This summer’s Fifa World Cup is already mired in controversy, as co-hosts Canada, Mexico and the US prepare for the tournament’s kick-off on 11 June. Critics have been calling for a boycott over Donald Trump’s travel bans, and now Iran’s participation has been thrown into doubt by the war in the Middle East.

Will Iran participate?
Fifa appears unwilling to grant the Iranian football federation’s request to relocate its US fixtures to Mexico, which would be logistically tricky but not unprecedented. The knockout stages could pose problems, too: if the US and Iran each finish as the runner-up in their group, they would play each other in the last 32.

Trump has already said it would not be “appropriate” for the Iranian players to take part in the competition, “for their own life and safety”. “When Trump has explicitly stated that he cannot ensure the security of the Iranian national team, we will certainly not travel to the United States,” said Mehdi Taj, the president of Iran’s football federation.
Iran’s first group fixture is against New Zealand in Los Angeles on 15 June. New Zealand officials told The Athletic that they were continuing to “monitor the situation” but were making plans to play Iran “until we hear otherwise”. No qualifying team has withdrawn from the World Cup since 1950.

What are the broader safety concerns?
Critics have decried plans to use agents from the controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to police World Cup venues in the US. There is also alarm about the wave of violence that has broken out in Mexico’s Jalisco state following the killing of a drug cartel boss. Guadalajara, the state capital, is due to host four games.

The EU sports commissioner, Glenn Micallef, last month urged Fifa boss Gianni Infantino to help safeguard European fans, according to Politico. Micallef has since asked again, as violence escalates in the Middle East, but there has been “no further communication from Fifa”.

A Fifa spokesperson said security at the World Cup was a “top priority”, and expressed confidence that host nations “will ensure a safe, secure, and welcoming environment for everyone involved”.

Banksy has been identified “beyond dispute” as Robin Gunningham from Bristol, following a months-long exposé by Reuters that took investigators from London to Ukraine and New York. The graffiti artist’s identity has been “debated, and closely guarded, for decades”, said the news agency, but it is in the public interest to understand “the identity and career of a figure with his profound and enduring influence on culture, the art industry and international political discourse”.

‘Put him in danger’
Gunningham’s name was first linked to Banksy in 2008, in The Mail on Sunday, so the Reuters report might be met “with a shrug”, said The Telegraph. But his definitive outing, and revelations that he legally changed his name to the more common David Jones, “may have more serious consequences than providing titillation for the arts crowd”. Banksy’s “uniqueness stems from the fact that his work is often done using subterfuge, under cover of night or with a team of operatives equipped with fake filming permits or disguised as builders”.

Much of Banksy’s work could be regarded as acts of criminal damage, said Will Ellsworth-Jones, the author of two books on the artist. This exposé “makes it much more difficult for him”, Ellsworth-Jones told The Telegraph. “The police could, if they wanted to, find him and arrest him easily.” Banksy’s lawyer, Mark Stephens, said the Reuters report “would violate the artist’s privacy, interfere with his art and put him in danger”, while “working anonymously or under a pseudonym serves vital societal interests”. 

‘Appeal resides in the riddle’
The “fascinating thing” is that despite Banksy’s true identity being public knowledge for close to two decades, “the public want him to be anonymous, covert, secretive”, said Eddy Frankel in The Times. “They would rather believe his identity is a mystery than admit that their favourite anti-establishment art rebel is a shortsighted bloke from Bristol called Robin.”

Part of his “appeal resides in the riddle”, said David Mouriquand on Euronews. Once that’s solved, “you inadvertently dent the artist’s tantalising elusiveness and his/her/their sense of unpredictability, as well as endanger his freedom of movement and expression”.

Women take part in the Mazu Heavenly Fragrance parade in a thousand-year-old fishing village in southeast China. Locals in Xunpu wear traditional floral headdresses and carry baskets of flowers, regarded as a blessing for health and prosperity, during the annual folk event. 

Zhang Bin / China News Service / VCG / Getty Images

Settling down with a good Agatha Christie adaptation “always feels rather delicious”, said Vicky Jessop in The Standard. “The 1920s costumes! The murder! The twistiest of plot twists!” After “Seven Dials” was recently given the Netflix treatment, here are some of the other screen adaptations based on the Queen of Crime’s collection.

Murder on the Orient Express, 1974
Sidney Lumet’s film stars Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, in what is “easily the best adaptation of probably the most famous Christie book”, said Ben Dowell in The Times. The “fastidious sleuth” is investigating the murder of an American tycoon on board a luxury train stranded in a snowdrift in Yugoslavia. Released 14 months before Christie’s death, the “masterpiece” received her seal of approval. “But she reportedly had reservations about what she regarded as Finney’s unimpressively small moustache.”

Miss Marple, 1984-1992
The small screen has been home to many a Miss Marple over the years, but “most Christie fans agree” that Joan Hickson’s take on the “underestimated old lady of crime” is the winner, said Harper’s Bazaar. Hickson brings a “cunning, quiet confidence” to the beloved sleuth, steering this “brilliant series” which ran for eight years, adapting all 12 books in the original “Miss Marple” series. It’s a must-watch.

Poirot, 1989-2013
“To many, David Suchet’s Poirot is the only Poirot,” said Michael Hogan in Radio Times. The series (pictured above), which ran for 25 years on ITV, saw the super-sleuth solve 70 “puzzling murders” in a variety of art deco locations. “Respectful” to Christie’s books, these “classic whodunnits” are a small-screen staple and a satisfying binge.

Juries want fairness in court and don’t just obey the government. That’s why ministers are attacking them
Michael Mansfield in The Guardian
The English criminal jury system is “the envy of the world”, writes barrister Michael Mansfield. It’s a “core democratic mainstay” and “vital bulwark” against “arbitrary governance”, yet the number of jury trials is to be halved. The official “justification is the shocking criminal court backlog of more than 80,000 cases”, but jurors “return verdicts that are inconvenient and challenge government”. A “sacred principle is being sacrificed and scapegoated to falsely explain systemic failure”.

After a deadly outbreak of meningitis B, who wouldn’t vaccinate their kids?
Victoria Richards in The Independent
“I’m not the only parent” panicking about the meningitis B outbreak, writes Victoria Richards, but I’m “relieved” my teenage daughter is getting her booster jabs. They won’t include one for the B strain, “but we’ll take what we can get”. Yet “misplaced fears fed by misinformation” mean many children won’t get any vaccinations at all. I urge you to “take your kids’ health seriously. Vaccinate them. Their lives might quite literally depend on it.”

Pilgrimage can change your life – even if you don’t believe in God
Catherine Pepinster in The Telegraph
Walking a pilgrim path “is one of the most profound ways of deepening faith”, writes Catherine Pepinster. But even non-believers find it “offers that precious thing that modern life” crowds out: “time to think”. As you put “one foot in front of the other”, your “life becomes quieter, with a stillness at its centre”. And, at each day’s end, you talk and take meals with “people you might otherwise never have met”, which “can be terrific fun”.