Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – USA, US sports, Football, Sport, World Cup 2026, World Cup, Paraguay, Video assistant referees (VARs)
Title – Tim Ream is World Cup’s first player to benefit from VAR ‘mistaken identity’ check | USA | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/pablo-iglesias-maurer
Link – Tim Ream is World Cup’s first player to benefit from VAR ‘mistaken identity’ check | USA | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-13T03:36:08.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/12/world-cup-var-mistaken-identity-tim-ream-usmnt

Tim Ream made history on Friday in more ways than one. The second the opening whistle blew in the United States’ match against Paraguay, the 38-year-old became the oldest player in the history of the US men’s national team to appear at a World Cup . Fifty-three minutes later, Ream made an entirely different type of history: he became the first player at a World Cup to benefit from the International Football Association Board’s “mistaken identity” rule change.

The revision to the laws of the game, made earlier this year, gives referees latitude to use video assisted review to overturn red and yellow cards issued to the incorrect players. The most common application, seemingly, would be a red or yellow card issued during a mass confrontation, where a referee’s view would be obscured. Dutch referee Danny Makkelie’s interpretation on Friday night was different, but correct.

Early in the second half of the Americans’ 4-1 win , Ream was booked after Paraguay midfielder Miguel Almirón went down under a challenge. Ream immediately protested, but was issued a yellow card, much to his chagrin.

Minutes later, Makkelie was ordered to the monitor by video assistant referee Carlos del Cerro Grande to review the play. Makkelie eventually overturned the yellow on Ream, instead booking Almirón for simulation, justifying the “mistaken identity” definition.

It was a deserved break for Ream, who could have spent the rest of the group stage seeking to avoid a second yellow card and one-game suspension for yellow card accumulation. At the World Cup, yellow cards reset after the group stage and again after the quarter-finals.

US midfielder Tyler Adams was not as lucky and will enter the USMNT’s match against Australia on 19 June carrying a yellow card, which he earned in the 59th minute of Friday’s match.

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – Rangers, Hearts, Football, Sport, Scottish Premiership
Title – Rangers target Derek McInnes from Hearts as replacement for Danny Röhl | Rangers | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/ewanmurray
Link – Rangers target Derek McInnes from Hearts as replacement for Danny Röhl | Rangers | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T17:56:04.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/12/rangers-target-hearts-derek-mcinnes-as-replacement-for-danny-rohl

Rangers are likely to move for the Hearts manager, Derek McInnes, if Danny Röhl completes a move to RB Salzburg. The Ibrox club and Salzburg are in talks over a deal for Röhl, who was appointed by Rangers last October . The 37-year-old began his coaching career elsewhere in the RB stable, at Leipzig. There is a rising sense in Glasgow that he will accept Salzburg’s overtures, with a switch likely to happen within days.

In that scenario, Rangers are expected to turn towards McInnes. The former Rangers player guided Hearts to second place in Scotland’s Premiership this season, with the Edinburgh club losing out on what would have been their first title since 1960 on the final day of the season, after defeat at Celtic Park . McInnes took over at Hearts after leaving Kilmarnock in the summer of 2025. He was Scotland’s manager of the year within 12 months.

McInnes rejected the opportunity to manage Rangers in 2017, but it would be a surprise if the 54-year-old turned them down for a second time. Steven Gerrard has also been linked with the Rangers post, having managed there before.

Rangers have already signed the Hearts captain, Lawrence Shankland after the striker exercised his right to leave Tynecastle for free at the end of the season. While any approach for McInnes would naturally be unwelcome, Hearts’ reputation and profile has been boosted by the involvement of Tony Bloom and Jamestown Analytics.

Keyword – Technology
Trefwoorden – Palantir, Technology, Switzerland, Europe, World news
Title – Palantir loses legal challenge to force Swiss magazine to publish responses | Palantir | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/nadeembadshah,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/aisha-down
Link – Palantir loses legal challenge to force Swiss magazine to publish responses | Palantir | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T23:12:45.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/13/palantir-loses-legal-challenge-to-force-swiss-magazine-to-publish-rejoinders

The US technology company Palantir has lost a legal challenge to force a Swiss independent magazine to publish its responses to articles about how the Swiss government rejected its services.

The data analytics company lost on 22 out of 23 counts of the suit. In a ruling on Friday, Zurich’s commercial court dismissed the majority of counterstatement requests filed by the company and its Swiss subsidiary finding that only a single passage in one article warranted a published response from the company.

The one-year investigation published in December – conducted by Republik and the Swiss research collective WAV – was one of the first to tell a story about Palantir that was a “failure narrative”, the journalists involved in the investigation said.

Over the course of a year, they filed dozens of freedom of information requests and found out that the spy-tech firm, though it had been in Switzerland for nearly four years, had not managed to win any government contracts.

It was this narrative – that Palantir could not sell its products to Switzerland – that prompted the legal action, the journalists said.

The articles made waves across Europe , prompting British MPs and officials in other governments to question whether its technology was necessary for them, although Palantir said the Swiss government was not a significant target for its regional business growth.

The journalists said they had interviewed company executives and sent a full list of questions before publication, but that the company demanded they print a detailed rebuttal with a list of points that the journalists said went beyond the scope of their investigation. When the magazine refused, Palantir filed a lawsuit in a Swiss commercial court demanding that it did so. While Swiss media law allows the subjects of a story to request a right of reply, this has caveats: the right of reply has to be concise and stick to the facts of the story.

The court on Friday ordered Palantir to bear 95% of the 9,000 Swiss francs ($11,300; £8,400) court costs and to pay Republik 9,900 francs in legal expenses.

Neither Republik nor WAV is a large outlet; the court case took up a significant portion of their resources.

Jennifer Steiner, co-founder of WAV and one of the investigators, said: “It was a lot of work and time invested. After four months waiting for a verdict, it’s good to have such a ruling now.”

Balz Oertli, a journalist with WAV research collective, said: “We invested a great deal of effort into this case, and we are very pleased with the outcome.”

The sole exception in the case concerned a statement in Republik’s article, Why Palantir is becoming a risk for Switzerland , reporting that Palantir’s Foundry software platform had originally been developed for US counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The court ordered Republik to publish a short counterstatement from the company disputing that claim.

Palantir said in a statement reported by the Financial Times: “We welcome that the Zurich commercial court confirmed our right to publish a counterstatement. It’s a critical part of open debate in our society to hear both sides on important topics.”

Keyword – Opinion
Trefwoorden – Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe, Race, Social media, Politics, UK news, Northern Ireland
Title – The right has created a false reality – fuelled by toxic images delivered straight to your phone | Jason Okundaye | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jason-osamede-okundaye
Link – The right has created a false reality – fuelled by toxic images delivered straight to your phone | Jason Okundaye | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-13T05:00:06.000Z
Category – Opinion
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/13/right-false-reality-toxic-images-riots-belfast-southampton

W hen voters in Makerfield head to the polls next week, their decision, as is increasingly the case across the nation, may come down to this: whether to be more swayed by a hopeful vision of the UK or by a narrative that defines the country as little more than the most shocking thing they have seen on their phone that day.

That quandary has been sharpened by something that has quietly become a regular fixture of social media: members of the public are now consistently fed a stream of exceptional images and videos that once might have only been seen by investigators or from the inside of a courtroom. It is so regular that it has become banalised, whether it’s of robbers smashing up a jewellery shop, or of extreme and graphic assaults akin to snuff films.

Much of this is broadcast in real time from the phones of bystanders. That includes the horrific footage out of Belfast this week, of a Sudanese refugee alleged to have carried out a knife attack on a white man, gleefully circulated on X by the likes of far-right activist Tommy Robinson. Considerations of the decency of sharing such footage, of how the circulation of graphic, violent crime images can indignify and rob victims of bodily agency, are nullified by what are considered greater political priorities: to identify and profile the ethnic violence that is supposedly tearing the fabric of the nation. And here, the result of an extreme incident of violence was racist riots – droves of meticulously organised masked fascists in Belfast who already had “hitlists” of the homes of migrants and ethnic minorities and set to burn them down.

That knife-attack image is potent. In solidarity protests in Southampton, the scene of riots over Henry Nowak’s murder last week, it is illustrated on banners. It has perfectly landed within a pre-existing online visual language that has, for some time, cast the United Kingdom as in decline, and besieged by “invaders”, with ordinary white people betrayed by the state that was meant to protect and privilege them.

What is that visual language? It can be summarised by the ubiquitous “Yookay” meme, an emblem of urban decline as supposedly accelerated by multiculturalism. It is of selective crime clips posted by far-right accounts and crime news aggregators on X such as @CrimeLdn; AI-generated images of migrant men assaulting white women or replacing iconic British buildings with large mosques; fake videos of young black men in balaclavas, “roadmen” , distributing machetes in the House of Commons – all of this is consolidated by conspiratorial claims of state cover-up, purported images of what the powers that be do not want you to see about the real state of the UK. So what happens when real, but isolated, footage of such crime lands on your feed is that it both feels indistinguishable from, and reaffirms, the slop content and narrative that has already been pushed and established.

Perhaps the mobs in Belfast did not need the direction of online agitators to respond so aggressively to this incident. Nonetheless, politicians of the hard right seize on such images to foment disorder. Where responsible politicians would not so casually circulate such violent imagery, the likes of Reform UK’s Nigel Farage and Restore Britain’s Rupert Lowe say, come, Britain, come and see how you have been betrayed by the state. It echoes the conviction of Enoch Powell, when he said, in 1968, that allowing a growing immigration population “is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre”.

With a screenshot of the incident, Lowe simply writes, “ Millions must go ”, while Farage, resharing the image via the rightwing-aligned news aggregator Politics UK ( co-owned by a Reform councillor ), says “the authorities must reveal the identity and status of the attacker immediately. The public are entitled to the truth” – a truth that, it must follow, is repeatedly being concealed from you. Reform’s spokesperson for home affairs, Zia Yusuf tells you what your eyes must believe: that “the horror of what you have seen in Belfast is a direct result of treacherous Tory and Labour immigration policy” (policy partly overseen, of course, by Reform grandees Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, both Conservative ministers in the Home Office when the alleged attacker was granted leave to remain).

The gift of all this is that in an image, a real image, that can allegorise civic decline, the politics comes pre-formed, sustained purely by the existence of the image, with no need to articulate an argument. What the hard right can then provide in response to such distress is blunt-instrument policy: a total ban on visas from anyone from Sudan, says Yusuf; the death penalty returned, says Lowe.

And what of Labour? Its leaders have the much harder job. They can take no victory, or expedient political soundbite, in net migration falling by almost half . People do not live or experience their lives by data and they do not care. In any case, that migration has fallen has only provoked the hard right to reach for more extremes to continue making inroads. You cannot in any sense feel that there are fewer migrants entering the UK, but you can be roused by the image of one among millions committing some atrocious act. You can be promised a more vicious, more ruthless border policy.

Starmer’s national telling-off in response to the Belfast racist rioters targeting people “because of their background” and his appeal for “calm” – even though palpably correct – cannot meet or subdue the angered and visceral response from those who view that image of a black suspect over the stricken body of a white man, and see it as the loss of their dominion. Presented with that image, asked to answer for their defence of diversity, to explicitly and without caveat say that the actions of one attacker cannot sensibly represent entire racial groups becomes impossible for them, even with the most intricate triangulation.

It is hard enough to convince people of unreality; it is harder still to convince them that a singular reality can be unrepresentative. One image of real violence can overwhelm all statistical evidence that violent crime is down year-on-year, across the UK, including in Northern Ireland . It exposes a structural disadvantage that plagues liberal politics. The hard right can simply point to images and tell a straightforward story, however true or false. Liberal politicians must choose between explaining context, embracing social complexity, and fussing over minute statistics, or allowing the hard right to gain ground by deferring to their narrative. Contending that is the difficult task that awaits whoever is to lead Labour into the end of this parliamentary term.

In Makerfield, Andy Burnham quickly jettisoned his previous pro-immigration stances , wagering that the pro-leave constituency would not take kindly to a compassionate policy on recourse to public funds for migrants, which he has advocated as mayor of Greater Manchester. But parroting the “legitimate concerns” mantra is easy. Far harder will be what few senior politicians of the centre-left seem to have developed an answer for, but which becomes all the more pressing in our image-saturated hate economy: how to win against a visual politics, that is in the gift of the right. Burnham, or whoever is to lead our country, will have to find solutions fast.

Jason Okundaye is a Guardian Opinion assistant editor

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

Keyword – Business
Trefwoorden – Music industry, Music festivals, Culture, Womad, Festivals, Music, Business, UK news, Hospitality industry, Scotland, Competition and Markets Authority
Title – ‘We eat and drink risk’: higher costs bring curtain down on more UK music festivals | Music industry | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/marksweney
Link – ‘We eat and drink risk’: higher costs bring curtain down on more UK music festivals | Music industry | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-13T09:00:09.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/13/uk-music-festivals-higher-costs-secret-garden-party-womad-glasgow

Hosting Scotland’s first Womad festival seemed like an easy sell for Glasgow, the country’s gig capital and self-proclaimed “dynamic global hub for music lovers” .

However, last week the internationally renowned event celebrating performance from around the world, successfully staged in 30 countries since being co-founded by former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel in 1982, was cancelled due to low ticket sales.

It is the 20th casualty so far this year as small and independent festival operators enter another tough summer facing myriad challenges, from belt-tightening consumers becoming more picky about how they spend their cash, to soaring energy and labour costs, and competition from deep-pocketed industry heavyweights.

“Independent festival organisers basically eat and drink risk,” says Jon Collins, the chief executive of Live, the body that represents the UK’s live music industry.

“A year ahead they have to commit to a huge amount of cost to get it all booked in, and then have to believe they will sell enough tickets to deliver it, and hopefully make a small profit at the end of it. It is hard, there are far easier ways to make money, but they love it.”

The longstanding Secret Garden Party, which featured acts from Ed Sheeran to Clean Bandit and attracted Prince Harry as a partygoer in 2014, shut down at the end of its 2024 edition with a symbolic burning of the main stage as its founder said it is “no longer sustainable for independents to run festivals” .

This year, the dream of the team at Chai Wallahs, the touring festival live venue collective, to hold their own event on the same site in Cambridgeshire this year also ended in ashes.

By April, they had smashed their crowdfunding target, raising £180,000 to launch the not-for-profit new grassroots festival, Where It All Began, with the aim of pushing back against the “grind of corporatisation” in the industry.

But by the end of that month two of its members had turned to Instagram to explain why it would have to be postponed until next year. Problems included poor ticket sales, which they said was “felt across the entire sector”, and a 10% to 15% increase in infrastructure and transport costs since the start of the Iran conflict.

“Had we pushed forward we faced a potential loss of £60,000 to £80,000,” the pair said. “Where It All Began would have died before it started.”

Days earlier, the “Rock’n’Roll Duke” , Henry Fitzroy, had shut down his Nashville-inspired Red Rooster festival, scheduled to take place at the end of May, which he had held at the family’s sprawling Suffolk estate for more than a decade. The event went into liquidation, citing higher costs and reduced ticket sales, with no prospect of refunds .

Yet, despite the rising festival casualty count, on the metric of closures this year is the best, or rather least-worst, since before the pandemic.

There were 43 cancellations or postponements last year; in 2024 that number was 78, and in 2023 the figure was 36, according to the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF).

More than 250 festivals have shut since before the pandemic, with annual numbers that are going ahead now hovering at about 600.

“This year is the lowest number since I have been in post, and some haven’t gone for good, they are just taking a fallow year,” says the AIF chief executive, John Rostron. “There is always going to be some that fall because they haven’t got it right, or there just isn’t demand for them.

“One thing that is true is that margins have become incredibly tight due to rising costs. Festivals used to have the capacity to ride the cost bumps between committing 11 months out and what happens up until the day of the festival, but now they can’t ride them like they used to.

“Look at fees for artists, as one example: they have gone up 60% to 70% over the last five or six years, particularly for top-tier talent. That might not be a problem for the big corporate players, but it is for the independents.”

There is also the ongoing debate about the impact of the giant corporations such as US giants AEG and Live Nation, which also owns Ticketmaster.

Wireless festival, which is owned by Live Nation, hit the headlines after organisers were forced to cancel after a backlash over the choice of Ye , the artist formerly known as Kanye West, named as headline act for the three-day festival in London in July. As the furore deepened the Home Office moved to block the artist’s travel visa.

The organisers of Womad Glasgow said its failure “reflects the challenge of launching a new large-scale event in a competitive and crowded market”, but this saturation has not stopped the deep-pocketed Live Nation running two new large festivals at the end of this month.

State Fayre promises to bring a “true taste of Americana” at the site of the former V festival at Hylands Park in Essex, with headliners including Kings of Leon and Alanis Morissette, while Blenheim Palace festival is a five-day affair featuring acts including Michael Bublé, Katy Perry and Teddy Swims.

Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have been probing the market dominance of Live Nation. The company’s business activities in the UK were put in the spotlight last year when the competition watchdog launched an investigation into the way tickets to Oasis’s reunion tour were priced via Ticketmaster .

Last month, the business and trade select committee of MPs published a report calling for the competition watchdog, the CMA, to investigate Live Nation’s dominance and impact on the live music sector, while also suggesting that there seemed to be a “climate of fear” among witnesses who gave evidence for its investigation.

A Live Nation spokesperson said: “The pressures facing festivals are being felt across the sector, with costs rising significantly for events of all sizes.

“The UK festival sector remains diverse and highly competitive, with major operators, regional promoters, specialist festival companies and hundreds of independent events all playing an important role.”

The AIF’s Rostron is cautiously optimistic. “We are halfway out of the worst of it,” he says. “But without other interventions there is a dark cloud hovering. We need to enable independents to thrive and survive; there is potential for a huge amount of growth in the overall festival sector.”

Next month, the Kelburn Garden Party , held in the grounds of Kelburn Castle outside Glasgow, is scheduled to welcome about 7,000 revellers for its 16th edition.

Chris Knight, the co-founder and lead coordinator of the multi-day festival, says the thinning out of festivals after the mass proliferation in the 2010s has weeded out many that failed to knuckle down on a long-term, sustainable strategy.

“This is our best year ever, we are about to sell out weeks and weeks earlier than last year, we are on the up,” he says. “There are the same pressures of fewer ticket buyers, higher costs, tougher conditions. Now the industry is pruning down and the ones who have survived are leaner, tougher, they know what they are doing.

“The independent festivals that have survived have a stronger focus on communities, not massive stages and headliners. We focus on digging in locally. We have had to raise ticket prices 10%. That’s above inflation, but we are delivering such a good event people are happy to pay for that.”

Keyword – Opinion
Trefwoorden – Labour, Keir Starmer, Politics, UK news, John Healey, Defence policy, Reform UK, Makerfield byelection
Title – Labour’s woes are like a slow-motion car crash – and Keir Starmer isn’t even in the driving seat | Marina Hyde | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/marinahyde
Link – Labour’s woes are like a slow-motion car crash – and Keir Starmer isn’t even in the driving seat | Marina Hyde | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T13:56:55.000Z
Category – Opinion
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/12/labour-woes-slow-motion-car-crash-keir-starmer-driving-seat

“T his isn’t the beginning of the end,” one senior Labour adviser remarked yesterday . “It has gone way beyond that.” To the middle of the end? The late-middle? Forgive the attempt to ascertain the precise coordinates of where we are in the decline and fall of Keir Starmer, which feels like it’s clocking in at slightly longer than the last days of Rome (conservatively estimated at a couple of centuries). Some believe that – like the phrase “heat death of the universe” – the “end of Keir Starmer” may sound like it should be a cataclysmically white-flash event, but will actually unfold over trillions of years.

I think something else is happening. I think we’re getting to the part in the movie where the mortally wounded antagonist hisses: “My death is only the beginning.” Andy Burnham is the sequel nobody asked for. The current inadequacy is a franchise.

Anyway: yesterday. You would say Britain’s defence establishment had turned their guns on Starmer, but I think their point is that they don’t have any. Or they do have guns, but they actually need advanced drones and attack submarines. Let’s just say they have turned their lack of the right kit on Starmer, whose busted managerialist approach to absolutely anything is starting to lend a retrospective sophistication to the former Tory defence secretary Gavin Williamson’s assessment that Russia should “go away and shut up”.

The resignation of the defence secretary, John Healey , over the inadequacies of the very-long-awaited defence investment plan has driven Starmer to the brink. (This is the aforementioned brink with the extremely large surface area.) Healey was followed out of the MoD door by a couple of parliamentary private secretaries, as well as by the armed forces minister and would-be leadership cleanskin, Al Carns, who I was recently shocked to learn has claimed £36,000 for PR and comms expenses since entering parliament at the last election. Feels like a lot more, surely?

The deadliest part of the defence secretary’s resignation letter is already widely held to be his mild-mannered drive-by on not one but two Downing Street addresses. As Healey put it: “You have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country.” Oh dear. All of this has sparked a return to the briefing fray for “Treasury sources”, who for some reason talk exactly like a desiccated Rachel Reeves spad. One “ Treasury source ” spat yesterday: “Let’s be clear on what John is asking for: cuts to schools and hospitals.” Hmm. This is a somewhat simplistic take on the role of chancellor. Then again, Reeves has repeatedly caved to a party that wet its collective pants over means -testing the winter fuel allowance. So maybe this is genuinely the way she sees her choices.

“The chancellor will always do what is right and needed to keep this country safe,” droned the “Treasury source”. Again: hmm. Always is starting to feel like a hell of a long time. It’s possible I’ve simply memory-holed it on previous sightings, but this week was the first time I saw the phrase “continuity chancellor” get a formal run-out. This is the idea that Reeves is angling to stay in the key role in a putative Burnham administration. And, specifically, the idea that what would really reassure the settled and contented nation of the United Kingdom is some more continuity.

Are there any bright spots? It’s foolish to count too many chickens, but we do have to take our smiles where we can, and the extremely distinct prospect of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK losing in Makerfield on Thursday – for entirely avoidable reasons that are entirely his or his party’s fault – should at least momentarily turn the corners of the mouth up. To recap, Reform somehow still – STILL – seems not to have got the message that it has to get the hazmat gloves on and trawl through its prospective candidates’ historical social-media effluent , either deleting it or picking someone who didn’t probably vote Remain and suggest doing unsolicited things to Carol Vorderman . And so it is that it has saddled itself with fielding Rob Kenyon, because even though “talking like a normal person” is good, it’s not when the thing you say is: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.” Or when you present on Question Time as so useless that you achieve a feat unseen anywhere else in contemporary politics: having people wish you would talk more like a politician.

The other Reform blunder means it might end up on Friday morning having lost significant votes to its right, to Restore Britain . Do remember that Restore is a party that only exists because Nigel Farage is such a turbo-diva that he couldn’t handle Rupert Lowe getting any attention or raising any questions of his strategy. Farage arranged for Lowe to be taken into the forest by a huntsman, who apparently didn’t have the heart to kill him – and so it is that Nigel’s magic mirror is now sending enraging messages from Makerfield. Not sure what you’d call this tale. Snow White Supremacist?

Back up the top of the Makerfield leaderboard, though, the king in the north is preparing to march, so perhaps it won’t be long before we hear Andy Burnham’s answer as to how to deal with defence. Is it something to do with getting in a time machine and going back to create “place-first politics” and “a new politics” and “business-friendly socialism” so that now – right now – we have enough money to pay for autonomous systems and rapidly scaling the drone fleet? If not, you suspect we are soon to learn the limits of Manchesterism.

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – England, World Cup 2026, World Cup, Football, Sport
Title – England’s World Cup boots stolen before first training session in Kansas City | England | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jacob-steinberg
Link – England’s World Cup boots stolen before first training session in Kansas City | England | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-13T02:01:58.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/13/england-world-cup-boots-stolen-before-first-training-session-in-kansas-city

England have been the victims of a security breakdown after the team’s match boots were stolen before their first World Cup training session in Kansas City.

The theft is understood to have taken place while equipment was being transported from the squad’s pre-tournament base in Florida to their training camp at Swope Soccer Village in Missouri. Boots belonging to England’s star players were understood to be among the stolen items, along with official tournament balls and training equipment.

The Kansas City police department is investigating the incident and has confirmed that two suspects have been apprehended. A police spokesperson told the Guardian: “Two subjects of interest were taken into custody pending further investigation.”

Thomas Tuchel’s side will train at their base for the first time on Saturday afternoon. The Football Association declined to comment when approached by the Guardian. The FA will have to liaise with the local police as it attempts to retrieve the equipment.

England face Croatia in their opening Group L game in Dallas on Wednesday. The FA has meticulous plans in place as Tuchel attempts to lead the men’s side to their first piece of silverware since 1966, but the incident presents staff with a headache.

There were positive vibes during England’s acclimatisation camp in the heat of West Palm Beach, Florida. England won friendlies against New Zealand in Tampa and Costa Rica in Orlando.

The performance in the latter was hugely encouraging and featured an eye-catching display from Jude Bellingham , who has boosted his chances of starting ahead of Morgan Rogers at No 10 against Croatia. Bukayo Saka is in a race to prove his fitness after struggling with an achilles problem while Ezri Konsa and John Stones could keep Marc Guéhi out in central defence.

Keyword – US news
Trefwoorden – Trump administration, Donald Trump, US news, US politics, US-Israel war on Iran, SpaceX, Elon Musk, Warner Bros, US Congress, Los Angeles
Title – Trump news at a glance: president’s name to be removed from Kennedy Center | Trump administration | The Guardian
Author – Guardian staff
Link – Trump news at a glance: president’s name to be removed from Kennedy Center | Trump administration | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-13T01:25:32.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/12/trump-news-latest-updates-today

The ongoing fracas over the facade of Washington DC’s Kennedy Center reached a key moment Friday night in the US capital.

An appeals court in Washington DC rejected an emergency appeal seeking to pause the removal of Donald Trump’s name from the building on Friday.

Justice department lawyers for Donald Trump and his hand-picked Kennedy Center board filed the emergency appeal earlier in the day, asking the court to stay a judge’s order that his name be removed from the facade of Washington ’s leading performing arts venue.

The Kennedy Center filed its appeal shortly before the Friday evening deadline set by US district judge Christopher Cooper. Earlier on Friday, Cooper denied a last-minute bid by the center to keep his name on the building.

As crews returned on Friday evening, onlookers gathered once again at the center to cheer on workers in hard hats and yellow vests gathering at the building, apparently ready to pry the president’s name from its marbled exterior. “Take it down!” they chanted.

Court denies emergency appeal to retain Trump’s name on Kennedy Center

An exuberant crowd gathered Friday night as workers continued to assemble scaffolding along the building, currently named the Donald J Trump and the John F Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

Many residents of the capital have viewed the rebranding of the Kennedy Center, and Trump’s other architectural ambitions, as narcissistic and anti-democratic. Carolyn, a 50-year-old retired government worker who did not wish to give her surname, said: “Putting his name on everything is right out of the dictator playbook .”

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US justice department approves $111bn merger of Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery

Trump ’s Department of Justice has decided to approve the $111bn merger of Paramount Skydance, controlled by the Ellison family, and Warner Bros Discovery, the parent company of networks including CNN and HBO.

The deal was approved by the justice department’s anti-trust division after months of review, and despite the concerns of many people in the entertainment and media industries who believe it will hurt competition by reducing the number of film studios and – most probably – merging two news networks, Paramount’s CBS News and CNN.

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US-Iran peace deal remains elusive as Trump and Tehran trade conflicting claims

Prospects for an immediate end to the war between Iran and the US remained uncertain on Friday amid a chaotic series of conflicting claims and counter-claims by US and Iranian officials about ongoing negotiations.

Trump seemed to distance himself from his earlier comments that suggested a preliminary agreement could be signed as soon as this weekend, with a series of angry social media posts describing the Iranians as “very dishonorable people to deal with”.

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Trump asking Congress for symbolic expunging of his two impeachments

The president is pressing Congress to erase one of the darkest chapters of his political career, urging Republicans to pass a resolution that would symbolically nullify the two impeachments he suffered during his first term in office.

The effort, first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by a White House official, would allow Trump to claim a symbolic victory on a key grievance from his first term. But experts say it would have little legal significance, since the constitution provides no procedure for undoing an impeachment.

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Trump officials cut federal funds to LA homeless services agency

The Trump administration has suspended federal funding to Los Angeles’s beleaguered homelessness agency. The announcement is the administration’s latest move rescinding funding to California , where Donald Trump has feuded with the state’s Democratic leaders.

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What else happened today:

SpaceX made the biggest stock market debut in history on Friday after nearly two and a half decades as a private company. Public trading began around midday with a starting share price of $150, which quickly jumped by a double digit percentage and sent the company’s valuation above $2tn, where it remained through market close. The company’s initial public offering made the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire .

A federal judge in Virginia has extended an order blocking the Trump administration’s nearly $1.8bn slush fund , saying the administration’s public statements that the fund was dead were not assuring enough.

Across the US, children with autism as young as 18 months old are being given unapproved stem cell treatments at clinics in Florida, Texas and elsewhere , part of a growing market operating beyond the bounds of FDA approval.

Dozens of women detained inside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility in New Jersey announced their participation in a hunger and labor strike , advocates announced on Thursday.

Catching up? Here’s what happened on 11 June 2026 .

Keyword – Television & radio
Trefwoorden – Television, Television & radio, TV comedy, Culture, Comedy
Title – G’wed: this underrated gem of a comedy is filthy, heartwarming and packed with ideas | Television | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/rhik-samadder
Link – G’wed: this underrated gem of a comedy is filthy, heartwarming and packed with ideas | Television | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-13T06:00:06.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/jun/13/gwed-season-3-comedy-scouse-sitcom-itv

H ow had I not heard of this show? Had I heard of it, then forgotten? Questions plagued me as I caught up on two series of this week’s underrated gem. In my defence, G’wed is an esoteric title. I assumed it was the name of a person, place or ancient story, possibly borrowed from Celtic mythology. Turns out it’s scouse for “go ahead”.

Reviewers that saw previous series of the adolescent comedy noted its similarities to The Inbetweeners. A middle-class boy, Christopher, is forced to “slum it” with working-class lads, including his nemesis neighbour, Reece, at a new secondary school in Liverpool. Immature antics ensue, alongside merciless teasing and finally acceptance. Hearts are warmed, knob jokes hammered. The difference was, this show kept talking about grief, and had more to say about class than does your average fish-out-of-water premise.

Unlike The Inbetweeners, the central friendship group is comfortably mixed in gender, race and sexuality. Yet the show has an allergy to woke pieties or patronising assumptions. Instead, we got storylines about PIP assessments , male anorexia and, in this new series, the corporate suffocation of the Premier League. There were swings into subjects a 30-minute broad comedy can’t comfortably hold, such as grey areas around consent, harm-related OCD and a mask-wearing digital vigilante known as “Ye Ma”. One had to admire the intent, even when storylines were quickly dropped so wank gags could recommence.

In its third season, the show expands its palette again. This time around, there is a Mamma Mia-style paternity mystery (but lap dance-based), an adulterous bedroom farce in a hotel and a pastiche of reality dance shows that will genuinely have you weeping. That’s before a series finale that raises the bar like Sylvester Stallone.

There are strong actors in the G’wed mix – particularly Leanne Best as Reece’s single mum, Jodie. In a previous series, we were able to infer her entire relationship with an off-screen sister from a single phone call regarding her nephew and his “bad influence, scumbag, thieving, feral, awful, dirty mates”. Best puts so much extra sauce on this litany of pejoratives, Burger King would raise an eyebrow. She’s a bracingly sarcastic parent, roasting Reece and his peers – but there’s no doubting the strength of their bond, and their scenes together are almost unbearably lovely.

Newcomer Jake Kenny-Byrne, as orphaned “posh muppet” Christopher, brings out much of the show’s heart. His sensitive performance accesses a deeper register, one of loneliness and fragile hope. He has a compelling face, a cross between Miles Teller and Benny Safdie. (I kept wondering if Josh Safdie might pop by, perhaps to direct an episode subplot about a school badminton tournament that would spike my cortisol for three days.)

The new series enjoys subverting “lost daddy” tropes. A former one-night stand of Jodie’s, Disneyland Darren, returns to their lives, determined to be the father figure Reece lacks. He’s an intense, over-sexualised Mancunian, whose driving lessons amount to maintaining the beginnings of an erection, in case an opportunity for intercourse presents itself on the journey. “You don’t drive and you’re not my dad. You’re just some little weirdo who won’t piss off,” Reece responds, possibly deflating it.

G’wed is not perfect. It leans on “only kidding” punchlines and there are some tonal lurches. But you know what? I watch a lot of TV. I know how much effort goes into unifying the tone of a show so that each episode feels part of the whole, unlikely to trip up an audience. And while smoothness is comforting, a lot of TV is also … a bit boring. I’ll take ideas over polish. If ambition outreaches achievement, it has still taken us further.

Those wanting a re-heated Inbetweeners will be disappointed: this show is its own beast. Expect inconsistency. Expect tears to come more reliably than laughs. The laughs are there. Expect filth. If that sounds like I’m telling you not to watch it, the opposite is true. At the risk of sounding like a copywriter for a brand of breakfast bar: why not break your routine with a shot of real energy? Go ahead!

Keyword – Life and style
Trefwoorden – Dating, Relationships, Life and style
Title – Blind date: ‘Her one dating request was “no one in finance”. I work in finance’ | Dating | The Guardian
Author – Guardian Staff
Link – Blind date: ‘Her one dating request was “no one in finance”. I work in finance’ | Dating | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-13T05:00:07.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jun/13/blind-date-yusuf-hannah

Yusuf on Hannah

What were you hoping for? Someone interesting, good chat is more important than anything. And a fun story. I like a random side quest.

First impressions? Great smile, really lovely northern accent – she seemed confident and excited.

What did you talk about? Her Hackney half marathon. And her disdain for people in finance. “Not in finance” was her one date request (I work in finance).

Most awkward moment? Hannah said she thought I could be dyslexic five minutes in.

Good table manners? Yep, no notes.

Best thing about Hannah? Her accent, or her brains – she’s studying for a PhD.

Would you introduce Hannah to your friends? My friends get on with most people, and the same is probably true for Hannah.

Describe Hannah in three words Charismatic, clever and confident.

What do you think Hannah made of you? Posh – she said. But hopefully good enough company for a Wednesday night.

Did you go on somewhere? We were in the restaurant for nearly four hours! Late enough for a school night.

And … did you kiss? Negative.

If you could change one thing about the evening, what would it be? Maybe more of a romantic spark.

Marks out of 10? A solid 7 – lovely evening.

Would you meet again? Absolutely, although probably as friends. Sounds like we’d do a cracking yoga class or something.

Hannah on Yusuf

What were you hoping for? Low expectations, to be honest – my sister made me apply. But hopefully to go for a nice meal, meet someone random, and do something different on a Wednesday evening.

First impressions? Really nice and friendly.

What did you talk about? Jobs. Family. Writing these answers. Solo travel. Bank holiday plans.

Most awkward moment? Maybe when he told me he worked in finance. I said I’d explicitly asked for someone who didn’t work in finance.

Good table manners? Yes, although I was so focused on my own I didn’t pay much attention to his.

Best thing about Yusuf? He was easy to chat to, asked questions and I felt comfortable straight away.

Would you introduce Yusuf to your friends? Not sure how much they would have in common.

Describe Yusuf in three words Interesting, friendly and chatty.

What do you think Yusuf made of you? Probably that I talked a lot and was weird for saying I wasn’t a foodie.

Did you go on somewhere? No, it was way past my bedtime.

And … did you kiss? No.

If you could change one thing about the evening, what would it be? I can’t think of anything. I had a really nice time, but it was more as friends.

Marks out of 10? 8.

Would you meet again? Potentially, as friends.

Yusuf and Hannah ate at the Bull & Last , London NW5 . Fancy a blind date? Email blind.date@theguardian.com