US Open 2026: golf updates on day two – live

️ Updates from the second round at Shinnecock Hills
️ Day one report | Follow us on Instagram | Mail David

Matt Fitzpatrick has to hole a 27-footer to save par at 3. It keeps him at -3 and in a tie for third. Great work. But not so good for playing partner DeChambeau, who misses the fairway, comes up short with his approach and looks utterly baffled as his par putt from 30 feet drifts five feet past. He completes an error-strewn hole by missing that one so it’s an ugly double bogey and Bryson tumbles down to +2.

The average score in round one was 73.280 which isn’t too exteme for a US Open. Here’s how it compares to the last five years.

Royal Ascot 2026: horse racing updates from day four – live

• Latest updates from Friday’s race card

• Greg Wood’s day four tips | Email Niall

Back to the straight course for the finale, and a chance for the American trainer Wesley Ward, a regular winner at this meeting over the last 15 years, to get another on the board via Bacio, who has been handed the plum draw in stall 31. He arrives with three wins from four starts, the most recent of which was an easy two-length win on firm going at Churchill Downs. Jazl, the winner of his two starts this year including his handicap debut at Leicester last time, is also attracting support despite his low draw in stall five, while Gold Digger, in 10, is another big runner and recently described as potentially being a Group horse in a handicap by his jockey, Saffie Osborne.

Kidney cancer rates near Pfas factory in Lancashire a ‘major source of concern’

Experts cast doubt on conclusion of government-funded study of factory emitting forever chemicals near Blackpool

Concerns have been raised about the conclusions drawn by a government-funded study that looked at rates of kidney cancer in the vicinity of a factory using forever chemicals near Blackpool.

Pfoa, which is a known carcinogenic forever chemical that was globally banned in 2020, was emitted from the AGC Chemicals Europe factory in Thornton-Cleveleys, a town north of Blackpool, between the 1950s and 2012. During this period, approximately 49 tonnes of Pfoa were emitted into the air. The factory, which AGC Chemicals Europe bought in 1999, stopped using Pfoa in 2012.

England v New Zealand: second men’s Test, day three – live

Updates from the third day’s play at the Oval
Day two report | Sign up for the Spin | Mail James

61st over: England 227-6 (Cox 27, Archer 0) Shot! Cox flicks his wrists on a half volley from Matt Henry and the ball traces away for four across the baking square. Lovely timing on that.

60th over: England 223-6 (Cox 23, Archer 0) It will be intriguing to see how Cox plays this morning, I have a feeling we might see some dashing strokeplay if he can hang around for a few overs and get settled. Jamieson is back of a length, Cox lets one pass by and then defends with a straight bat to mid off. The Oval is thrumming with excitement and plenty of folk can be spied applying a thick layer of sun cream, there isn’t a lot of shade here at the moment. A cheer greets Cox and England’s first run of the day, a guide to point for single off the final delivery.

US official says Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire agreed as Trump lashes out Iran deal critics – Middle East crisis live

US official tells Reuters news agency that ceasefire has now come into effect

Inside the city of grief hit hardest by Israel strikes on southern Lebanon

As the procession wound its way through mounds of rubble, the crowd chanted and beat their chests, their lamentations echoed by the dull thud of shelling in the foothills just beyond the city.

World Cup 2026: Scotland fans take over Boston; Pochettino looking for spies; Koné injury – live

⚽ All the latest news from day eight of the tournament
⚽ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Mail us

Let’s begin our look at what will happen later today.

First up is USA v Australia in Seattle at 8pm BST/12pm local time.

What's missing from the Epstein files? Here's what we found

The Justice Department says it's released "every document required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act," but CBS News has identified numerous gaps.

Italian PM Meloni says she was ‘astonished’ by Trump claims that she ‘begged’ him for a photo - Europe live

Italy’s foreign minister Antonio Tajani canceled his planned trip to the US in response to the ‘made up’ remarks

Another close Meloni ally and undersecretary in her office, Giovanbattista Fazzolari, also heavily criticised Trump’s attack on the Italian PM.

“It is unclear whether out ​of intent or ineptitude [Trump] is wrecking the historic ​relations between the United States and Europe,” he said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

The UK’s social media ban for under-16s has just empowered big tech | Taylor Lorenz

Age verification means that the sector’s biggest players will now have access to information that will only make them richer and more powerful

This week, the UK announced a wide-ranging ban on social media that will soon block users from communicating or accessing information on apps such as X, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat unless they prove that they’re over the age of 16.

The prime minister, Keir Starmer, called the policy “a line in the sand”. “Tech giants had their chance and failed,” he said, “but we’re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations.” All internet users, especially children, should be protected from exploitative systems online, but this new law will only foster more harm and help the largest and most powerful tech companies consolidate power and influence over everyone’s lives.

Taylor Lorenz is a technology journalist who writes the newsletter User Mag and is the author of the bestselling book Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

Luca Guadagnino’s Sam Altman movie dropped by Amazon after it announces OpenAI partnership

The web giant announced that Artificial, a biopic about the controversial tech executive, ‘will be better served if it were released by a different studio’

Artificial, Luca Guadagnino’s controversial Sam Altman biopic, which is poised for an awards run next year, has been dropped by its distributor, Amazon.

In a statement first reported by Puck, Amazon said that it believes “that Artificial will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the film-making team to find the film a new home”.

Read a book? Join a club? Stare at a wall? Social media alternatives for under-16s

Amid UK government proposals for a ban, experts discuss what other activities might really serve children well

When a Lancashire schoolgirl was asked what she would do if the proposed social media ban for under-16s came into effect, her answer hit a national nerve: “Stare at a wall,” she deadpanned.

The clip went viral, not least because it distilled a question many parents have been asking themselves about the consequences of the government’s proposed social media ban.

Bill Pulte assumes role of US acting director of national intelligence

Head of Federal Housing Finance Agency who investigated Trump’s enemies takes over top intelligence role

• Timeline of Bill Pulte’s appointment as acting director of national intelligence

Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, became the acting director of national intelligence (DNI) on Friday, following a tug-of-war between Donald Trump and Washington lawmakers over the short-term future of the cabinet intelligence post.

Tulsi Gabbard, the outgoing DNI, initially planned to leave her post on 30 June, but Trump shortened her tenure to Friday. Senators planned to confirm Jay Clayton, the president’s DNI nominee, by Friday, which would have denied Pulte an opportunity to serve as acting director. But Trump abruptly called off on Wednesday a Senate confirmation hearing for Clayton and directed him not to appear in front of Senate lawmakers.

Digested week: Struggling bees and the G7’s hot mics may speak volumes

Are we in the opening scenes of a disaster movie? There’s something going on with insects

It’s the start of the G7, guaranteeing us a week of either serious commentary or hot mic moments that may, in their way, prove more revealing than all the thousands of words of analysis. Previous summits have delivered a steady flow of off-the-cuff remarks from world leaders, including President Obama, at the G20 in 2011, grousing to the then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, about Benjamin Netanyahu (“You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day”), and Jacques Chirac, who, at a European summit in the early 2000s, said of the UK: “You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country with the worst food after Finland.” Rude!

Binface, foxes and raving loonies: the UK’s proud history of costumed candidates

British love of silliness comes to the fore when politicians stand shoulder to shoulder with satirical rivals

When world leaders are elected, it is usually a solemn moment, but when the Labour party veteran Andy Burnham found out he had won the Makerfield byelection, increasing the likelihood he could become the next prime minister, he was standing next to a man with a bin on his head.

The newest Labour MP was also flanked by a man in a fox costume. Robert Pownall, the founder of the campaign group Protect the Wild, decided to run as a fox in order to demand an end to trail hunting.

Record amount of sargassum seaweed found on Florida coast: "It stinks"

A record amount of sargassum seaweed has washed ashore on Florida beaches, bringing with it an unpleasant smell. Cristian Benavides shows how it's impacting coastal communities.

Remnants of Tropical Storm Arthur flood homes and force evacuations in Gulf states

The remnants of Tropical Storm Arthur were battering parts of the southeastern U.S. with heavy rain, sparking flash flooding.

Giant cranes and a dragon boat festival: photos of the day – Friday

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

Post your questions for Vini Reilly of the Durutti Column

Ahead of the band’s first new album in 16 years, the hugely influential guitarist will be taking your questions for the Guardian Film & Music reader interview

At the end of July, the Durutti Column will release their first new music in 16 years: the stunningly beautiful Renascent. It’s a prime time for Vini Reilly, Bruce Mitchell and Keir Stewart to return as the Durutti influence is everywhere: sampled by Blood Orange on his latest album Essex Honey; cited by Harry Styles on his new LP Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, as well as by Mark William Lewis and Yung Lean; played on The Bear.

Not that the group need the endorsements: since 1978, they have been one of the UK’s most distinctive acts, their dreamy instrumentals offering a sunlit alternative to the crags of post-punk, as last year’s reissue of their debut, The Return of the Durutti Column reminded us. The record’s deviation from the norms of the era, wrote Alexis Petridis in a five-star reappraisal, “ultimately worked in its favour: other than the sound of the primitive rhythm tracks, there’s nothing to tie the music here to a specific era, which means it hasn’t dated.”

Tay Keith, Grammy-nominated producer, found dead in Nashville at 29

Record producer Tay Keith was found dead in his Nashville home by officers performing a welfare check, police said.

Man released on bail after boy, three, critically injured in zoo crocodile enclosure

Cambridgeshire police say 30-year-old man arrested on suspicion of attempted murder is not fit to be interviewed

A man arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a three-year-old boy ended up in a crocodile enclosure has been released because he is not fit to be interviewed, police have said.

The 30-year-old man from Norfolk has been bailed while detectives from the major crimes unit conduct further inquiries, Cambridgeshire police said.

‘I paid $800 for my ticket but it was worth it’: England fans enjoying early World Cup vibe

Some supporters are breaking the bank to follow Thomas Tuchel’s team and early indications are that it’s worth it

They came, they saw and they went to the rodeo. For those England fans who made it to Dallas, watching Thomas Tuchel’s side see off Croatia in their opening match of the 2026 World Cup was the experience of a lifetime.

“I’ve never been to a World Cup game before so I thought it was something I couldn’t miss out on,” says Oli Lee, a music producer from Kent who now lives in Los Angeles and is otherwise known as one half of the Snakehips duo who had a UK top-five hit in 2015. “I paid $800 (£604) for my ticket but it was all worth it. We had a bit of a session in Dallas – I ended up jumping in a pool with my phone in my pocket but it’s still working somehow!”

Midwives on frontline of childbirth deaths crisis denied visas for key summit

Outcry as experts from African and Asian countries – where mortality is highest – prevented from attending Portugal conference on prevention

Visa rejections have threatened progress on mother and baby health after experts from struggling countries were barred from talks, global midwife leaders have said.

Politicians, donors and UN agencies convened this week at the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) congress in Lisbon, Portugal, a key conference to discuss the millions of avoidable mother and baby deaths every year.

Emily Maclean is a midwife

‘People think I’ve vanished’: Mary Earps on signing for London City and feeling forgotten

Former England goalkeeper discusses why it was time to leave Paris, the lure of her new club and when she will know it is time to stop

When Mary Earps signed for Wolfsburg eight years ago, shortly after they had played in the Women’s Champions League final, there was no club photographer available for her unveiling, meaning her agent popped out to buy a scarf from the club shop before taking a makeshift announcement image. So when the former England goalkeeper’s latest club, London City Lionesses, announced her Women’s Super League return with a glamorous photoshoot on a boat on the Thames in front of landmarks such as Tower Bridge, she was struck not only by how much the women’s game and her life have been transformed, but by the bold scale of her new team’s ambitions.

“The energy and effort put into the shoot, I would never have imagined this even five years ago,” says Earps, whose move to London City from Paris Saint-Germain was confirmed on Friday. “All I keep saying is: ‘I’m so excited,’ but that shoot just poured petrol on the excitement fire. Wow, if that’s what they do just to say: ‘Hey, by the way Mary’s arrived,’ then imagine hopefully what we can do [in the future].”

Two World Cup matches were played in ‘severe heat’, analysis finds

Games in Miami and Monterrey were at heat level a players’ union had warned in the past should trigger delays

Two of the first round of matches at the World Cup were played at a level of severe heat that a football players’ union has previously said should trigger the delay or postponement of games, a Guardian analysis has found.

A further four games were played in cities with temperatures also beyond that level of heat, though conditions inside the stadiums were mitigated by air conditioning.

Luigi Mangione's lawyers withdraw psychiatric defense for state case in CEO killing

Luigi Mangione's lawyers are withdrawing a psychiatric defense for his New York state murder trial. A judge had previously revealed Mangione, who has pleaded not guilty, would claim extreme emotional disturbance at the time he allegedly shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. CBS News legal contributor Caroline Polisi explains.

Dozens of people rescued as dangerous flooding wreaks havoc on Gulf Coast

Severe flooding impacts millions of people along the Gulf Coast as rising waters inundated communities and prompted rescues. Jason Allen reports.

‘People like me needed Sinéad O’Connor’: how the singer and activist inspired a new dance work

Tony-winning choreographer Sonya Tayeh was ‘broken up’ when she heard about the Irish singer-songwriter’s death three years ago. Now she and a group of over-40s female dancers are paying homage: ‘People love her, people need her’

Sonya Tayeh remembers watching Saturday Night Live in October 1992, at home in Detroit, when a young, shaven-headed woman behind a microphone tore a picture of Pope John Paul II into pieces, while saying: “Fight the real enemy.”

“I felt like the entire world paused,” remembers Tayeh, still in wonder at Sinéad O’Connor’s protest against abuses in the Catholic church, and the defiance in “those eyes that just seep through your soul and burn … It was like I could feel the world vibrate under my feet. I was overcome,” she says, on our video call from New York. I can see Tayeh has one side of her head shaved – a long curtain of dark hair sweeps down the other.

New research links prenatal exposure to Pfas to later development of PMOS

Study suggests exposure to ‘forever chemicals’ may be a main driver of disease, formerly called PCOS, authors say

New research for the first time links prenatal exposure to Pfas “forever chemicals” with the development of polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) later in life.

PMOS, formerly known as polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), is estimated to impact about 13% of women. Many cases are undiagnosed, and the disease’s cause largely remains a mystery.

‘It’s time for it to end’: Ebon Moss-Bachrach on the final, delicious season of The Bear

It turned its cast into global stars, triggered fashion crazes and even made an omelette go viral. As The Bear bows out, ‘cousin’ Ebon Moss-Bachrach talks obsessive fans, fork tattoos and why he’s ‘dumbly proud’

Ebon Moss-Bachrach is currently starring in an acclaimed Broadway production of Dog Day Afternoon, but after he takes his bow, there’s only one thing audience members want to talk about. “Every time I leave through the stage door, there’s a couple of hundred people yelling ‘Cousin!’” he laughs.

That’s his catchphrase as cranky maître d’ Richie Jerimovich in The Bear, of course. And now the culinary comedy-drama is back on the menu. One of the decade’s most influential TV shows is about to return for its fifth and final season. It seems the right time to reflect on how this scrappy creation became a surprise smash hit and cultural sensation.

Memory crisis hits such extremes that 'even Apple can't be safe'

Apple appears poised to take the rare step of increasing prices to deal with what CEO Tim Cook called an "unsustainable" memory shortage.

U.S.-Iran accord hits early snag after Swiss talks fail to proceed as planned

Analysts reckon a lasting resolution to the Middle East conflict will take some time to materialize.

Labour peer and Reform MP clash over ‘brown people’ and domestic abuse

Thangam Debbonaire and Sarah Pochin argue in Sky News interview at Makerfield byelection count

• UK politics live – latest updates

The Labour peer Thangam Debbonaire has clashed with Reform UK’s Sarah Pochin at the Makerfield byelection count, asking the MP: “You don’t like being on television with brown people, do you Sarah?”

The row erupted during a testy interview on Sky News that included an exchange about the £5m personal gift that Nigel Farage accepted from the Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne in the months before he stood as an MP in the 2024 general election. The gift, first revealed by the Guardian, is under investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner, who will examine whether or not it ought to have been declared.

Macron calls for vigilance as western Europe faces second heatwave of year

More than half of France’s population under severe weather warning with temperatures expected to exceed 40C

More than half of France’s population is under a severe weather warning as large swathes of western Europe endure the second extreme heat event of the year with temperatures expected to exceed 40C (104F).

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, called for “extreme vigilance from everyone”, asking citizens to “take care of our oldest and most vulnerable people” and follow government advice. “We are going through difficult days,” he said.

Venice’s new mayor seeks to raise day-tripper fee to up to €50

Simone Venturini says proposal aimed at discouraging arrivals in ‘periods of heightened tourist pressure’

Venice’s new mayor has said he hopes to raise a controversial entrance fee for day-trippers to the lagoon city to as much as €50 (£43).

Simone Venturini, the rightwing former tourism councillor who was elected as mayor in late May, said the proposal was aimed at further discouraging arrivals “during periods of heightened tourist pressure”.

US-Iran talks in Switzerland canceled. And, DHS to give police facial recognition app

The U.S.-Iran talks that were set to happen in Switzerland have been canceled. And, the Department of Homeland Security has plans to give some local police access to ICE facial recognition technology.

Reform’s genius plan is finally coming into view: field terrible candidates then lose | Marina Hyde

The unstoppable Nigel Farage is looking increasingly stoppable in the wake of Makerfield. The actual prime minister, meanwhile, has gone into hiding

You’ll note Keir Starmer is in full bunker mode – and we’ll get to him – but after this Makerfield result, why isn’t Nigel Farage? Why isn’t Nigel ranting madly at his generals and refusing to admit that actually, everything that went wrong for Reform here flowed directly from his personal character, and is going to keep happening in one way or another because people don’t change. Nigel’s gonna Nigel.

Nobody fetishises plain speaking like Farage, so we owe it to him to honour that and observe that Reform really shat the bed. Makerfield is among the party’s top 10 target seats for a general election, and Reform strategists’ decision to field yet another inadequate liability, whose past social media activity they simply couldn’t be arsed checking, seems to have proved something of a turn-off – for example for women, who strangely didn’t feel minded to vote for someone who had said: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.” Rob Kenyon will no doubt be back on his plumbing rounds next week. So, Makerfield ladies, make sure your husband’s home to be consulted as to whether you really want your sink unblocked. It’ll honestly be cheaper to replace it.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

U.S. opens tariff probe targeting Germany’s drug pricing policies

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Germany's proposal to reduce spending on medicines was "a serious step backwards."

Anya Taylor-Joy will make a brilliant elf assassin in Hunt for Gollum. But it’s a movie we don’t need

Andy Serkis has picked the perfect actor for the next iteration of the Lord of the Rings franchise. But if Tolkien didn’t linger over this subplot, should we?

Let’s be honest: Anya Taylor-Joy would make a great elf. If any human being could flit from tree to tree as if woven from gossamer and starlight, or appear on a moonlit branch looking as though she had just been summoned by a haunted lute, it would be the star of The Queen’s Gambit, The Witch and Furiosa. She is perfect for Lord of the Rings, and it is no surprise whatsoever that she has been cast as the elf Seren in the forthcoming Andy Serkis-directed The Hunt for Gollum, as confirmed this week by the Hollywood Reporter.

You’ll probably have heard about the movie: Serkis is back as Gollum, Ian McKellen returns as Gandalf, and the whole thing is about a barely mentioned, if crucial, section of LotR in which Aragorn is charged with chasing down the snivelling, one-time owner of the One Ring before Sauron’s forces can get to him.

Add to playlist: the wild club-pop of Zara Larsson cowriter Helena Gao and the week’s best new tracks

The Chinese-Danish artist wrote nine 10ths of Larsson’s breakout album then got a Grammy nod. It’s a fine springboard for her own revelatory pop

From Aarhus, Denmark
Recommended if you like Caroline Polachek, Zara Larsson, Grimes
Up next Debut project coming later this year

You could hardly make a better professional songwriting debut than co-writing nine 10ths of a moment-defining album – namely Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun – then getting a Grammy nod for it. It’s an enviable springboard for the relaunch of Helena Gao’s solo career. Over the past few years, the Chinese-Danish artist has released a handful of singles and EPs – standout God’s Favourite split the difference between NewJeans and R&B, and comes with an excellent Sims-referencing video – but her new music feels like a real flourishing, sidelining her older sweetness for a freakier braid of heavy bass, stuttering trance and a pitch-bending falsetto to rival that of Caroline Polachek, singing in English and Mandarin.

Over-reliance on chatbots can diminish critical-thinking skills, study finds

Depending on AI can also potentially decrease the ability to discern misinformation, research says

A new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the latest research to find that relying too much on chatbots can diminish critical-thinking skills, and potentially decrease our ability to discern misinformation for ourselves.

As AI tools are becoming more sophisticated and accessible, manipulated images and misleading headlines are becoming more common. AI can be part of the solution, and has proved useful in helping users identify fake content – but there’s a cost to using it this way, the new research suggests. An over-dependence on AI to help figure out what’s real on the internet can lead to trouble making those judgments.

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

The Pinnacle by Abir Mukherjee; A Violent Masterpiece by Jordan Harper; Murder on the Red River by Marcie R Rendon; The Devoted by Catherine Cho; The Repentants by Kate Foster

The Pinnacle by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill, £16.99)
In the eponymous Mumbai apartment block, the immensely rich and those who serve them exist side by side but worlds apart. Fading American actor George Abercrombie, married to superstar Sweety Sahota, finds himself advertising Indian whiskey while his younger wife’s acting career continues its stellar trajectory. Waking on the sofa with a hangover and only hazy memories of the night before, George discovers Sweety stabbed to death in the marital bed and one of his shirts, blood-stained, in the laundry basket. He knows he will be the prime suspect, but not only have Sweety’s phone and laptop disappeared, so has his assistant, Amit … Told from the points of view of George, Amit and Sweety’s put-upon PA Gemma – with Amit and Gemma both having secrets of their own – and laced with dry humour and social commentary, this is a tense, fast-paced tale of class, power and corruption.

Musk's SpaceX stake is worth over $1 trillion. Here are the other billionaire shareholders

SpaceX shares were up 37% after its historic debut last week, which offered shares at a set price of $135.

The BBC could be our best weapon against Trump, Musk and fake news. Here’s how that could work | Jane Martinson

A dynamic new strategy would allow the BBC to redefine what trusted news means, as it is still valued highly in this age of anxiety

Timing is all, and the timing of last week’s brutal job cuts at the BBC News could have been better. Not just because the director general Matt Brittin was reportedly on holiday, but because the announcement came straight after a new report showed social media platforms and AI chatbots had now overtaken traditional TV channels and websites as people’s first port of call for news.

The same Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism report also noted higher levels of global uncertainty and anxiety – caused not just by geopolitical instability, economic and environmental fears, but by a loss of trust in institutions, and in the news itself.

Jane Martinson is a Guardian columnist

What you need to know about the preliminary U.S.-Iran agreement signed by Trump

Here's a look at the preliminary agreement between the U.S. and Iran, and the challenges that remain to find lasting peace.

Russia threatens escalation after Ukraine hits Moscow with largest-ever drone attack

Russia has pledged to carry out frequent and "massive group strikes" against Ukraine shortly after Kyiv launched a barrage of drones on Moscow.

How the world’s voracious appetite for shrimp is destroying Ecuador’s mangroves

As demand soars, the country’s mangrove forests and the livelihoods of shellfish gatherers are under threat from encroaching farms and unchecked pollution

At low tide, Johana Carolina Cruz Potes steps into the mudflats around Isla Costa Rica, in Ecuador’s Jambelí Archipelago. Holding a bucket and a short metal hook, she probes the tangled roots of a mangrove patch, searching for concha negra, black-shelled cockles, buried beneath the sludge.

Cruz Potes has done this work since she was nine, when she first followed her father into the mud. But earning a living from shellfish gathering – often the only income for families here – has become harder as grounds shrink and catches decline.

Summer’s here and the time is right to direct sow vegetables in your garden

Starting your crops where you will harvest them avoids transplant shock and can speed growth. Just beware of hungry animals!

I like to think of myself as a fairly laissez-faire food grower. I see the prescribed sowing windows as guidance mostly, and have been known to bung a healthy seedling in a bed alongside a different plant family even if it goes against my crop plan. But when sowing seeds, I am all about control. I’m a devoted user of modular seed trays, preferring to keep my seeds compartmentalised so that I can monitor their germination and growth before choosing the ideal moment to plant them out.

Yet some crops lend themselves to being sown directly in the spot where they’ll grow until harvested. Quite a few crops can be sown outdoors now, in early summer’s generally friendly weather.

What's open and closed for Juneteenth 2026?

Juneteenth will affect banking, mail service and financial markets, although retailers and restaurants are largely staying open.

Shouting at the Texting Man is a West End smash: the Stephen Collins cartoon

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How Refugee Week film festival brings migrants’ experience home

From one hostile environment to another, the documentaries and dramas ranging from Nigeria and Syria to British immigration give vivid life to an experience that can feel very remote

As World Refugee Day approaches on Saturday, this year’s Refugee Week offers a multitude of events taking place across the UK, including a film festival that takes audiences from Ain el-Helweh – Lebanon’s largest refugee camp for Palestinians – in Mahdi Fleifel’s A World Not Ours and to an immigration removal centre in Dreamers, directed by Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor.

The UK’s asylum system is the focus of Allies in Exile, a first-person documentary from Syrian film-makers Hasan Kattan and Fadi al-Halabi that premiered on Tuesday at the BFI Southbank, which explores the labyrinth facing asylum seekers. Meanwhile, refugee charity Choose Love curated a selection of four short films that together chronicle different stages in the search for asylum, from the difficulties of everyday life in a person’s home country through the perilous journeys made over land and sea, and arrival in a hostile environment marked by ostracism and ongoing trauma.The event, which took place on Thursday at Picturehouse Central, London, was entitled Fearless Stories and showcased films that “challenge division”.Josie Fernandez-Marelli, chief executive of Choose Love, says: “The UK wouldn’t be what it is today without all the incredible people and cultures that make it up. As division is growing, it’s more important than ever to work together to make sure that refugees are seen as human beings, with hopes, dreams and ambitions.”

Premier League fixtures: Arsenal open against Coventry, Liverpool at Newcastle

• Manchester United travel to Hull on first weekend

• Manchester City without Guardiola host Bournemouth

Coventry will begin their first Premier League campaign in 25 years with a Friday night trip to the champions, Arsenal, on 21 August. Their fellow promoted club Hull begin at home to Manchester United on the Saturday and Ipswich entertain Sunderland that day.

Other eye-catching opening weekend fixtures include Andoni Iraola taking Liverpool to Newcastle on 23 August for his debut match and Manchester City starting life after Pep Guardiola at home to Bournemouth on the same day.

‘How am I supposed to know if it’s cute on me?’ The strange death of the changing room

As some shops toy with the idea of removing changing rooms, what does it mean for the future of the high street?

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Is the changing room dead? According to the teenage fashion mecca, Brandy Melville, it is. The brand has closed all its fitting rooms across stores in the UK, US and Canada, with shoppers taking to social media lamenting the change.

“Why does Brandy hate [its] customers?” one TikTok user questioned. “How am I supposed to know if it’s cute on me???!” another exclaimed.

Spencer Strider: MLB’s Bernie Bro on veganism, Trash Panda, and fighting homophobia

The Braves pitcher has always been different from the average baseball player. He talks to Joseph Palmer about his motivations on and off the field

Spencer Strider made an impression in 2022, his first full season in Major League Baseball: he was runner-up for National League Rookie of the Year. In 2023 he was ever better, leading the majors in wins and strikeouts and earning a spot on the All-MLB first-team.

But what set him apart from many of his peers wasn’t his athletic ability but his life away from baseball. In a sport that is often socially conservative, the Atlanta Braves pitcher was a vegan Bernie Sanders supporter who was just as likely to discuss indie music as his fastball.

‘They kill games, we fight back’: the activists campaigning to keep video games playable

When a company decided to shut down an online game’s servers, there wasn’t much the players who had bought that title could do – until a group called Stop Killing Games began lobbying for new consumer protection laws

You can never be sure how long an online video game will last. Developer BioWare shut off sci-fi shooter Anthem’s servers in January, after seven years. Electronic Arts discontinued access to The Sims Mobile the same month. Wildlight Entertainment shuttered its Highguard servers in March, mere months after the game’s release. Activision Blizzard took Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile offline in April. Dozens more games have had their servers shut down in the first six months of 2026, adding to an already long list of video games that are no longer playable.

There is little that players can do when a company decides to stop supporting online play. Communities work hard to keep their favourite games online, sometimes keeping dead games running on private servers, though that may not necessarily be entirely legal. Generally, though, when a game goes offline it is dead and it’s not coming back.

The U.S. may face Australia in the World Cup without star Christian Pulisic

The left winger Pulisic was key to the Americans' fluid and effective attack in last week's win over Paraguay. But he was kicked in the calf, left at halftime, and hasn't trained with the team since.

Meet the law students working to bring workplace protections to federal courts

A student-led group at Emory Law School has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the judiciary's system for policing bad behavior within its own ranks.

Weather tracker: Severe thunderstorms sweep Europe and east Asia

Strong winds and heavy rain batter Slovenia, while France experiences atypical heatwave

Severe thunderstorms swept across the Balkans last week, bringing widespread destruction to parts of the region. The storms developed as unstable hot air lingered over the Adriatic Sea while a cold front plunged south-eastward.

The front began its journey on 10 June in Slovenia, where the Slovenian Environment Agency recorded 65mph gusts at Ljubljana airport. Heavy rain also fell widely across the region with 23mm reported in Kranj.

Inside the city of grief hit hardest by Israel strikes on southern Lebanon

People in Nabatieh mourn the recent dead in religious ceremony held amid empty streets and shattered buildings

As the procession wound its way through mounds of rubble, the crowd chanted and beat their chests, their lamentations echoed by the dull thud of shelling in the foothills just beyond the city.

“This is the tragedy of Karbala, O Imam Hussein, look. This is the tragedy of Karbala,” the crowd cried in the opening procession of Ashura, in the city of Nabatieh, southern Lebanon.

Trump’s Iran deal could place his legacy in the hands of Tehran

He lambasted Jimmy Carter during the 1980 hostage crisis; now Trump’s presidency could be similarly blemished

It began with the fate of hostages.

Donald Trump’s first recorded foray into politics was sparked by the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran, which saw 52 American diplomats held incommunicado for 444 days.

Ibeyi: Offering review

(Ibeyi)
Newly independent and proudly self-sufficient, Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Diaz mix ancient lore with heavy bass, and harmonies with distortion, to incantatory effect

Having ceded creative control to numerous collaborators on 2022’s Spell 31 (veteran pop songwriter Eg White; rappers Pa Salieu and Berwyn), Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Diaz return to first principles for their fourth album. Written mainly by the sisters themselves, Offering recentres Ibeyi in their own sonic universe: fusing the influences of their Cuban percussionist father and Parisian upbringing, the twins sing in multiple languages, summoning ancient lore over intricate beats, transcendent harmonies and brooding distortion.

Self-sufficiency crops up as a lyrical theme, too: “One thing is for sure, I’m who I was looking for,” goes the refrain of Baba, which matches incantatory vocals with an irresistibly grimy bassline. (Perhaps the fact this is being released on their own label rather than XL, the taste-making British indie they were previously signed to, is also relevant here.)

Happy hosts as Canada claim first win and Mexico seal knockout spot | World Cup Daily

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Nicky Bandini and Ben Fisher as Canada thrash Qatar 6-0 in Vancouver

Andy Burnham wins huge majority in Makerfield byelection, paving way for Starmer leadership challenge

Greater Manchester mayor says result represents Labour’s ‘final chance to change’, after soundly beating Reform UK and Restore Britain

• UK politics – live updates

Andy Burnham has set up a potential showdown with Keir Starmer after convincingly winning the Makerfield byelection, paving the way for his return to Westminster and a likely tilt at the Labour leadership.

The outgoing mayor of Greater Manchester promised change after winning the byelection in the early hours of Friday morning with 55% of the votes and a majority almost double the size of his predecessor, Josh Simons.

Joe Lovano: Paramount Quartet review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

(ECM)
Lovano and his spirited quartet make his instrument glow in all its pliable eloquence, with rattling originals amid the Charlie Haden and Wayne Shorter covers

The saxophone’s 19th-century inventor, the Belgian Adolphe Sax, imagined hybrid horns that could combine the speed and fluency of woodwinds with the volume and punch of brass. Sax’s career was almost derailed by a childhood of hair-raisingly frequent accident-proneness that led his mother to fear for his survival, but at 20 he patented a prototype contrabass clarinet, and then the first saxophone as its offspring. Sneered at by traditionalists for decades, the sax was sidelined to parade bands and purring strings mimicry in dance orchestras – until jazz musicians from Sidney Bechet in the 1920s to Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter and scores more contemporary originals, all the way to Joe Lovano today, put it centre stage as jazz’s radiantly expressive equivalent of the classical violin.

And Lovano’s Paramount Quartet glows with all the saxophone’s pliable eloquence in a master’s hands, alongside comparably free-spirited guitarist Julian Lage, bassist Asante Santi Debriano and sometime Living Colour drummer Will Calhoun. Lovano is a brilliant bebop player, but also an inspired free-improviser, creatively inhabiting the sound worlds of classic jazz, global music and more texture-based European approaches. He played Charlie Haden’s First Song with Bill Frisell long ago, and here it returns on a lyrical solo guitar intro from Lage and an exquisite sax theme, spinning into long improv over vaporous guitar chords and soft, sleek runs.

Week in wildlife: a hungry hoopoe, a hot croc and a snoozing otter pup

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

On the trail of the dotcom queen: how Julie Meyer left a pattern of unpaid bills, missing funds and broken dreams in her wake

Investigation: The entrepreneur was once the toast of London’s tech scene, a ‘global leader of tomorrow’ who starred on Dragons’ Den and promised untold riches for the startups she championed. But people she worked with in the last decade, from Malta to Switzerland, describe a very different reality

Julie Meyer is sitting in a starkly lit attic, surrounded by piles of £50 notes. A California blond in a crisp, white shirt, her long, stockinged legs crossed at the knee, she listens intently to the young man standing before her. As he talks, she sizes him up. Eventually, she tells him: “I’m going to make you an offer.” It could be a scene from a heist movie, but Meyer is in a BBC studio, shooting a 2009 episode of the TV show Dragons’ Den. A celebrated entrepreneur with a venture capital fund, she is ready to invest in whichever contestants catch her eye. For the viewers, she has some advice: “What is success? A lot of it is self-belief. Continuing on when most rational people would stop.”

This is an online spin-off from the original Dragons’ Den series, so the stakes are a little lower. But for Lex Deak, a 23-year-old with a big idea for a social media website, what happens in this room today could be make or break. He desperately wants to work with Meyer.

Players are human beings and social media comments reach us. But the focus has to be on the pitch | Rodrygo

The pressure of wearing the Brazil shirt can be heavy but also creates a positive kind of responsibility

Playing in a World Cup is a huge experience; when you’re with the national team, your entire focus is on the squad’s schedule – the hotel, the training centre, the stadium – basically, everything revolves around the matches.

I lived that routine daily at the 2022 World Cup and realised the immense dedication the tournament demands. In this 2026 edition, as fate would have it and as I am still recovering from my injury, I’m discovering a different side of the World Cup: a World Cup of reunions, with countless events happening simultaneously across the cities and countries, creating opportunities for conversations and extraordinary experiences.

Sports quiz of the week: World Cup, US Open, Wimbledon and Royal Ascot

Have you followed the big stories in football, cricket, golf, tennis, athletics, rugby union, horse racing and MMA?

‘I’m 90 for goodness sake’: rainforest activist to pedal 104 miles down Thames

Veteran campaigner Robin Hanbury-Tenison is raising money for a research station near his home in Cornwall

Pedalling on water for more than a hundred miles in a heatwave, pushed back by east winds and having to navigate 31 locks would be a challenge for anybody. But when that body is 90 years old, with a bad knee, failing balance and malfunctioning arms and shoulders, it’s a herculean feat.

Rainforest campaigner Robin Hanbury-Tenison, 90, is pedalling 104 miles down the River Thames from Oxford to Richmond on a water-bike to raise money for a unique research station which is being built to study Britain’s temperate rainforest.

Elgar and Dvořák: Cello Concertos album review – Gerhardt’s readings are forthright, refreshing and thoughtful

Gerhardt/WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln/Manze
(Hyperion)
Alban Gerhardt eschews the romantic, heart-on-sleeve interpretations of these famous concertos, and finds nobility and poetry even in the most turbulent music

Alban Gerhardt adopts a back-to-basics approach in these thoughtful readings of cello concertos by Elgar and Dvořák. Determined to counter ideas embedded in the collective musical psyche by the likes of Jacqueline du Pré and Mstislav Rostropovich, there is a straightforwardness here, and a refusal to luxuriate that may not please those used to more heart-on-sleeve interpretations. Nevertheless, by scrutinising the scores – and few composers were as pernickety with their markings as Elgar – he finds much that is refreshing as well as illuminating.

In the Dvořák, he’s less theatrical, more poetic than his Soviet-born predecessor, aided by Andrew Manze, who keeps the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln clipped and generally light on its feet. Gerhardt’s is a noble, cleanly articulated performance that yearns where others prefer to gush and keeps its feet firmly planted in the Bohemian countryside, even when the music is at its most turbulent.

In the Hand of Dante review – Gerard Butler is jaw-dropping in bizarre Renaissance mafia reverie

Julian Schnabel’s combustible mix of lowlife cynicism and high art – along with cameos from Martin Scorsese and Al Pacino – powers this outrageous black comedy revolving around Dante’s Divine Comedy

The worlds of Renaissance manuscript scholarship and organised crime come together like a mix of Umberto Eco and George V Higgins in this flawed but fascinating reverie from director and co-writer Julian Schnabel. Switching between monochrome and colour, and freely adapted from the Nick Tosches novel of the same name, it is hilarious and shocking, at least at first, with a quite extraordinary tough-guy role for Gerard Butler. It is a mysterious, scabrous and bizarre adventure in violent larceny and spiritual crisis which unfortunately unwinds in the end into sentimental fantasy. In the Hand of Dante amounts to an epic and self-aware jeu d’ésprit with amazing cameos from Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino and Franco Nero, beckoning its audience over to peep into the fathomless abyss of heaven and hell, to ponder the matters of sin, art and the Mephistophelean bargain involved in the attainment of wealth, power and knowledge.

The film unfolds on two narrative levels. In 14th-century Florence, Oscar Isaac plays no less a figure than Dante Alighieri, the great poet whose Divine Comedy virtually invented the concept of redemption, as he grapples with his artistic and spiritual destiny. And in the US in the era of 9/11, Isaac also plays Tosches, louche author and Dante enthusiast, whose aggressive refusal to compromise has alienated publishers and editors, and who now accepts a freelance job via a kid from the old neighbourhood, where the young Tosches had learned to protect himself by any means necessary. John Malkovich plays a mob boss named Joe Black (presumably like the death figure in the movie Meet Joe Black whom Anthony Hopkins meets); he has come into possession of what seems to be the priceless lost original manuscript of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, discovered by an ancient Catholic priest in Sicily with mafia connections.

The changing face of Mongolia as, beneath the grass, permafrost thaws

The warming caused by climate breakdown in the landlocked east Asian country is transforming its fragile ecosystem

As the climate crisis accelerates, Mongolia is warming rapidly, transforming the country’s cryosphere, including some of the most southerly permafrost landscapes in the northern hemisphere.

Although rarely associated with the Arctic, Mongolia has a remarkably cold climate. Ulaanbaatar is the coldest capital city in the world, and a substantial portion of the country lies within the Arctic Ocean drainage basin. As a result, many of the physical and ecological processes occurring here resemble those found at much higher latitudes.

People in Khövsgöl province say they have observed an increase in the number of arrivals of migratory birds from China in recent years, consuming large quantities of fish in the region’s lakes. In northern Mongolia, communities closely tied to fishing, herding and tourism are witnessing the visible transformation of fragile freshwater ecosystems shaped by climate breakdown and the changing cryosphere.

Historical surveys conducted in the 1970s suggested that nearly 63% of Mongolia was underlain by permafrost. Today, estimates indicate that only 26% to 29% remains. Unlike the ice-rich permafrost of Siberia, Canada or Alaska, much of Mongolia’s permafrost is relatively warm, thin and dry, making it particularly sensitive to rising temperatures. Climate change is the primary reason for this decline, although local pressures such as overgrazing can further accelerate thaw by removing the vegetation that insulates the ground – Nikolay Shiklomanov, a professor in the department of geography and environment at George Washington University

‘I half expected James Bond to appear with a martini’: readers’ favourite seaside hotels in Europe

From faded grandeur in Greece to designer cabins in the Norwegian dunes, these are your most glamorous coastal discoveries
• Tell us about a memorable Greek holiday – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

The Hotel Villa Garden, Sant’Agnello is a ravishing but small, friendly, family-run hotel about 25 minutes walk from the centre of Sorrento. The view from the cliff-edge dining terrace over to Vesuvius is breathtaking and the stylish pool is a delight. The decor is crisp and sunny. It’s the kind of place where they bring you a free glass of rosé while you wait for your taxi to the airport. Very Billy Wilder. Very Avanti.
Jan Colley

The hill I will die on: Food-sharing is gross without serious rules of engagement | Poorna Bell

No trying my dessert, no tasting my drink, and definitely no double-dipping. I don’t care if it makes me sound precious or a germophobe

When I was a child, I remember the grimace on my uncle’s face when one of my sticky little cousins drank from his can of soda. He announced that he could no longer drink it because another person’s saliva had touched it. While no one said the words “germaphobe weirdo” out loud, we were all thinking it. Our shock increased as he abandoned his old can for a fresh one, because in the early 1990s wastage was serious – fizzy drinks were a treat and we had whatever the opposite was to the “don’t worry if you can’t finish that, darling” school of parenting.

Fast forward 35 years, and I’ve realised I am now that uncle. And not just drinks – this extends to food too. This may come as a surprise to some people, given that I’m Indian and sharing food is a fundamental pillar of who we are. But at home, we serve our food in giant pots, family style. There’s a spoon for every dish, and that kind of sharing is perfectly fine. There is no double-dipping because there are unspoken rules of engagement. What is not perfectly fine, however, is when different cultures come together, and someone thinks it is OK to put the spoon that was in their gob into the main pot, or use it to scoop something from another person’s plate.

Poorna Bell is a freelance journalist and author of She Wanted More

Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for upside-down blueberry cake | The sweet spot

Forget pineapple and use berries instead, with aromatic five-spice adding its warming fragrance to this darkly delicious take on the classic bake

I grew up thinking the only fruit that was allowed in an upside-down cake was tinned pineapple, so once I discovered that no such rule existed and that I had free rein, upside-down cakes became far more exciting. I’ve since used everything from plums and apples to blood oranges, but today I’ve gone for blueberries. And, thanks to how juicy they are, you don’t even need to make a caramel: just toss the berries in sugar. I always add a pinch of five-spice, too, for a warming fragrance that just works. Trust me!

ICO watchdog opens inquiry into cameras in mental health patients’ bedrooms

Exclusive: Oxevision system used by 40% of NHS mental health trusts being scrutinised by information commissioner over privacy concerns

The information commissioner has launched an investigation into a controversial camera-based system for monitoring patients in their bedrooms, used by 40% of NHS mental health trusts, over data protection concerns.

Oxevision is described by patients as “creepy” and a form of “spying”, and has been blamed by a bereaved mother for contributing to her daughter’s sense of paranoia before she took her own life.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Grammy-nominated music producer Tay Keith, who worked with Drake and Travis Scott, dies aged 29

Hip-hop producer behind Travis Scott’s Sicko Mode and Drake’s Nonstop has been found dead at home during a police welfare check

The Grammy-nominated producer Tay Keith, who worked with Drake, Travis Scott and Beyoncé, has been found dead at his apartment in Nashville, Tennessee aged 29.

Keith, whose real name was Brytavious Chambers, was discovered at home after police conducted a welfare check on Thursday afternoon.

‘I’d listen to my body before it screamed for help’: Keith Richards on life as an 82-year-old great-grandad – and jousting with Mick Jagger

He did every substance imaginable – and got punched by Chuck Berry – but Keef’s still going strong. As the Stones knock out another new album, he explains why he’s rejecting AI in favour of ‘the old ways’

Keith Richards has just become a great-grandfather. “This is true! This is true!” he enthuses, video-calling from somewhere in the depths of the Hit Factory, the New York studio first patronised by the Rolling Stones 46 years ago when they were making Emotional Rescue. “It’s been a couple of weeks. It’s a new thing for me. But I’m a fantastic grandad,” he confides. “Great-grandadding is … I try to let them hang with me for as long as humanly possible, then I hand ’em back. I’ve been doing a lot of grandfathering in the last year or so. I’ve got three or four new ones, you know. When I say new, I mean … two or three years old. Or four. Or one, or maybe five.”

Hang on, that seems a little vague. He shrugs and explodes in a wheezy chuckle. “I lose track, you know.”

Sugar review – Colin Farrell’s detective show is a luxurious labyrinth of noir

Each episode of this PI drama’s second season is a half-hour haze suffused with melancholy and distressed urban beauty. It’s the kind of show that could only exist on Apple TV

Getting a TV show made isn’t easy. OK, so you’ve got an interesting idea and some good scripts – but a network or streaming platform will have many further questions. How much will it cost to make, which age/demographic will enjoy it, can it be distilled in a grabby one-line summary, could it recoup investment by running to multiple seasons? Nobody’s going to take a punt on your kooky pet project and risk losing money.

At least that’s the theory, but Apple TV seems happy to commission shows having ticked none of the above boxes. Pound for pound – that is, ignoring the overwhelming volume of Netflix shows – it’s probably the best streamer in the game, having gambled and won on Severance, Ted Lasso, Slow Horses, The Studio, For All Mankind and Widow’s Bay. But it also has a stable of oddball charmers that work in a moseying sort of way – Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed and Margo’s Got Money Troubles being two recent ones – and a slew of baffling misfires like Government Cheese and Hello Tomorrow! that have popped up, done a thing nobody understood and disappeared again. You don’t know what you’ll get with a new Apple show, but it’s likely to be something nobody else would green-light, and they’d often be right.

I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro on my hands

I have no legs, so the thought of tackling the nearly 6,000-metre peak seemed crazy. But after reflection, and hard physical training, I decided to give it a go

I was born with a rare genetic disease called sacral agenesis, which meant that my legs didn’t work. When I was five, I had surgery to amputate them. Doctors told my parents that I might never sit up, let alone be a functioning member of society – but as a child I wanted to try everything, and my mum and dad were great at encouraging me.

I learned to navigate the world by walking on my hands. I also had a wheelchair, or I’d get around our neighbourhood in Wyoming by skateboard, just like other kids.

Canada’s emotions run high after gruesome Ismaël Koné injury: ‘We have a job to finish for him’

• Koné suffered a broken leg after a rash challenge

• Report: Canada routs Qatar for first men’s World Cup win

Any great midfield tandem requires each member to be acutely aware of what is happening with the other. It’s little surprise, then, that Stephen Eustáquio would be the first to alert the rest of Canada to Ismaël Koné’s injury.

“I saw his leg,” Eustaquio told reporters after Thursday’s 6-0 win over nine-man Qatar. “I saw that something wasn’t right, and I just wanted for the medical staff to get in as quick as possible.”

The 2026 FIFA World Cup schedule and how to watch

With 104 World Cup games being played in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, it's like "a Super Bowl every single day for five weeks," U.S. team captain Tim Ream told CBS News.

The Tassie devils in my neighbourhood keep stealing shoes and laundry, but I adore them | Kelley Swain

The thievery of these little creatures is endlessly amusing to me, but there have been, I’m told, a few rounds of inconvenience

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To have your knickers go missing at a music festival may be seen as evidence of having a great time, but what if you’re at a folk music festival in the lush green Huon Valley of Tasmania, where parents stroll around with children in prams, and the wildest thing happening is an 8pm ceilidh?

The thing is, I’m fortunate to live in that lush green valley, but my neighbours are inveterate kleptomaniacs. A guest who was visiting for the Cygnet folk festival this summer had left some laundry out on my landlady’s deck to dry in the sun, and as my landlady turned the corner, she saw the pair of knickers disappearing slowly between the wooden deck slats. She dived to rescue the knickers; the thief scuttled away beneath the deck. I learned early on that leaving shoes out at night was to kiss your shoes goodbye.

Forget the confected World Cup hostility, the US and Australia mirror each other

The Group D clash between the United States and Socceroos has been hyped as next step in a heated rivalry but the nations are on similar football journeys

Listen to the hyperbole spewed by the loudest voices, and the World Cup clash between co-hosts the United States and Australia in Seattle is the latest contest in a heated sporting rivalry streaked with disrespect and even downright hate.

Indeed, the sometimes spiteful clash between the teams in a friendly last year serves as a preview for what is now one of the marquee matches in the pool stage, and set to determine the winner of Group D.

Tornadoes tear through multiple states across Midwest, Southeast

Tornadoes were reported in Illinois, Iowa and several other states Wednesday as severe weather slammed a large swath of the Midwest​ and Southeast.

For women in China frustrated by sexism, female comics are offering a release

Standup comedy gives women a space to talk about certain topics that have become more sensitive, while performers remain wary of censorship limits

Packed into the upstairs theatre of a small performing arts space in east Beijing, more than 100 people, mostly women, are giddy with anticipation. “Who did you come to see?” asks the MC, fashionably dressed in a faded denim two-piece suit. The answer is bellowed in unison back to him: “Fang Zhuren!”

Fang Shaoli, AKA Director Fang (Fang Zhuren), has built a cult following in China in the past two years. Decidedly less fashionable than the evening’s host, Fang is dressed in a yellow hoodie and dark blue jeans. Her everywoman attire is part of the appeal. With a stout frame and short, sensible haircut, Fang, who was born in 1975, hails from rural part of east China’s Shandong province. Before discovering the art of standup comedy she worked in factories and on construction sites, but mainly lived as a housewife to a difficult husband. Her jokes riff on the deep sexism that permeates Chinese culture, particularly away from the big urban centres like Beijing and Shanghai.

Dangerous weather hits multiple parts of the U.S.

In the Midwest, a batch of tornadoes touched down, part of a line of storms that shredded buildings and toppled trees. In the South, flash floods stranded folks in their homes and vehicles. Jason Allen reports on water rescues and Rob Marciano has the forecast.

US military kills three people in boat strike in Pacific Ocean

Attack brings to at least 211 number of people killed as Trump administration targets alleged ‘narcoterrorists’

The US military attacked a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Thursday, killing three people, as the Trump administration wages a months-long campaign against alleged traffickers in Latin America.

The latest attack brings the number of people the US military has killed in boat strikes to at least 211 since the Trump administration began targeting people it calls “narcoterrorists” in early September.

NYC celebrates Knicks NBA championship with ticker-tape parade

The New York Knicks went up New York City's famous Canyon of Heroes for a massive ticker-tape parade celebrating the 2026 NBA champions.

Even after a brain tumor altered this artist's sight, he crafted his greatest work yet

After artist Vincent Serritella underwent surgeries to remove a brain tumor on his optic nerve, he found a way to overcome his change in vision. Tony Dokoupil has the story.

Obama Presidential Center opens: "We wanted it to be a vibrant, living celebration of community"

Former President Barack Obama formally unveiled his presidential center in Chicago on Thursday, calling it an "expression of thanks" to the city and a monument, not to his story, but to the U.S.'s story. Caitlin Huey-Burns reports.

Ukraine launches drone attack on Moscow: "If Ukraine burns, then your Moscow will burn as well"

Ukraine hammered Russia with the largest attack on the capital city of Moscow since Russia invaded its neighbor more than four years ago. A massive swarm of Ukrainian drones hit a major oil refinery there, among other targets, on Thursday. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was a retaliatory act. Aidan Stretch reports.

Star-studded opening for Obama library in Chicago delivers implied rebuke to Trump

Musical stars and retired politicians from less polarised era seeming antidote to cage fights on White House lawn

The Barack Obama presidential center opened in Chicago on Thursday after more than a decade in the making amid a musical fanfare and paeans to democratic principles that evoked a previous age, all while delivering an implied rebuke to Donald Trump.

Featuring appearances by a cast of musical stars and retired politicians from a less polarised era, it was a seemingly perfect antidote to the crass spectacle of cage fights on the White House lawn.

How Trump's rhetoric on Iran has evolved over the course of the war

Many of President Trump's stated reasons for going to war with Iran are left unresolved in the initial deal with Iran, and many of the president's goals for the war haven't been met. But what has changed in just a few months is his rhetoric. Margaret Brennan reports.

Democrats and some Republicans fuming at Trump's Iran deal

Vice President JD Vance defended President Trump's deal with Iran, which he signed on Wednesday at the Palace of Versailles in France. Weijia Jiang has more reaction and details.

Trump awards Medal of Honor to 3 veterans of the Vietnam, Afghanistan wars

In a ceremony at the White House, the president paid tribute to retired Marine Corps Maj. James Capers Jr., retired Army Maj. Nicholas Dockery and Marine Col. John W. Ripley, who died in 2008.

Mangione lawyers abandon psychiatric defense over health CEO’s killing

Legal team of alleged gunman, 28, reverses position on ‘extreme emotional disturbance’ defense after one day

In a stunning reversal, Luigi Mangione’s legal team said on Thursday they would no longer pursue a psychiatric defense in his upcoming state trial over the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Just one day earlier, Mangione’s lawyers told Judge Gregory Carro they would pursue a defense claiming the 28-year-old was suffering an “extreme emotional disturbance” at the time of Thompson’s killing on 4 December 2024.

6/18: CBS Evening News

Life-threatening flash floods hit the South; White House hits critics over the Iran deal.

States not required to give community-based care for those with disabilities: DOJ opinion

The Office of Legal Counsel opinion released Thursday said states aren't required by law to integrate mentally disabled patients with their peers by providing community or home-based care.

Chairman Warsh drastically alters Fed rate statement. Here's what's changed

This is a comparison of Wednesday's Federal Open Market Committee statement with the one issued after the Fed's previous policymaking meeting in April.

Waymo recalls about 3,900 robotaxis after some drove into 'freeway construction zones'

After some Waymo robotaxis drove into closed construction zones, the company implemented a recall to fix underlying software issues.