Keyword – Media
Trefwoorden – Media, Newspapers, Mail on Sunday, Reform UK, Rupert Lowe, Nigel Farage, National newspapers, Associated Newspapers, Daily Mail & General Trust, Media business, Politics, UK news, Newspapers & magazines
Title – Mail on Sunday attacks Restore as split right creates headache for UK papers | Media | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/michael-savage
Link – Mail on Sunday attacks Restore as split right creates headache for UK papers | Media | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T06:00:46.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jun/16/mail-on-sunday-attacks-restore-as-split-right-creates-headache-for-uk-papers

It was a Mail on Sunday headline with all the ferocity usually reserved for general elections, directed squarely at a political opponent. But in this case, the traditionally Conservative-supporting title was not targeting Labour.

The party in its crosshairs was Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain, the vehemently rightwing outfit that regards Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as too weak on deporting migrants.

“Restore Activists at ‘White Supremacy Summit’,” declared the front page. It claimed supporters canvassing for Lowe’s party before this week’s Makerfield byelection had attended an event that hosted calls for “a white-only Europe”.

Unusually, the Mail on Sunday’s vehemently anti-Restore editorial was displayed prominently on its app through much of the weekend. “Anyone who really cares about Britain won’t vote Restore,” it stated, asking voters to back Reform.

Restore Britain described the story about the summit as “totally irrelevant” and a “hit piece”.

The next day, however, the Daily Mail followed up with another blow. “Restore is the ‘new home for neo-Nazis’”, it said, citing Lowe’s claim over the weekend that if the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, wanted to join Restore, it was “up to him”.

A Reform source supplied the killer quote used for the headline.

Lowe himself saw the attacks as a sign of success. “Two Daily Mail front pages in a row abusing Restore Britain in the most spectacular fashion,” he said. “We’ve got the buggers on the run.”

However, the prominence and strength of the stories have also caught the eye of senior figures in Westminster and the media, who view it as a sign of how the rightwing press is reacting to the fracturing of the British right.

Reform figures believe that the emergence of Restore, and its even more stark approach to deporting “millions and millions” of people from the UK, could help push the Mail and other titles towards it as the acceptable option for its readers.

The immediate driver of the Mail’s endorsement was this week’s pivotal Makerfield byelection, in which Andy Burnham is attempting to return to parliament and challenge Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership.

While Burnham is the favourite, Reform is his challenger and there is a realistic possibility that Restore’s splitting of the rightwing vote could be the difference.

The approach to Restore by the right-leaning media has not been consistent, however. Over the same weekend as the Mail on Sunday’s attack, the Telegraph ran a full-page feature interview with Lowe, in which he railed against “woke creeps” who criticise his party.

While there has been a widespread perception that the Telegraph’s politics have drifted further to the right since the Brexit vote, its imminent new owner – the German media company Axel Springer – will be significant in defining its political direction.

In fact, the politics of the Politico owner have also caused intrigue, after its titles ran opinion pieces first by Elon Musk and, more recently, by Viktor Orbán weeks before Hungary’s elections.

It remains unclear how the company, overseen by Mathias Döpfner, wants to position the Telegraph within Britain’s rapidly fracturing politics.

While political endorsements are not on the minds of editors this far out from a general election, senior figures among Britain’s right-leaning titles readily point out how messy the political scene has become. “The whole landscape – from hard left to hard right – looks chaotic,” said one.

Current coverage remains a far cry from the once united pro-Conservative approach, however.

“What you’ve got is decades of essentially right-of-centre UK press and proprietors backing the Conservative party, but now that rightwing consensus is being fractured,” said Steven Barnett, professor of communications at the University of Westminster.

“The Conservative party must be thinking to itself now: where is our support going to come from? If the Mail is going to be at least flirting with Farage – and I think they have been doing some flirting – that on its own means come the next election, they’re not going to be as full-throated in their support for the Conservative party.

“I think they’re still feeling their own way in a new political environment, where the papers themselves are not quite sure where their readership stands.”

Lowe himself suspects that the established rightwing media outlets are now rallying behind Farage. As a result, he has been accusing Farage of a charge the Reform leader is not used to facing: that of being part of the political establishment.

“If you look at the mainstream media, it is now pushing Nigel,” he told the Spectator magazine earlier this year.

Keyword – Film
Trefwoorden – Film, Steven Spielberg, Culture, Film industry, Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, The Fabelmans, ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, Disclosure Day
Title – Alienated by Disclosure Day? You are not alone | Film | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/mike-mccahill
Link – Alienated by Disclosure Day? You are not alone | Film | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T06:00:48.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/16/disclosure-day-spielberg-et-close-encounters-of-the-third-kind-et

A sage person once told me every noted director’s career is an ongoing conversation with the audience. Some film-makers – Michael Haneke, say – sit on high, like a headteacher at an assembly, and loftily number the ways in which we’ve let ourselves and the school down. There are others – Lars von Trier and Ari Aster spring to mind – whose work sidles up uncomfortably close, gooses the viewer and then flees the scene sniggering before the relevant authorities can be alerted. The career of Steven Spielberg – arguably the most remarkable career in the history of popular cinema – has long depended on the audience being on the exact same page, looking up wide-eyed and guileless towards the light: his greatest films, from Close Encounters to The Fabelmans, invite further discussion, an awestruck back-and-forth.

You can therefore understand why Spielberg has broached the subject of social division with Disclosure Day , his much-trumpeted return to the summer event movie: he has almost as much skin in this game as the rest of us non-trillionaires. Yet if early box office has been solid enough, secondary indices – not least a slew of disappointed foyer texts from friends and loved ones – would suggest the film has itself proved distinctly polarising. In the US, market research firm CinemaScore – which polls opening-day cinemagoers to assess a film’s commercial prospects – graded Disclosure Day a B, the joint second-worst for a Spielberg film, ahead of AI: Artificial Intelligence (recipient of a harsh C), dead level with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Headmaster Haneke again shakes his weary head.

Despite the proximity of aliens, the new film’s focus is primarily human: the secrets we keep, the lies we tell. Disclosure Day thereby dovetails neatly with the themes of several mature-period Spielberg works, notably 2015’s Bridge of Spies and 2017’s The Post . To locate the source of this interest, you need only revisit The Fabelmans – Spielberg’s probing and perceptive movie-memoir of 2022 – which dramatised the effects similar deceptions had on his own household growing up. Screenwriter David Koepp has form in this area, too: his script for last year’s spry and gripping Steven Soderbergh thriller Black Bag unpicked the alibis of bedhopping spies. Yet Disclosure Day’s weak spot is its tissue-thin and arbitrary-seeming plot, its own diaphanous cover story for some altogether antiquated and simplistic editorial.

The setup, granted, is strong: Close Encounters, updated for the information age. First contact here is no longer as harmonious as a five-note call-and-response; as demonstrated by Emily Blunt’s weathergirl, left speaking in tongues, it’s more a matter of mainlining everything on social media (news, multiple languages, a whole century’s crashlandings and cover-ups) in one fell swoop. Phones are bad and must be tossed and driven over. On the trusted list: ordinary people, organised religion, local news (framed as the right, digestible amount of information) and – this being Spielberg – the family home. This ageing viewer has some sympathy for all that, but as a directorial vision, Disclosure Day feels far more old world than new, more 20th century than 21st. How many X-Files reboots does one civilisation need? Set Disclosure Day against Spielbergian precedents, and it has an obvious personnel problem. No one in this cast disgraces themselves – and it’s fun watching Wyatt Russell’s goofball charm, so central to TV’s short-lived Lodge 49, bouncing around on an Imax screen – but Koepp’s characters neither register nor stick in the mind in the way Close Encounters’ Roy Neary or ET’s Elliott did. Rather than real, indelible, flesh-and-blood people, these are cardboard-cutout heroes and villains, moving parts voided of depth so as to be yanked around more efficiently. Colman Domingo is a fine actor, but not even he can sell us on a figure who’s some combination of underground resistance leader, directorial stand-in and part-time construction manager. In a cardigan. Wasn’t Spielberg meant to be reflecting reality here?

At a certain point, even Spielberg appears divided. The opening stretch is identifiably the work of the sharp, savvy Spielberg, confident enough to drop viewers in medias res and reassure us with slow-drip narrative intelligence; he almost casually pulls off a car chase through a rural farmhouse. Yet Disclosure Day hinges on a flatpack reconstruction of an old image: Domingo’s recreation of the Blunt childhood home, familiarly lit by Janusz Kamiński, mechanically scored by John Williams. Here, the sappy Spielberg takes over, and the film draws wearily on muscle memory: how we used to live, how Spielberg used to direct. (Although his VFX game used to be much stronger: how is it that a film-maker who once had us believing in dinosaurs should now struggle to conjure believable woodland creatures?) A twinge of summer movies past, nostalgic for popcorn paradises lost, Disclosure Day appears terribly hazy, if not outright befuddled, on crucial plot points. Could any viewer pin down what the threat coming out of Korea is? Or how that metallic doohickey works? Koepp’s script boils down to one word – the Blunt character’s final declaration of “listen”, positioned here as Dr Spielberg’s prescription for all our social ills. Some part of me – the part who’s grown up with Spielberg’s films, wrestled with them, made peace with them, admired the best of them – longed to respond with a hearty “hear hear”. But Disclosure Day’s closing hour is such a tail-off that it just sounds defensive, a last-gasp “hear me out”: the cry of creatives who haven’t quite worked out the story they want to tell, desperate to keep their audience on side.

Keyword – US news
Trefwoorden – Donald Trump, Germany, US politics, Europe, G7, World Cup 2026, Football
Title – German chancellor Merz gifts Trump football shirt at G7 – video | Donald Trump | The Guardian
Author –
Link – German chancellor Merz gifts Trump football shirt at G7 – video | Donald Trump | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T12:18:58.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2026/jun/16/german-chancellor-merz-gifts-trump-football-shirt-at-g7-video

Keyword – Art and design
Trefwoorden – Photography, Pride, LGBTQ+ rights, Art and design, Exhibitions, Art and design books, Books, Mexico, Culture
Title – Free as a bird: the Mexicans redefining gender – in pictures | Photography | The Guardian
Author –
Link – Free as a bird: the Mexicans redefining gender – in pictures | Photography | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T06:00:47.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2026/jun/16/free-as-a-bird-the-mexicans-redefining-gender-in-pictures-pieter-henket-birds-of-mexico-city

Keyword – Life and style
Trefwoorden – Health & wellbeing, Men’s health, Life and style, Diets and dieting, Fitness, Mental health, Health
Title – From man boobs to baldness: everything you wanted to know about midlife wellness … but were too male to ask | Health & wellbeing | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/joe-stone
Link – From man boobs to baldness: everything you wanted to know about midlife wellness … but were too male to ask | Health & wellbeing | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T14:00:48.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jun/12/mens-guide-to-ageing-well-medical-health-diet-experts

Diet

According to the dietitian Rick Miller : “By the time a man hits his mid-40s, several physiological changes are already under way. Testosterone drops at around 1-2% annually from the mid-30s, insulin sensitivity decreases and the liver’s capacity to process certain nutrients changes. The diet that kept a man lean and energetic in his 30s simply stops working.”

Men’s metabolism also tends to slow during midlife. Miller says this isn’t down to ageing itself, but the loss of muscle that tends to accompany it – so dieting isn’t the answer. “Restricting calories – particularly if it comes at the expense of protein – simply accelerates muscle loss, which further slows metabolism, creating exactly the cycle men are trying to escape,” he says.

A better approach is to focus on increasing protein intake, alongside strength training in the gym. “The latest research suggests men over 40 need to eat between 1.6g and 2.2g of protein per kilogram of body weight a day to preserve the metabolic engine that regulates blood glucose, supports hormonal function and determines how well a man ages. Men should also limit refined carbohydrates, such as bread and pasta, to stabilise insulin.”

While protein is the most important “macronutrient” for middle-aged men, Miller says that men’s micronutrient needs also shift in this period. “Magnesium absorption becomes less efficient, vitamin D synthesis through the skin declines, and zinc, which plays a direct role in testosterone production, is frequently depleted in men eating a heavily processed western diet. This has negative effects on energy, cognition, mood and body composition.” To compensate, men should prioritise eating foods rich in magnesium (nuts, seeds and dairy products), vitamin D (eggs, cod liver oil and mushrooms) and zinc (shellfish and legumes).

Cardiovascular disease is the number-one killer of men aged 45-54 . It is often framed as a cholesterol problem, but Miller says this is an oversimplification: “A more accurate picture involves chronic low-grade inflammation, insulin resistance and endothelial dysfunction [the deterioration of the blood vessel lining].” All of these factors can be substantially modified with the right diet. Many of us eat too much omega-6 (found in refined oils and processed food) and not enough omega-3 (found in oily fish).

“Eating two to three weekly servings of salmon, mackerel, sardines, herring or trout directly addresses inflammation and cognitive function, alongside cardiovascular risk,” he says. “A high polyphenol intake (from colourful vegetables and berries) and adequate dietary fibre (particularly the soluble kind from oats and legumes) help to manage cardiovascular risk – as does avoiding ultra-processed foods, which cause inflammation and increase insulin resistance.” Alcohol use should also be moderated as it “suppresses testosterone production, disrupts the deep sleep stages where testosterone is predominantly synthesised, and adds inflammatory load at precisely the point in life when men can least afford it.” The UK chief medical officers’ guidance recommends no more than 14 units per week across at least three alcohol-free days.

Finally, beware late night snacking. “Eating the bulk of your food earlier in the day is aligned with the body’s natural cortisol and insulin rhythms, improving metabolic efficiency and sleep.”

Exercise

“Midlife is arguably the most important period for determining our future health and independence,” says David Vaux, author of Stronger: 10 Exercises for a Longer Healthier Life . “Many chronic conditions begin silently during these years, before emerging decades later.”

Mitigating these risks requires more than padding back and forth to the fridge. “Cardiovascular exercise remains essential for heart health, weight management and mental wellbeing,” he says. “But 10,000 steps a day won’t save us from frailty in older age. Research consistently shows that people with low levels of muscle mass and strength are significantly more vulnerable to early mortality. That’s why middle-aged men need both ‘steps and reps’.”

After 30, muscle mass begins to decline by 3-8% a decade, causing a decrease in strength and function. “Maintaining our skeletal muscle with strength training is akin to future-proofing our body’s ability to function normally,” says Vaux. “If we neglect it, our ability to heal from injury, fight infections or even think clearly will be compromised in older age. It’s not about aesthetics. It is about preserving function, resilience and quality of life.”

NHS guidelines recommend doing at least two sessions of resistance training (using weights, body weight or machines in the gym) a week. Vaux advocates functional strength exercises including lunges, squats and pull-ups as “these train multiple joints and muscle groups together, improving balance, coordination and real-world strength”. He suggests thinking of exercise as investing in a “strength pension, which underwrites virtually every aspect of healthy ageing”.

While resistance training becomes increasingly vital in middle age, he cautions against a “no pain, no gain” gym bro mindset. “Many men enter midlife still training with the ‘go hard or go home’ mentality they had in their 20s. Unfortunately, that often becomes counterproductive with age; you cannot train consistently if you are constantly injured. The solution is to recover with the same seriousness that we train. Learning to recognise fatigue, stiffness or pain and adjusting training accordingly is the difference between maintaining lifelong fitness and spending months sidelined with avoidable injuries.”

Skincare

Some good news! According to Dr David Jack , an aesthetic doctor, “Men begin with a structural advantage over women: thicker dermis, more collagen and more active sebaceous glands – all of which create a firmer appearance. During menopause women experience sharp collagen loss, whereas the trajectory is far steadier for men.”

The bad news? “Men tend to develop deeper-set lines, particularly across the forehead, and frown lines, as well as a dropping of heavier tissues in the lower face due to stronger muscles.” Meanwhile, “lower SPF use means men often have more advanced changes before seeking advice”. SPF should be your priority, he advises, as sun exposure remains the most dominant factor in skin ageing.

Other lifestyle factors also play a role. “Poor sleep affects the skin’s repair processes, while chronic stress elevates cortisol, which impacts collagen synthesis and damages your skin barrier.” Once again, protein is your best friend. “It supports collagen structure, while a diet rich in antioxidants found in colourful fruit and veg, nuts and seeds helps mitigate damage from UV rays and pollution.”

In an era awash with influencers and 12-step routines, skincare can feel daunting. According to Jack, three consistent steps in the morning are all you need. “A cleanser containing AHA (lactic/glycolic acid) or BHA (salicylic acid) will remove excess sebum and help men prone to congestion or ingrown hairs from shaving. This should be followed by an antioxidant serum (one containing vitamin C, for instance) and a moisturiser with broad-spectrum SPF 50 or above, which remains the most important way of preserving collagen and preventing pigmentation. In the evening, cleanse again before applying a retinoid – one of the most evidence-based ingredients for supporting collagen production and improving fine lines and texture. A simple moisturiser can be layered on top if needed.”

Feel like your crow’s feet require more heavy-duty measures? “Botox remains the entry point for most men, particularly for the forehead and frown lines, where it can soften a fatigued appearance,” says Jack. “Hyaluronic acid filler is increasingly popular, particularly when used to restore jawline definition or midface support. The emphasis should always be on deeper placement rather than volume in the fat pads, which can cause puffiness.” Meanwhile, lasers and microneedling can stimulate collagen and improve texture, tone and elasticity.

“The common thread is subtlety,” says Jack. “The most effective approach integrates a few treatments to give an overall impression of looking well. Small, well-planned interventions produce more natural results than more aggressive one-off treatments.” He recommends seeking practitioners with “a strong medical background, detailed understanding of facial anatomy and a conservative and tasteful aesthetic. Consultations should feel thorough, with a clear explanation of what is driving the ageing process and how each treatment helps. Transparency around risks and complications is also crucial.”

Mental health

Middle-aged men represent the highest suicide risk of any demographic; they are also less likely to seek help. According to Dr Jonathan Garabette, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist at Reborne Longevity : “Unemployment, divorce, financial strain, work and family responsibilities all peak during midlife, and can act together to significantly increase risk. Social isolation can further accelerate these stressors.” In addition: “Mental illness in men are often missed or labelled as anger issues or addiction, which may actually be secondary issues.” Alongside socioeconomic factors, biological and hormonal changes in midlife, such as the natural decline in testosterone, “can affect mood, energy, cognition and sexual function. These symptoms deserve medical attention rather than being dismissed as ‘just getting older’.”

Thankfully, lifestyle interventions can have significant benefits. “Regular exercise, good nutrition, adequate sleep, social connection and stress management can reduce depression risk by more than 50%,” says Garabette. “Exercise is particularly effective, with benefits comparable to medication for some people.”

Community and connection also cultivate good mental health. “Social support literally changes how the brain processes stress. It’s important to invest in these relationships before a crisis hits and not wait until breaking point to seek support. Small, consistent actions across multiple areas – physical health, relationships, meaningful activity – all add up to significant protection.”

As for therapy, only 33% of referrals to NHS talking therapies are for men, and according to Garabette, services haven’t always been designed with them in mind. “It may be helpful to reframe help-seeking as proactive maintenance, like going to the gym or servicing a car, rather than ‘admitting defeat’,” he says. “Psychotherapy comes in many different forms, and finding the right sort of therapy for each patient’s needs and preferences is important. Men should know that therapy can be practical and goal-focused, not just ‘talking about feelings’.”

Samaritans offers 24/7 support to anyone in distress (freephone 116 123). ANDYSMANCLUB has free peer-to-peer support groups across the UK and online.

Hair loss

Most men will experience hair loss in their lifetime, with 66% of men aged 35 already thinning. There are two main causes, says Dr Marco Nicoloso, a hair loss expert and medical director at Ouronyx . “The most common form is androgenic alopecia, male pattern hair loss, which is genetic and hormone driven. About 80% of men will experience this at some point – it could begin when they are 16 or when they are 60. The second most common form is telogen effluvium: shedding related to a stressful event. If the stress resolves, then the hair grows back.” A trichoscopy, in which a dermatologist takes close digital images of the scalp, can establish the cause.

As with skin ageing, lifestyle factors can hasten hair loss. Since the rise of Ozempic, Nicoloso increasingly sees patients who are losing hair through restricting calories. “Hair is 80-90% protein, so it’s particularly important to be eating enough protein if you want to maintain it,” he says. It’s also crucial to keep the scalp clean. “It’s a very oily environment full of bacteria and fungi, and needs to be washed every day. Shampooing removes the sebum, balances the pH and protects the hair follicles.”

While many men are content to lose their hair, 62% say that hair loss negatively affects their self-esteem, with 21% reporting feelings of associated depression. “Some patients accept it: they shave their heads and are completely fine,” says Nicoloso. “For others, it has a strong psychological impact.”

While transplants have surged in popularity, beginning medical treatments at the early signs of thinning can “delay or even avoid the need”. Nicoloso suggests asking your doctor about finasteride, a private prescription medication that acts as a hormone blocker to reduce the progression of thinning (there are potential side effects, including problems with libido and erections, although these should improve during treatment and in most cases stop once treatment is discontinued). This should be paired with minoxidil, which stimulates hair follicles to encourage growth and thickness, and is available as a prescription pill or over the counter as a topical treatment. If you do decide to progress to a transplant, medications will maximise the outcome by ensuring you have thick hair in the “donor area” from which hairs are harvested.

Transplants can be transformational for “the right candidate at the right time”, says Nicoloso. “I see a lot of patients who have transplants too soon, and without going on medication first. Transplanted hair is not sensitive to the thinning progression, so it will stay thick. But the existing hair will keep getting thinner without medication, so you end up having gaps. A 360 degree approach – correcting any deficiencies, having a healthy lifestyle, taking care of scalp health and considering medication – will maximise your outcome.”

Keyword – Society
Trefwoorden – Loneliness, Football, Sport, London, UK news, Apps
Title – ‘You make people a bit happier’: the football app building friendships in London | Loneliness | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/isaaq-tomkins
Link – ‘You make people a bit happier’: the football app building friendships in London | Loneliness | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-13T13:00:15.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/13/football-app-building-friendships-london-footy-addicts

Cries of “Boss! Boss! Boss!” emerge from the pitch during a hard-fought game of football in a London park. There aren’t a lot of names used in this game, because most players only met just before kick-off. They were brought together by an app that’s injecting life into grassroots football.

Footy Addicts was invented to solve an infuriating problem for amateur players – the late dropout, which can lead to unbalanced teams and ruined games. The app brings together strangers who are desperate to play football, and who can step in after a cancellation to make up the numbers at short notice.

Raul-Julian Grelet, 28, and Jacob Jae Ellis, 23, (RJ and JJ as they are known) met on the pitch today. Grelet organised their match through Footy Addicts, which is something he’s been doing since the start of the year. He says the platform has been a “marvel to this community”, and hosts matches to give people a chance to play and improve.

“I do it because I know what it’s like to go into a game when you’re shy and you don’t want to play and you feel like you’re doing badly. These sessions are open for you to just come and have a kickabout – make some friends and get some exercise.”

That’s exactly what the Footy Addicts CEO, Konstantinos Gkortsilas, intended. When he came to the UK in 2006 from Larissa, a city in central Greece, he wanted two things: to play football, and build a community. The trouble was that Sunday League football was too much of a time commitment, and required a big upfront payment to take part. At the same time Gkortsilas didn’t know enough people to organise his own games.

So he started using meetup.com, a website which connects hobbyists, to find more players. As the community grew, he eventually launched Footy Addicts in 2013, an independent platform that gives individual footballers a group to play with. Since then it has exploded, with more than 323,000 registered players all over the UK.

Gkortsilas saw the difference he made first-hand. “I was coming out of games, meeting people, chatting with them, and it gave me this feeling of accomplishment,” he says. “You’re giving a little bit to people’s lives, making them a bit happier. For me that was the biggest victory.”

Two years ago, JJ Ellis had come back to London after finishing university, was working in hospitality, and wanted to get some exercise. “I don’t mind the gym but I don’t think it’s very nice or particularly human,” he says.

He found Footy Addicts and started playing with them instead. At the matches, it didn’t feel as if he was fighting an uphill battle to fit in, as many people do when they’re new to a job, or a city, or a country.

What began as a convenient means of making sure the game goes ahead has since led to blossoming friendships. Next year JJ is going to the wedding of someone he met through the platform.

Loneliness, especially among young men , is a problem the Footy Addicts platform can help solve. But it also creates a space for women to play more football. Stephanie Benneli, 33, takes part in a longstanding game in Highbury. She grew up in Brazil playing football all throughout her youth, but when she came to London as an adult, the opportunities to play dried up.

After an eight-year lull she discovered the service, which brought back her passion for the game. Now she plays football whenever she wants, and it makes a world of difference to her life.

“If I’m struggling – when I’ve been through difficult moments, football is the only thing that really takes me out of my house,” says Benelli. “I don’t care if it’s drizzly, raining, if it’s snowing, I just go out and enjoy.”

As Grelet’s match winds down in Barnard Park, the next team gathers on the sidelines, getting ready to take over. They are already introducing themselves, joking around, heckling the players on the pitch at times. The mood is jovial, as friendships form in real time.

Keyword – Film
Trefwoorden – Documentary films, Music, Culture, Film, Pop and rock
Title – ‘He experienced a full life of trauma’: documentary explores troubled tale of Gregg Allman | Documentary films | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jim-farber
Link – ‘He experienced a full life of trauma’: documentary explores troubled tale of Gregg Allman | Documentary films | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T09:00:17.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/16/gregg-allman-documentary

L ate in the afternoon on 29 October 1971, one of the world’s greatest guitarists, Duane Allman, was riding his motorcycle when he swerved to avoid colliding with a flatbed truck that suddenly stopped short in an intersection. He wound up slamming into the back of the truck with such force, it threw him under his bike which skidded and dragged him for 50 ruinous feet. Suffering a collapsed chest, a ruptured coronary artery and a damaged liver, Allman was pronounced dead three hours later. He was 24.

Four decades after that tragic event, when journalist Alan Light was hanging out with Gregg Allman to ghostwrite the musician’s memoir, titled My Cross to Bear, he couldn’t help but notice how present Duane remained in his life. “In Gregg’s house, he was surrounded by photos of Duane, notes from Duane and music from Duane,” Light said. “It was obvious that he was still very much a part of Gregg’s day-to-day existence. The sadness and loss never left him.”

In fact, it only exacerbated the sense of tragedy that had been with both Allman brothers nearly from birth. When Duane was three years old and Gregg two, their father was shot to death by a hitchhiker he’d picked up. “Gregg experienced a full life of trauma,” said James Keach, who has directed a comprehensive new documentary about the star titled Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul. “That level of trauma, suffered young, informs everything you do, especially if you’re an artist.”

But if trauma underlay Allman’s music, the way he used it as a singer, songwriter and musician couldn’t have been more rousing, creative or cathartic, something the performances in the film make abundantly clear. While much of the documentary covers his decades with the Allman Brothers – which suffered another tragedy with the death of their bassist Berry Oakley one year after Duane’s demise – its greater value comes in differentiating Gregg from the rest of the band. To do so, it emphasizes his unique role within their ranks, as well as his separate solo identity, delineated over a wealth of solo albums released before his death from liver cancer in 2017 at 69. “If Duane had never formed the Allman Brothers, Gregg would have become a solo artist with an affinity for Jackson Browne and Tim Buckley,” said Alan Paul, author of the definitive book on the group, One Way Out. “He wouldn’t have been out of place in the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter scene.”

That’s apparent not only from the craft and melodic range of his writing, which pushed far beyond the blues idiom he’s often associated with, but also the husky timbre of his voice and the weight of emotion in his singing. Heavy with sadness and hurt, Allman’s voice was the perfect expression of the burdened life he led, though as Paul pointed out, “Gregg would have been a great singer even if he lived a very different life.”

Early in that life music represented redemption. After the murder of the boys’ father, their mother never remarried, forcing her to raise the kids herself. Though she was enormously devoted to them, the job she took to support the family required her to live apart from them for some years, during which she sent them to military school. In those years, Gregg felt abandoned by both parents. Though Duane became a kind of parental substitute, he could be an intimidating one to the more inward Allman. “People have this image of Gregg as this hard-living rock’n’roll pirate,” Keach said. “But I always saw him as a shy and sensitive guy.”

Interestingly, Gregg took up guitar first, but Duane became intrigued and quickly surpassed him in skill. The younger brother reacted by developing his voice, modeled on the southern Black blues singers whose phrasing, gravitas and swagger entranced him. Though the boys were raised in the segregated south, they were drawn to Black culture. An early band the brothers formed, initially named Allman Joys and later dubbed Hourglass, earned a recording contract but the restrictive sound their record company required frustrated Duane, who quit to become a session guitarist at Muscle Shoals studio where he played on classic recordings by artists such as Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin. By 1969, Duane had an idea for his own band fired by an unusual lineup, with two harmonically attuned lead guitarists and two powerhouse drummers, the latter modeled on similar lineups in James Brown’s and Otis Redding’s bands. The sound Duane conceived wound up defining the Southern Rock movement, heard in bands from Lynyrd Skynyrd to the Marshall Tucker Band. Duane’s first hire for the Allmans was Jaimoe (John Lee Johnson), a Black R&B and jazz drummer, making them one of the few major integrated bands in the Jim Crow south.

Gregg found his way into the group by tackling an intimidating instrument: the Hammond B3 organ. “Gregg was never a flashy organ player,” said Chuck Leavell, the master keyboardist who joined the Allmans in 1972. “You’re not going to listen to him and say, ‘wow, this guy’s got incredible chops!’ What you do hear is melody and feeling and sensitivity. He was a very tasteful player.”

More, Gregg could write songs like Whipping Post and Midnight Rider, which gave the group a compositional authority few jam bands ever muster. The Allmans’ third album, Live at the Fillmore East, universally hailed as one of the greatest concert recordings ever released, made them national stars but the same week that it went gold Duane lost his life. “I was angry,” Gregg says bitterly in the film. “I was angry at him for dying. I was angry at God for taking him. I was angry at the whole thing.”

The documentary reveals that Gregg, already a heroin user, overdosed the same night Duane died, though he was later revived. Alan Paul’s book adds another shocking fact: bassist Berry Oakley also nearly died that night in a terrible car crash he managed to walk away from. Gregg took to bed for weeks afterwards. By then he was addicted to heroin and alcohol, dependencies that plagued him for decades. “The reality of what he had to deal with was just too much,” Keach said.

Oakley’s death one year later was eerily similar to Duane’s – again from a motorcycle accident, though the bassist was fully conscious in the aftermath. When Oakley was asked if he wanted to go to the hospital, he said no, a decision that may have doomed him. “A lot of people make that mistake,” Keach said. “They think they’re OK but don’t realize their internal organs may have been crushed and they’re bleeding to death inside.”

Given the multiplying deaths, Gregg started to feel cursed. “He had this sense of, ‘why am I the one who made it through all this?’” Light said. “All around me, again and again, this tragedy keeps happening.”

During that period, Paul reveals, the killer of Gregg’s father wrote letters to him to try to apologize. “Gregg threw all of them out,” Paul said.

For a short while, the band thought about stopping but, said Keach, “if they quit, what was going to happen? None of these guys went to college. They were great musicians. So, they did what they knew how to do.”

In fact, they did so to an astounding degree, reinventing themselves in a way that made them more popular, and respected, than ever. Knowing they could never replace the singularity of Duane, they instead added a prominent keyboardist – Chuck Leavell. According to the pianist, “that was a happy accident. They weren’t looking for a piano player. We just started these jam sessions, and everybody said, ‘This is unique.’ And I guess I provided a certain degree of rhythm under (surviving lead guitarist) Dickie Betts, and also offered a foil. The twin guitar harmonies they had before I could cover on piano but with a totally different tonality and texture.”

Leavell’s first album with them, Brothers and Sisters, shot to the top of the charts, fired by the smash single Ramblin’ Man, whose lyrics briefly referenced the murder of the Allmans’ father. Betts wrote and sang that song, along with others on the album, making him the band’s biggest star. At first that was cool with Gregg, who was in no emotional shape then to lead the group. Eventually, though, it led to tensions. “Watching Dickie move into that position obviously rankled Gregg,” Light said. “He talked a lot about that.”

The ever-escalating drug use of both Gregg and Betts made things far worse. (Betts was permanently booted from the band in 2000.) At the height of their fame, Gregg began to feel overwhelmed by the group’s jam-band focus, leading him to inaugurate a parallel solo career with the Laid Back album in 1973. In the film, Gregg says anger inspired the move. After presenting the band with a song he was especially proud of, Queen of Hearts, one member sneered, “Man, that ain’t saying nothin’.” In an interview used in the film, Gregg doesn’t reveal who said that, but Paul believes it was drummer Butch Trucks. Gregg had the last laugh, though. His solo album quickly went gold, buttressing the Allmans’ success which, by then, turned them into America’s biggest band.

Harnessing that influence, they began to hold early fundraisers for a then little-known Jimmy Carter, an extreme dark horse running for president. The idea of a long-haired rock band endorsing a politician was incredibly rare then yet so effective that Carter later gave them credit for helping him win the White House in 1976. More importantly, the ascendence of Carter and the Allmans offered a radically new image of the south, one that was racially inclusive. “Before you had southern politicians like George Wallace and Lester Maddox who were adamant segregationists,” Leavell said. “Now we had guys who grew up in the deep south with Black people as neighbors and childhood friends and a whole new perspective.”

That didn’t go over well with everyone. There’s speculation in the documentary that anti-Carter forces were behind a nearly ruinous drug bust in the Allmans’ camp. To gain immunity from that, Gregg testified against the band’s road manager, Scooter Jennings. “There was a lot of feeling that Gregg had ratted on his friend,” Leavell said. “Some felt his testimony went beyond what was necessary. In reality, Gregg was put in a box.”

Jennings himself forgave Gregg and took the fall but the bad feelings broke up the band for a while. More controversy arrived when the Allman singer married Cher, making them music’s odd couple of the hour. (It was one of seven marriages for Allman.) “People were always going to think, ‘How the hell did that happen?’” Light said. “But they only had good things to say about each other.”

For the shy Allman, Cher’s level of Hollywood fame proved intolerable. The issue for her was his heroin addiction. When I asked Cher about their relationship a few years ago, she expressed abiding love for the man she called “Gregory” (as did all his closest friends). At the same time, she said she couldn’t have him using heroin around her children, which scotched the relationship for her.

Allman didn’t get sober until the late 90s. Leavell believes part of the reason it took so long was because “Gregg could drink a quart of liquor and still perform. So I think he felt he could get away with it. But there came a time when he couldn’t.”

Though he finally got clean and received a liver transplant in 2010, the hepatitis C he contracted previously endured, and in 2017 he died of liver cancer . Knowing he was dying, Allman recorded a final album, Southern Blood, released four months after his death. It stands as one of the greatest self-penned musical epitaphs ever released. While Gregg knew of his impending demise, it was never announced to the public, something Paul considers a shame. “When he died, he was treated as a major musical figure,” Paul said. “It would have been nice if he had been around to see that his cultural relevance went way beyond the Allmans.”

More, the depth of that recognition might have offered a sweet counter to the many traumas he endured in his life, including the suicide of the band’s drummer Butch Trucks just four months before his own death. Given the weight of such events, Light said, “Gregg felt haunted until the very end of his life. Sadly, that will always be a part of his story.”

Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul is in US cinemas for one night on 17 June with release dates elsewhere to be announced

Keyword – Politics
Trefwoorden – Jo Cox, Far right, Brexit, Communities, Politics, UK news
Title – Division in UK probably worse now than in run-up to Brexit, says Jo Cox’s sister Kim Leadbeater | Jo Cox | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/peterwalker,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/nosheen-iqbal
Link – Division in UK probably worse now than in run-up to Brexit, says Jo Cox’s sister Kim Leadbeater | Jo Cox | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T05:00:46.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/16/division-in-uk-probably-worse-now-than-in-run-up-to-brexit-says-kim-leadbeater

Political hatred and division in the UK is probably worse now than during the Brexit referendum, when Jo Cox was murdered, says Kim Leadbeater, Cox’s sister who is now also a Labour MP.

Speaking to the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast Leadbeater, who was elected to the same Yorkshire seat held by Cox in a 2021 byelection , said everyone in public life had a responsibility to try and ease tensions.

Referencing the response of some politicians to the murder of Henry Nowak, which was followed by disorder in Southampton , Leadbeater said people should remember that those calling for division were “in the minority” but were very vocal.

Other people, she argued, “have got a duty to drown them out and tell the good stories of this country”.

“After Jo was killed, there was a period where people said all the right things and said: we need to do things differently, we need more compassion, we need more understanding,” said Leadbeater in an interview to mark the 10th anniversary of Cox’s murder by a far-right terrorist on 16 June 2016.

She said: “And it was very short-lived. And sadly and regrettably, I think over the last decade, if anything, things are worse. And I think we have to be honest about that.”

With the anniversary approaching, Leadbeater said, it was time to “have a look at how we can change that narrative”.

In comments marking 10 years since Cox’s death, Keir Starmer said the values she had lived by – that “we have far more in common than that which divides us” – were being tested anew.

He added: “At a time when those values are being tested, her legacy feels as vital and urgent as ever. The best way to honour her memory is to stand firmly against hatred and division, to bring communities together, and to show, through both big acts and small, the compassion, decency and solidarity that define our nation at its best.”

Leadbeater said the responsibility for that change lay with “everybody … including politicians and people in public office”.

“We have a voice,” she added. “We’re very lucky to have a voice and to have a platform. But with that voice and with that platform comes a very significant level of responsibility.

“Recently we saw the horrific murder of that wonderful young man, Henry Nowak, and we saw his family’s response, and they pleaded with people: please do not allow Henry’s murder to be used to divide communities.

“I’ve been in that position, and I know what that feels like. It is unbelievably painful. But what you do not want to see is more anger and more hatred and more division on top of what you’re already going through. Then the opposite happened. Only from certain quarters, though. You’ve got to remember: those voices who are sowing the division are in the minority, and it doesn’t always feel like it.”

“They are very loud. But the rest of us then have got a duty to drown them out and tell the good stories of this country, call out bad things where they happen.

“Absolutely, be angry. I’ve got no problem with people being angry. I am really angry about what’s happened to my life. I’m pretty furious, to be honest. But you then have a choice what you do with the anger. And you can use that anger for good. You can use it to make a difference.”

Cox was 41 and had been an MP for just over a year when she was fatally shot and stabbed by Thomas Mair , a rightwing extremist, before a constituency surgery in the run-up to the Brexit referendum.

In the interview, Leadbeater recalled that she had been collecting her car from a garage when she received a phone call saying Cox had been attacked.

She said: “I remember getting in the car. My legs were shaking and I just couldn’t stop shaking. And instinctively I knew this was not good. And I don’t know if that’s a sister thing. I don’t know if it’s just an instinct thing. I don’t know what it was, but I just knew straight away.

“I remember saying to my partner, who was saying, as people do: ‘It’s going to be OK, it’s going to be OK.’ And I just remember saying: ‘I just don’t think it’s going to be OK.’ And I sort of knew.”

Leadbeater had not previously been involved in politics, but when Cox’s replacement in the Batley and Spen seat, Tracy Brabin, stepped down after being elected West Yorkshire mayor, she was persuaded to stand for Labour, winning the byelection .

Leadbeater said she had decided to stand after speaking with her parents and Cox’s children, in part because she “did not want our community and our country to be defined by Jo’s murder, because that isn’t what our country looks like and that isn’t who we are”.

The foundation set up in Cox’s name campaigns in part on tackling loneliness, and Leadbeater said that with people like Mair, it was important to take account of what she called “the intersection between extremism and loneliness”.

This, however, should not be used as a reason to avoid challenging extreme beliefs, she argued. “If we reduce Jo’s murder to an isolated act, then we are misunderstanding the context within which it happened. And we are misunderstanding and misrepresenting the views of the individual who killed Jo.

“This is someone who was a far-right extremist. And we have to call extremism out, whatever that looks like. We have to have an honest conversation about that.”

Keyword – Global development
Trefwoorden – Global development, Somalia, Al-Shabaab, US military, Drones (military), US foreign policy, Middle East and north Africa, Africa, Trump administration, US politics, Conflict and arms, World news, US news
Title – Killed walking home from school: why did Somali children become targets of US drone strikes? | Global development | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/marktownsend
Link – Killed walking home from school: why did Somali children become targets of US drone strikes? | Global development | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T10:00:07.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jun/16/somalia-us-trump-war-alshabaab-islamists-drone-airstrikes-civilian-deaths-children

T hey had just settled down for breakfast when the noise came. Some paused in the eating of their slow-cooked beans – cambuulo – spooked by the haunting high-pitched hum. Others pressed their faces against windows, scanning skywards. Farmers in nearby maize fields watched the objects circling above Jamaame, a town in southern Somalia .

Shortly after 9am on 15 November 2025, Jamaame shuddered from a series of explosions.

The home of Abdullahi Mohamed Abo Sheikh Ali, who was out tending his fields that day, was among those obliterated. His grandfather Mohamed raced towards the rubble.

“Clothes and books were scattered on the ground, but I couldn’t focus on them. I was in shock, standing before the bodies of my grandchildren. They were ripped to pieces.”

Scrabbling among the debris, Mohamed found the body of Safiyo Hassan Abukar, his daughter-in-law. She had been heavily pregnant.

Beside her were the remains of Abdifatah, her eldest child. It was little surprise the 10-year-old was found so close to his mother.

“Abdifatah never left her side, always helping with chores. When he was around, she needed no one else,” says Mohamed.

Seven-year-old Abdinasir, lay dead nearby. Abdinasir had doted on his grandfather. “He always asked me to pray so he could memorise the Qur’an. Sometimes I called him my ‘prayer seeker’ and he would smile.”

The bodies of two more brothers – Hussein, six and Abdurahman, four – were among the debris.

The family were killed during a US airstrike in Somalia. According to a Guardian investigation, at least 12 civilians, including eight children, died during the attack.

It is the deadliest US operation for civilians in Somalia during either Trump administration. The US had not killed so many innocent people in a single incident in the east African country for 18 years . The previous highest confirmed toll was the bloody, botched US military operation in the capital, Mogadishu, that became known as the 1993 Black Hawk Down incident.

Despite the scale, no investigation appears to have been launched into the attack on Jamaame six months ago. No one has been held accountable for the deaths – the US refused to admit that a single civilian died in the town that day.

Using photographs, video footage, and X-rays of children’s shrapnel injuries, alongside witness testimony, the Guardian has pieced together the first detailed account of themassacre.

The killings raise questions not only about US intelligence, but Washington’s intensifying campaign in the Horn of Africa. Hundreds of strikes have been carried out by the Trump administration in a legally ambiguous, secret war with no apparent accountability for civilian deaths.

Who signed off the attack on a densely populated family neighbourhood? Why and who, if anyone, was the intended target? Testimony indicates that it is highly probable the US drone teams knew children were in the vicinity.

More broadly, Jamaame invites scrutiny over how the US military values the lives of ordinary Somalis. The commander-in-chief of the US armed forces – Donald Trump – has repeatedly attacked Somalis, labelling them “stupid”, “low IQ” and their country as “disgusting” .

Did presidential disdain imply to senior officials they could get away with killing civilians?

T he US drones moved closer. A short while earlier, they had most likely taken off from Camp Simba , a military base farther south on the Kenyan coast. From the drones’ lofty vantage point, Somalia would have looked stunning: vast unspoilt sand beaches framed by white surf. Five miles (8km) inland, perched on a curve of the Jubba River, is Jamaame.

Full-motion video, or FMV , as live feeds from drones are called, relayed life inside Jamaame to a team of pilots and analysts in extraordinary detail. “You can read licence plates,” says Brett Velicovich , a former US army special operations intelligence analyst.

In Jamaame, people saw the aircraft above. Although the US would not comment on the weaponry used in the attack, they were probably MQ-9 Reaper “hunter killer” drones armed with Hellfire missiles .

In the Burburka neighbourhood, Marian Haji Abdi Guled remembers the door of her home swinging open to reveal her three grinning children, returning from Qur’an school.

But Guled felt uneasy, spooked by the “very loud” noise overhead. Her home shuddered, and the children ran outside to see what had happened.

Suddenly, another missile screamed down from the sky and Guled also ran outside. “All my children were lying on the ground covered in blood. When I tried to tend to them, shells began falling everywhere. Every direction you turned, there were shells and missiles raining everywhere.”

Nearby, Maryan Nur Buruji’s pregnant stepdaughter had fled to take shelter at the Qur’an school, her two-year-old tied to her back.

About 9.30am, witnesses described two missiles striking the school. Buruji’s stepdaughter was killed. The toddler, still clinging to her dead mother, somehow survived.

Amid the pandemonium, Mohamed Hassan Abdulle ran to a friend’s house to borrow a motorcycle to ferry his family from danger.

“ He told me he’s going to help his family flee first and then come back for my family,” says a neighbour.

But Abdulle was too late. His home was already flattened. Under the remains was the bodies of his 26-year-old wife, Farhiyo Hassan Nuur, and daughter, Layla Mohamed Hassan. Layla was 10 months old.

He stood beside his destroyed home, the entire neighbourhood ablaze. “I couldn’t even find anyone to help carry the bodies of my wife and daughter,” he says.

Outside Jamaame, Gedow Ibrahim had been tending his sesame crops when he received a panicked call from his wife, Nuurto Hussein Abukar, 30.

“ There was a lot of fear in town because drones were hovering above. I told her to remain indoors.”

At about 10am he received another call, this time from a neighbour, urging him to return home immediately. His house had been destroyed.

In its wreckage his daughters, Maryan, nine, and Farhiyo, seven, were dead.

“I saw the lifeless bodies of my children. One of them had their left arm torn off. The other one had shrapnel in their back, which came out of their chest.” His daughter Amin, eight, was peppered with shrapnel: metal shards speared her shoulder, thigh, hips and calf.

Also summoned home from his crops was Abdullahi Mohamed Abo Sheikh Ali, farmer and grandson of Mohamed. He, too would be confronted with a scene of terrible devastation and discover his family had been wiped out.

Abdullahi, unable to process his wife and four children’s deaths, went into immediate shock. “He’s never been the same,” says Mohamed.

Others were also dead, including a revered imam.

Although the precise chronology of the strikes is difficult to verify, witnesses counted at least 15 explosions. Mohamed says at least 18 homes were destroyed. The school was reduced to a shell. Guled counted nine strikes in the Burburka neighbourhood alone.

Abdullahi, struggling to comprehend his loss, finds clarity when it comes to naming the culprit. “The Americans bombed us,” he says. “Children, women and elders were bombed. They spared nothing.”

W hen Trump began his second term, analysts wondered how Somalia would fit into his foreign policy. On his first overseas trip – in February 2025 – Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, met senior officers from the US Africa command headquarters, Africom , in Germany.

Omitted from the press statement was Hegseth’s signing of a directive implementing a change that would have profound repercussions for the Jamaame families nine months later.

Safeguards governing drone strikes were dismantled. Restrictions imposed by the Biden administration – requiring White House approval for drone strikes in Somalia – were overturned.

Now, Africom generals could unilaterally decide whether to sanction a strike.

“They got the green light for high-tempo operations with minimal oversight,” says Jethro Norman, of the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).

The loosened rules of engagement started a dramatic escalation of US operations in Somalia. Acled , which monitors global conflict, recorded 123 airstrikes by the US last year – more than six times as many as the year before and double the previous record, set in 2019. This year the tempo has quickened further to unprecedented levels: by April, 49 attacks had been documented – averaging an airstrike almost every other day.

But what instigated the attack on Jamaame?

The US military has never contested its involvement in the strikes. The day after, an Africom statement said it had conducted airstrikes in that area on 15 November.

Referring to the Somali Islamist militant movement that emerged in the 2000s, it added that Jamaame was attacked as part of “action to degrade al-Shabaab’s ability to threaten the US homeland, our forces and our citizens abroad”.

While Jamaame falls within territory broadly controlled by al-Shabaab, every witness interviewed by the Guardian stated that the group was not present in the town. In fact, all testified that the militants had never set foot there, preferring rural hideouts.

“There was no al-Shabaab presence in our town, only women, children and elders. Before the airstrikes, the situation in Jamaame was calm and peaceful,” says Guled.

Buruji adds: “The only people [here] are livestock herders and farmers.”

Their accounts raise questions about US intelligence: who were the strike team trying to kill, and how detailed was their “target development” in the weeks before the attack?

Drones, as Velicovich says, allow “precision-guided munitions” to be targeted at identified individuals.

When conducting his own drone strikes in Somalia, Velicovich meticulously studied his target’s daily routines: who they met, when and where: “Not sleeping for three days, watching these guys over and over.”

However the dead in Jamaame were mostly children and their mothers. The Qur’anic school, crammed with children shortly before the attack, was hit alongside residential buildings belonging to families who had lived there for decades. Guled had lived in the same home for her entire 42 years until it was destroyed. There seemed no obvious reason why her house would be targeted.

Perhaps there was no target development. Some airstrikes, says Norman, who has extensive knowledge of the workings of military operations in Somalia, could be notably hasty.

Africom, he says, sometimes requests permission from Somali government officials almost as the strikes are under way. “Sometimes they’ll call an hour before and say: ‘We’re going to hit this target, please sign this piece of paper.’”

Another theory is that the Jamaame intelligence was deliberately misleading. US officials are vulnerable to being spoonfed false information, according to Norman.

“The Americans don’t really have a knowledge of what’s going on at the hyper-local level. It’s quite easy for certain Somalis to bump off clan or political rivals by feeding information,” he says.

Regardless of intelligence flaws, US drone operators should have a potent safeguard: they can see everything on the ground in real time. The MQ-9 Reaper, for instance, has exceptionally high-quality, multispectral cameras.

The drones’ live feeds allow operators to clearly distinguish between adults and children, and operators are trained to distinguish fighting-age men.

And children were outdoors in Jamaame which should have halted an operation. Guled’s two sons – aged 16 and seven, and her 14-year-old daughter were in the street when the attack was launched.

“A lot of money is spent on cameras and information to verify that the bad guy is the bad guy; part of that is for precision and for not making mistakes,” says Velicovich.

After children had been killed, missiles were described as continuing to hit nearby homes. The US Department of War would not comment on why a decision to keep firing was made.

Even under the current relaxed rules of engagement, US officials should ensure the safety of civilian bystanders.

Perhaps the attack was based on “ signature strike ” patterns – observed activity that seems suspicious and therefore makes the people targets. “But you’re basically killing people without confirming who they are,” says Norman, and those killed in Jamaame could hardly have looked less like militants.

The strikes become even more perplexing with the altitude of the drones. Multiple witnesses described the propellers as “extremely loud”, suggesting they were relatively low. Velicovich confirmed that the lower drones fly, the sharper their live-feed images.

So, who were the people analysing the images? How experienced was the drone strike team? Had they served in Somalia and could they understand what they saw? The US would not comment.

Some suspect the strikes suggest something darker than faulty intelligence and come back to the US commander-in-chief’s contempt for Somalia.

Trump has characterising the country as “totally broken and crime-infested” in a 2017 diatribe against the congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

Seventeen days after the Jamaame killings the president castigated Somali immigrants as unfit for US residency. In March, against the backdrop of increasing drone strikes, Trump dismissed Somalis as “ low IQ ” people from a “crooked country”.

Norman says the Trump’s anti-Somali sentiment is notable in the context of civilian deaths. “The escalation of this rhetoric, the way it’s promulgated by Trump himself, gives a tacit green light to the military commanders that Somalis are now dehumanised. They’re being sent the message: ‘Go ahead, these lives don’t matter.’”

When the White House was approached for a response to the Jamaame strikes, the deputy press secretary Anna Kelly asked if the Guardian would also focus on “fraud committed by Somalis in the United States?”

Kelly added: “Describing enforcing the law and bombing terrorists as ‘racist’ is the kind of moronic take one can only expect from the Guardian.”

T he official US account of the airstrike is brief and opaque. Africom’s statement makes no mention of any civilians killed. Asked to provide its casualty assessment of the attack, US officials refused to comment. Neither would it share the identities of individuals targeted or killed.

The dearth of information applies to strikes across Somalia. Last May, Africom “temporarily” stopped releasing casualty figures from the country. A year on, the self-imposed censorship remains.

Refusing to recognise civilian deaths makes it impossible for families to find answers. Acled’s Jalale Getachew Birru says: “There is no transparency, no justice when civilians are killed.”

The Jamaame airstrikes were supported by Somali ground forces, raising the possibility that some of the damage could have been inflicted by those troops. US officials would not answer questions over Somali forces’ role in the attack on Jamaame.

But corroborating witness accounts indicates that the drones’ missiles – not ground troops or mortar fire – killed the civilians. Guled says there was “no way” the explosions were from mortars.

Buruji says: “My stepdaughter didn’t die from fighting but from a missile that came from the sky. The shrapnel from a missile struck her breast and neck. It’s how she died.”

None of the bereaved families have yet been contacted by US officials or the Somali government.

An apology appears improbable, despite the seeming failure to adequately distinguish civilians being a violation of international law. Compensation seems unlikely. The US maintains a $3m (£2.2m) annual budget to compensate civilians for drone deaths but nothing has been paid out to Somali families.

“I’m requesting compensation for the atrocity that was inflicted upon our family. I don’t even have anything to eat,” says Buruji.

Ibrahim wants answers before reparations. “I need to know why my children were bombed as they returned from Qur’an school.”

Guled adds: “I’m urging the Americans for justice and compensation for what has happened to my children.”

S ome residents left Jamaame after the strikes. But the drones remained for months in the skies above the town, monitoring empty streets. Their constant presence, and the fear they bring, have made life intolerable.

“We can’t sleep because of the loud noise from the drone engines. Every night they hover over us. When we try to sleep, we fear we’ll be killed,” says Mohamed.

Across southern Somalia, the US operations against al-Shabaab appears to have had little impact. The threat from the group has intensified. Its forces have reached 20 miles from the capital .

“If the objective is to destroy al-Shabaab, it’s pretty clear that they [drones] are not particularly effective,” says David Sterman, an analyst at the New America thinktank.

Some warn that Trump’s Somalia strategy might actually be a potent recruiting agent for al-Shabaab.

For Mohamed, he is left to constantly replay in his mind the terrible moments spent searching for the body parts of his four grandchildren.

They were too slippery, he says, and kept sliding from his grasp. “There was no place to grip because they were ripped to pieces.”

He describes his body as “burning”, slipping between rage and grief. “I don’t know if it’s pain or anger. So I cry.

“My grandchildren just loved learning the Qur’an. On their last day, they didn’t even get a chance to eat breakfast.”

Keyword – Environment
Trefwoorden – Oceans, Antarctica, Climate crisis, Marine life, Conservation, Environment, World news, Wildlife
Title – ‘The Antarctic is the last frontier’: the quest to save Shackleton’s Endurance | Oceans | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/karenmcveigh
Link – ‘The Antarctic is the last frontier’: the quest to save Shackleton’s Endurance | Oceans | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-15T06:00:04.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/15/shackleton-endurance-shipwrecks-global-heating-antarctic-underwater-protected-area

T he harsh temperatures, treacherous currents and shifting pack ice of the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea, which crushed and sank his ship, Endurance, in 1915, led Ernest Shackleton to describe it as the “worst portion of the worst sea in the world”.

For more than a century, the inhospitable conditions, which present a challenge even for modern icebreaker ships, helped to protect the lost wreck, which was discovered in 2022 , its structure still largely intact.

But now conservationists fear that the rapidly changing climate, and the potential for exploration vessels to access the ship one day, may pose a threat to the world-famous wreck.

Marine biologists have already discovered what they think could be a new species of wood-eating crustacean living on the wreck; in Antarctica , unlike warmer oceans, no timber-eating creatures have so far been recorded, which is part of the reason the ship has remained intact for so long.

To safeguard it for future generations, the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) has proposed that the ship and the surrounding sea become the region’s first specially protected underwater area.

“This is about foresight,” says Camilla Nichol, chief executive of the UKAHT, which was commissioned by the British government to lead on managing the site.

“What’s going to happen in the next, 10, 20, 30 years? In the last 10 years there’s been much less cover [provided by] seasonal ice and we know there’s more shipping.”

At the same time, “shipwrecks have always held a romantic appeal”, and “submarine activity is growing”, she says. “The Antarctic is the last frontier, which adds to its appeal and accessibility will only increase.”

Last month, at a meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, of countries that govern human activities in the Antarctic, the proposal for a protected area was passed without dissent. But a hurdle to the ship’s protection remains. The proposal needs to be agreed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which was set up to protect the region, and meets in September.

The CCAMLR is made up of 27 member states, including China and Russia, and has been mired in geopolitical stalemate over setting up marine protected areas. But based on past discussions over the past three years, the UKAHT is hopeful the proposal will be passed.

“South Korea, Japan, Norway, everyone around that table [last month], agreed that it matters,” says Nichol. “Culture, heritage, our stories matter to us and they matter to the rest of the world.”

Endurance lies on the seabed in the ocean’s “midnight zone” at 3,000 metres below the surface, a similar depth to the Titanic, which sank in 1912 and lies at 3,800 metres in the northern Atlantic Ocean.

Vessels travelling to the Antarctic already require a permit from a signatory of the Antarctic treaty to go within a 1.5km radius of the historic site. Making the zone where the Endurance lies an Antarctic specially protected area would prohibit entry unless rigorous conditions were satisfied.

“We would love to see what is inside the wreck, when technology permits,” says Nichol. The submersible expedition that found the lost ship was unable to enter it, but produced remarkable 3D images of its exterior .

There are also fears that as the climate warms, different species could begin to colonise the ship.

“The Antarctic is one of the few places in the world that a wreck could exist without damage to the wood,” says Dr Huw Griffiths, a marine biogeographer with the British Antarctic Survey. Nothing has been known to have adapted to eat wood in the Antarctic, so the ship’s timber looks as “good as the day it went down”.

Most animals colonising the wreck are “filter feeders”, such as sea anemones and sponges, which capture tiny particles of dead plants and animals known as “marine snow” that fall from the sunlit upper layers of the ocean to the deep seafloor, says Griffiths. But the images taken in 2022 also picked up a few fist-sized squat lobsters, from the genus Munidopsis, one species of which only eats wood.

“It is likely that this species is new to science, because it can withstand such low temperatures,” says Griffiths. “It could be a deep-sea species from elsewhere. Is it potentially something that will eat the wreck?”

The Endurance has become a natural laboratory, scientists say. Griffiths is keen to find out what will happen in a warmer world as the sea ice retreats further. He also wants to ensure that no invasive species, which could damage the reef, are carried to the region on other vessels.

“We can already see what happens over 100 years in a place where there is very little food. If we were to do some damage to the reef, it would take decades to recover.”