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From ‘the new Toni Kroos’ to the US’ next big hope, Cavan Sullivan, we select some of the most talented players born in 2009. Check the progress of our classes of 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 … back to 2014. Here’s our Premier League class of 2026 Continue reading...

An old idea springs anew as a chorus of influential voices predicts that AI may trigger crises of vast magnitude In a preface to his book Capitalism and Freedom, the American economist Milton Friedman famously observed that a crisis can propel once-fringe ideas into the political mainstream. “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around,” he wrote. The job of intellectuals, thinktanks and economists, he argued, is to refine the quality of these ambient ideas, so that good ones are ready when disaster strikes. Continue reading...

Relying on technology can make us forgetful, but there are some simple ways to sharpen your recall. Memory experts describe the tricks and habits that can help Memory can worsen as we age, but it is often possible to do something about it. Here, memory experts share their advice on how to improve your power of recall. Continue reading...

The margin may have got smaller but the brilliant Spanish midfielder makes it a hat-trick of No 1 finishes They say the best things come in threes, and Aitana Bonmatí has written herself into the Guardian’s top 100 history as the first player to finish at the top of the tree for a third consecutive year. Last year the majestic midfielder emulated her Barcelona and Spain teammate Alexia Putellas by winning for a second year running, but the 27-year-old has now gone one better, establishing herself once again at the top of the women’s game. Continue reading...

It makes sense that sports teams want to keep influencers out of their games. The battle some clubs are waging with their fans, however, is a different dilemma By all appearances, things on the Yellow Wall seemed as they always had been. The stadium announcer hollered out the first names of Borussia Dortmund’s starting lineup and the supporters responded with their last names, tens of thousands of voices bellowing as one. Dozens of black and yellow flags waved over Europe’s largest standing terrace, a mass of faces fixed on the field beneath them. And then Signal Iduna Park, sold out with 81,365 fans, roared when Max Beier’s lone goal led Dortmund to victory over Eintracht Frankfurt last Saturday, putting the home side even on points with Bayern Munich atop the Bundesliga standings. Continue reading...

The former Republic of Ireland international on growing up in a community still reeling from the Troubles and the controversy that scarred his career “The perception of me is that, basically, I am a madman,” James McClean says calmly. “I’m outspoken. I’m a loudmouth. I’m very opinionated and I hate all things British. That’s from people who don’t know me. The reality is quite the opposite. I’m pretty boring. I go training, go home and switch off. A lot of my days are quite bland, quite basic.” McClean sounds as sane as he looks gaunt on a bleak Monday in Derry. He spent 14 years in English football and the fact that he is now at war with his own club, Derry City, can’t obscure the fact that he is the fifth-most-capped Republic of Ireland international, having played 103 times. “People define success in different ways,” he says, “but I’m the only footballer from the north of Ireland to win over 100 caps for Ireland. I played 150 Premier League games over five seasons, 800 professional games and won a lot of individual accolades. I count that as success and don’t look back with regrets.” Continue reading...

Diego Gómez’s wondergoal in a five-star demolition is just the latest in an impressive run of results for the south coast team Sign up for our free newsletter here For two or three years now, it’s been standard to nod approvingly at how well-run Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth are, and to move on. What else is there to say? It’s true, of course – these are sides who have made the most of relatively limited resources. But there’s also an underlying assumption in the designation: that these are clubs who have no higher aspiration, that their limit is earning praise for upper mid-table finishes. This season, perhaps, offers an opportunity to change that. Other than Arsenal, every major club is undergoing significant transition. Manchester City may have started the season with seven straight wins, but there’s every chance the punishment for their multiple breaches of Premier League regulations takes them out of the race for the top five. In that context, why shouldn’t one of those efficient smaller sides qualify for the Champions League? Continue reading...

Apple acquires Ascend Labs (aka Ascend.io), an agentic data engineering startup, in a deal revealed through an EU filing. (via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)

New post-Brexit rules mean that dual nationals cannot enter the UK unless they have a British passport My teenage daughter is unable to see her grandparents because of the UK’s new requirement for dual nationals to hold a UK passport. I’m a UK citizen, married to a French national, and we live in France. Our two older children have both French and UK passports. Our third child was born while we were living in Zimbabwe and only has a French passport. Continue reading...

From unstaffed self-service book-borrowing kiosks open 24-7, to a grand building that has robots fetching paperbacks from its multimillion collection of titles across nine floors, there's a reason that Shenzhen is known as China's "city of libraries." Sure, this may sound kind of boring, but the city in the southern Guangdong province has also just been named as the country's leader in wealthy entrepreneurs and is the beating heart of China's AI and tech industry. Continue Reading Category: History, Technology Tags: Shenzhen, China, Library, Reading, Digital Media, Social media, Smartphones

Oxford study shows Manx shearwaters get lost when their body clocks get out of sync Seabirds returning from foraging trips can be thrown hundreds of miles off course by a form of jet lag that arises when their body clocks get out of sync with local time, researchers say. Tracking data from Manx shearwaters on the west coast of the UK revealed that when the birds returned home to their colonies after trips over the Atlantic, their rapid eastward flights disrupted their sense of time and navigation. Continue reading...

It is billing £32.99 a month but I have had no functioning phone line since it switched me to Digital Voice I’ve had no landline since May 2025 when BT switched it to Digital Voice. Weeks passed, and each call to BT involved at least an hour waiting on hold and answering security questions before being passed between departments. Eventually, last December, two engineers were sent and discovered that a wire had been severed during the upgrade. They said they needed a cherry picker to reconnect it to its original location and would return. They did not. Continue reading...

On Brexit, devolution and investment, the former chancellor is eerily in tune with the man who sacked her Reeves says UK’s future is in the EU Which senior politician has argued that “Brexit did deep damage” and that the government seeks “not to turn back the clock but to look toward a new and stable, future relationship?” It was not Andy Burnham, who has been the torchbearer for thinking the unthinkable on Brexit since he became prime minister. Instead, these are the words of the former chancellor Rachel Reeves, in a lecture six months ago. Continue reading...

As John Lewis reports a 96% rise in searches for CD players, music fans share their reasons for ditching streaming CDs appear to be having a resurgence. John Lewis said searches for CD players are up 96% since July, while another report on trends in music and film this year found that CD sales are up 16%. With this in mind, we asked music fans why they favour discs over other formats, and if it is a new preference or a lifetime habit. Continue reading...

Our NextGen picks from five years ago show that breaking through early does not guarantee longevity or future success Read the full updates on our class of 2021 here and here In 2021, as every year, we picked 80 players from around the world who had a chance of making it in world football – 20 from the Premier League and 60 from the rest of the world – as part of our Next Generation series. We then follow these talented boys on their journeys for five years. Often it is almost impossible to predict how they will get on (OK, when Sid Lowe sent over Lamine Yamal in 2024 we had an inkling he might do well). The ball-playing central midfielder comes from a footballing family and academy staff believe his tactical awareness is born from growing up around the game. His father, Adam, played for Brighton and is now manager along the coast at Worthing FC, while Martin (his great uncle), Paul (his grandad), and Wally (his great grandad), all enjoyed careers as players. The youngest to play in the Bundesliga at 16 years and one day, youngest player to appear in the Champions League 17 days later, youngest goal scorer in Bundesliga 11 days after that and youngest player and youngest goal scorer for the Germany Under-21 team before he has turned 17. Continue reading...

In the final article in a series on high-end British manufacturing we look at a clothing brand that dates to the 18th century but is increasingly on-trend Making jeans again: the Hiut Denim factory in Cardigan Rolls-Royce rides high on craze for customisation Luxury leather: from wallets to cigar cases Tina is wielding a large pair of scissors with authority, slicing with immense skill and precision. With 38 years of experience, she is an important member of the 230-strong manufacturing team producing fine knitwear for the John Smedley brand. Using a chalk, a semi-circular guide and a sharp pair of scissors, she cuts necklines in the knitted garments ready for the final trim to be attached. Continue reading...

With a number of anti-data-center candidates poised to win on Tuesday, New York provides a glimpse at the tensions around actually having to do something about the digital infrastructure.

Fondation Cartier, Paris Ibrahim Mahama put an entire factory in this exhibition exploring Ghana before and after it was ripped to shreds by colonialism. And it’s just one dazzling installation in a show full of hope Ibrahim Mahama has dug through the ruins of post-colonial Ghana, sorted through the ashes of its ancient history, picked through the industrial detritus, the corporate waste, the piles of rubbish, and found something pretty unique: hope. Sit on one of the Asante stools in his circular Parliament of Ghosts and you can almost feel a new future being worked out right in front of you. It’s the first installation in this huge exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, and it sums Mahama up pretty neatly. He’s looking at the collapse of the Ghanaian government in 1966, the way the hope of the post-colonial project was crushed in a military coup, and he’s looking at ancient Ghanaian history, at the empires that fell centuries ago and the way colonialism tore them to shreds. But he’s not lamenting any of them. He’s not mourning. Instead, he’s reclaiming them, asking how things can be rebuilt, how we can move forwards by learning from the past. Continue reading...

Manhood, a new documentary about “girth enhancement,” explores how wellness professionals are encouraging men to undergo increasingly extreme procedures to be sexually desirable.

David Durman might be the first employee to receive a special exemption from using AI tools on religious grounds. The 45-year-old research administrator at the University of Kentucky identifies as a humanist, a belief system that apparently requires him to avoid AI-based workflows. Durman's job doesn't require AI either, which... Read Entire Article

In this week’s newsletter: As platforms chase s ubscribers, podcasts are losing their off‑screen charm , leaving listeners to wonder whether the intimacy of audio can survive the studio lights • Don’t get The Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up here This has been the year that podcasting properly, unapologetically “pivoted to video”. Yes, it’s been a progression that has been in the making for quite a while, arguably ever since Joe Rogan first trained a webcam at himself and whichever guest he was smoking weed with in his studio back in 2009 – but in 2026 the medium’s transformation from purely aural to audio/visual (often with more of an emphasis on the visual) is truly complete. In January, Netflix started broadcasting video versions of popular podcasts from The Ringer, iHeartMedia, Barstool and more, as well as continuing to make video pods of their own. That landgrab was a slightly desperate response to YouTube’s phenomenal success with visualised pods; after becoming the preferred podcast platform for most Americans in 2024, it managed the same feat in the UK in 2026, overtaking Spotify. No wonder, then, that Spotify has – as part of a wider push to get people sticking to its platform for pods – continued to bolster viewing capabilities for its own pods too. Continue reading...

Sykes Holiday Cottages showed no empathy and insisted on paperwork we didn’t have so soon after my husband’s death We booked a break with Sykes Holiday Cottages for 11 of us to celebrate my mum’s 80th birthday last February. The cost was £2,400, paid for by my 87-year-old dad, but it was my husband who made the booking. In January, my husband was diagnosed with aggressive lymphoma, and he died 10 days before the trip. My parents and some other members of the party still planned to take the holiday, and my dad informed Sykes of the death, since my husband was their point of contact. Continue reading...

A great picture can have an immediate and visceral effect on a viewer, as if bypassing thought. But a huge amount of thinking goes into selecting and sourcing them, and researching their backstories Can photographs still exert power in an age when millions of pictures are taken and shared every minute, and when a viewer’s first response is to question whether an image is even real? Every few months, a team of editors on the Guardian’s Saturday magazine puts together a special photography package in print and digital formats. It features photographs that don’t just stop the scroll, they have also prompted the rewriting of history books. They are the kind of images that have changed the world in some way or radically shifted people’s perceptions. Continue reading...