​Het officiële Panini-album voor het WK 2026 ligt in de winkel. Wat opvalt aan deze editie: het bevat louter plaatjes van Donald Trump en Gianni Infantino. Onze redactie heeft een exemplaar in handen.

Waar normaal gesproken een Panini-album is ingedeeld in landenpagina’s, heeft Panini die strategie dit keer volledig losgelaten. Alle pagina’s staan vol met de president van de VS en de FIFA-baas. De president in The Oval Office, de president bij een campagnebijeenkomst, de president op de golfbaan, de FIFA-baas in The Oval Office, de president met een bebloed oor, de FIFA-baas met de wereldbeker in zijn handen, de president met een Peace Prize in zijn handen, de FIFA-baas die de president de Peace-Prize overhandigt, enzovoort. Honderden plaatjes van het dictatoriale duo passeren de revue.

Het album is verkrijgbaar voor €14,95 of gratis bij het verlinken van drie illegale immigranten.

Dit artikel verscheen eerder, samen met andere bijdragen van De Speld Sport, in voetbaltijdschrift Hard Gras, nummer 167. Bestel dit nummer, of een ander nummer van Hard Gras op www.hardgras.nl.

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

The arid Barind region was transformed by aquifer wells but now the water system is collapsing under the pressure of the climate crisis and decades of extraction

In the parched fields of north-west Bangladesh, where the earth hardens into cracked red clay beneath an unforgiving sun, farmers in the Barind region say they are watching the foundations of rural life disappear underground.

For decades, groundwater transformed Barind – one of Bangladesh’s driest regions – into a productive agricultural belt. Deep tube wells allowed farmers to grow rice, wheat, maize and vegetables year-round across land once defined by drought.

From Thundercat’s all-star funk to Kacey Musgraves’ hymns to solitude, we look at some of our favourite music of the last six months from across the pop spectrum

• Listen to a Spotify playlist of every album here

Players and fans denied visas, the spectre of ICE raids on stadiums, Pete Hegseth’s latest speech ... By the end of this contest, the nature of this US government will be even clearer

Whenever my kids and I are stationary in the same room, within five minutes they will have started talking about football. Every now and then, a name will float out that I recognise – Jude Bellingham, say – but most of the time it lacks the dramatic texture to hold my attention. Everyone is either a genius or an irretrievable loser.

There’s a lot of counting. “Would you watch a play in which everyone was either entirely wise or entirely stupid and the rest of it was mainly a body count?” I ask, trying to wedge myself back into the conversation. They reply: “Hello? Romeo and Juliet?!” then go back to the shortcomings of La Liga, so I go back to looking at my phone.

Once mocked internationally, the UK became a gastronomic hotspot in recent decades – London was hailed as the foodie capital of the world. Now many Michelin-starred restaurants have closed and the rot is spreading

It’s 9am on a weekday morning and although I’ve just finished my porridge, the chef Richard Wilkins is making my mouth water. “My signature dish is soft Scottish langoustines wrapped in very thin, crispy pastry, served with Japanese sushi rice and a langoustine bisque.”

His other specialities include turbot in a spinach and champagne sauce, buttery wagyu steak with English peas, and raspberry millefeuille. Sadly, I won’t be able to sample any of them and neither will anyone else. At the end of April, Wilkins took the painful decision to close his west London Michelin-listed Restaurant 104 after seven years.

The theory is that breathing near your plants releases carbon dioxide, boosting photosynthesis and growth

The problem
We’ve all done it. Walked past a drooping fern, crouched down and given it a few encouraging words (whether you admit it to other people is a different matter). We are told it’s actually good for our plants, so should we all be chatting away to them to help them thrive?

The hack
Speaking to your plants is said to encourage growth. This is because breathing near them releases carbon dioxide, which they absorb during photosynthesis. More CO2 means faster, healthier growth.