Keyword – US news
Trefwoorden – US crime, UFC, Donald Trump, FBI, Washington DC, US news, Sport, MMA, US sports
Title – Five people detained for alleged ‘planned attacks’ on White House UFC cage fighting show | US crime | The Guardian
Author – Associated Press
Link – Five people detained for alleged ‘planned attacks’ on White House UFC cage fighting show | US crime | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T12:38:11.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/16/white-house-ufc-fight-planned-attacks

Law enforcement officials disrupted “planned attacks” meant to target the UFC cage fighting show staged at the White House this past weekend, and multiple people were in custody, said Kash Patel, the FBI director.

The nature of the potential threat was not immediately disclosed, with additional details expected to be released once charges are unsealed later Tuesday.

Five people were arrested from states including Ohio, Missouri and California, said a law enforcement official familiar with the matter. The official spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that was not yet public.

The FBI learned about the possible threat on 10 June, four days before the mixed-martial arts extravaganza on the White House’s South Lawn, “and thanks to the rapid action of the FBI, our partners, and the Department of Justice in a multi-state operation, multiple individuals are now in custody and allegedly planned attacks were stopped cold”, Patel said in a post on X on Tuesday morning.

Donald Trump, who celebrated his 80th birthday at the UFC event on Sunday, sought to tie the fights to larger celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Fox News reported that five people had been arrested and were in custody and that investigators had identified 23 people potentially involved in a plot to attack the event. Officials told the network that the alleged plan involved using explosive‑laden drones and snipers and even possibly storming the White House gate.

There was no indication of how realistic or advanced the plot had become. Patel tweeted out a link to the Fox story which said the plot had come to the FBI’s attention on 10 June, triggering the first arrest in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Fox quoted a statement from the Secret Service.

“In the days leading up to this weekend, our special agents, mission support personnel, and technical security teams worked around the clock to identify those responsible and hold them accountable,” said Sean Curran, the Secret Service director. “Equally important to our protective mission is ensuring accountability through the justice system. To that end, our formal comments regarding the specifics of this case will be made through court filings.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – South Africa, Africa, Race, World news
Title – ‘Then the firing started’: the Soweto uprising remembered 50 years on | South Africa | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/rachel-savage
Link – ‘Then the firing started’: the Soweto uprising remembered 50 years on | South Africa | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T02:00:41.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/16/soweto-uprising-johannesburg-remembered-50-years-on

T he day of 16 June 1976 began peacefully in Soweto. Student leaders at high schools across the sprawling Johannesburg township, to which the apartheid regime had exiled hundreds of thousands of black South Africans, took charge of the morning assemblies. They led their fellow students into the streets and began to march toward Orlando stadium.

The students were protesting against the government’s imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. Their teachers barely spoke the white minority language and the students did not want to learn the oppressor’s language. They were tired of the intentionally substandard Bantu education, tired of being second-class citizens.

By the end of the day, dozens would be dead.

The mood of the young protesters started off joyous, people who marched that winter day remembered. They sang struggle anthems, including Senzeni Na? , which asks in Xhosa: “What have we done [to deserve this]?”

“Our worst-case scenario, of course, was that they were going to throw cans and cans of teargas at us,” said Sibongile Mkhabela, then an 18-year-old pupil at Naledi high school and one of the march organisers.

As the children moved east, more schools joined. By the time the first group reached Orlando West, where Nelson Mandela had lived before he was imprisoned on Robben Island, the students numbered in their thousands.

They faced a wall of police. The police had a loudhailer, said Oupa Moloto, then a 19-year-old pupil at Morris Isaacson high school. But none of the students could hear what was being said.

Accounts of what happened next differ. Some say a white police officer threw a teargas canister into the crowd. Moloto remembered police dogs being released to attack marchers. “Now, women students were panicking and then we took stones to retaliate,” he said. “And then the firing started.”

Moloto thought it was fireworks at first. Then he saw that a boy next to him had been shot: “I was surprised when I saw this bleeding, that these guys are really shooting.”

He did not know what happened to the boy in the pandemonium that followed. “Helicopters were hovering over, shooting teargas from up in the sky. Students were panicking, running in different directions,” Moloto said.

Among the first to die were 15-year-old Hastings Ndlovu and 12-year-old Hector Pieterson. The photograph taken by the local journalist Sam Nzima of Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying Hector’s limp, bloodied body, Hector’s sister Antoinette running beside them, face twisted in anguish, became the day’s defining image .

The number of people killed that day, which became known as the Soweto uprising, has never been definitively confirmed. The official figure was 23, but some estimates put the death toll at more than 200, according to South African History Online , a respected resource.

The unrest spread to other townships. Government institutions were looted and burned. The police continued to fire. A regime report in 1980 concluded that 575 people died in the months after the start of the uprising. “By the end of 1976, the entire apartheid system was on trial,” said Mkhabela, who now runs an NGO.

The uprising created a new generation of anti-apartheid activists, reviving a struggle that had faltered after Mandela and other African National Congress leaders were given life sentences in 1964. Thousands of students fled South Africa to join uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC in exile.

I nitially, Kingsley Mamabolo planned to stay in Soweto and fight. “People would accuse us of being communist, but you didn’t need people to show you what was happening on the ground,” said Mamabolo, then a 20-year-old final-year student at Naledi high school. In early August, police broke up a demonstration in central Johannesburg and several of his friends were arrested. Some got word out of prison that police were hunting him too and he decided he had to flee.

“I thought I was brave, but the coward in me said: ‘I don’t want to be dying in prison’ … There were lots of rumours and stories going about, of people who didn’t make it after they had been tortured in prison,” said Mamabolo.

So began 18 years in exile, in which he represented the ANC in Cuba, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. While Mamabolo was motivated by the cause, it was also the life of a refugee. He was not paid a salary, surviving on food rations from the party and donated secondhand clothes.

Mamabolo, now South Africa’s high commissioner to the UK, said he still felt guilty about not giving his three children born in exile a stable upbringing. “I’m constantly apologising for the life I gave them,” he said. “It wasn’t of my making or their making. I think they understand.”

Mkhabela was arrested at the August 1976 demonstration and put in solitary confinement for four months. Her cell was cavernous and freezing and the Afrikaner guards would beat her at any time of night. “When they hit you, you felt like a rag doll, when you are thrown from one corner of the room to the next,” she said.

Mkhabela continued her activism on her release and was arrested again nine months later. She spent a year in prison waiting for her 11-month trial, the only woman alongside 10 men. She was one of five convicted and spent another two years behind bars, much of it in isolation.

Decades later, Mkhabela’s experiences were turned into a play by her daughter Ntsako. It helped Mkhabela to realise that her poor memory was probably a result of what she went through. “One of the things that hurt me most in prison was remembering … I had to train myself to forget what it feels like to love and be loved … but in the process the mind forgets a lot of other things that you shouldn’t forget,” she said.

Moloto did not make it out of South Africa. About a year after the uprising, he was caught trying to cross into Eswatini and spent more than three years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. Guards would force him to stay awake for up to 10 days and mock him when he became disoriented.

“The way those guys were so brutal, at one stage it clicked in my mind … how did it come that God should create people like this?” Moloto said, sitting with his daughter Mpho in an office at the June 16 Memorial Acre in Soweto.

After being released, he was kidnapped and tortured by security forces, who accused him of arms dealing. “I had to withdraw from being active … Even when you sit with your old comrades, you become paranoid, you are afraid,” he said.

Moloto excused himself from the interview. “He’s always seeing danger,” his daughter said. “The paranoia, the nightmares, the physical remnants of what happened to him. He has severe asthma now. You know, I think that’s why he wanted to go out.”

Mpho, 45, is now the primary carer for her father, after his wife of 43 years, Susan Jenny Moloto, died last year. “When Mama was there, she would wake him up and calm him down and ground him and bring him back to reality,” she said. “I’ve now had to step into that role.”

Moloto’s post-traumatic stress disorder means that 16 June 1976 is ever-present for the family, even 50 years later. “It’s not just a chapter in the history books,” Mpho said. “In our lives … for me, it’s still a living, a breathing reality.”

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – World Cup 2026, Belgium, Egypt football team, World Cup, Football, Sport
Title – Lukaku makes instant impact to force own goal and rescue draw for Belgium against Egypt | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jeff-rueter
Link – Lukaku makes instant impact to force own goal and rescue draw for Belgium against Egypt | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-15T21:08:34.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/15/belgium-egypt-world-cup-2026-group-g-match-report

For just over half of Egypt’s opening match against Belgium, it looked as though the Pharaohs had done enough for a famous first World Cup win. And then Rudi Garcia went to his bench and brought on the player Belgium have long relied on in thorny situations.

“Frankly, when you are the opponent and you see Romelu Lukaku entering the field, your confidence goes down and your anxiety increases,” Garcia said after the draw. While Lukaku himself did not score, his threat drew two defenders on to his first run into the box, which resulted in an equalising own goal to salvage a point from a closely fought contest.

Group G hotted up in earnest with presumptive frontrunners Belgium and Egypt opening their World Cup campaigns with a credible draw. A crowd of 66,775 watched on under the intense sun of the early North American summer, in a contest which warranted the contentious cooling breaks that have been universally adopted for this tournament.

The group’s headline clash was slated as a noon affair under a heat advisory in Seattle, with on-field temperatures of 30C (86F) and high, hazy clouds at kick-off. There was scarcely an empty seat to be found, forming a sea of red and white owing to the teams’ similar colours.

Both sides tested the tolerance of the referee, Ramon Abatti, for contact and exchanged a pair of early yellow cards. As the match entered the 19th minute, Egypt found a breakthrough. A quick restart caught Belgium backpedalling into position as Egypt approached the final third. Some nifty right-sided buildup found Mohamed Salah, where he turned to his left and assessed.

Playing on his 34th birthday, Salah fizzed a pass to his left where Emam Ashour collected and cut toward the top of the D. The midfielder fired a shot underneath Thomas Meunier’s dangling leg and beyond a diving Thibaut Courtois, who had overcommitted to his left and was unable to stretch far enough to his right. It was a timely first international goal for the Al-Ahly midfielder on his 30th appearance.

The stands at Seattle Stadium physically rocked during the raucous celebration, a hallmark of the venue when it hosts American and association football alike (as well as Taylor Swift concerts ).

Belgium struggled to maximise their width for large portions of the first half. Egypt were proactive when closing down Jérémy Doku, often doubling up on the winger whenever the ball went in his direction. On the opposite flank, Leandro Trossard often seemed in two minds about what to do in possession, having the ball taken off of him three times in the opening half-hour.

After Ashour’s opener, Doku switched to the right where Egypt had fewer numbers. As first-half stoppage time loomed, passes and shots increased in desperation. A long-range effort from Kevin De Bruyne failed to enter the box, instead smacking the striker Charles De Ketelaere on the backside.

Doku tried a volley but shanked it well above the bar. Egypt nearly found a second with the half’s final action, but the last in a series of corners drifted above the scrum and tamely into open terrain.

As Belgium shot more speculatively, Egypt comported themselves with greater aspiration than sitting in a bunker. The Pharaohs broke on the counter when able but otherwise were content to have possession in midfield with their defence well stationed behind.

At last, in the 66th minute, Garcia put his team’s fate at Lukaku’s feet. It proved savvy, as a quick break by Meunier into the box for a close-range cross found Lukaku sliding between a pair of defenders in close proximity to the goalkeeper, Mostafa Shobeir.

The ball went beyond Lukaku’s leg but caught the inside of Mohamed Hany’s boot and rolled into Egypt’s net, levelling the game just before the second-half drinks break.

The 33-year-old Lukaku only logged 40 minutes in Serie A for Napoli this season, raising concerns that Belgium’s record scorer would not be ready for this World Cup. Instead, it has perhaps made a role off the bench more palatable for the veteran striker.

“We’re going far [this summer] with Romelu, so we have to go easy on him,” Garcia said. “The goal is to get as far as possible in this World Cup with a Romelu who doesn’t get hurt. I think that’s the first objective. And then if he plays this role of super sub and that every time he hits a goal, frankly, it’s going to be great.”

Keyword – Books
Trefwoorden – Science and nature books, Books, Culture
Title – Togetherness by Rowan Hooper review – a stunning portrait of cooperation in nature | Science and nature books | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/philip-ball
Link – Togetherness by Rowan Hooper review – a stunning portrait of cooperation in nature | Science and nature books | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-15T06:00:04.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/15/togetherness-by-rowan-hooper-review-a-stunning-portrait-of-cooperation-in-nature

W hen Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, the Industrial Revolution and British colonialism were in the ascendant. Charles Dickens had published Hard Times five years earlier; Queen Victoria nominally ruled a fifth of the world’s population. Darwin, writes science writer Rowan Hooper, crafted his evolutionary theory to deliver what he figured his audience wanted to hear: “an account of nature as a competitive struggle”. Natural selection was launched into a world that was “colonial, capitalist, patriarchal and ruled by the upper class” – and Darwin’s central message, crudely paraphrased by the philosopher Herbert Spencer as “survival of the fittest”, chimed with the times.

Hooper adores Darwin – his account of visiting Darwin’s Kent residence Down House radiates reverence (“it’s a pseudo-religious experience”). But he feels that Darwinism and its union with genetics in the so-called “modern synthesis” has placed undue emphasis on competition in the natural world and underplayed the roles of cooperation and collaboration. In redressing that imbalance, Togetherness is not an attempt to make evolution cuddlier and more palatable; rather, it is a corrective deeply informed by what we have learned since Darwin about how nature works. Written with immense charm and passion, and packed with eye-popping facts, it is also a paean to the wonders of nature and the value and urgency of preserving them.

It’s easy enough to see the competitive side of nature: the lion stalking a gazelle, the bird of prey swooping for the kill. But the photogenic animal world is not necessarily the most representative resource for the natural historian. Hooper shows that we often find a very different story among the soft, slimy and squishy stuff: moulds, microbes, mushrooms. And lichens, which look superficially plant-like but are in fact a partnership between fungi and algae. Each supplies something the other needs: algae can photosynthesise, producing carbohydrates on which fungi feed, while the fungi shelter and spread the light-gathering algae. The relationship is symbiotic: each organism is dependent on the other and they grow and evolve together. Sometimes the lichen collective is joined by other partners: cyanobacteria (photosynthetic bacteria) or yeast. It’s a fantastically productive partnership, enabling lichens to flourish almost anywhere, from rainforests to tundra and deserts.

Or take corals. These colourful, branched marine organisms invite classification as plants but are in fact collaborations of animals (cnidarians, from the same family as sea anemones and jellyfish) and algae that live in their stomachs. The algae photosynthesise using sunlight while the host animal delivers nutrients and carbon dioxide to their guests. (Some deep-sea corals, growing in the dark, host bacteria instead.) Darwin published a book on coral reefs in 1842 after seeing them on the voyage of the Beagle, explaining how their limestone shells created entire island atolls. But he had no idea they were symbionts.

Most land plants depend on symbiotic fungi, especially the root fungi called mycorrhizae that deliver vital nutrient elements such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Without these associations there would be no forests and prairies covering the land, but just mats and crusts of microbial colonies. Orchids are the archetypal plant symbiont – individual plants are interlinked via an underground fungal network along which they can send sugar to their seedlings.

These are not, as was first imagined, oddities: symbiosis is the natural state of most organisms. Beetles and termites cultivate nutritious fungal gardens in their nests. And the importance of the bacteria hosted in and on our bodies – our microbiome – has become increasingly apparent. Antibiotics that deplete them leave us with digestive disorders, while some recurrent bacterial infections and even depression can be treated with faecal transplants, which sound gross but are nothing more nor less than a restocking of our microbial collaborators.

Symbiosis has driven evolution since its earliest days. The chloroplasts responsible for photosynthesis in plant cells were once free-living cyanobacteria. So were the mitochondria that produce energy in our own cells. Such permanent symbiotic merging (endosymbiosis) of single-celled organisms was first proposed in the 1960s by biologist Lynn Margulis, who asserted that the “red in tooth and claw” Darwinian view of evolution was “naive”. “Now we see ourselves as products of cellular interaction,” she wrote in 1987. Such mergers, she said, could allow evolution to advance not in small steps but in great leaps.

Margulis’s endosymbiosis hypothesis is now accepted, but initially met scepticism and even ridicule. Sexism surely played a part in that, but there’s a thesis to be written on the resistance of academic biology to notions of cooperation and collaboration in evolution – or the determination to recast them as mere expediency by “selfish genes”. Margulis made the rather gender-essentialist claim that scepticism about symbiosis was a rejection of the “feminine”, but one can’t help noticing that an emphasis on interconnection in the natural world often came from women, whether it was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring or the “wood wide web” of forestry scientist Suzanne Simard, the inspiration for a character in Richard Power’s 2018 eco-fable The Overstory.

These interdependencies are vital to the health of the biosphere. The catastrophic “bleaching” of coral reefs caused by warming of the oceans, for example, happens because the symbiotic algae can’t stand the warmer water. Without them, corals are doomed, and reefs have already declined by half since the mid-20th century. But, as Hooper explains, symbiosis is itself a delicate balance and apt to tip into parasitism if one partner reneges on the arrangement. He warns, however, that ultimately the language of competition and collaboration is anthropomorphic and tends to impose moral judgment on the workings of nature.

My review copy of Togetherness is now peppered with marginal annotations of “Wow!” I never knew that the feelgood neurotransmitter serotonin is mostly made by our gut bacteria. Some ants produce antibiotics that they apply to nestmates’ wounds. The bacterial symbionts of cockroaches give them their infernal (to our view) ability to live almost anywhere and eat almost anything. Hooper’s background in conservation biology and his wide travels (I guess being an editor at New Scientist has its perks) bring vividness to his accounts. While he mistakenly asserts that living organisms reduce entropy, seems sometimes to conflate symbiosis and interdependence (predators still need their prey), and somewhat exaggerates the “outrage and panic” that Darwin’s Origin produced among “religious authorities”, these are minor quibbles.

Darwin himself was too astute a naturalist to ignore the interdependencies of nature. He didn’t know the symbiotic secrets of corals or lichens, but he was fascinated by orchids, and an ecological sensibility, as we’d now see it, pervades his writings. The famous final passage of Origin (“endless forms most beautiful”) stresses not the ruthless individualism of nature but its webs of coexistence. “It is interesting,” Darwin wrote, “to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds … these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner.”

This is the Darwinian message we need most to hear today. “The crisis of nature we are engulfed in has been caused by a failure to see in ecological terms, a failure set up by our philosophical and economic systems,” writes Hooper. “We are symbiotic creatures at the deepest level of our cells.” A feeling of oneness with nature, he says, is not woolly green fantasy or pre-scientific mysticism. It reflects our best understanding of life and should be heeded.

Togetherness by Rowan Hooper is published by Fern Press. (£25). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

Keyword – Life and style
Trefwoorden – Running, UK news, Health, Life and style, Society, London, Kelly Holmes
Title – ‘A huge spectrum of people coming together’: how parkrun made it to its millionth event | Running | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/aneesa-ahmed,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sundus-abdi
Link – ‘A huge spectrum of people coming together’: how parkrun made it to its millionth event | Running | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-14T08:00:37.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jun/14/a-huge-spectrum-of-people-coming-together-how-parkrun-made-it-to-its-millionth-event

A n event to mark the millionth parkrun took place in west London on Saturday, acting as a celebration of the community cohesion and public health benefit that the charity has been aiming to achieve across the past two decades.

The former Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes joined thousands of locals and parkrun fanatics to mark the milestone in a west London park – the venue for the very first parkrun in 2004.

“Parkrun is one of those rare successful social movements that have happened organically,” said parkrun’s global chief executive, Elizabeth Duggan. “It’s not that we’ve had to pay vast amounts of money to grow the brand and ethos, it just happened from one person to another.”

The free weekly 5km event, founded by Paul-Sinton Hewitt, began in Bushy Park, Teddington, with five volunteers and a small group of 13 runners. It has since grown into a global fixture of weekend life, taking place in parks, fields, seafronts and even prisons.

Initially a single timed run, the event now operates at 2,800 locations worldwide, with more than 12 million people registered to take part.

Every Saturday morning, tens of thousands of runners and walkers turn up to jog, push prams or simply complete the course at their own pace.

These events, which are entirely volunteer-run at a local level, have seen bridal showers in matching headdresses, milestone birthday parties, and even engagements at the finish line.

But beyond giving people the opportunity to run and have a controlled space to move their bodies in for free, Duggan argues that one of the greatest successes of parkrun has been its ability to bring people together from across neighbourhoods – and into a shared green space.

“There’s a huge spectrum of people coming together at the parkruns, and there’s something so lovely about young and old, fast and slow, children and octogenarians all doing something together,” she said.

Whether volunteering or running, she has seen many cases of the local parkrun giving people a sense of purpose. People, she says, are always looking to be a part of something bigger than themselves – and the charity is proud to continue to provide the space.

“It is like a spiritual home for some people, some have likened it to a church,” she says. “It’s somewhere that you go, you know people, it calms and connects. It plays a role in community, and people are keen to support and protect it.”

The appeal lies less in competition than routine. Finish times vary widely, and organisers say the average is now the slowest in parkrun’s history, which may reflect a growing number of beginners and walkers taking part for health, rather than speed.

That shift is echoed in the people it attracts. About one in five participants describe themselves as inactive when they first sign up, while almost a third come from lower socioeconomic groups, suggesting the weekly run is reaching people who might not otherwise engage in organised sport.

However, there is still space for performance. The fastest recorded times stand at 13 minutes 44 seconds for men and 15 minutes 13 seconds for women, both set in Belfast. But for most participants, the focus is simply on finishing.

The movement has also become part of public health policy. More than 2,100 GP surgeries in the UK now “prescribe” parkrun to patients as part of social prescribing schemes, encouraging activity to support physical and mental health.

Sport England research has linked participation to reductions in conditions such as depression and diabetes, as well as fewer GP and hospital visits.

At a community-level, parkruns have given groups the space to share their history and cultures with other people in their areas – for example when Burgess Park parkrun hosted a celebration of Ugandan independence day in 2022.

It also connects people with their natural environment, something that has double the benefit to exercising indoors, Duggan says.

Its reach extends far beyond parks – about 25 prisons and young offender institutions now host parkruns, involving more than 12,000 people in custody, in programmes designed to support rehabilitation.

Duggan describes a case of a grandmother who was incarcerated, who would run the parkrun in the prison while her grandson would run it in his local park. When they would phone during the week, the pair would discuss their parkruns and compare stories from the weekend. “It was something that united them even if they couldn’t be together,” she said.

The charity is positive that they will be able to grow and reach even more people. Over the years it has drawn in everyone from Olympic champions to politicians, including Alistair Brownlee, Ed Miliband, and the late Keith Flint of the Prodigy, alongside thousands of first-timers.

“Parkrun is a piece of me,” says Holmes, who took part in the millionth parkrun on Saturday.

“I love the social interaction of it. I’ve spoken to so many people at parkrun over the years and so many people have told me how parkrun has saved their life.

“That’s everyone, from people who have come back from surgery … [and] women who have given birth and are getting back into activity. It’s for everyone really.”

Moving forward, parkrun is hoping to get even more people from a diverse range of communities participating in physical exercise, especially those from a lower socioeconomic background.

“Lower socioeconomic groups and ethnic minorities are statistically more likely to be inactive,” Duggan says.

“So by expressly targeting them we know that we’ll be having a bigger impact on the health of everyone in the nation.”

This article was amended on 16 June 2026. The event in Bushy park was organised to mark the millionth parkrun held globally, but was not itself the millionth parkrun as an earlier version said.

Keyword – Art and design
Trefwoorden – Art, Barack Obama, Chicago, Museums, Art and design, Culture, Painting, Exhibitions
Title – ‘This will be timeless’: what art can we expect from Chicago’s $850m Obama Presidential Center? | Art | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/davidsmith
Link – ‘This will be timeless’: what art can we expect from Chicago’s $850m Obama Presidential Center? | Art | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T10:00:06.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/jun/16/obama-presidential-center-chicago-art

I t is a tale of two presidents. On 14 June Donald Trump celebrated his 80th birthday by hosting a raucous crowd for Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) on the White House South Lawn. Four days later, on the eve of Juneteenth, Barack Obama will unveil a monument to his legacy that honours the audacity of art .

For the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago, Barack and Michelle Obama commissioned original works by 30 artists from diverse backgrounds, a bold move never seen at such scale at a presidential library. It also forms a quiet rebuke of Obama’s successor, who has filled the Oval Office with stiff presidential portraits while plotting the demise of cultural stalwarts such as the Kennedy Center and Smithsonian Institution.

“They love art,” said Valerie Jarrett , chief executive of the Obama Foundation, reflecting on how the Obamas took a similarly inclusive approach to curating the White House. “We want people who come here to look at a piece of art, stand next to a stranger, have a conversation about that piece of art and how it touches them each in their own individual ways. ”

The privately funded $850m presidential centre , opening nearly a decade after Obama left office, sits on a 19-acre campus in Chicago’s Jackson Park, close to where he lived as a young man and entered politics. It includes a new branch of the Chicago Public Library, an NBA-regulation basketball court, a recording studio and a sledding hill built because a young Michelle Obama never had one growing up on the city’s famously flat South Side.

The new artworks are dotted throughout. Jarrett insisted: “None of the art makes political statements.” But that depends on the definition of “political”. It does engage with the roots of African American history, the struggle for civil rights and the specific cultural legacy of Chicago .

Martin Puryear’s monumental sculpture Bending the Arc is inspired by Martin Luther King’s celebrated line, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” and pays homage to John Lewis for carrying it forward. Puryear hand carved a straight, 34-ft-long wooden beam, which was then 3D scanned, enlarged and curved digitally, before reaching its final form in stainless steel in the John Lewis Plaza.

Richard Hunt’s Book Bird, located in the library reading garden, depicts a bird bursting from the pages of a book to evoke the emancipatory power of reading. Hunt was steeped in the civil rights movement and Chicago’s South Side. This was his final work before his death in 2023.

The Ann Dunham Water Terrace – named for the president’s mother – features a stone water feature by Maya Lin , titled Seeing Through the Universe, comprising an upright oculus that emits mist and a flat “pebble” that cascades with water.

Towering above it all is the museum, a 225-ft granite-covered monolith that has already been dubbed the Eye of Sauron, a Klingon prison and the “Obamalisk”. On the exterior, the Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu has created Uprising of the Sun, a mesmerising 83-ft-tall painted glass window inspired by Obama’s remarks at the 50th anniversary of the marches from Selma to Montgomery.

In the Hope and Change Lobby, Nigerian-American artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby offers a mixed-media portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama – the first created of them together – that draws on archival imagery, family albums and historical ephemera. Nick Cave and Marie Watt join forces on a multimedia textile piece that brings together Indigenous and Black traditions through beaded nets and sculptural jingle elements.

Mark Bradford’s City of the Big Shoulders is a 38-ft-tall textured painting that envelops the three-storey west wall of the museum’s Our Story atrium, mapping Chicago and Lake Michigan with dazzling detail in a riot of colours and scrappy materials. On the white pyramid-shaped ceiling of the Nelson Mandela Sky Room, Idris Khan’s Sky of Hope overlaps thousands of hand-stamped words pulled from Obama’s speeches honouring civil rights leaders in a burst of textual colour.

Louise Bernard , the museum’s founding director, who also worked on the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, said the artists were given free range. “The artists were really thinking about the Obama legacy: a sense of hopefulness, a sense of connection to place, the power of place. The importance of Chicago specifically resonates in many of the works. A connection to Obama’s own personal story in terms of place and memory are definitely shaping the art experience.”

The feast of art contrasts with the star attractions at other presidential libraries: Richard Nixon’s boasts a replica of the White House east room , Ronald Reagan has a Boeing 707 that served as Air Force One and Bush has been known to display his own paintings . In another change, the Obama Presidential Center divorced itself from the National Archives and Records Administration, leaving millions of physical federal documents in a warehouse in Maryland and funding their digitisation instead .

But like its counterparts, the centre does contain a museum that seeks to narrate a presidency in positive but not propagandistic fashion (the Nixon library used to blame the Watergate scandal on Democrats but was revamped in 2011 to provide unvarnished truths). Obama’s picture is omnipresent and his voice booms out reciting “Yes, we can!” and other celebrated speeches that could be from a different planet to Trump’s “American carnage”.

Indeed, liberals feeling nostalgic for pre-Trump days – and willing to pay the $30 admission – are likely to find its beautifully curated collection both uplifting and heartbreaking, calling to mind an observation from Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys that there is “no period so remote as the recent past”.

The origin story of America’s first Black president is brought to life by some poignant objects: a woven wall hanging made by his mother when she was pregnant with him; his grandfather Hussein Obama’s colonial era passbook from 1940s Kenya; an essay about William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear that the student Obama wrote at Occidental College in Los Angeles (“In both plays, the tragic hero embarks on a quest for identity”).

Later, when he had moved to Chicago, there is a brown briefcase embossed with the name “Barack” in gold letters and an invitation to his 1992 wedding to Michelle Robinson. From his 2008 presidential campaign, what used to be ephemera is today’s historical artifact: flags, lanyards, posters, signs, 440 campaign buttons, a box of “Obama O’s” cereal and a 7-Eleven coffee cup with Obama’s name.

One display, titled The President’s Lucky Charms, reveals the tiny keepsakes, religious objects and tokens that supporters pressed into Obama’s hands on the campaign trail. He formed a daily ritual of carrying a selection of them in his pocket – not out of superstition, the exhibit notes, but as a “constant reminder of the remarkable stories of the people he met who would be counting on him to never forget them if he became president”.

For the 2009 inauguration, Marvel published an Amazing Spider-Man comic with his cartoon image. The Bible on which Obama swore the oath of office, previously used for Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, is also on display, along with Nobel Peace Prize that he won soon after.

But the march of progress has a dark undertow. One caption notes how, in 1968, Republican Richard Nixon tapped into “stereotypes about Black people and the counterculture”. Another states: “The brighter Barack Obama’s candidacy became, the more it attracted racist and xenophobic hostility. False claims spread that he had been born in Kenya and educated in an Indonesian Islamic religious school … The general election brought even more instances of hateful language.”

At such moments the museum feel like an ominous foreshadowing of Trump’s rise – yet pointedly it never mentions him by name and, in a break from tradition, he has not been invited to Thursday’s grand opening ceremony. (More surprisingly Obama’s vice-president of eight years, Joe Biden , is also given short shrift in the display.)

Trump silently looms again on the third level, Working for the Common Good, which chronicles Obama’s eight years in power. One section is called Restoring American Leadership and cites the Paris climate agreement (shredded by Trump), Iran nuclear deal (shredded by Trump), restoring ties with Cuba (shredded by Trump) and decisive action against Ebola in west Africa (unlikely to be repeated now that USAid has been shredded by Trump).

There are triumphs too, such as rescuing the economy from near collapse after Wall Street’s reckless lending and overcoming unanimous Republican opposition to expand healthcare to millions, although the museum acknowledges, admirably, that the Affordable Care Act did not benefit everyone. The killing of 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden is here, of course, but in an understated and sober display featuring a flag taken on the commando raid. A panel entitled “Improving the immigration system” now rings particularly hollow.

The fourth level, The People’s House, is the fun bit with exquisitely detailed dioramas of various White House rooms, an array of Michelle Obama’s dresses and a full-scale replica Oval Office ( sans Trump gold) where visitors can sit at the Resolute desk – and open its drawer to see the letter that George W Bush wrote to his successor.

The physical and emotional climax is located on level eight. Free and open to the public without a museum ticket, the contemplative space offers sweeping, panoramic views of the South Side, the Chicago skyline and Lake Michigan. The windows are veiled by massive, 5-ft concrete letters from the text of Obama’s 2015 speech in Selma : “You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be.”

It is a noble sentiment that aims to soar above the rancour of today’s Washington. When, at last week’s presentation, a reporter raised the uncomfortable subject of Trump’s attacks on Obama’s legacy, and democracy itself, Jarrett noted that she now runs a charitable organisation: “I don’t discuss politics anymore. We believe that this campus will be timeless. What will be the constant is the values that drove President Obama to run for office and serve for all the years and the work that we do now is really preparing the next generation .”

One item is conspicuously absent from the collection: the tan suit that Obama wore to a press conference in 2014, a supposed controversy that earned its own Wikipedia entry in those simpler times. “The reason we don’t have the tan suit is President Obama gave it away when he was cleaning out his closet,” Jarrett said wryly. “We thought about a replica but that would not be authentic.”

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 – 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 – Opinion
Trefwoorden – AI (artificial intelligence), US politics, US news, Computing
Title – The Anthropic ‘Fable’ saga proves: we have opened the AI Pandora’s box. What now? | Bruce Schneier | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/bruceschneier
Link – The Anthropic ‘Fable’ saga proves: we have opened the AI Pandora’s box. What now? | Bruce Schneier | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T12:00:01.000Z
Category – Opinion
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/16/anthropic-fable-ai

O n 9 June, Anthropic released its Fable generative AI model. Three days later, the US government classified it as a dangerous munition, and used its export-control authority to prohibit any foreign nationals from accessing it. Unable to differentiate between Americans and foreigners, the company shut off access for everyone.

The government’s actions won’t help . The problem isn’t any one particular models; it’s the general trend of increasing AI capabilities. And any real solution requires the sort of collective action that just isn’t possible right now.

Fable is the constrained version of Mythos, the AI model Anthropic announced in April. It only released it to a few selected organizations, because it claimed it was so good at finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in computer code that it releasing it more generally would be dangerous .

It was an obviously self-serving announcement, and because few were able to verify Anthropic’s claims they was met with some skepticism . Those with access used Mythos to find , and patch , many vulnerabilities in their own software. But one UK group found the latest, already public, OpenAI model to be just as powerful.

Fable is just another incremental improvement in the years-long climb of AI capabilities. But just as important as the AI model is the “harness”. This is typically not AI. It’s ordinary computer code that interfaces with the user. It stitches together AI models, decides how and for what purposes they can be used, and gives them useful tools such as web search and the ability to run it’s own computer code.

When Mythos first entered limited release, there was widespread debate whether its power came from the model or the harness. With Mythos demonstrating that it was possible, the open-source community scrambled to build harnesses that could steer other AI models towards similar capabilities.

They largely succeeded. For example, a Prague company was able to replicate Anthropic’s few verifiable cybersecurity capabilities with a much smaller and cheaper model – and a more sophisticated harness. Last week, a group showed that multiple cheaper models harnessed in concert matches Fable’s performance.

The broader community had only a few days with Fable, but that time we learned some about its capabilities . It’s difference is less the new model’s raw analytical and problem solving capabilities, and more that the model doesn’t need that sophisticated harness.

Fable requires much less expertise and detailed prompting from the human user. You can give it a difficult goal and it will figure out novel and unexpected ways to satisfy it, finding loopholes in whatever constraints you or the system have imposed on it.

“Relentlessly proactive” is how AI researcher Simon Willison described it. Another descriptor might be “creative”. Experienced AI developers have had that combination of creativity and proactivity since last year , but Fable puts it within easy reach of everyone.

In the hands of someone with a legitimate problem that needs solving, that can be an incredibly useful capability. But in the hands of someone who wants to do harm, it can be equally dangerous. AIs don’t have a moral compass in the same way that people do. They are agents of the wants and desires of the people who prompt them.

That points to the real problem with relentlessly proactive AI. In language, wants and desires are always underspecified. If I ask you to get me some coffee, you would probably pour me a cup from the coffeepot, or buy one from a nearby coffee shop.

You couldn’t buy me a pound of raw beans, or a coffee plantation. You wouldn’t order a cup of coffee for delivery next month. You wouldn’t find a nearby person, rip a cup of coffee out of their hands, and bring it to me. I wouldn’t have to specify any of the million limitations to my request; you would just know.

Human stories are filled with warnings about underspecified desires. King Midas wished that everything he touch turn to gold, forgetting to add “but not my food, drink, and daughter”. And genies are notorious for granting your wish in a way you wish he hadn’t.

The deeper point is that it’s impossible to list all limitations and restrictions and, like a malicious genie, a creative AI will find the ones you forgot. Block a database you don’t want it to have access to, and it might figure out how to bypass your control. Ask it to book a flight, and it might hack the airline because the website says the flight is sold out. Ask it to save money on your cellphone plan, and it might cancel it altogether – or get someone else to pay for it. As far as we know now AI has not done any of this yet, but you get the idea.

Malicious intent is not required. To an AI model, constraints are just things to get around and not general truisms about the world. They are creative problem solvers and natural rule breakers. They “hack” in the sense that they find and exploit loopholes.

Human systems rely on so many norms that we scarcely recognize the existence of until they are broken. AIs naturally think outside the box, because they don’t have any real conception of what the box is or why it’s there in the first place.

There is no foolproof way to prevent people from using AI models to complete harmful tasks. There is no way to prevent the models from incidentally causing harm while completing benign tasks. AI models are no longer isolated from the real world. They browse the internet and answer emails.

They trade stocks and make purchases. They control physical systems. They are, in effect , robots that affect life and property. We have no technical mechanisms to verify the integrity of an AI system. This level of capability and creativity in the hands of us untrustworthy humans will have both great and terrible results.

The problem is not unique to Anthropic. Mythos/Fable might currently be the most capable rules hacker, but more sophisticated harnesses give other models similar capabilities. And we should assume that the other frontier models are no more than a few months behind, and that open-source models are less than a year behind. At best, any ban only serves to delay the problem for a short while.

That delay might be useful if we – as a society, as a planet – would use that time to come together and figure out what to do. This isn’t a US/China arms race problem; this a species-level problem that requires coordinated action at that scale. Unfortunately, we have no mechanism to do that. I first wrote about this problem five years ago, but it was all too futuristic.

Today, when its right in front of us, there is no world government that can impose constraints on the for-profit corporations currently controlling AI models and research. The US has no appetite to effectively and even-handedly regulate those corporations, even as they do catastrophic damage to the environment, democracy, and – in this case – society in general.

This all makes an AI public option all the more necessary, and urgent. Today’s AIs can be fast, smart, and secure, but only two of the three are possible for any given system. These safety tradeoffs are tightly held secrets of companies racing to beat one another, and they tell us we have to trust them. Instead, the choices and their consequences need to be brought out into the sunlight.

We should be funding open-source harnesses that balance capability and safety – that achieve useful goals without so much power – and open-source AI models whose provenance and biases are public and well understood. We have opened the AI Pandora’s box. Now we have to make the best of it.

Bruce Schneier is a security technologist who teaches at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – World Cup 2026, World Cup, Football, Spain, France, Argentina, Brazil, England, Sport, Scotland, South Korea, Mexico, Czechia, South Africa football team, Canada, Qatar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Morocco football team, Haiti football team, USA, Turkey, Australia, Paraguay, Germany, Ecuador, Côte d’Ivoire football team, Curaçao, Netherlands, Japan, Sweden, Tunisia football team, Belgium, Iran, Egypt football team, New Zealand, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, Cape Verde, Senegal football team, Norway, Iraq, Austria, Algeria football team, Jordan, Portugal, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo football team, Uzbekistan, Croatia, Panama, Ghana football team, US sports, Australia sport, Switzerland
Title – Bracketology: predict a path to World Cup victory | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Author –
Link – Bracketology: predict a path to World Cup victory | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-04T10:00:48.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2026/jun/04/bracketology-predict-a-path-to-world-cup-victory

Groups Touch and drag teams into predicted finish order

Third-place teams Pick eight sides to advance to the last 32

Knockouts Tap a winner from each match to plan your route to the final

The progress of the World Cup from match to match is determined from
the beginning: there are no further draws to decide who plays whom in
subsequent rounds.

To maximise the spectacle, the competition is structured, broadly, to
ensure that the “bigger” teams don’t face each other (and knock each
other out) too early in the competition, and to ensure that all 48
teams have an incentive to field their strongest side for every
fixture.

The top two teams from each group automatically qualify to the next
round. Because the winner of a group will face a second- or
third-placed team from another group, the hope is that France, for
instance, will not rest on their laurels once they have enough points
to qualify for the knockouts but will try to win their last game to
get what in principle are easier opponents in the next round, the last
32.

At the other end of the table, a team who know they will come at best
third in their group still have an incentive to give their all in that
last group game because the eight best-performing of the 12
third-placed teams also go into the last 32.

Let’s take the example of England, wholly arbitrarily. If England top
their group, they will face a third-placed team in the first knockout
round (technically any one of 20 other teams, but plausibly a team
such as Côte d’Ivoire or Algeria). If they come second, they will play
the runners-up from Group K, plausibly Colombia. And if they come
third but have a better points total or goal difference than four of
the other third-placed teams, they get a tougher fixture, against the
winners of Group K, possibly Portugal. The simulator includes the
predetermined routes for all 495 possible combinations of groups
yielding the eight best third-placed teams.

This simulator allows you to change the outcome of each group and see
the effect that those changes have on the last 32, and then to imagine
the winner of each knockout game to plot each team’s possible route to
the final.

Editorial: James Dart, Marcus Christenson and Philip Cornwall

Design and development: Barry Ainslie, Georges Lebreton,
Seán Clarke, Harry Fischer, Petter Nitter and Freddie Preece

Groups Touch and drag teams into predicted finish order

Third-place teams Pick eight sides to advance to the last 32

Knockouts Tap a winner from each match to plan your route to the final

Your winner

The progress of the World Cup from match to match is determined from
the beginning: there are no further draws to decide who plays whom in
subsequent rounds.

To maximise the spectacle, the competition is structured, broadly, to
ensure that the “bigger” teams don’t face each other (and knock each
other out) too early in the competition, and to ensure that all 48
teams have an incentive to field their strongest side for every
fixture.

The top two teams from each group automatically qualify to the next
round. Because the winner of a group will face a second- or
third-placed team from another group, the hope is that France, for
instance, will not rest on their laurels once they have enough points
to qualify for the knockouts but will try to win their last game to
get what in principle are easier opponents in the next round, the last
32.

At the other end of the table, a team who know they will come at best
third in their group still have an incentive to give their all in that
last group game because the eight best-performing of the 12
third-placed teams also go into the last 32.

Let’s take the example of England, wholly arbitrarily. If England top
their group, they will face a third-placed team in the first knockout
round (technically any one of 20 other teams, but plausibly a team
such as Côte d’Ivoire or Algeria). If they come second, they will play
the runners-up from Group K, plausibly Colombia. And if they come
third but have a better points total or goal difference than four of
the other third-placed teams, they get a tougher fixture, against the
winners of Group K, possibly Portugal. The simulator includes the
predetermined routes for all 495 possible combinations of groups
yielding the eight best third-placed teams.

This simulator allows you to change the outcome of each group and see
the effect that those changes have on the last 32, and then to imagine
the winner of each knockout game to plot each team’s possible route to
the final.

Editorial: James Dart, Marcus Christenson and Philip
Cornwall

Design and development: Barry Ainslie, Georges Lebreton,
Seán Clarke, Harry Fischer, Petter Nitter and Freddie Preece