The "reckless decision" to award the 2034 men's football World Cup to Saudi Arabia will "put many lives at risk", Amnesty International has warned.

Human rights groups believe Fifa has "not learned the lessons" of Qatar's "much-criticised" preparations to host the 2022 World Cup, said Time.  

What did the commentators say?
At "every stage" of the bidding process for the 2034 finals, world football's governing body  showed that its commitment to human rights was "a sham", said Steve Cockburn, Amnesty’s head of labour rights and sport.

A particularly "vexed conundrum" facing the organisers is who will build the stadiums, transport links and 185,000 extra hotel rooms required for the Saudi tournament, said Oliver Brown in The Telegraph. But "we hardly need a distant reference point for our answer". Qatar's "gaudy spectacular" was built on "the sacrifice of countless workers" from countries including Nepal, Bangladesh and the Philippines, who were paid "atrociously" to "endure the dust and hotter-than-hell conditions".

Despite Fifa's assurances about the Saudi tournament, the 2022 tournament continues to cast a long shadow. "Look at what happened with Qatar," Uefa's former general secretary, Lars-Christer Olsson, told The Times. "All the promises that they gave were not fulfilled in regards to human rights, and taking care of the workers, and improving democracy.”

But perhaps, "in some ways", the lessons of Qatar "have been learnt", said The Independent. We "won't hear any real resistance" to the Saudis being chosen as hosts because "all of this has been normalised". There was "no need for any of the backdoor issues" of the Qatar campaign this time, "because everything is so brazen and in front of your face".

What next?
Hammad Albalawi, head of the Saudi 2034 bid, said the country has made significant progress in human rights and wants to attract "more fans than ever" to the tournament. "We have come a long way and there's still a long way to go," he said.

Fifa's president, Gianni Infantino, said he was "aware of critics and fears". But the organisation expects "social improvements and positive human rights impacts", he added, and "the world will of course be watching".

The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York last week revealed "two very ugly" aspects of American life, said The Atlantic. "A healthcare executive was shot dead, and because he was a healthcare executive, people cheered."

Shortly after police announced that they had detained 26-year-old Luigi Mangione (pictured above) in connection with the fatal shooting, "the internet exploded into a frenzy", said Newsweek. Social media posts and memes glorified Mangione, an Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland family, as a folk hero, proposed whip rounds to fund his legal defence, and even declared him "too hot to convict", as one user wrote on X.

'No excuse for cheering murder'
The shooting has "fostered a morbid wave of admiration for the alleged killer among people with anti-capitalist views or aggrieved with the country's costly and often capricious healthcare system", said the Financial Times. Mangione "has become a meme that channels widespread grievances with the healthcare industry and dark humour to legitimise targeted violence", intelligence analyst Alex Goldenberg told the paper. 

"There's no excuse for cheering on murder," said The Atlantic. The online "zeal" for the apparent assassination of a health insurance CEO "demonstrates both the coarsening of public discourse and the degree of rage Americans feel over the deficiencies of the US healthcare system".

'Hot felon'
"How is it that so many of us can gloss right over the idea that someone might be a violent killer, so long as they have chiselled abs and a sharp jawline?" asked Cosmopolitan. The "collective hysteria" over Mangione is reminiscent of "Hot Felon" Jeremy Meeks, whose photogenic mugshot went viral in 2014, and the even older romanticisation of serial killers such as Ted Bundy. In this case, there are also "complex emotions" at play around the healthcare system, with people negatively impacted by its failures able to "project personal frustrations" onto the shooting.

Beyond the fawning over the so-called "hot assassin", the more telling aspect of the shooting is the "whiff of populist anarchy" it has unleashed, said Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker. In a time of extreme political division, this is "notably across the aisle". Murder should never be met with "indifference", but such a reaction is unsurprising when the CEO class demonstrates such "indifference to the suffering and death of ordinary people".

"Dancing Nazis, swastika-marked pigeons, sex-mad elderly ladies and the campest portrayal of Hitler that has ever been seen on stage" – Patrick Marber's "loving" revival of Mel Brooks' "cheeky" musical "The Producers" contains all the elements of the original show, said Matthew Hemley in The Stage.

Two decades after its West End debut, "The Producers" has touched down at London's Menier Chocolate Factory, and it's a "more than welcome return for a show that's as funny as it is charming".

The story follows failed Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Andy Nyman) and his "hapless" accountant Leo Bloom (Marc Antolin). The pair set out to produce what they believe will be a surefire flop – a "tasteless" musical about Hitler – so they can swindle their backers out of millions of dollars. "What could possibly go wrong?"

While it "pulls back from the full freight of the danger in its political satire", Marber's revival is still "delightfully" and "daringly" funny, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. The "multitasking ensemble" work together in "ingenious" ways, giving the show the feel of a sprawling Broadway hit, "despite its modest cast". And Paul Farnsworth's costumes are "full of delightful surprises", getting glitzier as the show goes on.

"The sight of swastikas being gaily twirled around the stage still has the hard kick of taboo," said Louis Chilton in The Independent, and it's remarkable just how "sharp" the show's "teeth" still feel. "As a satire both of fascist nationalism and showbiz, 'The Producers' remains ever-relevant."

Who are Starmer's people?
George Eaton in The New Statesman
"All successful governments" need people who "will stand by them even in the toughest times", writes George Eaton, but Keir Starmer is "proving adept at making enemies and less good at making friends". After falling out with pensioners and farmers, this Labour government is "now in danger of falling out with its supposed friends" such as civil servants and public sector workers. So "who are the voters who will go to the wall for Starmer"?

It has never been so hard to be a liberal Muslim in the UK
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The I Paper
"Anti-Muslim attitudes" have "gone mainstream across the West" as a result of "organised campaigns by hard right-wing parties and their growing allies in the media", writes Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. I was once warned that "those furnaces that burnt European Jews would, next time, incinerate Muslims". Now, "as the forces of darkness gather", we must "do what we can to stop Europe from repeating its horrendous history of ethnic and religious cleansing".

Don't worry about Gen Z – they read books and sleep early
Jemima Lewis in The Telegraph
Recently, writes Jemima Lewis, "I have noticed something weird happening on the Tube" – there are "people reading books" and "most are noticeably young". Stats show those aged 14 to 25 are "now the biggest readers of fiction" and "I am struck by the uncanny good sense" of this so-called Gen Z, who "don't seem to revere personal identity or victimhood" but do "drink less than us oldies, have less casual sex, do more exercise and go to bed earlier".