Former United striker takes charge until March 2027
The former Manchester United striker Diego Forlán is poised to take over on a temporary basis as the new Uruguay manager after Marcelo Bielsa left the role following a sorry World Cup campaign.
After a wild attack on the media, Reform’s deputy leader joins other MPs in the Commons offering tributes rather than speculation
This is the third murder of either a sitting or former MP that I’ve covered in the last 10 years. It doesn’t get any easier or less shocking. Every death diminishes us all. The least you would hope is for politicians to behave with dignity. To set an example. For those who knew Ann Widdecombe to express their personal loss, for party leaders and ministers to convey the horror of her death and offer their condolences to her family and friends. Probably best for everyone else to say as little as possible for now.
The police have asked for everyone to refrain from speculating about the motives of the suspect, who, as of Monday lunchtime, was still being questioned by counter-terrorism officers, and not to politicise the murder if possible. A time for our political class to behave like grownups. And the overwhelming majority have done that. Just for now, even Nigel Farage has stopped acting as if he were the detective leading the investigation by offering his insights to every passing TV crew, and has fallen silent.
Additional 27 nominations mean it is impossible for any other candidate to launch leadership challenge
Andy Burnham is to become Britain’s next prime minister after winning the backing of 349 Labour MPs, including all eligible members of Keir Starmer’s current cabinet, making it impossible for any rival to secure enough nominations to challenge him.
The new MP for Makerfield received an extra 27 nominations on Monday, taking his total from 322 last week to 349. With only 54 MPs yet to back him, including Starmer and Shabana Mahmood, who cannot nominate because of her role as national executive committee (NEC) chair, no other candidate can now reach the 81 nominations needed to enter the contest.
Ukraine and nine other countries including UK issue joint statement as leaders meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris
Ukraine and nine other countries including the UK, Germany and France are to build a shared protection programme for Europe against ballistic missiles, using Kyiv’s experience in fighting Russia’s full-scale invasion for more than four years.
“Our goal is to build a shared ballistic missile defence capability for Europe,” the 10 nations said in a statement on Monday as leaders met the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for talks in Paris.
Pope Leo XIV gestures as he addresses the crowd during the weekly general audience at St Peter's Square in the Vatican on May 20, 2026. | Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty Images
Pope Leo XIV is dealing with his first schism.
A small, conservative sect of Catholics were excommunicated from the church earlier this month after it ordained a group of bishops without the pope’s approval. The drastic move from the first American Pope is the latest way he’s cementing his tenure at the helm of the church, just months after his call to “disarm AI.”
But David Gibson thinks the Pope’s strategy of dealing with this radical group of followers tells us something bigger about how we deal with our stateside politics. Gibson is the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University.
Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Gibson about the Catholic drama, what this schism represents, and why it might be a losing battle to go up against the pope.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Pope Leo XIV did something dramatic. Tell us what happened.
Well, basically the pope excommunicated a bunch of traditionalist, super right-wing, Latin mass, types. Actually he would say they excommunicated themselves. It’s this group called The Society of Saint Pius the X (SSPX). They ordained four bishops.
The Catholic church is an apostolic church. It’s all about chain of custody. You can’t break the chain. You need bishops to ordain priests. You need to keep bishops going. The pope is the one who ordains bishops. He says you can ordain a bishop. You can’t go ordain a bishop on your own. That’s like starting your own church. That’s a total red line.
They said, “No, we need this,” July 1st in Écône, Switzerland. They gathered SSPX and they ordained these four bishops. That was a schism.
It’s really a tiny, tiny group. They’re located in the West. It’s all about restoring christendom, restoring the glories of old European, white Catholicism. Basically, this group wants a special carve out, a special bubble where the Pope says, “It’s okay and I’ll give you your own bishops.” The Pope is saying, “No, you can’t do that. You can’t go off and have your own special little church.” So essentially they’re saying, “Okay, we are more Catholic than the pope.”
You mentioned that this group, the Society of St. Peter the X that has now at least partly been excommunicated by Pope Leo wanted to keep the church to some degree European. This is in the wake of what people thought could have been the first Asian Pope, the first African Pope. Is this group a little kind of white racist?
They’re certainly culturally chauvinistic to put it mildly. I’ve traveled around the world with popes. I’ve seen popes celebrate mass in a dusty refugee camp in Africa. I’ve seen mass celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica with the incense and the whole deal. It’s beautiful. It’s the mass wherever you are. It’s diversity. These folks don’t like that.
It’s very much this kind of cultural, ethnic, and some would say racial chauvinism that our culture, our people, is the same dynamic in the church. It makes no sense from a Catholic perspective. You’re baptized Catholic, you’re raised Catholic, you are Catholic. Anybody is Catholic, whether you’re in Indonesia or Indiana. But these folks don’t see it that way. That’s what they’re about.
They have influence and they have money. So that’s really why it’s a big story. They also have an amen corner.
An amen corner?
So to speak. The Vatican for decades has bent over backwards to try to accommodate these folks. Because it’s kind of a “no enemies to the right” dynamic within the Catholic Church. Here are these folks who’ve been given everything and they still went and split. They would never have given to people on the left wing, on the progressive wing, but they’re giving them to people on the right wing, on the far right wing and that they still thumb their nose at the Pope is what makes this so important.
So this small but powerful sect of the Catholic church thumbs its nose at Pope Leo. Why pick a fight with the pope?
Well, there are two reasons. One is to go down the liturgical rabbit hole of all this arcana about the mass and the Latin mass and can you change it and can you not?
They want to revisit the Vatican II council where the Church modernized like 60 years ago?
Yes, exactly. In the 1960s, they did things like lifting the anathemas of Protestantism, engaging in endorsing religious freedom, accepting a division between church and state, and lifting the teachings of contempt against Jews.
It also gets to what is really going on. It’s not about the Latin mass. They love to argue about that stuff. The bigger dynamics that I wanted to get to in a New York Times op-ed I wrote about this are that these really channel the same dynamics we’re seeing in the secular world, where it’s this sort of civilizational fight to retain the privilege and position mainly of white European folks who see America, “the glories of empire,” of the past, being “taken away what is rightfully ours.” That kind of resentment is what they are using as a wedge issue. That’s really their platform of grievance against what they perceive as a loss of status.
Is it a losing battle?
If you’re looking at the global church, these folks are already outliers. They’ve already lost. When Pope Leo was elected, they lost in a global sense. In the smaller kind of Western sense, the jury is still out because they are much larger. This kind of conservative oppositional mentality is much wider in the United States. And will that triumph? Will they try to make peace with Leo, the first American pope? Will they recognize that he could be around for 20 years and we better take a step back? Or will they just persist here in the United States as kind of right-wing Catholicism?
JD Vance, who wouldn’t know a Latin mass from anything, he’s the guy who tells the pope to stay in his lane on theology. It’s that kind of mentality that we’re really talking about, which is why the stakes really are high. The issue is whether this conservative Catholicism remains ascendant and essentially isolates the American church even further in the global church. That would be a tragedy.
Ukraine and nine other countries including UK issue joint statement as leaders meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris
Ukraine and nine other countries including the UK, Germany and France are to build a shared protection programme for Europe against ballistic missiles, using Kyiv’s experience in fighting Russia’s full-scale invasion for more than four years.
“Our goal is to build a shared ballistic missile defence capability for Europe,” the 10 nations said in a statement on Monday as leaders met the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for talks in Paris.
Midfielder covered the most ground in win over Norway while Villa man’s cameo impressed Thomas Tuchel
Elliot Anderson can be forgiven for needing additional time to recover from his exertions in the cauldron of Miami. As Manchester City’s new record signing reflected on England’s extra-time victory over Norway with his fellow Geordie, John Murray, from BBC Radio 5 Live, there was no hiding his pure exhaustion.
“It was so tough. So tough,” said Anderson, who covered 14.8km in stifling humidity – the most of any England player, beating his captain, Harry Kane, by a few hundred metres. “I was cramping up a few times [in extra time]. But the fighting spirit the lads have is amazing to be part of. The fans should be proud of the amount of fight and determination we showed.”
La cámara de los árbitros en la Copa del Mundo 2026 nos regaló una perspectiva muy distinta de los golazos que se marcaron en esta edición… Es IMPERDIBLE.
President Trump said the United States could collect tolls or fees, despite Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying no country could do so.
State health officials in Michigan said on Monday they have identified lettuces and salad greens as a “potential source” of the thousands of cases of cyclosporiasis – a parasitic infection that causes “watery diarrhea”, loss of appetite and weight loss.
In a statement, the Michigan department of health and human services said the investigation is still continuing, but early results “point to lettuce or salad greens as a potential source for this outbreak”, though officials also cautioned it is too early to rule out other food sources.
In an exclusive interview, the legendary con man known as Fat Leonard, back in prison, tells The Post about his wild escape and his bid for a presidential pardon.
State health officials in Michigan said on Monday they have identified lettuces and salad greens as a “potential source” of the thousands of cases of cyclosporiasis – a parasitic infection that causes “watery diarrhea”, loss of appetite and weight loss.
In a statement, the Michigan department of health and human services said the investigation is still continuing, but early results “point to lettuce or salad greens as a potential source for this outbreak”, though officials also cautioned it is too early to rule out other food sources.
Los Angeles residents continue to deal with the stench of burned waste after a massive warehouse fire as cleanup gets underway. CBS News Los Angeles reporter Rick Montanez reports.
Kathleen Williams sanctions president’s lawyers and says $10bn suit against IRS was brought for ‘improper purpose’
A federal judge on Monday nullified an agreement the government reached with Donald Trump and his sons over the leak of his tax returns. The judge lambasted the government and president’s lawyers for using the judicial process to try to concoct a beneficial arrangement for the president.
The ruling from US district judge Kathleen Williams in the southern district of Florida blocks a widely criticized arrangement the government and the president’s attorneys reached earlier this year to resolve a $10bn lawsuit by Trump and his sons over the leak of the president’s tax returns. The government never responded to the lawsuit and then announced it was settling the suit by creating a $1.8bn slush fund to compensate victims of “government weaponization” and giving the president, his family, and related entities immunity from tax audits.
More than 90 residents have expressed interest in contamination claim against AGC Chemicals Europe
A Pfas factory in Lancashire has announced plans to close down, just days after the Guardian revealed that more than 90 residents had signed up to be involved in a potential legal claim over contamination of the local area.
AGC Chemicals Europe is consulting with employees and their union representatives about plans to cease operations at its manufacturing plant in Thornton-Cleveleys, Lancashire. The consultation is expected to last for at least 45 days.
Home secretary insists all MPs treated equally but that security of former MPs and non-Westminster politicians is a concern
Shabana Mahmood has offered Nigel Farage a personal meeting with the Home Office unit that works on security for high-profile politicians, insisting all MPs are treated equally in how they are offered protection.
Addressing the Commons after the death of Ann Widdecombe, the Reform spokesperson whose body was found with serious injuries by the ambulance service at her home in Devon, the home secretary said the incident raised questions about the security of former MPs and politicians from smaller parties, including those not in parliament.
Israel will hold national elections on 27 October, giving its citizens their first chance to pass judgment on the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his coalition since the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023.
The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, will be dissolved on Friday. With just a few days left in session, the most far-right government in Israel’s history is now rushing to pass several controversial laws in an attempt to bolster its position before polling day.
Warning: graphic footage. A bison charged a man at Yellowstone National Park last Friday, flipping him in the air. The incident was captured on video. Tom Hanson reports.
Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI contains allegations that range from employees joking about unauthorized access to Apple’s systems to claims that job candidates were asked to bring Apple hardware to interviews. Here are the complaint’s most eye-catching claims.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in prison with Sepideh Kashani, who worked with husband Houman Jokar to save Asiatic cheetah
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has described the rearrest of two Iranian environmentalists, one of whom she met at Evin prison, as “unimaginably cruel and alarming”.
Husband and wife Houman Jokar and Sepideh Kashani were arrested by the ministry of intelligence at their home on 1 July. No reason has been given and their whereabouts are unknown.
Proposed legal settlement over 2022 oil spill would resolve allegations that South Bow violated clean water laws
A proposed legal settlement with the US government would require the Keystone pipeline system’s operator to pay a $26.9m civil penalty over a large oil spill in Kansas in December 2022 and spend about $40m more to prevent future accidents.
The agreement would resolve allegations from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Kansas that South Bow, based in Canada, violated US and state clean water laws. The rupture dumped nearly 13,000 barrels of heavy crude oil into a creek running through a rural pasture in Washington county, Kansas, about 150 miles (241km) north-west of Kansas City.
Joan Rivet drank water she managed to splash up to her face by turning faucet on with her foot
An 82-year-old North Carolina woman says she survived falling in her bathtub and being trapped there for nine days by turning the faucet on with her foot and drinking water that she managed to splash up to her face – all while drifting in and out of consciousness.
Joan Rivet recently shared her remarkable survival story with North Carolina’s the Mountaineer newspaper, providing an extreme example of the kinds of emergencies that can face the millions of older Americans who fall by accident annually, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates.
Kathleen Williams sanctions president’s lawyers and says $10bn suit against IRS was brought for ‘improper purpose’
A federal judge on Monday nullified an agreement the government reached with Donald Trump and his sons over the leak of his tax returns. The judge lambasted the government and president’s lawyers for using the judicial process to try to concoct a beneficial arrangement for the president.
The ruling from US district judge Kathleen Williams in the southern district of Florida blocks a widely criticized arrangement the government and the president’s attorneys reached earlier this year to resolve a $10bn lawsuit by Trump and his sons over the leak of the president’s tax returns. The government never responded to the lawsuit and then announced it was settling the suit by creating a $1.8bn slush fund to compensate victims of “government weaponization” and giving the president, his family, and related entities immunity from tax audits.
Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s governor, appointed Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to replace him in the Senate following his death on Saturday, after Donald Trump recommended that she be given the role.
Her appointment was welcomed by lawmakers from both parties, who saw Nordone as an appropriate replacement for the brother who had raised her after their parents died when she was a teenager.
A federal immigration officer shot and killed a man in Biddeford, Maine on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed, just days after a man was killed by an immigration officer during a traffic stop in Texas.
In the statement, DHS claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were “conducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal”.
Sam Neill was the leading man’s leading man who achieved something no other actor could: he was charismatic and self-effacing at the same time.
He could play handsome and good-humoured or devilishly sinister, often the husband and paterfamilias, perennially in some unspecified state of early middle age, sometimes in a period colonial setting, but the movie’s oxygen was never sucked away into his own unselfishly excellent performance.
Aortic dissections occur when the inner layer of tissue in the aorta, which carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body, ruptures. This allows blood to rush into the space between the lining of the blood vessel and the outer parts of the wall, peeling the lining back and weakening the whole structure.
What causes aortic dissection?
Wear-and-tear on the arteries is a major culprit, says Dr. Graham Cooper, a consultant cardiac surgeon in the U.K. and a trustee of the Aortic Dissection Charitable Trust. He notes that dissections may become more prevalent in the U.K. as the population ages. Prevention involves keeping blood pressure down and quitting smoking, but it’s also important that families where someone has experienced a dissection talk about it with a medical practitioner, as some cases are linked to genetic mutations that may be passed down. People with Marfan syndrome, for instance, are at a higher risk for aortic dissections.
—Anastasia Usenko—Getty Images
What are the symptoms of aortic dissection?
“The typical symptoms are sudden onset of chest pain that can radiate to the back or the neck,” says Cooper. “That pain can come and go, or it can be there very strongly and then fade within minutes or hours, depending on how the dissection progresses.”
Symptoms aren’t limited to chest pain. They can also include abdominal pain or symptoms that resemble those of a stroke or a heart attack.
Simon Jones is a survivor of the condition and trustee of the charity Aortic Dissection Awareness. In May 2020, when he was 49, Jones started to feel abdominal pain that was so persistent that after two hours, his wife called an ambulance. At the hospital, his doctor ordered a CT scan, which is the only way to rule out a dissection when someone has sudden abdominal pain. When the dissection popped on the screen, the doctors knew it wasn’t kidney stones or appendicitis or any of the other usual suspects for these types of symptoms.
For many people, aortic dissection is fatal. The most common type is lethal in about half of patients, and death is almost instantaneous. “The dissection weakens the wall of the aorta,” Cooper explains. “It ruptures, blood escapes into the sac that surrounds the heart, and that stops the heart working—and they have a cardiac arrest.”
For most people who are still alive when their dissection is spotted, the primary treatment is emergency open-heart surgery to remove the aorta and replace it with a tube, says Banerjee.
Aortic dissections are not always recognized immediately. Without a CT scan, there is no way to know that it’s not something more benign causing the pain. Jones feels he owes his survival to an awareness campaign, ThinkAorta, that the charity for which he is now a trustee had circulated among doctors, including the one who saw him at his local hospital. “She'd seen the posters," he says, "and she had a hunch.”
Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, appointed to serve out his Senate term
The Church of England is facing a legal challenge over Project Spire, its £100m plan to further reparative justice for historical links to enslavement, as staff come under “vile abuse” from critics.
At the General Synod in York over the weekend, Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York, defended the project as a “work of healing, justice and repair”.
President Trump said the United States could collect tolls or fees, despite Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying no country could do so.
Retiring Michigan Sen. Gary Peters is endorsing U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens to succeed him. The Michigan Democratic primary between Stevens and progressive favorite Abdul El-Sayed has grown increasingly contentious.
South Carolina lawmakers, including Sen. Tim Scott, Reps. Nancy Mace and William Timmons, and Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, paid tribute to Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died suddenly at 71 on Saturday.
A federal judge in Florida has found President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service was brought in “bad faith” for an “improper purpose.”
