News and stories from all over the world

Arsenal
Arsenal crowned Premier League champions for first time in 22 years – live reaction
Niall McVeigh
Tue 19 May 2026 23.02 CESTFirst published on Tue 19 May 2026 22.26 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2026/may/19/arsenal-premier-league-champions-first-time-in-22-years-live-reaction

We’ll keep the focus here on Arsenal’s title win – so Gunners fans, drop me a line here wherever you are. I have to give a shoutout to my friends from uni, Andy and James. We watched the Invicibles’ parade on a beaten-up telly at our student digs in Cardiff, and it’s been a long, long wait for them to celebrate again. Congratulations, chaps.

Pep Guardiola has offered his congratulations to Arsenal and Arteta, his former assistant at Manchester City. “We were close. On behalf of everyone at Manchester City, we congratulate Mikel and all the staff, players and fans on winning the Premier League . They deserve it, for so much hard work and effort.

Despite the widespread reports this week, Guardiola did not confirm his departure, telling Sky that he has a year on his contract and needs to speak to the club hierarchy. It still feels like he is leaving it to City to make it official later this week, though.

Kari Tulinius writes: “It’s said to be anticlimactic to win the title by having your main rival lose. If this is an anticlimax, I’ll take it.” Personally, I think when your team wins a title like this, it’s different to sealing it on the pitch, but no less wonderful. Shame it’s a school night, is all.

Bournemouth 1-1 Manchester City: match report

John Brewin was at the Vitality to see a game that Manchester City never really looked like winning, until a frantic 90-second spell in stoppage time.

A mass celebration is underway outside the Emirates Stadium as delirious Arsenal fans celebrate their first league title in 22 years. Young and old, male and female, people of all shapes and colours are spilling from the pubs on to the local streets, thronging around the concourse, singing and somehow trying to make sense of what has just occurred.

Arsenal’s Instagram admin marks their historic moment …

Arsenal’s 14th title cements their third place in English football’s roll of honour:

20 Liverpool, Manchester United 14 Arsenal 10 Manchester City 9 Everton 7 Aston Villa 6 Chelsea, Sunderland 4 Newcastle, Sheffield Wednesday 3 Blackburn, Huddersfield, Leeds, Wolves 2 Burnley, Derby, Portsmouth, Preston, Tottenham 1 Ipswich, Leicester, Nottm Forest, Sheffield United, West Brom

And in the Premier League era, this is how things stand:

13 Manchester United 8 Manchester City 5 Chelsea 4 Arsenal 2 Liverpool 1 Blackburn, Leicester

Here’s more on how Arsenal sealed Premier League glory tonight.

Preamble

On 26 April 2004, Arsenal secured the English title – their 13th in total –with a 2-2 draw at White Hart Lane, with four games still to play and an unbeaten league season to complete. Few of the delirious fans in attendance that day would have believed another 22 years would pass before their team would win it again, and take their tally to 14.

White Hart Lane has been bulldozed and rebuilt while Highbury is now a block of flats, with the Emirates Stadium overseeing a painful period of decline under Arsène Wenger, before Unai Emery’s brief tenure. Mikel Arteta, an Arsenal player from 2011 to 2016, took charge in 2019 and has made the team title contenders again.

In the last six seasons, Arteta has led Arsenal to finish eighth, fifth, second, second, second … and now first. Gooners around the globe, rejoice. The day is finally here – Arsenal are champions of England again.

Games
How Forza Horizon took on Japan with deep research – and 360-degree cameras
Keith Stuart
Fri 15 May 2026 12.20 CESTLast modified on Fri 15 May 2026 18.28 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/may/15/how-forza-horizon-took-on-japan-with-deep-research-and-360-degree-cameras

S ince the arrival of the original Forza Horizon in 2012, a game that revolutionised open world driving sims by setting players loose in a virtual Colorado, British developer Playground Games has promised authenticity with its settings. For each instalment, design teams are sent out on location to take thousands of photos, hours of video, even detailed captures of the sky, before construction of a virtual copy begins. It’s a huge undertaking. But it seems that for much of the past decade, one country remained slightly out of reach – an intimidating prospect. “Japan has been on our shortlist for several games now,” says design director, Torben Ellert. “But we just didn’t feel like we were ready to take on the challenge of building it.”

It’s not just about the sheer variety of the country’s landscape. There’s something else going on. Most video game players hold an image of what it is like to explore Japan. It may be inspired by the fictitious rural town of Inaba in Persona 4, or the busy docks of Yokosuka in Shenmue , or perhaps the neon-drenched Kabukichō district of Tokyo, which forms a regular backdrop in the Yakuza series. For decades, gamers around the world have been bombarded with images of the country that are often highly stylised and fragmented, but nonetheless potent and persuasive. As art director Don Arceta puts it, “with Japan there’s such an expectation [of] what gamers want – it’s a certain version of Japan that they picture.”

Playground’s answer was to get away from the Japan depicted in other games, as well as legendary street-racing manga such as Initial D and Wangan Midnight. Instead, it hired cultural consultant and one time Porsche ambassador Kyoko Yamashita, who worked with the team for three years advising on their depiction of the country and racing scene. According to Xbox Wire , she was able to point out tiny details, such as the traditional colours of store signs and what they symbolise. The dev team also worked with famed Kyoto-based bodyshop Rocket Bunny and car culture photographer Larry Chen, who appears in the game and fronted a series of YouTube documentaries named Art of Driving , looking at the cars and locations in Forza Horizon 6. “Because it’s a culture we see a lot, there’s a temptation to think you know it better than you do,” says Ellert. “Which is why we tried really hard to get people to course correct us if we were drifting.”

On the subject of drifting, Playground has sought to replicate the major elements of the Japanese street-racing scene. Seminal drift and wangan cars such as the Nissan Skyline, Toyota Supra and Mazda RX-7 are in there, and so are the narrow, winding mountain roads of the illicit touge racing scene which emerged in the 1960s and hit peak popularity in the late 1990s. “We knew we wanted to do a touge experience, but we also knew that if you get 50 people in a room and ask them to define a touge experience you’d get 50 different descriptions,” says Ellert. “We’re imposing some class restrictions, delivering interesting liveried vehicles and putting players on to super iconic roads such as Hakone Nanamagari or Mount Haruna. Someone will go, ‘Oh, that’s not what I thought Initial D would look like in Horizon’ – and it’s like, well, yes, this is our take on that experience.”

As with the countries featured in previous instalments, the Forza Horizon 6 map (the largest so far) is a sort of curated amalgam of scenic types. “We looked at iconic roads, landmarks, car culture, interesting biomes,” explains Arceta. “There was a lot of reference photography, a lot of scans, trips out there to capture the vibe and all the nuances that make Japan so special. [In previous games] we’d drive out with a Go-Pro on the dashboard, but this time we did the reference photography with 360-degree cameras which allowed us to capture the whole environment in both 2D and 3D – it was like our own version of Google maps. That helped us generate how we set dressed the world, but we also had proper scale and dimension – it really gave a sense of the space.”

You can zoom through bamboo forests and rice fields, you can run close to the railway tracks and watch a bullet train rocket past. The landscape is filled with little details – the little roadside temples, the pristine vending machines in rural lay-bys. “It’s the car-culture-adjacent elements,” says Arceta, when asked about his favourite elements. “The petrol stations, garages, the grassroots time attack circuits, just capturing that vibe … Those were the things that were exciting to work on.”

In the south of the map is a condensed yet still sprawling version of Tokyo. It takes in the bustle of Shibuya, the densely stacked electrical stores of Akihabara and the quaint suburban outskirts. Ellert seems particularly proud of the city: “When the preview version of the game was released I followed content produced by Japanese streamers, and one called out our representation of Tokyo railway station saying, I worked there and this looks really good. Honestly, for us to make a place with all the research, consultancy and support we can get and then for someone who lives there to say, ‘I recognise this place’ – that suggests we went in the right direction.”

Arceta concurs. “[Tokyo] is probably one of my favourite area, specifically Daikoku, because that’s basically a church – a church for cars. It’s so sacred. So us getting that right and capturing that type of car meet – it was really important.”

Those of us who have been playing Forza Horizon from the beginning have had many moments where we’ve spotted places we recognise. A little pub in a Cotswold village, the sun setting over the port town of Castelletto, a storm over the Maroondah rainforest. It will be fascinating to see how Japan comes together as a racing location, and if the game can give us elements of the country we have not experienced in games, cinema and anime, or even as tourists. We’re no longer in the era of open world racers – The Crew, Test Drive Unlimited, Midnight Club, Burnout Paradise have all come and mostly passed by. Horizon is still here. Its biggest test awaits.

Forza Horizon 6 is released on 19 May

Dating
Blind date: ‘Distance shouldn’t stand in the way of love … I did have to catch the last train home though’

Sat 16 May 2026 07.00 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/may/16/blind-date-frances-eddie

Frances on Eddie

What were you hoping for? A lovely evening with pleasant company.

First impressions? Eddie looked much younger and fitter than I had expected. He had bought me flowers and a thoughtful card which helped break the ice.

What did you talk about? Politics. His interest in animal rights and protests. My interests in golf and volunteering. Everything!

Most awkward moment? None.

Good table manners? Excellent.

Best thing about Eddie? His openness to other views. Although he has strong opinions on politics and animal rights, he was willing to accept different points of view. He was very thoughtful, kind and caring.

Would you introduce Eddie to your friends? I’m not sure many of them would have a lot in common.

Describe Eddie in three words Political, fit and caring.

What do you think Eddie made of you? I hope he thought I was OK, and with my heart in the right place.

Did you go on somewhere? Only to the bus stop.

And … did you kiss? Just a hug on arrival and departure.

If you could change one thing about the evening what would it be? I don’t think I’d change anything. Eddie was good company and the food and drink in the restaurant were excellent.

Marks out of 10? A strong 8.

Would you meet again? We exchanged numbers but the distance – he lives more than 100 miles away – might prove prohibitive. We did talk about the possibility of a picnic together, though.

Eddie on Frances

What were you hoping for? A femme fatale to make a better world. Failing that, two strangers enjoying each other’s company over Italian food.

First impressions? Smart, great appearance, an easy-to-be-with manner.

What did you talk about? Does love make the world go round? What are we looking for – how do we see the future when time is not on the table?

Most awkward moment? None.

Good table manners? With Italian gusto I knocked over a glass of red. Frances kindly rearranged the table.

Best thing about Frances? Straight, honest talker. Good listener.

Would you introduce Frances to your friends? No. Frances is way too gentle for my activist friends.

Describe Frances in three words Lovely caring nature.

Best thing about Frances? An ambitious dreamer, sense of purpose, loads of good energy.

Did you go on somewhere? I believe that distance shouldn’t stand in the way of love, so I met Frances even though she was in a different city. I did have to catch the last train though …

And … did you kiss? No.

If you could change one thing about the evening what would it be? No change.

Marks out of 10? 10.

Would you meet again? I feel we are at a different stage of our journeys, but we did exchange numbers.

Frances and Eddie ate at Vivo restaurant in Nottingham. Fancy a blind date? Email blind.date@theguardian.com

AI (artificial intelligence)
Tell us: have you become emotionally attached to AI?
Guardian community team
Tue 28 Apr 2026 11.15 CESTLast modified on Tue 28 Apr 2026 11.17 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/28/tell-us-have-you-become-emotionally-attached-to-ai

Lots of people now use chatbots as personal assistants, sometimes to the extent that they have formed an emotional attachment to them.

We would like to hear from people who converse with AI chatbots on a personal level. Have you formed an emotional bond to an AI chatbot?

If you’re having trouble using the form click here . Read terms of service here and privacy policy here .

San Diego
Boy, nine, recounts deadly shooting at San Diego mosque: ‘We saw a bunch of bad stuff’
Edward Helmore
Tue 19 May 2026 20.08 CESTFirst published on Tue 19 May 2026 16.14 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/19/nine-year-old-boy-san-diego-shooting-mosque

A nine-year-old boy has described witnessing Monday’s deadly shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego , saying that he “saw bad stuff” and huddled in a closet during the attack.

Odai Shanah, whose mother emigrated from Gaza and settled in southern California two decades ago, told Reuters that he heard a barrage of gunshots coming from outside the walls of the mosque complex, which also houses an Islamic day school.

He recounted being among dozens of children forced to huddle in classrooms when deadly gunfire erupted at the mosque.

Odai said he and his classmates were trembling in fear as 12 to 16 more shots rang out after they were quickly ushered into that closet and crowded there together.

After the shooting stopped, the boy said, he and his companions heard members of a special tactical police team shouting from outside the classroom, “‘OK, open up’ – then they opened the door”.

But as they were escorted out of the building, “we saw a bunch of bad stuff, people laying down and yeah, bad stuff”, Odai said. He acknowledged meaning that he and the other children had seen bodies as they walked out in “a big line” with their hands up.

“My legs were shaking and my hands and my head were like hurting a lot,” he said. “I felt like a rock.”

Odai gave Reuters his account of the shooting after permission was granted to the outlet by his parents.

It was a stark reminder of how youths in the US are disproportionately affected – whether directly or indirectly – by gun violence, the country’s leading cause of death for teenagers or younger children.

Police have said three adults affiliated with the Islamic Center were killed during the attack, including a security guard, who officials said played a crucial role in limiting the number of deaths.

The security guard was identified by multiple friends as Amin Abdullah. One of the friends, journalist Kashif-ul-Huda, wrote on the website of Al Jazeera that he was “not surprised” Abdullah had defended those at the mosque, saying he had always been “a man who wanted to protect others”.

“It was such a delight to see him fulfil his lifelong dream of being a security officer,” Huda wrote, adding that his friend had been “martyred defending the mosque”.

“Amin, which means ‘trustworthy’, lived up to his name and died doing what he loved,” Huda continued. The writer said his friend was born a Muslim to an African American mother and therefore was “as American as one can get”.

“He was also as Muslim as one can be.”

Two attackers, aged 17 and 18, also died in the shooting, apparently killing themselves in a stolen car they used to transport themselves to the site of the attack.

San Diego’s police chief, Scott Wahl, said on Monday the shooting was being investigated as a hate crime and that the mother of one of the suspects had found a note.

“At this point, there was definitely hate rhetoric that was involved,” he said. “There was generalized hate rhetoric and speech,” but no specific threat was made to “any facility or any place”, he said.

New York
New York woman dies after stepping out of car into open manhole
Edward Helmore
Tue 19 May 2026 21.50 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 22.03 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/19/new-york-manhole-death-manhattan

The family of a New York woman is struggling for answers after the 56-year-old fell to her death upon stepping out of her car and slipping down an open maintenance hole on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.

The woman in question died on Monday night and was identified by family members as Donike Gocaj, from Briarcliff Manor, a commuter belt area north of New York City.

Police say she parked her Mercedes-Benz SUV at West 52nd and Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan just before 11.20pm. She had stepped out of the car and directly into the maintenance hole in front of the Cartier mansion.

Gocaj fell down about 10ft (3m), and steam caused her to go into cardiac arrest. She was rushed to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The New York television station, WABC, spoke to her family members, who said they were saddened and shocked by her sudden death.

The city’s electric utility provider, Con Edison, is investigating why the maintenance hole was left uncovered since no construction was going on nearby.

The maintenance hole cover was found about 15ft from the opening. Authorities are reportedly looking into the possibility that a truck ran over it and caused it to dislodge.

“We are deeply saddened to confirm that a member of the public has died after falling into an open manhole,” Con Edison said in a statement. “We are actively investigating how this occurred.

“Our thoughts are with the individual’s family, and safety remains our top priority.”

New York’s department of environmental protection, which is responsible for maintenance holes connected to the sewers, says it has received more than 700 service requests for missing covers during the year so far.

Injuries or deaths related to open maintenance holes are relatively rare. Nonetheless, open maintenance holes are an urban nightmare akin to being hit by falling masonry, scaffolding, an air conditioner, getting pushed on subway tracks, a lightning strike or other such event.

A 17-year-old college student was struck and killed by falling masonry in 1979 on Broadway near West 115th Street in New York City, one of the world’s most populated and visited places. That death prompted mandatory facade inspections and reshaped scaffolding requirements.

But maintenance holes remain an issue. In 2019, a man who was unhoused was found dead in such a hole in Manhattan two weeks after he fell into it.

A 2022 study then found that, from 2007 to 2017, 388 trauma patients fell into a maintenance hole nationally, or 20 to 49 a year. One percent of those died as a result, according to the study.

Southampton
Southampton kicked out of Championship playoff final and docked four points for spying
Louise Taylor
Tue 19 May 2026 19.45 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 22.52 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/19/southampton-kicked-out-of-championship-playoff-final-docked-four-points-for-spying

Southampton have been expelled from the Championship playoff final for spying on training sessions staged by Middlesbrough and two other second-tier rivals.

While Boro, semi-final playoff losers to Tonda Eckert’s team, have been reinstated to Saturday’s Wembley showpiece where they will face Hull, Southampton will also kick off next season’s league campaign with the handicap of a four-point deduction.

The south coast side, who apart from admitting to breaching EFL regulations by spying on Boro before the semi-final first leg, also owned up to the same transgression against Oxford in December and Ipswich in April, have appealed against sanctions imposed by an English Football League independent disciplinary commission.

That appeal will be held in front of an entirely new panel on Wednesday morning with the result due by early evening at the latest. Southampton consider the sanctions to be wholly disproportionate and are confident the decisions will be overturned.

Depending on the outcome of that appeal, the playoff final may need to be postponed until Tuesday or Wednesday of next week but, as things stand, it remains on course to take place on Saturday.

Once the appeal is over Eckert, William Salt, the young intern first-team analyst who was sent to spy on Boro and any other members of Southampton’s staff involved in espionage are likely to face individual Football Association charges for bringing the game into disrepute.

In 2024, Bev Priestman, the County Durham-born former head coach of Canada women and two members of her staff were banned from football for 12 months by Fifa after being found to have been part of an operation designed to spy on New Zealand at the Paris Olympics using a drone.

The Priestman precedent represents a significant problem for Southampton. Their thinking had perhaps been guided by the £200,000 fine imposed on Leeds for spying on Derby in 2019 but a new, much tougher EFL rule has subsequently been imposed and Tuesday’s sanctions fell well within its remit.

Boro caught Salt recording one of their training sessions while lurking between a tree and some bushes. Southampton, though, failed to win any of the games that followed their spying, losing at Oxford and drawing at home to Ipswich and away at Middlesbrough before beating Kim Hellberg’s side 2-1 in the playoff semi-final second leg.

An EFL statement issued early on Tuesday evening read: “An independent disciplinary commission has today expelled Southampton from the playoffs after the club admitted to multiple breaches of EFL regulations related to the unauthorised filming of other club’s training.

“In addition the club have received a four-point deduction that will be applied to the 2026-27 Championship table, alongside a reprimand in respect of all the charges.”

Middlesbrough welcomed that ruling saying, in a statement: “We believe this sends out a clear message for the future of our game regarding sporting integrity and conduct.”

Although Middlesbrough trained on Monday, the uncertainty surrounding the potential outcome meant Hellberg’s players were given a day off on Tuesday. They will however return to the practice pitches on Wednesday and have already organised a flight to London on Friday.

The club’s administrative staff will be equally busy as they face the challenge of selling 35,000 tickets to their fans in time for a final staged on a weekend when the main east coast railway line is closed between Darlington and York. Southampton supporters who had bought Wembley tickets will be given full refunds.

Literary criticism
If This Be Magic by Daniel Hahn review – how on earth do you translate Shakespeare?
Steven Poole
Tue 19 May 2026 08.01 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/19/if-this-be-magic-by-daniel-hahn-review-how-on-earth-do-you-translate-shakespeare

T he great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, who translated William Faulkner, André Gide, Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf into Spanish, drew the line at Shakespeare. Speaking of the moment when Hamlet asks the ghost why it returns to haunt “the glimpses of the moon”, Borges commented: “I don’t think it can be translated. Perhaps the words can be translated. Certainly Shakespeare cannot be translated. ‘The glimpses of the moon’ means exactly ‘the glimpses of the moon’.” All, however, is not lost. “It has been said that Shakespeare cannot be translated into any other language,” Borges added. “But Shakespeare cannot be translated into English, either, since he wrote what [Robert Louis] Stevenson called ‘that amazing dialect, the Shakespeare-ese’.” This might not be entirely true, as the translator Daniel Hahn points out in this superbly diverting book. Recalling a hip-hop production of Romeo and Juliet he once saw, he persuades us instantly that “the phrase ‘Do you kiss your teeth at me, fam?’ proved to be a perfect translation of ‘Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?’”

And if into English, then why not into Portuguese, or French, or Māori? Hahn’s project is to argue that “Shakespeare with every word changed can still be great, and can remain Shakespeare”, and to that end he reproduces chunks of Dutch, Russian, Welsh, Thai, Arabic, Japanese, and a dozen other languages, betting that by simply counting syllables or observing alliteration in a language one doesn’t understand (as he cheerfully admits, he doesn’t understand Danish), one can learn something about the quality of a translation. I wasn’t convinced that wager worked much of the time, but the typesetters, as you can imagine, were certainly getting a decent workout, and the gambit does finally pay off when a long passage from Twelfth Night is annotated by boxes mentioning dozens of different translators’ choices.

What really illuminates the book are Hahn’s conversations with his fellow translators, who can explain their choices directly. In Māori, we learn, Lady Macbeth’s question to her husband, “Are you a man?”, makes no sense at all, so the translator Te Haumihiata Mason renders it as something roughly meaning “Have you got balls?” – “which is,” Hahn notes contentedly, “exactly what Lady M is asking.” Meanwhile, Prince Hal’s name means “fish” in Hungarian, which would be unhelpfully distracting, so it gets changed to Riki, short for Henrik. Hahn also offers many asides about the annoyances and pleasures of translation in general. “The word ‘literal’ is annoyingly overused to suggest a sort of ‘neutral’ translation, which cannot exist,” he complains; and he shows that, in many cases, a non-literal choice would be better. When Mark Antony imagines Caesar’s spirit to “cry ‘Havoc’”, for example, the closest Portuguese word is the rather weak-sounding “ devastação ”; a better choice, Hahn shows, is “ matança ” (killing), because it’s shorter and more easily shoutable. Each chapter addresses a different question translators face, for example whether to translate into verse (careful: as one French translator observes, you risk making “a genius into a talented versifier”), or how to translate jokes: it’s usually best, everyone agrees, to create an entirely new joke – “being faithful to the laugh”, as Hahn calls it. In a German Midsummer Night’s Dream, to preserve the doggerel rhymes, we are promised not that Thisbe will be in “mulberry shade” but that she will be “hiding like a newt”. Translators might even embrace the possibility of a joke where none previously existed – which Hahn illustrates brightly by mentioning that the “sorting hat” in Harry Potter has become, in French, le choixpeau (the chapeau that chooses). Can you even preserve alliteration? Sometimes, if you’re lucky: Love’s Labour’s Lost received the surely unimprovable Greek title of “ Agapēs Agōnas Agonos ” (“the struggles of love are barren”). But when no such fortunate tricks are available, you can simply replace one idiom with another: so, in Spanish, Much Ado About Nothing is often called “A lot of noise, not many nuts”. There are quibbles to be made here and there. Hahn calls a line from Richard III “irregular” after counting syllables, but it’s a perfectly regular line that begins with an anapest (da-da-dum). And when Juliet says to Romeo “You kiss by th’book”, Hahn glosses this as her approvingly noting his “formal courtship”, but she is surely issuing a flirtatious challenge. And – this being the publisher’s rather than the author’s fault – the book has been produced, inexplicably, without an index. All may be forgiven, though, for the delight and endless curiosity displayed in these pages. “In Shakespeare, people get sad with precision ,” Hahn enthuses. And he is cherishably bitchy about certain literary “translators” who somehow produce new English versions of Chekhov or Ibsen without speaking the source language – the process being, as he surmises, “a sort of high-status prettying up of a so-called ‘literal’ translation”. By the end of the book, Hahn has amply demonstrated not only the treasures of other languages, but also the rich and strange inexhaustibility of Shakespeare himself.

If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation by Daniel Hahn is published by Canongate (£25). To support the Guardian, buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

Folk music
Carters’ cries, lullabies and tales of errant crocodiles: Lero Lero and the battle for Sicily’s soul

Tue 19 May 2026 06.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 12.58 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/may/19/lero-lero-sicilian-folk-for-the-21st-century

‘W hat do I do now that I no longer have my mother?” Lero Lero sing on Com’haiu a Fari , the opening track of their self-titled debut album. “If I still had my mother, I would not love you.” What may sound like the kind of honest self-reckoning a modern songwriter has dragged out of therapy sessions is actually a traditional Sicilian folk text once sung by a washerwoman, reimagined here through three voices modelled on Sicilian Settimana Santa polyphonies. For this Palermo collective, maternal loss is also metaphor: symbolic of Sicily’s ruptured cultural inheritance, which they recover through archival labour songs, carters’ cries and lullabies, then reshape through electronics and microtonal instrumentation.

In the Italian imagination, Sicily has long been more than the island at the country’s southern edge. It has functioned as a symbolic South, carrying fantasies of archaic beauty and rural authenticity alongside associations with poverty, criminality and backwardness. Its culture is often romanticised and patronised at once.

Lero Lero’s debut digs beneath those familiar representations. Formed by singer-songwriter Alessio Bondì, synth player Donato Di Trapani and producer and guitar player Fabio Rizzo, the project grew out of years combing through 20th-century Sicilian field recordings, driven by the sense that the version of Sicilian music handed down was only a fraction of what had once existed. What survived, they found, had often been detached from the social worlds that produced it.

During his research, Di Trapani witnessed that detachment first-hand: older peasant singers were often remembered as rough, out-of-tune figures marked by poverty and shame, while later generations of folklore musicians saw themselves as having “ennobled” those traditions, simplifying them into a version of southern identity they felt could be publicly embraced. By contrast, his own generation had “ennobled” those traditions, simplifying and cleaning them up to better suit the version of southern identity they felt could be publicly embraced: the kind of exportable Sicily later familiar from Dolce & Gabbana ’s black lace or the Inspector Montalbano books and TV series, where crime unfolds amid fictional baroque towns, long lunches and seaside landscapes.

The line between homage and stereotype continues to provoke debate around representations of southern Italy. A recent flashpoint was Al Mio Paese , a wildly successful single by three southern artists – Puglia’s Serena Brancale and Sicily’s Levante and Delia – which wraps pop production around pizzica -inflected rhythms and a vivid montage of familiar southern imagery: women seated outside on plastic chairs, bustling piazzas, white sheets billowing above market stalls. For some listeners, it was an affectionate ode to diasporic longing and homecoming; for others, it crystallised a more uncomfortable pattern, reducing the south to a picturesque, consumable collage of nostalgia.

In contrast, Lero Lero engage with Sicily less as a postcard image than a complex social and sonic inheritance, shaped by a kaleidoscope of different histories and experiences. On Salinai , they rework the surreal rhymes once shouted by salt workers as they counted their salt baskets, where playful, near-nonsensical refrains gradually accumulate until the worker’s hunger, deprivation and misery are revealed: “Last night I went to work for Campanella,” Bondì’s voice strains over a steady beat, “who gave me bread one slice at a time with nothing to eat alongside it but a hazelnut shell, just to keep my belly lean.”

With its light, uplifting atmospheres, the following Cuori ri Canna feels like a sudden release. Built around a canto di sdegno – literally “song of indignation”, an agro-pastoral form ignited by lovers’ betrayal – it transforms bitterness into irony and liberation. Di Trapani recalls playing it in Palermo and watching “people standing up and singing like each one was freeing themselves from their own life’s problems.”

Much of Lero Lero’s process begins with close study of the archival material, with singer Bondì painstakingly decoding lyrics and obscure metaphors. The point is not faithful reproduction, but entering the generative processes of oral tradition itself: the haunting Bedda ca Cantari A Mia Sintisti , for instance, began with a short 1955 vocal and marranzano mouth harp prison recording. Lero Lero expanded its fragments by piecing together other ottave siciliane , Sicily’s traditional oral verse forms, transforming it into a larger lament of love, solitude and lost freedom. For Rizzo, that reconstructive process is entirely faithful to the oral tradition itself: “We don’t submit to a fixed text,” he says. “We shape and modulate different inputs to create something that people in 2026 can connect with.”

Their aim is to forge their own sound from the source, rather than lean on easy external references. “It would be easy to hear a carter’s song and think, we could put some flamenco here because that’s the musical scale,” says Bondí. “But we’re conscious that from this music, from these songs and these melodies, we can make entirely new music.”

Rizzo’s “Palermitan guitar” is central to this project. He modified his own instruments to create a microtonal, double-stringed guitar capable of following the shifting tonalities of Sicilian archival song. On Franculina , its serrated riffs cut through pounding bass-synth and tamburello; on Aieri Ci Passava , it coils around an insistent bassline, sharpening the song’s tension and sarcasm.

The tension between submerged history and disruptive return is captured in artist Giulia Parlato ’s album artwork, which features the mythical crocodile of Palermo’s Vucciria market: a creature said to have reached the city from the Nile through the waters of the Papireto, the now-buried river that once ran through Palermo, hiding beneath the market’s fountains before emerging to terrorise children. Partially glimpsed beneath an otherwise ordinary scene, it lurks as though it has always been there; like the voices Lero Lero pull from Sicily’s sound archives, it feels like a latent presence, poised to rupture the polished image of the present.

Lero Lero is out on Black Sweat Records , Panta Records , and Shhh/Peaceful.

Carlos Alcaraz
Carlos Alcaraz ruled out of Wimbledon as recovery from wrist injury goes on
Tumaini Carayol
Tue 19 May 2026 17.07 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 22.23 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/may/19/carlos-alcaraz-ruled-out-wimbledon-recovery-wrist-injury-tennis

Carlos Alcaraz has been forced to withdraw from Wimbledon as he continues his recovery from the wrist injury that will force him out of action for at least three months during the most significant part of the tennis season.

Alcaraz has not competed since withdrawing from his second-round match at the Barcelona Open last month after feeling pain in his right wrist in his opening match of the tournament. The 23-year-old had already been forced to withdraw from the rest of the clay-court season , including the French Open, which begins on Sunday.

“My recovery is going well and I’m feeling much better, but unfortunately I’m still not ready to compete, which is why I have to withdraw from the grass-court swing at Queen’s and Wimbledon ,” Alcaraz wrote in a statement on social media. “They are two truly special tournaments for me and I will miss them a lot. We’ll keep working to come back as soon as possible!”

Alcaraz is the reigning champion at Roland Garros, where he defeated Jannik Sinner in one of the greatest grand slam finals . The Spanish player, a two-time champion at Wimbledon, reached the final there last year, losing to Sinner in four sets.

Tennis players have to be particularly careful because of the constant strain their strokes place on their wrists and the risk of developing chronic injuries, meaning Alcaraz’s decision not to compete at Wimbledon is no surprise.

In his absence, the tour remains at the mercy of Sinner, the world No 1, who won his sixth consecutive Masters 1000 title on Sunday with his triumph at the Italian Open and has won 29 matches in a row. Sinner will be the prohibitive favourite for Roland Garros and Wimbledon, which begins on 29 June.