Keyword – Fashion
Trefwoorden – Fashion, David Hockney, Life and style, Art and design, Culture, Painting, Art
Title – Peroxide mop, statement specs, tweed suits and quirky Crocs: David Hockney’s genius for fashion | Fashion | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/laurencochrane
Link – Peroxide mop, statement specs, tweed suits and quirky Crocs: David Hockney’s genius for fashion | Fashion | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T10:41:58.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026/jun/12/david-hockney-genius-for-fashion-peroxide-tweed

I f artist style is now a well-trodden path in fashion, there are some examples that stand out. David Hockney – with his trademark glasses, rugby shirts, trenchcoats and quirks like wearing a pair of yellow Crocs to meet King Charles in 2022 – might have been top of that list.

His flair for style was there from the start: a self-portrait of Hockney at 16 shows him dressed in a blue coat, red scarf and yellow tie, already with strong statement specs. As time went on, he developed his trademark look. The peroxide mop came in the early 60s, after he saw an advert for Clairol proclaiming “blondes have more fun” and his signature round spectacles replaced his NHS specs by the the middle of the decade.

As the 70s and 80s unfolded, the signature clothing arrived: rugby shirts, brightly coloured suits and perfectly crumpled trenchcoats. Much like Pablo Picasso in his Breton, Andy Warhol in his fright wig or Georgia O’Keeffe in her white blouse, “he became an artwork himself,” wrote Vogue in 2025 . This panache was quickly noted – he appeared on Vanity Fair’s Best Dressed List in 1986 .

The artist documented his outfits himself, of course, creating more than 300 self-portraits. These included him in red braces, in a flat cap, a checked shirt and a tweed suit, quite often with either a paintbrush or his other trademark accessory, a cigarette.

Inevitably, Hockey became a reference for fashion designers. His seemingly haphazard artistic approach to wearing colour – so central to his work – was a big part of the appeal. People who think about clothes a lot were fascinated by a man who could look striking without looking perfect. As the Guardian wrote in 2014 , “his clothes never look new or overly styled or even thought out but are somehow simultaneously a total ‘look.’”

Christopher Bailey designed a collection inspired by Hockney while at Burberry in 2013. Speaking backstage, Bailey said: “I once saw David Hockney on Jermyn Street, wearing a cream linen suit with a perfect green paint smudge on it. I love the way Hockney wears colour, so that you’re never completely sure how deliberately the look is put together.”

Paul Smith, who designed a collection inspired by Hockney in 2008, echoed this sentiment almost exactly when speaking to Vogue in 2017 . “I remember once bumping into him in town, and he had a pinstripe suit on, but in an interesting shade of blue, and he wore it with a teal shirt and an emerald-green tie,” he said, “very tonal colours that fought each other and looked very feisty together.”

Hockney was an icon of 60s and 70s bohemia and hedonism, friends with people such as Warhol, Ossie Clark, Manolo Blahnik and Cecil Beaton. Smith recalled an anecdote from his wife, Pauline Denyer, who was at the Royal College of Art with Hockney: “[She] remembers him graduating, and causing an absolute outrage because instead of wearing the mortar board and gown he had a gold lamé jacket on and had dyed his hair blond.” In an era where outfits worn by those in the public eye are chosen with great care by teams of stylists, his unconsidered and spontaneous take on fashion is like catnip.

The artist was photographed during this period by his friend and sometime lover, Peter Schlesinger, wearing those now familiar items: the suits, the glasses, the too-long scarves. These images, and others of Hockney in his studio in a paint-splattered sweatshirt, have gone beyond fashion designers’ mood boards to become familiar style references on social media as this analogue era of abandon seems further and further away. A dupe of Hockney’s Coney Island sweatshirt can now be bought on Etsy for £40, and the current vogue for the rugby shirt can, at least in part, be traced back to Hockney.

Happily, Hockney lived and worked for many more decades, and his style evolved as he did, always keeping that flair for the unexpected. In his later years, he stuck to suits – often made by a tailor in Cannes, with the same ones worn for both painting and private views – set off with colourful knitwear. The Crocs at the Order of Merit luncheon performed the same visual function, if on the feet. King Charles, for one, was charmed. “Your yellow galoshes!” he remarked. “Beautifully chosen.”

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – Iran, World Cup 2026, Football, World Cup, Sport, US-Israel war on Iran
Title – Iran’s World Cup camp in Tijuana unfolds under armed guard and political shadow | Iran | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alexander-abnos
Link – Iran’s World Cup camp in Tijuana unfolds under armed guard and political shadow | Iran | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-11T20:49:46.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/11/iran-world-cup-tijuana-security-camp-mexico

O pen-top trucks patrolled the surrounding roads outside the Estadio Caliente today, mounted by men in helmets and masks and wielding machine guns. They pass by the main entrance every few hours, guarding the massive city block, otherwise chocked with cars and smog, that the Iran national team has made its temporary, and largely improvised, home for this World Cup .

This has become business as usual here in northwest Mexico, at an arena that most teams in the domestic league hate to visit thanks to its distance from the country’s other footballing hubs and its brutal artificial turf playing surface.

The team was originally due to stay about 400 miles and one international border away, in Tucson, Arizona, at the sprawling Kino Sports Complex; a pro-level facility with numerous fields. Those plans were scrapped in a rush in the weeks after the US and Israel opened their attacks on Iran itself, killing the country’s head of state and several top leaders. The setting now, in the middle of bustling Tijuana, is downstream of that and countless other aggressions, threats and volleys of policy.

Staff working for Club Tijuana were only informed about the team’s move two weeks ago in a call with Fifa. Since then, they have been working 18-hour days to get the training field ready for one of Asia’s best teams – the complex only has one pitch with natural grass. That’s on top of the logistical concerns. Admission to the facility is strictly controlled. Credentials are checked, double-checked, then checked again. Though the team is staying at a hotel nearby, the political situation has demanded the utmost security. Hence the machine guns, the tight security, the lack of information about training times, filming locations, and who, if anyone, will speak about the latest extraordinary situation the team finds itself in.

Just about the only population who have welcomed the Iranians with open arms are Mexicans. Club Tijuana staffers, while clearly stressed at the sudden change of plans, have pulled out as many stops as they can to make the players feel at home – a large banner surrounding the field reads “Iranian cheetahs, welcome to Tijuana” in Farsi. Mexican fans have taken to gathering outside the team’s hotel, sending them off for the short journey to training sessions with cheers and requests for autographs.

“I’m ashamed of what the United States is doing,” one fan told Agence France-Presse.

“It’s wrong… [the United States] treat everyone like terrorists,” said another.

When they move to Los Angeles for the Fifa-mandated press conference on Sunday, they will do so without 15 members of the support staff, a federation official confirmed, including their entire media operations department. When asked who will run the press conference and manage any potential access to players in the aftermath of their World Cup opener against New Zealand, the official speculated that it might have to be the kit man.

Today, the federation is allowing only a brief glimpse of the team in the spotlight, moreso now than at any previous time they have gone to the World Cup under political pressure. No players will speak, because there is little in it for them if they do. At home, the regime itself and its supporters will pounce on any perceived slight in a moment where the nation is seeking unity. Among the diaspora, opponents of the regime will criticize the team for representing the oppression they have escaped. Somewhere in the middle, there are Iranian people who simply want to see the team do well, because they are football players playing in a football tournament, and football brings joy to a nation that is absolutely mad about the sport. The players are in a no-win situation; political and cultural quicksand where the only way to survive is to not move at all.

Yet the Iranian players are moving. Today is a light regeneration session, with the team recovering from yesterday’s 3-0 win over the Under-21 team of Club Tijuana, their hosts. It’s about as good a competition as the team can muster at this point, with their country a pariah on the international stage and thus seemingly radioactive for teams looking for a stern test against an experienced team that has qualified for its fourth straight World Cup. A planned friendly against Caribbean country Grenada was abruptly canceled, hence the need to play that U-21 team.

In 2022, Iran played in Qatar amid ongoing protests within the country over the death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian woman arrested for improper hijab and who later died in custody. At the first of those three games in the middle east, Iranian fans used the occasion to shout the time’s rallying cry: Woman, Life Freedom. Over the course of the next two, the tenor of the crowd changed, reportedly policed from within by hundreds of IRGC operatives sent from across the water.

The denial of visas to many Iranian officials makes a similar scene unlikely this time around. Yet this is a team that does not have the support of all Iranian people, and especially not the diaspora that in the US has its center in the Los Angeles area, where the team will play two of their three group games. There are divisions within divisions that are almost inherent to this fandom, though Fifa will pretend there are none, and that this team’s appearance in the world’s showpiece event is purely about the football.

Good luck.

Keyword – Environment
Trefwoorden – Waste, Rivers, Oceans, Los Angeles, Pollution, Plastics, US news, Environment, World news
Title – A solar-powered rubbish-eating boat? The vessel chomping plastic waste out of the sea | Waste | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/katharine-gammon
Link – A solar-powered rubbish-eating boat? The vessel chomping plastic waste out of the sea | Waste | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T11:00:44.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/12/solar-powered-rubbish-eating-boat-plastic-waste-sea

O n an overcast June morning, I step from the rubber-sided Zodiac boat on to a floating barge at the mouth of Ballona Creek, where it meets Santa Monica Bay on the west side of Los Angeles . The first thing I notice? Salty air is the only smell, despite six giant waste bins sitting atop the tennis court-sized barge.

The contraption is actually two barges – a smaller platform sits nestled inside the larger boat. A floating barrier directs rubbish into the device, where a conveyor belt scoops it up. An automated shuttle then distributes the waste into six dumpsters on a separate barge, sending an alert to crews when it is full. Above, solar panels form the ceiling and a conveyor belt runs slowly, dropping bits of plastic and waste into each of the bins. The whole thing can hold about 20,000lbs (9,070kg) of rubbish – the same as one fully loaded lorry.

Since it is the dry season in LA there is not much waste being washed down the river by rainfall. But I still see what the problems are: polystyrene takeaway containers, noodle cups, bottle caps, a yellow pencil, a palm frond dotted with colourful pieces of microplastics. They are all caught up in the boat’s conveyor belt. It’s a pretty representative sample, says James Patterson, the operations manager with the nonprofit Ocean Cleanup , which created the system. “You get a wide variety of basic plastics – a lot of bottles, cups, to-go containers, things from restaurants. That’s typically what we see out here,” he says.

When the waste is pulled out, it is sorted and sent to refuse facilities. “We want to make sure that from start to finish, we’re pulling the trash out in a responsible way, and it’s getting sorted or stored in a responsible manner,” Patterson says. “We don’t want a circular battery of trash here.”

This particular barge is a model for others being deployed around the world. Ocean Cleanup operates in 10 places, with 21 Interceptor systems – in countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Guatemala, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. It aims to clean up the 30 most-polluted cities by 2030.

The big idea? Stop waste from ever reaching the ocean. “Instead of specific rivers, the goal is to clean up an entire area, because that’s how you get an actual genuine impact on society and on the environment,” Patterson says.

In this creek, the end of a 130 sq mile urban drainage network in LA County, the boat stopped 143,710lbs of rubbish from entering the ocean in 2025. Ocean Cleanup will launch two more boats in the LA area – in the San Gabriel River and the Los Angeles River. It is already having an impact on the coastal communities, Patterson says. Beach cities south of the project have lowered their budgets for beach grooming: there is simply less waste on the sand, so they don’t need to be cleaned as often.

Ocean Cleanup’s founder, the Dutch inventor and entrepreneur Boyan Slat, was originally inspired to use technology to battle the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch , and created the skimming technologies that can scoop a soupy crud of waste off the surface of water. But in researching solutions, the nonprofit pivoted to rivers – the arteries that carry rubbish into the world’s oceans.

Rivers are key. Research by Ocean Cleanup has shown that just 1,000 of the world’s rivers are responsible for nearly 80% of plastic emissions into the ocean, and 90% of all pollution in the ocean comes from rivers. “We have to turn the faucet off before we can scoop the ocean, or else all we’re doing is taking out legacy trash to replace it with new trash,” Patterson says. “Before you can clean out the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, you really need to turn off the source.”

Work on designing the autonomous boat started in 2017, and this pilot project in LA began in 2022. It cost about $1.3m to design and permit, and another $1.5m to secure the boat and booms in place. Maintenance each year costs $650,000 – and the Interceptor is being provided to LA County free from Ocean Cleanup.

It’s not a perfect system. As we stand on the barge, I point to a red plastic cup floating outside the barrier on the surface. Patterson winces. “When something like that escapes, it hurts,” he says. But that cup is an outlier. The most difficult kind of trash, the public works employees agree, is large logs.

Each river requires its own special system. “There’s no one size fits all,” Patterson says. “Every river is different in how they act, where you can deploy, what the local government and permitting timelines look like, and just the conditions of nature.”

Patterson adds the boats rarely have issues with wildlife – except for birds. Seagulls like to sit and defecate on the barge, which can corrode the metal.

As we step off the Interceptor back to the Zodiac that will return us to shore, I look back at the metal container and comment how straightforward it all seems: gather the floating debris, hold it for later disposal. From the outside it looks complicated. “It may seem simple,” Patterson says, “but, truly, a master of engineering goes on inside of these.”

Keyword – Sport
Trefwoorden – Phil Mickelson, Golf, Sport, US sports, LIV Golf Series
Title – Phil Mickelson reportedly ousted from golf club after alleged ‘inappropriate contact’ with woman | Phil Mickelson | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/ewanmurray
Link – Phil Mickelson reportedly ousted from golf club after alleged ‘inappropriate contact’ with woman | Phil Mickelson | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T01:50:31.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jun/11/phil-mickelson-membership-cancelled-the-farms-alleged-misconduct

Phil Mickelson has reportedly had his membership cancelled at a San Diego golf club following alleged “inappropriate contact” with a female employee.

Golf Digest first reported that Mickelson has had his membership terminated at The Farms following an alleged incident before he played there in the spring. The report, citing multiple sources, said the employee accused the 55-year-old of “nonconsensual and inappropriate physical contact” towards her before a game of golf. Mickelson is said to have been challenged on the incident mid-round and duly left the property.

“Any misunderstanding has been cleared up,” said a spokesperson for Mickelson. “Phil continues to attend to a family health matter and is uncertain when he will be able to return to professional golf.”

Mickelson has been absent during most of this season on the LIV tour due to family issues. He also skipped the Masters in April and the following month’s US PGA Championship. Ongoing doubt regarding the longevity of LIV, which will soon lose its Saudi Arabian funding , makes Mickelson’s future in his sport unclear. The six-time major winner is regarded as one of the finest players in golfing history.

The Farms provided a statement to Golf Digest which read: “The Farms Golf Club is committed to maintaining a golf club environment that is safe, respectful and reflects the highest standards of conduct. All members are required to adhere to our code of conduct, and any allegations of misconduct are taken seriously.

“Following a staff member report of member misconduct, the club provided immediate and ongoing support to the staff member, conducted a thorough independent investigation of the incident and took decisive action. This individual is no longer a member of The Farms Golf Club.”

Attorney Tom Clare provided Golf Digest the following statement: “There is a great deal of misinformation circulating and, while Phil’s full attention is devoted to a private family health matter, he has retained defamation counsel and is determined to hold accountable any publication or individual trafficking in speculation or false rumors.”

Keyword – Politics
Trefwoorden – Makerfield byelection, Andy Burnham, Labour, Politics, Greater Manchester, Reform UK, Byelections, UK news
Title – Power games in a pub garden as MPs seek Burnham’s favour in Makerfield | Makerfield byelection | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jessica-elgot
Link – Power games in a pub garden as MPs seek Burnham’s favour in Makerfield | Makerfield byelection | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-11T17:12:30.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/11/andy-burnham-makerfield-byelection-labour

For a few short weeks, the centre of political gravity in Britain has shifted from the Palace of Westminster to the bar of a former Labour club in Wigan.

In London, even as Keir Starmer insists he will fight to stay in No 10, the walls seem to be crumbling around him, especially with Thursday’s resignation of the defence secretary, John Healey.

Two hundred miles north, most mornings outside Stubshaw Cross community centre there is a queue snaking round the building as 20 MPs patiently wait to clock in to do their hours on the doorstep for Andy Burnham in Makerfield.

It is a seat that once looked so impossible to win that some of Burnham’s closest friends advised him to turn down the offer from Josh Simons to fight it.

But now, if the polls are to be believed, Burnham looks on the brink of proving his own concept, that he is the only Labour party politician who can stand a chance at beating Reform UK .

One MP said observing their colleagues make the pilgrimage to Ashton-in-Makerfield felt “like watching power change hands in a pub garden”: a few loyalist MPs looking at their shoes on the outskirts of the throng, while their colleagues eagerly sought praise from Burnham’s most influential fixers, Louise Haigh and Anneliese Midgley.

Inside, MPs are pocketing souvenir stacks of beer mats printed with the ubiquitous Stanley Chow cartoon of Burnham, with the slogan “Brewed Round Here”.

Standing in packs outside with activists, they are briefed to tell undecided voters on the doorsteps of Ashton-in-Makerfield and Orrell that they are from “Andy Burnham’s campaign” rather than the Labour party.

Over the next week, the party will target roughly 16% of undecided voters who have told canvassers they are still to make up their minds between Labour and Reform, though strategists say the number has narrowed since the BBC’s Question Time last week .

At the weekend, 450 volunteers came to canvass. By the end of the coming week, Labour activists will have knocked on every door in the constituency five times over.

Residents of Makerfield – though no one would ever call this area that name – know they are the centre of the universe during this bizarre period. As the canvassers make their way along the roads, many of them want to engage in long chats about national issues.

They want to talk about immigration, tax and transport, as well as local flooding, housing, antisocial behaviour, vacant shops and the future of local services. Some are unimpressed by Burnham’s unabashed sights on No 10, but for others that is the basis of his appeal.

There is no Labour attack literature against Reform, or against Restore Britain, which is also making significant inroads here. Instead, almost all the MPs who come to canvass for Burnham agree with the residents they speak to that change is desperately needed.

During four hours on the doorsteps, no voter had a good word to say about Starmer, though many struggled to articulate exactly why.

Among the MPs out on a daily basis are members of the Corbynite socialist campaign group, shoulder to shoulder with ministers and ambitious MPs from the 2024 intake.

Such is the desire to be part of this most momentous of byelections, constituency Labour parties are sending busloads of activists and staffers are staying in cabins in local people’s gardens.

There is an open admission of fear about how the party will even manage the number of eager volunteers who will turn up on polling day, without aggravating local voters by pestering them too much.

At the centre of it all, the “boys’ club” who were the power brokers in Starmer’s leadership have been replaced by a formidable band of female operators.

There is Midgley, the MP for Knowsley and a battle-hardened Unite and Labour organiser; Haigh, the ex- transport secretary who has become one of Burnham’s closest confidantes; and Sally Jameson, the Doncaster MP and former prison officer. MPs talk particularly about the influence of Haigh. “She is the oracle and the gatekeeper for Andy,” says one.

Outside on the terrace as they waited to get their canvassing instructions, MPs have begun to talk about the result and Burnham’s subsequent return to Westminster as a foregone conclusion. Talk has turned to whether Burnham will challenge Starmer – and the feeling is he will.

But those at the heart of the ground campaign are hesitant to look beyond next Thursday. They are wary of the habitual non-voters who turned out in significant numbers to vote for Reform in the local elections, in which the party swept all the wards.

The Reform campaign made a huge effort to establish a visual presence early. Boards went up along all the major roads within hours of the announcement – faster than the Labour campaign could get theirs to the printers.

The result is a dominant turquoise presence along many of the major arteries, though there are competing navy boards of Restore on many of the streets. On one digital board, the bright hoarding alternates unnervingly between Restore and Burnham’s “For Us” slogan.

Labour canvassers say they believe Rupert Lowe’s Restore could end up with more than 10% of the vote.

Several Restore voters who spoke to the Guardian said, rather counterintuitively, they believed Lowe to be less extreme in his views than Farage and cited not his hardline immigration policies, but his position on animal welfare and on allowing children out of school to go on holiday.

But others are clearly attracted by his far more radical remigration and pro-death penalty policies, which have enormous reach on Facebook. The area has a historically significant far-right vote, including about 7% for the British National party as recently as 2010.

While Restore may ultimately help Burnham win the seat, it poses a not insignificant threat to Burnham’s legitimacy among his sceptics.

There are already murmurs among MPs saying that if the split on the right is the reason for his victory, it would cast doubt on his narrative.

But that is a problem for a week’s time. Until election day, Haigh and Midgley say they aim to get Burnham physically in front of as many of the 13,000 undecided voters as possible. On Tuesday he gathered more than 100 at a town hall meeting for a three-hour session of questions.

“He is our best electoral asset and people are genuinely quite shocked when he turns up to see them in person,” one campaign source said.

“‘They are starting to feel it’s worth one more roll of the dice.

“The message is not anti-Reform, the message is he is coming back to Westminster to change Labour. We want to be hopeful about the country again and put working people back at the heart of our economy.”

Keyword – Opinion
Trefwoorden – Trump administration, Donald Trump, Law (US), US supreme court, UFC, US news, US politics
Title – Welcome to ‘the Claw’: the White House fighting cage captures Trump era rot | Sidney Blumenthal | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sidneyblumenthal
Link – Welcome to ‘the Claw’: the White House fighting cage captures Trump era rot | Sidney Blumenthal | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T10:00:41.000Z
Category – Opinion
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/12/trump-ufc-fighting-cage

“I f the government decides, very quickly, to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty – the people whose ancestors that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the government moved too fast – nothing can be done?” asked Judge Patricia Millet of the District of Columbia court of appeals on 5 June to the principal deputy assistant attorney general, Yaakov Roth. “I think that’s right, yes,” he replied.

In the case brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation against Donald Trump’s “sudden, unilateral, and unlawful decision” to demolish the East Wing of the White House and to construct a 90,000 sq ft ballroom, “without seeking approval from Congress; without requesting review and approval from the federal commissions charged with oversight of development in the nation’s capital; without conducting the required environmental studies; and without allowing the public any opportunity for input”, Trump’s Department of Justice has countered that he can simply do whatever he wishes, whenever he wishes, however he wishes.

“When did it become a fait accompli?” Judge Millett asked. “If this were complete lawlessness by the government … it couldn’t be stopped?” “On these theories, I think that’s right,” said Roth.

“If you move fast enough, nobody has standing to challenge it?” asked Millet. “I do think that that is correct,” Roth said. “The injury, it becomes non-redressable.”

The supreme court’s 2024 campaign ruling granting “absolute” presidential immunity for “official acts” is Trump’s Magna Carta for absolute rule. But if the president can do anything, anytime, anywhere, why even bother now with the irrelevance of the judicial system except as a residual bow to empty formal courtesy? Why dress up the “non-redressable”?

At the same time that the justice department insisted that Trump could demolish the Statue of Liberty at will, a monstrous and gaudy 600-tonne, 154ft-tall skeletal structure called “the Claw”, painted red, white and blue, was rising on the South Lawn of the White House, above the building itself and next to the rubble where the ballroom is planned.

Within “the Claw” there will be a cage, where the Ultimate Fighting Championship company will stage martial arts matches, an exhibition called “UFC Freedom 250”, to celebrate Trump’s 80th birthday on 14 June.

The cage fighter weigh-ins and face-offs will take place at the Lincoln Memorial, where the solemn marble Daniel Chester French statue is flanked by the engraved words of the Gettysburg Address (“a new birth of freedom”) and the Second Inaugural (“malice toward none”).

On the Ellipse, in the shadow of the Washington Monument, jumbotron TV screens will show the fight to tens of thousands of fans who have not been invited to join the select few designated by Trump to sit ringside with him at “the Claw”.

The event is billed as “free”, but in reality it appears to be an occasion for many complex transactions for Trump to further his economic and political control, reward members of his inner network and deepen his influence over them. While the fighters are the ostensible draw, they are not the true main event.

They are a pretext for Trump’s kleptocratic spectacle. The gladiatorial grappling has given Trump a chance to extract tribute for his favor, to put the federal government out to the highest bidder, to bind his big money allies closer to him, to make them more dependent. Not least, on his birthday, the circus revolves around him as the center of attention.

“This plan is deeply corrupt,” states the lawsuit brought by the non-profit Public Integrity Project in an effort to stop the “unlawful” event from taking place. “UFC Freedom 250 is a private, for-profit sporting event being ‘planned, organized, and executed’ by the UFC, its broadcast partners, and its advertisers, not by the federal government. And it is not in any material sense a ‘celebration of the 250th anniversary of American Independence’ – it is, instead, a celebration of the UFC’s brand and the 80th anniversary of Donald Trump’s birth.

“For these reasons, UFC Freedom 250 does not satisfy the strict conditions that must be satisfied for special semiquincentennial events to occur on the South Lawn or at the Lincoln Memorial.”

The UFC is offering special access VIP packages, “Partnership Investment”, for $1.5m. Two weeks after the match was announced, Trump’s “wealth advisers” purchased up to $50,000 of stock in TKO Holding Group, the UFC’s parent company. One TKO executive touted the upcoming event as “the greatest earned-marketing tool of all time”.

Marketing is everything to the UFC. Dana White, impresario of the UFC, owes Donald Trump for his first promotional break. The UFC was essentially a shell company in 2001 when White became its president after arranging its sale to a group of casino investors. Senator John McCain called it “human cockfighting”. The company’s activity was prohibited in 36 states and on pay-per-view cable TV. At that moment, Trump himself was also floundering. His Atlantic City hotel and casino, the Taj Mahal, had already been subjected to a bankruptcy . He hired the UFC for its first public matches to attract a crowd, which did not prevent the Taj eventually from collapsing into its final bankruptcy.

But Trump gave the UFC visibility. White also hired a knock-about comedian and actor, Joe Rogan, as a color commentator. Then 15 years later, in 2016, White sold the UFC to WME, the entertainment agency, for $4bn. White has been elevated into a cultural icon of the Trump age. He spoke on the podium of the 2024 Republican convention for Trump, contributes mightily to Trump’s political action committee and hosts Trump at UFC events where he enters like a conquering Caesar.

The Public Integrity Project lawsuit notes that White “admitted that the event was ‘Trump’s idea’”. Trump is staging a version of his past, when he brought the fledgling and proscribed UFC to his dying casino, but is now re-enacting the tawdry scene as a grand success using all the resources at his command in a celebration of his web of influence and himself.

Plebes may also pay a streaming service to see it, but not just any one . For an $8.99 plus tax subscription fee, viewers at home can see the event on Paramount+, owned by Larry Ellison and his son David Ellison, who are seeking Department of Justice approval of the takeover of Warner Brothers Discovery, and who put CBS News under the unerring mismanagement of Bari Weiss.

The cage match is expected to leverage millions of subscription sign-ups, sell expensive commercials to corporate sponsors that want to curry Trump’s favor, and establish Paramount+ as a live sports competitor with Netflix and Amazon Prime.

In fact, Paramount+ has emerged as the home for all UFC events under a seven-year contract with the TKO Group. The deal has a projected annual value of $1.1bn. That agreement came almost immediately after the Trump justice department granted approval for the Ellison-owned Skydance company to purchase Paramount for $8bn.

In what appears to be an attempt to clear the way for the Federal Communication Commission’s blessing, Paramount paid a $16m personal settlement to Trump to resolve his lawsuit in which he accused CBS News’s 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris.

David Ellison declared that “the addition of UFC’s year-round must-watch events to our platforms is a major win”.

A Republican lobbyist told NBC News about the Trump political operation’s frenetic activity surrounding the UFC event: “They are raising a shit-ton of money and have used it as another unofficial vehicle for corporate donors to give and gain favor with Trump.”

The night before the match, Trump is holding a $1m-a-person dinner at the Trump National Golf Club at Potomac, Virginia, for Super Pac Maga Inc.

Since the 2024 election, Maga Inc has raised more than $342m from “the GOP’s legacy donor class and its newer crop of tech and finance billionaires,” any number of them recipients of federal contracts or reliant on federal regulation, according to Forbes Magazine .

The corporate operator of Crypto.com, for example, has donated $20m , and as part of Crypto.com’s deal with the UFC, giving Crypto branding rights on all fighters’ uniforms, it is offering “a first of its kind, $1 million $CRO bonus pool for the Fight of the Night”.

“Maybe we’ll never, ever take it down,” Trump mused in a video on his TikTok account about “the Claw”. He compared it to the Eiffel Tower, built as a temporary structure for the 1889 Paris World’s Fair.

And “maybe”, following the doctrine promulgated by his justice department, he will keep “the Claw” and “bulldoze” the Statue of Liberty, “maybe” just to prove the point that he can.

The two structures are opposing symbols of the Trump era. The Statue of Liberty was built as the project of French liberals as a gift of the people of France to commemorate the Union victory in the civil war. In Liberty’s left hand, she holds a tablet on which is written “JULY IV MDCCLXXVI”– 4 July 1776 – and at her feet lie broken shackles representing emancipation from slavery, redemption of the revolutionary promise in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”

Liberty faces Europe holding in her right hand an upraised beacon to shine for liberalism and freedom, in Lincoln’s words, the United States as “the last best hope of earth”. The funds for the statue were provided by the American public in a subscription drive launched by Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.

For that drive, the poet Emma Lazarus wrote The New Colossus, whose lines expressing the American promise to immigrants are inscribed at the statue: “Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

“The Claw” overarching the cage for brutal combat is the physical representation of Trump’s Hobbesian vision for the rest of us while he presides in the owner’s box. That cage also signifies the many cages Trump has built for immigrants, a kind of sculptural Salvadorian Cecot of his own on the South Lawn.

But, more, Trump’s cage, his regime, has been lowered on the whole country to entrap it. Bombs away again, but then not for now. “I love inflation.”

After Trump attended the third game of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden on 9 June, where he was heartily booed during the national anthem by the New York fans who are all too familiar with him and might not take well to the bulldozing of the Statue of Liberty, Joe Rogan, the original color commentator, sagely remarked: “He should stick to the UFC, they’re going to boo him everywhere else.”

Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man , Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth . He is a Guardian US columnist

Keyword – Food
Trefwoorden – Cocktails, Spirits, Food, Tomatoes, Korean food and drink
Title – Cocktail of the week: the Red Lion & Sun’s kimchi bloody mary – recipe | Cocktails | The Guardian
Author – Heath Ball
Link – Cocktail of the week: the Red Lion & Sun’s kimchi bloody mary – recipe | Cocktails | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T12:00:44.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/jun/12/kimchi-bloody-mary-recipe-cocktail-red-lion-sun

This sour-spicy twist on the classic brunch drink is very easy to recreate at home.

Kimchi bloody mary

Serves 1

For the kimchi mix (for four serves) 45g Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce 45g fresh lime juice 18g kimchi – use your favourite; ours is Kim Kong 5g Tabasco 10g gochujang

For the drink 50ml vodka – we use Grey Goose 75ml good tomato juice 30ml kimchi mix (see above and method) 1 thick slice cucumber , to garnish 1 fresh mint sprig , to garnish

First make the kimchi mix. Put everything in a blender, blitz smooth, then decant into a clean jar or bottle, seal and store in the fridge, where it’ll keep for a good couple of months.

To build the drink, fill a boston shaker with ice and leave until the shaker feels cold to the touch. Measure in the vodka, tomato juice and kimchi mix, then shake hard for 10 seconds. Strain into a highball glass filled with fresh ice, garnish with the cucumber and mint, and serve.

Heath Ball, owner, The Red Lion & Sun , London N6

Keyword – Business
Trefwoorden – Oil, Economics, Business, US-Israel war on Iran, UK news, US news, World news
Title – Oil prices plummet as Trump claims he is close to US-Iran deal | Oil | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jillian-ambrose
Link – Oil prices plummet as Trump claims he is close to US-Iran deal | Oil | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T11:07:33.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/12/global-oil-prices-trump-us-iran-deal-brent-crude-strait-of-hormuz

Global oil prices fell on Friday to lows not seen since the first week of the Iran crisis after Donald Trump claimed he was close to reaching a peace deal with Tehran.

The price of Brent crude began to tumble from about $93 a barrel in overnight trade after the US president called off further military strikes against Iran scheduled for the evening.

It traded briefly below $85 a barrel on Friday morning in fresh hope that a deal between the US and Iran could mean a reopening of the strait of Hormuz over the weekend, and was later trading at about $87.50, a 3% fall on the day.

Trump called off his plan for renewed strikeslate on Thursday, saying that talks with Iran had progressed and a peace deal could lead to the reopening of trade through the strait of Hormuz as soon as this weekend.

Tehran said it had not made a final decision but large parts of the agreement had been finalised.

“Headlines are driving the market once again, as confidence grows that an eventual deal will be struck and the strait reopens,” said Tamas Varga, an analyst at PVM Oil Associates.

The oil market slump has taken prices to the lowest seen since early March, when Iran effectively blocked shipments of oil and gas from leaving the Gulf following US-Israeli strikes on Tehran.

The chokehold on the vital trade route caused oil prices to quickly reach highs of $113 a barrel before members of the International Energy Agency coordinated a release of 400m barrels of emergency crude to calm the market. Before the war started, Brent was trading at about $70 a barrel.

Oil prices have been falling in recent weeks because of a string of factors that have helped to rebalance the market, including import cuts from China and the emergence of stealth crude exports from the Gulf via “dark transits” .

Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG, said: “The usual pesky caveats about details and signing remain of course, but if the two sides could actually come to an agreement that reopens Hormuz, that would provide the perfect boost for a stock market rally that was beginning to look more than a little tired.”

European markets followed Asia higher on Friday, with the pan-European Stoxx 600 down 1.5%.

Goldman Sachs, one of the most influential players in the global oil market, said on Friday that it still expects oil prices to average $90 a barrel in the last quarter of the year as oil flows slowly begin to normalise from August and countries refill their depleted stockpiles.

However, the US investment bank has lowered its oil price forecast for 2027 by $5 to $80 a barrel owing to higher expected supplies from the Americas and the UAE, and lower forecast demand.