Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – Colombia, Americas, World news
Title – Ghost of far-right paramilitaries hovers over Colombia’s presidential runoff vote | Colombia | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/tiago-rogero
Link – Ghost of far-right paramilitaries hovers over Colombia’s presidential runoff vote | Colombia | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T12:00:01.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/20/colombia-presidential-election-paramilitary-militia-runoff

W hoever wins Sunday’s presidential runoff vote in Colombia , the country’s next leader will have a personal history intertwined with one of the criminal forces at the heart of a decades-long armed conflict that claimed nearly half a million lives.

The lives of Iván Cepeda and Abelardo de la Espriella have, in very different ways, been shaped by their relationship with Colombia’s paramilitaries – private armies originally established by rightwing landowners, drug traffickers, businessmen, mining magnates and politicians to fight leftwing guerrilla groups.

De la Espriella, 47, a far-right admirer of Donald Trump and self-styled outsider, launched his legal career defending paramilitary leaders.

Cepeda’s father was assassinated by army officers linked to a paramilitary group, and the 63-year-old leftwing senator forged his public career as a human rights activist exposing those groups’ crimes.

The winner will take office on 7 August and inherit the country’s worst violence since the landmark 2016 peace agreement between the government and most of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

The two candidates advocate opposing strategies for dealing with the surge in crime.

De la Espriella, who has led the polls since defeating Cepeda in the first round , supports a return to the kind of full-scale military confrontation that has done little to curb violence in the past.

Cepeda, who is backed by the current president, argues for a modified continuation of Gustavo Petro’s strategy of “total peace”. Petro, who is barred by the constitution from running for re-election, has proposed negotiations to dismantle all armed groups, including leftwing rebels, paramilitaries and organised crime factions. Violence has surged, however, and security experts say the strategy has broadly failed .

Sunday’s vote “reflects the reality of a country shaped by drug trafficking,” said Gustavo Duncan, one of Colombia’s leading scholars of paramilitarism.

Paramilitary groups were first formed in the 1960s in response to the emergence of leftwing rebel groups and often operated with the collusion of the Colombian military. By the 1980s, as the cocaine trade grew central to the conflict, the paramilitaries also protected trafficking routes and drug lords such as Pablo Escobar . A major faction later broke with the Medellín cartel leader, helped bring about his downfall and used the resulting power vacuum to expand.

“At its peak, these groups had more than 30,000 members. It was an enormous army spread throughout the country,” Duncan said.

In the 1990s, the paramilitaries “became notorious for massacres” – choreographed displays of extreme violence designed to terrorise entire communities – said María Teresa Ronderos, the author of major investigations on the private militias.

Their fighters would enter towns and rural communities and kill anyone suspected of sympathising with or providing information to the guerrillas, including peasants, Indigenous people and Afro-Colombians. They also carried out what they called social cleansing, targeting people deemed undesirable by paramilitary far-right culture, including LGBTQ+ people, sex workers, homeless people and drug users.

Massacres frequently involved extreme forms of torture, including rape followed by murder, dismemberment of victims with chainsaws while they were still alive and decapitations carried out with axes.

In 1994, paramilitaries and members of the army murdered the senator Manuel Cepeda as part of a campaign against the communist Patriotic Union party. Iván Cepeda, then a university professor, came across his father’s car riddled with bullet holes.

In the early 2000s, the younger Cepeda founded and led a movement representing the death squads’ victims, investigating cases and visiting prisons to collect testimony from former paramilitaries.

At the same time, De la Espriella was rising to prominence as a lawyer defending leaders of the country’s main paramilitary organisation, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC by its Spanish acronym), while the group negotiated its demobilisation.

The AUC no longer exists, but the Gulf Clan, widely regarded as Colombia’s largest and most powerful illegal armed group, was founded by its former members and inherited much of its territory and many of its trafficking routes.

Cepeda filed a criminal complaint against De la Espriella last week, alleging that he had not only represented the AUC in court in the past but had also acted as a “possible recruiter” for the group through a foundation he created.

De la Espriella dismissed the accusations as a “smokescreen” and hit back by claiming that Cepeda maintained a “narco-political” alliance with guerrilla groups in order to secure votes.

Cepeda is regarded as the main architect of Petro’s “total peace” plan. He has repeatedly denied any links to rebel groups, but the fact that Petro was once a guerrilla has been heavily exploited in De la Espriella’s campaign.

After De la Espriella emerged ahead in the first round, Trump announced on social media that he was backing the lawyer, while calling Cepeda a “radical left Marxist”.

Eleven Democratic members of the US Congress sent a letter to the Trump administration last week arguing that “rather than campaigning for [De la Espriella], our government should be examining his ties” to the AUC – which the Washington designated a foreign terrorist organisation in 2001 and which “was responsible for numerous massacres, assassinations and forced disappearances, as well as torture, forced displacement, sexual violence, collusion with state/security and political actors, and large-scale drug trafficking to the US and other countries”.

They said De la Espriella had allegedly “maintained close relations with multiple leaders” of the AUC.

De la Espriella did not respond to requests for comment. He has vehemently denied committing any crime or illegal act in relation to the paramilitaries, insisting that his contact with them was strictly professional in his capacity as a criminal lawyer.

For his supporters, his past seems to matter less than his promises of an iron-fist approach to crime, including building private “mega-prisons” in the Amazon and “wiping out” criminals like “cockroaches and rats” .

The past year has been the most violent since the 2016 peace agreement, with a surge in armed group attacks, homicides, kidnappings, forced displacement and massacres . The rightwing senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot during a campaign event last year and later died.

Security experts say current indicators are far below the extraordinarily high levels of violence recorded in the decades before the peace deal, but many Colombians feel the country has returned to its “worst moments”.

“One reason there is so much criminality in Colombia is that people rob, kill and then a few days later they are back on the streets,” said Lucy Vélez, a 38-year-old graphic designer from the western city of Manizales. “So I do like the idea of being tougher on crime.”

A former businesswoman who now works as a driver in Bogotá and asked to be identified only as Marcela does not see De la Espriella’s alleged associations with the paramilitaries as a problem. “The paramilitaries kept the guerrillas in check,” she said. “When there were too many thieves or too much crime, the paramilitaries would carry out what they called ‘social cleansing’ … Unfortunately, they have served a purpose in some ways.”

An investigation by the Colombian news outlet La Silla Vacía reported that among the minority shareholders of De la Espriella’s businesses – which include rum, wine, clothing and real estate ventures – are relatives of the convicted paramilitary leader Hugues Rodríguez Fuentes, who was known within the AUC as “Comandante Barbie” .

“That does not mean he is personally a criminal [but] De la Espriella comes from the heart of those narco-paramilitary networks,” said Ronderos.

“Colombia has spent years trying to dismantle that terrible war , and he talks about ‘disembowelling’ leftists and killing criminals,” she said. “To return to that after everything it cost us is deeply sad.”

Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – South Africa, Ultrarunning, World news, Africa, Sport
Title – Sweat, tears and camaraderie as 20,000 runners take on world’s largest ultramarathon | South Africa | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/rachel-savage
Link – Sweat, tears and camaraderie as 20,000 runners take on world’s largest ultramarathon | South Africa | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T08:00:24.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/21/comrades-ultramarathon-south-africa

I n the early morning dark, thousands of runners waited, jostling with anticipation. South Africa’s national anthem rang out. Then the haunting swell of Shosholoza , first sung by Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa’s goldmines. Finally, that unmistakable, spine-tingling piano: Chariots of Fire.

Runners gather before the start of the marathon

5am. A cock crowed. A gun fired. The runners streamed across the start line of the Comrades marathon.

The Comrades is the world’s oldest and largest ultramarathon. The first race in 1921 took the runners 54.6 miles (88km) from Pietermaritzburg downhill to Durban on the coast. The following year the race was run in reverse, uphill back to Pietermaritzburg, and it has changed direction every year since, pausing only for the second world war and the Covid-19 pandemic. Over its 99 iterations, the route distance has averaged just under 55 miles.

L-R clockwise: Athletes gather before the start of the Comrades Marathon in Durban; supporters gathered to watch the start of the 2026 Comrades; the race begins

That first year, 34 runners, all white men, lined up for the race, conceived by the first world war veteran Vic Clapham as a way of honouring his fallen comrades. Sixteen of them finished. More than a century later, on 14 June, more than 20,000 people stood outside Durban city hall, hoping to make it to Pietermaritzburg before the 12-hour cutoff.

What started as an all-white, all-male test of physical endurance has become part of the fabric of South African life, something so ordinary that you would be hard-pressed to find someone here who does not know a Comrades finisher.

Running clubs bus in from all over the country. Security guards and shop workers line up alongside bankers and celebrities. And, for one day, every June, South Africa’s searing racial inequality seems to melt away.

Nomusa Shelembe, from the Run Alex team, passes through Pinetown

You hear it all around the race: every runner has their reason. William Seleka started running in March 2025, amid a deep depression after the break-up of his marriage. “I thought for me to stay alive, I had to keep myself busy,” he said, as he stretched before a run, outside the single room he rents in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra, two weeks before Comrades.

Seleka was persuaded to join Run Alex , a local club. Six months later, having never run further than 10km, he finished a 50km ultramarathon, from Johannesburg to Pretoria.

“I used to hear people saying, ‘This is Comrades, you are running from Durban to Pietermaritzburg.’ I said, ‘It’s insane, you can’t do that.’ But now we are facing reality – I’m doing that as well,” he said.

To train, Seleka ran at least 10km every weekday evening, after a day spent repairing appliances for fridge-maker Smeg. On Saturdays, the 38-year-old would run up to 50km with Run Alex. “Recovery,” he said, was a half marathon.

Seleka said he wanted to create a legacy for his 15-year-old son and three-year-old daughter. “I can’t wait to have my red cap and the medal to show my kids.”

William Seleka

On a Comrades “up run”, runners must climb about 1,800 metres (5,900ft) on their journey to Pietermaritzburg, 650 metres higher than Durban . This year, runners started in three batches, at 5am, 5.15am and 5.30am.

About 12 miles into the race, the sun began peeking above the horizon in Pinetown, a suburb above Durban. “Let’s go! Let’s go!” spectators shouted. Seleka appeared up the hill. “Good to see you,” he beamed, sweeping in for a glancing hug.

In 1923, Frances Hayward became the first woman to start and finish the Comrades. In 1935, Robert Mtshali was the first black man to complete the race. Nonetheless, with only white men officially allowed to compete, the Comrades seemed fated to stay what most ultramarathons remain today – a niche, elite pursuit.

L-R: A runner receives a leg-rub from a volunteer along the route in Camperdown; spectators cheer on the runners in Pinetown

That changed in 1975 when the privately run race was desegregated and also opened to women. South Africa at the time had been shut out of all major global sporting events in response to apartheid, driving the sport-obsessed country mad.

“Some people in the sporting world in South Africa had the idea that if they start desegregating some minor sports … it’ll show that South Africa is not as backward and racist a place as it’s made out to be,” said Ryan Lenora Brown, a journalist who has been covering the Comrades since 2017.

Then there was the introduction of TV in 1976. The single, heavily censored state channel started showing Comrades highlights. In 1986, it broadcast the entire, all-day race in full.

South Africans were mesmerised by the sight of delivery driver Hoseah Tjale going toe to toe with Bruce Fordyce, a professional athlete who won eight Comrades in a row from 1981.

Runners fill the road from Durban to Pietermaritzburg

“You would have these scenes in the 1980s of a white runner sharing a bottle of water with a black runner, which was such a small gesture, but such a huge thing in that society that was so divided,” said Brown.

Apartheid had forced black South Africans on to the lowest rungs of society. But Tjale and Sam Tshabalala, the first black man to win Comrades in 1989, were proof that they could do anything.

L-R: Supporters take photos with a runner in Pinetown; spectators line the route out of Camperdown

As the runners left Durban, they wound their way upwards through lush trees, open fields and small towns. Families braaied by the roadside. Running clubs handed out supplies from gazebos pumping out music. Everybody was cheering the runners, willing them on.

By the halfway point, most were walking up each hill. At the Run Alex aid station, Seleka changed into a spare pair of shoes. It was the wrong choice: by 34 miles he was in agony. The only way he could distract himself from the pain was by counting or singing.

William Seleka near Camperdown

“I’m not a person who goes to church,” he said. “But on that day I started to sing. I don’t know where those songs came from.”

Around 46 miles, Seleka found another Run Alex aid station and put on a clubmate’s shoes. He pushed on.

The light turned golden. Some runners danced across the finish line, arms outstretched. Some were arm in arm, complete strangers who had become friends on the road. Many stumbled over the line, or collapsed and were carried away on waiting stretchers.

Darkness began to fall. Guns were fired for the first 12-hour cutoff, and then the second. Around a third of Comrades runners finish in the final hour .

An official prepares to fire the shot to mark the final 12-hour cutoff

South Africa’s pacing “buses” are unique in long-distance running for their size and camaraderie, racers singing and chanting, led by a metronomic pacer, known as a bus driver. Perhaps the biggest cheer of the day came when the final 12-hour bus driver, Shahieda Thungo , crossed the line at 11:56:34, carrying dozens of runners home with her. About 91% of runners finished this year, according to The Running Mann blog.

L-R: Jenny Da Silva misses the 12-hour cutoff time by seconds; an exhausted runner rests shortly after crossing the finish line in Pietermaritzburg

Then there were those who just missed the cutoff. At exactly 5.30pm, a wall of people stepped across the finish line. Two women ran into them, seconds short. One, wearing the green bib of a 10-time finisher, doubled over in anguish, her face in her hands.

Seleka cried as he crossed the line at 10:30:49. He was thinking of his sister, whose kidneys failed in 2018. “At the start, everything changed,” he said. “I said this pain today is for my younger sister.”

A runner crosses the finish line of the 2026 Comrades Marathon in Pietermaritzburg

Everyone needs a reason if they are to finish the Comrades, said Seleka, who was already planning his race next year. “If you’re going through a lot, once you say why, then it’s a mission,” he said. “After Comrades is accomplished, it’s a new chapter again.”

Keyword – Info
Trefwoorden – Information
Title – What is the ‘Deeply read’ list? | Information | The Guardian
Author – Guardian staff
Link – What is the ‘Deeply read’ list? | Information | The Guardian
Publish date – 2024-02-28T09:45:16.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/info/2024/feb/28/what-is-the-deeply-read-list

For many years at the Guardian we have been looking at how long our readers spend with our journalism. While the number of clicks on an article can help us understand the possible importance or popularity of an article on a given topic, it’s just as important for us to get a sense of the quality of a piece and the time readers spend with it can help us gauge that.

Along with many other sites, the Guardian has for a long time shown readers the pieces other people are clicking on in the form of a “Most viewed” list. But these lists often don’t include wonderful journalism on topics more off the beaten track. The “Deeply read” list uses attention time to surface a wider range of journalism that other readers are spending more time with. It appears on our regionalised home pages and reflects the interests of the region’s audience.

Not all of these pieces are long. To power the list we created a metric that looks at the attention time from readers compared with the length of the piece. This means that the list is diverse in terms of topic, length and format.

We hope you enjoy the increased variety and depth of the pieces you find here.

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – World Cup 2026, World Cup, Australia national football team – Socceroos, Football, Australia sport, Sport
Title – Australia’s Jackson Irvine has no sympathy for Paraguay after historic World Cup red card | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jack-snape
Link – Australia’s Jackson Irvine has no sympathy for Paraguay after historic World Cup red card | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T04:50:24.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/21/australias-jackson-irvine-has-no-sympathy-for-paraguay-after-historic-world-cup-red-card

Socceroo Jackson Irvine has backed the decision by Fifa to send players off for covering their mouths when they speak, after Paraguay winger Miguel Almirón was given a historic red card against Turkey.

The Socceroos and Paraguay face a showdown for second place in the group at the San Francisco Bay Area Stadium on Thursday (Friday AEST). If either team lose they will face a torturous wait to find out if they will progress as one of the eight third-placed teams across the 12 groups.

Almirón was the first player sent off under a rule introduced by Fifa for this tournament to address the trend of footballers covering their mouth when confronting opponents. In a boost for the Socceroos, he will be suspended for his team’s final Group D clash.

Irvine, a member of Fifpro’s global player council, said the players had been given fair warning, and the rule was justified. “I know it’s going to be controversial in some ways because we don’t know the nature of what [the comment] was, but when you look at what’s happened in the past, especially around what happened with Vinícius Júnior, I think it takes everything out of the equation.”

The highest profile example of the controversial conduct was earlier this year when Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni made comments to Real Madrid’s Júnior while covering his mouth with his shirt.

The referee did not send Prestianni off in the Champions League clash, and the on-field behaviour could not be assessed using video evidence, but he was subsequently banned for six matches for using homophobic language .

The body responsible for the laws of the game, the International Football Association Board, approved the introduction of a red card for such conduct in April.

Irvine said Almirón can have no complaints. “If you’re saying something to someone that you don’t want to be seen, then I think it’s safe to say that if you can’t be seen saying it, then it shouldn’t be said,” he said. “For me, it’s a clear line on the rule, and we were all told about it, so it is what it is.”

Despite the absence of Almirón, Paraguay enter the fixture with momentum after their 1-0 victory over Turkey . But they will need to defeat the Socceroos to leapfrog them into second place in Group D. Third place may also scrape into the knockouts depending on results in other groups.

Australia has never beaten a South American side at a World Cup , and Irvine is expecting their opponents to be physical, skilful and unpredictable. He said it will be “just a totally different type of game” compared with their matches against Turkey and the USA, and the Paraguay players have “incredible individual quality”.

“Watching Paraguay against Turkey last night, there was a sequence towards the end of the game that sums up their style of football,” he said. “It was with about five minutes to go, and they had won the ball back high up the pitch, and they had a chance to go to the corner. The guy just whips the cross into the back stick with three guys, and they try and score again with 10 men and they’re 1-0 up. Expect the unexpected. I guess that’s probably the best way to put it.”

Irvine said the Socceroos need to start better against Paraguay than they did against the USA . “The main thing that we have to get better from the first half is just being able to come into the duels and arrive – in the physical side of the game – a little bit better, and ride through those difficult moments,” he said.

“We’re playing against top teams at the highest level, but they’re going to have moments where you’re going to have to defend and we’re going to have to suffer and you’ve got to find ways to get through that.”

Keyword – Opinion
Trefwoorden – Andy Burnham, Labour, Makerfield byelection, Politics, Greater Manchester, UK news, Reform UK
Title – The Guardian view on Labour after Makerfield: change must mean more than a new leader | Editorial | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/editorial
Link – The Guardian view on Labour after Makerfield: change must mean more than a new leader | Editorial | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-19T16:56:23.000Z
Category – Opinion
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/19/the-guardian-view-on-labour-after-makerfield-change-must-mean-more-than-a-new-leader

A ndy Burnham’s triumph in the Makerfield byelection leaves the prime minister with only two options : fight openly for the Labour leadership, or leave office cleanly. The former Greater Manchester mayor easily saw off Reform UK’s candidate – winning 55% of the vote to his rightwing rival’s 35%. He won largely because he changed the political meaning of voting Labour in Makerfield. With Mr Burnham, the party went from being the unpopular incumbent to being the vehicle for change.

The prime minister’s implicit claim that it was Starmerism that beat Reform is not credible. The polling by Persuasion UK in Makerfield shows that Labour won because of Mr Burnham’s personal brand, anti-Starmer signalling and leftwing economic message. Significantly, Mr Burnham’s victory rally speech on Friday connects with the data. He was offering, in rhetoric, economic security through a visible state. This is not just redistribution, but the state as buyer, planner and manager. That would be a welcome shift, but how would he deliver cheaper essentials, more public control, fiscal expansion, industrial renewal and fairer rules on housing, work and migration? Mr Burnham’s programme needs to be more than slogans.

It was an unusual byelection: Mr Burnham is a household name in England’s north with a mayoral record, fronting a dramatic Labour leadership subplot. A general election would not be Makerfield. In Scotland, Wales and the south-east, Mr Burnham’s local identity may carry less force. But he cannily fused anti-Starmer and anti-Reform moods by standing both inside and against Labour while selling a more rooted , hopeful politics.

That is why Sir Keir must either force the issue – call a leadership contest, stand in it, and smoke out his rivals – or accept that his authority has drained away and step aside, allowing the party to choose a successor. A Burnham coronation would be tempting, especially with overwhelming parliamentary backing. That would avoid a summer of internal warfare. But it would also risk repeating the original sin of Starmerism : a leader taking power on the promise of “change” without making it clear what the change consists of.

It is ironic that a leadership contest might actually help Mr Burnham. It would force him to turn his Makerfield speech from a mood into a mandate . He might have to say: here is what I would do in the first 100 days; here is what needs legislation; here is what it would cost; here is what can be done through regulation; here is what requires confronting the Treasury; here is where I break with Starmerism; here is where I continue its work.

The strongest argument for avoiding a contest is practical. A long campaign could make Labour look like the Conservatives in 2022 : unstable and riven by infighting. Mr Burnham might avoid a brawl and secure Sir Keir’s quiet retreat by negotiating a clear, short programme , winning support from MPs across the parliamentary party and trade union assent while offering roles to defeated factions.

It looks likely that Sir Keir Starmer’s days are numbered. Whoever replaces him will need a mandate for a fresh agenda. If MPs can unite around such a plan from Mr Burnham, a leadership contest may be unnecessary. If they are just rallying around his poll ratings in the face of Sir Keir’s weakness, then a contest becomes more necessary, not less.

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 – Environment
Trefwoorden – Electric, hybrid and low-emission cars, Automotive industry, Automotive emissions, Business, Greenhouse gas emissions, Environment, Motoring, Technology, Travel and transport, Renault, Citroën, Renewable energy, Transport, Manufacturing sector, Europe
Title – How Europe’s EV makers shrank their product to challenge the bloated SUVs | Electric, hybrid and low-emission cars | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jasper-jolly
Link – How Europe’s EV makers shrank their product to challenge the bloated SUVs | Electric, hybrid and low-emission cars | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T04:00:20.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/21/europe-ev-shrank-challenge-suv-smaller-china

T he winding backstreets of London, Paris and Rome are a large part of their charm. But they are also a problem for electric carmakers. For a long time, squeezing big batteries into smaller, cheaper cars to fit European streets was too much of a problem, so manufacturers focused on bloated SUVs instead.

But that is finally changing. Battery technology has improved and Europe’s carmakers havecut manufacturing costs enough that they can now sell cars that might have a chance of fitting down a medieval lane or two.

The new Renault Twingo E-Tech is a case in point. Driving the city car through London attracts quizzical looks. Its bulbous headlights live up to the older petrol version’s “frog” nickname, and this particular model has a “mango yellow” paint job.

But small, European electric cars like this will be notable for more than their looks if they can slow the trend towards ever-bigger lumps of metal – and help fend off the challenge from Chinese rivals.

“The world is not going to be saved by big SUVs that are electric,” says Renault’s chief design officer, Laurens van den Acker, who led development on the Twingo. “The world is going to be saved by small electric cars. We need more of them and not less. We need them to become as popular as other cars.”

Car companies are probably not the obvious candidates for saving the world, but they do have a part to play in making vehicles that don’t pump several tonnes of planet-heating carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Road transport currently accounts for about a fifth of EU emissions.

Switching from a small petrol hatchback to an electric SUV represents two steps forward and one step back in environmental terms. The larger car will not produce emissions directly, but more bulk and bigger batteries mean higher emissions associated with manufacturing and more energy needed to move compared to a smaller vehicle – not to mention clogging up streets.

Renault’s Twingo (priced from €19,490 in France and probably selling for about £18,000 when it launches in the UK next year) will go up against an increasing number of rivals in the city car and small car segments of the automotive market. Citroën has the ë-C3 and is planning to revive the venerable 2CV name for a forthcoming small electric model. Peugeot, Citroën’s sister company in the Stellantis group, has the E-208.

Renault and van den Acker have already had a hit with the slightly larger Renault 5 E-Tech, the 2025 winner of Europe’s venerable Car of the Year award . The Mini Cooper Electric and the Fiat 500e have also been on sale for several years, and more are on the way, notably the Volkswagen ID. Polo. There is also the very fun niche of even smaller “ quadricycles” such as the Citroën Ami and the Micro Microlino .

Reversing the trend

The blossoming of smaller cars comes after decades of vehicles getting bigger. At 4.41 metres (14ft 5in) on average, cars manufactured in 2024 were 5% longer than in 2016, according to Dutch government statisticians. They were also nearly 4% wider at 1.82 metres (5ft 10in) – a particular problem for anyone trying to navigate the canal-side streets of Amsterdam.

Smaller cars had started to disappear because it became harder for manufacturers to make money on them. Safety regulations meant extra kit, which was tricky to package into smaller spaces. And when the shift to electric came, batteries were initially too expensive for cars that had traditionally been the most affordable.

If any brands can claim to be synonymous with small cars, they are Mini and Smart – the latter particularly for its two-seater model, the Fortwo . Smart became a joint venture between Germany’s Mercedes-Benz and China’s Geely in 2019, when it turned its attention to larger electric models, and it is now planning an electric version of the Fortwo, called the #2 (pronounced, awkwardly, as “hashtag two”).

Smart Europe’s boss, Wolfgang Üfer, told an industry conference last month that the #2 was the model everyone, including his own mother, had been asking for. But it has taken longer to develop because of the design challenges of packaging everything into a footprint less than three metres long.

“Making a big car is easy,” says Xuan-Zheng Goh, Smart Europe’s director for product, marketing and communication. “Making a small car is a real big challenge. You need to make some careful decisions.”

Demand for smaller cars has always been there in Europe, he says, but the key to making them financially viable was the falling cost of batteries.

To clamp down further on costs, Renault pushed to design the Twingo in two years rather than four, and did some of the engineering work in China. It also cut the number of parts from between 1,500 and 2,000 found in other cars to only 750.

Within those constraints, van den Acker says, the company sought to make “EVs that you could actually fall in love with”. On the Twingo, that translates to quirky touches such as the headlights and bright colours, a profile in which the windscreen and bonnet form a single line, and sliding back seats to allow for more legroom or boot space.

It is also “French and good taste”, van den Acker adds. ”What you guys in England love.” The trade-off, though, is range: the Twingo has a 27.5kWh battery that gives it a range of 163 miles – easily enough for the school run, but meaning this reporter had to stop to charge for 20 minutes on a weekend return trip from London to Oxford.

Cupra, owned by Volkswagen, is another manufacturer shrinking its product with the launch of its electric Raval. Starting at £23,785, the car is “a gamechanger” for the company, according to Markus Haupt, the chief executive of Cupra and its Spanish sister brand, Seat.

“We said, OK, now is the moment to bring these cars,” Haupt says, pointing to increased demand for electric vehicles in the UK and Europe. “With this car we have the perfect package to convince [customers] that electro mobility is not the future, it’s the present.”

Getting the cost of production down was a crucial first step, Haupt adds. That required billions of euros of spending across the Volkswagen group to produce a new platform – a shared manufacturing blueprint used as the basis for several cars across different brands. Production costs should be about level with petrol cars “by end of this or beginning of next decade”, says Haupt.

Carmakers have another big reason to try to switch to electric for the millions of small cars in Europe: they need to hit emissions targets in order to avoid fines. That will be impossible without making EVs their top sellers.

However, governments setting the rules – including in the UK – have come under a lot of pressure from the industry to slow the pace of change . Carmakers may be able to sell more hybrids to meet their legal obligations – an option for some small cars such as the Toyota Aygo and the Fiat 500 – albeit at the cost of much higher carbon emissions.

Chinese rivals

But, as ever in the European car industry, there is an elephant in the room: Chinese rivals . China’s relatively new cities and wide roads do not necessarily need smaller cars, but the country’s carmakers know there is a market for them in Europe.

BYD, the world’s largest electric carmaker , has the Dolphin Surf city car, while Stellantis is helping to distribute the Chinese manufacturer Leapmotor’s T03. Smart’s cars, meanwhile, are designed in Europe but engineered and made in China.

Haupt said European manufacturers welcomed the competition, but that China’s manufacturers should be pushed to source components and produce cars in Europe, given the huge government subsidies across Chinese industry that last year prompted the EU to impose tariffs on Chinese cars.

The EU’s new “Made in Europe” rules are expected to go further still, giving a strong incentive to manufacturers to build within the bloc (with the UK at risk of being shut out). That may well mean European buyers will always pay more for small cars, but the upside might be more Chinese carmakers setting up factories there.

“I think for Europe, looking where we are standing now on our industrial basis, it will be super-attractive,” says Haupt. ”This would create employment. This would attract investment to Europe.”

Keyword – Global development
Trefwoorden – Transnational repression, UK news, Iran, China, Russia, Middle East and north Africa, Pakistan
Title – ‘A hunting ground for foreign regimes’: why violent attacks on dissidents are on the rise in Britain | Transnational repression | The Guardian
Author – Geneva Abdul
Link – ‘A hunting ground for foreign regimes’: why violent attacks on dissidents are on the rise in Britain | Transnational repression | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T12:00:29.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactive/2026/jun/21/a-hunting-ground-for-foreign-regimes-why-violent-attacks-on-dissidents-are-on-the-rise-in-britain

As Pouria Zeraati was crossing the street between his Wimbledon home and his car in south London in March 2024, he was confronted by two men. One held him firmly as the other stabbed him three times in the leg before they both fled.

It was later said to be a targeted attack on behalf of the Iranian regime in Tehran. A punishment for Zeraati’s work as a journalist covering Iran . He survived, but the ambush is one of dozens of violent incidents in recent years linked to foreign states. Russia, China, India, Saudi Arabia and Iran have all been blamed for targeting critics and dissidents living in the UK in the past decade, and linked to incidents involving physical assaults, attempted kidnap, stabbings and an acid attack.

State-threat investigations run by MI5 jumped by 48% in a year , and there have been more than 20 threat-to-life cases relating to Iran since 2022.

This week, arson attacks on properties connected to Keir Starmer in May 2025 were linked to Russia . Two men were also jailed on Thursday for surveilling Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigners living in the UK on behalf of China through a “shadow policing” operation.

Suddenly, say parliamentarians and lawyers, the UK has become a “hunting ground for authoritarian regimes”.

From a topic consigned to spy novels, such state-targeting is becoming commonplace, leaving large numbers of individuals who had sought sanctuary in the UK in fear of their lives .

The former UK security minister Dan Jarvis has said the UK maintains a “hard operating environment” for those states trying to target individuals.

But in recent weeks the Guardian has spoken to various diaspora communities in the UK – Hong Kong, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, India and others – who have alleged receiving threats, sexualised harassment , economic coercion , state-linked legal cases and, in some cases, violent attacks.

They described sparse, incoherent and inadequate responses from UK authorities, and spoke of the detrimental impact on their health and safety living in the UK.

“Whereas historically the UK has been less targeted than other places in the world, that position has changed in recent times,” prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC said in Zeraati’s trial at the Old Bailey last month.

“The UK government is not prepared to stand up to anybody,” says Ben Keith, a barrister specialising in cross-border cases, as other experts say the UK is wedded to ineffective diplomacy that is doing nothing to stop the attacks.

Speaking to the Guardian, Clive Stafford Smith, an American lawyer helping victims of state-led targeting, says: “The FBI have advised victims not to travel to the UK … because the British government does not take meaningful action when dictators go hunting their dissidents.”

The UK overhauled its legislation with the 2023 National Security Act, including further offences around espionage, sabotage and foreign interference, but it still lacks a clear strategy for dealing with the problem, says Lord Alton, chair of the Joint Committee of Human Rights (JCHR). There is also no accurate data on the number of attacks taking place.

Roshaan Khattak, an exiled Pakistani activist and former researcher at Cambridge University, says he has faced intimidation and threats he believes have come from Pakistani-linked state actors as a result of his advocacy on highlighting human rights abuses in Balochistan, a region in south-west Pakistan that has sought independence for decades.

In November 2025, Khattak says he received a message on Instagram saying, “we had warned you to stop criticising us on international platforms” and “stop playing into hands of enemies or else you will be killed no matter where you are”.

The message also included details of Pakistan mobile numbers belonging to him and his father, and his Pakistan passport and ID card. “Where are you going to run?” the message on Instagram said. “Don’t forget even Cambridge and UK is not safe,” it added. “Don’t be stupid.”

Khattack says he always looks over his shoulder when leaving the house to see if he is being followed, or if anyone nearby is acting strangely. “It is next to impossible dealing with the police in the UK … Either they mock you or they’re like, who are you? Or what is Balochistan? Is it in Qatar? They’re sort of turning a blind eye … They don’t want to name Pakistan an offender.”

A spokesperson at the Pakistan high commission said: “Pakistan firmly rejects any malicious suggestions that it engages in transnational repression or unlawful activities anywhere in the world, including the United Kingdom.”

The biggest perpetrator in recent years is Iran, with multiple Iranian activists, journalists, academics and students telling the Guardian they had faced threats, surveillance or intimidation on British soil, which they believed were linked to Iran.

For Nahid Bahmani, a member of the central committee and political bureau of Komala, the Kurdish opposition party, the threat has meant years of forced impermanence. Last year, police informed her husband Abdullah Mohtadi, the party’s secretary general, that they had foiled a terrorist plot against him. They have had to move house every few years.

“This is not simply a physical relocation,” says Bahmani. “It creates a deep psychological insecurity. You never feel that you belong anywhere. You always feel that everything is temporary.”

Although they had gone through greater physical danger in Iran , says Bahmani, insecurity in exile felt different: “In Iran, we could draw on social and emotional networks, while in Britain we were often left with only our homes and the police.”

All those interviewed say they had been in contact with police or counter-terrorism officers and had received safety advice, including installing CCTV, avoiding going out alone at night, not sharing locations on social media, and even changing their car and home.

But Izzy Cutts, policy and parliamentary affairs manager at the Foreign Policy Centre, says there were “big gaps around incidents that fall below the criminal threshold”, which she says was leaving communities and individuals “very scared”.

“I am in a permanent state of anxiety, and anxiety creates paranoia,” says one Iranian activist living in London. “At night, any noise sends me straight to check my CCTV. If a car drives behind me for too long, I think it is following me. I avoid staying out late and often turn down invitations from people I don’t know well. You impose limitations on your normal life so that you can stay safe.”

Alicia Kearns, Conservative MP and former chair of the foreign affairs committee, accuses the Labour government of “rewarding one of the states most responsible” for the issue by granting the Chinese Communist party, a new embassy in London “despite their illegal campaign of repression” on Hongkongers in the UK.

As well as this week’s China spy case, in the past Hong Kong protesters have also allegedly been attacked in the UK by Chinese activists.

“Hostile dictatorships are increasingly seeking to impose their own repression on British shores. There is no acceptable level of transnational repression . Every individual, organisation – and ultimately state – responsible, must be held to account,” says Kearns.

A Home Office spokesperson said attempts by a foreign state to coerce, intimidate, harass, or harm individuals on UK soil are considered a threat to our national security, and will never be tolerated.

“We continually assess potential threats and, whenever they are identified, we will take appropriate measures to mitigate risks to individuals, working closely with the police and intelligence services.”

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – World Cup 2026, World Cup, Football, Sport
Title – World Cup 2026: Spain screening in Madrid scrapped due to heat; Curaçao keeper ‘deserves statue’ – live | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/billy-munday,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/luke-mclaughlin,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/rob-draper,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/ben-fisher
Link – World Cup 2026: Spain screening in Madrid scrapped due to heat; Curaçao keeper ‘deserves statue’ – live | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T12:38:57.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2026/jun/21/world-cup-news-live-curacao-iran-spain-saudi-arabia-belgium-cape-verde-uruguay-new-zealand-egypt

Spain returning to action against Saudi Arabia is one of the big stories of the day … so make sure you don’t miss Sid Lowe’s preview:

Here, courtesy of Graham Ruthven , is the full lowdown on what’s coming up at the World Cup today:

“ That pre-match shirt from Oranje is special because of what it stands for,” comments Aintmuch, writing from the Netherlands, regarding the team’s colourful attire before yesterday’s win against Sweden.

“You can recognize lions and tulips, but also the city shields of many of the players, and of course the traditional Ala Kondre chain. (That’s Surinam for ‘all countries’.)

“The shirt sold out here within one hour (yep, I was lucky).”

And on the subject of non-Galacticos who are shining in the USA:

I love the article on non-superstar players of the tournament so far. I’d like to nominate Keito Nakamura, who has a wonderful 80s winger look about him, floppy hair and rolled down socks. He’s had two really good games and is doing an extremely fine job of ensuring Japan aren’t missing Mitoma. He’s got a bouncy energy off the ball and like Mitoma can dribble both ways and shoot off either foot. A real handful.

Here’s another cracking Uruguay contribution :

I’ve never seen Uruguay play in a match but in 1966 their then team made their base at the Saxon Inn Motel on the edge of Harlow New Town in Essex. I was 7 then and lived nearby. We used to see them training on the cricket pitch on the common opposite St Mary Magdalane church. I was on the cusp of understanding as a kid. I knew they were quite important but not really why. There was no security or media just a group of well built obviously physical specimens not quite playing football but doing a lot of ball kicking and running. I guess you’d call it amateur compared to today. I remember liking the colour of their shirts. My only other memory of 1966 is my dad chucking a heavy cushion at the telly after Germany got their equaliser in the final but it unfortunately hitting my 4 year old brother instead. He bawled, my mum yelled at my dad and it all seemed like a downward spiral which has probably had a lifetime affect on me. Luckily order was restored.

“ Saw Uruguay play Mexico in 2010 at Rustenburg in South Africa,” emails Tim.

“Spent the morning in Pilanesberg National Park. Our hungover driver stalled the car with an irate bull elephant 10 metres behind us. The match was mainly interesting for the fans, especially the Mexicans with their wrestling masks on. Suarez scored only goal of game on his way to goalline handball infamy/ stardom v Ghana and Forlán was impressive on way to being best player of tournament. Classic light blue shirt and black shorts kit.”

I was working at that tournament, and speaking of driving around national parks – we went out on a tour one day and I spotted the Auxerre legend, Guy Roux, sitting in the front seats of an oncoming van. True story.

“ My first ever match was England v Uruguay in May 1990 at Wembley,” emails Nick. “I remember John Barnes scoring a great free-kick and England playing in their away kit of red, despite being at home.

“Uruguay had the brilliant Enzo Francescoli and Ruben Sosa playing for them.”

The main thing I remember about Ruben Sosa is him hitting the crossbar with a penalty for Inter Milan in a Uefa Cup shootout against Aston Villa. Good little player though yes, thanks for your email Nick.

Here’s the only pic I can find of that game, featuring Bryan Robson, Nelson Gutiérrez and Stuart Pearce”

Let’s get back to some #UruguayMemories.

All seems well in the England camp after the opening win 4-2 against Croatia on Wednesday.

Jacob Steinberg watched training in Kansas City, and has written interestingly about Thomas Tuchel’s obsessive attention to detail, the high demands he places on players – and how positively they respond:

Madrid screening of Spain v Saudi Arabia cancelled due to heat

The public screening of Spain’s World Cup match against Saudi Arabia in Madrid on Sunday has been cancelled because of extreme heat forecast for the Spanish capital, officials said.

The match, due to kick off at 6pm local time on Sunday, had been scheduled to be shown on a giant screen installed by the Spanish football federation (RFEF) at a fan zone in Plaza de Colón in central Madrid.

Madrid city council and the federation decided to cancel the screening after national weather agency AEMET issued an orange heat warning – the second-highest level – for the Madrid region, with temperatures forecast to reach 40C.

“The decision has been taken with the aim of protecting the health of attendees, event staff and support services involved in the event,” Madrid city hall said in a statement, apologising for any inconvenience.

Officials urged supporters to watch the match indoors in air-conditioned spaces and avoid prolonged exposure to the heat.

Large parts of Spain are experiencing unusually high temperatures for June as a mass of hot air from North Africa moves across the Iberian Peninsula.

A total of 13 of Spain’s 17 regions are on orange alert for heat on Sunday, while the northern Basque Country bordering France is on red alert, the highest level.

Authorities advised residents and visitors to take precautions during the heatwave, including drinking water regularly, staying in cool environments, limiting outdoor physical activity during the hottest hours of the day and taking extra care of vulnerable people. AFP

Now , in “Hot in the City” news …

The Football Association has remained coy over what will happen when England line up for their next World Cup match against Ghana on Tuesday and come up against a familiar opponent in Thomas Partey. The former Arsenal midfielder played for Villarreal this season, but will be released at the end of his contract this month.

In the pre-match ceremony, all players are expected to shake hands with opponents, and the FA will leave England’s players to decide whether they wish to go through the ritual with Partey. The squad includes two of his former club-mates, Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka.

‘I need a statue in Curaçao,’ jokes goalkeeping hero Room

Heroic goalkeeper Eloy Room joked he deserves a statue in Curaçao after his performance earned a first World Cup point as the minnows held Ecuador to a 0-0 draw in Kansas City .

Room made 15 saves – the most by any goalkeeper in 90 minutes of a World Cup match since records began in 1966 – as he acted as a one-man barrier, with Dick Advocaat’s brave side bouncing back from their 7-1 thrashing by Germany in their opening game.

The point, a historic result for a tiny nation of just 158,000 people, keeps their unlikely hopes of advancing through Group E alive and they will progress to the knockout stages if they can somehow beat Ivory Coast in their final match.

The 37-year-old is expecting to be honoured in his homeland.

“It means everything, it feels like a victory, it’s the first point at the World Cup , it means everything,” he said.

“It is unreal, the journey where we came from and we are now here and we showed we have real heart, it’s an unbelievable feeling.

“I knew it was a lot of saves. I know it was a record from a long time ago, so I am really proud. It was a really good feeling. My first save gave me confidence, I knew it was going to be a busy game.

“I am little bit bummed because we had chances to score. For us this feels like a victory. I think in 40 years I will remember this, it will be insane. I think I need a statue in Curaçao now.”

Room’s profile is set to grow in a similar way to Cape Verde goalkeeper Vozinha, who gained several million Instagram followers after his display in the 0-0 draw with European champions Spain .

Room, who plays for USL Championship side Miami FC, saw his following grow from 122,000 followers to 724,000 within an hour and by midday on Sunday he was fast approaching 900,000.

The exposure is all down to a monumental performance and he was in action from as early as the third minute when he denied Enner Valencia with a brilliant save.

Room was on a one-man mission as he kept out Gonzalo Plata’s effort while again denying Valencia with an impressive low stop.

Curaçao had their moments, with former Manchester United midfielder Tahith Chong wasting a three-on-two situation while Juninho Bacuna had a shot blocked in the penalty area.

Advocaat’s men had a triple chance to take the lead on the hour when Ecuador goalkeeper Hernan Galindez made a good double stop to deny Leandro Bacuna and Livano Comenencia before Moises Caicedo blocked Jurgen Locadia’s follow-up effort.

But Room continued to keep his side in it as he denied Valencia and Kevin Rodriguez before Piero Hincapié sent a free header over and Plata somehow missed after bursting into the area.

Rodriguez then hit the crossbar with a cross-shot, but Room was the hero as the Caribbean nation held on for a historic result. PA Media

And what a goal it was by Rodriguez, by the way .

“ I have seen Uruguay play just once, ” emails Gavin.

“In 2014, I spent the year travelling around South America. Being in Bolivia at the time just before the World Cup , I managed to find a last-minute bargain on AirBnB, and rented an apartment for the entire tournament in Rio.

“Having made it that far, I thought I must secure a ticket to a game at the Maracanã to tick it off the bucket list. I managed to grab a last-16 tie not knowing who would be playing, only to sit with the Colombia fans and witness that James Rodriguez goal in a 2-0 win v a Suarez-less (banned) Uruguay.

“That match more than made up for my England adventure, a 24-hour bus ride to witness the last group game v Costa Rica, with Roy Hodgson’s side limping out of the tournament.”

Lovely stuff (well, not the England bit). Thank you Gavin.

Meanwhile, look what I just found in the photo archive from that match at the Maracanã – it’s him again!

Cody Gakpo’s second goal for the Netherlands was the 100th at the tournament, in just the 33rd game. That makes this tournament the fastest to 100 goals since the 1958 edition.

It cannot really be a World Cup without Uruguay, is it? They face Cape Verde later, much later, in about 11 hours’ time.

I witnessed Uruguay against England in March (dreadful game, especially if you left on 75min like me) … I also saw Uruguay v Ghana in 2010 , and in a World Cup playoff against Australia in Melbourne in the early noughties.

Have you ever had the pleasure of seeing them play? Mail me.

England have just lost the second Test against New Zealand, if you like that sort of thing. (Cricket content.)

“ Do we have any notable names in the upcoming games?” emails Nathan. “Between Desiree Doué, Denzel Dumfries and Brian Brobbey, we’ve been a little spoilt for alliteration.”

What a pre-match tracksuit top that is from the Netherlands, by the way.

Messi’s teammates see him ‘as a God and a kid from the neighbourhood’ – Scaloni

Lionel Messi’s move to America will look like a masterstroke if he leads Argentina to back-to-back World Cup titles. His decision to join Inter Miami in 2023 has been good for all parties, raising the profile of football in the US, delivering titles for his club and writing a new chapter in his career.

But Argentina could be the biggest winner of all, with Messi’s powers still at stratospheric levels aged 38. “Leo will be the best for as long as he wants; he has been doing it every single match for the last 20 years,” said the Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni.

Thierry Henry described him as “on the moon” after his hat-trick in Argentina’s opening game against Algeria . “Leo is just different. It’s just a different topic,” Henry said.

Messi scored his first hat-trick at a World Cup and also moved level on 16 goals with Miroslav Klose as the leading scorer in tournament history.

“I tried to prepare myself in the best possible way to feel good physically, to feel useful, and to be able to help the group,” Messi said.

Despite saying the last World Cup was likely his last , Messi is once again at the heart of the Argentina team, its biggest creative and attacking threat. At this stage of his career, that was far from guaranteed.

“We should be used to this, but if you ever needed any more confirmation that when it comes to Argentina, Messi is the system, he is the tactic, he’s the formation, he’s the identity and he is the heart,” Fox analyst Alexi Lalas said after the 3-0 win against Algeria. “It was something to behold.”

Messi left behind the intensity of European soccer to join Inter Miami in 2023, delivering a massive boost for the MLS. He said he wanted to “live football in another way”, but there was a step down in level compared to Europe’s top leagues.

But at a time when top players are warning of burnout, Messi appears to be benefiting from the move. He has played fewer games than at the height of his Barcelona career, when he could play more than 50 a season. His performance at the start of this World Cup shows he hasn’t lost his sharpness even if he is not regularly facing the world’s top defenders.

“I love to play, to compete. And no matter where it is, today I find myself at another World Cup, which brings extra happiness, but I prepare myself just as I have done throughout my entire career,” he said.

Many people already rated the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner as the greatest soccer player of all time. But even past his peak years, he has hit new heights on the sport’s biggest stage.

His Inter Miami teammate Rodrigo De Paul has spoken of theextra training both players had put in to ensure they were in peak condition.

“We killed ourselves to, physically, arrive in the best way,” De Paul said.

Messi has taken inspiration from Rafa Nadal after watching the Netflix series on the tennis great’s drive to stay at the top.

“I am very similar in that sense. I always want to feel good. As long as I can and I am well, I will be there,” Messi said.

For his teammates, he is simply the biggest inspiration. “What Leo transmits is spectacular,” said Scaloni. “His teammates view him both as a God and as a kid from the neighbourhood. Honestly, you just run out of words. Beyond the goals he scores, it is what he transmits—both to his teammates and to the fans. We will miss him.” James Robson, AP

Right , how about an Associated Press piece on the iconic Lionel Messi? Coming up shortly …

Don’t forget to email us with your World Cup musings.

The Sweden manager Graham Potter , meanwhile, said this of his side’s 5-1 drubbing by a very handy Netherlands side:

“In the end, it is what it is.”

Unarguable.

Tijjani Reijnders , of the Netherlands, offered a scintillating assessment of their handsome win against Sweden.

“We knew we had to win. It was a great victory,” said the Manchester City man.

“We have one goal: to win the World Cup . We did a good job today, and we have to keep going.”

I live for this stuff.

Thank you Billy. Hello everyone. What sort of thing is happening here? Let’s take a look.

That’s it from me for now. Luke McLaughlin is here to steer you through the next couple of hours.

On the Japan supporters cleaning up in Monterrey last night – one woman has gone viral this week for saying men should do the same when they’re at home.

Fifa lauded Japanese fans on social media for their “impeccable manners” that saw them tidy up the stands after their draw with the Netherlands, with pictures of men in blue avidly picking up trash. Similar images have since proliferated online, but one X post went viral after claiming Japanese men aren’t all that they are cracked up to be.

“Japanese men spend among the least time on housework internationally,” read the post, which has been viewed more than 2m times. “Please do it at home,” the post said, with a satirical illustration showing a fan who proudly cleans up the stadium is, in fact, relaxing on a sofa at home, oblivious to the pile of laundry and his wife or mother doing the dishes.

Japanese men participate notoriously little in household chores, with women spending 5.5 times more time than men taking on “unpaid work” such as shopping, domestic chores and caregiving, the cabinet office says, citing 2021 OECD data. The gap is far greater than in Britain, France and the United States, where women spend 1.8 times, 1.7 times and 1.6 times – respectively – longer than men doing unpaid work.

While supporters describe the act of cleaning up the stadium as proof of Japan’s cultural altruism, others have also seen it as slightly performative. Opinions have been divided on the viral X post. “Wives struggling with husbands who don’t clean at all should have them wear Samurai Japan uniforms at home too,” one comment said. “This is too much of generalisation – not all Japanese men are like that,” another user wrote. AFP

World Cup TV: Whether it’s Gary Lineker on ITV or Alexi Lalas going tete-a-tete with Thierry Henry on Fox coverage, it’s been an eye-catching first 10 days on the box.

Group H: Spain have had almost a week to stew over their disappointing start against Cape Verde but are back in Atlanta today to take on Saudi Arabia. Lamine Yamal could be fit enough to start having only come on as a 71st-minute substitute in the opener.

Luis de la Fuente has asked for people not to compare the 18-year-old to the likes of Messi and Maradona … before comparing him to the likes of Salvador Dalí and Michelangelo:

The worst mistake we could make would be to compare him to anyone. He is the midst of a process. He has exceptional footballing maturity and lives it all with total naturalness. He has great serenity and strength. We have to let him follow his path but those players who have something different are ready for that. They’re geniuses, like Dalí [who] can paint a picture, or Michelangelo. They’re different. What is exceptional to us, isn’t to them.

That’ll keep his feet on the ground.

Podcast: The World Cup Daily crew have been discussing Saturday’s action from their base in Los Angeles. They’ve also been coming to terms with the early elimination of dark horses Turkey.

You can listen here or watch here .

Infantino’s private jet could emit ‘300 to 500 tonnes of CO2’ during World Cup

Gianni Infantino has been a busy man at this World Cup but his unquenchable thirst to pack in as many matches as possible is causing unrest among environmental groups who are questioning his indifference to the climate crisis. Mexico City, Guadalajara, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Seattle, Kansas City, Houston: the Fifa president has already powered up his private jet to appear in the stands 10 times in seven days.

His insatiable use of a Qatar Airways private jet is nothing new: in September 2024, the investigative outlet Josimar revealed that he had used the plane to clock up 600,000km (372,822 miles) over the previous three years.

But the expanded 2026 World Cup, staged for the first time with 48 teams across the United States, Canada, and Mexico – meaning a jump from 64 to 104 matches – has magnified the impact of Infantino’s flying habit.

“Just one hour in this plane emits roughly what an average human being emits in an entire year,” Greenly, a French company specialising in carbon footprint assessments, said this week.

If Infantino strings together two cities a day until the end of the last 16, then attends the last eight matches, Greenly estimates he will rack up “a defensible range of 300 to 500 tonnes of CO2 for his plane alone” over the course of the tournament. That is the equivalent, they say, of “the annual footprint of around 35 to 55 French people”.

Fifa defends the president’s travel by stressing that its executives choose between commercial and private flights “based on what is most efficient and cost-effective” and that in all cases the organisation covers travel costs.

David Gogishvili, a geographer at the University of Lausanne, told AFP that Fifa had created a “sustainability paradox” – “by reusing existing but geographically dispersed NFL stadiums across a continent, Fifa has created a model that is structurally dependent on high-emission air travel,” he said.

Given that the 2026 tournament has attracted celebrities and wealthy spectators, the use of private jets at a World Cup is not just limited to Fifa leadership, further increasing the event’s overall footprint.

The 2022 World Cup drew 1,846 private jets to Qatar, the British journal Nature noted. That is more than the Super Bowl, the Cannes Film Festival, the World Economic Forum in Davos and Cop28 combined. AFP

Dutch royals swap orange for blue to follow Curaçao too

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands began Saturday by cheering the Dutch past Sweden in Houston. The monarchs ended the day by watching Curaçao make some history against Ecuador in Kansas City.

The small island nation of Curacao is a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and that makes King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima the heads of state. So, after a quick flight north, the royal couple dutifully swapped out the bright orange scarves they wore to their earlier match with bright blue ones.

Curaçao, the smallest World Cup team in population and size, made their tournament debut last Sunday in a 7-1 loss to Germany. But they bounced back from that defeat for a 0-0 draw with La Tri and earn its first-ever point in the tournament.

“It is an extra special World Cup because we have both the Netherlands and Curaçao,” Willem-Alexander told RTL-TV. “So we have twice as many teams to cheer for. A great opportunity to cheer on both the Blues and the Oranges. All in all, it will be a special World Cup for me with two teams, and I naturally hope they go extremely far.”

After the Netherlands moved one step closer to the knockouts, Curaçao are still alive too after Eloy Room made 15 saves — one off the World Cup record — to earn a draw with Ecuador.

“It’s amazing,” the Curaçao midfielder Tahith Chong said of celebrating with the royal family in the dressing room. “I knew before the game that they were coming to the game. To have them at such a game that we pick up our first point ever in history is amazing.”

“Seeing how the king, his wife and daughter fit in our group is something that evokes a lot of respect,” said the 78-year-old Curaçao coach, Dick Advocaat, who was born and raised in the Netherlands. “They smile, they dance, nothing is too much for them, and you can see them radiating with joy. It was wonderful to see the royal family in this way.” AP

Today’s fixtures

We’ve got Groups G + H in action on World Cup Sunday.

Spain v Saudi Arabia , Atlanta (noon local time, 5pm BST, 2am AEST)

Belgium v Iran , Los Angeles (noon local, 8pm BST, 5am AEST)

Uruguay v Cape Verde , Miami (6pm local, 11pm BST, 8am AEST)

New Zealand v Egypt , Vancouver (6pm local, 2am BST, 11am AEST, 1pm NZST)

A convenient kick-off time for fans of the All Whites – well, maybe not if you’re at work or school. Let us know how you’re getting on with the match schedule in your country.

“Not sure when you compiled the Sans-Stars list, but there’s no space and you’ve left Room!” writes Chris on email. “Not as good as the Lebowski/Room/Rug one last night, admittedly. But at least it’s an ethos.”

Yes, it may not surprise you that we didn’t write that in the wee hours of this morning in the UK. Poor Vozinha – yesterday’s man, now.

It’s not a World Cup without Japan fans/players cleaning up after themselves …

Japanese fans celebrated their team’s 4-0 victory over Tunisia in the 1,000th ⁠match in World Cup history by staying behind at Monterrey’s stadium to collect rubbish from the stands. The ⁠practice, known in ⁠Japan as ​ gomi hiroi , reflects an emphasis on taking responsibility for shared spaces.

Ken Okawa, 30, said he was happy to bring ⁠this tradition to his very first World Cup match as he stooped down to collect discarded cups and other rubbish from the ⁠floor around his seat. “We are guests in Mexico,” he said. “I have been treated ​wonderfully, so this is my way ‌of showing my appreciation.”

The ‌practice is instilled from a very young age in Japan, where schoolchildren are ‌taught to clean up their own classrooms. Miku Takeya, 41, said that the habit of tidying up after herself has become second nature. “It’s a natural part of our culture,” she said. “We do this to ensure that everything we use is left clean so that the next person can use it comfortably.”

Images of ‌Japanese fans cleaning up in stadiums after matches during this year’s World Cup have gone viral. Ahead of Saturday’s match, ​the Nuevo León governor, Samuel García, said he had arranged for 20,000 bin bags to be distributed in the stadium during the match, as well as at Fanfest and other tourist sites, following requests from Japanese fans, according to local media.

While this ⁠practice has captured global attention, many Japanese fans say it is ​nothing out of the ​ordinary for them. “It’s common sense ​in Japan,” said Ichiro Oyo, 27. Still, Ryo Matsuoka, 32, said he ​was proud to ‌bring this part ​of Japanese culture ​to the world stage. “I think it is a matter of great pride that this is being showcased in a stadium like this, where people from all over the world are watching,” he said. Reuters

World Cup team of the tournament so far: John Brewin, Marcus Christenson and I have compiled some of the best performers of the opening 10 days … with one rule – no superstars.

Move over Messi, Mbappé and Haaland – this is about Laryea, Just and Quiñones:

Group F: It was Premier League power in the Netherlands v Sweden match. Well, almost – Crysencio Summerville of Championship West Ham the only goalscorer not to currently ply his trade in England’s top flight. There were doubles for Sunderland’s Brian Brobbey and Liverpool’s Cody Gakpo, while Newcastle’s Anthony Elanga got Sweden’s consolation in a 5-1 defeat.

“The scoreline’s a little ‌harsh on us, but sometimes ‌that happens in football, especially with the quality of the opponent we face,” said Sweden’s Graham Potter.

“We got off to not ‌a good start, which then puts you behind in the game and then affects the mood. After the first break, we thought we did really well. We adjusted things a little bit, which made it better for us.”

You’d expect Ronald Koeman’s Dutch side to top the group from here, with Sweden maybe looking for a draw in their final game against Japan that should see them through as a best third-place team.

“We needed this,” Koeman said. “When you start a tournament, you want to start ‌well. It gives you peace of mind. There was also a bit more pressure on us to win. Otherwise, everything would come down to the final group match, and you don’t want that.”

Tony Mason was one of those up at the crack of dawn in the UK this morning: “After last night’s and this morning’s shenanigans things are starting to get a tiny bit clearer. I’m predicting a blockbuster round of 32 match between Brazil and Japan. Curaçao may have done a huge favour to teams finishing 3 rd as both them and Ecuador will now struggle to get more than 2 points. This Sunday morning I’ve watched a full football match, the highlights of another, been for a run and had breakfast and it still isn’t 9 o’clock.”

We are all slackers in comparison.

Group F: Here in the UK anybody up with the lark was able to watch Japan sweep aside Tunisia in Monterrey. Crystal Palace fans would not have been surprised to see goalscorer Daichi Kamada play so well in an advanced position, filling in for the injured Takefusa Kubo in the Japan attack.

“Daichi has mostly been deployed as a defensive midfielder recently, but considering our current team situation, we had him shift to the shadow striker position today,” said Japan’s head coach, Hajime Moriyasu. “The ⁠idea was to bring out his strengths and ​have him ​control the team’s offence ​and defence from that advanced position.”

Tunisia, meanwhile, have joined Turkey in booking their flights home. Herve Renard replaced the sacked Sabri Lamouchi in the dugout and, well, didn’t make much of a difference. Last up for them: the Dutch.

“The score is heavy but it reflects the difference between the two teams tonight,” said Renard. “Even if we ‌are eliminated we still have a third game to play. ​We are in a World Cup , and we must remain focused. It is important to get ⁠ready to fight for this third ​game ​against the Netherlands.”

Elsewhere in Group E Germany sealed progression from a World Cup group stage for the first time since they won the damn thing in 2014, coming from behind after Côte d’Ivoire had a half-time lead.

“We showed great character today,” said Deniz Undav, channelling his inner Brendan Rodgers. The Stuttgart striker came off the bench to score twice and netted a late winner, making it nine goals in 11 international caps.

Undav’s role is a curious one under Julian Nagelsmann. The coach has previously criticised the striker for his performances in a Germany shirt, even if he scored goals. Undav has also not been particularly happy to just be an impact sub.

“I could have him in the starting lineup,” Nagelsmann said yesterday. “I think that every player would love to be in the starting lineup, but I think he’s very happy as it is right now.”

Comments won’t be on until a little bit later – sorry about that – but in the meantime don’t forget you can email us to share your thoughts.

“I think I need a statue in Curaçao now,” said Eloy Room after keeping Ecuador at bay and earning his country’s first World Cup point – his clean sheet particularly significant after that 7-1 hammering by Germany in the first game. The Miami FC goalkeeper was just one off Tim Howard’s record of 16 saves (for USA v Belgium in 2014) in a World Cup match.

“A little ⁠bit annoyed that I don’t have the record from Tim Howard, but I think he was sweating in front of the TV because I was close,” Room said.

It’s going to be an insane memory. You don’t think about it ​when you do it but of course it’s going to be something you look back to. For me as a goalkeeper, this is almost a perfect game. It’s unbelievable. And I cannot do it alone. I did it with the team and my defenders and the midfielders, strikers. We did it as a ⁠team.

The draw means Curaçao can still (and probably will) progress from Group E if they beat Côte d’Ivoire in their final fixture.

Results and reports

Here’s what happened on Saturday at the World Cup …

Netherlands 5-1 Sweden

Germany 2-1 Côte d’Ivoire

Ecuador 0-0 Curaçao

Tunisia 0-4 Japan

Sweden followed up their 5-1 opening win over Tunisia with a thumping by the same scoreline by the Netherlands , with Sunderland’s Brian Brobbey on the scoresheet twice in Houston. Nick Ames was there:

Deniz Undav kept up his remarkable scoring record for Germany with both off the bench, including a late winner, against an impressive Côte d’Ivoire in Toronto. Leander Schaerlackens was there:

Curaçao earned their first point at a World Cup by holding Ecuador , with a heroic Eloy Room making a a ridiculous 15 saves in Kansas City. Ed Aarons was there:

And Herve Renard’s first game in charge of Tunisia was just as poor as Sabri Lamouchi’s final match, with Japan racking up the goals in Monterrey. Jonathan Wilson was there:

Iran’s Ghalenoei bemoans lack of support from other 47 managers

Iran’s head coach, Amir Ghalenoei , expressed his disappointment at the lack of support from the other 47 managers at the World Cup amid further chaos on the eve of their crunch match against Belgium.

Iran arrived in Los Angeles from their base in Tijuana, Mexico, soon after midday on Saturday, less than 24 hours before their second Group G game. Iran had requested to arrive in LA two days before the match but were not permitted to do so and have voiced their frustrations to Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, about feeling the “most oppressed” team at the tournament . Belgium, meanwhile, arrived on Friday to prepare for the match.

“I haven’t heard anything from other coaches and I’m sure they’re busy with preparing their own teams and we never expect them to show any reaction,” Ghalenoei said. “But if I had seen another team being treated the way we’ve been treated, I would have [done it].

“I have not seen any reactions from anyone but it seems like the honourable coach of Belgium [Rudi Garcia] has said we are here for football, not politics, and I’m saying exactly the same thing. Our grievances are to do with the way [Fifa] have behaved towards us.”

Ghalenoei detailed how Iran waited in limbo on Friday evening after being given encouragement by Fifa that Iran may be able to travel earlier to LA than initially permitted. Ghalenoei said the team were ready to leave their base in Tijuana but the evening passed without Fifa giving them the green light.

“They [Fifa] phoned me and said: ‘Are you ready if we get you a flight at 6pm?’ I welcomed that but we sat and waited and waited,” Ghalenoei said. “We waited until 7pm, nothing happened. ‘OK, sorry, we weren’t able to do that.’ That’s going to affect us mentally, especially me as a head coach … I know Fifa is trying its best, I thank them for that but it doesn’t mean they have succeeded.”

Ghalenoei confirmed they have been granted permission to fly to Seattle two days before their final Group G match against Egypt on Friday, but questioned why they have been prevented from doing so for their other matches in the US. “Why didn’t they let us come earlier for the first two games as well?” the 62-year-old said. “They’ve allowed us to make our own decisions with regards to planning the travel but unfortunately for the first two games others made these decisions for us.”

Preamble

Tunisia are out, after a thumping defeat against Japan in Group F. Curaçao are still in there fighting, after a heroic 0-0 draw against Ecuador in Group E … Germany and the Netherlands, meanwhile, appear to be moving ominously through the gears. Let’s talk about the World Cup .

Keyword – UK news
Trefwoorden – MI6, UK news, Espionage, World news, UK security and counter-terrorism
Title – Lady Ramsay of Cartvale obituary | MI6 | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/julialangdon
Link – Lady Ramsay of Cartvale obituary | MI6 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-19T17:13:04.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/19/lady-ramsay-of-cartvale-obituary

Meta Ramsay described herself in her latter years as an “international affairs consultant”, while her former career was summarily defined in Who’s Who as having been a member of HM Diplomatic Service. In reality, Ramsay, who has died aged 89, was the spy who perhaps should have been appointed the first woman “C”, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6 .

On retirement from MI6, as required at the age of 55 in 1991, she was the most high-ranking woman in the service, yet it would still be more than three decades until the first female “C”, with Blaise Metreweli securing that distinction only last year. Ramsay went on to play an active part in Labour politics when her old friend John Smith was leader, and subsequently in the House of Lords during Tony Blair’s government.

It was Ramsay’s bad luck that her 22 years as an intelligence officer (a post that was never, of course, officially confirmed or denied by the service) coincided with a period of profound misogyny in appointments within MI6. “The most serious problem was the fact that I was a woman,” she said in a rare interview in later life, and it was to her credit that she became one of only two women to rise to a senior rank during her operational career.

Ramsay was angered that although women had been widely deployed with immense success as agents in the second world war, during the second half of the last century their roles were often downgraded, consigning many of the clerical “Miss Moneypennys” to becoming the forgotten women of British intelligence.

She herself was assigned to the Stockholm station for three years in 1970, the year after being signed up, and she later ran the Helsinki station for four years from 1981 – both of these posts being significant on what has been called the “Moscow watch”. Predictably, there is no record of her role in the intervening eight years. The only operation that she ever acknowledged was the successful exfiltration of the double agent Oleg Gordievsky , a former KGB colonel, through Helsinki in 1985.

He had been betrayed by the CIA traitor Aldrich Ames , and escaped across the border from the Soviet Union in a thrilling episode of derring-do. Ramsay was later wholly opposed to Gordievsky participating in a 1990 edition of BBC television’s Panorama. “She was utterly convinced that the security organisation ought to remain secret and have no relationship whatever with the press in any circumstances,” said the journalist Tom Mangold, who conducted the interview.

Born Margaret in Langside in the south of Glasgow, she was an only child. Her father, Alexander Ramsay, was an engineering pattern-maker from Govan, working in the shipyards and for Rolls-Royce aero engines. Her mother, Sheila (nee Jackson), was the daughter of a Jewish woman who had arrived in Glasgow’s Gorbals district as a refugee from the pogroms in Ukraine. Meta went to Battlefield primary school then Hutchesons’ girls’ grammar school before heading to Glasgow University, graduating with a general degree.

There, she was a member of the “golden generation” who became luminaries in Scottish politics, journalism and public affairs. They included Smith, his future wife Elizabeth Bennett (now Lady Smith of Gilmorehill), Scottish first minister Donald Dewar , Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell and lord chancellor Lord (Derry) Irvine. From 1958 for a year Ramsay was the first woman at the university to be president of the Students’ Representative Council, and subsequently the first female president of the Scottish Union of Students.

In 1960 she moved on to the international stage, working for three years in the co-ordinating secretariat of students’ unions at Leiden, in the Netherlands, set up to counter communist influence in other student bodies in western Europe, and then for four years as the manager of the fund for International Student Co-operation. It was in these posts that she was presumed to have attracted the attention of the intelligence service that she formally joined in 1969. She also graduated from the Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

After her service in the field she worked at MI6 headquarters from 1987 to 1991, officially as a Foreign Office counsellor. She was in charge of the counteraction department, “doing nasty things to nasty people”, as she once put it. This covered the period of the first Gulf war , and Ramsay would later opine that she had “blood on her hands” because, in her view, the Americans pulled out too soon and thus let down the Kurds and the Shia Muslims. She backed the Iraq war in 2003, by which time she was a Labour peer under Blair.

After leaving the intelligence service she briefly worked in hostage rescue for the Control Risks consultancy, until Smith appointed her as his foreign policy adviser on becoming Labour leader after the 1992 election. When Smith died she became political adviser to Robin Cook , as shadow trade and industry secretary, and she joined the House of Lords in 1996 on Blair’s recommendation. When he took office the following year he made her a government whip, and until 2001 she was a frontbench speaker on foreign affairs, culture, media and sport – and also on Scottish affairs until devolution was enacted. Her proudest achievement, she would say, was as co-chair from 1997 to 1999 of the constitutional convention that set up the Holyrood parliament.

She was a member of the intelligence and security committee (1997; 2005-07), and of the joint committee on national security strategy (2010-14). She had a role in a number of international political and security organisations, and garnered a number of honorary degrees. She also played a role in Jewish affairs, speaking out latterly against antisemitism “creeping out of its hiding place again”.

Ramsay was always professionally uncompromising. She was also smart as a whip, great company and fun. An elegant woman who dressed often in amethyst silk jackets with matching nail polish, as a politician she would drum those manicured nails on the table to make her point. Like others of her generation in intelligence, she never married – until 1973 it would have meant immediately leaving the service – commenting casually once that it would be difficult to explain at home the broken fingernails caused by “things that you do with machinery or guns”.

Ramsay had once considered being an educational psychologist, and she revealed her comprehension of the psychology of the job of an intelligence agent in an interview with the Herald two years ago. She said it was “tricky”, “like being an actor” and also a cross between “priest and psychiatrist”. She thought of herself as a public servant, “just doing the best for your country”, and said: “I wanted to achieve something positive and helpful to the fight and the cause of democratic socialism.”

Lady Ramsay of Cartvale, (Margaret Mildred) “Meta” Ramsay, intelligence officer and politician, born 12 July 1936; died 28 May 2026

Keyword – Games
Trefwoorden – Games, Culture
Title – From pwned to kiting – an A to Z of the gaming terms you need to know | Games | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/robin-craig
Link – From pwned to kiting – an A to Z of the gaming terms you need to know | Games | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T11:00:29.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/jun/21/from-pwned-to-kiting-an-a-to-z-of-the-gaming-terms-you-need-to-know

T wenty years ago, video games were seen as a niche hobby dominated by hardcore enthusiasts, tucked away in obscure online forums and gaming meet-ups. Back then, the idea that governments would use footage from Call of Duty and gaming terms such as “killstreaks” as war propaganda would have been absurd. Then the 2010s happened: nerd culture popularised, previously online-only spaces began to meld with the real world, and gaming went mainstream.

Now, gaming references have entered common parlance – at the end of 2024, video game terms including “cheat code” and “cutscene” were even added to the Oxford English Dictionary – and they increasingly crop up in politics, too. Earlier this year, the official White House X account posted footage of military strikes on Iran interspersed with footage from the video game Grand Theft Auto. Six days later, another video was posted , this time interspersing military footage with clips from Nintendo’s 2006 game Wii Sports. Video game references aren’t reserved for the political right, either: in February 2026, Democrat representative of New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quipped , “Why does this guy always talk like a World of Warcraft npc [non-player character]?” in response to a post on X by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff.

To help navigate this new world of gaming references and gaming-inspired “ slopaganda ”, we have compiled a guide to gaming terms, from phrases that are already widespread to those on the verge of cutting through.

A

Any% A method of beating a game by any means possible, including using glitches or other techniques to skip boss battles, cutscenes, and even entire levels. Any%ers often celebrate “breaking” the game through code exploits to gain a speed advantage. For a real world example, see Elon Musk’s approach to the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) .

B

Boosting Paying for someone else to do the hard work for you by, for example, levelling up your character, especially in online games. Generally viewed as cheating and against the ethos of gaming, it is also something that Elon Musk has admitted to doing for his characters in Path of Exile 2 and Diablo 4.

Buff An enhancement made to a character, item or ability that increases its power or effectiveness. The equivalent of having two pints at a bar to buff your confidence before speaking to someone you fancy.

Bullet sponge An enemy character that takes an absurd amount of damage before they are defeated. Also, derogatory military slang for a person whom nobody wants to be around because they always attract enemy fire. See also: “tanks”.

Button mashing Repeatedly pressing a random selection of buttons on a controller, usually as an act of sheer panic and desperation by inexperienced players trying to win difficult fights.

C

Camping A tactic, usually deployed in games involving shooting and combat, of staying in the same spot for long periods because of its strategic advantage. Often used to snipe other players from afar, which can quickly become very annoying and lead to accusations of trolling or “griefing” (see below).

Cheesing Using tactics that are not technically cheating, but are treading a fine line . Cheesing is effectively taking the easy way out and avoiding the intended challenge set by developers. Tactics include exploiting glitches and loopholes, spamming the same move again and again before an enemy can react, or making yourself overpowered (see “OP” below). One example of cheesing was in Crash Bandicoot: Warped (1998), where players could avoid taking any damage during a colosseum-themed boss fight by standing in a safe-spot corner. In the game’s 2017 remake, standing in that corner resulted in the player being pelted by blocks of cheese as a punishment.

Class A character’s role or occupation (such as warrior, samurai or bandit), often chosen early in the game. Most classes fall into the categories of offence, defence and support, and each class has its own strengths and weaknesses that requires players to adapt their playing style.

D

DLC “Downloadable content”, an extra part of a game that players can pay to download, often including new levels, outfits, items or weapons.

DPS “Damage per second”, a way of calculating how effective an in-game attack or weapon is by measuring how much it damages an enemy in one second.

E

Easter eggs One of the oldest video game terms, an Easter egg is a message, reference or feature hidden in a game. It originates from Steve Wright, a software developer at Atari in 1980, who compared a hidden room in the video game Adventure to an Easter egg hunt (the hidden room contained the signature of Warren Robinett, a coder who, in his own words , was “pissed” that he hadn’t received any credit for being the game’s creator).

Emotes Short gestures players can make their characters perform to show emotions, such as waving, laughing or crying. Popular in online games such as Fortnite and World of Warcraft, where emoting is often used to rile or mock other players.

F

Farming Performing an action in a game repeatedly to gather resources such as items or experience, much like going to work every day to accumulate money, but for fun and in your free time. See also: “grinding”.

G

Gank Similar to “jumping” someone in real life, this is a gaming strategy to ambush weaker players by sneaking up on them, usually in a group.

GG Short for “good game”, used during online games as a way to show sportsmanship at the end of a match. Can be extended to GG WP (“good game, well played”) or, if a player wants to brag about defeating a particularly weak opponent, GG ez (“good game, easy”).

Glitch A bug or malfunction in a game that causes unintended consequences. One of the most infamous is the “ Corrupted Blood incident” in World of Warcraft , where a glitch meant that a blood curse spread rapidly between players, eventually spreading so widely that developers had to reset the game. The incident was later used by scientists to study the spread of infectious diseases .

God mode To be omnisciently powerful and invincible within the world of the game, sometimes achieved using hacks or code exploits. During Doge’s overhaul of US government agencies, one senior leader at USAID declared to the Atlantic : “Doge has achieved God mode.”

Griefing To grief someone, or to be a “griefer”, is to wind other players up deliberately by being annoying, disruptive and generally infuriating. Often achieved through killing other players without reason, stealing items, or refusing to engage in team activities. See also: “trolls”.

Grinding Similar to “farming”: a repeated action or task undertaken to gather a resource or level up.

H

HP “Hit points” or “health points”, used to measure the health of a character or how much damage an attack does. Increasingly used in meme culture to joke about real-life damage or embarrassment, such as seeing someone fall over and quipping: “minus 10 HP”.

I

In Minecraft A phrase adopted by far-right sites such as 4chan, often added semi-ironically to the end of threats in an attempt to avoid legal repercussions (for example: “I’m going to punch him … in Minecraft”). It backfired in 2023 when a man was arrested for making death threats against a Florida sheriff on 4chan’s politics board, despite ending his threats with “in Minecraft”.

K

KDR “Kill/death ratio”, a measure used to compare the number of kills a player achieves with the number of times they die, usually to determine skill and competence in online multiplayer games.

Killstreak A continuous series of kills made by a player without being killed themselves (literally a “streak” of kills). This year, the White House was criticised for using a killstreak animation from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in a video featuring real footage from the war in Iran.

Kiting The tactic of hitting an enemy from range while keeping enough distance to avoid harm, often leading them around like a kite on a string.

L

Loot Items players collect as a reward for killing enemies or completing tasks. In recent years, controversial “loot boxes” have gained popularity in games including Genshin Impact and League of Legends, allowing players to exchange real money for randomised virtual items (sometimes also known as “gacha games”, named after Japanese Gashapon , vending machines that dispense capsule toys).

M

-maxxing Prioritising one skill or attribute over all others. Originates from “min-maxing”, a technique of creating the best possible character by maximising desirable traits and minimising undesirable ones. It has now entered mainstream vocabulary with the advent of looksmaxxing and Chinamaxxing .

MMORPG “Massively multiplayer online role playing game”, a game in which players interact with an enormous number of other players in an online fantasy world. A notable example is EVE Online, a sci-fi MMORPG, which, in 2014, saw a battle with 7,548 participants .

Modding Fan-created modifications that change elements of a game’s appearance or add new features. A personal favourite is a Skyrim mod that turns the game’s dragons into Thomas the Tank Engine characters .

N

Nerf To weaken or water down a weapon, character or ability (“I don’t want to play as Riven any more, she’s been nerfed!”), originating from the Nerf brand of toy guns that fire harmless soft foam weapons.

Noob Gaming slang that took hold in the 00s, short for “newbie” and sometimes spelt “n00b”, it is a derogatory word for a clueless and hopeless beginner.

NPC “Non-player character”, a video game character not controlled by the player. Increasingly used as slang for people who are predictable, robotic or lacking interiority, and sometimes tied to the philosophical idea that we live in a simulation .

O

OP “Overpowered”, referring to a character, item or ability that is ridiculously strong and makes winning easy. The spiritual opposite of “nerfed”.

P

Pwned A misspelling of the word “owned”, meaning a humiliating defeat (for example, “You died so easily! Pwned!”). It emerged in the early 00s as part of “leetspeak”, an online slang dialect heavily associated with hackers and coders. A notable example of the word escaping video games is the website “ Have I Been Pwned ”, established by a Microsoft developer to check whether your email has been compromised in security breaches.

R

Ragequit To suddenly stop playing a game out of anger and frustration, usually because you are repeatedly losing. In 2017, Vanity Fair accused Steve Bannon of threatening to ragequit the White House.

RPG “Role playing game”, typically a game with a heavy storytelling element in which players assume the roles of characters, make decisions for them and follow a narrative path.

S

Side quest A mission or activity that isn’t part of the game’s main story and is usually optional to complete. Sometimes used in more general slang to refer to the whimsical activities and adventures of day-to-day life, such as taking a sewing class or getting a tarot reading .

Skins Different designs and outfits that can be applied to characters to customise their appearance, such as “Peely”, a Fortnite skin that gives characters a banana costume.

Smurfing When a highly skilled player in an online game creates a new account to disguise their skill level and play against lower-ranked players. Originating from top Warcraft 2 players Geoff “Shlonglor” Frazier and Greg “Warp” Boyko, who disguised themselves under the usernames PapaSmurf and Smurfette to play against novice players.

Speedrunning A popular spectator sport that involves completing a game as fast as possible, sometimes using loopholes or glitches (see “Any%”). The term has recently broken into common parlance through “Scientology speedruns”, a 2026 social media trend in which participants film themselves running as far into Scientology buildings as possible before being stopped. One video racked up 90m views .

T

Tanks Also known as a meat shield or bullet sponge, a tank is a class of character designed to withstand large amounts of damage, akin to military tanks. See also: “bullet sponge”. Trolls Similar to griefers, players who don’t take the game seriously and annoy other players for fun, including by being purposefully offensive – for example, by posting slurs in the in-game chat.

Turtling A strategy where players build heavy defensive fortifications and force their opponents to make risky moves to break through, akin to building a defensive turtle shell.

X

XP “Experience points”, similar to HP, are a unit of measurement used to quantify a player’s skills and progress. Typically, the more XP one has, the stronger they are. Can also be used in real life, such as when video game streamer Sykkuno said: “ My XP bar is low ” in reference to dating inexperience.