Keyword – Sport
Trefwoorden – Magnus Carlsen, Chess, Sport
Title – Chess: Carlsen heads for Hong Kong while Russia unveils the next Botvinnik | Magnus Carlsen | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/leonardbarden
Link – Chess: Carlsen heads for Hong Kong while Russia unveils the next Botvinnik | Magnus Carlsen | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T07:00:38.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jun/12/chess-carlsen-heads-for-hong-kong-while-russia-unveils-the-next-botvinnik

Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, had his worst tournament result since 2015 last week when the 35-year-old ended up fourth of six in the $178,000 (£133,000) Norway Chess event at Oslo, losing four games out of 10.

There were reasons for his disappointing showing. Previous editions of the event were in distant Stavanger, far from the hometown pressures of Oslo, while Carlsen is the father of a baby son and he arrived at several games seemingly unprepared.

He often took too long over his opening moves. The fast time control was 40 moves in the first two hours, followed by a mere 10 seconds per move increment from move 41 until the end of the classical game.

Drawn games were replayed under Armageddon rules, where White had 10 minutes on the clock and Black seven minutes, but a draw on the board counted as a win for Black. Norway’s scoring system was 3 points for a classical win, 1 for a classical draw, 0 for a classical loss, 0.5 for an Armageddon win and 0 for an Armageddon loss.

Carlsen several times entered the confession booth where players could voice their thoughts to the audience. During one game, which he later lost, he summarised his day so far as: 1 Woke up. 2 Had breakfast. 3 Had a nap. 4 Felt really old.

He made a special effort against Gukesh Dommaraju, the Indian 20-year-old who now holds Carlsen’s abdicated position as world champion but has failed to make an impact. Gukesh finished sixth and last in Oslo, and there was no repeat of 2025 when Carlsen lost to the Chennai player then thumped the table in frustration.

Their final round game was vintage Carlsen, despite mishandling his clock time and playing a long ending on increment. It was a textbook demonstration of how to win with bishop v knight and an outside passed pawn. In the final position the end would be 65…Ng7 66 Kf6 Ne8+ 67 Ke7 Ng7 68 Bg4! and Black’s knight is trapped.

Gukesh’s compatriot Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, who was in last place after six rounds, enjoyed a purple patch of four straight wins which, with the aid of the scoring system, took him all the way to first.

Praggnanandhaa’s overall form is strange, though. His stellar 2025 made him one of the favourites for the 2026 Candidates, but he was never in contention there. His Oslo success only takes him to No 11 in the live ratings , with Gukesh a dismal 25th. In contrast, Carlsen has been an unchallenged No 1 for 15 years.

Carlsen’s next event will be the Fide World Team Rapid and Blitz championships, starting on 17 June in Hong Kong. The event was played in central London last year, when the blitz was won by the top-seeded WR team founded by the German chess sponsor Wadim Rosenstein.

Teams of six have mandatory women, junior, and amateur boards. WR are again the top seeds, and include the No 1 ranked woman, Hou Yifan, as well as Carlsen. Teams for the €500,000 (£430,000) event also feature three young stars who could all be the frontrunners for chess in the 2030s: Turkey’s Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, 15, Argentina’s Faustino Oro, 12, and Russia’s Roman Shogdzhiev, 11.

Erdogmus and Oro have already qualified as grandmasters, while Shogdzhiev broke an age record which has stood for 18 years last week when he scored his first of three required GM norms in the Asian Championship at Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The Russian had already narrowly missed his first norm a few months ago at Tashkent and made no mistake in Mongolia, where he was unbeaten against the six GMs he played and drew confidently against India’s experienced Krishnan Sasikiran in the final round.

Shogdzhiev now has the world GM age record of the USA’s Abhimanyu Mishra, 12 years and four months, firmly in his sights. The Russian still has about 12 months to score two more GM norms and reach an overall 2500 rating. That achievement, if it happens, will be sweeter because Oro failed to achieve his own final norm early this year and break the record in Aeroflot Moscow. Oro had to wait until his next event in Sardinia last month before qualifying for the GM title.

Shogdzhiev was born in Elista, Kalmykia, the land of Fide’s former president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. He was taught chess by his father at four, his mother gave up work to home-school him, and the family moved to Moscow to help him. This column mentioned Shogdzhiev several times in 2023-24 when he was still comparatively unknown, but was receiving special treatment, including a series of all-play-all blitz tournaments where the boy could hone his skills against established masters.

Long ago in the early 1930s, the Soviets identified Mikhail Botvinnik, then 21, as a potential world champion. He got special help, including rare trips to the West and a personal trainer. In the late 1960s, the same path was followed for Anatoly Karpov when he emerged on the world scene.

Now it seems that Russia, which currently has no players in the world top 10, plans to restore its former No 1 chess status, with Shogdzhiev as the spearhead. The 11-year-old has seven grandmaster coaches, one for every day of the week, led by the two-time Russian champion Evgeny Tomashevsky, who says of his pupil: “If you play like Roman at 11, it’s very close to a unique case.”

Next week in Hong Kong, Shogdhziev and Oro will play on the two junior boards for Chess United, the No 8 seeds, who are led by the former world champion Vishy Anand.

Shogdzhiev says of being compared to Oro: “I’m very relaxed about it. But, of course, I want to catch up and surpass … We’re not friends, we don’t see each other often. The language barrier is also a hindrance.”

Shogdzhiev says that his ultimate goal is to become world champion: “I just want to. That would be awesome!”

The three super-talents Erdogmus, Oro and Shogdzhiev are all home schooled. This is a stark contrast with Germany’s world No 6, Vincent Keymer, who had to complete his final state exams a few days before a world championship qualifier.

England’s rising talent Supratit Banerjee, 12, has to prioritise his Sutton grammar homework before spending a couple of hours on chess, while Bodhana Sivanandan, England’s top-ranked woman at 11, has achieved all her successes while a pupil at a state primary school in Harrow.

GM Danny Gormally, 50, won the silver medal on his first appearance in the European over-50 senior championship at Acqui Terme, Italy. Gormally scored 6.5/9, with his only defeat being against France’s top-seeded GM Jean-Marc Degraeve, who totalled an unbeaten 7/9. This is a fine result for Gormally, whose streams on chess are increasingly popular and who is one of England’s few full-time professional players. He had declared beforehand that his target was a place in the top three so as to qualify for free entry and expenses for the next championship in 2027.

In the European over-65 championship, which had more well-known players than the over-50, Georgia’s GM Zurab Sturua won with an unbeaten 7.5/9. GM Keith Arkell finished ninth with 6.5/9, FM Terry Chapman 14th with 6/9, and Scotland’s IM Craig Pritchett, who was second in the unofficial over-75 standings, 20th with 6/9.

Chess has almost always decided its world champion by individual matches rather than tournaments of leading contenders, and the historical record supports this. Periods with a single dominant player (Wilhelm Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, José Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Botvinnik, Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Carlsen) have been more frequent than instances where the No 1 was only primus inter pares .

When, as now, the official world champion seems inadequate for his role, criticisms of the system quickly multiply. It remains to be seen whether Sindarov, who will challenge Gukesh later this year, can be as impressive in the forthcoming title match as he was in the recent Candidates.

4028 : 1 Rb7! Rxb7 2 Nc6+ Ke8 3 Rxd8 mate. If 1…Rxd4 2 Rxd4+ or 2 Rdc1 should win on material – although in the actual game White missed numerous chances before drawing with K+R v Kv N in 108 moves.

Keyword – Life and style
Trefwoorden – Weddings, Women’s suits, Wedding dresses, Fashion, Life and style, Dresses for weddings, Skirts
Title – ‘A big pouffy dress is not really me’: the brides who got wed in a suit – long before Dua Lipa | Weddings | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/ellie-violet-bramley
Link – ‘A big pouffy dress is not really me’: the brides who got wed in a suit – long before Dua Lipa | Weddings | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-10T11:00:18.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jun/10/a-big-pouffy-dress-is-not-really-me-the-brides-who-got-wed-in-a-suit-long-before-dua-lipa

For some people, wearing a big white dress on their wedding day feels as key as the rings. For others, less so.

When Dua Lipa wore a Schiaparelli couture white skirt suit as she wed the actor Callum Turner in London last month, she joined a long line of women who have opted for a suit. Not least Bianca Jagger, whom Lipa was speculated to be emulating – the model and activist caused a stir when she got hitched to Mick Jagger in 1971, wearing a Yves Saint Laurent Le Smoking jacket and bias-cut skirt.

In a way it’s strange that it’s still considered unusual, but the concept of the traditional wedding, dress and all, still holds immense sway. So who else has chosen a suit over a dress? And were they inspired by Jagger or simply cutting their own cloth? We asked readers for stories of their wedding-day suits.

Tilly Burn, 31, works in local government , Moreton-in-Marsh

I had been toying with the idea of wearing a suit for a while – the reusability really appealed to me, and I realised that if I had a wedding dress it would hang forgotten in my wardrobe. I wanted something comfortable and, rather than just looking beautiful on my wedding day, I wanted to feel cool.

Then I saw the iconic photo of Bianca Jagger and I just thought she looked so cool; effortlessly chic and sexy. A woman wearing a suit looks so powerful! So she became my inspiration.

I tried on lots of different suits, from really expensive Vivienne Westwood ones to mid-range to much cheaper. My suit was by a brand called Me+Em, and I got the trousers tailored perfectly by a local suit-maker, Anwen Greenaway. I felt incredible.

I was married nearly three years ago at the Manor House hotel, Moreton-in-Marsh, and have worn the suit at least 15 times since. On one memorable occasion I did a great John Lennon costume with it.

Judith Winters, 55, archaeological editor, North Yorkshire

We got married in 1997 at Sheffield register office. We were indie postgraduate students and had decided on a humanist wedding – it was definitely our statement of: “We’re going to do this our way.”

I had never dreamed of the white-dress wedding but I did want to dress up for a change. So we took a trip to the fairly new Harvey Nichols store in Leeds. I chose a pale blue Nicole Farhi trouser suit that matched the occasion perfectly.

I felt amazing in it. The trousers were really comfortable and it meant I could boogie on the dance floor and pick up the small children who were at the wedding.

I have worn the suit several times since. It’s still hanging in my wardrobe, looking for that niece to pass it on to.

Justine Knowles, 57, osteopath, Birmingham

I married my husband in 2003 at the register office in Birmingham. We had already been living together for five years. We had no desire to have a traditional wedding and wanted to be quite unconventional about it.

We started with a list of things we could do without and a big, expensive white dress was top of it. I’ve never been a girly-girl and a big white pouffy dress is just not really “me”. So I thought: “Why don’t I just buy a white trouser suit like Bianca Jagger?” I said: “We could go a bit more rock’n’roll with it.” My husband played in bands and he wore a royal blue and red pinstripe Ozwald Boateng suit.

I also didn’t want to end up with something in my wardrobe that I’d never wear again. My mum had put a token effort into getting me into a “nice dress” from the high street but even she admitted I looked better in the white tuxedo trouser suit I had picked out from Principles. It fitted perfectly and was only just over £100.

I have worn it on other occasions since. It probably needs a good old dry clean.

Sarah Morley, 59, graphic designer, near Bath

I was 44 when I married my husband, Chris, at the Roman baths in Bath in September 2011. I’ve never really been a “dress” person, and I’ve always admired women like Diane Keaton, Bianca Jagger and Katharine Hepburn, who showed how stylish a suit can be. Plus, I thought a suit would reflect that I was independent, strong and stylish. But the women’s suits that I’d been looking at didn’t have that edge.

I was at a loss until the day my husband-to-be had a fitting for his suit (he’d always wanted a Savile Row suit and had thought if not now then when). While standing there as the tailor, Richard Anderson, measured him, I thought: “Damn, of course this is the answer.”

A man’s suit, fitted to me, just had that frisson – there were no alterations to make it more feminine, and underneath I wore it with a traditional men’s formal backless evening waistcoat … but with no shirt. It felt fantastic.

Judith Mendes, 61, marine biologist, Jamaica

The decision to wear a suit was a practical one resulting from a sentimental choice to get married where we met, at the coastguard base in Port Royal, Jamaica.

At the time I was a graduate student studying coral reefs and doing my fieldwork right next door to the base. One Christmas, students were invited to a party and I met my now ex-husband there.

So we decided, when we got married in 1992, that it would be nice to get married back there on a coastguard vessel. This required walking up and down a narrow gangway as well as over obstacles on the deck. Obviously a big pouffy dress was just not going to work.

I got that suit off the rack. The shawl collar was made of lace and it had sequins and beading that sparkled in the sunlight. I really felt very beautiful in it.

Helga Saint Pierre, 71, retired teacher, Halifax, Canada

We were students with little money when we got married in the 70s. We planned a simple secular celebration in Canada with university friends, a homemade meal and cake. The only splurge was champagne.

I wore a dove-grey suit that I’d bought off the rack and a small lily of the valley antique brooch that had been my first Christmas present from my soon-to-be husband. All in all, there was no spectacle and very little cost: $100 in 1976.

Maxine O’Neill, 61, location coordinator, Harrow

It was 1993. My husband and I both worked in the record industry and were not the kind of people who would wear traditional suits or meringue-style wedding dresses; it just wasn’t really “us”.

So my lovely mother-in-law, Belle, who was a dressmaker, made me a suit in cream silk, and I made a hat out of a feather boa. We got married in Newry, northern Ireland, where my husband is from.

I don’t have the suit any more because I left it at my parents for safekeeping and they moved and sent it to charity by accident. But I’ve still got the hat.

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 – Wellness
Trefwoorden – Well actually, Life and style, Menopause, US news, Women, Women’s health
Title – How do I know when I’ve hit perimenopause? | Well actually | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/keren-landman
Link – How do I know when I’ve hit perimenopause? | Well actually | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-07T16:00:02.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/global/2026/jun/07/perimenopause-diagnose-how-to

There’s a special frisson to period changes in your mid-forties. Every deviation from your usual pattern can feel like a harbinger of the menopause transition, also known as perimenopause.

One might spend years staring at their underwear, wondering: am I or aren’t I?

Unfortunately, early perimenopause is characterized by uncertainty. That’s because the transition happens in fits and starts, not all at once.

In comparison, menopause itself is just a moment – specifically, the moment 12 months after a person’s last period. It’s only diagnosed retrospectively, long after their ovaries have stopped making estrogen, which drives the menstrual cycle.

It can be really helpful to know whether you’ve started perimenopause. If your symptoms are derailing work or relationships, a diagnosis opens the door to getting treatment. Here’s what you need to know.

What does perimenopause look like?

On average, perimenopause starts around age 47. A changing menstrual cycle usually heralds its arrival, “and the biggest change women will notice is they skip a cycle”, says Nanette Santoro, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and menopause treatment researcher at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine.

The first symptoms start an average of four years before the last period, but it’s different for each individual; your periods may start changing months before menopause, or a decade before.

During early perimenopause, periods aren’t as regular, and are often late or early by at least a week. Period flow might be lighter or heavier, and about 40% of women have hot flashes.

Later in perimenopause, periods are even less frequent – sometimes as much as two months apart. Hot flashes peak at this stage, showing up in about 80% of women. Additional symptoms often enter the picture, including depression, sleep disturbances, and genital and bladder symptoms like vaginal dryness and vulvar burning or itching.

Waning estrogen levels are the root cause of these symptoms. In midlife, after decades of releasing estrogen into the bloodstream on a more-or-less regular schedule, the ovaries start to slow down. That translates to less estrogen in the body at less predictable intervals.

Less estrogen means less period flow, because it plays a major role in regular menstruation by growing the uterine lining that gets sloughed off during periods. Estrogen also helps regulate the parts of the nervous system that control temperature and sleep, so dwindling levels lead to hot flashes and sleep problems. It also controls the cells that maintain elasticity and blood flow in the genitals, leading to reduced resilience, lubrication and sensation.

If your periods have stopped due to removal or medical alteration of the uterus, chemotherapy, use of a hormonal IUD or other progesterone-only contraceptives, or other conditions that disrupt regular cycles, you won’t detect flow changes. But other changes will be noticeable. (A blood test can be useful in these situations; more on that below.)

How do I know if I’m in perimenopause?

If your symptoms are pretty typical and you’re over 45, that’s usually enough data for a clinician to make a diagnosis.

“If you’re 49 and you’re telling me you’ve got hot flashes or you’re having these certain changes, I don’t need a blood test to tell you that this is perimenopause,” Santoro says.

Estrogen tests exist, but an abnormal result isn’t that informative, says Lauren Streicher, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and menopause researcher, at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. The tests are accurate, but estrogen levels fluctuate wildly during perimenopause. If the level is normal, you might just be catching an upswing or the beginning of a crash – and a low level could also be normal at various times in a person’s life.

Blood tests can be helpful if your symptoms aren’t typical, or if you’re experiencing them earlier than expected. Thyroid problems and diabetes can also begin at midlife and can lead to cycle irregularity, hot flashes and mood swings, so it’s worth ascertaining the true cause.

For particularly confusing scenarios – for example, if you have an IUD and ambiguous symptoms – the blood test for anti-Mullerian hormone (which tells you approximately how many eggs you have left) can help determine whether you are near menopause, but it isn’t useful for every age group and situation.

Several companies sell direct-to-consumer test kits that enable people to check hormone levels at home, but both Streicher and Santoro say they are not good enough predictors of menopause to be particularly useful.

I think I’m in perimenopause – do I need to do anything?

If you have any of the core menopause symptoms, see a menopause specialist about treatment. Hormonal and non-hormonal therapies are available for managing most menopause symptoms, but they’re underprescribed. An OB-GYN with menopause expertise or a primary care clinician with training in treating menopause symptoms can help determine what could work best for you.

While not directly related to menopause, lifestyle basics become particularly important in midlife; Santoro recommends getting good sleep, quitting smoking, exercising regularly and eating healthy, high-fiber foods.

Additionally, get checked regularly for common midlife medical conditions, like high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes. “If you’ve got hypertension in your family and you inherited those genes, they’re coming after you at this time of life,” says Santoro.

Keren Landman MD is an independent health reporter who is also trained as an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist, with experience serving as a disease detective at the CDC and conducting HIV and malaria research in resource-poor countries. Her public health newsletter is called Landmansplained

Keyword – Television & radio
Trefwoorden – Documentary, Dinosaurs, Evolution, Factual TV, Television, Television & radio, Culture, NBC
Title – ‘Life has always managed to crawl through’: docuseries takes us back to mass extinction events | Documentary | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/vivian-ho
Link – ‘Life has always managed to crawl through’: docuseries takes us back to mass extinction events | Documentary | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-11T09:00:18.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/jun/11/surviving-earth-docuseries-mass-extinction

A lmost three decades have passed since producer Tim Haines reimagined natural history with Walking with Dinosaurs , using CGI and animatronics to bring to life the beasts that roamed these lands millions of years ago.

With his latest project, Haines is applying that same visual magic to look even further into the past. Surviving Earth, a docuseries premiering on Thursday on NBC , explores eight mass extinction events going back 450m years through the lives – and eventual annihilation – of the creatures that preceded or existed alongside the dinosaurs.

But what is essentially a series on death is actually a series on life, or really, the resilience of it – “how life bounced back” from the volcanic eruptions, flooding and drought that have repeatedly wiped out nearly all lifeforms, Haines told the Guardian.

“The biggest message of the show is that the Earth is an incredibly changeable place and life has evolved on it, which means that life has evolved to cope with change,” Haines said. “No matter what the Earth has tried to do, life has always managed to crawl through it and come out the other side stronger.”

Haines worked with more than 300 scientists to breathe life into the creatures in Surviving Earth, consulting with paleontologists and paleoclimatologists from around the world over the course of three and a half years. While CGI technology and the visual details of CGI animation are better now than they were in 1999, when Walking with Dinosaurs premiered on the BBC, the process of putting the series together was not too different, Haines said. A paleo artist designed the animals while film crews determined the locations to shoot the backgrounds, some of which, like a forest in Chile with monkey puzzle trees, Haines had used in Walking with Dinosaurs. The tech team then built landscapes based on the background shots and detailed models of the animals off of the paleo artist’s designs before animating the creatures and compositing everything together.

There will always be some level of debate over what the fossils and paleological discoveries of past centuries tell us about prehistoric life – what these animals looked like, how they moved and what they ate – and because no one alive has witnessed these animals, their renderings will always be “what the scientists think is the best guess”, Haines said. “We never know when we’re right, but we know when we’re wrong.”

For example, the gorgonopsians of the first episode are reptilian apex predators who are also the early distant relatives of mammals. “They’re kind of half mammal, half reptile, and we had a huge discussion about whether there should be any hair on them,” Haines said. “I really wanted them to have whiskers.” Haines was ultimately overruled by a scientist who described them as the “really” early distant relatives of mammals and in the first episode, they appear similar to modern-day Komodo dragons.

With any nature program, showrunners have to find a way to endear to the human audience to animals that cannot verbally communicate with them, but stopping just short of anthropomorphization. “We want you to emotionally connect to their stories, but we don’t want to start calling them Eric and Sonia,” Haines said. An added challenge that Haines faces this time around is that while the least paleontologically inclined layperson is somewhat familiar with dinosaurs, it is unlikely that they have even heard of the creatures featured in Surviving Earth.

But a good narrative can cross any barrier. “The storytelling we’re using is universal,” Haines said. “It is parents and babies, it is fathers and mothers, predators and prey … they are creatures living their lives, and what natural history shows you is that you can get some very rich stories out of that.”

The first episode ends by addressing the prehistoric mastodon in the room – that given the current climate crisis, it’s easy to imagine we’re in the midst of an imminent extinction event as well. To borrow a phrase from another blockbuster franchise about prehistoric creatures, Surviving Earth’s overall message of optimism is that life finds a way. That message feels a bit more daunting when you realize that this does not mean you and your species will survive. Scientists estimate that something like 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct and humans could go the same way too.

But as narrator Josh Goodman points out in the first episode, over scenes of cars, cities and modern life, today’s levels of carbon dioxide, the primary driver of mass extinctions, are not high when compared with the history of life on Earth – which means that human beings aren’t the only species to have caused the climate crisis. “Other types of life have changed the Earth as well,” Haines said. “As a form of life, we’re not the first ones to change the climate, but we are the first ones who know we’re doing it.”

The concern lies in the speed at which humans are driving the climate crisis. But as the first species to be aware of such, Haines said, humans also have the unique opportunity to be the first species to stop the damage and find a way to make the Earth continue to be inhabitable for them.

“The program isn’t here to lecture anyone or tell anyone what to do, but it’s blindingly obvious that if the Earth changes, you have to acknowledge that and change with it as much as you can,” Haines said. “And if you’re responsible for changing it, you’d be wise to try and reduce the amount you change it by.”

Surviving Earth begins on NBC on 11 June with dates in the UK and Australia to be announced

Keyword – Society
Trefwoorden – Autism, Stem cells, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Children’s health, Medical research, Health policy, Health, Children, Science, US news
Title – Autistic children injected with unapproved stem cell treatments supported by RFK Jr | Autism | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/edpilkington
Link – Autistic children injected with unapproved stem cell treatments supported by RFK Jr | Autism | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T11:00:45.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/12/autism-stem-cell-infusions-rfk-jr

Autistic children as young as 18 months old are being injected with human stem cells derived from umbilical cords in unapproved, unproven and potentially harmful “treatments” that scientists warn are proliferating across the US under the active encouragement of the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr .

Clinics in Florida, Texas and other states are selling what they bill as “regenerative medicine” to families with autistic children who have intensive care needs. Parents who have taken their children through the process talked to the Guardian about their hopes and fears for a therapy that appears to be gaining ground in the US.

The procedure, which can involve the child being sedated with ketamine before receiving intravenous doses of millions of stem cells, costs up to $20,000 each treatment. Families are often advised to return for regular top-ups.

Profoundly stressed parents are being wooed to the clinics with promises that a high-dose infusion of umbilical cord stem cells can lead to dramatic improvements in their children’s ability to speak, socialise, or avoid aggressive or self-harming behaviour. Yet there is no scientific evidence that the procedure works – the most comprehensive clinical trial staged so far, a placebo experiment conducted by Duke University , found insignificant benefits for most of the 180 children tested.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) directly cautions parents that if they are being offered stem cell treatments outside an approved clinical trial, “you are likely being deceived and offered a product illegally”.

Though the Duke trial found minimal safety concerns with properly administered stem cell infusions, authorities continue to highlight the potential risks of under-regulated therapies.

The FDA warned in 2021 that it had received reports of complications following applications of umbilical cord stem cells and other related unapproved products leading to “blindness, tumor formation, infections and more”.

In his 16 months as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services within the Trump administration, Kennedy has undercut established scientific endeavors. He has fired thousands of federal health officials, dismissed longstanding scientific advisers , defunded $31m in autism-related research and attempted to shrink the recommended list of childhood vaccinations.

At the same time, largely unnoticed, he has given his backing to alternative health providers moving to fill the gap. Kennedy appeared by video link at the first two annual summits held in San Diego by Autism Health , a leading advocate of stem cell infusions for autistic kids.

At the summit last year, he told the audience that “your issue is no longer on the fringe”. At this year’s gathering in April, he promised to “create opportunities that extend across a lifetime” and to work with the stem cell providers “to drive solutions together”.

Those providers included Mike Chan, a Malaysian physician who presented the San Diego summit with a protocol that he practices from his clinic in Bangkok. It involves injecting autistic children in the buttocks with high doses of stem cells extracted from slaughtered sheep and rabbits.

“Man himself is an animal, the most intelligent animal. There are hundreds of drugs from animals,” Chan told the Guardian in an email exchange.

Kennedy described the organiser of the San Diego summit, Tracy Slepcevic, as a “good friend”. In January, the health secretary appointed her to his remodelled Autism Coordinating Committee, which guides federally funded autism research.

Slepcevic is the mother of an autistic son and a proponent of alternative therapies for autism including stem cell infusions. She will be appearing alongside Eric Trump and Del Bigtree, the influential anti-vaxxer who was communications director of Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign, on stage at the Christian nationalist ReAwaken America reunion in Tulsa next week.

Slepcevic unveiled at the San Diego summit a new experiment that involves injecting 120 autistic children with umbilical cord stem cells. The effort will begin next month in partnership with a major clinic in Tijuana in Mexico, a country which has historically taken a looser approach to stem cell regulation than the US.

Slepcevic has not responded to a request for comment from the Guardian.

Ed Clay, a former MMA fighter who founded the Cellular Performance Institute (CPI) in Tijuana, told the Guardian that the clinical trial would be free to families and would be fully licensed under the Mexican federal health authority, Cofepris.

He said he had devised the exercise as a clinical trial with expert neurologists and paediatricians serving as investigators in the full-service hospital his company runs in Mexico, with the CPI investing about $2m to conduct it.

His team includes, he said, “21 PhD scientists and 42 medical doctors, including PhDs from institutions such as Harvard, Yale, MIT and Stanford”.

Clay said the clinical trial could be imported at later stages to Nashville and other US sites under full FDA licensing if early results in Mexico were promising.

While the CPI prides itself at using state-of-the-art medical technology, other stem cell providers now moving into autism treatment do not hold such standards. Clay said: “I would say our biggest competitor right now for CPI is the scammer and the many fly-by-night clinics operating in this space.”

Kennedy has said that he does not want to see a “wild west” of alternative therapies developing in the US. Yet in the same breath, he conceded that opening up the country to such providers will lead to “charlatans and people who have bad results, but ultimately you can’t prevent that”. The Guardian has contacted the US health department and the FDA but did not receive a reply.

Among the newly emboldened raft of stem cell providers targeting autistic kids is Better Stem, a Miami-based company run by Greice Murphy. She describes herself as an entrepreneur whose other ventures include the suggestively named “Biatch”, a range of “artfully crafted tequilas made for the woman’s palate”, and a Miami stem cell clinic offering infusions to address hair loss and erectile dysfunction. The Guardian contacted Murphy for comment, but she did not respond prior to publication.

Two months ago, she moved into the business of offering umbilical cord stem cell infusions for autistic children. Families are charged $300 for an initial consultation, followed by up to $15,000 per infusion.

Better Stem claims to be the first company in the US offering “legal, compliant access” to stem cell therapies under the “right-to-try” law signed by Donald Trump in 2018 during his first presidency. The clinic tells prospective clients that the legislation allows patients with a debilitating condition that has no cure, such as autism, to be treated with unapproved drugs.

In fact, the Right to Try Act is specifically limited to patients who are terminally ill and have been diagnosed with a “life-threatening disease or condition”. Autism does not fall under that definition.

“Technically speaking, the federal Right to Try Act covers terminal diseases and is not applicable to non life-threatening conditions even if they have no cure,” said Jeff Cohen, an expert in health law at the Florida Healthcare Law Firm.

Among the families who are being drawn to stem cell therapies are Taylor and her four-year-old son, Ollie, from Utah. At the end of this month, they will travel to Florida for an infusion of umbilical stem cells for Ollie, who is non-speaking and has been diagnosed with autism with high support needs.

The procedure will cost Taylor $12,500, which she has raised largely through donations from family and friends. She told the Guardian that her heart’s wish was that people would come to understand “the weight these children carry in a world that was not designed to help them thrive”.

She has had family members chide her for seeking alternative therapies, which they have described as “a little bit crazy”.

Her view, though, is that “I have to at least try. For those who pass judgment, I hope they come to understand the lengths we must go, simply because no one else will.”

Keyword – Film
Trefwoorden – Horror films, Film, Film industry, Culture
Title – Obsessed with Obsession: how a low-budget horror changed the game in Hollywood | Horror films | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jesse-hassenger
Link – Obsessed with Obsession: how a low-budget horror changed the game in Hollywood | Horror films | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T14:00:42.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/12/obsession-horror-film-hollywood

T his week, the independently produced horror movie Obsession , which cost either $750,000 or $15m depending on whether you count its actual budget or acquisition cost for its studio, officially passed the latest Star Wars movie at the box office (the film has so far made over $165m in the US alone).

It’s not a coincidence that this happened on a weekday. Obsession’s box office power lies not just in its astonishing weekend-to-weekend strength (including the virtually unheard-of trajectory of increasing grosses on its second and third weekends) but in its powerhouse weekday grosses. This past week, as it approached the one-month mark in theaters, it was averaging over $4m on its weekdays. At the same point in the run of Avengers: Endgame, that movie – the biggest summer blockbuster of modern times – was pulling in half as much.

When all is said and done, Obsession will (probably) not make as much as Avengers: Endgame, though its return on investment is far more astronomical. But this intimate and occasionally gruesome horror movie about a meek twentysomething named Bear (Michael Johnston) who wishes for the devotion of his cool-girl crush Nikki (breakout performer Inde Navarrette) only to accidentally curse her with a form of unnerving possession, has the kind of cultural cachet needed to break through in a post-pandemic, post-superhero moviegoing landscape.

I saw this first-hand venturing out to see the movie a second time with a paying crowd on Thursday. Normally at a Times Square multiplex in Manhattan, the big Thursday-night draw would be a previewing blockbuster officially opening on Friday, like Steven Spielberg’s new film Disclosure Day; for a movie that’s already been out for a week or more, Thursday is typically its lowest-grossing day of the week. But the 300-seat auditorium used for a 7.30pm showing of Obsession was nearly full, just as similar shows across the city had been all week.

As a critic, I first saw Obsession in a small screening room, and though its creepiness, shocks, and mordant laughs played fine to an audience of a dozen or so journalists – I gave it a positive pre-release notice – the full audience experience felt different. Waves of laughter and murmurs of discomfort crested through the crowd, and though the movie’s particularly shadowy lighting made it difficult to see, I did catch plenty of viewers with their hands on their faces, aghast as Bear’s wish (and his passivity) causes Nikki (or, more accurately, her puppeted body) to become increasingly unhinged. Multiple pairs, seemingly couples, covered each other’s eyes in affectionate mutual quasi-agony. When the movie reached its grim-but-fair conclusion and rolled its credits, chatter quickly rose, overtaking the usual quiet shuffling toward the exit.

Outside the auditorium, I spoke with a few groups about their decision to come out on a Thursday night, temporarily aligning them more with all-hours obsessives like me rather than the typical moviegoer who might attend one every few months, if that. Some of them were indeed cinephiles, including a young woman who had already seen the film and organized a group of uninitiated friends to come check it out. As such, the group framed the specific weeknight outing as more of a convenience, an offshoot of trying to find a time that worked for everyone. That itself seems telling about the force of the film’s buzz: this was enough of an event to coordinate the schedules of half a dozen presumably busy twentysomethings. Clearly this wasn’t a normal occurrence; one of those friends hadn’t seen a movie in theaters since last year’s A24 comedy Friendship.

So what motivated everyone to make this specific trip happen, uniting AMC A-listers with once-a-year types? Almost everyone cited buzz about the film, both from real-life friends and online discourse. One guy specifically pointed to news about the movie delaying its streaming premiere indefinitely creating the impetus to not just wait for home viewing. At the same time, other forms of home viewing seemed to goose interest, too, as others mentioned TikTok clips, specifically of a scene where Nikki reacts to Bear lightly pressing her on a personal question during a date with an escalating, panicked “no, no, no, no, NO, NO, NOOO” (in a scene that has reportedly led fans to swarm the real location to recreate).

Another group of young women described their own range of reactions to Nikki’s wish-forced behavior: “At least I’ll never be that crazy,” followed by “am I that crazy?” and then “I feel like I’ve been that crazy.” Obviously part of the movie’s appeal is the social lens of watching this woman fly off the handle, though reactions like these, framing it as a degree of craziness, raise the question of whether viewers really think of Nikki as a prisoner within her own body, possessed by a force attempting to inhabit a devoted human relationship, or simply performing an outsized version of typical relationship possessiveness. That queasy mix of relatability and potential caricature probably only helps the movie transcend its horror roots and become more of a social conversation piece. One woman had heard certain details about the film beforehand – not necessarily spoilers, she clarified, but discussion points, especially about Bear and how sympathetic he was intended to be in the film. Watching the movie, she did notice laughter that she thought flirted with feeling inappropriate, like certain moments were landing more like dark comedy than they should have.

I don’t disagree; Obsession is clearly intended to have blackly funny moments, but a second viewing did underline just how same-y some of its scenes are in walking that line between abject horror and cruel-fate humor, as Bear reacts with the same frozen-body, stammering-language inability to control what he’s conjured. Yet in watching and talking to audience members, it became clearer how a relatively straightforward monkey’s-paw story, even one that flirts with repetition, contains enough grabby ambiguity to make the movie a decide-for-yourself must-see. Writer-director Curry Barker has even spoken about mixing different takes in an early, pre-wish scene, to intentionally muddy the question of whether Nikki returned Bear’s feelings before she loses control of her faculties.

Obsession’s success probably also speaks to the lack of movies attempting to replicate some form of the twentysomething experience – this was a young-skewing crowd even by Times Square standards – even in a heightened way. Consider that Obsession’s fellow surprise smash Backrooms , which has followed a more typical big-opening-big-drop trajectory, was directed by a 20-year-old, fueled by a highly online phenomenon, and yet is still about characters closer to middle age. Hollywood is forever chasing crowd-pleasing feel-great all-demographic experiences, and movies like Project Hail Mary prove that this can still be a lucrative market. But a movie like Obsession creates a rarer impulse: to go and watch even if it makes you want to look away.

Keyword – Life and style
Trefwoorden – Pets, Life and style
Title – Tell us: what’s the weirdest thing your pet has tried to eat? | Pets | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/guardian-community-team
Link – Tell us: what’s the weirdest thing your pet has tried to eat? | Pets | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-05T13:41:26.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jun/05/tell-us-whats-the-weirdest-thing-your-pet-has-tried-to-eat

Socks, trainers, sofas, cushions, the entire contents of your fridge – the list of things dogs will attempt to eat their way through is endless. And sometimes it gets weird. We want to hear from people who’ve witnessed their dog try to chew their way through the remarkable, the bizarre, the seemingly impossible – and lived to bark the tale! Pictures are a must.

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Keyword – Art and design
Trefwoorden – David Hockney, Art and design, Culture, UK news, World news
Title – David Hockney – a life in pictures | David Hockney | The Guardian
Author –
Link – David Hockney – a life in pictures | David Hockney | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T10:18:42.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2026/jun/12/david-hockney-a-life-in-pictures