As the Colombian pop supremo prepares to perform at Sunday’s final, we rate her greatest work, including gossipy takedowns and lycanthropic lyrics
Of Shakira’s World Cup anthems, it’s the joyfully ludicrous Waka Waka from the 2010 tournament in South Africa that bangs hardest. Featuring Afro-fusion band Freshlyground, the Colombian superstar redraws preened football superstars such as Ronaldo et al as soldiers on a frontline.
Continue reading...The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world
Continue reading...Ofcom concerned TikTok’s age verification is ineffective, leaving some exposed to posts on suicide, self-harm and pornography
TikTok is under formal investigation over concerns it has failed to protect children from harmful content, the UK’s online regulator, Ofcom, has announced.
The social media platform’s approach to checking the ages of users has sparked “particular concerns” at the watchdog, almost a year after measures to protect children from the worst of online content came into effect under the Online Safety Act.
Continue reading...Replacement of panels with version that’s sympathetic to enslavers comes amid effort by Trump to dismantle diversity initiatives
Critics say the Trump administration acted under the “cover of darkness” to replace an exhibit exploring the lives of nine enslaved people who lived at George Washington’s Philadelphia home with a version that is overly sympathetic to enslavers and that whitewashes the country’s origins.
The installation of new information panels followed a six-month fight between the city of Philadelphia and the Trump administration over an enslavement memorial at the President’s House, the former home of both Washington and his presidential successor John Adams.
Continue reading...Diesel tops $5 a gallon as regular gas reaches almost $4, nearly a dollar and a quarter more than a year ago
The average price of diesel fuel in the US has increased again to more than $5 a gallon, according to the AAA, and the average price of gas is almost $4, returning to their highs before the June memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran.
It is a reminder to consumers and truckers of the costs of the Iran war and the unpredictable rhetoric from both Washington and Tehran. A year ago today, the AAA says, the average price for a gallon of diesel was $3.72, almost a dollar and a quarter less than it is now.
Continue reading...Midfielder was team’s best performer last season
Leeds close to signing centre-back Muharemovic
Dominik Szoboszlai is poised to give Liverpool and their head coach, Andoni Iraola, a significant boost by signing a new long-term contract. The midfielder, who was the team’s best performer during a difficult final season under Arne Slot, has two years on his deal and mentioned several times last season that there had been no real progress over an extension.
After months of negotiations between Liverpool’s sporting director, Richard Hughes, and Szoboszlai’s representatives, the terms of a new contract have been agreed in principle and the 25-year-old is close to signing the deal.
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F1 races are exhilarating. While racing alongside 21 other cars, an F1 driver can reach speeds of up to 231 mph, making it one of the world’s most dangerous sports.
And F1 drivers need to be physically prepared to prevent disaster. Over the course of a single race, they experience hundreds of pounds of force, temperatures up to 130°F, and risk extreme dehydration that can lead to lowered brain function. In order to stay on the road and not pass out, F1 drivers have to be in peak physical condition.
In order to find out how F1 drivers can survive a sport that is so physically demanding, I hit the gym. Since F1 is such an international sport, there aren’t many specialized trainers in the US. So with the help of an F1 performance expert currently based in the United Arab Emirates, I worked out with David Dunlop, a strength and conditioning coach who works with NFL players. And it turns out that training for F1 is surprisingly similar to training to be a linebacker.
Read more about the fitness required to drive in an F1 race:
This video is presented by the Ford Motor Company. Ford doesn’t have a say in our editorial decisions, but they make videos like this one possible.
Spokesperson says islands belong to the UK
‘PM wishes both teams well for the final, especially Spain’
Keir Starmer supports the idea of Fifa investigating Argentina players who displayed a banner touting their country’s claim to the Falklands Islands after their World Cup semi-final win against England, Downing Street has said.
Starmer, who watched the match while travelling to Ukraine by train for the final overseas trip of his premiership, endorsed a call by Peter Kyle, the business secretary, for Fifa to investigate what rules may have been broken.
Continue reading...Aluminium is practical, recyclable and, for wines drunk young, the ideal container. Better still – high-quality options are increasingly available
Cans are the answer to many of the problems posed by wine. On picnics, at festivals and generally on the trot, what are more practical than bottles? Cans! For the carbon-conscious, what have a significantly lower environmental impact than glass? Aluminium cans! And what if, for whatever reason, you don’t want to commit to a full 750ml bottle of wine? Try a can! This small, light and sustainable format is a secret weapon to keep, quite literally, in your back pocket; with cans – wherever you are and whatever you’re doing – drinking wine is always possible. Not to get too Barack Obama about it, but “yes, we can”.
Gen Z are largely behind the recent boom in canned wines, which stands to reason: fewer of them are drinkers and those who are do so only moderately, so a smaller format suits. According to a 2025 survey by Ocado, 53% of them “have been directly influenced by social media to try boxed or canned wine”. This shows in the way those formats are marketed: the peachy-pink can of Nice’s Pale Rosé, for instance, reads, “Won’t shatter on the dancefloor”, while Vinca’s catarratto “pairs well with great company”. A and almost all of them make a point of their recyclable packaging, appealing to the most environmentally-conscious generation to date. (Glass bottles are, after all, consistently found to be one of the largest contributors to wine’s carbon footprint.)
Continue reading...With the state shattered, armed gangs offer food, shelter and perilous safety to young people – but at a terrible cost
When Davensky was eight years old, he was kidnapped from school. An armed gang pulled a black bag over his head, dragged him from class and threw him into a truck. He was taken to an unknown location, stripped and locked inside a refrigerated room. Some time later, his captors handed him a gun.
“They pointed to another child and said I had to kill him. It was a test. They said if I didn’t pull the trigger, they would cut off my fingers,” he says, speaking in quick bursts. “I did it.”
Continue reading...Spokesperson says islands belong to the UK
‘PM wishes both teams well for the final, especially Spain’
Keir Starmer supports the idea of Fifa investigating Argentina players who displayed a banner touting their country’s claim to the Falklands Islands after their World Cup semi-final win against England, Downing Street has said.
Starmer, who watched the match while travelling to Ukraine by train for the final overseas trip of his premiership, endorsed a call by Peter Kyle, the business secretary, for Fifa to investigate what rules may have been broken.
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The Trump administration wants to install permanent fencing around Lafayette Park, directly outside the White House. It's long been a popular spot for protesters, who worry barriers will change that.
(Image credit: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts)
Forward caught on video making dismissive gestures
Borthwick says Pollock was being ‘good natured’
England have defended Henry Pollock after the young forward was caught on video making dismissive gestures towards Argentina fans on the streets of Buenos Aires before the football World Cup semi-final. England’s head coach, Steve Borthwick, insisted the Northampton flanker was just being “good natured” but has again opted not to start the 21-year-old against the Pumas on Saturday.
Footage has emerged on Instagram of Pollock and other teammates pulling faces, shushing the crowd and making various uncomplimentary gestures at local supporters from the top deck of England’s team bus on Wednesday. Anglo-Argentinian relations have inevitably been under the spotlight this week, with England’s players having previously been warned not to compromise their personal safety by venturing outside their hotel.
Continue reading...Fracking billionaire Harold Hamm is co-chair of a non-profit that has aggressively pushed for US energy dominance
Tycoon Harold Hamm is one of the US’s most successful oilmen, the son of Oklahoma sharecroppers who hit it rich as a “wildcatter” and pioneered fracking techniques that drove the shale boom in 2008 that reversed declining US oil production. Donald Trump describes him as a “long time” friend and is said to have called him his “original oil guy” behind closed doors.
The Continental Resources founder has also faced scrutiny from climate advocates and groups and some Democratic lawmakers over his influence on Trump and role in pushing him to go all in on planet-heating fossil fuels and gut climate rules.
Continue reading...Roger Rogoff’s was selected by panel of judges for top prosecutor job after interim US attorney’s term ended
Donald Trump fired the new top federal prosecutor in Seattle on Wednesday less than an hour after the attorney was unanimously appointed by the federal judges in the district, highlighting tensions between the courts and the president over the powerful positions.
Roger Rogoff, a former judge and veteran state and federal prosecutor, was sworn in as US attorney before 8am at the US courthouse in downtown Seattle. In a phone interview, he said he then went to the US attorney’s office and asked to meet with Charles Neil Floyd, whose 120-day interim term in the position ended in February.
Continue reading...Michael Carrick’s first signing is a surprise, but the Brazil midfielder will help the team deal with Casemiro’s exit
By Opta Analyst
Andrey Santos moving from Chelsea to Manchester United was not on our summer transfer window bingo card, but the Brazilian has become Michael Carrick’s first signing. United desperately needed reinforcements in midfield, especially after Casemiro’s departure and Manuel Ugarte’s long-term injury, so deals for Santos and Youri Tielemans will be welcomed by fans.
Tielemans looks like particularly good business – he captains Belgium, has made 244 appearances in the Premier League and was available for £35m – but Santos is a more curious choice. He was often a backup player for Chelsea last season as they finished seven places and 19 points behind United; he is not the finished article, and played for one of United’s rivals. Since Alex Ferguson retired 13 years ago, United had only signed four players from their “big six” rivals: Juan Mata, Nemanja Matic, Mason Mount (all Chelsea) and Alexis Sánchez (Arsenal).
Continue reading...Third round of arrests linked to independent bookshops widely regarded as clampdown on dissent in territory
Hong Kong authorities have raided two bookstores and arrested five people on suspicion of selling allegedly seditious publications, in the latest step targeting independent booksellers.
Videos and photos from multiple media outlets on Wednesday showed officers wearing vests marked with “police” seizing boxes from the building that houses Have A Nice Stay, a bookshop founded by former journalists. AFP reporters saw officers also lead away a woman in handcuffs to a van.
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After the first trailer for Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation of The Odyssey dropped, a wave of conversation followed, part amused, part outraged: Why were all the actors, even the British ones, doing American accents? And why did the dialogue sound so contemporary?
“My dad is coming home,” declares Tom Holland as Odysseus’s son Telemachus, with tight-mouthed American vowels despite Holland’s natural English accent.
“You’re pining for a daddy you didn’t even know,” returns Robert Pattinson, another British actor hitting hard American r’s.
“Let’s gooooooo!” yells Matt Damon’s Odysseus as he leads his men to battle, Boston o’s in their full splendor.
“Dude,” the Hollywood Reporter wrote. “Everybody sounds like they’re from Ohio.” The comments section below the trailer is filled with jokes about seeing Odysseus waiting outside Starbucks.
It makes sense that audiences were so surprised at Nolan’s choice. We’re used to seeing actors in period pieces and fantasy epics speak with British accents, a trope sometimes called “The Queen’s Latin.” But there’s no logical reason that characters who, in-universe, are speaking ancient Greek should sound to us like they’re talking in mannered BBC English, says Erik Singer, the dialect coach who helped Austin Butler nail his Elvis accent. The Odyssey is nearly 3,000 years old, and on that scale, contemporary American English is just as close to Homer’s language as the elevated old-timey English diction we often see in period films.
“Accents do not in fact inherently mean anything,” Singer says, “but we really think that they do.”
To understand why the accents in The Odyssey sound so strange to so many people, you first have to understand why British accents became the default for any period piece. The answer has a surprising amount to do with what American audiences think power sounds like.
As the Hollywood epic emerged starting in the 1930s and evolved in the 1950s, Singer says, studios developed a convention of coding the past in different accents. In films like Spartacus and Ben-Hur, the villainous elites were mostly played by British theater actors in Received Pronunciation English, whereas the heroic peasant protagonists were played by Americans with American accents.
“I do think that it is not an accident that…there still was a British Empire in the ’30s and ’40s,” Singer tells Vox. “There’s something [there] that makes sense…the popular conception of the Roman Empire bestriding the world, like the British Empire.”
“British accents have been closely associated with imperialism for a very long time for obvious reasons,” says Mike Walsh, a dialect coach who worked with Brian Geraghty for 1923: A Yellowstone Origin Story. “When you’re dealing with some sort of war effort that takes place in something that feels like fantasy, most often the characters become British.”
Over time, this practice calcified into a convention. In fantasy worlds based on medieval Britain, like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, the American and Australian actors speak in British accents. They also speak in British accents in period films that are supposed to take place in France (Ever After, Les Miserables), Russia (Anna Karenina), and the ancient past (Gladiator, 300). In The Borgias, the Italians have British accents, but the French have French accents.
Even in Star Wars, the Empire uses the Queen’s English, while the scrappy resistance army has American accents. “Why is the empire always the British one when we’re in outer space and there is no Britain?” Walsh asks. “Britain has become associated with this high-fantasy war conqueror image.”
When Hollywood avoids a British accent in a period or fantasy film, it’s usually for a specific reason. Often, it has to do with which characters the audience is supposed to perceive as powerful, and which ones they are supposed to relate to.
In the 1984 film Amadeus, director Miloš Forman had Tom Hulce use his usual American accent to play Mozart. Forman “wanted the Mozarts to feel like out-of-place Americans in Vienna,” Hulce explained in 2023. F. Murray Abraham also kept his American accent to play Salieri, but the Viennese characters around them were primarily played by Brits in their natural accents.
In 2005, Sofia Coppola directed the cast of Marie Antoinette to use their natural accents. “We weren’t going to do the movie in 18th-century French, so it didn’t make sense to have them do British period movie accent,” she said at the time, adding that she was influenced by the way the natural accents in Amadeus made the characters feel “like real people.” As in the old Hollywood epics, Coppola cast British theater actors as the old guard of Versailles and young Americans as Marie Antoinette and her friends, so that Kirsten Dunst’s California drawl became another anachronism, bringing Marie Antoinette’s youth and modernity to life.
In the 2017 film The Death of Stalin, each character in 1950s Russia has a different accent. Director Armando Iannucci told most of the cast to speak as they normally would, so that Steve Buscemi’s Khrushchev keeps Buscemi’s Brooklyn intonations, while Adrian McLoughlin’s Stalin is Cockney. (The exception is Jason Isaacs, who tweaks his Liverpool accent into something more Yorkshire). Iannucci told Metro in 2017 that he considered having the cast perform in Russian accents, but ended up feeling it would detract from the comedy. “I thought it would just kill the pace and spontaneity of it,” he said. “I wanted a range of English accents, to indicate the geographic spread of this Empire.”
Nolan’s Odyssey, however, does not appear to be aiming for the shocking anachronism of Marie Antoinette, the fish-out-of-water humor of Amadeus, or the black comedy of The Death of Stalin. Whatever Nolan’s doing with his accent work, it’s something else entirely.
Nolan has said he was inspired by Emily Wilson’s portrait of Odysseus in her radically stripped down 2017 translation. While most English translations of The Odyssey use heightened, highly poetic language, Wilson’s is severe in its simplicity. She rejects any flowery invocations of “the muse” at the beginning of her translation, rendering the first line starkly as “Tell me about a complicated man.”
“The notion that the Homeric epic must be rendered in grand, ornate, rhetorically elevated English has been with us since the time of Alexander Pope,” Wilson writes in her introduction to The Odyssey, referring to Pope’s grandiloquent 1725 translation. “It is past time, I believe, to reject this assumption.” Her argument is that the original Greek is “not difficult or ostentatious,” and she wants to honor the fact that “stylistic pomposity is entirely un-Homeric.”
Following suit, Nolan told the Los Angeles Times that he wanted “an earthy narrative” for his Odyssey, and that he prioritized “language that has emotional not intellectual meaning to people.”
“He’s attempting to go closer to that idea of what would have been colloquial for the time,” Walsh says. “Though it is a heightened story told in song, that doesn’t mean that it was told with a filter or a distance applied to it, or that it was only meant to apply to smart people.”
What seems to be jarring to people, though, is that while Nolan’s characters might sound relatable, they are still powerful classical figures: kings and queens and gods and goddesses.
We’re used to thinking that power sounds like the British Empire. Nolan’s Odyssey shows that might not hold true anymore.
“If it’s changing…it could well be because for folks, maybe Americans younger than 40, those associations between [Received Pronunciation] and Empire aren’t really there anymore strongly,” Singer says. “Or even between RP and high falutin’ fanciness or something aren’t there as much anymore.”
The British Empire is passing out of living memory now, and the American empire is here. In Nolan’s Odyssey, if not for the rest of Hollywood, power sounds like a guy from Boston, loitering outside a Starbucks.
From taco in a bowl to cantaloupe and courgette, assemblies of raw ingredients are a terrific choice for lo-fi, hot-weather meals that require minimal cooking
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When Shakespeare coined the phrase “salad days”, he was referring to a state of youthful inexperience. But at 41, and midway through the hottest summer on record, I can safely say my own salad days – these weeks of endless salad-eating – are the result of experience. As my organs segue into their fifth decade, I need more than rosé and a bag of Tyrrells for dinner. (Although if you’re interested, I’m a salt-and-vinegar Furrows person and my favourite rosé – Catalan producer Can Sumoi’s La Rosa – is on offer.)
I’m not only eating salad, of course, but assemblies of raw ingredients are an obvious choice if you’re looking for lo-fi meals that involve more interaction with the fridge than the oven. I like Tom Hunt’s rubric for a fridge-raid dinner salad, which – rather than sending you out for ingredients and sweat patches – uses whatever you have on hand. And Meera Sodha’s no-cook salad of tomatoes, chickpeas and rose harissa delivers fibre and flavour without so much as a struck match. And then there is Feast’s archive of recipes by Yotam Ottolenghi, which boasts doozies such as his tomatoes with mango-miso dressing and this courgette and cantaloupe salad. Ottolenghi’s lime and poppyseed slaw with curry leaf oil, meanwhile, has accompanied almost every barbecue or “family-style” spread – the citrus juice softens and “cooks” shredded cabbage, carrot and onions into submission, and don’t even get me started on its maple-turmeric cashews. The whole lot cries out for a beer – preferably Table Beer by the Bermondsey brewery the Kernel, a pale ale that is big on hops and low on booze (variable, but about 3%).
Continue reading...Country begins 42-day countdown to outbreak being declared officially over, as numbers continue to rise in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo
Uganda has started lobbying countries to lift Ebola-related travel restrictions after discharging its last confirmed Ebola patient from hospital.
The discharge of a Congolese national from the Mulago national referral hospital’s isolation centre in Kampala on Thursday triggered the start of a 42-day countdown required by the World Health Organization before Uganda can officially be declared Ebola-free, provided no new infections are detected.
Continue reading...McLaren’s fourth change of power unit exceeds regulations
Reigning champion eyes overtaking opportunities
Lando Norris believes he can still be competitive at this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, despite a 10-place grid penalty. The defending world champion will nonetheless have his work cut out at Spa after his McLaren team took a new battery for his car, the fourth, one more than is allowed.
Norris is fifth in the world championship, 82 points behind the leader, Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli. He and McLaren have endured a series of failures from their Mercedes power unit this season, including “terminal” issues with the power electronics unit, a part of the battery. One failed in China, one was withdrawn in Japan, repaired but failed at Monaco.
Continue reading...Sixth day of fighting threatens to turn into all-out war and casts serious doubt on peace deal struck last month
The US has intensified its attacks on Iran, hitting targets near Tehran and striking a ship it accused of trying to break its blockade, while Iran retaliated by firing missiles and drones at US allies in the region.
Six consecutive days of back-and-forth attacks threaten to pull the region back into a total war and cast serious doubt about an interim deal reached last month meant to achieve a permanent peace.
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Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired the country's popular defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who pushed for innovation on the battlefield through use of drones and turned the tables on Russia.
(Image credit: ROMAN PILIPEY)
(Island)
On the Bradford-born producer’s self-assured second album, drum’n’bass rhythms power up angsty odes with shades of Arctic Monkeys, Kate Nash and myriad genres
Like another of the year’s biggest pop records, Olivia Rodrigo’s You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, the second full-length from the self-proclaimed “emotional junglist” Nia Archives is an album of two halves. The first documents its protagonist falling in love at breakneck speed; the second, the whiplash of sudden heartbreak. Unlike Rodrigo, Archives didn’t grow up starring on Disney Channel, a predestined route to success, but in Bradford, cutting her teeth on early 00s pirate radio, dancehall and landfill indie.
More than most major artists, Archives has carved out her own path. After leaving home at just 16 to move into a youth hostel in Manchester, she started teaching herself to make beats; eventually, she uprooted to Hackney and studied music production, and used her student loan to fund the promotion of her self-released debut single. Since then, she’s made history as the first electronic/dance act to win a Mobo in decades (after publicly campaigning for the inclusion of dance music at the awards in 2022). With her 2024 debut album Silence Is Loud, she became the first junglist to be nominated for three Brit awards, and the first to be nominated for the Mercury prize since 1997 – before she was born.
Continue reading...Sam had such ease about him and I just loved the way he seemed to cruise through life. But he confronted his mortality with real courage
When I first met Sam, I thought he was handsome, cool and weirdly shy. He was always a rare combination of suave and down-to-earth: this great, democratic guy with no bullshit. I just loved the way he seemed to cruise through life. He had such ease about him.
Acting was just one chunk of his life: there was always a lot of other stuff going on. He couldn’t wait to get back to his farm and his wine and his animals. I remember when we were making Merlin in 1998, he kindly took me out for lunch. We had a really delicious bottle of pinot noir, and he said that was what he was aiming for with his winery Two Paddocks.
Continue reading...Country begins 42-day countdown to outbreak being declared officially over, as numbers continue to rise in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo
Uganda has started lobbying countries to lift Ebola-related travel restrictions after discharging its last confirmed Ebola patient from hospital.
The discharge of a Congolese national from the Mulago national referral hospital’s isolation centre in Kampala on Thursday triggered the start of a 42-day countdown required by the World Health Organization before Uganda can officially be declared Ebola-free, provided no new infections are detected.
Continue reading...