
We’ve rounded up stylish and comfy summer footwear for every occasion, whether you want beach perfection or office-ready
• The best sunglasses for every budget
I’m over clunky shoes the minute there’s a glimmer of sunshine in the sky. And because flip-flops will only get you so far (literally and figuratively), a range of sandals is constantly in rotation for me during the summer months.
Sandals have also become an unlikely favourite for men’s event dressing, with Alexander Skarsgård stepping out in a pair of Valentino Rockstud flip-flops on the Sundance red carpet earlier this year. And while thong sandals aren’t for everyone, plenty of more reserved options offer additional coverage.
Continue reading...If the Makerfield MP is to be our next PM, he needs some immediate and memorable cost of living policies to avoid his predecessor’s fate
Pause here before we rush headlong into the turbulent future. Stop and inhale last week’s rare political triumph, revel in the sunshine of cheery optimism. It was a precious but unfamiliar sensation when life on the progressive side of politics in Britain is so often a litany of hopes dashed and disappointments.
Andy Burnham’s comprehensive victory in the Makerfield byelection, surpassing expectations, was a precious moment. He demolished £5m-Nigel Farage’s party of loathsome Reformers, whose every election candidate seems more repugnant than the last. Hostile hard-right politics in Britain needs defeating time and time again, every time nativists and hate-stirrers – from Enoch Powell to the BNP – erupt in our politics.
Continue reading...Fox’s broadcast at the tournament has become a story of two contrasting styles. And there is one clear winner
We all know someone like Alexi Lalas. He’s the ranter whose rants never actually say anything, the life of the party at the party no one enjoys attending, the “big personality” who’s always misjudging the size of the room. He’s corporate America’s idea of a fun guy, the type of workplace “character” whose business trip hangover never stops him from being first at the hotel breakfast buffet, hair wet, Untuckit shirt untucked. He would absolutely dominate karaoke night at a conference on infrastructure finance. If only this were the limit of Alexi Lalas’s actual impact on the world, our culture would live in blessed ignorance of his existence. But in the real world Alexi Lalas is not a small-time menace working the floor at an infrastructure conference. In the real world Alexi Lalas is American soccer’s brightest media star, and he is everywhere this World Cup.
When Lalas’s Roger Ramjet jaw thrust into frame on Fox at the start of this tournament, it’s fair to assume that many viewers felt a sense of dread similar to that expressed in the Grand Theft Auto meme: “Ah shit, here we go again.” Lalas’s ubiquitousness every World Cup is American TV’s answer to the Iran war: no one wants it, everyone hates it, and as it drags on, it inevitably becomes a face-saving exercise in damage limitation. But there was also a glimmer of hope: for this tournament Fox has enlisted a pair of elite European strikers, Thierry Henry and Zlatan Ibrahimović, to terrorize Lalas and shake proceedings up. Steered by Rebecca Lowe, this new-look panel has promised a slightly more sophisticated approach to covering the tournament than the yahooing belligerence that was Fox’s stock in trade at the last two World Cups.
Continue reading...Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London
A stream of high-profile guest stars included Johnny Marr, Little Simz, Shaun Ryder, Sparks, Yasiin Bey, Bootie Brown and Fatoumata Diawara
Gorillaz’s first stadium show is quite the event. It’s a staggering hi-tech spectacle, a two-and-a-half hour mini-festival with a seemingly endless stream of high-profile guest stars, and its audacious ambition and military precision all stem from the fecund imagination and magpie mind of one man.
Damon Albarn has never come across a genre of music that he doesn’t want to turn inside-out to see how it works. In recent years, he has turned Gorillaz from the mildly gimmicky virtual band he co-conceived with graphic artist Jamie Hewlett into a sprawling expression of his own musical curiosity and rampant eclecticism.
Continue reading...Together my best friend Annabel Rook and I worked to support victims of gender-based violence – until she became one herself. Now I feel like a part of myself has been erased. Why aren’t more people outraged?
It is the summer of 2005, and we are staying on the sun-kissed shores of Busua, a coastal community in Ghana. The sand here is made of crushed pink shells. Annabel and I pick up handfuls and scrub our stained feet in the shallows. We’ve been wearing flip-flops for months, trailing through the rich red dust at the refugee settlement where we work. The Atlantic is rough and alive. Its tumbling motion and the wind are making me feel euphoric. Annabel is smiling to herself, too, and jumping in and out of waves.
“Mori,” she shouts, “it’s like being beaten up by an old friend!”
Continue reading...Fitness isn’t just about getting a six-pack or competing in a triathlon. These straightforward, low-intensity moves will improve your strength and mobility and make almost everything easier
There are lots of movements that make you stronger and more physically capable – press-ups, squats and kettlebell swings build strength and muscle that help in a huge variety of situations. But can you get more specific? Well, yes: there are exercises that target the challenges of everyday life, whether that’s playing on the floor with your kids or bringing in the big shop. Here are the moves you may want to consider, presented by a dozen movement coaches, personal trainers and strength specialists.
Continue reading...Ministers say Starmer will set out his intentions on Monday morning with an autumn departure the most likely option
Keir Starmer is expected to announce a timetable for his departure on Monday morning, clearing the way for Andy Burnham to become prime minister without a formal contest by the autumn.
Cabinet ministers say Starmer will set out his intentions outside No 10 Downing Street, starting a process of the UK installing its seventh prime minister in a decade.
Continue reading...Negotiations continue via mediators after US president threatened to bomb Iran and kidnap negotiating team unless strait of Hormuz reopened
Iranian negotiators left high-stakes talks with the US in Switzerland in protest at a stream of threats issued by Donald Trump on social media, leaving mediators Qatar and Pakistan to continue negotiations in the background.
The US president had threatened to bomb Iran, and even to kidnap the Iranian negotiating team unless the strait of Hormuz is reopened. It was not clear if the Iran walkout was permanent or a symbolic show of protest.
Continue reading...⚽️ Kick-off: 6pm local time/11pm BST/8am (Mon) AEST
⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Email Beau
4 min Cano is down, having received a small shove from Borges that, if his reaction is to be believed, dislocated several vertebrae.
3 min Lopes Cabral is judo-tossed again. What’d he do to deserve this?
Continue reading...Family of Shaun Burton, 60, say they are ‘devastated by his loss’ and their thoughts are ‘also with those affected’
Police have named the driver killed in the Bedford train crash on Friday, as his family paid tribute to him.
British Transport police said Shaun Burton, 60, was the East Midlands Railway driver killed in the collision between two trains on the line between Bedford and Luton that also left 100 people injured.
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