First-half debacle dooms hapless USMNT in 4-0 friendly loss to Switzerland
The United States gave up four goals in the first half and looked unprepared for next year’s World Cup, as they were routed by Switzerland 4-0 in a friendly on Tuesday night. The result means the Americans lost their fourth straight game for the first time since 2007. Switzerland won their third straight match and extended the USMNT’s winless streak against European opponents to eight games since 2021. after newsletter promotionThe match was played one year and one day before the 2026 World Cup co-hosted by the US starts. The US made five changes to start the second half and Damian Downs made his debut in the 75th minute.
Source:The Guardian
June 11, 2025 17:30 UTC
Eurostar vows to run direct trains from UK to Germany and Switzerland
Eurostar has vowed to run direct trains from the UK to Germany and Switzerland, as it attempts to fend off potential competitors eyeing its London depot space. The cross-Channel rail operator’s chief executive, Gwendoline Cazenave, said she had no doubt the direct services would run in the early 2030s despite the failure of previous ventures to connect London and Frankfurt. It is targeting direct trains from London to Frankfurt and Geneva, taking about five hours to the German financial hub and about 20 minutes more to the Swiss city. after newsletter promotionHowever, Cazenave told the PA news agency that she had “no doubt” the new direct services would happen because of the “willingness” of Eurostar, passengers and governments. The UK and Switzerland signed a memorandum of understanding last month aimed at establishing direct train services between the countries.
Source:The Guardian
June 10, 2025 20:31 UTC
Luciano Spalletti claims he has been sacked by Italy after Norway humiliation
Luciano Spalletti has been sacked as Italy’s coach, he said on Sunday, after their heavy loss to Norway, but will take charge of Monday’s game against Moldova. He told me that I will be relieved of my position as coach of the national team,” Spalletti said. While Spalletti took Italy to Euro 2024, their disappointing performance there had already put the manager under pressure. View image in fullscreen Luciano Spalletti cuts an anguished figure as Italy lose 3-0 in Norway. They lost at home to Les Bleus in the final group game to finish behind France on goal difference.
Source:The Guardian
June 08, 2025 23:35 UTC
Canada won’t become the 51st US state – but could it join the EU?
“We have to strengthen the European Union,” said Streit, who last year was elected as a member of the European parliament. “If Canada would be a member of the EU, it would rank 4th in terms of GDP. In late January, a former foreign minister of Germany, Sigmar Gabriel, called for Canada to be invited into the EU. “They are more European than some European member states anyway,” he told Germany’s Pioneer Media. Undaunted, he sent a letter to two EU commissioners calling for a sort of political Erasmus to be launched between the bloc and Canada.
Source:The Guardian
June 08, 2025 14:30 UTC
Conservationists call for Lake District to lose Unesco world heritage status
Conservationists have launched a campaign to revoke the Lake District’s Unesco world heritage status, arguing that it promotes unsustainable sheep farming at the expense of nature recovery and local communities. The Unesco designation celebrates the Lake District as a “cultural landscape” shaped by traditional agro-pastoral farming, with sheep farming a central part of its identity. When the RSPB replaced sheep with cattle and ponies on its Haweswater site, local people cited world heritage status in opposition. “The Lake District world heritage inscription is presiding over the death of the landscape and its communities – both wild and human.”However, the view that world heritage status is hindering progressive farming is contested. Aglionby disputed that revoking world heritage status was the answer.
Source:The Guardian
June 08, 2025 03:30 UTC
Country diary: This hardy survivor is brightening up the moors
Shadows thrown by the early evening light pick out every feature: streams, cleughs, barns and farms, mining spoil and ruins – a record of the land. It’s a boom year for this beautiful plant, perhaps due to the dry spring putting the plants under stress. View image in fullscreen ‘Sending out underground rhizomes where few other plants will grow’ Cottongrass (Eriophorum angustifolium). Plug plants of cottongrass are being planted by the North Pennines National Landscape to restore degraded blanket bog. The larvae of large heath butterflies feed on a similar species, the hare’s tail cottongrass Eriophorum vaginatum.
Source:The Guardian
June 07, 2025 21:08 UTC
Six great reads: the world’s biggest YouTube star, a missing twin and a way to understand polarisation
‘The Mozart of the attention economy’: why MrBeast is the world’s biggest YouTube starView image in fullscreen Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast (centre, in grey jumper) giving away a car during a promotional tour for his confectionary brand in Sydney, Australia. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAPJimmy Donaldson, the 27-year-old online content creator and entrepreneur known as MrBeast, is by any reasonable metric one of the most popular entertainers on the planet. In this profile Mark O’Connell tries to grasp the scale of Donaldson’s role in modern popular culture:“I don’t intend to make a case here that you should start appreciatively watching Donaldson’s videos. I don’t intend to make a case for MrBeast as art – although I reserve the right to talk about it as though it were. I’m not even going to try to convince you that these videos are even necessarily good, whatever that might mean.
Source:The Guardian
June 07, 2025 20:41 UTC
Friday briefing: From White House sleepovers to Epstein allegations, how the relationship between Musk and Trump spectacularly imploded
He had numerous sleepovers at the White House, where he ate a late-night tub of caramel Häagen-Dazs at Trump’s suggestion. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Hugo Lowell, the Guardian’s White House correspondent, about why the truth may be considerably more venal than that. “And now he’s out of the White House, he doesn’t have anything to lose.”How has Musk’s relationship with Trump changed? “But the White House counsel’s office was clear that he couldn’t serve any longer.”And just days after his official departure, the White House withdrew its nominee for Nasa administrator, Jared Isaacman, after it emerged that he had previously donated to Democrats. He interspersed his attacks on Trump yesterday with old clips of Republicans arguing for a balanced budget.
Source:The Guardian
June 07, 2025 03:26 UTC
The Swiss village buried by a glacier collapse – podcast
The Swiss village of Blatten was wiped out in seconds. “What we can say is, basically, climate change is affecting all of the ingredients for a disaster like this. They’re shrinking, they’re cracking, they’re growing more unstable. “And we also know that climate change, higher temperatures and mountains are linked, from scientific studies, to higher rates of rockfall and higher rates of that kind of disintegration. So we can’t sort of say yes, the Birch glacier was climate change and climate change alone, but we can look at all of these factors, and all of them are related to global heating.”Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod
Source:The Guardian
June 06, 2025 18:30 UTC
‘All the birdsong in the world in one sound’: England’s nightingale haven at risk from planning bill
For the best part of a decade, developers have been eying up Lodge Hill in Kent, where more than 100 singing birds are known to live. View image in fullscreen The bushes in Lodge Hill attract nightingales because they contain a variety of habitats. So they’ll fly over, and hear another nightingale sing, and know that means the area is good for nightingales. View image in fullscreen The fact that Lodge Hill has been disturbed by the Ministry of Defence suits the nightingale. So we are really worried.”Of the suggestion Keir Starmer should come and hear the nightingales, Beale says: “It would probably do him some good.”
Source:The Guardian
June 04, 2025 20:31 UTC
‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects
View image in fullscreen Light traps have long been used to monitor nocturnal insect numbers. Out of the forest darkness, a tornado of insects would flock to its glow, spinning and dancing before the light. Reports of falling insect numbers around the world are not new. Photograph: George Ruhe/NYT/eyevineWhen David Wagner stepped out into the US’s southern wilderness this spring, he found landscapes emptied of life. “There just wasn’t any insect life to speak of.”It was not only the insects missing, he says, it was everything.
Source:The Guardian
June 03, 2025 17:30 UTC
Australia to lobby Unesco over barring of ancient rock site from world heritage list due to Woodside emissions
The Unesco recommendation is due to go before the 21-country world heritage committee at its next meeting on 6 July in Paris. A government spokesperson told the Guardian it was now “actively engaged in the process” and would make “strong representations at every opportunity” to have Murujuga listed as a world heritage site at the Paris meeting. “Our role is to make sure that when sites are nominated [for world heritage status], we’re reassured that the values for which it’s being evaluated are protected,” he said. The chair of MAC, Peter Hicks, said the ICOMOS report had made clear the site should be on the world heritage list. “While we are disappointed, we are determined to finish our journey and see the Murujuga Cultural Landscape included on the world heritage list as soon as possible.”A spokesperson for Woodside said the final decision on the nomination would rest with the world heritage committee.
Source:The Guardian
June 03, 2025 16:04 UTC
‘The walk is shot through with melancholy and romance’: a new trail to the north face of the Eiger
View image in fullscreen The writer’s father Ian, centre, with Bugs McKeith, left, and Kenny Spence before they started their successful ascent of the north face in 1970. The north face was first conquered in July 1938 by a German–Austrian party, including Heinrich Harrer, the author of Seven Years in Tibet. Up close to the north face, I really sense Dad’s achievement for the first time. View image in fullscreen The writer scattered some of his dad’s ashes by the north face. An earlier version incorrectly stated it was the Eiger mountain when it shows the Grindelwald valley and Wetterhorn, Switzerland.
Source:The Guardian
June 03, 2025 07:30 UTC
Italy’s Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano, spews plumes of ash
A huge plume of ash, gas and rock has spewed forth from Italy’s Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano, but authorities said there was no current danger to the population. Surveillance cameras showed “a pyroclastic flow probably produced by a collapse of material from the northern flank of the south-east crater”, the agency said. A pyroclastic flow occurs when volcanic rock, ash and hot gases surge from volcanoes. View image in fullscreen Officials are keeping a close watch on the volcano but say there is no danger to people at present. A red alert issued for aviation authorities said the height of the volcanic cloud was estimated at 6.5 kilometres (more than four miles).
Source:The Guardian
June 02, 2025 23:18 UTC
UK swings behind Morocco’s autonomy proposal for Western Sahara
The UK has thrown its weight behind Morocco’s autonomy proposal for Western Sahara, marking a shift in Britain’s position on one of Africa’s longest-running territorial disputes. The UK has previously said the status of the disputed territory in north-west Africa remains “undetermined”, while supporting “self-determination” for “the people of Western Sahara”. Under Morocco’s autonomy plan, Western Sahara would remain under Rabat’s sovereignty but with a degree of self-rule. The US recognised Morocco’s claim over Western Sahara in 2020 during Trump’s first administration. He said British investments in Western Sahara were under discussion.
Source:The Guardian
June 02, 2025 22:57 UTC