Keyword – Food
Trefwoorden – Chinese food and drink, Malaysian food and drink, Sri Lankan food and drink, Food, Thai food and drink
Title – ‘It’s more exciting than ketchup!’ How chilli crisp became the hottest condiment – and how to make your own | Chinese food and drink | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/ammar-kalia
Link – ‘It’s more exciting than ketchup!’ How chilli crisp became the hottest condiment – and how to make your own | Chinese food and drink | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-15T13:00:25.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/jun/15/chilli-crisp-hottest-condiment-how-to-make

W alk down the specialist aisle in most British supermarkets and you will find a red jar with the kindly face of a middle-aged Chinese woman staring back at you. Branded Lao Gan Ma, meaning “old godmother”, these jars contain chilli crisp – a spicy, crunchy and moreish umami condiment that has made made hundreds of millions for Tao Huabi, the woman on the label. Doused over steaming dumplings, fried eggs, noodles and even ice-cream, Lao Gan Ma’s chilli crisp has become a social media sensation in recent years and has spawned a thriving cottage industry of independent chilli crisp producers in the UK.

“It’s such a convenient shortcut to flavour when you use it as a condiment,” says Fuchsia Dunlop, an expert in Chinese cuisine. “Every Asian cuisine has a form of chilli oil, but China and Lao Gan Ma invented chilli crisp and now the western world is more interested in authentic flavours, thanks partly to social media.” People, she says, want to have their own taste of that authenticity. “It’s far more exciting than a bottle of ketchup!”

While chilli oil involves simply infusing a neutral oil with pepper flakes, a crisp is far more inventive and customisable. Typically made by pouring hot oil over chilli flakes, spice mixes and fresh ingredients such as spring onions, garlic and peanuts, the result can range from a jammy, piquant sludge to a sizzling crunch. It’s a multisensory flavour bomb, one that dozens of independent producers across the UK are putting their own twist on to meet growing demand.

Tom Palmer, the founder of the Sichuan-inspired brand Yep Kitchen , launched his chilli crisp in 2023 and has sold more than 120,000 jars since. “The demand for this category has grown so quickly that manufacturing can’t actually keep up,” he says. “We’ve gone from making batches in my mum’s kitchen to now building our own factory in north London, but we’ve had to import machines from China, since there are none available in Europe that can correctly jar the oil along with the right amount of that crunchy sediment.”

Inspired by a decade spent living in China and the chilli oils he would dot over every meal, Palmer’s version isn’t just spicy, but also coats the palate with the funky hum of a fermented soya bean paste and the numbing floral notes of Sichuan pepper flakes. He likes to swirl it through peanut butter on toast or spoon it over fried eggs.

He’s not alone in trying to find a novel approach. At the small plates restaurant Ardfern in Edinburgh, the head chef, Roberta Hall McCarron, uses shards of chicken skin in her chilli crisp to add a salty crunch to prawn toast, while the London-based Thai restaurant Khao Bird uses a peanut and Thai soya bean version over a vegan tofu dish. The author of the Chilli Crisp cookbook , James Park, has crafted a version to use in desserts.

“Since chilli crisps are balanced, rather than having the one-dimensional vinegar sharpness of hot sauces, they tend to go very well with everything, from curries to dairy products such as yoghurt or cream cheese,” Park says. “I developed a chilli crisp that could be used explicitly with sweet dairy desserts. It involves lots of roasted nuts and fewer savoury elements, and I’ve already found it adds a mouth-watering element to tahini brownies, caramels and lemon pound cakes.”

Park grew up in Alabama and has Korean parents. He struggled to connect with his heritage until he moved to New York for college and discovered Lao Gan Ma. “It became a way to find common ground with other Asian students, since everyone used it,” he says. “Although it used to be only Lao Gan Ma, since Covid hit, I’ve seen so many new products and producers pop up. Each brand expresses a new diaspora identity.”

In Britain, chilli crisp products range from Sri Lankan blends to Filipino-Chinese chilli crunch, Taiwanese recipes and Malay versions, often created by cooks from several generations. Xiengni Zhou and her mother, Jolene Yu, run Mama Yu , a typical example of this diaspora heritage. Growing up, Zhou, who is Malaysian-Chinese, was surrounded by her mother’s home-cooked chilli oil at their family’s Sheffield Chinese takeaway, Wok Inn. In 2021, she encouraged her mother to start selling batches of 30 to 50 jars to their local network of customers; in the five years since, they have sold more than 75,000 units. They have both quit their jobs to keep up with the demand: their Instagram “drops” of new batches sell out in minutes.

“In Malaysian cooking, we use a lot of crispy shallots, whether it’s in soups, on noodles or over eggs, and we wanted to pay homage to that with our chilli crisp,” Zhou says. “It lends a natural sweetness to the sauce and it’s become one of our most popular items. The business has been a lovely way to stay close to my mum and also to pay tribute to our heritage.”

A mother-son duo, Michael Perera and Yok Chan have created a curry-scented, jammy-textured condiment that references Perera’s father’s Sri Lankan heritage as much as Chan’s Chinese background. Ana Morales says her shrimp-garlic chilli crisp honours her Filipino background by incorporating bagoong, a fermented shrimp paste that is common across the archipelago. “My mission is to put Filipino food on the map, as I don’t think it’s very well known in the UK,” she says. “The shrimp paste makes our product salty, garlicky and perfect for pizza, soups or basically any dish. It elevates everything.”

For those wishing to make and personalise their own version at home, the process is surprisingly simple. I follow Park’s recommendation to infuse my oil with flavour before heating it and pouring it over a spice mix. Finely sliced spring onion, garlic and a dollop of Korean gochujang are stirred into a warming pan of vegetable oil and cooked on a low-to-medium heat for about 20 minutes.

Setting the oil mix aside to cool, I add a spice blend of several chilli flakes – Sichuan, Aleppo and gochugaru – as well as MSG, chicken powder, soy sauce, salt, sugar and black vinegar into a heatproof bowl. I mix the cooled oil into the spice blend and in a separate pan begin heating plain oil until it begins to smoke. I carefully pour the hot oil into the fragrant cold blend and it sizzles to deliver a fragrant aroma.

The process takes about 30 minutes and, aside from the crucial detail of remembering to use a heatproof bowl so the scorching oil doesn’t cause it to shatter, the recipe is foolproof. I’m left with a hot, savoury and umami-rich sauce that I spend the next week spooning liberally on to yoghurt and toast (both excellent) and as a base for frying eggs (delicious, if indulgent). I even gingerly spray it over ice-cream (vile, bordering on criminal). Still, the salty, lip-smacking flavour is addictive, although anyone concerned about their spice tolerance might want to try drops rather than a drizzle.

“The British palate is becoming far more adventurous and tolerant to spice, and these chilli crisps are just the start,” says Dunlop. “You can add it to steamed vegetables, pies or a roast dinner. The combinations are endless.”

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

Keyword – Life and style
Trefwoorden – Turkey, The far right, Europe, Life and style, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Title – ‘I don’t want Europe to fail the way Turkey did’: Ece Temelkuran on fascism, death threats and life in exile | Turkey | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/aidaedemariam
Link – ‘I don’t want Europe to fail the way Turkey did’: Ece Temelkuran on fascism, death threats and life in exile | Turkey | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-17T11:00:32.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jun/17/ece-temelkuran-turkey-fascism-death-threats-exile

O ne summer’s evening in 2022, the Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran found herself in a doctor’s office in Hamburg, Germany, lying flat on a stretcher with an IV drip in her arm. After six intense years of work and travel, her body was in revolt. “I now know that I need to talk,” she writes in her latest book, Nation of Strangers, which was shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s prize for nonfiction . “I fear that not speaking will make me really sick. And when homeless, you cannot afford to get sick.”

In fact, she had not been silent in the preceding years: she had published two well-received books, How To Lose a Country: The Seven Steps from Democracy to Fascism (2019) and Together: A Manifesto Against a Heartless World (2021). She had spoken her warnings in public, too, on stages all across the west, saying: this is what happened to us in Turkey – make sure it doesn’t happen to you, too. And she is not technically homeless; she lives in Berlin. But by “speaking” and by “home”, Temelkuran means something specific yet vast. Nation of Strangers posits that the idea of home, and the emotions that idea contains, is one of the dominant political forces of our time.

Temelkuran became a journalist at 19, while still in the thick of a law degree; she was a senior reporter for CNN Türk and then a political columnist critical of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. She has also published several novels and prose poems. For years, she operated successfully in the bruising milieu of male-dominated newsrooms, in a patriarchal, increasingly nationalistic culture. But as Erdoğan tightened his grip, life became increasingly difficult: death threats, rape threats, emails “reporting [my] life minute by minute”, to show her that she was being closely watched.

She and her colleagues coped by laughing it off. “And then our friend Hrant Dink was killed [by a Turkish nationalist on 19 January 2007]. One day before that, we were joking – you know, comparing our death threats.”

Her books began to be used as evidence in people’s arrests; soon after, six or seven columns were published calling for her own detention. Then, one night, she woke to find that the iron bars on her windows had been removed and a window left open. Nothing was taken, but, she writes, “I took it as a message saying: ‘We could do it.’” On 6 November 2016, she called her mother from Zagreb, Croatia, to tell her she wasn’t coming back: “A one-minute phone call; half of it was silence. But that’s all it took for me, in the autumn of 2016, to become homeless.” She was 43.

“I despise telling this story,” she writes, seven lines into Nation of Strangers. It makes her “cringe – politically, morally, emotionally”. She fears “appearing as yet another whining exile demanding recognition” and hates the objectification and alienation the label represents. She is alive to how often the word is used as a comforter by the (usually western) user: “they” are exiles who should be grateful; ‘“we” are a civilised haven. The challenge, she writes, is to work out “how to speak like a homeless person yet not sound like a victim or a survivor”.

Her response was to urge caution about the fragility of such havens, writing three books in which novelist, poet, reporter and political columnist merged with a lifetime of travelling and absorbing culture (from the writings of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza and the Sufi mystic Mansur al-Hallaj to French films, Leonard Cohen and Pikachu) to produce a kind of aphoristic, flaying clarity. And to write them all in English.

It wasn’t just that her target audience was different. English was a way of denying her feelings. “It was really complicated, you know, what I went through,” she says, staring out of the window of the rental property in Barcelona where she is staying with her partner, towards a secondary school where the students are being cheerfully harangued via a megaphone. Her cigarette smoke curls across the screen on our video call. When she chose to move to Zagreb, she knew just one person in the city; she had seen a billboard in the airport that read: “Why Zagreb?”

“It was a question people asked me all the time later on when I started living there, meaning: why would anyone like me go to Zagreb?” she says. “As in, instead of London or Berlin. And this is exactly why I stayed there.

“I wanted to be alone and really understand what had happened to me all these years. Why and how people let go of those whom they are supposed to support. I know many people think of fascism as evil guys coming along and taking over, but, no, it doesn’t happen like that. It happens with a million complacencies – and those complacencies, especially if you experience that in your private life and in your public life, break your heart in an impossible way. And I had to deal with that heartbreak, I think. It took me 10 years to call it a heartbreak, by the way.”

She also had to deal with all the things she had seen before leaving. Recently, the writer Pankaj Mishra told her he had noticed that in public she always begins in 2016. “You never tell the other bits,” as she puts it now: reporting on the aftermath of earthquakes; interviewing a mother who had chosen to run over her daughter with a tractor to forestall an even worse “honour” killing (“of course, she lost her mind”); charting “how people kill each other for stories”, usually nationalist narratives. She makes a sound of complete disgust. “And I said [to Mishra]: ‘I wouldn’t tell the westerners, because they’d be traumatised.’”

She laughs. “It’s a line I borrowed from Ziko [an interviewee in Nation of Strangers]. It is traumatising. And when I tell it, it feels unreal. And I don’t like the look in people’s eyes. I become an object to observe.”

Writing in Turkish would be “too emotional”, she felt. She wanted to “be a brain, only a brain” – and the linguistic distance of English allowed that. She refused to listen to Turkish music or meet Turkish people; she wrote and talked and wrote and talked. And then she ended up at the doctor’s. There is a moment in Nation of Strangers, some time after this visit, where she ventures tentatively into the Turkish area of Berlin and finally has a Turkish coffee. The world does not disintegrate; in fact, it becomes a little more whole. And that is her point. National stories urgently need to be told differently. The personal is political. Specifically, emotion is political, especially in a world where, as Temelkuran argues, more and more of us feel unhomed. This may be because we have literally been forced to leave our homes, or because we are at war, or because the political ground has shifted beneath us and we no longer recognise the country we live in; because AI is reshaping work, or the cost of living has ejected us from a life we recognise; because the climate crisis is changing the weather and the face of the Earth. The left ignores this at its peril, she argues, not least because the right certainly hasn’t.

Temelkuran spent much of the past five months on a book tour. In every audience, she says, she met at least one “American exile”. “These people are calling themselves exiles. They say: ‘I came from the United States because I felt under threat. I felt like this wasn’t my country any more.’ And their voices start trembling, because they are new in the game, and I make jokes and make them laugh, like: ‘Welcome to the club.’” Many Germans feel it, too, she says.

“Those who write and think and talk – we have a new moral responsibility, not only to understand and analyse, but to care about how people feel at this point,” she says. “Loneliness, fear, anxiety, uncertainty: all these emotions have political consequences and those consequences today are utilised, weaponised, organised and mobilised by the far right. What they have done, from the very beginning, is a masterclass in emotion management.”

Not only is democracy failing, Temelkuran argues, but also the left has failed to understand how to deal with the results of that failure. She has been thinking a lot about the arrogance of the west, but especially about “our own arrogance as progressives, as intellectuals, as the cultural elite, if we can call it that. We still think somebody will ask us what to do and what we think. But in this new world order that’s been building, in a very speedy way, we don’t count.

“People get angry when I draw parallels between Turkey and European countries. But I am doing it mainly because I don’t want people to fail in the way that we did, to make the same mistakes. We went through that arrogance – and that arrogance cost us our country.”

She is impatient with those who ask her to define fascism, who suggest that what she is speaking of is authoritarianism. She turns the question back on them: “Why don’t you call it fascism?” She believes there are a few reasons. First, many westerners believe “there cannot be fascism in a free-market economy, which was established as a natural fact after the Berlin Wall came down”. Second, there is the search for comfort: a strict historical definition of fascism means it can be put inside the box marked “second world war” and the lid closed. Third is plain fear: “We cannot be one of those crazy countries.”

But mostly it is about responsibility, she says: “Once you call it fascism, you have to do something about it. If you call it authoritarianism, right-wing populism, you can sit back and treat this political phenomenon as a passing fancy: people have gone mad for a while. They’re going to vote for these leaders, they’re going to get their taste and then it will be over.”

This makes it easier to laugh off, she says: “I think the UK has been stuck at the laughter stage for quite a long time. That laughter is very strong. It is inherent to British culture. And it is not easy to separate it from cynicism … But nothing is hilarious at the moment and people should allow themselves to be very serious.

“I’m afraid when Nigel Farage comes to power, if Nigel Farage comes to power, when Trump shows up in London, when Jared Kushner comes with his new PowerPoint plans about, I don’t know, the NHS, they will still feel like they have to laugh about it just to feel safe.”

I mention that I walked alongside a short section of Tommy Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” march last month and thought how many of those marching were probably there because of a sense of loss or imminent loss – of a recognisable home, of a possible future. The fact that this was expressed through St George and crusader flags – and read as aggressively exclusionary and threatening to anyone who didn’t look like the marchers – doesn’t erase that. This isn’t mentioned much in her books, which focus on progressive, left-leaning losses.

“I am not one of those liberals who thinks that: ‘Oh, we should always have a dialogue,’” replies Temelkuran. “We should always know fascism when there is fascism. You don’t have a dialogue. You just fight against it. Period. But on the other hand, I think home stands at the heart of the zeitgeist today for several reasons. I lost my home because of fascism – but then those who are afraid of losing their homes are weaponising [loss of home] to build fascism. Home stands at the centre of all this debate.”

Temelkuran is with Iris Murdoch, who in books such as The Sovereignty of Good argued that paying attention was a moral act, that real, humble and open attention is the essence of care. The tough reporter part of her is embarrassed even to say it, she admits, but attention is the essence of human love: “Paying attention is being there, I think, rather than staring at the situation. Being in the reality, not observing it.”

It means paying attention to all-comers, not just to specific political tribes, or differentiating between people within or outside a particular national story; being open to and accepting the messiness of it and making a concerted effort to see how much we have in common, rather than what splits us apart. “Yes, let’s talk about loss of home, but let’s talk about it from the perspective of human love.”

She says she has been struck in recent months that “when I start speaking along those lines and with that particular tone about human love in a political context, people start getting teary eyes. Literally, I’ve seen so many people cry. And it’s not because I had this profound revelation. They are exhausted. They’re exhausted from being in survival mode: ‘I’m not going to feel anything. I’m not going to allow myself to be vulnerable.’”

Temelkuran’s parents got together after Erol, a young lawyer, had Lale, the militant-left woman who would become his wife, released from jail by sending a general photos of his own daughter taking part in a demonstration. (Lale had been locked up for distributing the last letters of three students hanged by the military in the 1971 coup.) For Temelkuran, politics has never been a parlour game, an airing of ideas after which “everyone goes back to their homes”. It is about morality: “Your political choice is also a moral choice. It is this thing that makes you who you are – very bluntly, whether you’re a good person or a bad person.

“I think our political vocabulary will be less soft from now on. I think we will have to talk about sacrifice very soon,” she adds. “Gaza was an experiment, in that sense. Are you going to sacrifice your career, your social environment? That question has been asked to us. Some of us answered correctly, some of us not. But then that question will get wider and more profound. It will absorb all of us.”

Each summer, Temelkuran’s family meets on a Greek island in the Aegean sea. Her brother and his family come from the US, her parents from Turkey. It is not a place, she writes, that will “usually pop up in your email inbox as a destination in travel ads”. It is a village on Lesbos, the island that hosted Moria, the now closed refugee camp that was the largest in Europe. They chose Lesbos because it was easy for her parents to reach. For a week, they make a point of trying not to discuss dark topics – but it is hard when, in clear weather, they can see the Turkish coast from across the bay.

Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century is out now (Canongate, £11.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

Keyword – Food
Trefwoorden – Food, Life and style
Title – To fridge or not to fridge: tell us your views | Food | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/guardian-community-team
Link – To fridge or not to fridge: tell us your views | Food | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-17T11:52:31.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/jun/17/to-fridge-or-not-to-fridge-tell-us-your-views

What items should or shouldn’t be kept in the fridge can divide opinions but the Guardian has asked some experts – it seems bread and olive oil do not benefit from being in the fridge but red wine can taste great chilled.

Now we want to hear from you. What items do you keep in the fridge? Does this differ from your partner, family or friends? Let us know.

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – World Cup 2026, World Cup, Football, Sport, France, Senegal football team, Kylian Mbappé
Title – France looked a disjointed mess in their World Cup opener. Then came Mbappé | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/leanderschaerlaeckens
Link – France looked a disjointed mess in their World Cup opener. Then came Mbappé | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-17T01:00:17.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/16/france-senegal-world-cup-kylian-mbappe

After the whistle blew for half-time, Kylian Mbappé ran to the player tunnel at a good clip, followed by Ousmane Dembélé. Behind them, the rest of the French team were in no such hurry, sauntering off the pitch. The forward widely considered the best in the world – or at least the most famous in the Non-Ronaldo-and-Messi Division – and the reigning Ballon d’Or winner had much to discuss.

The scoreless first half Tuesday against a Senegal side who had organized and pressed cohesively and forged much the better chances, including a clipped post, was a disjointed mess for the 2018 World Cup champions and the 2022 runners-up. But having the world’s best corps of forwards means getting to comprehensively beat the ( former ) African champions 3-1 despite spending the first hour looking like your front four had never played together before. And possibly didn’t even know one another’s names.

Because France have Mbappé. And Dembélé. And Michael Olise.

It seemed there was little connective tissue holding the French attack together in the first half. Olise roamed every which way from his right flank, once nearly traveling to the other touch line just to get involved in the play, but couldn’t figure out how to affect the game. Désiré Doué hardly factored on the left. And then there was the slapstick series of misunderstandings between Dembélé, playing in the pocket, and Mbappé up front.

The latter was nearly sprung in the fourth minute, served by Adrien Rabiot – French manager Didier Deschamps’ longtime and much-maligned pet playmaker. Mbappé received the ball with his right ass cheek, which evidently lacked the suppleness of his feet. He exchanged several hopeful balls with Dembélé, but their partnership never quite seemed to produce any real peril for the Senegalese defense, which enjoyed a pleasant afternoon of casual work on a sunny day that was neither hot nor humid.

Olise, sticking to the right for once, eviscerated El Hadji Malick Diouf late in the first half and set off into the vacant corridor. He and Mbappé seemed to lock eyes but never entirely worked out who was going where. Nothing was working.

Mbappé and Dembélé, the main protagonists up the middle, were having a very miserable time, gesticulating at one another, willing the other to just read their minds already. The French looked every bit like a team with an innately defensive manager who had set up his attackers in positions or roles they don’t play for their clubs. They were a collective in search of ideas and solutions, aware that they were far too good to look this bad.

And yet. The Senegalese pressed and cut right through the French lines to create several good chances. Nicolas Jackson’s shot off Mike Maignan’s near post followed an Mbappé turnover upfield. When Mbappé lost the ball yet again on a hideous turnover, a French journalist in the press box could no longer contain himself. “Oh la la la la la laaah,” he moaned. Really.

What’s the French word for ennui?

“From time to time, you do have a rough start,” Deschamps said. “It’s quite hard to meet the high expectation at a World Cup .”

Whatever message was delivered at the intermission worked. So too did switching Olise to the middle and Dembélé to the right. Deschamps’ men dialed up their intensity and finally managed to slip the right sprockets into the correct gears around the hour mark.

Olise was denied by Senegal keeper Édouard Mendy. So was Mbappé. And Sadio Mané was spared what seemed a stone-cold penalty kick on Mbappé, when even the assistance of VAR could not convince referee Alireza Faghani to make the right call.

No matter. In the 64th minute, Olise spun into space centrally and rolled a beautiful through ball against the grain for Mbappé, who couldn’t quite get a toe to it. Nonetheless, they had found another at last. Proof of concept.

Two minutes later, the two connected for much the same play. Mbappé made a run across goal and Olise found him with a splendid diagonal pass, paced and placed just so. Mbappé slotted past Mendy. The goal equalled Olivier Giroud’s all-time France scoring record at 57.

After a smashed finish from Jackson was ruled offside, Rabiot scampered into the vacant midfield on a break in the 82nd minute and sent Bradley Barcola, fresh on to the pitch for Dembélé, through on goal and the substitute finished with a delicate chip.

The 18-year-old Ibrahim Mbaye blasted Senegal on to the scoreboard, but Olise and Mbappé had one final treat for the 82,000 congregants in New Jersey. At the death, Olise fought through a Senegalese scrum and fed Mbappé up the middle about 30 yards from goal.

And then Mbappé did the sort of thing that makes a nation pin its hopes on you, that moves children to beg their parents for your jersey, that compels a manager to leave you on the field even when you’ve had an objectively ugly game. He turned and, without any questioning or compunction about the propriety of even trying such a thing, unloosed a shot that swerved past Mendy. Fifty-eight international goals. 3-1.

“He told me that he didn’t want to strike in a friendly match but wanted to score in a real match,” Deschamps joked about Mbappé’s record-setting goals. “He wanted to do it here.”

No Frenchman on the field will remember this game as one of their best. Senegal, meanwhile, were good. Very good at times. And still. Mbappé. And Olise. Also Dembélé. The sorts of players who give their side, and themselves, a vast margin for error.

“Kylian was efficient, ruthlessly efficient,” Deschamps said. “People will still criticize him. He’s an iconic player, I’ve always said that. He can sometimes miss a game but on one action he can really tip the scales.”

There were smiles and hugs now. Mbappé led Les Bleus to the sea of French fans to thank them for their support. The first-half grimaces, all the poor touches, the passes played to the wrong foot, the routes misread, the signals crossed, all of it long forgotten.

The French would be just fine. Because they have, well, all of them.

Keyword – Music
Trefwoorden – Olivia Rodrigo, Music, Pop and rock, Culture
Title – Olivia Rodrigo: You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love review – who’s she singing about? Who cares when the songs are this good | Olivia Rodrigo | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alexispetridis
Link – Olivia Rodrigo: You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love review – who’s she singing about? Who cares when the songs are this good | Olivia Rodrigo | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-12T15:58:26.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/jun/12/olivia-rodrigo-you-seem-pretty-sad-for-a-girl-so-in-love-album-review

W ith a certain crushing inevitability, the arrival of Olivia Rodrigo’s third album has been accompanied by a lot of frenzied decoding of its lyrics for references to Louis Partridge, the British actor whose relationship with the singer ended late last year. One magazine ran a 1,200 word essay, complete with annotations, panning its songs for nuggets of gossip: the fourth piece they’ve published on the subject in recent months. A British broadsheet plumped for a news story about the fact that Rodrigo had apparently changed the lyrics of a track called Purple, formerly a “very sweet and saccharine” love song, to reflect the end of their relationship. Over in New Delhi, The Hindustan Times was pondering rumours that the couple had actually got back together: “Interest in Partridge has grown after Rodrigo released her new album since fans believe the track Stupid Song has references to the singer’s relationship with him.”

Well, of course it has: for better or for worse, that kind of speculation seems to have become a major part of modern pop, and Oliva Rodrigo in particular has long been a beneficiary of the clickbait publicity it brings. Her breakthrough single Drivers Licence gained traction thanks to the rumour that its lyrics were about her former boyfriend Joshua Bassett’s dalliance with Sabrina Carpenter; Vampire, the lead single from 2023’s Guts invited yet more speculation about whether its subject was another ex or Taylor Swift. Indeed, she actively seems to encourage it: “I never talk about my personal life in interviews or in any public forum, so I guess the music is where people go to deduce things,” she recently told an interviewer, a line that seems to have a distinct hint of “go ahead, fill your boots” about it.

Under the circumstances, it’s perhaps worth noting that the real identity of the subject of You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love – a song-cycle that follows a relationship from the first blush of romance to some fabulously bitter post-break-up recriminations – might be the least interesting thing about it. Parsing the songs for clues seems besides the point: it’s a spectacularly accomplished pop album whoever it is about.

It represents a distinct and confident pivot away from the sound of Guts – only My Way, on which an ex-girlfriend incurs Rodrigo’s displeasure by declining to bugger off, leans towards the gleefully bratty pop-punk of its predecessor – replacing it with a take on 80s new wave in which you can variously detect hints of the B-52s, New Order and Devo.

The influence of the Cure figures heavily: a bold move, given the baffled expressions of young fans in the front row when Robert Smith ambled on stage during her Glastonbury headlining set. Smith reappears here, duetting with Rodrigo on What’s Wrong With Me? – his perennially racked voice blends remarkably well with hers – but his presence is felt everywhere, from the lyrical reference to Just Like Heaven in opener Drop Dead, to a song literally called The Cure (Rodrigo has insisted the title isn’t related to the band, but the typeface in which it’s written in the song’s video looks remarkably like their late 80s logo), to Maggots for Brains and U + Me = <3, which – with their flanged basslines and breezy acoustic guitars – are very clearly loving homages to Smith and co in pop mode.

More importantly, from the show tune-like melody of Stupid Song to the affecting emotional shapeshifting of Purple – which starts out lovestruck and gradually grows more anxious – the songs are uniformly well written. The tunes cling, fantastic choruses arrive in profusion, and, moreover, the lyrics are substantially more nuanced and thoughtful than the screw-you recriminations that made Rodrigo famous.

The moment you realise a relationship is doomed but doggedly refuse to act on it is drawn with queasy relatability on Begged; Less depicts said relationship in slow but inexorable decline, packed with wince-inducing recollections: “We tried to recreate our favourite date, but we didn’t laugh much this time.” She’s also exceptionally funny, particularly when letting rip post-breakup. “I met him at a party, I think he was on drugs / He wasn’t smart or funny, I convinced myself he was,” opens Expectations, before throwing in another barbed, eye-rolling detail: “He had a great apartment and a car his parents bought.”

It’s intelligent, witty, complex, occasionally painful listening. It’s also audibly a step on from Rodrigo’s previous work. An artist who first came to attention at 17 and whose debut album was promoted with a concert movie designed to look like a high-school prom was always going to have to grow up in public, something that’s notoriously tricky to pull off: the world is full of pop stars frozen in the collective imagination at the point they arrived. But You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love suggests an artist maturing with an impressive ease: nothing about it feels forced or uncomfortable. Olivia Rodrigo, one suspects, is in it for the long haul: she’ll be around long after the gossip is yesterday’s news.

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – World Cup 2026, Argentina, Lionel Messi, World Cup, Football, Sport, Algeria football team
Title – Messi dazzles to equal World Cup scoring record as Argentina breeze past Algeria | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/pablo-iglesias-maurer
Link – Messi dazzles to equal World Cup scoring record as Argentina breeze past Algeria | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-17T03:08:57.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/16/argentina-algeria-world-cup-group-j-match-report

Those in attendance at Argentina’s opening match against Algeria could be forgiven, for a moment, for thinking they were at one of the great Argentinian cathedrals of football – La Bombonera , or maybe the national stadium, El Monumental . Kansas City Stadium, awash in the colors of the Albiceleste, roared with the sound of nearly 70,000 supporters serenading their team, and their hero, in rapturous song. They had plenty to sing about.

Argentina rose to the occasion, and so did Lionel Messi , who on his 200th cap took another step towards solidifying his place as the greatest footballer in history, scoring three splendid goals to draw level with Germany’s Miroslav Klose for the World Cup’s all-time mark on 16 goals. The performance came just hours after France’s Kylian Mbappé had briefly leapfrogged Messi, with 14.

The Inter Miami playmaker also became the first male player to appear at six World Cups, a record that was swiftly equalled by Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo at Houston Stadium.

Messi had been recovering from a muscle injury in recent weeks but any doubt surrounding the captain’s status was quickly wiped away when he was named in Lionel Scaloni’s starting XI, and those doubts were ancient history once the match began.

Messi had nearly nabbed Argentina’s opener just five minutes in when a through-ball found him at the near side of the box. His shot was perfectly placed, but assistant referee Tomasz Listkiewicz correctly flagged him offside by the smallest margin. Not two minutes later, the Algeria winger Farès Chaïbi had an equally clinical finish chalked off after finding himself offside by a similarly narrow margin.

Messi wasted little time putting Argentina ahead, finding the back of the net in the 17th minute. Rodrigo De Paul found Messi 40 yards out, after which the former Barcelona star turned and took three touches towards goal. With no defenders in sight, his driven shot from the edge of the area was too powerful for Luca Zidane, glancing off the goalkeeper’s fingertips and into the goal.

The one negative on an otherwise brilliant performance came in the first half, with Messi fortunate to escape punishment after a rash challenge in which he raked his studs across the back of Aïssa Mandi’s calf. The Argentinian likely deserved a yellow, and potentially even a red. He received neither, and the play was not reviewed on the field.

Messi’s second goal was even more easily taken than his first. Alexis Mac Allister’s speculative effort from 30 yards was pushed away by Zidane directly into the path of Messi, who coolly slotted it home from close range in the 60th minute.

Again, Algeria’s backline was nowhere to be found. Argentina, on the other hand, were excellent defensively throughout the entire match. The 38-year-old completed his hat-trick in the 76th minute with a vintage finish, threading his strike through a trio of defenders and just out of reach of Zidane. He left the match minutes later.

Both fanbases have been well-represented for days in Kansas City and nearby Lawrence, Kansas, where Algeria will be based for the entirety of their tournament.

Thousands of Argentinian supporters packed a local park on Monday night for a banderazo, singing, chanting and dancing into the wee hours. On Tuesday evening, the party moved to the stadium, which was full of noise hours before kickoff.

Algeria’s supporters have been the subject of a remarkable story in Lawrence , where residents have welcomed them with open arms. Though understandably outnumbered by opposing fans, loud, vibrant pockets of green emerged from Argentina’s blue-and-white at times, urging the underdogs on.

The 28th-ranked Algerians will have hoped for a happier return to the World Cup after a 12-year absence, having been revitalized under the head coach Vladimir Petković.

Algeria earned a reputation during qualifying for their high-energy approach, glimpses of which were present, particularly in the closing moments of the first half. Despite some promising exchanges, they were undone by poor finishing and never looked competitive.

Algeria’s encounter with Jordan now has the makings of a must-win; they feel much more evenly matched with Austria.

Scaloni had tempered expectations in the leadup, going as far as saying that a win against the Desert Foxes was far from necessary. Scaloni should know; he was at the helm in 2022 when Argentina narrowly lost in their group stage opener to Saudi Arabia, among the most shocking results in World Cup history.

Expectations aside, Scaloni will surely be pleased with three points, which nudged Argentina towards the last 32. They will meet Austria in Arlington, Texas, on Monday.

Messi, as is his custom, will be expected to make even more history there.

Keyword – Global development
Trefwoorden – Global development, Menstruation, Women, Pakistan, Society, South and central Asia, Women’s health
Title – ‘Period tax’ on sanitary products to be abolished, says Pakistan minister | Global development | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/kat-lay
Link – ‘Period tax’ on sanitary products to be abolished, says Pakistan minister | Global development | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-17T12:46:15.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jun/17/period-tax-sanitary-products-abolished-pakistan-minister

Pakistan plans to abolish “period tax”, in a victory for young campaigners who had taken the government to court over the charges.

Finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb announced that sanitary towels and related items were “daily necessities that are indispensable for women’s health, dignity and full participation in social activities”, and said he intended to remove the sales tax.

Commercial period products are used only by a minority of women in Pakistan because of their cost, according to research from Unicef . Most use cloth or homemade alternatives that can be unsafe and raise the risk of infection.

Two lawyers, 25-year-old Mahnoor Omer and 29-year-old Ahsan Jehangir Khan, brought a court case last year in a bid to get sanitary products zero-rated, so that they would not be subject to taxes of any kind. They said the charges amounted to a “pink tax” on women.

Their campaign was hugely successful on social media and a supportive petition attracted thousands of signatures.

Locally made period products incur the 18% sales tax in Pakistan, and imported products are subject to an additional 25% customs tax.

UN Women said the decision to abolish the sales tax was a welcome step that would help women stay in work and girls stay in school. It said: “Menstrual health is a matter of health, dignity and equality – not a luxury.”

Omer welcomed the announcement but said the fight was “ definitely not over ”, and that they would continue to push for the removal of all additional charges on period products.

Bushra Mahnoor, executive director of Mahwari Justice, a Pakistani period rights organisation, said the decision was “just one step towards combating period poverty” in the country.

She told CNN its most valuable effect was probably destigmatising menstruation, but that safe sanitary products remained unaffordable for the most vulnerable women.

She said: “Menstrual justice also means access to clean water, sanitation facilities, accurate menstrual education and a society free from period stigma.

“This moment is significant, but our work is far from over.”

The government will also no longer impose an 18% sales tax on contraceptives, Aurangzeb said.

Abolishing the tax on contraceptives was necessary in the face of “alarming” population growth, he added, saying: “Pakistan is the fifth-largest country in the world in terms of population … Family planning is a top priority of the government.”

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

Yusuf on Hannah

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

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

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

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

Good table manners? Yep, no notes.

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

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

Describe Hannah in three words Charismatic, clever and confident.

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

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

And … did you kiss? Negative.

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

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

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

Hannah on Yusuf

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

First impressions? Really nice and friendly.

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

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

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

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

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

Describe Yusuf in three words Interesting, friendly and chatty.

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

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

And … did you kiss? No.

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

Marks out of 10? 8.

Would you meet again? Potentially, as friends.

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

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – Morocco football team, World Cup 2026, World Cup, Football, Morocco, Sport, World Cup 2030
Title – Morocco’s average annual salary is $7,400 – some fans are paying double that for World Cup tickets | Morocco football team | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/leanderschaerlaeckens
Link – Morocco’s average annual salary is $7,400 – some fans are paying double that for World Cup tickets | Morocco football team | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T15:30:06.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/16/would-you-pay-twice-the-national-wage-to-see-the-world-cup-some-morocco-fans-are-doing-just-that

T hey had come from the United Kingdom and from Dubai. A surprising number had come down from Montreal. They had come from Morocco, of course, from Marrakech and Casablanca, to witness their team take on mighty Brazil. To support Morocco, the administrative, off-again, on-again champions of Africa , and semi‑finalists at the last World Cup in Qatar.

“We had a good World Cup in 2022 and a good African Cup of Nations,” Kamal Ait El Hadj said before the game, lounging in his seat in the New York New Jersey Stadium’s lower bowl. Soon enough, his section would be colored by Morocco’s blood red and splotches of green. “It was a minimum for me to be here.”

Ait El Hadj, a 47-year-old who “builds villas” in Morocco , figured his travel from Marrakech just for this match would set him back $5,000 (£3,700), even though he had a free ticket. He would go home after the game and planned to return for a last‑16 match – hopefully featuring Morocco – which would cost him another $5,000.

Houssam Jeboni, a 33-year-old fish wholesaler, was high up in the second tier. He said it would cost him $6,000 to follow his team through the group stage, from New Jersey through Foxborough and Atlanta, before flying home to Morocco via Miami.

Salma Sebti, sitting in the second tier behind one of the goals with her husband and daughter, had booked their travel for all three group matches as well. “And inshallah, we stay,” she said. They were here because she had a feeling the Atlas Lions required their presence to succeed. Sebti and her family would spend at least $15,000 on this trip, she estimated. They own a gas station in Marrakech.

We spoke to a dozen or so fans who had traveled from Morocco for the match and none of them reported any problems getting into the US, although some had faced waits in the immigration line as long as three hours. There was also consensus among them that Morocco are the rightful African champions.

But from those who managed to make it from Morocco to the Meadowlands on Saturday, a clear picture emerged of just who gets to witness this World Cup, of who can decide it’s “a minimum” for them, as it was for Ait El Hadj. After all, the average annual salary in Morocco is estimated to be less than $7,400 .

Morocco is a rising power in the global game. The rapidly developing country, which is building impressive infrastructure, has become the power player in African soccer and stands accused of wielding its swelling influence to wrest away Senegal’s continental trophy. In four years, Morocco will be the second African country (after South Africa in 2010), and the second Arab one (after Qatar), to host a World Cup , when it shares the duties with Spain and Portugal – and, briefly, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Judging from this random sampling, only Morocco’s well-off are sharing in the soccer spoils. In a soccerfootball-mad country like Morocco, as in many others, traveling to this World Cup is a luxury, costing what the average citizen would earn in an entire year or even two.

“I trust our team and I think this is our year,” said a 32-year-old Morocco fan who works in the travel industry and asked not to be named. He expected to spend up to $10,000 over 10 days. To him, this World Cup represents an appetizer for the one Morocco will co-host. “We will show the world we are ready to host the best World Cup in history,” he said.

He shared this abundant pride with Mohammed Smouni, the deputy director general of Morocco’s national railway. “We’re in training [to host],” he said.

Smouni is a World Cup regular, this is his fifth, and did not want to miss this fixture, the only group-stage contest between teams ranked in Fifa’s top 10, which would end 1-1 . “We got a taste in Qatar,” he said. He was in the stadium’s second tier beside his son, who had come from Montreal to meet him. “Seeing my team has no price.”

It did have a price, though – a $1,500 flight. A friend had given Smouni their tickets and was putting them up, making this a relatively affordable trip for him and his son.

That made Smouni one of the lucky ones. Ait El Hadj, the builder of villas, had saved up for a long time. But then he was lucky, too. “Not everyone can afford it,” he said.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is the author of The Long Game: U.S. Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts, which is out now . He teaches at Marist University.

Keyword – Science
Trefwoorden – Archaeology, Infectious diseases, Microbiology, Science, Biology, World news, Russia, Europe
Title – Ancient DNA provides evidence of earliest known plague outbreak | Archaeology | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/iansample
Link – Ancient DNA provides evidence of earliest known plague outbreak | Archaeology | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-17T15:00:36.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/17/ancient-dna-evidence-earliest-known-plague-outbreak

The earliest evidence for an outbreak of plague has been uncovered at late stone age cemeteries in south-eastern Siberia where dozens of hunter-gatherers and their children were buried.

Ancient DNA collected from the remains suggests the disease tore through the sparse communities in devastating waves that began about 5,500 years ago, at least two centuries after the bacterium responsible, Yersinia pestis , first emerged.

The hunter-gatherers probably became infected after butchering or eating raw marmots , a risky practice that still causes plague deaths today . After spilling over from the chunky ground squirrels, the primary animal reservoir in the area, the disease spread from person to person, decimating families and others in close contact.

The work resolves a longstanding mystery of why so many children were among the dead at one cemetery in particular, named Ust-Ida, on the bank of the Angara River north-west of Lake Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world.

While older hunter-gatherers might have survived past brushes with the disease and gained some immunity, young children were exceptionally vulnerable. At least two-thirds of the dead at two of the cemeteries were under 15 years old. Many who died shared graves with siblings or other family members.

“The archaeologists were keen to see whether ancient DNA analysis could shed any light on what happened and it absolutely did,” said Ruairidh Macleod, a research fellow who studies ancient DNA at the University of Oxford. “Getting the result that all these people were dying of plague was extraordinary but super exciting. We really didn’t expect to find this in prehistoric hunter-gatherers.”

The international team, including researchers in Copenhagen, Alberta, Cambridge and London, analysed dental pulp in the teeth of skeletons excavated from the cemeteries. The graves typically run parallel to the river, with bodies laid so the heads point downstream.

Tests on 42 hunter-gatherers buried at four cemeteries on the Angara river found that 18 of them (39%) contained Y pestis DNA, a higher proportion than is seen in some medieval plague pits. Given the high chance of false negatives, where infections are missed because the DNA is too degraded, the scientists suspect all those buried may have died from plague.

Writing in Nature , the researchers describe how the ancient DNA points to two distinct outbreaks, with the first starting about 5,500 years ago and the second 400 to 600 years later. Further analysis showed that Y pestis emerged at least 5,700 years ago, after splitting from its ancestor, a bug called Yersinia pseudotuberculosis , which can cause abdominal pain, fever, diarrhoea and vomiting.

The earliest evidence of plague in Britain is 4,000 years old , with traces of Y pestis found in the teeth of men and women excavated at bronze age burial sites in Cumbria and Somerset.

The hunter-gatherers most likely contracted pneumonic plague, which affects the lungs. The same bacterium causes other forms of the disease, namely septicemic plague, a blood infection, and bubonic plague, which leads to swollen lymph nodes, or buboes, in the armpits, neck and groin. Bubonic plague typically spreads through infected fleas and triggered devastating pandemics such as the Black Death, which killed half of the European population in the 14th century.

Scientists have questioned whether the very earliest forms of plague were deadly, because they lacked virulence genes that allowed bubonic plague to spread through fleas and rodents. The Y pestis found at the Lake Baikal cemeteries carried a superantigen, or toxic protein, that could trigger severe immune reactions, raising the risk of the disease being particularly lethal for children, the researchers found.

Samuel Cohn, a professor of medieval history at the University of Glasgow, said the work reached “groundbreaking conclusions” by identifying such early outbreaks in hunter gatherers, rather than in populations that arose at agricultural settlements. Isolated communities suffered in later outbreaks, however. During the Black Death, mountainous villages were hit in Snowdonia and across Tuscany, he said.

Plague outbreaks conjure up images of densely populated, rat-infested cities in the middle ages, but the latest work shows that small communities of ancient hunter-gatherers were far from safe. “To me that makes a lot of sense,” said Macleod. “If you’re a prehistoric hunter-gatherer, you’re going to be in contact with a lot more wild species than an early farmer, and it’s the wild species that are primarily the reservoirs of the disease, not the domesticated animals.”