Under President Donald Trump, the US has often seemed less welcoming to outsiders than it used to. But the men’s football World Cup is showcasing the country’s grassroots hospitality to visitors from abroad.

What did the commentators say?
Many international football fans were worried about “visa access, high costs” and “gun violence” ahead of this year’s World Cup, said Reuters. But instead they have “flooded” social media with posts about their “warm welcome from Americans” and the “distinctive culture”, awash in “free soda refills” and “chicken wings dipped in ranch dressing”.

In host cities across the US there is an “unlikely romance between everyday Americans and squads from around the world”, said The New York Times. While polls show the US global reputation “has dipped in recent years”, visitors are discovering American communities have “all kinds of estimable traits”.

My fellow citizens are “reminding the rest of the world that this country still has a lot of attractive values”, said foreign-policy expert Daniel Drezner on his Substack. That may not matter to world politics in the short term, but it offers a “hopeful reminder that in just a few years America can be great again”.

What next?
US residents are welcoming the world “even when their government has failed to do so”, said former Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem on her Substack. Events like the World Cup “represent a kind of soft power that America has been increasingly unwilling to exert” and had seemingly been lost. It will take more than a summer to repair the world’s “dismal view of America”, but there are signs of hope. “Americans are proving better diplomats than their administration.” 

It’s been a long 13 years but “GTA 6”, the follow-up to “Grand Theft Auto 5”, is now open for pre-orders and set to launch on 19 November. It is expected to be one of the biggest releases in entertainment history and is projected to generate revenues of £5.67 billion in its first two months.

But the journey has been far from smooth, said IGN. Fans have now “waited two console generations for a new ‘GTA’”, while developer Rockstar has “pushed back” its launch – “again, and again”.

Quest for perfection
The most recent delay – from May – was because “more time was required to polish” and “make sure that it was spectacular”, according to Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive.

Avid fans greeted the May delay with “resignation, frustration, déjà vu”, said the BBC. Rockstar is a “notoriously perfectionist” developer: “Red Dead Redemption 2”, its most recent major release, “is still widely considered a benchmark for open-world video games” due to its “obsessive attention to detail”.

Broader industry-wide shifts have also made game development “more expensive, more complex”, and Rockstar has to contend with its own hype: each success “raising ever-higher expectations” for future games.

Union-busting
The repeated delays may also be connected with Rockstar’s decision to fire more than 30 staff who were trying to unionise, sparking a legal action against the developer.

The employees were dismissed in October 2025 for what the company called “gross misconduct”. It claimed staff had discussed confidential game features from upcoming titles in a public forum. The sacked workers dispute this, saying their secure Discord channel was solely used for union-focused discussion. They also claim they have been subject to blacklisting, a “practice in which information about workers engaged in union activity is compiled to facilitate discrimination”, said The Register.

This month, Rockstar lost a legal battle “which means fired unionised workers can continue to bring blacklisting claims against” it, said Novara Media. The final employment tribunal is set to conclude just a month before “GTA 6” is released.

People pose for photos during a “destruction ceremony” in Yangon, Myanmar, to mark the UN’s International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. Burmese police burned more than 50 tons of confiscated heroin, meth, ketamine and marijuana – a haul worth over £450 million.

Sai Aung Main / AFP / Getty Images 

Essex: Otten Hall, Belchamp Otten
An important Grade II country house in an idyllic setting. The estate traces its history back to the Saxon era and, during the reign of Henry II, it came into the possession of the Otto family, from whom the village derives its suffix. 5 beds, 3 baths, kitchen, 4 receps, garden, outbuildings, garage. £1.5 million; David Burr 

Suffolk: Smokey House, Sudbourne
A striking example of gothic revival by the architect Frederick Barnes, commissioned by Sir Richard Wallace, who donated his father’s extraordinary collection of art and artefacts to the Wallace Collection in London. 5 beds, 4 baths, kitchen, 2 receps, 1-bed self-contained annexe, garden, parking. £1.45 million; Knight Frank 

Dorset: Plush Manor, Plush
An elegant Georgian manor house that was once the home of the celebrated pianist Alfred Brendel, and which hosted the acclaimed Plush Music Festival for 22 years. 9 beds, 5 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 5 receps, self-contained 1-bed flat, indoor swimming pool, garden, parking. £2.95 million; Savills

Isle of Wight: Winterbourne House, Bonchurch
A handsome Victorian villa, close to the beach, in which Charles Dickens wrote part of “David Copperfield”. 6 beds, 7 baths, kitchen, 8 receps, garden, parking. £1.6 million; Spence Willard

Huw Edwards’s arrogance was his downfall. So of course he’s launched a comeback
Victoria Richards in The i Paper
The “same Huw Edwards” who was “slapped with a suspended prison sentence” after pleading guilty to receiving and making indecent images of children “now wants us to read his” Substack posts, writes Victoria Richards. Yes, “it’s natural to be curious” about what he’ll write but “all I see is a man who misses being in the spotlight” and has the “galling arrogance to keep demanding space”. “We’ve all heard quite enough from Huw Edwards; enough to last us several uneasy lifetimes.”

Cathedrals are civic jewels: let councils help to run them
Simon Jenkins in The Times
“I am a non-believer” but “a gothic cathedral has a poetry that can move me to tears”, writes former National Trust chair Simon Jenkins. And I’m clearly not alone: while England’s 42 cathedrals “serve just 40,000 worshippers a year, they get ten million visitors”. Yet 80% of them are “in financial peril” and the Church of England is not equipped to “handle” the “looming crisis”. Our county or borough authorities should share responsibility for these “most magnificent buildings”.

Forget Burnham, his ‘Blind Date’ wife is about to become No 10’s real star
Rowan Pelling in The Telegraph
“No sane person wants to be the Prime Minister’s spouse,” writes Rowan Pelling. But Andy Burnham’s wife, Marie-France van Heel, is “better equipped than most”. She’s  “weathered 25 years as a political wife” and, as her 1992 “Blind Date” appearance showed, has the “self-belief” and “wit” to “take a bit of criticism and turn it around to her advantage”. I wouldn’t be surprised if she comes “to be seen by many of us as the better half of the duo”.