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 – UK news
Trefwoorden – UK news, Road safety, Virtual reality, London, Manchester, Birmingham
Title – Motorway traffic drones are coming to UK roads, but will they drive us to distraction? | UK news | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/raphael-boyd
Link – Motorway traffic drones are coming to UK roads, but will they drive us to distraction? | UK news | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T09:17:47.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/20/motorway-traffic-drones-driving-distraction-virtual-reality-simulation

I’m barrelling down the motorway at 70mph, swerving from lane to lane, with cars speeding past me. There’s just one problem, I don’t have a driving licence.

Or at least it would be a problem were this a real road test. But despite the life-like surroundings, I am in fact trialling a complex simulation created by virtual reality company MXT on behalf of National Highways, the government-owned agency responsible for the UK’s major roads.

Its purpose, beyond being fun, is to see if drivers are likely to be distracted or disturbed by the introduction of low-flying drones deployed to monitor the state of the country’s 4,500 miles of motorways and A-roads.

Human-operated drones have already been used by the National Highways since 2020, in collaboration with engineering company Arup, but the agency is hoping to roll out even smaller drones that can get closer to sites of possible road maintenance, with the hope of having them in the air above motorways by early 2027.

National Highways say smaller drones flying at a lower altitude of between 10 and 20 metres will be able to pick up more details than larger drones, which are only allowed to fly about 50 metres above the road’s surface. The smaller drones are also about 10 times cheaper.

The simulation examines how feasible this is. The tests, which have taken place in London, Manchester and Birmingham over the course of a month, are described to participants as a standard road safety simulation, with drones only being mentioned after they are finished. Participants are then asked if they had noticed how much – if at all – they felt the drones affected their driving.

On top of their testimony, the test also measures several metrics during the simulation, including the participant’s heart rate, pupil dilation and the amount of time they spend not looking directly ahead, as well as factors such as speed and steer control.

It’s a surprisingly nervy experience and one that is not likely to boost my confidence behind the wheel. Still, while the simulated driving undertaken to write this story was described as “not great”, the administrator did point out that it wasn’t the worst they had seen, adding “at least you didn’t crash”.

Ewan Murdoch, a senior consultant at Arup, said that the results of the test could lead to drones being used for highway maintenance around the world.

“We’ve had some interest from colleagues in Australia who are looking potentially to do some of their things to their road authorities,” said Murdoch. “And in the US as well, they’re looking at opportunities for this, but this kind of methodology is quite interesting and novel, so I think it’s something that globally we’re seeing a strong interest in.”

The tests have been conducted with 120 regular drivers, as well as 19 heavy goods vehicle drivers to see if they were more affected driving large vehicles. While about half of participants said they noticed the drones during the test, significantly fewer drivers said they considered them to be “hazardous” or “dangerous” during the simulation.

Callum Brown, senior adviser on airspace standards at National Highways, described the tests as “cutting edge” and said smaller drones would be the safest and most efficient way to survey roads and buildings in the future.

“They did some tests similar to this in Massachusetts,” said Brown. “But in terms of trying to apply this nationally, this is a world first. We’re at the cutting edge for this and it’s something we’ve been building to for about six years now.”

One participant, Kevin McKeown, 49, enjoyed the experience and, while he found the VR aspect “a bit jarring” at first, did not believe the drones caused him any problems.

“It was a bit surreal like a video game, but if it increases health and safety and takes away an element of risk then I’m all for it,” he said. “And if you can get distracted by a drone flying 10 metres overhead then I think you’ve got bigger issues than just a drone, and I’m not too sure you should be driving a car in the first place.”

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – Spain, World Cup 2026, World Cup, Football, Sport
Title – Lamine Yamal a genius ‘like Dalí or Michelangelo’, says Spain’s De la Fuente | Spain | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sidlowe
Link – Lamine Yamal a genius ‘like Dalí or Michelangelo’, says Spain’s De la Fuente | Spain | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T22:48:23.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/20/lamine-yamal-genius-salvador-dali-michelangelo-spain-luis-de-la-fuente-world-cup

Luis de la Fuente urged people not to compare Lamine Yamal to Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona or “anyone”, but did compare him to Salvador Dalí and Michelangelo – “geniuses” for whom the exceptional comes naturally.

On the eve of their second World Cup game, against Saudi Arabia in Atlanta, it was put to the Spain coach that Lamine Yamal is confronted by a process similar to those faced by Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona but at the age of 18. His image is everywhere in the United States, a global figure already, and the buildup to the selección ’s participation at the tournament has been dominated by his availability after an injury he suffered in April – a teenager cast as their hope and salvation.

“Those are big names,” De la Fuente replied. “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. In those extremes, they feel comfortable. Why? Because they are different. What we think is exceptional, they consider normal.”

De la Fuente added: “We should help him as best we can on this journey: that would be good for Spanish football and the Spanish national team. Those of us who are parents know that you accompany [your children], guide them, but without invading their space. I am a coach but I am also someone who forms people. When you’re so young, when you’re 18, you still need advice. You can’t talk to them like you do to Jesús Navas. He is intelligent and accepts it. He protects himself from the media, as he should.”

De la Fuente also denied that it is a problem for the national team that so much of the spotlight falls on the teenager, eclipsing everything and everyone else. “That’s because the atmosphere inside is very healthy, very natural,” he said. “We know the human qualities of everyone in this group. We are waiting for Lamine because that’s the way it is. He’s important. We celebrated the expectation there is [around him], because he is with us. We understand his role perfectly, and so do his teammates. Day to day, they are all the same, all equal.”

The Spain coach announced that Lamine Yamal was ready to start against Saudi Arabia in their second World Cup game, after a 20-minute substitute appearance in their 0-0 draw against Cape Verde . But he also said he did not expect the winger to play the entire game, floating the idea that he could get “55, 58 or 63 minutes”, depending on how the game evolved.

Asked what “he’s back” meant, De la Fuente replied: “That he is at the point where we have stop him, hold him back; he has to do the things he has to do at this stage in the process. He enjoys playing so much. We see him train and it’s a joy: the way he is, the way he competes, the spirit and sharpness he has. The best news of all is that he is available and in a good moment.”

Keyword – Technology
Trefwoorden – AI (artificial intelligence), Technology, Trump administration, US politics, Silicon Valley, Anthropic, OpenAI, Nvidia, Datacenters, Europe, US news
Title – A viral doomsday scenario aims to shake Europe out of its AI complacency | AI (artificial intelligence) | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/aisha-down
Link – A viral doomsday scenario aims to shake Europe out of its AI complacency | AI (artificial intelligence) | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T09:59:12.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/20/europe-sleepwalking-ai-disaster-us-china

It’s 2031 and the US and China are about to tear Europe into pieces.

The US ploughed vast sums into datacentres and the EU did not. China built robots and Europe did not. American companies “restructured” their workflows around AI and fired people, while EU workers went on long lunch breaks and handed over administrative tasks to the AI model Claude.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Europe’s economy is a shambles because it does not have its own AI. Populism is surging, the euro is wobbling, cyber-attacks are shredding EU businesses. Brexit seemed like a good idea. It looks like the end of the European Union.

That, at least, is the vision of a speculative thought experiment, called Europe 2031 , penned by Brussels-based thinktankers and published fortuitously one day before the Trump administration decided to block “foreign nationals” from using a much-hyped AI model built by Anthropic, called Fable.

In the heady week of G7 talks that followed, the scenario has gone viral – feeding a feverish discussion of the urgency for EU tech sovereignty. It has been read by members of the European parliament and, say its authors, was brought up in track 1.5 discussions between British and German officials earlier this week.

Its authors say they feel “vindicated”, by the attention it has received and by the fact that one of their predictions – that the US would restrict global access to advanced AI models – appears to have briefly come true. They hope the scenario will spur Europe towards a dramatic course-correction on AI.

The piece is part of a burgeoning genre of fictional AI doomsday scenarios, created by obscure figures, which have gained surprising traction among policymakers over the past year. In 2025 there was AI 2027, a thought experiment which culminates in a superintelligent AI killing all of humanity to make way for more datacentres; in February, another speculative scenario imagined AI upending the US economy . (The first was read by US vice-president JD Vance, the second contributed to a stock market wobble.)

One complication of all this might be that their thought experiment is at times based on current developments in AI whose outcome is uncertain or in doubt.

Maximilian Negele contributed to Europe 2031, he says, because of the “incredible translation barrier” between Brussels and San Francisco, where AI is being developed. Formerly at US thinktank Rand, he left his job this year to focus on the project.

“As somebody who travels to San Francisco quite a bit and talks to people there, what is happening in Europe just seemed like a slow-moving car crash to me,” he says.

The scenario unfolds from the perspective of a fictional bright-eyed Brussels staffer, Caroline Dubois, who has a German friend, Christian Vogt, with a startup in San Francisco. On a visit, she’s impressed by America’s “70 or 80-hour” working weeks and discomfited by the conviction among tech bros that everything is about to change.

Back in Europe, she works to evangelise her well-meaning bosses about the impending AI future – but fails to convince. There’s too much scepticism, and most people think AI is a bubble.

Things go from there. The Americans spend huge sums on a massive AI building programme – the scenario highlights a real-life $100bn (£75bn) deal between OpenAI and Nvidia , the $300bn agreement between OpenAI and Oracle, and “bulldozers” breaking earth in Texas for an AI datacentre. Europeans, meanwhile, put forward a tepid investment package and ignore advisers’ pleas for “a full regulatory carte blanche for datacentre providers”.

In a matter of years, America monopolises 70% of the world’s “compute” – the semiconductor chips that fill the datacentres that power AI models. Europe’s economy is meanwhile gasping for air, mostly because its companies have not adopted AI.

As AI-powered cyber-attacks shred European firms and unemployment surges, EU officials scramble to parlay their one last bargaining chip – the Dutch lithography firm ASML, which is vital to the production of AI semiconductors – into concessions from Beijing or Washington. But it’s too late. The US deploys powerful “frontier AI” spyware and learns the deepest fears of EU officials and also which of them are having affairs.

Curtains drop. Christian and Caroline exeunt stage left for a drink. Disaster impends.

Sceptical readers might point out that a number of the eye-popping sums and big projects that the authors name-check in describing the US’s AI ascent have already fallen apart.

The $100bn agreement between OpenAI and Nvidia , the biggest AI deal of last year, evaporated in February. The $300bn between OpenAI and Oracle seems doubtful , especially as recent reports indicate the maker of ChatGPT is still billions of dollars underwater as it burns money on datacentre infrastructure.

The bulldozers on the ground in Texas may not be bulldozing very much any more, as OpenAI pulled out of the flagship AI project to which that moment in the scenario seems to refer.

The authors are sanguine about these matters. Throughout the piece, they pre-empt potential objections – such as AI being overhyped – by suggesting that the hapless European officials have these worries, too, and they end up tragically wrong.

“I wouldn’t rule out that there’s some exuberance and that one or two AI companies might go bankrupt,” says Negele. “But what we wanted to get across is a general feel for a version of what we think will happen.”

He and his co-author, Alex Petropolous, agree that there could be some bumps in the road – including mounting resistance to datacentres in the US. “I mean, people hate AI in general. A lot of people do. People hate datacentres. They destroy the landscape. They support big tech. It’s a very, very unpopular policy.”

The authors of Europe 2031 think that the solution to this is datacentres. Europe needs to build more, faster, ideally in AI zones where matters such as power and planning can be streamlined and deregulated.

“I think our view is that the total datacentre supply is quite an inelastic supply. So there will only be a limited number of datacentres built in the world built every year, and the question is, how many of those do you want built in the US? How many of those do you want built in Europe?” says Petropolous.

It is further worth noting that the main organisation behind the Europe 2031 scenario, Arq Foundation, based in Brussels, describes itself as “neither an advocacy NGO nor a venture-backed startup” and does not disclose who funds it.

Brussels politicians who read it, though, may take away a simpler message: the scenario has crystallised a conversation about the need for Europe to have technological sovereignty.

“This scenario, Europe 2031, I believe that some of the parts they mentioned can happen,” says Nicolás Casares, a member of the European parliament from Spain. “But I think they are increasing – a bit – the alarms in order to call our attention.”

The US cutting off Europe’s access to Fable, he says, means that the EU needs to ask itself harder questions about who is building its AI infrastructure and who will benefit from it.

“What is the added value of having OpenAI or Anthropic datacentres in Europe?” he says.

“We are buying a narrative that we need a lot of datacentres not to lose the race for AI. But this is crazy … we are paving the way for infrastructure that they will use and sometimes not allow us the possibility of using it.”

Keyword – Technology
Trefwoorden – Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, US news
Title – Key Trump allies and Musk on leaked list for secretive Peter Thiel retreat | Peter Thiel | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/wilson-jason
Link – Key Trump allies and Musk on leaked list for secretive Peter Thiel retreat | Peter Thiel | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T12:00:00.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/20/trump-elon-musk-peter-thiel-retreat

A website leak has exposed participants in the secretive, Peter Thiel-founded Dialog retreats which includes top politicians from across the American divide, officials from foreign countries, other titans of the tech industry world and prominent media figures.

The annual Dialog retreats, which have been compared to other quasi-secret elite conferences like the Bilderberg Group and Bohemian Grove since they began in 2006, have had some participants revealed in previous media reports. Fairly little is known about the invitation-only event, which is usually held at luxury establishments around the world and features organized discussions on global affairs.

The list indicates an organization capable of mustering a unique mix of government, corporate and cultural power, though many names on the list likely attended Dialog events prior to Thiel’s association with the political right and the Trump era.

The list was exposed, apparently accidentally, in the Dialog website’s source code, and was visible in an Internet Archive snapshot of the site archived on 15 June. It was first noted by a hacktivist on BlueSky.

The leak was snapshotted on the Internet Archive on Monday, where the Guardian was able to independently verify the information.

Thiel is a secretive and influential billionaire political svengali and tech investor who recently hit the headlines for hosting a series of lectures philosophizing about who the antichrist could be and warning that Armageddon is coming. Thiel has also recently become powerful in conservative politics with close ties to Donald Trump and JD Vance and has helped bankroll Republicans’ 2026 midterm campaigns.

The leaked Dialog list includes governors, senators and congresspeople from both US political parties, leaders and officials from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and Japan and prominent opinion writers from outlets including the New York Times, among many others.

It’s not clear when the names were added to the list and under what circumstances, and in what capacity those listed participated in Dialog.

The list has already been the subject of media reports, but it remains unclear whether all the individuals on it have the same degree of involvement with Dialog. Some of those on the list whom the Guardian contacted were prepared to defend Dialog and its mission, which the organization’s website characterizes as the promotion of non-ideological, non-partisan conversation.

Others took pains to distance themselves from the elite networking gatherings, and claimed to have had only fleeting involvement with the gatherings, which had sometimes taken place in the distant past.

The names include serving Trump administration figures such as White House staff secretary Will Scharf and National Science Foundation nominee and former CDC acting head Jim O’Neill; conservative-movement rainmaker Leonard Leo and the retired general Stanley McChrystal ; corporate powerbrokers like OpenAI president Greg Brockman and trillionaire Elon Musk, as well as Neuralink executive and mother of Musk’s children Shivon Zilis ; and writers including Sam Harris, Steven Pinker , and New York Times columnists Ezra Klein and Bret Stephens .

Names from beyond the US include the Saudi royal and former intelligence chief Turki al-Faisal ; former Keir Starmer adviser Matt Clifford and the UK Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat ; and Sheikh Nawaf Al-Sabah, the CEO of Kuwait Petroleum.

Separate reporting in Wired magazine revealed that this year’s Dialog event, to be held in Dublin this August, will range across topics including nuclear power, world war 3, sex, and cults. It’s not known if those on the leaked list were speakers, guests, or full members of the organization.

The Guardian has contacted all participants named in this reporting via publicly listed email addresses, or affiliated organizations, to ask about the details of their involvement with Dialog.

Janine Wedel, co-director of the Corruption, Networks, and Transnational Crime Research Center at George Mason University, and the author of Shadow Elite and other books, said: “It is in these sorts of gatherings – where you have financial, tech and political power coming together – that we’re increasingly seeing agendas being set and opinions being shaped. It’s where the most powerful elites, a cross-section, an interconnected section of the most powerful positions, come together and shape elite opinion.”

Wedel added: “There do seem to be a growing number of fora involved in precisely this – transnational gatherings of the most powerful financial, tech and political elites, coming together. So I think it’s a problem for democracy, in essence. We have to think about it that way.”

And the leak connects with other scandals involving the intersection of wealth and power. Emails released by the House oversight committee show that Dialog’s other founder, tech entrepreneur Auren Hoffman, invited deceased financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to the 2014 conference. It’s not known if Epstein attended any Dialog gatherings.

US government officials, serving and former

The leaked directory contains the names of several senior Trump administration officials. Dialog’s list includes treasury secretary Scott Bessent; army secretary Dan Driscoll; White House staff secretary Will Scharf; and Jim O’Neill, the former deputy secretary of health and human services and a co-founder of Thiel’s fellowship programme ).

Two sitting senators are listed – Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey – alongside the Connecticut Democratic congressman Jim Himes. Two sitting governors also appear: Wes Moore of Maryland and Jared Polis of Colorado, both Democrats.

Democrats appeared keen to disassociate themselves from the organization.

Jared Polis spokesperson Eric Maruyama wrote in response to a request for comment: “No, Governor Polis is not a member of this organization, whatever it is. He does not know why his name is associated with the organization in any way or appeared on their website.”

Maruyama added: “He does not recall ever having attended functions hosted by them and has not previously heard of them.”

Cory Booker’s spokesperson David Bergstein linked the Guardian to an X post in which he wrote: “Cory is not involved with this group. Back when he was a mayor he regularly attended conferences and speaking engagements, and this might have been among them. He is not a part of this organization and has absolutely no interest in doing anything with them.”

Wes Moore’s spokesperson did not respond directly to the Guardian’s request for comment, but soon after the request was sent, the governor took to X to post “13 years ago I was invited to speak – to an audience largely unfamiliar with the experiences of millions of Americans who grew up like me – about my book The Other Wes Moore”.

He added: “That was my first and last appearance at Dialog. Never met Peter Thiel. Don’t plan to in the future!”

The list also spans figures who have moved between government and the private sector: Robert Hur, the former special counsel; Lisa Monaco, the former deputy attorney general; Julian Castro, the former housing secretary; Preet Bharara, the former US attorney in Manhattan; Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor and Purdue University president; and the retired general Stan McChrystal.

McChrystal replied to a request for comment in an email, writing that “I did attend two Dialog events about a decade ago but I don’t believe it constituted ‘membership’. They’ve regularly invited me since but I haven’t attended because I’m very busy – not out of any negative feelings for Dialog.”

He added: “My experience was all positive – a gathering of thoughtful people across the political spectrum (my wife was seated at dinner with a well-known Republican politician) and in my memory the gathering discussed almost every kind of subject but politics. Non-attribution was applied simply to encourage candor.”

He concluded: “I can see a temptation to view these kinds of events as something they’re not, in my experience we need more venues where people feel free to talk openly, without the pressure of public scrutiny – and often misinterpretation – of every word if we’re going to rebuild bridges across the divide in my nation and our world.”

Asked if he was aware of Thiel’s connection with the organization, McChrystal wrote: “He attended one that I was at but I was [not] aware if he was an organizer – seemed to just be attending like everyone else.”

Wedel, the professor and expert on power elites, said of McChrystal’s comment: “While I’m sure it is nice to talk off the record, it is nice to talk freely, at the same time, this shaping of opinion has a great deal of impact on the rest of us who aren’t participating in it.”

She added: “That’s the conundrum we’re in. And it’s only through leaks, and through dogged journalism, that you learn some of these things after the fact – and then you’ve still had no voice in any of it.”

Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society co-chairman who has shaped the federal judiciary, is listed, as are the former treasury secretaries Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers, who recently resigned from Harvard over his association with Jeffrey Epstein; the former state department policy chief Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former FDA commissioner Peggy Hamburg, and the anti-tax organiser Grover Norquist.

A person familiar with Summers’s involvement with Dialog said that he had attended one meeting last April.

Overseas government officials

Dialog’s roster reaches well beyond Washington. Serving foreign officials include Kaja Kallas, the European Commission vice-president and former Estonian prime minister, and Tarō Kōno, Japan’s digital minister and a former defence minister.

In an email, Kallas spokesperson Matthias Eichenlaub wrote: “The High Representative is not a member of this group. If you’re referring to the press coverage that there’s apparently a meeting in Ireland in August, we have no intention of going there, if that meeting even exists.”

The list names Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi royal who formerly ran the kingdom’s intelligence service and served as its ambassador to Washington and London; Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, the current Saudi ambassador to the United States; Sheikh Nawaf Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, chief executive of the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation; and Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, a former prime minister of Pakistan.

There is a notable British presence on the list. Matt Clifford – who until recently was the UK prime minister’s adviser on AI and now chairs the government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) – is a member, as is the British Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat. A separate retreat registration list is reported to name Randy Kroszner, a former US Federal Reserve governor who now sits on the Bank of England’s financial policy committee.

In an email responding to a request for comment, Matt Clifford wrote: “I’m very surprised this is interesting to anyone! For better or worse, I receive invitations to a large number of conferences, events and gatherings each year; this was one of them.”

Clifford added: “I am not attending the conference. The list being circulated is (as far as I understand it) an invite list rather than an attendee list.”

Clifford also linked the Guardian to International Business Times reporting on his Dialog listing.

Tech and business

Beyond the founders – Thiel and Auren Hoffman, who chairs the group – the directory is heavy with business figures closest to the current administration. They include trillionaire and former “Doge” supremo Elon Musk; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and foreign policy envoy, now running the Gulf-backed Affinity Partners; Joe Lonsdale, the Palantir co-founder and prominent Maga-aligned venture capitalist; the former Google chief Eric Schmidt; and the investor and All-In host Chamath Palihapitiya.

It also names a row of sitting corporate chiefs: Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI (and Jason Kwon, its chief strategy officer); Neal Mohan, the chief executive of YouTube; Vas Narasimhan, the chief executive of Novartis; Thasunda Brown Duckett of the pension giant TIAA.

Other names come from the world of media and entertainment, including Ezra Klein and Bret Stephens, the New York Times columnists; the podcaster and author Sam Harris; and the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is married to former OpenAI board member Tasha McCauley and has recently campaigned to repeal the statute that protects online publishers from liability for content posted by users. Also on the list is the longevity entrepreneur Peter Attia, who this year had a short-lived tenure at Bari Weiss’s revamped CBS News before resigning over his correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein.

Levitt confirmed to media outlets that he had attended two Dialog events.

Epstein invitation

Founded around 2005–06, Dialog maintains a paid, tiered membership with a nominations pipeline, an executive director – Raffi Grinberg – and, for a period, a managing director in Simone Collins , half of the pronatalist couple at the centre of a Silicon Valley movement previously reported on in the Guardian .

Archived versions of an earlier Dialog site show member directories stretching back to 2006 and regional “Around the Table” dinners in several cities. The group is now building a permanent campus in the Washington suburbs, and this year’s retreat is reported to be set for 12–16 August at a hotel outside Dublin.

The 2014 invitation shows Hoffman asking Jeffrey Epstein to that year’s retreat – alongside Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton and Henry Kravis – adding Dialog to the long list of elite institutions that courted the financier after his conviction, a milieu the Guardian has previously reported on . It is not known whether Epstein attended.

Wedel, the professor, said: “What we’re seeing is how all of these [elites] come together, help each other out and absolutely play above the rules. They’re not beholden to the rules the rest of us are subjected to.

“The participants are secret, the agendas and the conversations are secret – and people can get away with shaping opinion that is in their interest but may be absolutely contrary to the interests of you and me.”

Keyword – US news
Trefwoorden – Trump administration, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, US foreign policy, US news, US politics, Ukraine, Europe
Title – US treasury chief urged Trump not to host ‘Mr Bean on crack’ Zelenskyy, book says | Trump administration | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/martin-pengelly
Link – US treasury chief urged Trump not to host ‘Mr Bean on crack’ Zelenskyy, book says | Trump administration | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T13:00:02.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/20/scott-bessent-volodymyr-zelenskyy-trump

Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, advised Donald Trump not to host Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, having called the Ukrainian president a “little fucker”, a “special-needs child” and “Mr Bean on crack”, according to a new book.

The suggestion that a US cabinet official described a world leader in such terms is included in Regime Change, a blockbusting account of the second Trump administration by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, set to be published worldwide on Tuesday.

News of Bessent’s alleged remarks may embarrass the Trump administration, although the meeting that did take place on 28 February 2025 proved outright disastrous, as Trump and JD Vance blasted Zelenskyy for not being grateful for aid in his fight against Russian invaders, and for not wearing a suit.

The issue of aid to Ukraine remains at the fore, and was discussed at the G7 summit in France earlier this week.

“Several Trump aides had been worried” about the potential for a blow-up when Zelenskyy came to the White House, ostensibly to seal a minerals deal drafted by Bessent, Swan and Haberman write. Then-national security adviser Mike Waltz “tried – unsuccessfully – to get the message across that Zelenskyy should come wearing a suit”, they continue. “Bessent had strongly recommended to Trump that he not even allow Zelenskyy into the White House before he had signed” the deal.

“‘I’ve dealt with this little fucker,’ Bessent would say to associates about Zelenskyy,” according to the book. “‘He’s tricky. He’s like the special-needs child for the Europeans. And he’s acting like Mr Bean on crack.”

The treasury department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Zelenskyy did come, and Bessent was in the room as Vance carpeted their visitor. “Others present could see that Vance was steadily turning red,” Haberman and Swan write, as Zelenskyy’s insistence on pushing for security guarantees “began to sound to Vance like impertinence and ingratitude”.

Things went south from there.

After the disastrous meeting, Bessent told Bloomberg that Zelenskyy scored “one of the great diplomatic own goals”, adding: “I was shocked, shocked that President Zelenskyy would come into the Oval Office, behave like this, speak to the president, speak to the vice-president, but more importantly, disrespect the American people like this.”

Regime Change also contains alleged details of Bessent’s unsuccessful handling of the minerals deal. Prior to the Oval Office fiasco, the treasury secretary visited Kyiv to press Zelenskyy to sign. It did not go well.

“For 45 minutes, the men berated each other,” Swan and Haberman write. “Bessent had only been on the job for a few days, and already he had gotten into a shouting match with the leader of a country in the middle of a war. Finally he looked at Zelensky and said: ‘What the fuck do you want to do?’”

Negotiations are said to have stalled while Bessent battled the commerce secretary Howard Lutnick over how the deal should be worded. Eventually, Swan and Haberman write, “Trump asked JD Vance’s wife, Usha, also a Yale Law School graduate, to review the Ukrainian edits to the minerals deal. She declared the document ‘awful’, and [took] a heavy pencil to it.”

Most embarrassing for Bessent, however, may be his reported view of Trump himself, whom he is said to have compared to perhaps the greatest progressive boogeyman in many Republican minds.

Bessent told associates “Trump reminded him … of his old boss, the legendary investor and major Democratic donor George Soros”, according to the book. “‘They are the same animal,’ Bessent said.”

Keyword – UK news
Trefwoorden – Scotland, UK news
Title – Man charged after suspected anti-Muslim attacks across Edinburgh | Scotland | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/nadeembadshah
Link – Man charged after suspected anti-Muslim attacks across Edinburgh | Scotland | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T00:30:54.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/20/counter-terrorism-officers-investigate-after-five-injured-in-violent-incidents-in-edinburgh

Police Scotland said a man was charged after a series of attacks in Edinburgh on Friday night that are being treated as potential anti-Muslim hate crimes.

Counter-terrorism officers were brought in to investigate the attacks in which five people were injured.

A 36-year-old white Scottish man was arrested on Friday. The force added late on Saturday night: “A 36-year-old man has been charged in connection with a number of incidents which took place in Edinburgh on Friday, 19 June, 2026. A report has been submitted to the Procurator Fiscal, and the individual will appear at court in due course.”

Police said there was no further threat to the public.

Officers were called to the Sighthill area of the city, where two men were injured, at about 8.50pm on Friday. They were taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary by ambulance.

The Scottish Association of Mosques said two worshippers were attacked in a park after leaving the Broomhouse mosque.

Reports then came in to police about incidents around shops in the west and north of the city. The force said that during this period three other men were allegedly attacked in the Telford Road and Leith Walk area.

Around 9.30pm, police equipped with Tasers confronted a suspect and, although a Taser was not discharged, the man was detained.

Posts on social media appeared to show a shirtless man carrying a long weapon roaming a street and battering a restaurant door in the Scottish capital.

Another video appeared to show the same man on the ground shouting about “protecting the country” while being held by a police officer.

Police said that five men, two aged 22, and others aged 24, 27 and 39, sustained a range of injuries and three needed hospital treatment though none of the injuries were life-threatening.

Keir Starmer posted on X: “Absolutely appalling. No one should face violence on our streets.

“The suspect appears to be motivated by anti-Muslim hatred. I will not tolerate this – he will face the full force of the law.

“My thoughts are with those who are injured and I thank the police and the emergency services for their response.”

Omar Afzal, director of public affairs for the Scottish Association of Mosques, told the Scotsman: “There is a profound sense of shock, alarm and anger within Muslim communities across Scotland today.

“These latest attacks are deeply disturbing. However, they do not exist in a vacuum. For years, Muslim communities have warned about the consequences of anti-Muslim hatred becoming normalised in public discourse. When prejudice is left unchallenged, it creates an environment in which some individuals feel emboldened to act on that hatred.”

Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, said he was “deeply concerned” by the incidents. “There is no place for violence, racism or intolerance in our country,” he added.

The anti-Islamophobia non-profit Muslim Engagement and Development urged police to “treat this as what the evidence indicates: Islamophobic, far-right terror”.

Assistant chief constable Catriona Paton said: “I want to send a clear message of support to all our communities that there is no place for racism or faith-based hate in a Scotland which is at its best when we stand together.

“Officers responded to multiple reports of a fast-moving sequence of events across Edinburgh before arresting a man and public safety was our priority.

“Extensive work is ongoing to establish all the circumstances.

“We are being supported by counter-terrorism policing and working under the direction of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.”

Police closed off Leith Walk on Friday evening as the incidents unfolded.

A major incident public portal has been set up to encourage members of the public to submit information directly to officers.

Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – Iran, US news, JD Vance, Strait of Hormuz, Lebanon, Israel, US-Israel war on Iran, Middle East and north Africa, Switzerland, World news
Title – US-Iran talks in Switzerland get under way as strait of Hormuz remains closed | Iran | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/patrickwintour
Link – US-Iran talks in Switzerland get under way as strait of Hormuz remains closed | Iran | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T12:25:52.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/21/us-iran-talks-jd-vance-switzerland-strait-of-hormuz-lebanon

Talks between Iran and the US aimed at building out the fragile interim deal to end the war have got under way in Switzerland, beset by difficulties including an Iranian decision to keep the strait of Hormuz closed in protest at Donald Trump’s inability to force Israel to end the fighting in Lebanon.

The US vice-president, JD Vance , leading the US delegation, said he was adding Lebanon to an agenda that had originally been conceived to focus on the opening of the strait, the lifting of US sanctions on Iranian oil exports and the unfreezing of Iranian assets held overseas.

Vance arrived at a Qatari-owned Swiss mountainside resort in Bürgenstock early on Sunday to meet Iranian negotiators for the second time since the months-long conflict began. He has already held direct talks with the Iranians in Islamabad.

The Iranian delegation is led by the speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, but the presence of the deputy oil minister and the governor of Iran’s central bank shows how Iran had wanted to focus on the terms for lifting sanctions.

The first clause of the memorandum of understanding published last week requires a ceasefire on all fronts including Lebanon , where fighting has escalated between Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.

Vance said: “I think we’re going to hopefully make progress on the nuclear issue, make progress on the Lebanon ceasefire issue. Those are the two big things that I think we’re to be focused on.” He said he could join the talks only “for a day or two”.

The Swiss foreign ministry said the US and Iranian delegations, plus mediators from Pakistan and Qatar, were all present at the luxury resort.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said Iran was meeting mediators in the morning and would then hold a four-way meeting with the mediators and the US in the afternoon.

The practical impact of the Iranian decision to keep the strait of Hormuz closed is yet to be tested, but Trump said last week that the world was four weeks from running out of sufficient refined oil, and said there would have been worldwide recession if he had not agreed to the strait’s reopening by lifting the US blockade on Iranian oil ports.

He is under fierce attack from US supporters of Israel who are angry at the personal attacks mounted on the Israeli prime minster, Benjamin Netanyahu, by Trump and Vance.

The Iranian delegation arrived in Switzerland with a furious row exploding in Tehran between advocates of negotiations and those that insist pursuing an agreement with the US is purposeless because the US cannot be trusted.

Mahmoud Nabavian, a long-term critic of the negotiations and a member of the delegation that went to Islamabad, claimed the negotiations being pursued were “fundamentally different” to the conditions originally approved by the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. Last week, Khamenei published a letter saying he opposed the talks but in deference to the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, had permitted the talks to proceed so long as the interests of the axis of resistance – a reference to Hezbollah – were protected.

Nabavian’s appearance on state TV was cut short and it was announced legal action would be taken against him. A senior official from the state broadcaster Irib was reportedly to resign.

During his appearance, Nabavian claimed correspondence had been sent by the supreme leader three times limiting the scope of the proposed talks. He claimed that in one letter referring to the Islamabad talks, Khamenei wrote: “What was achieved in the negotiations is completely different from what was supposed to be done and was a condition for the legitimacy of the negotiations.”

Referring to the management of the strait of Hormuz, Nabavian said: “The leader of the revolution has emphasised Iran’s monopoly on the management of the strait of Hormuz, collecting tolls from passing vessels, restrictions on enemy ships, and allocating the revenues from the tolls to the people, families of martyrs, and veterans.”

The claim that Iran’s negotiators may be ignoring the guidelines set by the supreme leader would be regarded as a very serious charge inside Iran.

Pezeshkian tried to calm the mood, saying: “All the provisions of the memorandum of understanding signed between Iran and the United States are in our favour, and the achievements of this dialogue and negotiation will be made clear.”

Pezeshkian said the words of the US president had changed 180 degrees. “Trump, who forbade us from doing many things, in his recent speech considered all of them the right of the people and the nation. Our $6bn in money will be returned from Qatar.”

Pointing out that Netanyahu was the first to be dissatisfied with the negotiations, he added: “The achievements of this dialogue and negotiation will be revealed. All the provisions of the memorandum are in our favour.”

The only American demand “is that we not have atomic bombs; this is something that the martyred leader has said many times: ‘We do not want atomic bombs.’ The United States said ‘write this and sign it’ and we signed.”

There remained scepticism from Tehran, however, with Mohsen Rezaei, a military adviser to Khamenei, posting on X: “The enemy has shown itself to be a promise-breaker.” He said: “One should be cautious; any optimism will be exploited by the enemy.”

Hojjatoleslam Sadeghi, the supreme leader’s representative to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said: “Our enmity with arrogance will never end. We are not negotiating to reconcile, but rather to get our rights.”

Washington announced a renewed ceasefire in Lebanon later on Friday, but Israeli troops again clashed with Hezbollah fighters the following day, with each side accusing the other of breaking the truce. Citing a US “breach of contract”, Iran’s central military command said it was closing the strait of Hormuz to vessel traffic.

Keyword – Opinion
Trefwoorden – Donald Trump, US-Israel war on Iran, US news, US politics, Feminism, Women, Washington DC
Title – DC’s ‘renovated’ pool reflects the Trump administration’s dangerous hubris | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/arwa-mahdawi
Link – DC’s ‘renovated’ pool reflects the Trump administration’s dangerous hubris | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T12:00:02.000Z
Category – Opinion
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/20/trump-renovated-pool-hubris

Trump has spent millions creating a giant swamp in DC

It’s been a busy week for the US’s birthday boy. First, there was the cage fight on the White House lawn, in honour of the United States’ 250th anniversary and Donald Trump’s 80th. Then, after watching sweaty men fight, the president flew to France to try to sort out the mess he’d helped create in the Middle East. I regret to inform you that despite Trump signing what Jimmy Kimmel called “the retreaty of Versailles”, it does not really look like the Iran war has been sorted out. Still, the president seems happy with himself. After Axios asked what his takeaways from the Iran war were, Trump said he believes there are “ no limits ” to his power.

The Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool would beg to differ. In between the cage fights and a catastrophic war, Trump has been waging a very expensive battle with the algae in the famous monument, which was the scene of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech . The president has spent $14.2m trying to make the “filthy” and “dirty” pool into the resort-like water feature of his own dreams. Alas, he has proved quite powerless against the algae blooms.

To be fair to Trump, algae is an aggressive adversary. Ever since the Washington landmark was built in 1922, the 2,000ft reflecting pool has been plagued with leaks and algae blooms that turn the water green. There have been various attempts to fix these issues, including a $34m renovation of the monument in 2012, during the Obama administration, but the problems keep coming back. Enter Trump, a walking case study in the Dunning-Kruger effect, who vowed to fix the problem once and for all. During an event in April, Trump explained that he’d “probably built more than 100 swimming pools” and had “a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools”. The reflecting pool is not actually a swimming pool but forget about that little detail. According to Trump, he’d do what no other president had been capable of doing and clean up the whole thing in “two weeks”. He reiterated this “ two week ” timeline at events on 7 May and 11 May.

About eight weeks later, a firm employed via a dubious no-bid contract has painted the bottom of the pool “American-flag blue” and turned on some nanobubblers. The renovation is over and Trump has declared victory in the Trumpiest way possible. “The advanced nanobubbler technology very effectively killed the algae … ,” the interior department press team wrote on X . “The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool – just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf.”

Whether it’s Iran or a reflecting pool, Trump seems to think you can just ignore all the inconvenient facts on the ground and unilaterally declare victory. Alas, the world doesn’t actually work like that. Iran is now arguably stronger than it was before Trump waged war, and the reflecting pool does not look much better than before the president started his renovations. Indeed, the pool is green again , and peeling paint has been seen floating in the water . The algae appear to be very much undefeated. According to the Washington Post: “Within days of the renovation’s completion, the Reflecting Pool had more algae in it than at any recorded point in the month of June for at least five years .” Trump has effectively spent a lot of money creating a giant swamp in DC.

It’s all just a little bit too on-the-nose, isn’t it? There are obviously more important things going on than the president’s ill-fated attempts to clean up the reflecting pool but the entire endeavor is a perfect reflection of the Trump administration’s dangerous hubris.

Giorgia Meloni says Trump ‘totally invented’ story that she begged him for photo

“She wanted a picture with me so badly,” Trump told the media after chatting to Italy’s prime minister at a G7 summit. “I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her.” Meloni, who was once a big Trump fan, is fuming about these remarks, and the Italian foreign minister announced he was cancelling a planned visit to the US next week.

Japanese mayor takes maternity leave – and starts a debate

“I didn’t expect it to be so controversial,” Shoko Kawata, Japan’s youngest female mayor, told the Guardian after her decision to take maternity leave in May caused a national brouhaha. “If more women are involved in leadership and decision-making,” she said, “we will be able to implement more social systems to support balancing a career with family life.”

HPV vaccines massively cut the risk of dying from cervical cancer

A new study funded by Cancer Research UK estimates that a girl who gets the HPV jab when she’s 12 or 13 has an almost-zero chance of dying of cervical cancer before the age of 30.

Nearly 160 people sick with flu at military base after Pete Hegseth ends mandatory vaccines

In April, the defense secretary announced he’d end mandatory flu vaccination because of the importance of bodily autonomy. “Your body, your faith and your convictions are not negotiable,” the defense secretary said . Unless you’re a woman, I guess: Hegseth’s self-identified Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson has opposed a woman’s right to vote and said : “Women are the kind of people that people come out of.”

Shania Twain is afraid of using the F-word

“I don’t see myself as a feminist,” she told the Times in a recent interview. “I see myself as a very independent thinker and not necessarily because I’m a woman.” A few days later, she wrote to the Times to say “feminist” is “a tricky word for me” but she aligns with “the values and morals” of feminism. This is not the first time the Canadian singer has walked back an awkward comment. Back in 2018, she apologized for telling the Guardian she would have voted for Trump if she could have.

Medication abortion restored in Missouri

This comes after a long legal battle.

‘The British state has redefined civil disobedience as terrorism’

Last week, four Palestine Action activists who smashed military equipment at an Israeli arms manufacturer’s UK factory were sentenced as terrorists. This is a chilling ruling that opens up the path for direct-action protest targeting property to be classified as terrorism. Writing in the Key, Geoffrey Robertson, a renowned lawyer and founding head of Doughty Street Chambers, proclaims that the “British state has redefined civil disobedience as terrorism – lengthening sentences, stripping prison privileges, and marking dissenters for life – as a result of a finding made in secret by a judge”.

The week in pawtriarchy

Romeow, Romeow, wherefore art thou, Romeow? A cat in Turkey decided to find out for itself by wandering onstage during the final scene of a Romeo and Juliet purr-formance by the Imperial Russian Ballet Company. It sat down next to a “dead” Romeo and sniffed his head for a bit before getting distracted by Juliet’s dress. Onlookers were highly amewsed.