The Guardian
Trump sues Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over Epstein report

President follows through on libel threat over report that said he sent Epstein ‘bawdy’ birthday note and sketch

Donald Trump has sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal newspaper reporters for libel and slander over claims that he sent sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a bawdy note and sketch of a naked woman.

Trump’s lawsuit on Friday, which also targets Dow Jones and News Corp, was filed in the southern district of Florida federal court in Miami.

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18th July 2025 21:43
The Guardian
Democrats condemn CBS for axing Colbert show: ‘People deserve to know if this is politically motivated’

Lawmakers note cancellation follows Colbert’s criticism of parent company Paramount for settling Trump suit

Democrats are condemning CBS for its recent decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, noting the news comes just a few days after its host criticized the network’s parent company, Paramount, for settling a $16m lawsuit with Donald Trump.

Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who appeared as a guest on Colbert’s show on Thursday night, later wrote on social media: “If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.”

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18th July 2025 21:36
The Guardian
Company says investigation under way into footage of couple at Coldplay gig

Video at the concert showed Astronomer’s married CEO with his arms around its head of human resources

Astronomer, the company at the center of the Coldplay scandal in which its CEO was caught canoodling with its chief human resources officer, has finally issued a statement on the matter.

More than 24 hours after a Jumbotron camera at a Coldplay concert in Boston, Massachusetts, caught the software company’s married CEO, Andy Byron, with his arms around the company’s HR head, Kristin Cabot, Astronomer has responded to the incident which has taken the internet by storm.

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18th July 2025 21:31
The Guardian
Alan Bergman, Oscar-winning lyricist, dies at 99

Bergman teamed with wife Marilyn to write lyrics for such hits as The Way We Were and The Windmills of Your Mind

Alan Bergman, the Oscar-winning lyricist who teamed with his wife, Marilyn, for an enduring and loving partnership that produced such old-fashioned hits as How Do You Keep the Music Playing?, It Might Be You and the classic The Way We Were, has died aged 99.

Bergman died late on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles, family spokesperson Ken Sunshine said in a statement on Friday. The statement said Bergman had, in recent months, suffered from respiratory issues “but continued to write songs till the very end”.

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18th July 2025 21:26
The Guardian
Spain see off stubborn Swiss to reach semis despite two missed penalties

“Spain is Spain,” Switzerland’s talismanic captain Lia Wälti had warned and in the quarter-final between the host nation and the world champions, she was right. Spain Spained – Athenea del Castillo and Clàudia Pina each struck in a five-minute, second-half spell to crush rumblings of a possible upset.

It had been a game of hope, Mariona Caldentey’s missed penalty and Livia Peng’s save from an Alexia Putellas’s spot-kick sandwiching the goals that crushed the resolve of a battling Switzerland.

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18th July 2025 21:17
The Guardian
Caracas releases 10 Americans as Venezuelans freed from El Salvador jail

Scores of Venezuelans deported by US to El Salvador repatriated as Marco Rubio hails return of Americans

Venezuela released 10 jailed Americans on Friday in exchange for getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

The resolution represents a diplomatic achievement for the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, helps Donald Trump in his goal of bringing home Americans jailed abroad and lands El Salvador a swap that it had proposed months ago.

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18th July 2025 20:44
The Guardian
The Open 2025: sensational second-round 64 gives Scheffler outright lead – live reaction

World No 1 Scottie Scheffler justified his status with a scintillating display to take the lead on 10 under par

Adam Scott should have won this Championship in 2012. But he bogeyed holes 69 through 72 at Lytham, handing the Claret Jug to Ernie Els on a silver platter. What the genial Scott would give to play that stretch again. Ah well, he’ll always have Augusta National, nine months later. What the Big Easy would give for a green jacket. Scott started this morning on +1 after a 72 yesterday, but he’s going backwards now, after a clumsy double bogey, his first of the week, at the short par-three 3rd. He over-clubs, his ball disappearing down the swale at the back … then he under-chips, his ball coming back towards his feet. A second chip doesn’t get close, and two putts later, he’s +3 and prodding the green with his putter in annoyance, not so genial right now.

Sergio Garcia missed a five-foot putt to win the Open at Carnoustie in 2007. He had his chance to win at Hoylake in 2014 too, but failed to get out of a bunker at the par-three 15th and that was that too. At 45 years of age, it’s not too late to right those wrongs, and yesterday’s opening round of 70 offered hope. But he’s started his second round horrendously, tugging his opening tee shot into the thick stuff down the left, finding a greenside bunker, failing to get onto the green, chipping short, then failing to make the eight-footer that remains for bogey. A double, and those shoulders are slumping already. We’ve seen this story too often before. Oh Sergio. He’s +1.

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18th July 2025 20:38
The Guardian
More violence erupts in Syria’s Druze heartland as tribal groups reinforce local Bedouin

UN calls for end to ‘bloodshed’ that has claimed at least 638 lives, according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

Armed tribes supported by Syria’s Islamist-led government clashed with Druze fighters in the community’s Sweida heartland on Friday, a day after the army withdrew under Israeli bombardment and diplomatic pressure.

The UN called for an end to the “bloodshed” and demanded an “independent” investigation of the violence, which has claimed at least 638 lives since Sunday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

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18th July 2025 20:15
The Guardian
Trump worked to kill a story about his friendship with Epstein. Now we know why | Margaret Sullivan

The president is reportedly ‘on a warpath’ over a story in the Wall Street Journal – controlled by Trump’s top media ally

For days before the Wall Street Journal published its story about Donald Trump’s salacious friendship with Jeffrey Epstein on Thursday, the president was frantically working the phones.

He reportedly put pressure on the paper’s top editor, Emma Tucker, and even Rupert Murdoch, who controls the paper’s business side, claiming that the alleged facts behind the story were nothing but a hoax, and threatening to sue the paper if it forged ahead.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

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18th July 2025 19:45
The Guardian
Explosion at LA law enforcement training facility kills three people

Three deputies who were killed were members of department’s arson explosives detail, according to sheriff

An explosion at a law enforcement training facility in Los Angeles has killed three people with the county sheriff’s department in the largest loss of life for the agency since 1857, the sheriff said on Friday morning.

The three deputies who were killed were members of the department’s arson explosives detail said Robert Luna, the sheriff, at a press conference. Authorities were still working to notify relatives of the deceased, he said, and details on the circumstances around the explosion were limited.

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18th July 2025 19:31
The Guardian
‘Gangster granny’ jailed for leading family gang dealing drugs worth £80m

Deborah Mason, 65, who had moniker ‘Queen Bee’, and seven members of her network sentenced to total of 106.5 years

A family-run organised crime group, orchestrated by a 65-year-old described by police as a “gangster granny”, has been sentenced for dealing drugs with a street value of £80m across the UK.

Deborah Mason, who had the moniker “Queen Bee”, and seven other members of the gang, were sentenced at Woolwich crown court in London on Friday for their involvement in supplying nearly a tonne of cocaine over seven months.

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18th July 2025 19:23
The Guardian
Lions desperate for fast start in Test that will set the tone for Australia series

Talk is of a possible clean sweep for tourists but the onus is on Australia to make one or two Lions eat their confident words

Whatever unfolds over the next three Saturdays this British & Irish Lions series will resonate more than its predecessor. Simply to see visiting fans in red jerseys wandering down Queen Street in central Brisbane is to be thankful the whole enterprise has a beating heart once again, in contrast to South Africa four years ago when a Covid-disrupted, spectator-free experience sapped everyone’s spirits.

Because a Lions tour is nothing without a human element, enticed back every four years by the fabled steepness of the challenge. “This is our Everest, boys,” growled Jim Telfer back in 1997 and, as usual, the master coach was right. On only three occasions in the past 50 years has a Lions squad returned home triumphant and, for now, a series win remains the holy grail for the professional egg chasers of England, Ireland, Scotland and, if selected, Wales.

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18th July 2025 19:00
The Guardian
England’s defensive problems go deeper than Carter – and must be fixed fast | Jonathan Liew

Centre-back’s ordeal against Sweden was damaging but sketchy press and midfield failings need to be addressed before Italy semi-final

Jess Carter glumly accepted her warm-down top, the pallid commiserations of Arjan Veurink and a seat on the England bench. In truth she had been fortunate to see 70 minutes of this quarter-final, and for all the nightmarish apparitions of the first half perhaps the last few minutes were the loneliest of all. Marooned at the back, 30 yards behind the rest of the team while England forced set pieces and pushed for a route back into the game: a last line of defence that had proved to be very little defence at all.

Esme Morgan would replace her to add some extra heft and the entire system would need to be rejigged to a back three. Carter would watch the excruciating last hour from a seated position, reflecting bleakly on the sort of performance that scars international careers, perhaps even defines them. “You’re feeling nothing and everything at the same time,” she said afterwards. “It’s a turbulent experience. I feel like it’s the first time I’ve smiled since the game.”

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18th July 2025 19:00
The Guardian
‘Absolute madness’: England fans reflect on Euros comeback win against Sweden

  • Lionesses overturned deficit to win on penalties in Zurich

  • Reigning champions will face Italy for place in final

England supporters in Zurich were recovering on Friday from the drama of the Euro 2025 penalty shootout win against Sweden, with one speaking of “absolute madness in the stands” as the team came from two goals down.

England’s official allocation of 2,099 tickets at the Stadion Letzigrund was sold out but there were about another 10,000 England fans in the stadium, including Louisa Holden-Morris, from Crewe, who was attending her 13th match at this tournament. She told the Guardian she could scarcely watch the penalties.

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18th July 2025 18:52
The Guardian
Trinidad and Tobago declares second state of emergency, citing gang threat

Police commissioner says there has been intelligence of formation of organised crime syndicate intent on havoc

Trinidad and Tobago has declared its second state of emergency this year amid “grave concerns” about a coordinated threat from organised crime gangs inside and outside the country’s prisons.

Announcing the decision on Friday, the commissioner of police, Allister Guevarro, said his force had received intelligence the day before that the gangs had “formed themselves into … an organised crime syndicate” and were intent on wreaking havoc and planning assassinations, robberies and kidnappings.

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18th July 2025 18:44
The Guardian
Trump administration to destroy nearly $10m of contraceptives for women overseas

As part of president’s end to foreign aid, destruction of the long-acting contraceptives will cost US taxpayers $167,000

The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need.

A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000. The contraceptives are primarily long-acting, such as IUDs and birth control implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two senior congressional aides, one of whom visited a warehouse in Belgium that housed the contraceptives. It is not clear to the aides whether the destruction has already been carried out, but said they had been told that it was set to occur by the end of July.

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18th July 2025 18:01
The Guardian
The week around the world in 20 pictures

Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, combat training in Ukraine, wildfires in France and Iga Swiatek at Wimbledon: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

  • Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

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18th July 2025 17:36
The Guardian
Angela Rayner tells Labour to ‘step up’ and make case for being in power

Exclusive: Deputy PM defends action against party rebels and says Send system is priority, in Guardian interview

Angela Rayner has urged Labour colleagues to “step up” and make the case for why the party should be in power as the government attempts to draw a line under a tumultuous first year in office and shift towards a more upbeat approach.

The deputy prime minister urged Labour MPs to focus on the party’s achievements over the last 12 months rather than always thinking about failures, saying they should all be “message carriers” for what had been done well.

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18th July 2025 17:17
The Guardian
‘Profound alarm’: US veterans agency roiled by fight over anti-discrimination provisions

Nearly 100 lawmakers claim the agency’s recent actions put veterans’ healthcare at risk. Department of Veterans Affairs chief says ‘no one is being discriminated against at VA’

The US Department of Veterans Affairs has enthusiastically joined Donald Trump’s war on DEI – demanding that staffers report colleagues who engage in diversity initiatives, banning LGBTQ+ pride flags from VA hospitals and shuttering an office investigating why Black veterans are more likely to have their mental health disability claims rejected.

Last week, the VA secretary, Doug Collins, tweeted that “VA is now squarely focused on Veterans – not out-of-touch, woke causes such as DEI and gender dysphoria treatments.”

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18th July 2025 17:13
The Guardian
‘Two fights left’: Usyk closes in on history and retirement with Dubois test

Ukrainian seeks to unify the heavyweight division again at Wembley on Saturday before putting family time first

Boxing, as Oleksandr Usyk knows, gets everyone in the end. It is a harsh and pitiless business and earlier this week, at the end of a long afternoon answering the same old questions in front of a line of television cameras, Usyk sat down with a small group of familiar faces who have written about him for years. During his last assignment for the day he opened up a little more as he spoke about the sacrifices boxing demands.

He told us how much he wanted to see his wife, Yekaterina, as she had just flown into London and they would be reunited that evening. Three months had passed, in a gruelling training camp, since they had been together and Usyk spoke about missing her and their four children.

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18th July 2025 17:06
The Guardian
Faced with a choice between saving his own skin and the lives of others, Netanyahu always chooses himself | Jonathan Freedland

If Israel’s prime minister accepts a ceasefire deal soon, it will only be because the timing suits him. He, like his country, will face a reckoning

Will the war in Gaza last for ever? It’s not a wholly rhetorical question. There are days when I fear that the death and devastation that has gone on for 650 days will never stop, that it will eventually settle into a constant, low-level attritional war inside the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a war within a war – that becomes a background hum to world affairs, the way the Troubles in Northern Ireland endured for 30 years. In this same nightmare, incidentally, I see Benjamin Netanyahu, who has already sat in Israel’s prime ministerial chair for nearly 18 years, on and off, staying put for another 18 years or more, ruling the country until he is 100.

Israelis don’t want either of those things to happen. Polls show that only a minority trust Netanyahu, while an overwhelming majority – about 74% – want this terrible war to end. As the leader of one of the ultra-orthodox, or Haredi, parties that this week quit Netanyahu’s ruling coalition – over the government’s failure to pass a bill permanently exempting Haredi youth from military service recently put it: “I don’t understand what we are fighting for there … I don’t understand what the need is.”

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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18th July 2025 17:05
The Guardian
Lammy announces exposure of 18 Russian spies after UK cyber-attacks

Foreign secretary says two agents were involved in planting spyware on a device used by poisoning victim Yulia Skripal

The UK has exposed 18 Russian spies and their units responsible for cyber-attacks in Britain and hacking one of the victims of the Salisbury poisonings, David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has said.

Announcing individual sanctions, Lammy said Russia had targeted media, telecoms providers, political and democratic institutions and energy infrastructure in the UK in recent years.

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18th July 2025 16:44
The Guardian
The Guardian view on Maga and Jeffrey Epstein: the truth about Donald Trump and conspiracy theories | Editorial

The US president is struggling to close down speculation about the case that those close to him have promoted


Donald Trump has thrived on conspiracy theories – “birtherist” lies that Barack Obama was born outside the US; the lunacies of the Q-Anon movement; false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. All centred on the idea that the “deep state” was lying to, and thus cheating, ordinary people. Mr Trump was their tribune.

It’s hard not to feel schadenfreude now that he’s at the sharp end of a theory that he at times encouraged and allies eagerly pushed: claims that the prison death of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein might not be suicide after all, and that wealthy and well-connected associates were trying to hush up connections to the financier. Mr Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, promised that “truckloads” of documents would help reveal the truth and claimed that a client list was “sitting on my desk right now”.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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18th July 2025 16:37
The Guardian
Kerr and Lyles offer London Diamond League stardust despite withdrawals

Threat of rain and absences of Hodgkinson, Hassan and Ingebrigtsen are blows but record tilts will enthrall fans

One of the major issues athletics faces is the relative lack of importance that the overwhelming majority of events hold. It is one of the reasons why Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track is yet to catch alight: the pay is great for the athletes, but a win or loss counts for little in the overall scheme of a season or career.

The much-maligned Diamond League has fought against such (ir)relevance throughout its existence. In such a context, it is a notable achievement that the London leg of athletics’ premier season-long competition is a 60,000 sellout for what could turn out to be a thunderstorm-threatened Saturday afternoon.

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18th July 2025 16:30
The Guardian
Your Guardian sport weekend: Tour de France, the Open and Women’s Euro 2025

The first Lions Test, a golf major at Royal Portrush, a Euro 2025 quarter-final and heavyweight boxing are just some of our offerings this weekend

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18th July 2025 16:23
The Guardian
Tour de France: Pogacar pulls more than four minutes clear with stage 13 victory

  • Defending champion eases to time-trial triumph

  • Vingegaard finishes second with Roglic in third

A breathless Jonas Vingegaard slumped exhaustedly over his bike on another baking Pyrenean afternoon, after Tadej Pogacar inflicted a further crushing defeat in the mountain time trial to the altiport at Peyragudes.

The second time trial in the 2025 Tour was expected to further confirm Pogacar’s supremacy over the peloton and so it proved, as the defending champion extended his lead to over four minutes with his fourth stage win in this year’s race and the 21st Tour stage of his career.

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18th July 2025 16:10
The Guardian
The song of the summer is … nothing? Why 2025’s charts are so stale

Experts say this year has produced the fewest new hit songs in US history – and it might signal the end of a singular seasonal smash

A spectre is haunting America – the spectre of Shaboozey.

Despite it coming out in April 2024, Shaboozey’s huge hit A Bar Song (Tipsy) is still, billions of streams later, at No 5 on this week’s Billboard chart. Its country-tinged refrain of “everybody at the bar gettin’ tipsy,” an interpolation from J-Kwon 2004 hit Tipsy, has stuck around well past closing time.

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18th July 2025 16:08
The Guardian
From penalty taker to physio: Lucy Bronze is England’s Swiss army knife

When the chips were down against Sweden, the right-back scored, scrapped and strapped her way to a semi-final spot

Lucy Bronze pinned up a picture of herself after the 2019 Women’s World Cup bronze-medal match against Sweden, which England lost 2-1, for her teammates to see on a wall in the team hotel where players and staff share inspirational images. She was, in her words, “absolutely exhausted” in it, hairband round her neck, shirt crumpled, hair awry, the physical, emotional and mental pain of the preceding 90 minutes visible.

That photo represents so much to Bronze, England’s stalwart right-back who no one has come close to replacing and likely never will. “I will give anything and I will give everything when I play in an England shirt,” she says of the image of her at her most broken. “I wanted all the girls to know that that’s my why. My why is to give everything for this team because I just love playing for England so much.”

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18th July 2025 16:00
The Guardian
I’m an expert on ageing. Here’s what I know about thriving in later life | Kerry Burnight

I scoured longevity research on wellbeing – and the deeper I dug, the more I recognized a profound underlying pattern

Anyone who says “age is just a number” has not reached the high numbers. Ageing is not easy, and “forever young” is not a plan. Regardless of how many burpees you can do or protein smoothies you chug, the passing of time brings challenges. Roles that you relished change, words on menus seem to shrink, necks sag, diagnoses arise.

On the other hand, ageing is not the downhill slide that people believe it is. A multibillion-​dollar anti-ageing industry profits when you feel awful about yourself and fear ageing like the plague. The tragedy of ageing is not that we will all grow old and die, but that ageing has been made unnecessarily, and at times excruciatingly, painful and humiliating. Ageing does not have to be this way.

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18th July 2025 16:00
The Guardian
Whiteboard warrior: Marvel is priming Mister Fantastic to be the new leader of the Avengers

The guy who treats collapsing timelines like a crossword puzzle has one extra superpower this time around: he’s played by Pedro Pascal

The Avengers need a new leader, and given how many potential candidates for the gig have either died, retired, or turned evil, they need it soon. The multiverse is collapsing, timelines are unravelling, box office numbers are wobbling, the Kang plan is in tatters and Blade is on its ninth script. So, naturally, Marvel’s answer is to hand the reins to a stretchy man in sensible shoes who once broke the entire multiverse.

Yes, according to The Fantastic Four: First Steps director Matt Shakman, the awesome foursome’s Reed Richards is being lined up as the new leader of Earth’s mightiest heroes. Or at least, he is (at times) in the comics, and it looks increasingly like he might be the only reality-straddling, buttoned up polymathable to take on this job on the big screen.

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18th July 2025 15:49
The Guardian
I used to be scared of being a ‘difficult woman’. Now it’s a badge of honour | Jacinta Parsons

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned by talking to older women, it’s that being a ‘bad girl’ shouldn’t faze you – it should embolden you

I remember the thrill I felt when someone would tell me that I was a “good girl”. I understood from a young age that, as a girl, goodness would be my supreme achievement – my calling in life. But what that looked like or how I might embody its essence took time to decode.

I remember being in the back seat of our brown HJ Holden when I was young, leaving a family party and being reprimanded by my parents for my “behaviour”. I was mystified. I had no idea what I had done that had caused them such embarrassment. Had I run when I was told not to? Or had I misunderstood an instruction? Was I a “bad girl”, I remember wondering.

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18th July 2025 15:00
The Guardian
Spain’s People’s party hit by alleged multimillion cash-for-favours scandal

Claims involve former finance minister Cristóbal Montoro and dealings with gas and other energy companies

Just when Spain’s opposition People’s party thought it had the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez on the ropes over a series of corruption scandals, it has been hit by a controversy of its own over alleged trafficking of influences by Cristóbal Montoro, the former finance minister.

It is alleged that Montoro established the “economic team”, a lawyer’s office linked to the finance ministry, which took kickbacks from gas and other energy companies in return for favourable government policy. It is claimed that between 2008 and 2015 Montoro and 27 other accused, among them senior treasury officials, were paid at least €11m (£9.5m) by big energy companies.

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18th July 2025 14:51
The Guardian
The Guide #200: Get Out, Breaking Bad and the pop culture that defined the 21st century so far

In this week’s newsletter: To celebrate the Guide’s 200th edition, we look back at the films, shows, albums and more that mattered most over the last 25 years

The Guide is 200 issues old today – maybe not the biggest milestone, but one worth marking. So this week we’re doing just that, ending our recent miniseries on the culture of the past 25 years with a listicle spectacular.

We’ve picked a piece of popular culture for each year of the 21st century so far. Which isn’t to say a definitive list of the best culture of the 21st century – the Guardian’s arts desk already did that far more conclusively than we ever could. Instead, we’ve selected 21st-century TV shows, films, plays, podcasts, artworks, albums and games that together hopefully help explain how culture has evolved in that time.

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18th July 2025 14:41
The Guardian
Man arrested in Glasgow for holding sign allegedly supportive of Palestine Action

Arrest under the Terrorism Act happened after the man refused to stop displaying the sign when asked by police

A man has been arrested in Glasgow for holding a paper sign allegedly supportive of the proscribed direct action group Palestine Action, the third arrest of its kind across the city in the past week.

Police Scotland confirmed that the 64-year-old man, who had been speaking to a small group of protesters gathered at Nelson Mandela Place in the city centre on Friday afternoon, had been arrested in connection with an offence under the Terrorism Act “for displaying a sign expressing support for a proscribed organisation”.

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18th July 2025 14:33
The Guardian
Bolsonaro ordered to wear ankle tag over fears he may abscond as coup trial nears end

Guilty verdict widely expected for Brazil’s ex-president accused of plot to seize power after losing 2022 election

Federal police have raided Jair Bolsonaro’s Brasília mansion, banned him from communicating with foreign diplomats and ordered him to wear an electronic ankle tag amid fears Brazil’s ex-president may abscond to avoid punishment over an alleged coup attempt.

A supreme court trial examining claims that Bolsonaro masterminded a murderous plot to seize power after losing the 2022 election is expected to reach its conclusion in the coming weeks.

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18th July 2025 14:15
The Guardian
The long road to tragedy at the Texas girls camp where floods claimed 27 lives

A 2018 county meeting foretold the Texas flood that overwhelmed the summer camp for girls

Investigators of the catastrophic Hill Country flooding in Texas may never be able to pinpoint a precise moment that sealed the fate of 27 young girls, teenage counselors and staff who perished after a wall of water surged through Camp Mystic on the banks of the Guadalupe River.

But perhaps no bigger clue can be found than the account of an otherwise unremarkable and sparsely attended meeting of Kerr county commissioners in March 2018.

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18th July 2025 14:00
The Guardian
Trump’s endless toying with conspiracy theories has finally come back to bite him | Moira Donegan

The president has long exploited useful fictions embraced by his supporters. Now he’s trying to change the narrative

Donald Trump’s followers, and the conspiracist influencers turned government officials through whom he persuades them, have turned on the president and US attorney general after they declared an end to federal inquiries into Jeffrey Epstein’s death. But it would be a mistake to think that the investigation scandal is sui generis. It’s more like the culmination of a long-running trend, one in which Trump’s exploitation of the conspiracist fictions, distrust of institutions, and prurient fascinations of his base have finally come back to bite him.

A pedophile ring at the center of power is a recurring theme in rightwing conspiracy theories of the Trump era. During the 2016 presidential election, supporters of Trump, then an outsider challenger for the Republican nomination, began to spread dark claims about his rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton. Online, far-right trolls and members of the population now called “low trust voters”– people who believe that something nefarious and conspiratorial is going on in the halls of American power, even if they don’t know exactly what – speculated that Clinton was at the head of a huge human trafficking and pedophilic abuse ring based inside Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in Washington DC. There was no secret ring. But that didn’t stop a disturbed man from showing up with a gun.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

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18th July 2025 14:00
The Guardian
Are collagen shots and supplements really the secret to youthful skin?

Treatments to boost the protein are all the rage, but the evidence is uncertain and any results could be short-lived

From high-end aesthetics clinics to the middle aisle of Lidl, collagen is having a moment. Whether it’s in the form of fruity shots or powdered supplements, this structural protein is being touted as the secret to youthful skin and glossy hair.

Celebrities are also singing the praises of a collagen-boosting procedure called NeoGen, with the actor Leslie Ash claiming earlier this week that it had “taken 10 years off her”.

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18th July 2025 14:00
The Guardian
Football Daily | England and Sweden get into spot of bother with an unmissable shootout

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The strongest contender that Football Daily could find for the worst penalty shootout of all time was predictably held between two English teams. In January 1998, under-10 pair Mickleover Lightning Blue Sox and Chellaston Boys faced off in the Derby Community Cup. After the regular game finished 1-1, a total of 56 penalties failed to break the deadlock, with referee Peter Shieff even moving the spot two yards closer and offering a coin toss to decide the result (which the sides declined). Despite saving 31 consecutive spot-kicks in the sudden-death decider, Chellaston Boys’ goalkeeper Ben Hodder ended up on the losing side as Blue Sox romped home 2-1, after a grand total of 66 kicks had been taken, a world record verified by David Barber, the FA’s official statistician. A thought, then, for the parents that day 27 years ago, stood on the sidelines, outwardly encouraging their youngsters while internally being tortured and scorched with the fires of a thousand flamethrowers.

There is such a feeling of sadness and disbelief around this awful tragedy that we wanted to make this tribute of our own as soon as we could. Like everyone else, we’ve been stunned by events, and we remember what a wonderful player Diogo was for Wolves during that unforgettable promotion season under Nuno and our early years back in the Premier League. His record of 44 goals at Wolves, and then 65 at Liverpool as a Premier League title winner, speaks volumes. So many fans across the game – especially in Portugal after he helped them win the Nations League this summer – are feeling his loss deeply. We saw no reason to delay this decision” – Wolves induct Diogo Jota into their hall of fame.

The north (in the west) starts at the Cheshire/Staffordshire border. This puts Stoke in the midlands (yesterday’s Football Daily letters) and Crewe in the north. This isn’t just my opinion (I went to grammar school in Crewe) but also the opinion of a person originally from Merseyside who wrote a book about the north that started by him defining where the north started and the first chapter was him visiting Crewe” – Mike Walsh.

Looking at the James, Parker, Chapman, Jack golfing quartet (yesterday’s Memory Lane, full email edition), I couldn’t help but wonder which one of them would have the flag showing ‘Fashion, Golf, Arsenal. In that order’” – Ken Muir.

Further to Yannick Woudstra (yesterday’s letters) wondering if a move to Old Trafford could materialise for Jordan Henderson. I seem to recall that Alex Ferguson once put the kibosh on a move for Henderson in the early-2000s over concerns about his running style. Well the good news for Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s brains trust is that, at the age of 35, running won’t be something Henderson will be doing a lot of. Sign him up!” – Joel Flood.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

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18th July 2025 13:55
The Guardian
Felix Baumgartner: the man who skydived from space – video obituary

The Austrian extreme sports pioneer Felix Baumgartner, known for his record-breaking 2012 skydive from the edge of space, has died in a paragliding accident in central Italy, police have said. Baumgartner, 56, lost control of his motorised paraglider while flying over Porto Sant’Elpidio in Marche on Thursday. He fell to the ground near the swimming pool of a hotel. The cause of the accident remains unclear

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18th July 2025 13:37
The Guardian
Essex police arrest two after asylum hotel protests turn violent

Police say eight officers were assaulted when crowds surrounded a small counter-demonstration

Two people have been arrested after a protest outside a hotel housing asylum seekers during which eight officers were assaulted, Essex police said.

Riot police wore helmets and took up position while crowds of men, some masked, surrounded a small counter-demonstration by anti-racism activists on Thursday evening.

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18th July 2025 13:31
The Guardian
The end of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show is a concerning nail in the coffin for comedy | Jesse Hassenger

The long-running US television staple is coming to an end, signalling the slow death of late-night comedy and the worrying cultural power of Trump

The idea that the political career of Donald Trump would be a goldmine for comedy died a long time ago, with the coffin accepting stray nails for the past five years. The latest and possibly last such nail is the cancellation of The Late Show, the CBS late-night talkshow hosted by Stephen Colbert since the fall of 2015, and originated by David Letterman when the network poached him from NBC in 1993. At this point, Trump hasn’t just made topical late-night comedy look outdated, hackneyed and an insufficient response to his reign of terror; he’s also made a chunk of it flat-out go away.

There will be time to eulogize Colbert’s particular talkshow style later; the Late Show isn’t leaving the air for another 10 months, when his contract is up. Surely that leaves plenty more time to savage the president – and Colbert has been in this slot since right around the time Trump became a real contender in the presidential race, so why has this only now come to a head? Seemingly because the axing of the Late Show franchise follows the $16m settlement of a frivolous Trump lawsuit against CBS and their newsmagazine show 60 Minutes over the show’s editing of a 2024 interview with presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Colbert made great fun of his bosses’ payout as a cowardly “bribe” designed to appease the Trump administration, who are in the position to approve or deny the sale of Paramount, the corporate owners of CBS, to the company Skydance. In other words, the pre-merger nixing a comedian who regularly goofs on Trump on network TV seems like a convenient bit of timing – maybe even an unspoken bonus to go along with those millions of dollars.

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18th July 2025 13:29
The Guardian
Christian leaders make rare visit to shelled church in Gaza

Israel grants access after ‘stray’ tank round kills three people and wounds Catholic priest

Israel has granted two senior Christian leaders rare access to Gaza after an Israeli strike on the Palestinian territory’s only Roman Catholic church killed three people.

Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Catholic Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, and his Greek Orthodox counterpart, Theophilos III, led a delegation on Friday to the Holy Family Church, whose shelling the day before triggered international condemnation.

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18th July 2025 13:22
The Guardian
‘We painted, sang songs’: the Russian woman found living in Indian cave with daughters

Nina Kutina told police she moved to forest with girls, aged four and six, to get away from modern urban life

According to Nina Kutina, life for her and her two daughters in their jungle cave had been peaceful.

Buried deep in the forests of Gokarna, a coastal town in southern India, they had woken “up with the sun, swam in rivers and lived in nature”.

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18th July 2025 13:17
The Guardian
‘The hot tar splashed everywhere’: remembering the dark magic of Derek Jarman

In 1989, the artist was living on the Kentish coast when he created a series of mysterious paintings with a bonfire and tar. A new exhibition brings these so-called Black Paintings to life – and shows why they still resonate today

In Modern Nature, his journals, published two years before his death in 1994, Derek Jarman described the time his friend David arrived for lunch at Prospect Cottage, Jarman’s home, some time in the summer of 1989. David was carrying an enormous block of pitch.

The cottage and its boundless garden sits on the shingle at Dungeness, a place of immeasurable strangeness and beauty on the Kentish coast. “After swimming,” Jarman wrote, “we built a brick hearth, lit a bonfire, and melted the pitch in an old tin can.” The two men then rushed back and forth between the studio and the pot, fetching brushes, gloves, pillows, barbed wire, crucifixes, prayer books, bullets, a model fighter plane and a telephone and set about tarring and feathering objects and affixing them on to canvases. “The hot tar splashed everywhere and set like shining jet,” he observed, with a childlike enthusiasm.

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18th July 2025 12:00
The Guardian
‘I’ve not got a problem with making myself look disgusting’: the wild rise of Diane Morgan

From Avon lady to TikTok superstar, Diane Morgan has become a global comic darling. As her raucous comedy Mandy returns, she talks about why she almost asked the BBC to pull it – and why she pretends to be a robot for an hour a day

Diane Morgan went vegan a few months ago, so naturally, we meet for lunch at a restaurant in central London that almost entirely serves cheese. It is a humid, muggy day. “You don’t often hear people use the word ‘muggy’ now,” Morgan says, when I mention it. “How many people do you hear saying that, on a daily basis?” A pause. “Under the age of 85, I mean.”

Morgan is famous for her deadpan style, which she has honed to perfection as the mockumentary host Philomena Cunk, and has put to use all over British TV, from the dour Liz in Motherland to Kath in Ricky Gervais’s sitcom After Life, with a recent stint as the reporter Onya Doorstep in Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. Over a lovely looking cheese-free salad, she admits that she is becoming more of a hippy as she gets older. “As I’m cascading towards the grave,” she laughs.

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18th July 2025 12:00
The Guardian
This fiasco didn’t start when Britain leaked Afghans’ names, but when we invaded their country | Simon Jenkins

Even after Tony Blair’s bungled war, UK leaders still yearned to dominate the world stage. With the lifting of the superinjunction, we can all see where that has led

What odds on a public inquiry into the Afghan superinjunction? Gold-plated, judge-led, three years of fun and games, that is how British politics normally kicks an embarrassment into the long grass. And what odds on who will get off scot free – Tony Blair?

The more we pick away at the stages of this fiasco, the more from the start one blunder seemed to follow inevitably from another. There was no reason for the British invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. If the US wanted revenge on the Kabul regime for harbouring al-Qaida after 9/11, it could have done what Donald Trump did last month to Iran. A savage retaliatory blow against the country’s rulers would have made the point.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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18th July 2025 11:30
The Guardian
BP agrees to sell US onshore wind business as it shifts back to oil

Company to sell business for undisclosed sum to LS Power as part of plan to offload $20bn in assets

BP has agreed a deal to sell off its onshore wind business in the US as the oil multinational turns its back on renewable energy after a failed attempt to go green.

The company said it would sell its share of 10 windfarms, which generate enough clean energy to power more than 500,000 US homes, to the New York-headquartered LS Power.

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18th July 2025 11:03
The Guardian
The best recent crime and thrillers – roundup

Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson; Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson; The Good Liar by Denise Mina; The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun; Gunner by Alan Parks

Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson (Michael Joseph, £20)
The bestselling YA author’s first novel for adults has an intriguing premise: thanks to the combination of a blow to the head by an unseen assailant and a pre-existing medical condition, Jet Mason has a week to solve her own murder before a fatal aneurysm rupture. Jet, who comes across as rather younger than her 27 years, has retreated back to the dysfunctional bosom of her wealthy Vermont family after dropping out of law school; she disagrees with the police department’s choice of culprit and conducts her own investigation with the aid of childhood friend Billy. As Jet’s neighbours, family and the construction business from which the Masons derive their money come under the microscope, secrets and cover-ups are revealed, and it starts to look as if the killer may be very close to home … A propulsive plot, where the pathos is fuel for real suspense, makes this perfect holiday fare – a genuine page-turner for YA and adult readers alike.

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18th July 2025 11:00
The Guardian
Add to playlist: Céline Dessberg’s harp evokes Hollywood and home – plus the week’s best new tracks

With a wide-eyed awe at the natural beauty of her Mongolian heritage, the warmth of Dessberg’s voice is irresistible

From France
Recommended if you like Eddie Chacon, the Sweet Enoughs, Chet Baker
Up next
Full-length album due later this year

Perhaps you are listening to a lot of Mongolian-French harp music featuring hauntingly beautiful Mongolian-language vocals about the natural treasures of the Earth, in which case Céline Dessberg will be old news to you and you can move along. For the rest of us though, she’s a revelation. Taking inspiration from all aspects of her heritage, you’ll find traces of Buddhism, the Mongolian countryside, Chet Baker and David Byrne woven through her songs in a sound that’s classic, old as the hills and refreshingly new all at once.

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18th July 2025 11:00
The Guardian
‘We’re the canary in the coalmine’: when will Russia take action on the climate?

World’s fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases pays lip service to tackling climate crisis and, with fossil fuels central to regime’s legitimacy, it seems happier with status quo

Source of figures at top: World Economic Outlook

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18th July 2025 11:00
The Guardian
Listen up, weaklings: there’s no Epstein client list. Why are you so obsessed? Yours, Donald J Trump | Marina Hyde

It’s the bonfire of the Maga hats. The real mystery is where their wearers got the idea of a paedophile conspiracy from in the first place

You have to feel for Donald Trump’s Maga base. The one huge secret they didn’t want disclosed was that he actually really hates them. All populists despise their people, obviously – but please, Mr President, respect the playbook! You’re supposed to do it quietly. Regrettably, no one could accuse Trump of hiding his spite under a bushel after a week in which he described those of his supporters who want him to simply do what he repeatedly promised, and release the so-called Epstein files, as “weaklings” and “stupid people”. This is quite the (public) volte face from the guy who originally swept to office declaring “I love the poorly educated”.

Most of you are unlikely to need a recap at this stage, but Jeffrey Epstein is the sex-trafficking financier and socialite, who conveniently died in jail while awaiting trial, apparently by suicide. A woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted of conspiring with him to sexually abuse minors, and is currently serving 20 years in a low-security Florida prison. But no big-hitting or even small-hitting male associate in the US has so much as been arrested for participating in what I believe the dead paedophile would have encouraged us to call his “lifestyle”. This second Trump administration didn’t just sweep to power while repeatedly screaming about the “cover-up” of this story, but it spent a good portion of its early months assuring its ravenous base that Epstein’s supposed “client list” was on a desk waiting for release approval. Yet now, Trump and his associates say there is no list. Nope. Never even was a list. Where did these weakling idiots get that idea? To summarise his administration’s position: “We took a look at the deep state and it turns out to be very shallow. Seriously, I’m standing in it right now and it doesn’t even come up to my knees.”

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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18th July 2025 10:53
The Guardian
‘A wild and orgasmic ride’: Basic Instinct set for ‘anti-woke’ reboot

Original writer Joe Eszterhas is signed on for the new films, with the 80-year-old intending to unleash the ‘twisted little man’ inside him on the script

Joe Eszterhas, the screenwriter of 1992 smash Basic Instinct, is to write a reboot sources close to the project are calling “anti-woke”.

As first reported by the Wrap, Eszterhas, 80, has signed a deal with Amazon MGM for the script; the streamer guarantees a $2m fee, which will be upped to $4m should the film be made, making it the most lucrative spec sale of the year.

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18th July 2025 10:48
The Guardian
Barbra Banda on Zambia’s progress at Wafcon: ‘We have a really good feeling’

The Orlando Pride forward is thriving while playing for her country after a sex eligibility row

Having missed the 2022 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations as a result of a controversy over the DSD (difference in sex development) test guidelines set by the Confederation of African Football, Barbra Banda was tight-lipped about her feelings as the Copper Queens won bronze without her.

Now she is back. She has scored three goals in Zambia’s Wafcon campaign, with the first coming 58 seconds into the tournament’s opening game, against hosts Morocco. Banda, who doubles as the Copper Queens captain and attacking pivot, alongside the equally lethal Racheal Kundananji, can finally breathe a huge sigh of relief.

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18th July 2025 10:37
The Guardian
‘The nightmare that never ended’: Swedish media on Euro 2025 penalty heartbreak

  • Pressure put on 18-year-old Smilla Holmberg criticised

  • England squeak through after youngster’s miss

Swedish media reacted with incredulity and indignation after the country’s women’s team lost the Euro 2025 quarter-final to England on penalties.

The Swedes raced into a 2-0 lead in the first half before the Lionesses responded with two quickfire goals to take the game into extra time. After a goalless 30 minutes Sarina Wiegman’s team, the reigning champions, won a fraught shootout 3-2.

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18th July 2025 10:36
The Guardian
Serious pollution incidents by English water companies rose 60% last year

Environment Agency records 75 serious incidents among total of 2,800, with Thames Water being worst offender

Serious pollution incidents by water companies were up 60% last year compared with the year before, data has revealed.

These incidents are the most environmentally damaging and indicate that the sewage spill or other pollution incident has a serious, extensive or persistent impact on the environment, people or property. They could, for example, result in mass fish deaths in rivers.

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18th July 2025 08:27
The Guardian
Gas flaring created 389m tonnes of carbon pollution last year, report finds

Rules to prevent ‘enormous waste’ of fuel are seen as weak and poorly enforced and firms have little incentive to stop

The fossil fuel industry pumped an extra 389m tonnes of carbon pollution into the atmosphere last year by needlessly flaring gas, a World Bank report has found, in an “enormous waste” of fuel that heats the planet by about as much as the country of France.

Flaring is a way to get rid of gases such as methane that arise when pumping oil out of the ground. While it can sometimes keep workers safe by relieving buildups of pressure, the practice is routine in many countries because it is often cheaper to burn gas than to capture, transport, process and sell it.

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18th July 2025 08:23
The Guardian
Alex G: Headlights review – indie-rocker reins in the noise to reveal romantic soft rock

(RCA)
While the sonic invention and off-kilter details remain, on his 10th album the cult musician eschews distortion for melancholic melodies and crooked love songs

Alexander Giannascoli’s nine-album back catalogue is the record of a great creative evolution. Starting with thin, wobbly Moldy Peaches-style anti-folk in his teenage years, the Pennsylvania native added lusher, twangier elements – Americana with a slacker twist – before introducing glitched beats, pitched-up vocals and copious vocoder. By 2022’s God Save the Animals he had a zealous cult following and was pushing at the limits of what indie singer-songwriter fare could be, melding acoustic strumming and sweet melody with distortion that ranged from unsettlingly inhuman to downright demonic.

On Headlights, his 10th album, Giannascoli, 32, reins in the warp and abrasion: the sonic invention remains, but it is deployed with increased subtlety. Exceptional opener June Guitar has chipmunk backing vocals and a surging organ riff that strongly recalls Centerfold by the J Geils Band; Beam Me Up is haunted by a mid-century sci-fi sound effect and Louisiana begins with a revving engine – yet all serve the timeless, melancholic soft-rock rather than overpowering it.

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18th July 2025 08:00
The Guardian
Remember When by Fiona Phillips review – an unsparing insight into early-onset Alzheimer’s

The journalist’s memoir of events leading up to her diagnosis, aged 61, is a moving account of a life slowly unravelling

In 2019, the TV presenter and journalist Fiona Phillips booked a last-minute trip to Vietnam with a friend. Nothing unusual there, you might think. But not only did Phillips not invite her husband or children, she didn’t consult them, instead simply informing them that she was leaving the following week. It was an impulsive decision that she hoped would lift her out of a depressive episode that was manifesting in brain fog and anxiety. But for her husband, TV editor Martin Frizell, it was another instance of Phillips behaving oddly, a sign that things “were not all they should be”.

Remember When chronicles, with illuminating candour, the changes that culminated in Phillips’s diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s in 2022, at the age of 61. Billed as a memoir by Phillips herself, owing to her decline during the three-year writing process, it’s really a co-production between her, her ghostwriter Alison Phillips (no relation) and Frizell, who provides fitful interjections. As such, it offers a rare account of the impact of Alzheimer’s not just from the person who has it, but from their primary carer too.

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18th July 2025 08:00
The Guardian
Netflix uses generative AI in one of its shows for first time

Firm says technology used in El Eternauta is chance ‘to help creators make films and series better, not just cheaper’

Netflix has used artificial intelligence in one of its TV shows for the first time, in a move the streaming company’s boss said would make films and programmes cheaper and of better quality.

Ted Sarandos, a co-chief executive of Netflix, said the Argentinian science fiction series El Eternauta (The Eternaut) was the first it had made that involved using generative AI footage.

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18th July 2025 07:57
The Guardian
Poor Creature: All Smiles Tonight review | Jude Roger's folk album of the month

(River Lea)
Masters of atmosphere, Ruth Clinton, Cormac MacDiarmada and John Dermody contrast hauntological synths with robust noise on this playful debut

The latest gorgeous release from the fecund Irish folk scene doesn’t begin with bassy dread in the Lankum mode, but a mood of gentle, haunting psychedelia. Adieu Lovely Erin starts by evoking Broadcast swirling around a maypole; then it’s as if Cocteau Twins had been transported to a traditional music session. Its sweet, high female vocals also evoke the improvisations of sean-nós singing, while simmering, krautrock-like drums build drama.

Poor Creature comprises three musicians expert in heightening and managing atmosphere: Landless’s Ruth Clinton, Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada plus live Lankum drummer John Dermody. Their debut album steeps cowboy songs, Irish ballads, bluegrass and other traditional songs in a misty, playful lightness that somehow also carries an eerie power. Bury Me Not is a 19th-century American song about a dying sailor desperate not to be buried at sea, and Clinton delivers its lamenting lyrics with a bright, shining innocence. MacDiarmada leads Lorene, a rolling, country ballad by Alabama duo the Louvin Brothers, with a similarly soft, brooding magic. Singing as a boy desperate for a letter from his beloved, despite clearly knowing he’s being ghosted, the song’s melancholy slowly rises as voice and guitar mesh together.

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18th July 2025 07:30
The Guardian
Eight hours, 250 singers… and as many bananas as it takes: Tavener’s Veil of the Temple

Who’d be brave enough to programme John Tavener’s choral epic? We talk to the team behind the staging that’s opening this year’s Edinburgh international festival, and veterans of its 2003 premiere remember the challenges and rewards

What’s the longest concert you’ve ever been to? Ever found yourself sitting through more encores than you’d bargained for, worrying about your last train? Or mid-symphony becoming desperate to stand up and stretch?

What about the longest single piece of music? Opera-goers may or may not sympathise with Rossini’s quip about Wagner’s “good moments but awful quarters of an hour”, but there is no denying the monumental scale of Die Meistersinger, for instance, which runs to about four and a half hours, not including intervals. And then there’s the same composer’s Ring cycle – about 15 hours in total, albeit split across four instalments; as close to a marathon as classical music usually gets.

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18th July 2025 07:00
The Guardian
Young, educated and knee deep in rubbish: the recyclers cleaning up in Cairo’s Garbage City

Piles of waste line the streets of Manshiyet Nasr, turning it into a no-go zone for many. But a new generation see themselves as agents of change in the fight against plastic pollution

When Mina Nedi graduated with a nursing degree last year, his friends and family expected him to start working in one of Egypt’s overstretched hospitals. Instead, the 25-year-old decided to join his father’s recycling business in Manshiyet Nasr, a neighbourhood on Cairo’s eastern outskirts known as Garbage City.

Every day, he sorts through thousands of plastic bottles, collected by a team of men who roam the city at night to pick up rubbish, separating them by colour and compressing them into large bundles with the help of a machine, ready to be sold for recycling and reuse.

Mina Nedi, 25, has been working as a plastic collector for five years and funded his university education with it

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18th July 2025 07:00
The Guardian
Death and the Gardener by Georgi Gospodinov review – how it feels to lose a father

The International Booker winner explores Bulgarian family life under communism in this moving depiction of a son’s bereavement

The Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov was published quietly in the Anglophone world for years before he won the 2023 International Booker prize with Time Shelter, about an Alzheimer’s clinic that recreates the past so successfully, it beguiles the wider world.

He is perhaps now Bulgaria’s biggest export. Ever playful, never linear, his new novel Death and the Gardener consists of vignettes of a beloved dying and dead father, told by a narrator who, like Gospodinov, is an author. Gospodinov has spoken publicly about losing his own father recently, and the novel feels autobiographical in tone. When we read “My father was a gardener. Now he is a garden,” it is not the beginning of an Archimboldiesque surrealist tale, but rather a more direct exploration of how we express and where we put our love.

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18th July 2025 06:00
The Guardian
Be more ‘squee’: the big business of tiny accessories

Like celebrity bodies on the red carpet, everything from bottles, bag charms and even the bags they’re attached to are shrinking in size – but are bigger signs of status than ever

When it comes to attention-seeking fashion, bigger is usually better. A giant designer bag. Shoulder-grazing earrings. A straw hat the size of a bike tyre. Recently, however, there has been a shift. Like celebrity bodies on the red carpet, accessories are shrinking. Everything from bags to water bottles are noticeably downsizing.

In April, Uniqlo released a micro version of its mini shoulder bag. The original banana-shaped hit, which has become the brand’s bestselling bag of all time, measured 28cm by 17cm. Its £12.90 offspring has been scaled down to 21.5cm by 11.5cm and, like a matryoshka doll, comfortably nestles inside its progenitor.

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18th July 2025 06:00
The Guardian
Helen Goh’s recipe for lemon meringue bombe alaska with pistachio cake | The sweet spot

The toasted meringue reveals tangy ice-cream with nutty sponge in this dramatic celebration dessert. Ta-da!

There’s a touch of theatre to a bombe Alaska: the soft swoops of toasted meringue, the hidden layers revealed at the slice, the contrast of cold and flame … This one takes its cue from lemon meringue pie, reimagined as an icy dessert with a gently tangy heart. The lemon ice-cream is no-churn, which makes it blissfully easy, and it softens into a mousse-like texture, rather than melting, so this is great for entertaining, when timing isn’t always precise. Underneath is a tender pistachio sponge for a little texture and subtle nuttiness, and it’s all wrapped in a satiny meringue, torched to golden. It’s a dessert that feels doable but celebratory, a little retro and entirely joyful.

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18th July 2025 05:00
The Guardian
‘It’s ourselves and society on trial’: playwright adapts Gisèle Pelicot case for stage

Case that exposed France’s rape culture and shocked the world has been made into play to be shown in Avignon, where trial was held

A stage play based on the trial of the men who drugged and raped Gisèle Pelicot will be staged this week in the southern city of Avignon, as France continues to debate the lessons for society from the country’s biggest ever rape trial.

The three-hour performance, The Pelicot Trial: Tribute to Gisèle Pelicot, has been created by Milo Rau, the Swiss director and playwright acclaimed for his theatre interpretations of court proceedings, including the Moscow trial of the Russian punks Pussy Riot and the trial of the Romanian despot Nicolae Ceaușescu.

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18th July 2025 04:00
The Guardian
‘People lashed out because she wasn’t a guy’: Linkin Park on nu-metal, nostalgia and their new frontwoman

After the death of lead vocalist Chester Bennington in 2017, the rap-rock icons have reformed, aiming to cultivate ‘good vibes’ for a new generation of fans. Mike Shinoda and Emily Armstrong discuss backlash and rebirth

It’s been almost 25 years since Linkin Park released their debut album, Hybrid Theory. An irresistible fusion of metal, hip-hop, electronica, industrial rock and infectious pop melody, it established the Californian sextet as instant nu-metal icons and laid the groundwork for the group to become, by many metrics, the biggest US rock band of this millennium: Hybrid Theory ended up the bestselling album of 2001; its follow-up, Meteora, would also go on to rank as one of the bestselling albums of the 21st century.

It’s been just 36 hours, however, since the band played their biggest headline gig to date, at a steamy and rapturous Wembley stadium. Outside, it’s still scorching, but in an icily air-conditioned hotel overlooking the Thames, Linkin Park’s co-founder, co-vocalist and chief songwriter, Mike Shinoda, is reflecting on the show. “For any band that’s been around a long time, it’s really easy to start heading into heritage territory,” says the 48-year-old. “You’re just playing that old stuff.”

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18th July 2025 04:00
The Guardian
Experience: I am the world champion of ‘doing nothing’

The Space-Out competition involves sitting still for 90 minutes – no sleeping, no noise, no checking phones

From an early age I worried if I was doing enough. Growing up in Hong Kong, a city where competition is keen, I wanted to do well. That brought a lot of anxiety.

I started to practise mindfulness in 2012. It helps a lot with my emotions, and I can think more clearly. As an educational psychologist, I see lots of mental health issues. I think bringing mindfulness into our schools is an important way to find moments of calm, especially in the fast-paced city of Hong Kong.

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18th July 2025 04:00
The Guardian
‘Shot in the head, as if executed’: four days of violence end with hundreds dead in southern Syria

Sectarian divisions prompted the worst unrest in Syria since March as the Druze population of Sweida province suffered massacres and executions

Bahaa* had no choice but to keep on working as patient after patient came through the doors of the Sweida National hospital in southern Syria. Almost all bore similar injuries: gunshot wounds and bodies shredded by shrapnel from nearby exploding artillery.

“There were hundreds of wounded, no less than 200 bodies in the hospital. Many of them shot in the head, as if executed,” said Bahaa, a surgeon speaking of the events of this week in Sweida under a pseudonym for fear of retribution.

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18th July 2025 04:00
The Guardian
‘Cult of convenience’: how Tokyo’s retro shotengai arcades are falling victim to gentrification

Across Japan covered shopping arcades are in a losing battle against property developers, depopulation and consumer culture

Tsutomu Nishiwaki raises the shutters of his store, the rattle marking the start of a new day at a shopping arcade in Tokyo. He wheels a display case into the foreground and stands behind the counter, framed by a sign proclaiming that this is a family-run noodle store.

It is a ritual Nishiwaki has been performing almost daily for 60 years. But like the fresh noodles its owner makes every morning, the store has a limited shelf life: in a few years from now, the 80-year-old will pull down the shutters for the last time.

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18th July 2025 01:32
The Guardian
Trump: Moscow’s Man in the White House? review – a lazy, galling failure of a documentary

This Dispatches episode about Putin and Trump is a weird rundown of everything we’ve known for a decade – like reading a Twitter thread in 2018. What’s so frustrating is that this really matters right now

It’s never a particularly encouraging sign when the title of a documentary ends with a question mark. It might just be a tiny scrap of punctuation, and yet it can single-handedly undermine an entire thesis.

Take the latest episode of Dispatches. A film called Trump: Moscow’s Man in the White House would hit like a juggernaut. That film would be an authoritative, definitive hammer blow, confirming beyond doubt what many have suspected for years: that Donald Trump is either working with or an unwitting puppet of Putin’s Russia. This film would represent a clean punch landed. It would reverberate around the world.

Dispatches: Trump: Moscow’s Man in the White House? is on Channel 4

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17th July 2025 21:00
The Guardian
I am very wary of my five-year-old stepdaughter. Am I a bad person? | Leading questions

It’s fine to have mixed feelings about being a step-parent, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. But what you do with those feelings might not be

Am I a bad person for being very wary of my five-year-old stepdaughter? I had resolved to not have children of my own but when I met my partner, with whom I have a wonderful relationship, he came with two children from a previous marriage. He’s very supportive and understanding in giving me my space from the children when I need it, and he’s come to respect the fact I am making concessions in my life to take on parenting.

I love both the children but the youngest is a challenge. She presents a lot of the characteristics of her mother – she has no shame, no accountability, zero fear of authority and is incredibly spoilt. My partner struggles with this too. I know she’s five and you can’t expect someone so young to be accountable, but I’m really worried she won’t grow out of it.

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17th July 2025 20:00
The Guardian
New book sheds light on Lincoln’s misunderstood killer: ‘He’s not that person at all’

In Midnight on the Potomac, author Scott Ellsworth looks back at the tumultuous last year of the US civil war

Scott Ellsworth’s new book, Midnight on the Potomac, is about the last year of the American civil war and “the crime of the century”: the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by the actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on 14 April 1865.

Asked how the book came to follow The Ground Breaking, his acclaimed history of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, Ellsworth said his thoughts focused on two areas: historical parallels to the modern-day US, and the true crime genre.

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17th July 2025 17:15
The Guardian
From landfill to luxury: how a designer uses scraps from Hermès and Chanel to make leather goods

Hyer Goods sells bags, wallets and other products made from high-end deadstocks – leftover fabrics that might otherwise end up in landfills

After more than a decade as a fashion designer, Dana Cohen was disillusioned. Excessive waste was rampant in every part of the industry – from surplus samples, to manufacturing scraps, to retail stores with “a disheveled mountain of garments that nobody wanted”, she said. “I was like, ‘I just don’t want to be a part of it any more.’”

Then Cohen, who had designed for brands including Banana Republic, Club Monaco and J Crew, had a chance encounter with a manufacturer that changed her course. Drishti Lifestyle, based in India, had a container full of leather scraps it didn’t want to discard. Together they experimented, and made some wallets and a handbag, all of which sold out. That was the very start of Cohen’s sustainable leather accessories company – and her mission to make a dent in the industry’s immense waste problem.

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17th July 2025 17:00
The Guardian
Connie Francis was a trailblazing pop star haunted by tragedy | Bob Stanley

The late star, who broke through with Who’s Sorry Now, paved the way for solo female singers in the highs of the 50s and 60s but her life was hit by devastating lows

Connie Francis, 1960s US pop star known for Pretty Little Baby, dies at 87

There may be more widely revered singers, but the statistics don’t lie – worldwide, the Italian-American Connie Francis was the best-selling female vocalist of the 50s and 60s.

Her breakthrough hit, 1958’s Who’s Sorry Now, was written as far back as 1923 and had been a hit for Johnnie Ray just a couple of years earlier, with a swinging, uptempo arrangement. But what made the 19-year-old Francis’s version click was the way in which she took pleasure in her ex’s misery, coolly and coyly cooing over the slow-rocking backing while picking his failed love life apart; for a finale, she ended the song with impressive, high-kicking spite. In contrast, her second UK No 1 was the daffy Stupid Cupid, written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, and loaded with ear-catching gimmicks: the bow-and-arrow guitar effect on the chorus; Francis jumping an octave when she sings “Cu-pid!”; and instruments that drop out – the musical equivalent of a wink – to allow her voice to sound as seductive as possible.

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17th July 2025 16:19
The Guardian
Air India finds ‘no issues’ with fuel switches on other Boeings after crash

US report says investigators looking at actions of plane’s captain before plane crash that killed 260 people

Air India has said it found “no issues” with the fuel switches on its other Boeing planes after the fatal crash that killed 260 people last month, as a US report suggested investigators have turned their attention to the actions of the plane’s captain.

A preliminary report into the incident, released last week, found that the switches that controlled fuel going into the engines had been turned off “one after another” just after the plane took off from Ahmedabad airport.

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17th July 2025 15:44
The Guardian
‘In the world of psychiatry, all your certainties are shattered’: has cinema’s champion of kindness run out of patience?

Nicolas Philibert completes his triptych of films about mental health centres with a documentary about where patients go on their darkest days

Laurence is a woman in desperate need of an act of human kindness. The grey-haired patient urges her psychiatrist for a hug, a cuddle – that, she says, is all she needs to keep at bay the nightmarish visions that haunt her. Yet on her ward at the Esquirol hospital centre in Paris, such simple gestures are impossible to come by. “When I asked for a hug,” Laurence laments, “they gave me a jar of yoghurt.”

This scene, from Nicolas Philibert’s new documentary At Averroès & Rosa Parks (two sections of the Esquirol hospital centre), is as hard to watch as anything you are likely to see on a cinema screen this year. But it is especially remarkable coming from perhaps the world’s pre-eminent maker of humanist documentaries. The Frenchman Philibert is one of modern cinema’s great champions of kindness. Aged 74, he has built a career making award-winning observational portraits of places that excel at giving care within a hostile modern world: a southern French school for hearing-impaired people in 1992’s In the Land of the Deaf; museums and the people who dedicate their lives to maintaining the objects inside them in Louvre City (1990) and Animals and More Animals (1995); a single-teacher infant school in the rural Auvergne region in Être et Avoir, his 2001 international breakthrough film.

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17th July 2025 15:00
The Guardian
How Trump’s anti-immigrant policies could collapse the US food industry – visualized

The president is threatening to deport essential farm workers, grocery clerks and food delivery drivers. But without them, shelves could go empty and prices could soar

The Trump administration’s assault on immigrants is starting to hit the American food supply.

In Texas, farmers who have for years depended on undocumented people for cheap labor – to plant, harvest and haul produce – have reported that workers are staying home to avoid raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). In Los Angeles, restaurants and food trucks have been forced to close as the immigrants who cook and wait tables fear Ice and other law enforcement.

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17th July 2025 15:00
The Guardian
Breakups, booty calls and bare-all balladry: SZA’s 20 best songs – ranked!

As her European tour with Kendrick Lamar continues in the UK, we rate the former Glastonbury headliner’s best tracks, from 2012’s debut to this year’s collaboration with Don Toliver

A bit of a buried treasure: Hit Different was coolly received on release – SZA ceded the song’s hook to guest Ty Dolla $ign – but it deserved better: the Neptunes’ production is beautifully atmospheric, her vocal is fantastic, the lyrics – in which she perplexingly finds a partner sexier when they’re arguing – are great.

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17th July 2025 13:00
The Guardian
Rosanna Arquette: ‘You pay the price for being outspoken’

From shooting with Martin Scorsese at 4am to watching Madonna explode on set, the actor answers your questions

You’ve acted in some killer heels. Which have been your favourite? SarahWales
I hate high heels! I can’t remember any favourites. In between takes, I’d be in slippers or Uggs. If it’s ladylike to be in heels, then that’s not my type of lady.

Do you think the entertainment industry still has issues with strong, outspoken, independent women? CaptainLib
You definitely pay a price for being strong, outspoken and independent. But the women whom I admire, like Jane Fonda and Ava DuVernay, are strong, independent and speak their minds.

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17th July 2025 12:00
The Guardian
Why summer’s a time to pass the port | Hannah Crosbie on drinks

When the sun’s out, try using port as a mixer and surprise yourself with a port tonic or any number of citrus punches

Some drinks are so inexorably tied up with specific seasons and circumstances that it’s hard to imagine them anywhere else. Like bumping into a teacher outside school or witnessing someone take off their shoes during a flight. It’s legal, sure, but there’s always a moment of deep discomfort and confusion before acceptance. And that’s pretty much how I imagine many people feel about drinking port in summer. Or, indeed, at any time of the day that isn’t evening, or served alongside anything that isn’t an intriguing, veiny cheese.

Consider Porto, the city responsible for bringing the drink to the rest of the world – do you think that, when the temperatures creep up, everyone there stops drinking the stuff? No, they find new ways to enjoy it. Improvise, adapt, overcome.

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17th July 2025 12:00
The Guardian
‘Time to get excited!’ Why Stranger Things could be back to its best for its final episodes ever

The Netflix show’s last season just dropped a trailer full of heavy metal, demons, tornados and flamethrowers. And even better – it might have rediscovered its devastatingly emotional core

Objectively, you should not be excited about the return of Stranger Things. Over the years, the Netflix smash has in many ways come to represent everything bad about television’s streaming era.

It began as a fun piece of fluff, a one-and-done collection of overt 1980s film references, designed as the first part of an unconnected anthology. But then it exceeded expectations, so the Duffer brothers found themselves having to pull an entire mythology out of thin air. And a bloated one at that, full of (at best) bottle episodes about punky young superheroes and (at worst) self-indulgent episodes that grind on for hours and hours.

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17th July 2025 11:30
The Guardian
The search for the drink of summer 2025 is over – and it’s Lonkero

Sorry, BuzzBallz, spicy paloma, Hugo spritz, Suntory –196 and Tiramibru, but nothing hits the spot like gin mixed with grapefruit soda

Ideally, to qualify for the title, the drink of the summer – like the song of the summer – should be obvious and undeniable, emerging some time in mid-June before spreading, as though on the breeze, to be inescapable by August.

You should have never even heard of this beverage before the temperature hits 20C, then you shouldn’t be able to imagine life without it. You might return to it years later, and even enjoy it – but it should never hit quite the same way as it did that first summer it was everywhere.

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17th July 2025 11:00
The Guardian
Tell us about the mix tape that defined your life

We would like to hear about your memories of the mix tapes that helped shape your life

In the new TV drama Mix Tape, two ex-lovers are thrown back together with the music they played to each other 20 years earlier.

With this in mind, we would like to hear about your mix tape memories. Did you have a treasured tape or CD that defined your life? Guardian writers have shared theirs; now you can tell us about yours – and share pictures – below.

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17th July 2025 10:48
The Guardian
‘He told us to just tell the truth’ – behind a revealing Billy Joel documentary

In HBO’s five-hour portrait, the chart-dominating singer-songwriter gives unusual insight into his career with support from his A-list friends and collaborators

In 2011, singer-songwriter and pop legend Billy Joel returned a multimillion-dollar advance paid on a memoir to his would-be publisher, HarperCollins. He had apparently co-written an autobiographical book as planned, but ultimately decided that he didn’t want to publish it. “It took working on writing a book to make me realize that I’m not all that interested in talking about the past,” he said at the time, “and that the best expression of my life … has been and remains my music.”

Billy Joel: And So It Goes, a two-part feature documentary premiering this week on HBO, feels like an attempt to stay true to that same basic ethos while not shying away from Joel’s public and private life over the years. The five-hour project tells Joel’s story, but does so by prioritizing his music, in content and in form. “He has 121 songs in his catalog and we used over 110,” said Jessica Levin, who directed the film with Susan Lacy, describing just how many Joel tunes wound up somewhere in the movie. It’s tempting to study the credits and figure out the unlucky 10 that didn’t make the cut, but in effect it’s all here. There are also a few non-Joel compositions in the film, but the vast majority of the music is his, including some adaptations of his melodies into subtle underscore. “It was a goal of ours to use it as score, not just throw it in,” said Levin. “It’s a testament to the depth and breadth of his catalog that we were able to do that.”

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17th July 2025 09:00
The Guardian
Is your home a health hazard? 15 surprisingly filthy everyday items, from taps to toothbrushes

Your water bottle could harbour 40,000 times more bacteria than your toilet seat. And that’s just the tip of the dirtberg

oMost everyday objects are at least a little bit grimy. They rarely, if ever, make contact with soap or disinfectant – unlike your toilet seat, even though that’s the one that’s often used as a symbol of filth in studies of household cleanliness. Aside from pathogens that can cause disease and illness, “for the most part, we’re dealing with our own bacteria”, says Jason Tetro, microbiologist and author of The Germ Code. This usually isn’t a problem, especially for youngish healthy people – but, Tetro adds, “when they accumulate, even if they are your own, it can lead to things like skin irritability, itchy scalp, cavities [in teeth from bacteria-heavy toothbrushes], that type of thing”.

Does it matter that your reusable shopping bag might be carrying faecal bugs? Or that your watch strap is teeming with lifeforms? Are the studies – usually small, and sometimes conducted by cleaning-product companies – scaremongering or a grave matter of public health? Germ experts come clean.

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17th July 2025 09:00
The Guardian
You be the judge: should my flatmate start using the spice rack I made?

Murad doesn’t want to sniff-test every unlabelled jar, while Alex is tired of their chaotic shared cupboard. You decide who needs to chilli out

Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

I haven’t labelled the jars, but you can just sniff each spice and work out which is which

I want ease and functionality. I don’t want to try to solve a puzzle every time I make a curry

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17th July 2025 07:00
The Guardian
Freewheeling family fun in the Netherlands: a cycling and camping trip along the Maas river

The Maasroute is the ideal entry-level, multiday bike trip for young children – flat with plenty of riverside cafes, family-friendly campsites and ice-cream stops en route

As early as I can remember, I’ve always got a thrill out of poring over a map, tracing wavy river lines with my fingers, roads that connect and borders that divide – all the routes I could take. The freedom of heading out on my bike and not knowing where I’m going to pitch my tent that night. Now that my children are aged seven and nine, I wanted to introduce them to the liberation of this kind of adventure. They adore a day out on their bikes, but this was to be our first multiday bike trip as a family of four, so it was crucial to find a route easy and fun enough to captivate them.

The Maasroute follows the course of the Maas River as it meanders for 300 miles (484km) through the Netherlands, from the inland city of Maastricht to the Hook of Holland, then loops back to Rotterdam. It forms part of the much longer Meuse cycle route (EuroVelo 19) that stretches from the source of the Maas (or Meuse as it’s known in France) on the Langres plateau, travelling through the French and Belgian Ardennes before crossing into the Netherlands.

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17th July 2025 06:00
The Guardian
My friends made plans without me – is it weird to invite myself?

New research has shed light on the psychology of ‘self-invitation’, and why people hold back from asking to join others’ plans

I’m at the pub with my friend, catching up over drinks, when her friend walks in – let’s call her Clara.

Clara mentions the party she’s throwing next weekend. Our mutual friend is counting down the days, but it’s news to me.

I’m an adult. Why do I regress under my parents’ roof?

I like my own company. But do I spend too much time alone?

People say you’ll know – but will I regret not having children?

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16th July 2025 16:00
The Guardian
Top Bananza! Donkey Kong’s long-awaited return is a literal smash-hit

Destruction is the order of the day as DK embarks on his first standalone adventure in a decade. The team behind his return reveal all

When you think of Nintendo, it’s almost impossible not to picture Donkey Kong. The ape that started it all, Donkey Kong’s tie-donning, barrel-launching arcade antics introduced Mario to the world and almost bankrupted Nintendo in the process, after a near-miss legal battle over alleged King Kong copyright infringement. Yet despite Donkers’ undeniable place in gaming history – and obligatory appearances in Smash Bros and Mario Kart – for the last few console generations, Donkey Kong platformers have been MIA. Enter DK’s first standalone adventure in 11 years, Donkey Kong Bananza.

While Mario’s recent adventures saw him exploring the reaches of outer space or deftly possessing enemies with an anthropomorphic hat, DK’s grand return is all about primal rage. Employing a similar voxel-based technology to Minecraft, DK’s Switch 2 adventure swaps the former’s thoughtful Lego-esque world-building for gleeful destruction, letting players shatter every colourful level into smithereens.

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16th July 2025 14:00
The Guardian
‘Our food, our heritage, our culture’: the chef highlighting Palestinian cuisine

For Sami Tamimi, preparing the food of his homeland is an act of resilience and keeping his culture alive

Food is both deeply personal and political for Sami Tamimi, the Palestinian chef and food writer, whose first solo cookbook is an emotional culinary ride down memory lane through the bountiful seasons of his homeland – and an effort to preserve the ingredients, techniques and traditions which have long been targeted by the Israeli occupation.

Boustany: A Celebration of Vegetables from My Palestine is a masterclass on how less is so often more when it comes to creating food that connects with people and how the joy derived from cooking and sharing food can, in itself, be an act of resistance.

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16th July 2025 14:00
The Guardian
Donkey Kong Bananza review - delirious destruction derby takes hammer to platforming conventions

Nintendo Switch 2; Nintendo
Given that its hero can smash through any barrier – which is delightful fun in itself – Nintendo’s new 3D platformer has a surreal freeform audacity

A lot rests on Donkey Kong Bananza. As Nintendo’s first major single-player Switch 2 game, it will set the quality bar for the console in the way Breath of the Wild did when the original Switch was released. But as the latest game from the team responsible for the exceptional 3D Mario series, it is already begrudged by some Nintendo fans as a distraction: what could possibly be so exciting about a tie-wearing gorilla to justify making Bananza ahead of another Super Mario Odyssey?

Donkey Kong demolishes those concerns. He demolishes a lot in Bananza. It may resemble a Mario 64-style 3D platformer on the surface, with its themed worlds festooned with giant bananas to sniff out and collect, but DK’s fists show total disregard for the playground as built. All terrain is destructible. Mash the buttons and his powerful arms thump tunnels through hills, pound pristine lawns into muddy craters and tear up wodges of stone to swing as sledgehammers for even speedier landscaping. He is less a platforming mascot than a potassium-powered level editor.

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16th July 2025 12:00
The Guardian
Drowning in admin? 14 productivity hacks to regain control of your diary, inbox – and life

No one knows more about admin than administrators. They share their top tips, from ‘eating the frog’ to drawing up a ‘ta-da’ list

Some of us are utterly hopeless with admin, others so good they do it for a living. What are the best ways to get your working life under control? Administrators share their productivity tips and efficiency hacks.

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16th July 2025 10:10
The Guardian
Sali Hughes on beauty: I’ve got a real problem with neck creams. Here’s why …

Collagen-boosting retinoids and antioxidants do hold their own south of the chin, but ensure you lather on sunscreen first and foremost

If you’ve ever kindly searched for a recommendation of a neck cream from me, then you’ll know there are virtually none on record. This is because, despite so many being marketed in my direction and so many requests for a column about the best of them, I am consistently grumpy about neck products on principle. I certainly don’t neglect my own neck in my routine, and encourage anyone engaged in their appearance to take good care of their entire skin, scalp to toe. And I can obviously understand why people seek out a specialist neck treatment when they notice changes in firmness and texture on the throat. But skin doesn’t become different when it passes the jawline, it responds in the same way to TLC as the face, so I can see few good reasons for spending extra money.

The things we know can help produce collagen lost on the face and neck as we age, naturally or prematurely, are retinoids and, to a lesser degree, antioxidants like vitamin C. So I use these on my face and neck (usually at both ends of the day).

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16th July 2025 09:00
The Guardian
Nothing Phone 3 review: a quirky, slick Android alternative

Novel design and cool software proves phones can still be fun, but this one struggles to beat flagship rivals

The Phone 3 is London-based Nothing’s latest attempt to get people to ditch Samsung or Apple phones for something a bit different, a little quirky and more fun.

As the firm’s first high-end Android in several years, it has most of what you’d expect a flagship phone to have. But where it tries to set itself apart is with slick, dot-matrix-inspired software and a design on the back that includes a small, unique LED screen.

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16th July 2025 06:00
The Guardian
I traded booze for THC drinks. But are there hidden risks?

Giving up alcohol changed my life, but I wanted to know whether cannabis cocktails were too good to be true

Mark Zuckerberg, a billionaire, has said he avoids substances like caffeine because he likes “rawdogging” reality. I, on the other hand, do not. I mean, have you seen reality lately?

For most of my adult life, alcohol has been my preferred way to take the edge off. But, like a lot of other people, I got older and realized regular drinking was not doing me any favours. Last year, I experimented with “intermittent sobriety”, taking months off here and there. It helped, but it was also easy to slip back into bad habits.

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15th July 2025 16:00
The Guardian
Afghan nationals: have you arrived in the UK under the Afghanistan Response Route?

We would like to hear from Afghans who have arrived or are due to arrive in the UK under the Afghanistan Response Route

Thousands of Afghans have been relocated to the UK under a secret government scheme following a data leak.

Personal information about more than 33,000 Afghans seeking relocation to the UK after the Taliban takeover was released in error by a defence official. Fears that the individuals named would be at risk from reprisals from the Taliban led the last government to set up a secret relocation scheme, the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), involving 20,000 people.

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15th July 2025 14:56
The Guardian
‘The way a child plays is the way they live’: how therapists are using video games to help vulnerable children

Minecraft and other creative games are becoming recognised as powerful means of self-expression and mental health support, including for traumatised Ukrainian refugees

Oleksii Sukhorukov’s son was 12 when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. For months, the family existed in a state of trauma and disarray: Sukhorukov was forced to give up his work in the entertainment industry, which had included virtual reality and video games; they became isolated from friends and relatives. But amid the chaos, his boy had one outlet: Minecraft. Whatever was happening outside, he’d boot up Mojang’s block-building video game and escape.

“After 24 February 2022, I began to see the game in a completely different light,” says Sukhorukov. I discovered that Ukrainian children were playing together online; some living under Russian occupation, others in government-controlled areas of the country that were the targets of regular missile attacks; some had already become refugees. And yet they were still able to play together, support one another, and build their own world. Isn’t that amazing? I wanted to learn more about how video games can be used for good.”

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14th July 2025 09:00