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Social-demographic · Sports

Buildup, news and discussion before Saturday’s games This weekend’s fixtures | Mail us with your thoughts Mexico v England in the Azteca was a World Cup classic. But here it is from a totally different angle: the referee’s point of view. This is an extract from The Impossible Job: The Truly Unbelievable World of Football Referees by William Ralston. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop. com Continue reading...

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

UN says Israeli settler violence in West Bank displaced 2,500 Palestinians in 2026 Israeli settler violence has resulted in the displacement of more than 2,500 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). OCHA said in a statement that since 2023, more than 6,400 Palestinians in 130 communities across the West Bank have been displaced due to the settler violence and related access restrictions. Half of the 2,500 forced out this year alone are children, OCHA said. That has left 48 Palestinian communities fully displaced since 2023, including a dozen just this year. The statement said that humanitarian partners have warned that the cumulative impact of repeated displacement, recurrent settler attacks, damage to homes and infrastructure, and restrictions on access to land and essential services is deepening humanitarian needs. (AFP) OCHA said that half of the 2,500 Palestinians forced out this year alone from West Bank are children.

Military · Geopolitical

Niger has blamed France for inciting an attack on a key military airbase by mutinous soldiers last week.

Natural · Natural

According to police, 4,898 people, including Nepalese nationals and foreigners, remain missing

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

Hong Kong national security police have arrested three people on suspicion of acting with seditious intent over a gathering outside Prince Edward MTR station to mark the 2019 protest flashpoint there. A police force spokesman said on Saturday that two men and a woman were arrested on Thursday for allegedly shouting seditious slogans and holding white flowers outside the station on August 31. “The people concerned were suspected of spreading false information and attacking the Hong Kong Special...

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio posted bail at a Manila courthouse on Saturday, a day after an arrest warrant was issued over her alleged death threat against the country’s president. Duterte-Carpio was charged last month with “grave threats” stemming from a late-night news briefing in which she claimed to have hired a hitman to kill President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, his wife and a congressman cousin should she be cut down first. The... She later said the comments had been misconstrued.

Social-demographic · Culture

He taught maths and walked across Europe, trying to leave his demons behind. As he goes back on tour aged 84, the folk-pop legend explains how he came back to singing As Art Garfunkel is keen to point out, “I am a singer – there, use that as the title of your article” – but he was never just a singer. “I’ve been an actor. I am a writer,” he continues. “I’ve walked across countries, taken freighters across oceans. I’ve read the dictionary. I’ve read two books a month for 60 years: Darwin, Herodotus, Balzac, Proust, Tolstoy. I’ve taught maths. I have two great kids and I’m a great father, but it always does seem to come back to the singing. ” Which is understandable, given that in Simon and Garfunkel (with songwriter Paul Simon) he sold more albums than any other pop duo in history. Garfunkel’s oft-called “angelic” tones powered classic chart-toppers including The Sound of Silence and Bridge Over Troubled Water, and he became a successful solo artist. However, until a year ago, he was hardly singing at all and hadn’t toured since 2019. “I found myself lying on a pillow in a dream state, thinking about the meaning of being alive,” he reveals. “What is my day? What am I supposed to do with myself? ” Continue reading...

Social-demographic · Culture

James Gunn and Peter Safran’s regime had good reasons to ditch Ben Affleck’s Batman and Henry Cavill’s Superman. Other choices have been much harder to fathom There was never going to be a completely painless way to break up the old DC gang. Warner Bros’ DC Extended Universe probably needed to be ruthlessly ripped apart in order to create space for James Gunn and Peter Safran’s brand-new DCU. We almost certainly did need a clean break from the likes of Ben Affleck (Batman) and Henry Cavill (Superman), if only to persuade audiences that this really was a proper reboot. The question, as Gal Gadot may have been pondering this week, is quite why some of the old universe’s supporting players were smuggled safely into the new continuity while others were left sprawling amid the ruins. Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Gadot, who starred in two solo Wonder Woman movies for director Patty Jenkins, revealed that nobody at DC Studios ever formally told her she had been dropped. One minute, Gadot says, she was being assured by Gunn and Safran that they would develop a third instalment with her; the next, she was looking on in mounting alarm as the entire infrastructure of the previous DC continuum was blown to smithereens. “They were like, ‘We’re going to develop it with you, the third one,’” she said. “But I saw the way everybody else was handled, right? And I, you know – the Henry [Cavill] situation was unfortunate. I was in the middle of that. The Henry situation was not handled elegantly, to say the least. Same with Patty – it was not handled elegantly. ” Continue reading...

Social-demographic · Culture

Telluride film festival Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s absorbing documentary is a parallel take on their relationship and a nascent drama on artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor are artists and film-makers from Ireland who have created eerie and suspenseful psychological dramas in parallel with a strand of complex and self-questioning essay movies. They explore ideas about history and identity, ruminating on their creative selves and metatextually examining (or re-examining) their own work. You may call it the “Alfred Hitchcock” and “Chris Marker” sides to their work. Sometimes, their documentaries act as a kind of commentary on the fiction feature they are developing at the same time: like The Future Tense, a film about the ideas encountered during a planned movie about the pro-IRA English heiress Rose Dugdale, a project which came to fruition as the drama Baltimore. Now, they have made a strangely mesmeric, deeply personal, mysteriously stylised film called Act 3, which may itself yet herald a conventional drama about its notional subject. It is structured around Molloy and Lawlor having a weirdly self-aware dialogue about their lives together over 40 years, filmed singly in shot-reverse-shot (was each holding the camera on the other? ) but speaking quietly and slowly, as if under hypnosis. Continue reading...

Social-demographic · Culture

Telluride film festival In a remote Colorado farmstead, a family with a mother gone missing finds a strange buoyancy and freedom as they wait for the snows to melt Andrew Haigh’s mysterious and beautiful new film is adapted by him from the 2006 story by Colm Tóibín, transplanting the action from the 1930s Spanish Pyrenees to the wintry, vertiginous landscapes of Colorado about the time of the Korean war. It is a poignant, subversive study of grief and desire, and the terrible, infantilised loneliness of men without women; it is fiercely acted, and wonderfully shot by cinematographer André Turpin. Lester, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, is a grizzled, hardened farmsteader in the remote hills whose family has a certain sufficiency from their livestock; he makes a precarious living breeding rabbits for their meat and fur. One son, Tommy (Kit Connor) is leaving for military service, leaving behind his shy brother Mikey (Fred Hechinger); Mikey has secret gay longings, which are nourished by furtive glimpses of glossy Cosmopolitan magazines, with their impossibly exotic visions of big-city fashion and design. Continue reading...

Social-demographic · Culture

Telluride film festival Alice Bailey Johnson and Kate O’Flynn lead a complicated, quietly heartbreaking drama about friendship, ageing parents and the sadness of lives moving inexorably on Mike Leigh’s new film – perhaps his last – is a poignant, intergenerational drama of happy-sad acceptance that life goes on, until it doesn’t go on. And then you have to come to terms with the mortality of your elderly parents and by that same token, with the end that is waiting for you too. The decency and clarity of the film are a tonic. It is a movie with one of Leigh’s overtly positive and even sugary titles, like Life Is Sweet (1990) or Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), as distinct from his darker ones: Secrets & Lies (1996) or Hard Truths (2024). But his sweet titles are not simply satirical and intended to mean the opposite: it is more complicated and elusive, and even the contrast here between the two heroines’ private and professional lives isn’t straightforwardly a matter of irony. As so often, the dialogue has that unique Leigh cartoonish quality that isn’t caricature, and the characters often speak with an almost wartime chirpiness in a world of peckers kept up and noses kept clean. This is a perkiness that the thirtysomethings have unexpectedly inherited and modified from their old mum and dad, and Leigh leaves it to the audience to judge the consequent tone of the drama and the appropriate tone of their response. Continue reading...

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

The announcement came as Russian strikes on Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region killed four overnight, per local authorities.

Military · Geopolitical

Hongkongers’ requests for help from overseas jumped 35 per cent in the first eight months of 2026 compared with the same period last year, the city’s immigration chief has revealed, attributing the rise to the war in the Middle East. Director of Immigration Benson Kwok Joon-fung told reporters on Saturday that his department had received around 3,160 requests for assistance from Hong Kong residents overseas between January and August this year. “The rise mainly came from the military conflict in...

Military · Geopolitical

Morning recap Good morning Middle East Eye readers, If you're just joining us, here are key developments from across the region: • Donald Trump has said that the Iran war was "small potatoes" for the United States, while warning American military may hit Iran's Pickaxe Mountain. • The Lebanese health ministry says that Israeli strikes in southern and eastern Lebanon late on Friday killed at least three people and injured 23. • Iran will conduct “pre-emptive operations” wherever it perceives a threat, army spokesman Brigadier-General Mohammad Akrami Nia said. • The US State Department said it had approved the potential sale of Joint Direct Attack Munitions-Extend Range to Saudi Arabia for an estimated $5 billion. • Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz fell sharply on August 31, with five confirmed crossings, down 50 percent from 10 a day earlier, according to the latest update by maritime data firm Kpler. • Former Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, has once again branded Qatar an "enemy," repeating his call for Israel to take action against it. • Iranian army spokesman Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia has said that the US and Israel suffered a “major defeat” in their latest aggression against Iran, and “failed” to achieve their stated objectives. • US government investigators have subjected 50 members of the American military’s Joint Staff to polygraph tests over Iran war leaks to journalists. • The United States, Britain, France and Germany are seeking a resolution by the UN nuclear watchdog's board next week reporting Iran to the UN Security Council for the first time in 20 years. • Palestinian media has reported land seizure, vandalism and raids by the Israeli military and settlers in the occupied West Bank. • Tunisian police have arrested prominent journalist Mohamed Yousfi, an outspoken critic of President Kais Saied.

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

Russian forces launched ballistic missiles and 167 drones overnight, with Ukrainian air defences destroying or jamming 128 drones and strikes recorded at 23 locations.

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

US President Donald Trump said on Friday he was sending envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Moscow and Kyiv with a plan to end more than four years of war in Ukraine. The move marks Washington’s latest bid to break a diplomatic stalemate in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A senior Ukrainian official said the envoys were due in Kyiv on Sunday. US outlet Axios reported they would meet Russian President Vladimir...

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

Russian forces launched 1,032 attacks on 61 settlements in Zaporizhzhia Oblast over the past day, including airstrikes, artillery fire and hundreds of drone attacks, injuring six people.

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

Russian attacks on Kherson and Donetsk oblasts killed two people and injured 34 over the past day, damaging residential buildings, infrastructure and cars.

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

Russian forces repeatedly attacked a shopping centre in Mykolaiv with drones on 4 and 5 September, damaging retail areas, sparking fires and injuring two people.

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are travelling to Moscow and Kyiv this weekend with what US President Donald Trump says is a new proposal to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Despite Trump's promises to resolve the conflict, Washington's efforts to broker a peace have so far come to nothing.

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

Israeli strikes in southern and eastern Lebanon late on Friday killed at least three people and wounded 23 more despite a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese health ministry said. The ministry said in a statement that strikes hit five locations in the southern Tyre and Nabatieh regions and the Beqaa region in the east. Follow our liveblog for all the latest developments.

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

US sanctions Turkish bank over alleged IRGC ties, accusing it of facilitating millions in transactions for Iran.

Military · Geopolitical

'What do you call this but ethnic cleansing? ' NYT columnist on West Bank demolition Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof said Israeli settlers had blocked him during his visit this spring to a few Palestinian villages, one of which has been cleansed of its residents since. Kristof wrote on X: “I visited these Palestinian villages in the spring. Families were still struggling to farm the land of their ancestors despite repeated violent attacks by settlers. ” “The settlers also blocked me but left when I tried to interview them. What do you call this but ethnic cleansing? ” Kristof’s remarks came in reaction to a video posted by Yehuda Shaul, co-director of the Ofek Center and co-founder of Breaking the Silence, which shows the demolition of a Palestinian village of Khirbat al-Tabban in Masafer Yatta by Israeli authorities. Shaul warned that without serious international pushback, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich's political agenda would lead to the destruction of more Palestinian communities in the area. Masafer Yatta, a cluster of Palestinian hamlets in the South Hebron Hills, has faced a longstanding Israeli military campaign to displace residents under the pretext of using the land as a firing zone. I visited these Palestinian villages in the spring. Families were still struggling to farm the land of their ancestors despite repeated violent attacks by settlers. The settlers also blocked me but left when I tried to interview them. What do you call this but ethnic cleansing? https://t. co/tAYYbkWGkO — Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) September 4, 2026

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

Russian forces struck warehouse facilities in Sviatopetrivske, Kyiv Oblast, four times on the evening of 4 September, causing a fire and heavy smoke but no reported casualties.

Economic · Economic

Japan and the United States have confirmed they will advance cooperation on investing in strategic sectors and honour the other terms of a trade deal they reached last year, even though President Donald Trump’s tariff policies have changed significantly over time. “We reaffirmed that last year’s agreement remains unchanged,” Japan’s Trade and Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa told reporters in Washington on Friday, after meeting Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative...

Natural · Natural

At least one person was killed and 11 are missing after they were buried by a landslide in central China as the region continued to battle severe flooding caused by Typhoon Saudel. The landslide hit Gaoping, a town in a mountainous area of Jiangxi province, at around 4am on Saturday, according to state broadcaster CCTV. It said rescue teams were rushing to the disaster site. The accident followed days of torrential rain brought by the outer bands of Typhoon Saudel and a cold front. Floodwaters...

Economic · Economic

In an effort to control escalating inflation, the Reserve Bank of India is running auctions to draw in surplus liquidity from the financial system. This move comes as call money rates fall beneath the policy repo rate, with predictions indicating liquidity levels could exceed fifteen lakh crore by the close of September. Additionally, the central bank recently sold government securities worth thirty-two thousand crore.

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

US, allies push IAEA board to report Iran to UN Security Council The United States, Britain, France and Germany are seeking a resolution by the UN nuclear watchdog's board next week reporting Iran to the UN Security Council for the first time in 20 years, according to diplomats and the proposed text seen by Reuters. If passed, the resolution would follow up on one adopted on June 12 of last year declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for not fully cooperating with an investigation into uranium traces found at undeclared sites. Israel started bombing Iran's nuclear facilities the next day, soon joined by the US Iran's uranium-enrichment plants were destroyed or badly damaged. Iran has not let International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors return to the bombed sites since then or verify what remains of its stocks of enriched uranium, some of which was enriched to up to 60 percent purity, a short step from weapons grade. (Reporting by Reuters)

Social-demographic · Education

Weeks before President Javier Milei visits France, scrutiny has grown around an Argentina-run university residence in Paris supposed to promote peaceful coexistence but which activists say instead restricts lodger freedoms and hosts European far-right figures. Paris city officials have demanded the foreign ministry investigate Argentina House, one of dozens of homes run by foreign nations or French institutions on an international campus in the French capital. The Cite Universitaire campus, or...

Economic · Economic

Investors await crucial inflation data next week which may decide the Fed's interest rate move. The S&P 500 index is nearing its record high while facing market volatility. Producer and Consumer Price Index reports will offer insights into August's inflation trends. Odds for a Fed rate hike are currently around a coin flip. Treasury yields and AI trade developments also remain key market concerns.