: who does this guy think he is, some kind of big shot?

At this point in Trump’s presidency, it’s fair to wonder if he got into politics for the free tickets. On a night when he could’ve been dealing with far more pressing issues – soaring living costs, war with Iran, a global economy under strain – Trump flew to New York expressly to watch the Knicks play host to their first NBA finals game since he started making noises about running for office someday; he evidently couldn’t turn down the game after being invited by “numerous people.”

World Cup 2026 visa chaos: from referee Omar Artan to Iranian officials – who is affected?

Fifa has found its tournament squarely caught up in the second Trump administration’s aggressive border restrictions

For successive men’s World Cup tournaments Fifa has managed to bulldoze its way through costly immigration and entry requirements. In 2014, Brazil passed a law granting free temporary visas to ticket holders, and for Russia and Qatar, the respective autocracies bypassed traditional border friction using Fan IDs and Hayya cards as makeshift visa entry documents that also provided free public transport. Not so in 2026, where Fifa has found its tournament squarely caught up in the second Trump administration’s aggressive border restrictions. Here are some of the people that have been affected.

Miles Russell, 17, qualifies for US Open with Tiger Woods’s son Charlie as caddie

• Pair are friends and will play golf together at college

• Tournament will start at Shinnecock Hills next week

Miles Russell was among two 17-year-olds who earned a spot in the US Open on Monday. Still to be determined was whether Russell brings his caddie from the 36-hole qualifier – the son of three-time champion Tiger Woods – to Shinnecock Hills next week.

Russell, the No 10 amateur in the world, survived a bogey on the first playoff hole and grabbed the fourth and final spot from the Florida qualifier. Charlie Woods is one of his close friends who has the same commercial agent and is following Russell to Florida State to play college golf.

‘I was dazzled. I thought the walls would fall down’: the oral history of DMZ, the label and club night that gave dubstep its soul

In an extract from Aftershock, a definitive new history of dubstep, DMZ’s Mala, Coki and Loefah recall the bass drops and pacifist mentality that went into their creation

By the turn of the millennium, British electronic music had some growing pains. The jungle and drum’n’bass scenes that energised the 1990s were running out of creative gas, and garage had shifted from the moody underground into champagne flash and chart hits. Across pockets of London, Croydon and Essex, a tiny group of artists coalesced around a new idea. After 15 years of high-octane beats, they decided to strip the breakbeats, hard partying and cliquishness out of dance music, focusing instead on soundsystem fundamentals: bass, space and togetherness. From there, dubstep was born.

As we approach the 25-year anniversary of dubstep’s beginnings, I’ve documented the genre in my book, Aftershock: The Seismic Impact of Dubstep: an oral history of its origin story told through 28 artists and key figures. Some of the most influential are part of DMZ, a record label and party series led by south London DJ-producers Mala, Coki and Loefah, and MC Sgt Pokes. With its anti-VIP ethos, DMZ became one of dubstep’s driving forces, and earlier this year, Mala and Coki performed at Fred Again’s residency at London’s Alexandra Palace: their influence is shifting to a new generation of fans.

Man sustains injuries to both arms after shark attack at Navy Base marina in Florida

Officials say an employee at a Navy Base marina in Panama City, Florida, was taking a swim during his lunch break when he was attacked by a shark on Monday. The man sustained injuries to both arms and was taken to a nearby hospital.

Jeffrey Epstein assistant Lesley Groff set to testify before House panel

Groff worked for Epstein for nearly 20 years, starting in 2001, in which her job was to ‘organize one man’s life’

Lesley Groff, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime executive assistant, is testifying on Tuesday before the House oversight and reform committee as lawmakers on the panel continue their investigation into the late convicted sex offender.

Groff worked for Epstein for almost 20 years, beginning in 2001 and ending in July 2019 when he was arrested.

Guide to mass transit at World Cup host cities across the U.S.

Eleven U.S. cities over the next few weeks will host thousands of World Cup fans. But getting to the games won't be cheap in some cities. Kris Van Cleave reports.

All signs point to Trump pushing AI growth

Also: Anthropic advocates for a ‘pause’ on AI advancement – days after filing to go public on the US stock market

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, the US tech editor at the Guardian. Today we’re discussing Donald Trump’s neediness for AI and the contradictions of Anthropic’s safety-first posture.

OpenAI confidentially files for initial public offering on US stock market

Apple debuts revamped ‘Siri AI’ and new child safety features for iPhones and iPads

The Guardian view on children and the internet: rolling back big tech’s untrammelled power | Editorial

Silicon Valley including Meta has embraced Maga politics, says Nick Clegg

Bernie Sanders’ AI sovereign wealth fund plan is good. But we think this is better | Nathan E Sanders and Bruce Schneier

Majority of US’s new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land

Billions spent and hypothetical returns: the AI boom explained with six charts

‘A driver of political violence’: how the breakneck AI boom is fueling anti-tech extremism

Alleged mastermind in murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira to stand trial

Brazilian judge rules there is enough evidence to try Ruben Dario da Silva Villar over killings of journalist and activist

The alleged mastermind and financial backer of the murders of the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira in the Amazon four years ago will stand trial before a jury, a federal judge in the state of Amazonas has ruled.

Judge Cristina Lazzari Souza found that, based on the charges brought by federal prosecutors, there were “sufficient indications of authorship” to try Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, known by his nickname “Colômbia”.

A barbers’ contest and Pope Leo in Spain: photos of the day – Tuesday

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Trump formally nominates Todd Blanche as attorney general

Currently acting attorney general, Todd Blanche may face an uphill confirmation battle from some wary Republican senators.

Predator: The Billionaire Football Boss review – truly skin-crawling television

This bleak investigation into allegations against the former West Ham owner and porn baron David Sullivan is incredibly valuable. It needs to spark widespread change – not least for all the women who’ve come forward

At this point, is it even worth saying that British football has a problem with safeguards around club ownership? In the context of the various sports-washing petrostates, incompetent investment conglomerates, oddball entrepreneurs and publicity hounds who control the purse strings of “the beautiful game” in the UK, West Ham United’s billionaire owner David Sullivan didn’t seem that much of an outlier. By the end of his tenure, West Ham fans largely hated him. But while they had their reasons and many of them were entirely valid, they didn’t always seem connected to either his business dealings or his tabloid past.

Football fans are nothing if not morally flexible. They (perhaps, in the interests of full disclosure, I should say “we”) will overlook almost anything if there’s a trophy or two finding its way into the cabinet. While Sullivan’s recent decision to step down as West Ham’s owner has been widely celebrated in east London, that’s mainly a result of the club’s recent relegation from the Premier League.

UK regulator orders social media firms to adopt measures to stop viral illegal content

Ofcom move follows concerns about misinformation and online claims over police response to Henry Nowak stabbing

Social media companies have been ordered to have emergency measures in place to stop illegal content going viral, as regulators battle to stop the type of misinformation spiral that circulated after the 2024 summer riots.

Sites such as X, formerly Twitter, and TikTok will have to have a “crisis protocol” in place to intervene when the sharing of dangerous content begins to rise.

How to buy SpaceX shares as its blockbuster IPO readies for liftoff

SpaceX is setting aside a large chunk of shares for ordinary investors as it seeks to raise a record $75 billion. Here's what to know.

Here are 10 ways a ‘super’ El Niño could impact the planet | Benjamin Selwyn

The climate phenomenon is intensifying an already unequal global economy

Ranked! USMNT’s best World Cup goals: from Donovan at the death to a painful Pulisic finish

The US men have scored 25 goals (we’ll spare you the own-goals) in the World Cup since 1990. Ranking them requires some nuance

What makes a good goal? This was the question each of us pondered as we embarked upon the process of ranking every goal we’ve seen the US score at the men’s World Cup – a worthwhile bit of nostalgia before the national team kicks off their 2026 World Cup campaign hoping to add more to this list.

First, we had to narrow the field. The team have scored 40 goals at the men’s World Cup, but scant video evidence exists of 12 of those – appropriate, given they were scored in 1930, 1934, and 1950. Piecing together reports and descriptions can give you an idea, but they were always going to be judged differently than those we’ve seen, felt and heard. And so, with apologies to Aldo “Buff” Donelli and Joe Gaetjens, our pool is limited to US World Cup apearances from 1990 til the present.

5 takeaways from airline CEOs' biggest annual gathering

Airline CEOs met in Rio de Janeiro at IATA, the International Air Transport Association's annual meeting.

David Squires on … the World Cup reimagined as Gianni Infantino’s West Side Story

As football’s greatest spectacle comes to North America, our cartoonist creates a heartwarming narrative around the Fifa president

• Buy a cartoon | David’s favourite works of 2025

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

I watched as Meta’s threats stopped Sarah Wynn-Williams from speaking – we must have stronger rights for whistleblowers | Tim Wu

The company is clearly trying to make an example of the author who wrote about her time at the company. Her free speech should be protected

This year’s Hay festival concluded with a strange spectacle. I was on a panel about the dangers of excessive tech power, alongside former Meta employee Sarah Wynn-Williams – who sat without saying anything on the advice of her lawyer. She had been silenced by Meta’s legal threats to bankrupt her if she spoke.

Wynn-Williams has written a book, Careless People, about her time at Meta (then Facebook), where she was an early director of global public policy. In the tradition of such books (usually written by former government officials), it is in parts flattering, more often critical and, above all, insightful.

Prof Tim Wu is professor at Columbia University Law School and the author of The Age of Extraction:
How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

4 states head to the polls. And, global conflicts are on the rise, new report says

Voters in four states head to the polls today for their primaries. Here are the races to watch. And, global conflicts are at their highest level since World War II, data shows.

‘We are knocking on the door’: Africa’s 10 contenders target World Cup glory

Morocco’s semi-final appearance in Qatar has raised the possibility of an African team reaching the final, but who are best poised to do so?

With a record 10 African teams at the first 48-nation World Cup finals tournament, the big question, after Morocco’s historic semi-final appearance in Qatar, is whether any of them can go a step further.

The prospect of an African side becoming world champions appeared realistic after Cameroon defied the odds to beat Diego Maradona’s Argentina, the defending champions, in the opening game of the 1990 tournament and embarked on a fairytale run that ended in a 3-2 quarter-final defeat by England. But in the eight subsequent World Cups, African teams have been long on promise and short on delivery.

Chilean lawmakers want ‘museum of truth’ to provide far-right take on Allende era

National Libertarian party wants museum to highlight ‘victims’ of socialist government ousted by CIA-backed coup in 1973

Far-right lawmakers in Chile have proposed the creation of a “museum of truth” to tell its own version of the years preceding Gen Augusto Pinochet’s bloody dictatorship – and emphasise the plight of what it calls the victims of Salvador Allende’s socialist government.

According to the seven congresspeople from the far-right National Libertarian party who presented the bill, the museum would highlight the “outrage, hunger and humiliation” of Allende’s Popular Unity government.

Bank of England warns of AI scams as deepfakes of Farage-Bailey fight spread

Governor urges people to report videos on X that falsely show the men clashing in the Question Time studio

The Bank of England has warned the public against falling for AI-generated scams after deepfake videos of Nigel Farage fighting its governor spread online.

Andrew Bailey, the head of the BoE, said AI-generated content related to central banks was spreading and urged people to be “vigilant”.

‘Nobody is pretending to like my work because of my fresh-faced good looks’: the pros of being a debut novelist at 51

There are some advantages to being an older debutant, including knowing what it’s like to fail and not having your new novel overshadowed by early literary promise

Recently I was at a film event where I was introduced to a big producer by a very nice actor. The actor said, “this is Patrick, he has a debut novel coming out soon.”

The producer looked me up and down and said, “You took your time.”

The Galápagos is a wildlife haven. But is that enough to protect the rare scalloped hammerhead shark?

The species is abundant within the protected archipelago but when they migrate outside the marine reserve to give birth they run the gauntlet of industrial fishing

The unmistakable fluted T-shape of a scalloped hammerhead shark slides by, followed by a diver holding his breath and a metal spear like an extra-long snooker cue. The spear hits the fish behind its dorsal fin and the 2-metre shark darts away, disgruntled but otherwise unharmed.

Carlos Robalino, a marine biologist from the Galápagos Islands, trained as a shark researcher in Mexico but is now back home and working as a junior researcher at the Charles Darwin Foundation. When we meet in March, he is one of the divers on the foundation’s research expedition to Darwin and Wolf, the most northerly islands in the Galápagos marine reserve.

Cat ladies aren’t that ‘crazy’ after all - the social science behind the stereotype

Felines have long been associated with feminine power – and these women are embracing a cliché used to bring them down

To support 700 cats, you need roughly 1,350lbs of food a week. But that’s just the dry stuff, which isn’t a balanced enough diet for a cat. You also need 1,000 cans of wet food.

Next, 600lbs of litter, because cats, like all living things, need a place to do their business. Sixty rolls of paper towels to clean up the many messes that will occur. Nine gallons of laundry detergent, six gallons of dish detergent, 200 large trash bags, and 400 kitchen trash bags.

‘A man of great appetites’: what’s it like to be a dictator’s personal chef?

In an often chilling new documentary, the chefs of brutal leaders from Idi Amin to Saddam Hussein, talk about their unusual lives behind the scenes

Kim Jong-il loved pepperoni pizza. Saddam Hussein couldn’t resist a fish barbecue. Idi Amin reportedly had the capacity for an entire roasted goat. The menus may have differed, but the appetite was the same. For history’s most notorious strongmen, the dining table doubled as a stage for power. For the cooks who served them, every meal came with extraordinary stakes. “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.”

In his latest film, How to Feed a Dictator, which premieres at the Tribeca film festival this week, five private chefs recount their intimate experiences serving some of the world’s most feared dictators and the ever-present dangers that came with the job. Based on the 2020 book by the Polish journalist Witold Szabłowski, the 95-minute documentary probes the fraught terrain between morality and survival, asking viewers to consider the choices these chefs made – and the choices they never really had. Structurally, the film is something of a tasting menu, serving up sobering morsels of human atrocity within the trappings of a decadent cooking show. It makes for especially uneasy viewing on an empty stomach.

Signal One review – Dennis Quaid and David Thewlis star in high-concept, low-risk first contact yarn

Sci-fi about the inventor of a device to communicate with aliens, in which scientists spend too much time talking astrophysics at each other

Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is not alone in the universe. It is now joined by another sci-fi about Earth’s first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life in the form of a high-concept, low-risk, talky drama from writer-director Jonathan Sobol. It stars Isabelle Fuhrman as Dr Annika Cask, a brilliant young computer scientist, already famous for taking the first photograph of dark matter.

Predictably for this kind of film, Annika has a tragic backstory (the death in childhood of her sister) which drives her single mindedness and has left her with a deep sense of the fragility of life. She takes a job for brash tech billionaire Dennis Quaid, working on a top-secret project on his private island in the Caribbean. On the helicopter she’s joined by another wonder-kid, electronics engineer Charlie (Josh Hutcherson). The pair have been recruited to keep an eye on the even more brilliant Perry Glassner (David Thewlis), who has invented a device called Littlemouth, a fancy-looking mini-pylon designed to communicate with other life in the universe. Glassner is an unbalanced narcissist, played by Thewlis in style of his character Johnny in Mike Leigh’s Naked: all fear and rage, though channelled this time through a PhD in quantum physics. Here he is on a rant about humanity: “Petty, cruel, prone to self-destruction, hellbent on rage-fucking our habitat out of existence.”

How do you give Britain’s hidden army of young carers a break? | Is Mum OK? Documentary

There are more than one million young carers in the UK – with an average age of 12 – which is the equivalent of two kids in every school class. Do they feel supported? In Walthamstow, east London, we meet a group of carers as they are collected for a rare night off that brings a sense of community and a glimpse of fun for a few hours every few weeks. It’s hosted by Satvinder, a tenacious council worker who fights to improve the recognition of young carers in her borough and provides them crucial emotional support.

This film is released during Carers Week in the UK, a campaign that celebrates unpaid carers across the country and calls for better recognition and support for them.

The Breakdown | Rugby mourns Spurrell and Slattery, two titans who exemplified the game’s spirit

If you want to understand warrior mentality, look no further than these unflinching icons of the 1970s and 80s

People talk a lot about character in sport without always agreeing on a precise definition. Hanging in there when times get tough? Arguably that is a pre-requisite across top-level competition. The ability to keep cool, calm and collected under the most extreme pressure? Valuable, certainly, but not every cherished champion – John McEnroe or Diego Maradona, for example – fits that unflappable mould.

A more accurate gauge, perhaps, is how much certain individuals are missed once they are gone. In recent days rugby union has lost two titans who absolutely belong in that special category. Not every modern Prem flanker will be familiar with the exploits of Fergus Slattery and Roger Spurrell, both of whom have passed away at 77 and 71 respectively, but for many of us they exemplified what unquenchable warrior spirit looks like.

Give or take Willie John McBride, there was no more renowned Irish international forward in the 1970s than “Slattery of Ireland”, to borrow from Cliff Morgan’s famous commentary of the 1973 Barbarians v New Zealand game in Cardiff. On the 1974 British & Irish Lions tour he was at the peak of his powers on the hard fields of South Africa, setting new standards for fit, fast-paced and forthright wing forwards everywhere. As the suitably warm tribute issued by Blackrock College put it: “He played with ferocity and grace but without ego or theatre … Fergus never sought admiration but earned it universally.”

Spurrell, for some bizarre reason, never won an England cap but the example he set as Bath’s unflinching captain during their glory years remains indelible. His former teammate Jeremy Guscott described him in the Rugby Paper as “a true Bath rugby icon” and the former paratrooper was renowned as one of the hardest players in a notable tough Bath pack who underpinned the club’s consistent success. The journalist Jon Newcombe described the curly blond-haired Spurrell as “the West Country’s answer to Jean-Pierre Rives” and his impact on youthful imaginations was similarly vivid.

Out-of-contract XIs: players in their 20s versus players in their 30s – who wins?

There are young stars and golden oldies available on a free transfer this summer. But which team is stronger?

Goalkeeper
Illan Meslier, aged 26, contract expiring at Leeds United
The goalkeeper joined Leeds as a teenager but departs the Yorkshire club having not made a first-team appearance since March 2025. Meslier was recently seen alone on the Elland Road pitch, seemingly contemplating his departure.

White House urges UK not to ban social media for under-16s

Trump administration says restrictions could impose ‘disproportionate’ burden on US tech companies

• UK politics live – latest updates

The White House has urged the UK not to impose a social media ban for under-16s, saying such restrictions could impose a “disproportionate” burden on US tech firms.

In a submission to a government consultation on online safety, the US government came out against “prescribed one-size-fits-all government restrictions” and “blunt regulatory instruments” to address online harms to children.

‘I fear people will go to war over water’: as wells run dry, farmers struggle to survive in Bangladesh

The arid Barind region was transformed by aquifer wells but now the water system is collapsing under the pressure of the climate crisis and decades of extraction

In the parched fields of north-west Bangladesh, where the earth hardens into cracked red clay beneath an unforgiving sun, farmers in the Barind region say they are watching the foundations of rural life disappear underground.

For decades, groundwater transformed Barind – one of Bangladesh’s driest regions – into a productive agricultural belt. Deep tube wells allowed farmers to grow rice, wheat, maize and vegetables year-round across land once defined by drought.

The best albums of 2026 so far

From Thundercat’s all-star funk to Kacey Musgraves’ hymns to solitude, we look at some of our favourite music of the last six months from across the pop spectrum

• Listen to a Spotify playlist of every album here

The British food scene was booming. Why has it suddenly gone bust?

Once mocked internationally, the UK became a gastronomic hotspot in recent decades – London was hailed as the foodie capital of the world. Now many Michelin-starred restaurants have closed and the rot is spreading

It’s 9am on a weekday morning and although I’ve just finished my porridge, the chef Richard Wilkins is making my mouth water. “My signature dish is soft Scottish langoustines wrapped in very thin, crispy pastry, served with Japanese sushi rice and a langoustine bisque.”

His other specialities include turbot in a spinach and champagne sauce, buttery wagyu steak with English peas, and raspberry millefeuille. Sadly, I won’t be able to sample any of them and neither will anyone else. At the end of April, Wilkins took the painful decision to close his west London Michelin-listed Restaurant 104 after seven years.

Houseplant hacks: does talking to your plants help them grow?

The theory is that breathing near your plants releases carbon dioxide, boosting photosynthesis and growth

The problem
We’ve all done it. Walked past a drooping fern, crouched down and given it a few encouraging words (whether you admit it to other people is a different matter). We are told it’s actually good for our plants, so should we all be chatting away to them to help them thrive?

The hack
Speaking to your plants is said to encourage growth. This is because breathing near them releases carbon dioxide, which they absorb during photosynthesis. More CO2 means faster, healthier growth.

More Americans survive cancer. But the psychological impacts can persist for years

Due to advancements in treatment and screening, more Americans are surviving cancer. But many are left with lingering mental health challenges like anxiety and depression.

GLP-1s appear to protect against cancer. Researchers are trying to figure out how

Recent studies suggest the weight loss and diabetes drugs may prevent cancer and slow its progression. While weight loss is known to curb cancer risks, GLP-1s may act on other brain and metabolic pathways to prevent cancer.

James Blood Ulmer, adventurous US guitarist and vocalist, dies aged 86

Musician who spliced jazz, funk and blues, including in a spell on a major label in the early 1980s, was celebrated as ‘fearless’ by his family

James Blood Ulmer, the US guitarist celebrated for his avant garde splicing of jazz, blues and funk, has died aged 86.

A statement on social media said he died on 3 June. “His music was fearless, and so was his spirit,” his family added in another statement.

Morning news brief

Israel and Iran agree to stop strikes for now, voters in four states head to the polls Tuesday for primaries, Trump makes baseless claims about election fraud in California.

Pope Leo calls AI firms a new form of colonialism, echoing tech critics

NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with tech journalist Karen Hao about the Pope's recent warnings that AI companies represent a new form of colonialism.

KLM apologises after Paralympian denied onboard wheelchair on 11-hour flight

Athlete Hannah Babalola says she was told to use the toilet without an aisle chair or leave Cape Town to Amsterdam flight

The Dutch airline KLM has offered “sincere apologies” to a Paralympic athlete who was denied access to an onboard wheelchair during a long-haul flight so she could go to the toilet.

The cabin crew on the flight later called the police after the request from Hannah Babalola, 37, who is paraplegic and competes in track events, for the wheelchair, known as an aisle chair as it is narrow enough to be used inside a plane. They first handed her a written notice, headed: “Unacceptable conduct and final warning on behalf of the captain of this plane.”

Conflicts around the globe hit highest levels since World War II, new report says

The new report by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program said the massacres in El Fasher pushed one-sided violence in Africa to its highest levels since the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Pink Narcissus review – garish colour and dreamlike images in a homoerotic vision of 60s New York

James Bidgood’s experimental DIY movie, first released in 1971, starred Bobby Kendall and was shot mostly in Bidgood’s own apartment

James Bidgood’s experimental homoerotic reverie is now reissued in restored form. The film was shot mostly in Bidgood’s own New York apartment throughout the 1960s; it was finally released in 1971 with Bidgood’s name removed from the credits after an opaque dispute with his backers and his authorship only revealed 20 years later.

Pink Narcissus is a movie of garish colour, mute melodrama and dreamlike imagery which mimics early cinema, perhaps simply because the resources for recording lip-sync dialogue were not available. (The director says that Powell and Pressburger’s Red Shoes was an inspiration although the title alludes more to their nun melodrama Black Narcissus.) It interestingly merges its rather pastoral fantasies with the urban circumstances where these would be consumed – the city’s movie theatres, outside which poverty and alienation were commonplace. Some of the most interesting and successful parts of the piece are the radio soundscapes and the modelled neon skylines.

‘We are familiar faces’: are local peacemakers the answer to Nigeria’s bandit crisis?

Nigeria has struggled to contain bandit groups who kidnap and kill but some communities are finding their own solutions

In the 1980s, Dayyabu Abba-Kurfi’s striking prowess for his high school football club in north-west Nigeria earned him the unlikely nickname Doncaster, after the English third-tier side more than 3,800 miles away. More than four decades later, in August last year, he scored perhaps his most important goal, brokering a peace pact between his neighbours in Kurfi, in Katsina state, and the bandit gangs terrorising communities there.

“For months now, we have experienced relative calm … our people are rebuilding their livelihoods,” the 60-year-old civil servant and local politician said.

World’s largest banks pledged $906bn to fossil fuel companies in ‘unfathomable’ increase in 2025, report finds

JPMorgan Chase leads 65 banks making decisions incompatible with restraining rising temperatures, researchers say

The world’s largest banks committed $906bn in financing to the fossil fuel industry last year, an “unfathomable” increase in investment locking in years more of coal, oil and gas production as the world continues to overheat, a new report has found.

The surge in new fossil fuel lending, up $64bn or nearly 8% on 2024, shows that the world’s largest 65 banks are making decisions incompatible with international agreements to restrain rising global temperatures, according to the coalition of environmental groups behind the new analysis.

Levi’s sues Australian clothing brand Globe over ‘blatant copying’ of tabs on pockets

Denim giant claims trademarked design has been copied by S-Double, which was founded in 2008 by Shawn Stussy and is owned by the Melbourne-based clothing company

Global jeans giant Levi’s has launched legal action against Australian clothing company Globe and one of its brands for sewing tags on to pockets – which it says is “blatant copying” of its trademark design.

The US denim giant made the same claim 15 years ago against the same brand, S-Double, founded by Shawn Stussy and owned by Melbourne-headquartered Globe.

Israel puts Palestinian doctor in solitary confinement after 17 months held without charge

Dr Hussam Abu Safiya now in cell barely big enough to sit in, says son, after UN experts demanded his release in March

The son of a prominent Palestinian doctor who was detained by Israeli forces in Gaza in late 2024 and held for more than 500 days without formal charges has spoken of his deep concern for his father’s wellbeing after he was transferred without explanation to solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison.

Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, was detained at work on 27 December 2024. Physicians for Human Rights Israel said last week it had received information indicating that the 53-year-old had been transferred from Ketziot prison to Ramon prison, part of the Ganot prison complex, where he had been put in solitary confinement. PHRI said it had not been told the reasons for the transfer.

Let this be a warning – if Europe worries about Trump, it has even more reason to fear JD Vance | Gaby Hinsliff

His toxic Henry Nowak intervention fits a pattern. Vance has hard-right views, a disdain for European society – and he may yet become president

Immigration is falling in Britain. It’s falling so fast and so hard – net migration to the UK nearly halved between 2024 and 2025 – that before long we could conceivably be a shrinking population, with more people leaving the country than coming here. (And no, that’s not because of an exodus of bright young Britons fleeing overseas, though you wouldn’t blame them given how hard they’re finding it currently to get jobs: the rise, as the Institute for Government’s Sam Freedman helpfully points out, is mainly in foreign students and foreign workers going home.) Even small-boat crossings are down on last year. We have, in short, finally made ourselves as unattractive to the rest of the world as leave voters always wanted – which means that, sooner or later, populists who built their careers on railing against supposedly uncontrolled immigration are going to be needing another scapegoat to explain why taking back control hasn’t magically solved all the country’s problems. And with a grim inevitability, they’re finding it in turning on migrants who are already here.

That’s the background to two hand grenades lobbed aggressively into British politics from across the Atlantic last week, causing enough concern in Downing Street to prompt a rare public rebuke. The claim from the US vice-president, JD Vance, that “righteous anger” was “the only response” to the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak would have been provocative enough, given its pointed echo of Nigel Farage’s now widely condemned call for “pure, cold rage”.

Cello belonging to artist John Constable to be played for first time in 100 years

Exclusive: Landscape painter was also a keen musician and played a cello made for him by his friend and mentor

He was one of Britain’s greatest landscape painters, with masterpieces including The Hay Wain and View on the Stour near Dedham But John Constable was also a keen musician – and his personal cello, which he commissioned, is to be played in public for the first time in 100 years after its restoration.

The instrument was made in 1802 and it is thought Constable may have played it in a local band in his home village of East Bergholt in Suffolk.

Meet Cooper Lutkenhaus, 17, the phenom who became 800m world champion while at school

Track and field’s youngest world champion on ‘wanting to change the sport’ and his admiration for Napoleon

We are in living in the era of teenage super talents. On Saturday, Mirra Andreeva won the French Open at 19. Spain’s Lamine Yamal, at 18, is one of the favourites for the World Cup’s golden ball. Then there is Cooper Lutkenhaus, the 17-year-old American already making the world’s best athletes gasp for air and reach for superlatives, who may yet prove the best of the bunch.

True, it is early days. But Lutkenhaus is already track and field’s youngest world champion, having won 800m indoor gold in March. On Sunday, he added to his CV with victory against a top-class field in his first Diamond League race. But it was what his rivals said afterwards in Stockholm that left the deepest mark.

Conflicts are on the rise globally, at the highest level since WWII, data shows

Global conflicts surged to the highest number tallied by Uppsala Conflict Data Program. Fatalities were the highest on record since 1994, with approximately 244,600 people killed in conflict in 2025.

Sweden set to ban mobile phones in schools

Long championed as a leader in adopting digital technology, Sweden is set to ban mobile phones in schools beginning in the fall for the next academic year.

The End of Everything by M John Harrison review – near-future visions from an SF master

This bleak but brilliant tale of enigmatic alien entities and slow social collapse exposes the terrifying insecurity of life right now

M John Harrison’s prose has thrilled me since I was a teen. It has thrilled others, too, including Angela Carter, Deborah Levy and Robert Macfarlane, but snobbery about the genres in which he made his mark – science fiction and fantasy – has hindered the respect his achievement deserves. His rigorously realistic novel Climbers, published in 1989, looked as though it might change that, but subsequent work has remained genre-fluid and uncompromisingly peculiar.

In the 1970s and 80s, he wrote stories about Viriconium, a fabled city crumbling into decadence and anarchy. These swashbuckling yet sinister tales functioned as escapist adventures for readers who preferred a far-flung nightmare to the contemporary humdrum. But in the 21st century, the world we inhabit has become utterly fantastical and Harrison has no need to revisit Viriconium; his anarchic, disintegrated metropolis is London and The End of Everything is set in an unnamed town on the Kent coast.

How Porto’s gritty, industrial neighbour became a cool coastal hotspot

Matosinhos was built on fish, but today its retro seafood restaurants and canneries sit alongside great art spaces, museums and landmark architecture

This once declining industrial city is on the up, but not so much that it has been ruined – yet. See it now, mid-gentrification, before its humble seafood restaurants become overpriced and its beautifully curated museums and galleries overrun.

‘They are isolated … they are alone’: Zelenskyy on Russia, Putin’s lies – and fighting back

In a wide-ranging interview, an upbeat Ukrainian president also discusses Donald Trump, King Charles, and how Kyiv is prepared to share its experience of drone warfare with the west

Sitting down with the Guardian in London, Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems cheerful. More than four years after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, he believes Europe’s biggest war since 1945 appears to be slowly turning in Ukraine’s favour. The military situation is the most promising it has been for Kyiv for two and a half years, Zelenskyy says. “We can’t say Russia is losing this war. But we can say they are losing the initiative each day, day by day,” he insists.

Over the past week the Kremlin has suffered a series of setbacks. Long-range Ukrainian drones have hit Putin’s home city of St Petersburg, setting fire to oil terminals and sending smoke billowing above the skyline. Similar attacks have crippled occupied Crimea. A key supply road is littered with burning lorries and tankers and the peninsula seized by Russia in 2014 is experiencing severe fuel shortages.

José Pizarro’s recipe for duck legs with cherries and amontillado

Served with a sauce full of sweetness and acidity – and a splash of sherry – this is a simple but deeply Spanish dish

Duck is one of those ingredients that feels rather special, but is actually very simple to cook. It’s something I always enjoy taking my time with, so it’s tender and full of flavour, and for me what really makes this particular dish are the cherries, even more so when they’re picotas from Extremadura, where I’m from. They’re small, sweet and full of sun, and a crop we wait impatiently for every year. When you cook with them, they bring a beautiful balance of sweetness and acidity to the rich duck, while the addition of a touch of amontillado transforms this simple dish into something that’s deeply Spanish. And remember, it’s always worth using a good sherry and enjoying the rest with the meal.

World’s first wind-powered underwater datacentre starts operating in China

Datacentre off Shanghai coast uses less power and water than land-based equivalent

The world’s first wind-powered underwater datacentre has started operations off the coast of Shanghai, as China presses forwards with solutions for energy challenges created by the country’s artificial intelligence boom.

The Shanghai Lingang undersea datacentre demonstration project, which launched in May, has a capacity of 24 megawatts. It is a joint effort between HiCloud Technology and China Communications Construction, a state-owned company.

‘You’re treated like this is the end’: Meet the dementia rebels – diagnosed and determined to change people’s minds

Few things are more feared than a dementia diagnosis. Now people living with the condition are fighting against damaging stereotypes and demanding proper medical support

When Maxine Linnell, 78, a retired psychotherapist living in Leicestershire, learned that she had dementia four years ago, the diagnosis proved less challenging than some people’s reactions. “What was striking was how many people’s attitudes changed almost immediately … they stop seeing you as a person and see only dementia, some professionals included. Like this is the end and everything after will be devastating.”

The assumption that you go overnight from diagnosis to late-stage dementia isn’t confined to family and friends. Julie Hayden, a nurse and social worker from Yorkshire, was diagnosed nine years ago at the age of 54, long after sensing that something was wrong but being constantly told that it was depression or menopause; her doctors still associated dementia with old age and didn’t consider that she might have had young onset. “At the point of diagnosis,” she recalls, “most of us are told: ‘Well, it’s dementia, nothing we can do about that. Best go away and get your end of life affairs in order.’”

Ping-pong sponges, ‘black smokers’ and floating somethings: the secrets of the deep sea

The bottom of the ocean has barely been explored, but every journey to the deep reveals wondrous new lifeforms. As underwater mining gains momentum, we risk destroying one of the Earth’s last great wildernesses

On 8 March 2014, at 1.20am, Malaysian Airlines flight 370 veered off its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. An hour later, military radar spotted the plane heading west over the Andaman Sea. Six or seven hours later, it is presumed to have crashed somewhere over the southern Indian Ocean, one of the least studied bodies of water in the world.

Just how little we knew about this part of the ocean became clear during the subsequent search for the missing aircraft. Before a proper underwater search could even begin, a vast stretch of seafloor had to be mapped. Over the next three years, a team of ships from Australia, China and Malaysia scanned the bottom with a combination of submersible robots and ship-borne sonar. Together, they charted a swath of ocean roughly 1,500 miles long and 150 miles wide, encompassing an area the size of France. The maps produced from these scans revealed a lost world, full of undersea canyons, crevasses, volcanic plateaux and a single, enormous cliff taller than the Swiss Alps. Even the abyssal plains, thought to be some of the flattest areas on the planet, were home to previously uncharted hills.

‘We were going off the cliff’: Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil on inventing grunge – and losing Chris Cornell and Kurt Cobain

As he publishes a memoir, the pioneering guitarist talks about rejecting spandex and hair metal, his fears for breakthrough hit Black Hole Sun – and completing nine unfinished Soundgarden songs

Kim Thayil has always felt like an outsider. For example: the Soundgarden guitarist has lived in Seattle, a city infamously addicted to coffee, for more than four decades, but only started drinking the stuff himself during lockdown. “I was pretty against-the-grain to my Seattle friends, who always wanted to meet up at coffee shops,” he grins, cradling a freshly brewed cup of java in his kitchen. “My girlfriend in the 80s and 90s even worked at the original branch of Starbucks and made coffee with a French press every morning. But I drank tea, because my parents are Indian.”

Thayil’s Indian heritage also set him apart from his peers. In his new memoir, A Screaming Life, he writes that when he and bassist Hiro Yamamoto formed Soundgarden in 1984, the group was “two-thirds Asian”, and that “as liberal and accepting as the punk scene was, it was still largely white, and I was ever aware of that”. Nevertheless, Soundgarden went on to become pioneers of Seattle’s grunge movement, a multiplatinum-selling, critically acclaimed, Grammy-winning group whose breakthrough hit, Black Hole Sun, transcended their gnarly milieu to become an enduring anthem.

NBA finals: Wembanyama silences Garden’s party as Spurs beat Knicks in Game 3

• As it happened: Spurs 115-111 Knicks

• French star leads Spurs to win with 32 points

• Knicks lead best-of-seven series 2-1

• Trump given hostile reception by New York crowd

The spectacle at Madison Square Garden on Monday night was such that the basketball almost took a back seat to everything else. The president in the suites. The mayor in the crowd. Movie stars along the sideline. The culmination of days of talk over $10,000 tickets, heightened security and cancelled watch parties alongside the anticipation for New York City’s first home NBA finals game since 25 June 1999.

By the end of the game, Victor Wembanyama had given New York something fresh to talk about. The San Antonio Spurs snapped the Knicks’ 13-game postseason winning streak with a 115-111 victory, playing spoiler to the Garden’s party and cutting the deficit to 2-1 in this year’s finals. Game 4 is Wednesday in New York.

Izakaya economics: Japan’s traditional night out fights tooth and ale for survival

Hard times – and British-style pubs – are squeezing restaurant-bars that once thrived in cities everywhere. Can they innovate to keep pace with change?

From rowdy spit-and-sawdust joints to dimly lit high-end eateries, from chains equipped with tablets to family-run holes in the wall, Japan’s izakaya restaurant-bars are as varied as the cuisine they serve.

They are also a bellwether, reflecting strength and shifts in the wider economy. Now that economy is squeezing them harder than ever, pushing closures to record rates. The damage is spread unevenly: amid the struggles, some flourish, while a chain of unlikely alternatives expands.

6/8: The Takeout with Major Garrett

Iran and Israel say they've halted military operations after weekend flare-up; Trump attends NBA Finals game at Madison Square Garden.

6/8: CBS Evening News

Millions in central U.S. facing severe weather threats after weekend of storms; Inside Trump's visit to the NBA Finals.

Gordon S Wood, Pulitzer-prize winning historian, dies after being struck by a car in Rhode Island

A renowned academic, Wood was hit by a car as he was crossing a supermarket’s parking lot and later died of the injuries

Gordon S Wood, a Pulitzer prize-winning author and historian, was killed on Sunday when he was struck by a car in a supermarket parking lot in Rhode Island.

Wood, 92, won the Pulitzer in 1993 in the history category for The Radicalism of the American Revolution, a landmark tome that advanced the theory of the break with Britain being at least as much of an internal social and political transformation as a desire to be rid of colonial masters.