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Today — 1 July 2024The Guardian

France election live: first-round results give far-right alliance 33% of vote, as PM warns Le Pen at ‘gates of power’

Gabriel Attal urges tactical voting in second round to keep party from forming country’s first far-right government

Marine Le Pen’s victory has been applauded by other far-right leaders in Europe. Santiago Abascal, who heads the far-right Vox party across the border in Spain, called it a “victory of hope, freedom and security for the French people”, while André Ventura, leader of Portugal’s Chega party, hailed “a great victory”, adding: “Europe is waking up! Soon, it will be Portugal!”

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and the leader of the far-right League party, accused Macron of undemocratic behaviour after the French president called for a united front to head off Le Pen’s National Rally in the second round.

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© Photograph: Thibault Camus/AP

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© Photograph: Thibault Camus/AP

Israel-Gaza war live: thousands of Jewish ultra-orthodox men clash with police in Jerusalem over conscription law

1 July 2024 at 02:41

Government decision to begin drafting previously exempt ultra-Orthodox men came months into Gaza war

Here are some of the images of protests in Jerusalem overnight in which Israeli security forces intervened. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, also known as Haredim, were protesting against plans to end their exemption from compulsory military service.

Al Jazeera reports that Muhammad Abu Salamiya, director of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, has been released by Israeli forces.

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© Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

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© Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

Residents flee as war arrives in Toretsk, eastern Ukraine - in pictures

Compared with others in war-scarred eastern Ukraine, the mining town of Toretsk was in a relatively sleepy sector of the frontline. Then suddenly, the Russian assaults began, and life there deteriorated drastically. And with the heavily increased amount of rockets and airstrikes that started raining down on Toretsk’s shaken residents many people decided to leave the town, while others decided to stay

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© Photograph: Roman Pilipey/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Roman Pilipey/AFP/Getty Images

We couldn’t see a thing in our VIP Taylor Swift seats

By: Anna Tims
1 July 2024 at 02:06

I paid £2,649 for four tickets as a treat for my daughters, and all they had a view of was a tent and black plastic

Last July, I paid AXS £2,649 for four tickets for the Taylor Swift concert in Liverpool this month as a treat for my daughters. When they arrived, they found their view of the stage completely blocked by a tent and large items of technical equipment shrouded in black plastic.

They asked to be moved and were put in the very back corner next to fans who had paid a fraction of what I had.

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© Photograph: Handout

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© Photograph: Handout

On the Couch: Writers Analyze Sigmund Freud review – the shrink’s shrink engagingly examined by Siri Hustvedt, Susie Boyt and others

1 July 2024 at 02:00

Authors reassess the legacy of the father of psychotherapy in a lovely grab bag of essays

Spare a thought for Ida Bauer. The 17-year-old came to Freud’s consulting room with a host of symptoms – fainting fits, pains, hoarse cough, breathlessness. She told Freud her dad’s friend Herr K had tried to seduce her from the age of 13. Possibly K’s advances, for which she once understandably slapped him, were erotic payback for her father having an affair with Herr K’s wife.

Freud disagreed, arguing that, really, she wanted to be seduced by Herr K – and by her therapist too. Unsurprisingly, she terminated Freud’s therapy after three months. “Talk about unexamined projection!” writes the cartoonist and editor Sarah Boxer in the first essay in this often droll and always engaging collection, arguing that his treatment of Ida was: “Ground zero for ‘No means yes.’”

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© Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

A new start after 60: I saw children caged on the US-Mexico border – and my life changed completely

1 July 2024 at 02:00

When Fiona Burke saw the shocking images in lockdown, she knew she had to help. Now she spends four months each winter volunteering on the border, helping migrants who are battling the odds

When travel resumed after the first pandemic lockdown in 2020, Fiona Burke, who was 60, boarded a plane to Austin, Texas. She was one of the first post-Covid volunteers to arrive at a migrant centre for people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the US-Mexico border. “Stuck at home during lockdown and seeing images of children in cages, I felt compelled to help,” says Burke.

This idea of helping others, she believes, was drilled into her from a young age, growing up in Ireland and attending a Catholic school. “I am not a practising Catholic and have rebelled against the church in many ways but the nuns had a very big influence on me, subliminally. I always wanted to help people and we were fed that message a lot,” she says. This idea informed Burke’s first career as a Montessori teacher before she moved into a finance job later in life.

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© Photograph: Patrick Bolger/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Patrick Bolger/The Guardian

Into the Peruvian Amazon: ‘I’m going to show you good things. Let’s start with an anaconda’

1 July 2024 at 02:00

On the third leg of his South American trip, our writer heads to the remote city of Iquitos and braves a swim in the Amazon – despite the fearsome reputation of the local fish
Part 1: The alternative Inca Trail
Part 2: Exploring Lake Titicaca

It is an absolute truth, hard-wired into every explorer’s tales, that the Amazon is deadly dangerous. If the electric eels, piranhas, sting rays and caimans don’t get you, the hordes of biting insects and snakes will. Every living thing is ready to devour you or lay eggs under your skin.

And, in a world of water, swimming is particularly risky. When the naturalist, explorer and writer Redmond O’Hanlon ventured upriver, he claimed to have adapted a cricketers’ protective box to pee through: a barrier for the dreaded candiru fish that allegedly swims up the urethra and gets stuck. For men, amputation could be the only solution. But then in the world of old-fashioned exploration, it was mainly men who got to be explorers, and presumably, those who survived were cricketers, or had extremely tight-fitting swimming trunks.

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© Photograph: Sebastien Lecocq/Alamy

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© Photograph: Sebastien Lecocq/Alamy

Child malnutrition crisis in Nigeria amid rural violence and soaring food inflation

1 July 2024 at 02:00

MSF says it is overwhelmed in country where 31.8 million people are suffering from hunger

An unprecedented number of children in northern Nigeria are suffering from acute malnutrition, aid workers in the country have said.

Nigeria has the “largest number of food insecure people globally” at 31.8 million, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization office in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri said.

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© Photograph: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

Blue Lock the Movie: Episode Nagi review – football anime gets the battle royale-treatment

By: Phil Hoad
1 July 2024 at 02:00

From Terminator-eyed strikers to flame-wreathed shots on goal, no bombast is too much in this feature-length extrapolation of Muneyuki Kaneshiro’s popular series

Like Squid Game meets Shaolin Soccer, this feature-length extrapolation of Muneyuki Kaneshiro’s popular manga and anime set in a football training academy treats the beautiful game like an epic showdown between demonic forces or a Kurosawa-esque assault on a mountain fortress. Terminator-eyed strikers, flame-wreathed shots on goal, players zoning out in an amniotic limbo; no bombast is too much when hammering home Blue Lock’s key message: a star centre-forward must have an almighty ego.

The head coach is even called Jinpachi Ego. In trying to identify a unique attacking talent for the Japanese national team at the elite Blue Lock academy, he is unimpressed by the close-knit bond between the two final recruits: rich kid Reo (voiced by Yuma Uchida) and his diffident schoolmate Nagi (Nobunaga Shimazaki). The latter especially is an enigma: a twinkle-toed footballing genius who declares everything a “hassle” and would rather be gaming than on the pitch. Both Nagi’s Eeyore-ish attitude and the pair’s alliance may have to be jettisoned if one is to triumph in Ego-san’s elimination process.

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© Photograph: undefined PR

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© Photograph: undefined PR

TV tonight: Tim Harford’s long, hard look at Britain’s broken economy

The Financial Times columnist asks why younger generations are no longer expected to be wealthier than their forebears. Plus: House of the Dragon takes off. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Channel 4
A sobering investigation from the Financial Times’s “undercover economist” and host of Radio 4’s More or Less about the lack of growth in the economy – and why it means younger Britons are no longer expected to be richer than the generation before. After hearing real-life stories and expert insights, Harford asks a crucial question before the polling stations open later this week: how can this be fixed? Hollie Richardson

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© Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images

Labour planning to replace NHS England chair with party loyalist

Exclusive: Alan Milburn, Jacqui Smith and Sally Morgan would be contenders to take over from Richard Meddings

Labour is poised to axe the chair of NHS England if it wins the election and replace him with a party loyalist to help implement its plans to revive the “broken” health service.

The party is considering replacing Richard Meddings with the former health secretary Alan Milburn, the ex-home secretary Jacqui Smith, or Sally Morgan, who served as Tony Blair’s political secretary.

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

London investment bankers to rake in bigger bonuses after two-year slump

Exclusive: Rise in dealmaking likely to be reflected in spring bonus season as interest rate hike cycle ends

London’s investment bankers are expected to rake in bigger bonuses this financial year, as the City begins to recover from a two-year slump in deals caused by surging interest rates.

Demand for investment banking services – such as facilitating mergers and acquisitions, advising companies and governments on fundraising, and underwriting new stock and bonds – was hit by a sharp increase in borrowing rates after the pandemic, as central banks acted to tame runaway inflation. Jobs and pay were cut as investment banks sought to reduce costs.

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© Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

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© Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

At least 30 Reform candidates have cast doubt on human-induced global heating

1 July 2024 at 01:00

Exclusive: Analysis of social media posts, including by candidates projected to win seats, finds multiple mentions of ‘hoaxes’ and ‘the Illuminati’

At least 30 Reform UK candidates have posted material or made statements that cast doubt on the validity of human-induced global heating, a Guardian analysis can reveal.

A suite of the party’s prospective parliamentary candidates have publicly cast doubt on the existence of the emission-caused climate crisis.

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© Photograph: Paul Marriott/PA

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© Photograph: Paul Marriott/PA

Housing: how 14 years of Tory rule have changed Britain – in charts

Rent has risen 50% in parts of the country, while the accelerating rate of homelessness is hard to calculate

Ask a millennial in the UK in 2024 what distinguishes them from their parents’ generation and it is likely that a single-word answer will crop up: housing.

Since 2010, despite a succession of government pledges to would-be homeowners, the average age of a first-time buyer in the UK has risen. Meanwhile rents have soared, homelessness has more than doubled and housebuilding targets have been repeatedly missed.

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© Composite: Getty / Guardian Design

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© Composite: Getty / Guardian Design

Parties keen to capitalise on SNP woes in Scotland, but for different reasons

SNP fears resurgent Labour, while Starmer seeks credibility and Lib Dems eye status of third biggest party in Commons

Within 48 hours of the election being called, both main party leaders travelled to Scotland, keen to capitalise on the decline in support for the Scottish National party, which has dominated elections at Holyrood and Westminster for more than a decade. But the campaign has revealed that Scottish votes matter to parties for very different reasons.

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© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

‘We can’t let the animals die’: drought leaves Sicilian farmers facing uncertain future

Rainfall is down 40% since 2003 and experts predict a third of Sicily will be desert by 2030

Every morning, as soon as he wakes up, Luca Cammarata looks to the sky in the hope that some clouds on the horizon will bring a few drops of water. On his farm in the Sicilian interior, it hasn’t rained for months. Cammarata’s 200 goats graze on a parched landscape resembling a lunar surface, forced to eat dry weeds and drink from a muddy pond.

The 53-year-old has never experienced a drought like it. “If things continue like this,” he said, “I will be forced to butcher my livestock and close down my farm.”

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© Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

The best theatre to stream this month: Shakespeare v the Tories, Mel C’s dance show and more

1 July 2024 at 01:00

This month’s picks include a Starlight Express intro for kids, a rollicking wedding play at the National and an explosive hour of dance

Micheál Mac Liammóir’s 1960 solo show interweaved the private and public lives of Oscar Wilde with excerpts from the great Irish wit’s oeuvre. Alastair Whatley – who directed The Importance of Being Earnest a few years ago – recently performed Mac Liammóir’s monologue at Reading Rep. A recording of that production, directed by Michael Fentiman, is available on Original Online from 1 July.

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© Photograph: Marc Brenner

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© Photograph: Marc Brenner

The tragic parable of Rishi Sunak: driven by success at all costs, then undone by his own myth-making | Nesrine Malik

1 July 2024 at 01:00

The PM’s unbending belief in Britain as a meritocracy blinded him to the realities of race, class – and his own flawed project

In Nairobi’s industrial South B district stands the Highway secondary school, alma mater of Rishi Sunak’s father. It was established for Asian boys in 1962, one year before Kenya’s independence, during a time when there were separate schools for whites, Asians and black Kenyans.

Days after Sunak became prime minister, the principal told the Kenyan press that his premiership was “an indication that with determination and focus, one can be anything in this world. We are not limited if the example of the UK premier is anything to go by.” The celebration reflected an aspirational approach to life, emerging from deep within the postcolonial experience, that conceives of the world in terms of centre and periphery, and in which success is defined by proximity to that centre. “Endeavour to excel”, the Highway school motto, is hand-painted neatly on a blue sash on its walls.

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© Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Getty Images

EU would not rush to reopen Brexit talks with Labour, say Brussels sources

1 July 2024 at 00:00

‘People will be asking, is it worth the pain?’ if asked to give UK a gift, says European diplomat

The EU will not rush to reopen Brexit negotiations with the UK even if Labour is swept to power next Thursday, senior sources in Brussels have indicated.

They say they will welcome a change of government but the deep scars left by the Conservatives during Brexit negotiations along with the new priorities caused by the war in Ukraine, and the rise of the far right weigh heavily on the minds of influential figures in Brussels.

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© Photograph: Reuters

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© Photograph: Reuters

Millions to pay lower summer energy bills as UK price cap drops

1 July 2024 at 00:00

Cap falls by £122 to a typical £1,568 a year – but bills are expected to rise again in October when the cap ends

Millions of households will pay lower gas and electricity bills this summer as the energy price cap for Great Britain falls by £122 a year to the equivalent of £1,568 for the typical annual charge from today.

However, the latest cap applies only from July until the end of September, and bills are expected to rise again this winter, leaving millions struggling to heat their homes.

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© Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

‘As complicit as Saddam’: people on BA flight held hostage in Kuwait sue UK government

Claimants who were onboard BA149 claim airline and Thatcher’s government knew of risk before they landed in 1990

British Airways (BA) passengers and crew taken hostage in Kuwait and used as human shields during Saddam Hussein’s invasion are suing the airline and the UK government.

The claimants, who were subjected to torture, including mock executions, say they have evidence that BA and the government knew the invasion had taken place hours before the plane landed in Kuwait. They also claim that the flight was used to secretly transport a special ops team for immediate and covert deployment to the battlefield, “regardless of the risk this posed to the civilians onboard”.

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© Photograph: supplied

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© Photograph: supplied

Lacking hope, desperate for change: the UK towns devastated by Tory rule

1 July 2024 at 00:00

Across Britain, the impact of austerity has reached breaking point, but few believe Labour will turn things around

There were about 30 people standing outside Birmingham Central Mosque, and they formed as diverse a crowd as the city’s population. It was food bank day: inside a portable building in the car park, a team of four spirited women were efficiently sorting through crates of groceries and handing those who had finally reached the front of the line what they needed.

As they did their work, we had a snatched conversation. “The queues are getting longer,” one of them said.

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© Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The big Glastonbury 2024 review: the Last Dinner Party justify the hype, Dua Lipa nails it and Coldplay go over the top

1 July 2024 at 00:00

From K-poppers Seventeen to performance artist Marina Abramović, via Cyndi Lauper and Little Simz, it was one of the most diverse editions yet. But the real fireworks came with a band who have taken things to another level

Friday morning at Glastonbury underlines that the old cliche about the festival having something for everybody is only a cliche because it’s true. Your options range from the beatific (Sofia Kourtesis’s lambent brand of techno) to the profoundly challenging (artist Bishi Bhattacharya performing Yoko Ono’s Voice Piece for Soprano, which sounds every bit as nerve-shredding as you might expect). From the dependable – a sharp-suited Squeeze on the Pyramid stage, offering up one of the late 70s most beloved run of hits – to a largely unknown quantity. Now 80, Asha Puthli last performed in Britain in 1974: her oeuvre takes in everything from collaborations with Ornette Coleman to Bollywood soundtracks to new wave. A tiny figure swathed in chiffon, she turns out to be as spacey and idiosyncratic as the album on which her cult status is based, 1976’s The Devil Is Loose, highly prized by disco collectors and hip-hop producers in search of samples. Between songs, she reminisces about her friendship with legendary drag queen and Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn, complains about the weather (“it’s bloody fucking cold here – I just flew in from Miami”), and demonstrates how she achieved a curious bubbling sound that appeared on her 1973 cover of George Harrison’s I Dig Love: not, as was commonly supposed, by smoking a bong, but by gargling. Her voice is still capable of summoning up the eerie falsetto that punctuated her underground disco classic Flying Fish, while The Devil Is Loose’s acknowledged classic, Space Talk, still sounds incredible: a seductive, trippy dancefloor shimmer.

After UK drill rapper Headie One uses his 18-song set on the Other stage to unveil his new album – no fan of understatement, he incentivises fans to download it by informing them it is “a masterpiece” – the Pyramid stage plays host to the first-ever Glastonbury appearance by a K-pop band, the almost unreasonably pretty Seventeen, whose name refers to the number of members in the band and whose last EP, FML, was the biggest-selling in the world last year. The crowd they draw isn’t vast but at least some of it is very vociferous indeed: the stage-side screens unfortunately pick out a middle-aged onlooker wearing an expression for which the adjective “nonplussed” might have been invented, but equally, there are teenage girls down at the front expressing their appreciation by making a noise not dissimilar to Yoko Ono’s Voice Piece for Soprano. And Seventeen, whose music varies from toothsome pop that comes accompanied by film of cartoon unicorns to what sounds like a peculiarly fresh-faced take on nu-metal, work very hard indeed to win over the merely curious. The hook of their closing track Very Nice is difficult to dislodge from your brain for the remainder of the day, simply because they repeat it so many times: every time you think they’re about to leave the stage, they start singing it again.

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© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

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© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

How a brother’s illness spurred a plan to get mental health on the agenda across Africa

One of the continent’s leading medics, Jean Kaseya, has made it his mission to help the 116m people in African countries with mental health conditions

Jean Kaseya would hear regularly from his younger brother, an army officer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, until the day in 2018 when all contact stopped. “Suddenly, we didn’t have any information,” remembers Dr Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

It was two years before an acquaintance approached the family to say his brother, Dieudonné, was alive, but in jail in the north of the country. Kaseya was able to have him brought back to the capital, Kinshasa. “I went to see him. Honestly, this person deserved to be at a hospital, not to be jailed.

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© Photograph: Media Lens King/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Media Lens King/The Guardian

‘Natty or not?’: how steroids got big – podcast

Once upon a time, it was only hardcore bodybuilders who pumped themselves up with testosterone. Today it is no longer niche. But how dangerous is it? By Stephen Buranyi

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© Illustration: Calum Heath

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© Illustration: Calum Heath

‘I knew I’d be back’: Simone Biles shines at US gymnastics trials to seal Olympics spot

30 June 2024 at 23:10
  • 27-year-old secures automatic place for Paris 2024 Games
  • Gymnast will compete in her third Olympics

Simone Biles is heading back to the Olympics and the spotlight that comes with it.

The gymnastics superstar earned a third trip to her sport’s biggest stage by cruising to victory at the US Olympic trials on Sunday night, posting a two-day all-around total of 117.225 to clinch the lone automatic spot on the five-woman team.

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© Photograph: Jamie Squire/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Biden’s family reportedly tell him to stay in presidential race as blame shifts to advisers

30 June 2024 at 23:03

The US president met with his family at Camp David, after a disastrous debate performance last week led to calls for him to drop out of the election

Joe Biden’s family have urged him stay in the race after a disastrous debate performance last week, according to reports in the US media, as senior democrats and donors have expressed exasperation at how his staff prepared him for the event.

The president gathered with his family at Camp David on Sunday, where discussions were reported to include questions over his political future. It came after days of mounting pressure on Biden, after a debate in which his halting performance highlighted his vulnerabilities and invited calls from pundits, media and voters for him to step aside.

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© Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

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© Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Life at the heart of Japan’s lonely deaths epidemic: ‘I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried’

30 June 2024 at 22:56

Some 68,000 people are expected to die alone and unnoticed in Japan this year, police say, as the population continues to age

“We occasionally greet each other, but that’s all. If one of my neighbours died, I’m not sure I would notice,” says Noriko Shikama, 76. She lives alone in a flat Tokiwadaira, in Tokyo’s commuter belt and has come to the Iki Iki drop-in centre to catch up with residents over cups of coffee served by volunteers.

Here, amid the everyday discussions about the merits or otherwise of dyeing grey hair, people also share news about the latest lonely death, or kodokushi – officially defined as one in which “a person dies without being cared for by anyone, and whose body is found after a certain period”.

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© Photograph: Justin McCurry/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Justin McCurry/The Guardian

USA’s Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone breaks 400m hurdles world record for fifth time

30 June 2024 at 22:34
  • 24-year-old storms to victory at US Olympic trials
  • American is clear favorite for gold at Paris 2024

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone lowered her world record once again, running the 400m hurdles in 50.65 seconds on Sunday at the US Olympic trials.

In only her fourth 400m hurdles race of the season, the 24-year-old defending Olympic champion cleared all 10 barriers with ease, then went on a dead sprint to the line to break the record for the fifth time. Four of those marks have now come on the track at University of Oregon’s Hayward Field.

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© Photograph: Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports

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© Photograph: Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports

The 14 years that broke Britain, part 2 - podcast

In part two of our miniseries on how 14 years of Tory rule have impacted the UK, Jonathan Freedland explores how chaos from Brexit to Partygate destroyed trust in politics

Listen to part 1: austerity

In the second episode of a two-part series examining the legacy of 14 years of Conservative rule in the UK, Jonathan Freedland and Helen Pidd lay out the chaos that followed David Cameron’s departure from Downing Street.

Cameron’s reign ended abruptly in the summer of 2016, when his gamble to hold a referendum on EU membership backfired and the UK voted to leave. He retired to his shepherd’s hut in his garden to write his memoirs and a period of mayhem began.

The king of chaos was arguably Boris Johnson, who barely had time to celebrate his landslide victory in the winter of 2019 before a global pandemic forced him to lock down the country. He imposed strict restrictions on the rest of us but neglected to follow the rules himself. Liz Truss became PM, only to be outlasted by an iceberg lettuce.

And now, with just a few days before the country goes to the polls, Rishi Sunak’s campaign is being overshadowed by allegations that a stream of Tory insiders placed bets on the date of the election.

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© Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

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© Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Furry bucket hats for ever! The seven biggest fashion trends of Glastonbury 2024

30 June 2024 at 11:00

What can we learn about style at the UK’s biggest music event? Chain belts are back, leopard print is a neutral – and Lidl is the biggest label right now

The only thing that unifies fashion at Glastonbury is the need for sensible footwear: no other festival is as much a walking holiday as it is a great day (and night) out. But other than that, all bets are off. From kimonos to fancy dress, these were the big trends this year.

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© Photograph: Richard Isaac/REX/Shutterstock

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© Photograph: Richard Isaac/REX/Shutterstock

Yesterday — 30 June 2024The Guardian

Chinese space rocket crashes in flames after accidental launch

By: Reuters
30 June 2024 at 21:14

Company Space Pioneer says first stage of its Tianlong-3 launched during test after ‘structural failure’ and crashed in hills near city of Gongyi

The space rocket of a Chinese private company crashed and exploded into flames near a city on Sunday, after it accidentally launched during a test.

The first stage of the Tianlong-3 rocket left its launch pad due to a structural failure at the connection between the rocket and the test stand, said company Beijing Tianbing, also known as Space Pioneer, in a statement on its official WeChat account. The rocket landed in a hilly area of the city of Gongyi in central China, it said.

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© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

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© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

Far-right National Rally in reach of being dominant French party after election first round

30 June 2024 at 20:47

RN has won about 34% of national vote, exit polls suggest, as Marine Le Pen targets absolute majority

Marine Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration party is in reach of becoming the biggest political force in the French parliament after a historically high showing in the first round of snap parliament elections.

The left and centrists immediately began to call for tactical voting to try to stop the far-right before next Sunday’s final round runoff, after exit polls indicated the National Rally (RN) had won about 34% of the national vote share with the leftwing alliance in second place and Emmanuel Macron’s grouping trailing in a distant third.

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© Photograph: Thibault Camus/AP

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© Photograph: Thibault Camus/AP

Ukraine war briefing: Russia launches attacks on Kharkiv and Kyiv as Zelenskiy appeals for help

30 June 2024 at 19:29

One person was killed and at least nine others injured in Kharkiv; a 14-storey apartment building in Kyiv was set on fire after Russia strikes. What we know on day 859

One person was killed and nine others including a baby were injured in a Russian strike on a post office in Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, local authorities said. “A man, a post office employee, was killed,” the head of Kharkiv’s regional administration, Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram. The city of Kharkiv has been regularly targeted by Russian troops in recent months, but military analysts say the frequency has dipped since the US authorised Ukrainian use of its weapons on certain Russian targets.

In Kyiv’s Obolon suburb, the local military administration said falling fragments from a Russian missile started a fire and damaged balconies on a 14-storey apartment building. Emergency services, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said five female residents were treated for stress, and mayor Vitali Klitschko said 10 residents had been evacuated. The head of the military administration of Kyiv region said missile fragments had also fallen outside the capital, causing injuries and damage, though no details were provided.

Drone footage from Ukraine’s military has shown what appears to be bodies in a civilian area in the embattled eastern town of Toretsk, which has come under heavy Russian bombardment in recent days. The attacks in the war-torn Donetsk region have prompted a scaled-up evacuation effort by Ukrainian rescue services. Local officials said that powerful Russian glide bombs have also been used in the town. Glide bombs are heavy Soviet-era bombs fitted with precision guidance systems and launched from aircraft flying out of range of air defences.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a post on Telegram, said Russia had used more than 800 glide bombs on Ukrainian targets in the past week. He issued a fresh plea in his nightly video address for better weapons systems. “The sooner the world helps us deal with the Russian combat aircraft launching these bombs, the sooner we can strike – justifiably strike – Russian military infrastructure … and the closer we will be to peace,” he said.

Bulgaria’s Orthodox Church on Sunday elected Metropolitan Daniil – who experts see as pro-Russian in a church traditionally considered very close to Moscow – as its new leader. Daniil supported the Kremlin in a lengthy video message published in 2023. The Bulgarian patriarch is elected for life unless he himself decides to step down.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report

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© Photograph: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images

SZA at Glastonbury review – electric eclecticism from today’s greatest R&B star

30 June 2024 at 19:28

Pyramid stage
Her show may be situated in a fantastical world full of insects, swords and fallen trees, but the US singer’s lyrics are earthy and induce bedlam in her devoted fans

Towards the end of her set, SZA informs the audience that she was “so nervous to be here”. You can understand why. Of all the headlining artists at this year’s Glastonbury, the announcement of SZA seemed to cause the most consternation. It wasn’t the kind of dreary what-about-indie-rock complaining that used to attend the unveiling of any hip-hop or R&B headliner, more that if social media was to be believed, a significant proportion of Glastonbury-goers had simply never heard of her.

That probably says more about the atomised nature of algorithm-catered pop culture in 2024 – a world in which it’s far easier to stay in your particular musical bubble than it once was – than it does about SZA’s popularity. Her last album SOS wasn’t just a critical success, it sold 3m copies in the US and became the longest-running No 1 album by a female artist in the 2020s: in the UK, her last tour packed out a succession of arenas, including two nights at the O2. But as anyone who was at those London shows could attest, it was largely packed out with screaming, devoted teenage girls, who aren’t Glastonbury’s main demographic. Indeed, you could interpret her appearance as Glastonbury playing a long game, sending out a signal to a new generation of potential festival-goers that they feature the kind of artists they want to see.

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© Photograph: Harry Durrant/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Harry Durrant/Getty Images

Police meet families as part of inquiry into human ashes found at Hull funeral home

Thirty-five bodies recovered in March from company’s premises, along with ashes of unknown number of people

Police in Humberside have met with more than 160 families whose loved ones’ remains could be among human ashes found at the Legacy funeral home in Hull that will never be identified.

A total of 35 bodies were recovered in March from the company’s premises on Hessle Road, along with the ashes of an unknown number of people, after reports of “concern for care of the deceased”.

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© Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Patients left in pain and to die alone amid NHS nurse shortages, survey finds

30 June 2024 at 19:01

Only a third of shifts have enough nurses on duty, the Royal College of Nursing says its analysis shows

NHS patients are being left unseen in pain and in some cases to die alone because shifts do not have enough registered nurses, a survey shows.

The Royal College of Nursing said analysis of a survey it carried out showed that only a third of shifts had enough registered nurses on duty.

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© Photograph: Jeff Moore/PA

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© Photograph: Jeff Moore/PA

Starlight Express review – Lloyd Webber’s bizarre juggernaut is bigger, camper and more OTT than ever

30 June 2024 at 18:30

Troubadour Wembley Park theatre, London
Updated with references to net zero, the 1984 musical is back on track in all its outlandish glory

What bald-faced audacity led Andrew Lloyd Webber to conceive a show featuring the lives – and loves – of train carriages that sing their way through a nocturnal track-race while on roller-skates? Is Starlight Express the most outlandish musical ever to grace the stage?

It certainly seems so as it rumbles back from its bay after four decades in a bigger, camper and more preposterously OTT revival than its 1984 original, though the most confounding question is how this bizarre juggernaut of a show pulls it off in spite of it all.

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© Photograph: Pamela Raith

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© Photograph: Pamela Raith

Ruthless Rodri crushes Georgia’s fairytale and keeps Spain on track | Jonathan Wilson

Midfielder is as close to a footballing certainty as you can get, ensuring Luis de la Fuente’s side broke Georgia’s hearts

Nothing in football is certain, but Rodri is perhaps as close as it’s possible to get. There are times when it seems he is the teacher stepping in to a kids’ game to make sure it doesn’t become too one-sided, the grown-up who doesn’t have to bother with the things like running. He just strolls about, delivering accurate pass after accurate pass and, occasionally, scoring vital goals.

This was Rodri’s 89th game since Manchester City lost 1-0 at Tottenham in the Premier League on 5 February 2023. Since then he has lost only twice. If you take out games in which Scott McTominay was on the opposing side, he hasn’t lost at all. Quite why McTominay should be his kryptonite is unclear, but rivals should as a matter of urgency isolate whatever the active component is and start trying to manufacture it synthetically. Until Georgia’s legs went in the second half, they were excellent on Sunday but for that one vital absence: they lacked a McTominay.

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© Photograph: Thilo Schmülgen/Reuters

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© Photograph: Thilo Schmülgen/Reuters

The Age of Gareth lives on: England’s peaks and troughs lead to Swiss test

Despite teetering so close to predictable failure, England are still in Euro 2024. Now they just need to play better

OK. So you’re saying there’s a chance. With 94 minutes of football already played at a clammy and frazzled AufSchalke Arena, with England 1-0 down against Slovakia and about to exit the European Championship in miserable fashion, with the entire Age of Gareth poised to sink into a toxic farewell, the range of possibilities for the next few seconds seemed fairly stark.

Forty minutes later England would leave the pitch victorious, 2-1 winners of their last-16 tie after extra time, drenched in the sweet, sweet sounds of Sweet Caroline, and ready now for a quarter-final against Switzerland on Saturday.

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© Photograph: Patrícia de Melo Moreira/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Patrícia de Melo Moreira/AFP/Getty Images

US accused of offering Boeing ‘sweetheart deal’ over fatal crashes

30 June 2024 at 17:42

Planemaker set to be offered plea deal, angering loved ones of the 346 people who died on 2018 and 2019 flights

The US Department of Justice is set to charge Boeing with fraud, but plans to offer the planemaker a plea deal, according to sources familiar with the matter – have infuriated the loved ones of hundreds of passengers who died in two fatal crashes five years ago.

Boeing will be granted until the end of this week to decide whether it will plead guilty to the charge and avoid trial, officials told families of those on board the fatal Lion Air flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 that claimed 346 lives.

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© Photograph: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Spain recover from early shock to ease past Georgia and set up Germany clash

Spain versus Germany, then. Don’t mind if we do. The tournament’s hosts and its best team will meet in Stuttgart for a place in the semi-finals after the selección took 33 shots and scored four goals to ease past Georgia here. Only “ease” may not be quite the right word.

They were hugely impressive again en route to a victory secured by goals from Rodri, Fabián Ruiz, Nico ­Williams and Dani Olmo, a lovely combination of quality, control and velocity confirming their status as favourites, but that makes it sound a little simpler than it was – if only because for the first time Spain conceded and Georgia did all they could to make a match of it.

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© Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters

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© Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters

England fans go to great lengths to watch match at Glastonbury

30 June 2024 at 15:31

Music festival eschews football screening out of respect for headliners, but people wheel out portable TVs

As the Glastonbury festival filled up on Sunday, there was an incongruous mix of England football shirts and cowgirl get-ups among the crowds.

England’s Euro 2024 football match against Slovakia kicked off at 5pm on Sunday, immediately after Shania Twain’s Legends slot and shortly before Avril Lavigne took to the Other stage at 6pm.

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© Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian

French elections: far right on course for first round victory. What happens now?

30 June 2024 at 15:09

Macron’s grouping and the left-green alliance will have to cooperate to keep the Front National out of power, but that won’t be easy

The National Rally (RN) has won 34% of the popular vote in the first round of France’s snap two-round general election, according to early estimates, with the leftwing New Popular Front (NFP) alliance on 28%-29% and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Together bloc on 20%-22%.

A national vote share, however, is extremely difficult to translate into a projected number of seats in the assemblée nationale. That’s because the final outcome will depend on the results in the constituencies. While pollsters issue seat estimates, France’s polling watchdog does not endorse them.

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© Photograph: François Lo Presti/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: François Lo Presti/AFP/Getty Images

Lando Norris hits out at ‘reckless’ Max Verstappen after F1 Austrian GP

  • Pair clashed while vying for lead, forcing Norris out
  • Verstappen dropped to fifth as George Russell wins

McLaren’s Lando Norris has condemned Max Verstappen’s driving as desperate and reckless after the pair clashed while vying for the lead at the Austrian Grand Prix, knocking Norris out of the race and leaving Verstappen able to claim only fifth. George Russell took advantage of the collision to triumph for Mercedes at the Red Bull Ring.

The pair had been competing hard against one another and on lap 64 of the 71-lap race, the third time Norris had tried to pass, they hit one another as the 24-year-old British driver attempted to go round the outside of turn three and both suffered punctures.

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© Photograph: Sky F1

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© Photograph: Sky F1

Caribbean prepares as Hurricane Beryl becomes earliest category 4 on record

30 June 2024 at 13:05

‘Extremely dangerous’ storm approaches south-east Caribbean, where officials urge people to take shelter

Hurricane Beryl strengthened into what experts called an “extremely dangerous” category 4 storm as it approaches the south-east Caribbean, which began shutting down Sunday amid urgent pleas from government officials for people to take shelter.

Beryl had strengthened into a category 3 hurricane on Sunday morning, becoming the first major hurricane east of the Lesser Antilles on record for June, according to Philip Klotzbach, Colorado State University hurricane researcher.

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© Photograph: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images

T20 World Cup dodges storms to deliver and break new frontier | Ali Martin

30 June 2024 at 11:52

A better balance of bat versus ball made for an improved spectacle and plenty of fun in the Caribbean and USA

After the golden ticker tape settled on the outfield at Kensington Oval on Saturday, Barbados was placed on a state of high alert. At the time of writing, Hurricane Beryl is barrelling towards the region and the early hours of Monday are when potentially “life-threatening” winds will be at their strongest.

The Met Office here has issued warnings of power outages, flash flooding and storm surges on the coast, while people are being urged to stock up on essential supplies and non-perishables. “It’s better to plan for the worst and pray for the best,” said the prime minister, Mia Mottley, her attention very much switched since delivering the T20 World Cup trophy at the final on Saturday.

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© Photograph: Alex Davidson-ICC/ICC/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Alex Davidson-ICC/ICC/Getty Images

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