Increasingly isolated president is determined to press on with Ukraine war, say well-placed sources, despite ailing economy

Vladimir Putin pulled up to a hotel in central Moscow earlier in May in a Russian-made SUV, dressed casually in jeans and a light jacket. Carrying a bouquet of flowers, he walked unhurriedly into the lobby and embraced his former schoolteacher Vera Gurevich, who kissed him on both cheeks.

He then helped Gurevich into his car and drove her to dinner at the Kremlin.

I’ve worked hard to leave the intimidation I experienced in the past. But when I met the man I wanted to marry, those childhood memories took me by surprise

The bullying began shortly after my fifth birthday. My family had moved from Dorset to a small village in Buckinghamshire. I started a new school in September, just before my third sister was born. It should have been idyllic. I remember everyone being excited about the new baby on the way. My school was small and set in the heart of the countryside, with playing fields bordered by woodland. It was about a mile from our new home. If the weather was good, my mother tried to encourage me to walk with her. Sometimes she would repurpose my lunchbox as a punnet and fill it with blackberries picked from the hedgerow on the way home. But she was heavily pregnant, and at the time the mother of three (soon to be four) children aged five and under. It made practical sense for me to catch the school bus.

Weird things were already happening at school. Initially I put it down to the shock of the new. The games were boisterous – my sisters and I could be rough with each other, but everything seemed to go a little further and cut a little deeper. I’d been startled by a group of girls who had reached under my skirt and tugged my knickers down to my ankles. Maybe they thought they were being funny? I just wasn’t sure whether I was in on the joke, or whether I was the joke. At first, it felt a little like being in a dream or visiting a foreign country. Almost nothing made sense to me, but I knew I was the only one who couldn’t understand, and it was down to me to work it out.

His recent concerts are a thunderous call to fight for democracy. The nation could use more like him

The Bruce Springsteen concert I went to in Brooklyn last week was unlike any concert I’ve attended in decades. It was far more than a fabulous, joyous concert; it was also an inspiring resistance event.

From the get-go, the Boss made clear that this concert would be part of the anti-Trump resistance. It was a three-hour-long ode to the resistance and a thunderous call to Springsteen fans to step up and do more to fight for democracy and against authoritarianism. In this way, Springsteen is serving as a model for how celebrities can stand up against Trump and fight for what’s right.

Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice

Singing through the bloody mist

Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues

Like David Cameron in 2016, premier Danielle Smith is facing a mutinous party and has called a referendum about a referendum while vowing a ‘no’ vote

An embattled leader forced to call a referendum on separation to ward off mutiny – and then pledging to campaign against it. Allegations that prosperity had been stolen by distant elites and could be remedied with a vote to leave. Mutterings of foreign interference.

The shadow of Brexit has loomed over the prairie province of Alberta as a minority push for a vote on secedeing from Canada. And it was there again on Thursday evening when Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, unveiled her government’s tangled referendum question on the western province’s future – both in the gravity of the potential outcome, and in the chaotic nature of its expression:

Global prices are approaching a tipping point that could trigger inflation, shortages and, over time, recession

If a US-Iran deal is about to be reached, three months on from the launch of Donald Trump’s Operation Epic Fury, it will not be a day too soon for oil markets, which are approaching a dangerous tipping point.

The cost of a barrel of crude on the spot market – for immediate purchase, effectively – has bounced about $100 since Iran predictably responded to the onslaught from the US and Israel by closing the strait of Hormuz.

Having enjoyed breakout fame on Taskmaster and Last One Laughing, the subversive Australian comic has been handed the reins of his own, very strange sitcom. Get ready for feet animations and a character called Super-Breast …

The premise of Make That Movie, Australian comedian Sam Campbell’s deeply strange new Channel 4 series, is not easy to describe. A show-within-a-show, it stars its creator as an alternative Sam Campbell: rather than his real-life idiosyncratic standup self, he’s a pompous director whose well of inspiration has run dry. So he invites the public to share their (invariably bonkers) ideas for movies, which he and his dysfunctional crew then develop into real feature films. This all occurs within the framework of a shonky reality programme; each episode concludes with the film’s premiere. Think Changing Rooms, but instead of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Handy Andy renovating somebody’s living room, it’s Campbell and co bringing to life a man called Mick’s fantasy about a couple who can’t be snakes at the same time, yet one of them is always a snake.

In other words, the actual Campbell is the one who has been given carte blanche to turn his own invariably bonkers ideas into reality. He claims the production company behind the show were very hands-off – partly because they were so busy working on an animated Ricky Gervais series about cats “so we sort of got left to our own devices”. It helped that Channel 4’s head of comedy, Charlie Perkins – a longtime champion and collaborator of Campbell’s – was also “very trusting. I don’t know if she really got [the concept] when we were first talking about it. When we’d made it, I think she understood it a tiny bit more.”

The US president’s remarks come after he said on Saturday that a peace deal with Iran was ‘largely negotiated’

In Lebanon, the civil defence agency said early on Sunday its regional facility in the southern city of Nabatieh had been destroyed by an Israeli strike.

The Directorate General of Civil Defence said the building had collapsed and a large number of vehicles and equipment had been damaged by a “direct hit in a hostile Israeli strike”.

Assault hits water facility, market, residential buildings and schools, killing at least four and injuring dozens

Russia used its powerful hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile for a third time in Ukraine as part of a massive attack on Kyiv and its surrounding region that killed at least four people and injured about 100.

Russia hit the city of Bila Tserkva in the Kyiv region with the missile, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said. He described a heavy Russian assault that also hit a water supply facility, burned down a market and damaged dozens of residential buildings and several schools.

⚽ 4pm BST kick-off | Premier League clockwatch – live
⚽ Live scores | Latest table | Top scorers | Email Scott

Roberto De Zerbi has been out on the pitch waving his arms about in an extremely exuberant style, exhorting the fans to make the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium a cauldron in terms of atmosphere as well as temperature. It’s 30 degrees out there, with little or no wind. UV level high. Seek shade, wear sunscreen. And stay hydrated!

… and at the risk of turning this MBM into some sort of retro-relegation compendium, here’s Gary Naylor. “I was there in 1994,” he writes of Everton’s 1994 scrape with ignominy, requiring to beat Wimbledon on the last day only to go two down after ten minutes. “It was, and is, my favourite game. You’ve got to embrace it. There’ll be Tottenham or West Ham fans feeling the same come 6pm.”

Incident said to have happened at racing event in 2002, year of queen’s Golden Jubilee, according to Sunday Times

Police investigating Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor are looking into an allegation that he behaved inappropriately towards a woman at Royal Ascot, according to a report.

The alleged incident is said to have happened at the annual five-day racing event in Berkshire in 2002, according to the Sunday Times.

Reform UK leader claims ‘counter-espionage experts’ suggest state-sponsored hackers are behind disclosure of £5m gift

Nigel Farage is under mounting pressure to provide evidence for his claim that a state-sponsored Russian hack was behind the disclosure of the £5m gift he received from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

Reform UK claimed over the weekend that analysis of Farage’s phone by “counter-espionage experts” suggested that “Farage’s phone, email and bank accounts were compromised by hostile actors, almost certainly linked to Moscow, using spear phishing tactics”, before the Guardian revealed details of his undeclared gift last month.

Santon Downham in Suffolk first area to hit threshold, with temperatures of more than 27C for three consecutive days

Parts of the UK are officially in a heatwave as temperatures soared to within reach of May records.

The first area of the UK to hit the threshold was Santon Downham in Suffolk, which reached the criteria of recording temperatures of more than 27C for three consecutive days at 11.30am on Sunday.

Former justice secretary Alex Chalk says figures obtained by Channel 4 reveal that current situation is a ‘horror show’

Almost 60,000 arrest warrants were issued for defendants who skipped court in England and Wales last year, up nearly 50% since 2020 in further evidence of the “horror show” in the criminal justice system.

The figures, obtained in an investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches to air on Friday 29 May, also show that more than 30,000 failure-to-appear warrants are outstanding, meaning that tens of thousands of criminals could be on the run after being charged. It is unclear how many have more than one warrant to their name.

Suspect who died after exchanging fire with agents had tried to enter the complex last summer, records show

A gunman who opened fire outside the White House on Saturday before he was shot by federal agents was already known to the US Secret Service, court records show.

The man, 21, was taken to a nearby hospital, before he was later pronounced dead. He had previously tried to enter the complex, according to an affidavit filed in DC superior court in 2025, following an arrest nearby.

Cheap ready-to-drink cocktail criticised as appealing to children while ‘hiding behind a thin “nostalgia” label’

Alcohol charities have criticised a new 99p shot from the company behind BuzzBallz, warning its cheap price and heavy marketing are designed “to appeal to children”.

BuzzBallz, the brightly coloured ready-to-drink cocktails sold in spherical containers, have become popular with younger drinkers and on social media in recent years, particularly on TikTok where users post tasting videos and cocktail hacks featuring the brand.

The destruction of homes and villages in southern Lebanon leaves a mark not just on those living there, but families watching on across the globe

For the last two years, much of the Lebanese diaspora – estimated to be about 15 million people spread across Australia, Europe, North and South America and more – has held its breath. Much of it watched from afar, helpless, during the latest extended conflict between Hezbollah and Israel as Israeli attacks on their motherland, and particularly its southern villages, resulted in widespread destruction. To date, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced, thousands killed, and roughly 14.3% of Lebanese territory ordered to be vacated. But while those within the country endure their own suffering, those in the diaspora face a different, emotional struggle: the loss of familial homes they may not be able to return to, and a severing of connection to a place that is a fundamental part of who they are.

La Brea Tar Pits – the only urban, active ice age excavation site in world – gets a mammoth face lift for the first time in nearly 50 years

Los Angeles is known for famous museum such as the Getty and the Lacma, but perhaps fewer people are aware that – in the heart of the city – lies a museum that contains one of the world’s most remarkable fossil sites.

The La Brea Tar Pits and Museum is home to the remains of more than 2 million ice age flora and fauna, including mastodons and saber-toothed cats, that became trapped in oily pools that still bubble up today.

Anna Wintour has welcomed the Bezoses – and their patronage – with open arms. But after a controversial Met Gala, industry insiders are less enthusiastic

The press conference for the Met Costume Institute’s spring exhibition is always a stately affair, but this year it was giving “feudal lady addresses her serfs” or perhaps “Marie Antoinette during the last days of Versailles”. Here, among the spectacular marble sculptures of the art museum’s American wing, was a beaming Lauren Sánchez Bezos, who Anna Wintour introduced as a “force for joy”, before adding that “she and her husband, Jeff, have shown with this event that they genuinely, genuinely care about giving back”. Meanwhile, in the outside world, protests against the Bezoses’ involvement had been raging for days. The discrepancy between the word on the street and the deference within the glass-ceilinged room was head-spinning.

The Met Gala has recently become a magnet for anti-excess protests, but this was its most controversial yet, owing to the $10m patronage of its honorary co-chairs, centibillionaires Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos. It was not the first time Jeff Bezos bankrolled the gala – Amazon was its lead sponsor in 2012. But this year’s event came at a moment of soaring inequality, as Bezos’s personal wealth has mushroomed and his Donald Trump-appeasing decisions have made him less popular than ever with New York City’s left-leaning fashion and arts crowd.

The athlete on the joy of receiving her first bike, her lonely teenage years, and a life-changing phone call

Born in Bedfordshire in 1980, cyclist Victoria Pendleton is one of Britain’s most decorated athletes. As well as winning nine world championship golds, she won the gold medal in the sprint at the 2008 Olympics and the gold medal in the keirin (a sprint following a speed-controlled start), as well as a silver medal in the sprint in the 2012 Olympics. She retired from cycling in 2012 and is now a jockey. Her new book, The Fear Opportunity, is published on 21 May.

This was taken when cycling was a hobby and nothing more. My family were on holiday in the south of France, not far from Saint-Tropez. That was my first solo racing bike – it was secondhand and Dad got it custom sprayed. My twin, Alex, had one, too. We were very proud of them.

As a uni student my pay went towards petrol and books, with little left for fun. But I never expected anyone to buy me a ticket

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I was a teenager – just a little kid, really. It was 2003 and I would often co-present the Youth Show on Brisbane community radio station 4ZZZ. Part of the job was to read out the weekly all-ages gig guide, at a time when there was lots of live music to discover.

Beck, one of my favourite artists, was coming to play at Festival Hall a few days before my 18th birthday. The show was all-ages, so when I read out the event details I cheekily joked that someone should buy me a ticket for my birthday. I was a uni student whose casual wages all went towards petrol and books for uni, with little left over for fun, so buying my own ticket was out of the question. Not that I actually expected anyone to buy me one – I was just being a brat!

Animals have tactics of their own to cope with the heat, but zoo animals also get a little help from their keepers

A hot bank holiday weekend might see humans flock to the beach, don summer hats and crack open a cold beer, but when it comes to keeping big cats cool, zoos turn to a rather different treat: blood lollies.

While experts note habitats within zoos are carefully tuned to their inhabitants’ needs, with areas of shade, water, sun and mud as appropriate, animals have tactics of their own to cope with the heat.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

• Next week’s question: if an alien landed and asked you, ‘What is this thing you call music,’ what would you play for them? And why?

You’re supposed to be quiet in the cinema. So why are the snacks so loud? Michael Rivera, London

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

When Lucia’s libido dropped, she found imaginative ways to reignite her spark with Edwin

• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

I felt guilty because I love him and want to make him happy

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

A divorcee gets blackmailed by a camboy in a bingeable twisty thriller, and the musical master’s biography is gossipy and erudite. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports

The helmeted Star Wars hero and ‘baby Yoda’ get a big-screen adventure, while James Graham’s play about England boss Gareth Southgate comes to TV

The Mandalorian and Grogu
Out now
Back in the day, you’d have to be living under a rock not to be familiar with the main players in a new Star Wars movie. These days, you might need a little catchup: the Mandalorian is Pedro Pascal’s character Din Djarin from the TV series and Grogu is his adoptive son, a Force-sensitive child of the same species as Yoda.

⚽ 4pm BST kick-offs | Tottenham 1-0 Everton – reaction
⚽ Live scores | Latest table | Top scorers | Email Simon

Pep Guardiola has a chat with Sky:

I’m good. Trying to focus on the game. It’s not easy, with many things happening around it. Not just me, Bernardo and John and some people from the staff. But yeah, try to enjoy, with my family, and an amount of people that I love.

There’s a football game, and we don’t want to make a bad last game. I’d have loved to have the chance today to play against Arsenal, but there are a lot of things around.

Now is the time, I’m pretty sure. Once we announced I thought, maybe I was wrong. The past has been really good with us, but the future will be better without me. You have to have a special energy..

Updates from Sunday’s first-round action in Paris
French Open agrees to player talks in row | Mail Daniel

Khachanov has reached the last eight of this competition twice – Wimbledon likewise – and the last four of the other two slams. That tells us he’s got an all-court game, with the eye-test advising that he lacks the power-augmenting finesse go further. He does, though, have Gea’s number … so of course, as I type, the young Frenchman flat-bats an incredible pass cross-court to save set point. For all the difference it makes, Khachanov closing out from there to lead 6-3.

It looks a lovely day in Paris, by the way – which isn’t always the case. It’s going to be seriously hard work for those involved in tight matches, given clay-court rallies and soaring tempteratures.

This was an occasion for Mikel Arteta to savour. With owner Stan Kroenke watching on from the stands on a rare visit to see his team in the flesh, Arsenal celebrated being crowned champions for the first time since 2004 by recording a comfortable victory over a Crystal Palace side who also have a European final on their minds. Max Dowman became the youngest player ever to start a Premier League game at the age of 16 years and 144 days and played his part, as goals from Gabriel Jesus – on what could be the Brazil striker’s last appearance – and Noni Madueke rounded off a memorable campaign for Arteta and his side.

But as they waited to be presented with the Premier League trophy at a sultry Selhurst Park after Oliver Glasner completed his own lap of honour following his last home match in charge of Palace, attention will switch very quickly to the daunting prospect of facing Paris Saint-Germain in next weekend’s Champions League showpiece. Palace - who scored a late consolation through Jean-Philippe Mateta and saw a late equaliser from Yéremy Pino ruled out for offside - will be concerned to see Adam Wharton limp off ahead of their meeting with Spanish side Rayo Vallecano in Leipzig on Wednesday in the Conference League final in what should be an emotional farewell for Glasner. Palace revealed this week that it had identified more than 35,000 bots attempting to buy tickets in the home sections of the ground and asked fans to report any Arsenal supporters transgressing. Yet other than a handful who sneaked in wearing hi-vis jackets before being ejected by security, everything passed off peacefully in the end.

Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson were given in-game guards of honour as they said farewell to Liverpool. The tears streamed down the former’s face when he stood in the centre circle after the final whistle and absorbed the enormity of the moment. They leave behind a club that secured Champions League qualification on the final day of a uniquely challenging season, but could have been staring at another defeat but for Dango Ouattara’s late miss for Brentford.

Ouattara put a free header wide with Alisson’s goal at his mercy with practically the final touch of the season. Keith Andrews’s team would have qualified for Europe had he found the target but were left to ponder what might have been. Not that Brentford merited victory.

Sussex by the sea will host Conference League football next season even if Brighton could not meet their side of the bargain. They let their fate drop from their control, making for an anxious afternoon of relying on results elsewhere and a decent 5G connection to bring good tidings. Eventually, as players stood in the centre circle, the good news arrived.

At 6.01pm European football was secured by events on Merseyside and Wearside. Manchester United, third place and Champions League football long in the bag, in the first game of Michael Carrick’s reign as permanent manager, had dazzled in the sun. History was made by Bruno Fernandes supplying a record 21st assist of the Premier League season.

There was an inflatable miniature plane bobbing around the Bournemouth away end and, for long periods, their unlikely Champions League dream was on. The Europa League will have to suffice. Andoni Iraola, whose name was serenaded on loop approaching the final whistle, will exit the stage having led Bournemouth to sixth, their best finish, a record points tally of 57 and having secured European football for the first time in their history. It doesn’t sound too bad.

Bournemouth’s result at Nottingham Forest was quickly rendered redundant by Brighton imploding at home to Manchester United but Aston Villa’s shock win at Manchester City and Liverpool’s failure to beat Brentford denied Iraola the perfect ending. This draw at Forest, who led through a Morgan Gibbs-White free-kick, does mean Bournemouth completed the second round of fixtures unbeaten, a run that goes back to the tail of last year.

With Sam Dalby’s 81st-minute overhead kick, Bolton could start to plan for their return to the Championship, a division they left in 2019 as a club in turmoil. After administration, emergency loans, points deductions and a spell in League Two, they have found their way back under Steven Schumacher.

Stockport, looking to reach the second tier for the first time in 24 years, were game opponents in a tetchy meeting of two clubs from Greater Manchester but were overpowered. With the score level at 1-1 after an hour, Schumacher gave Bolton a lift with the introduction of Dalby, who has been playing through an ankle injury, and within 20 minutes the substitute had stretched their lead to 3-1 with a picture-book goal. Rúben Rodrigues’s late penalty against 10 men added gloss.

• Vingegaard among riders unhappy about race furniture

• Dane remains in pink going into Giro’s final rest day

Fredrik Dversnes won the 15th stage of the Giro d’Italia on Sunday, taking the honours from a breakaway on a day in which the final lap of Milan was neutralised due to rider complaints about the race conditions.

Norwegian Dversnes crossed the line in front of three Italians – Mirco Maestri, Martin Marcellusi and Mattia Bais – as a widely expected bunch sprint failed to materialise.

The crowd that gathered late into the night to celebrate on the streets reflected an idea of London where all are welcome

The mounds of detritus pile up outside Finsbury Park station, like an offering to a vengeful deity. A deity gone rogue for the evening, demanding tribute specifically in the form of empty food cartons and abandoned Lime bikes. A deity that has finally decided to break the habit of 22 years.

They approach via the familiar sidestreets, Gillespie Road, Benwell Road, Hornsey Road, the little shortcut past The Plimsoll pub. The night is cool and calm and still, the air rumbling with adoration and freedom, the sensation of chains being broken. As they reach the stadium, perfect strangers grip each other by the shoulders, bound by shared memory, shared trauma, a shared hymnbook. What do you think of shit? Tottenham! Thank you. That’s all right! A firework is let off, and then another. People are FaceTiming their relatives. People are getting selfies with Ian Wright. The crowd is hundreds, and then thousands, a lawless melee that in classic Arteta-ball tradition features plenty of jostling but no free-kicks awarded. Meanwhile, in the digital wilds beyond, the celebration police have laid down their truncheons and riot shields.

Holidays offering the newly-in-love stress tests are missing the point. Strife is inevitable, it’s how you deal with it over the long term that matters

‘Turbulence test” trips are a “romantic travel trend” for new couples, according to US Vogue. The magazine spoke to two women who had decided to stress-test fledgling relationships with trips, and a hotel in Charleston, South Carolina, that aims to “lean into couples’ curiosity about their connection” by offering a “turbulence test” package. It includes $100 (£74) of cocktails and a pack of conversation cards, which does indeed sound like a recipe for brewing trouble in paradise.

I can’t fault travel as a trial for new romance: coffin-sized shared spaces, upset schedules, tricky interactions, destination disappointments – and the unhelpful accepted wisdom that holidays should be better than real life when they’re less comfortable and way more expensive than staying home – make them into a Soltan-scented pressure cooker for couples. My husband and I nearly split after a horrific trip to Italy in our second year together – it started with unsuccessfully trying to hitchhike 20 miles in a thunderstorm after discovering no trains ran on 15 August and continued with a fortnight of rain, recriminations, tinned soup and cheap wine-fuelled fights.

The document is full of disclaimers and does not address fundamental issues, including Gaza and the Biden-to-Harris transition

When the Democratic National Committee finally released its autopsy on the 2024 election disaster, not even the DNC chair could defend it. “I don’t endorse what’s in this report,” Ken Martin conceded as the autopsy went public on Thursday. After several months of withholding the autopsy on the grounds of not wanting it to be a distraction, Martin fessed up at last: “When I received the report late last year, it wasn’t ready for primetime. Not even close. And because no source material was provided, fixing it would have meant starting over, from the beginning.”

In response, a former Obama speechwriter, Jon Favreau, summed up eight stages of Martin’s tortuous process that has spanned more than a year: “Promise to release autopsy; put incompetent friend in charge; incompetent friend produces incoherent product; announce you’re not releasing the autopsy; lie about why; gaslight people who ask, saying they’re the problem; face internal revolt; release autopsy.”

Norman Solomon is the director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book is The Blue Road to Trump Hell: How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy

It’s been 14 years since he passed, but I can feel his blood coursing through my veins whenever I realise the small ways I am just like him

This sounds like an old-fashioned, “take my mother-in-law” type joke, but is the antithesis of funny: one in five British people would swap their dad for a better model. This is according to a new survey ahead of – you guessed it – Father’s Day in the UK, which also revealed that one in three pretend they have a better relationship with their dad than they really do. Many admitted they buy Father’s Day cards out of obligation rather than love, too. Oof.

As a result of this research, online retailer Thortful has launched a campaign called “Dad’s not perfect, but …” to challenge the stereotype of the “Best Dad Ever”, with a much more honest range of cards.

Yes, I could worry about all the money I’ve ‘thrown away’ but, like my fellow renter the Princess of Wales, I’m digging in

It was cheering to read that William and Kate’s new lease for Forest Lodge in Windsor stipulates that they must keep the grounds “clean and tidy” and “free from weeds”. Solidarity, comrades! How relatable. For I too am a renter, and know how it feels to live under the landlord’s cosh. My own tenancy agreement says something similar.

Not that the landlords have ever enforced it. They take what I might euphemistically call a “hands-off” approach, which I acknowledge is preferable to the alternative. I was outside weeding this very afternoon, not because I’m legally obliged to but because I have decided, after four years of letting it slide, to enjoy my garden again.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist

Project Hail Mary, Jurassic Park: from dino-mosquitoes to a spaceship’s roar, pointless mistakes on the scientific details make me wince

On the advice of my teenage son, I recently went to the cinema to see Project Hail Mary. The film has science in it. I am a science writer and so he was convinced I would like it.

Imagine my surprise partway through, however, when I found myself seething so hard I thought I would combust. Ryland Grace – the main character and a molecular biologist who should have known better – had just put two plastic tubes into a centrifuge NEXT to each other!

Helen Pilcher is a science writer and author of Life Changing: How Humans are Altering Life on Earth and This Book May Cause Side Effects

The director of national intelligence was sidelined as the president abandoned his pose as the ‘candidate of peace’

Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, stayed loyal to Donald Trump until the end – and nurtured the president’s grievances against his political enemies. Last year, she accused Barack Obama and several of his top national security officials of leading a “treasonous conspiracy” to highlight Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. In January, Gabbard showed up at the scene of an FBI raid in Georgia where officials sought ballots from the 2020 election, even though her role is mainly focused on foreign intelligence.

On Friday, Gabbard submitted her resignation to Trump, saying she would leave her post on 30 June, so she could support her husband after he was recently diagnosed with cancer. News reports quickly emerged that the White House had forced Gabbard to resign. The Guardian reported last month that Trump had privately asked cabinet members whether he should replace her from the post that oversees 18 US intelligence agencies.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University

The trumpeter, composer and band leader still towers over jazz because he treated reinvention not as a betrayal, but as necessary for its survival

The space reserved for Miles Davis in the pantheon of 20th-century music is not simply because he mastered jazz, but because he refused to let it stand still. As musicians and fans mark the centenary of his birth , Davis’s work still feels limitless. “I always thought that music had no boundaries,” he wrote in his 1989 autobiography, “no limits to where it could grow and go, no restrictions on creativity.” Davis repeatedly dismantled the sound he had helped invent – embracing the electric age in 1968, much as Bob Dylan had in folk.

Davis moved to New York as an 18-year-old after hearing Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. While bebop prized speed, Davis preferred restraint and precision – spearheading cool jazz. By 1988, now the grand old man of jazz, he was playing trumpet with Prince, whom he remarked could be the “new Duke Ellington of our time if he just keeps at it”. Such was his refusal to be pigeonholed, he hated the word “jazz”. Whatever it was, Davis reasoned, had to evolve: absorbing funk, rock, African rhythms and electronica to emerge altered again.

The removal of an opposition party leader and closure of a liberal university show an authoritarian democracy moving closer to one-man rule

Turkey’s next presidential election is scheduled for 2028. Many think it will come sooner. But by the time ballots are actually cast, the outcome may already have been decided – especially after the last few days.

On Thursday, an appeals court removed the head of the opposition Republican People’s party (CHP), Özgür Özel, by annulling its 2023 leadership contest. The 51-year-old was credited with reviving the CHP, which trounced the ruling Justice and Development party in 2024’s local elections. He was also one of the few senior figures not caught in a sweeping crackdown that has led to hundreds of CHP officials and politicians being arrested. Human Rights Watch says that the justice system has been weaponised against the opposition. A mass corruption trial opened in March, with defendants including the Istanbul mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, who was arrested last year on the day that he was chosen as the CHP’s presidential candidate. He could face a sentence of more than 1,900 years if convicted on all counts.

Readers respond Devi Sridhar’s call for the world to act now over the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Devi Sridhar is right that this Ebola outbreak needs urgent attention (Ebola in the DRC needs the world’s attention now – if your neighbour’s house is on fire, you don’t wait and watch, 19 May). Present an engineer with a problem needing a build or fix and you will often hear: “You can have it good, fast or cheap – pick two.” In global outbreak responses, we learn too late every time that we must pick “fast” first.

Having worked on the west African Ebola outbreak in 2014-16 and on smaller Ebola responses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018-2020, I have seen the same failure pattern repeat. We think too long before going in, despite knowing what is needed, and we overestimate the complexity of what must be accomplished.

Readers respond to Emine Saner’s article about the ubiquity of pooches in public spaces

Your article on dogs was uncannily timely (‘She compared her dachshund to my newborn baby’: should you be able to take your dog everywhere?, 19 May). I have had a phobia of dogs since childhood and can’t get past an unleashed dog. This causes me a problem every couple of years, but in the last week I’ve twice been inconvenienced by thoughtless owners who don’t see the need for a lead while walking dogs on public highways.

The first time I was trapped in a restaurant until the staff managed to persuade the owner to move (my panic attack alerted them to the problem), and a day or two later it was a market stallholder who was letting a dog run loose. The dog was jumping up at passersby and investigating the occupants of passing pushchairs. A kindly passerby noticed me crying and came to help.

As a mother with disabled children, Anne-Louise Crocker has experienced first-hand how the social care system lets people down. Plus a letter from Dr Brian Fisher

At the 2024 Labour conference, Wes Streeting said: “We can’t fix the NHS without fixing the crisis in social care. And we can’t fix social care without the people who work in it … I will deliver a new deal for care professionals: a fair pay agreement, to improve pay and conditions and give staff the status and respect they deserve – our first step towards building a national care service.”

In fact, Streeting’s first step on social care was to set up yet another review, which will not report until the end of the parliament, thus kicking social care down the road, like every other health secretary before him.

Deathbed advice | Dangerous deference | Marks & Spencer | Stephen Yaxley-Lennon | Readers’ reads

Polly Hudson’s piece on her relationship with her dad felt so poignant (My dad was far from perfect – but I live by the advice he gave me on his deathbed, 24 May). I lost my dad during Covid and didn’t get to have that deathbed conversation with him and get the sage advice that Polly got from hers. Although we didn’t get to say goodbye, I know he would have said, “Make the most of every day, queen”. And I will.
Julie Craig
Stockport, Greater Manchester

• Your 21 May editorials on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and the Grenfell Tower fire demonstrate the dangers of deferring to those in positions of power or influence. This has characterised British society for too long and will only end when those responsible for the Grenfell, Post Office and other disasters are held to account and sent to prison.
Geoffrey Payne
Ealing, London

Some casualties after attacks on multiple locations in south and east of country on Sunday, state media reports

• Middle East crisis: live updates

Israeli strikes have hit southern and eastern Lebanon, a day after 11 people were killed in a single raid on the south despite a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war and claims that the US and Iran are about to reach a peace deal.

Saturday’s strike in Sir al-Gharbiyeh “resulted in a massacre whose final toll is 11 dead including a child and six women, and nine wounded including four children and a woman,” Lebanon’s health ministry said.

Explosives-laden vehicle detonated as passenger train travelled through south-western city of Quetta

A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle near a railway track as a passenger train travelled through the south-western Pakistani city of Quetta, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 70 others, officials have said.

The force of the explosion on Sunday caused two of the train cars to overturn and catch fire, sending thick black smoke into the air, according to footage shared online.

Boys, aged 15, given youth rehabilitation orders for two separate attacks against two girls in Hampshire

A judge’s decision not to jail the teenage boys who raped two girls has been described as a “rock straight in my face” by one of their victims.

Southampton crown court heard the two boys, both aged 15 at the time, raped the teenage girls in two separate attacks that occurred on 26 November 2024 and 17 January 2025 in Fordingbridge, Hampshire.

Former Labour minister says complete disengagement has potential ‘for us to end up in a very, very difficult position’

David Miliband has said Europe should have “separate bedrooms” from the US, but not seek a “divorce” from its traditional alliance, despite the Trump administration’s impact on the relationship.

The former Labour foreign secretary, who has served as the president of the International Rescue Committee since 2013, said at the Hay literary festival on Sunday: “You can see the argument that strategic autonomy for Europe means divorce from the United States. I really counsel the dangers of that.

Gerry ‘the monk’ Hutch comes fourth in contest won by Daniel Ennis of Social Democrats

The Irish gangland figure Gerry “the monk” Hutch has failed in his bid for a parliamentary seat in a Dublin byelection.

The 63-year-old came fourth in a contest won by Daniel Ennis of the Social Democrats, a victory for progressive politics after a campaign dominated by concerns over the cost of living and immigration.

Technological interventions face huge financial or practical challenges, but there is another way

In 2019, my scientific research was nearly brought to an early end when my team and I published the bombastic statement that natural forest restoration was the “best climate change solution” available in a paper for the peer-reviewed journal Science.

I remember a colleague from the World Wildlife Fund advising me that this message represented career suicide. He argued that people would be furious because reducing greenhouse gas emissions was the most urgent priority. The revival of nature might help with 30% of our carbon drawdown needs, but you cannot stop rising temperatures without cutting emissions.

Charter to be adopted along river’s entire catchment from Cambrian mountains to Chepstow and Bristol Channel

The entire catchment of the River Wye has been formally recognised as a living ecosystem with intrinsic rights in a charter, a UK first that campaigners hope will help save the highly polluted river.

The charter was celebrated at a community event at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival on Sunday. It includes the right to flow, to biodiversity, to be free from pollution, to be supported by a healthy catchment, to regenerate, and the right to be represented, described as a “significant step” towards protecting and restoring one of the UK’s most beloved rivers.

Staff at the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy are overseeing the repatriation of ‘the shiest antelope’ from western zoos to their native east African country

“We are bringing the boys home,” says Ngenoh Erick Kibet, a wildlife officer at the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy, as a cargo plane carrying four mountain bongo touches down on a wet runway at Jomo Kenyatta international airport.

The operation is the culmination of two weeks spent in Czechia, a first flight for Kibet, and a decades-long collective effort to rescue a species on the edge of extinction.

The 100th bongo calf was recently born at the conservancy

Department for Transport is understood to back reducing levy, which critics have called a ‘pavement tax’

• Business live – latest updates

Government officials considered cutting the VAT charged on electricity used at public EV chargers from 20% to 5% at the last budget, but the Treasury under chancellor Rachel Reeves rejected the proposal amid disagreement between departments.

Officials in the Department for Transport encouraged electric car charge point operators to write to the Treasury explaining how they would respond to a VAT cut, according to three industry sources. The charger companies said that they would pass the tax cut on to consumers.

Discussions highlight how seriously senior Labour figures are treating Burnham’s path back to Westminster

Andy Burnham has sought advice from Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff, on how to manage a potential transition into Downing Street if he returns to Westminster and succeeds the prime minister.

Lady Gray is understood to have advised Burnham on how a future government could be formed as Labour’s internal succession chatter intensifies before the Makerfield byelection.

Call for crackdown as finance linked to corruption, tax evasion and money laundering is estimated at 10% of GDP

At least £325bn worth of dirty money is flowing through the UK every year, according to research that is causing concern about funding for state investigators and the government’s push into crypto assets.

The figure is equivalent to more than 10% of UK GDP and includes illicit funds linked to financial crime, money laundering, corruption, illegal trade and tax dodging, according to the report by the Finance Innovation Lab charity.

More people are being jailed in England and Wales as a result of acting to prevent climate breakdown and the war in Gaza, research reveals

Britain has created a new breed of political prisoners through the systematic incarceration of people acting to prevent climate breakdown and the annihilation of Gaza, a report claims.

The research by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the protest group Defend Our Juries says that custodial sentences for acts of direct action or civil disobedience were once rare but are now being imposed with increasing length and frequency.

Chancellor’s allies urge MPs to back her if Keir Starmer is replaced, saying she is only candidate to safeguard UK’s finances

Rachel Reeves has launched a rearguard action to save her job as chancellor, telling friends she would like to stay in the post even under a new prime minister.

The chancellor’s supporters have been urging MPs to back her if Keir Starmer is replaced later this year, saying she is the only candidate who can safeguard the country’s finances.

More than 20,000 attacks on markets, farmland and food distribution systems have been recorded since 2018

Hunger is being increasingly exploited as a weapon of war with more than 20,000 documented incidents of “food-related violence” in the past eight years, new analysis reveals.

Attacks include 1,261 strikes on markets used by families for daily groceries and 863 incidents in which food distribution systems were targeted and workers killed.

US imposed sanctions on nine judges and a prosecutor after ICC issued arrest warrants for members of Israeli cabinet

A former prosecutor at the international criminal court has called for an EU-wide statute blocking what she describes as “thuggish” and “bullying” US sanctions imposed on members of the court that are designed to send the court into oblivion.

In February 2025, the US imposed sanctions on 11 ICC officials, including nine judges and the chief prosecutor as well three Palestinian organisations, in response to the ICC decision in 2024 to issue arrest warrants for members of the Israeli cabinet, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mission will put first astronaut in orbit for a year, a key step in Beijing’s plan to put people on the moon by 2030

China has launched its Shenzhou-23 mission in which an astronaut will spend a full year in orbit for the first time, a crucial step in Beijing’s ambition to send humans to the moon by 2030.

The Long March 2-F rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan launch centre in north-western China on Sunday, carrying three astronauts to the Tiangong space station.

The 39-year-old was reportedly fishing at Kennedy Shoal between Cairns and Townsville when emergency services alerted about midday

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

A man has died after a shark attack on the Great Barrier Reef south of Cairns.

The 39-year-old had reportedly been fishing at Kennedy Shoal, a shallow reef about 50km off the Queensland coast, between Cairns and Townsville.

Labour MP writes to chair amid concerns building societies are overusing quick votes and failing to add members to boards

Nationwide is under pressure to address “emerging governance issues” across the building society sector, amid concerns bosses are bundling voting options and failing to allocate board seats for members.

The Stockport Labour MP Navendu Mishra has sent a formal letter to the chair of Nationwide, Kevin Parry, outlining growing unease over the way executives, including at Nationwide, have been engaging with members who ultimately own their building societies. A letter raising similar concerns was sent to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in recent weeks.

PR executives say UK companies are forcing them to present ordinary automation as artificial intelligence

UK companies are performing “yoga-level” stretches to describe themselves as AI specialists in an attempt to capitalise on the buzz around the technology, public relations firms have said.

Weary communications executives tasked with securing media coverage for brands have complained that bosses in low-tech industries or running businesses that use automation but not generative AI, are increasingly demanding they are pitched to journalists as artificial intelligence companies.

BioOrbit hopes drug-crystallisation technology will lead to self-injected cancer treatment that could save millions

Onboard a SpaceX flight last week was a remarkable piece of cargo – a hi-tech box destined for the International Space Station to grow ultra-pure protein crystals, with the aim of producing self-injected cancer drugs.

A British startup, BioOrbit, has developed the drug-crystallisation technology at its labs in London and launched Box-E, a compact unit the size of a microwave, on the 15 May rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Phone company launched by Donald Trump’s family says names and contact details appear to be affected, but not credit card or banking information

A phone company launched by Donald Trump’s family business is investigating a potential security flaw on its website that appears to have exposed the personal details of an estimated 27,000 people who sought to buy a gold-coloured smartphone.

Trump Mobile said in a statement that it was investigating the issue – “with the assistance of independent cybersecurity professionals” – in which the full names, addresses and phone numbers of people who filled out preorder forms appeared to be exposed.

The chart-topping star makes a strong case for Livin’ on a Prayer and opts for TLC at karaoke. But which song reminds her too much of her ex to listen to?

The first song I fell in love with
When I was five or six, my mom got me the VHS of The Little Mermaid, and I would watch it over and over again. I was obsessed with the moment Ariel sings Part of Your World. There was something about wanting more, wanting a different life – even as a kid, I felt that.

The first single I bought
I remember going to a record store in Times Square, New York and my aunt buying me What a Girl Wants by Christina Aguilera on cassette tape and it was really exciting. Then the first CD that I bought myself was Just Dance by Lady Gaga which felt like a real moment of independence.

English-language debut by Romanian director who triumphed in 2007 with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days takes top prize

Nineteen years after his searing abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days won the top prize at the Cannes film festival, Cristian Mungiu’s English-language debut, Fjord, has repeated the trick.

The film – which stars Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan as Romanian religious parents who relocate to Norway, where they find themselves accused of child abuse – makes Mungiu, 58, the 10th director to have received two Palmes, following Alf Sjöberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Bille August, Emir Kusturica, Shōhei Imamura, the Dardenne brothers, Michael Haneke, Ken Loach and Ruben Östlund.

James Graham’s smash hit play Dear England comes to the small screen. Plus, a tense drama about a love triangle that ended in murder. Here’s what to watch this evening

Sunday, 9pm, BBC One

Drugs, sex, scorpions, breakdowns … a summer trip in Greece goes diabolically wrong in the BBC’s immaculate new show that will give you a well-earned break from bad TV

Hell is other people. But a fortnight’s summer holiday in a Greek island villa with three pals you have known since university, the young second wife of one of them, your depressive husband and the mulish French nanny the second wife has hired to look after her foul child, is surely the innermost circle of it.

Such is the diabolical situation in which Zoe (Jessica Raine) finds herself in Two Weeks in August, an utterly convincing and wholly compelling – in an “if somebody doesn’t push at least three-quarters of these credibly appalling individuals into the sea soon then I will clamber through the screen and do it myself” kind of way, which is the best kind of way – blackly comic drama exquisitely written by Catherine Shepherd, immaculately directed by Tom George and Matthew Moore and perfectly played by the whole cast.

Many contestants have a positive experience on the reality show, but others say the format is unsafe

It was about 1am. After a day of relentless filming in which he had met and “married” a stranger, the Married at First Sight UK cameras stopped rolling and Adrian Sanderson was left alone with his new TV partner.

“Honestly, I’ll never ever forget that feeling – it was so difficult,” he says. “When those producers leave you and you’re, like: ‘I’m alone – I don’t get this. How is this about to happen?’ It would be daunting for anyone. You’re exhausted by this time.

This stellar adaptation of James Graham’s award-winning play is a stirring take on national identity – even if not all the actors look like the real footballers. Put it this way, Wayne Rooney will be very pleased indeed

To watch Dear England (Sunday, 9pm, BBC One) – the BBC’s stellar adaptation of James Graham’s Olivier award-winning play – you must first understand the incomparable damage to the national psyche that arose from Gareth Southgate missing a penalty in the Euro 96 semi-final. For those born outside England or too young to remember, imagine the apocalypse mixed with the death of your childhood pet and you’re just about halfway there. I was 11 at the time and almost three decades later still remember going to bed crying as my dad explained over my tear-strewn pillow: “This is what it is to be an England fan.”

You’d better get your therapist on speed dial: the four-part fictionalised account of Southgate’s revolutionary reign as England manager begins with a real-life clip of his penalty miss. Fast forward to 2016 and England is in crisis, with the men’s squad crashing out of the Euros to Iceland while Brexit looms large. Meanwhile, Southgate (Joseph Fiennes, reprising his critically acclaimed West End role) – now middle-aged and managing the under-21 men’s team – is watching football on the TV and looking pensive.

(Warp)
The Scottish electronic duo remain hugely influential – but their new album’s interrogation of religion is dubious, and the drum programming is worse still

This is the first album in 13 years from Boards of Canada, and from the opening notes – an analogue synth rising and falling like a sound effect in a forgotten 1960s radio play – you’re thrust back into one of the most instantly recognisable worlds in electronic music.

From 1995 debut EP Twoism onward, across four LPs and four more EPs, the Scottish duo – brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin – used the heavy gait of classic hip-hop beats to trudge through spectral ambient vistas, like spacemen sent through a time portal while still being tethered to the present. By grabbing samples from old public television and other vintage sources, they looked back at the utopian promise of the mid-20th century, while teasing out the latent kitsch and creepiness of these sounds.

In a collapsing world, artists like Slayyyter and Cobrah are chasing extreme highs with hyperactive music and debauched lyrics. Is their trashy vibe emancipating – or a bit contrived?

If any year demanded a soundtrack of self-aggrandising female mayhem, it’s 2026. Amid the terrors of war, AI and the climate crisis, women are expected to be symbolic vessels of order and stability: thin, beautiful and perpetually 25 – a state of perfection newly available for purchase thanks to weight-loss drugs and the deep plane facelift.

Covered unironically in leopard print and rhinestones, a cohort of young female pop stars are defying this familiar con with brash electronic pop, shamelessly hedonistic lyrics, anarchic sexuality and an obsession with what was once dismissed as “white trash”. It’s an aesthetic embraced by performers such as Slayyyter, Kim Petras, Cobrah, Demi Lovato, Snow Strippers’ Tatiana Schwaninger, Tove Lo and returning scene godmother Kesha.

The five-piece combine traditional musical styles with mountains of synths and hurried drums – rejecting computerised production in a pointed anti-AI statement

From João Pessoa, Brazil
Recommended if you like Hermeto Pascoal, Mr Bungle, King Crimson
Up next Celestial album released 7 August, touring the UK and Europe from 15 August

Thanks in part to its famed music department at the local Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa – the easternmost city in South America – is a hotbed of artists playing different folk styles from all over the continent. Papangu sound like all of them at the same time. The five-piece blend a long list of genres: bossa nova, the circle-dance song ciranda and forró, with its dry-tuned accordion and pulsing rhythm section, plus the more ubiquitous progressive rock and extreme metal. The band’s virtuoso chops and intensity keep their songs from buckling under the weight of those ideas, from the hurried drums to the mountains of synthesisers and pianos.

(Unheard of Hope)
The Guatemalan newcomer and US veteran find striking common ground on an intimate collaboration full of agitation, complexity and uncanny chemistry

This dreamlike, intimate album unites one of experimental music’s current stars with one of its most prolific veterans. During an interview promoting 2024’s acclaimed Sentir Que No Sabes, 34-year-old Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti praised Bill Orcutt, the 64-year-old US guitarist whose disjointed, aggressive four-string playing – honed in 90s noise-rock band Harry Pussy – graces more than 100 records. Orcutt reached out, and they started sharing files. While their friendship is new, Almost Waking reveals a deep kinship between these true originals.

The album centres on conversational duets between Fratti’s cello and Orcutt’s guitar. On the overdriven Forced & Forced & Forced, Orcutt’s trademark string-snapping plucking is matched by Fratti’s fragmented, agitated bow-scraping. Just as both players can wrestle with their instruments, they know how to make them feel like voices. On Steps of the Sun, the cello and guitar harmonise tenderly and take turns as lead, performed with the complex phrasing and dynamism of a sung duet.

After visiting an island brothel in Bangladesh, the novelist was inspired to write an imagined uprising. She explores the radical fictional worlds where women have the power

In the spring of 2024, I am finally able to visit Banishanta, the island in southern Bangladesh that has been haunting my dreams. When I arrive I find it is little more than a long patch of grey mud, with a string of flimsy huts lining a craggy shore. Thirteen years earlier, I was on a boat on my way to the Sundarban mangrove forest when a guide casually pointed out the island and told me it was a state-licensed brothel that had been there since the time of the British.

When I went home, I didn’t want to think about Banishanta, because if I did, I would have to imagine the terrible things the women there were enduring while I lived a life of casual entitlements many thousands of miles away. Yet the women squatted in my imagination, refusing to leave. I resolved to never write about them, because it would say things about the world I didn’t want to know. It was only when I decided I could write a novel, set on a fictional island, about a rebellion of women, that I allowed them in.

From a darkly comic new novel to a gripping 1950s memoir – Katherine Rundell, Malala Yousafzai, Matt Haig and others appearing at Hay festival pick titles to tempt you

Malala Yousafzai
Activist
I have loved going to the theatre ever since I saw my first musical (Matilda in London, when I was 15 years old) – and I love reading about it, too. In Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad, a British-Palestinian actor travels to the West Bank to see family and finds herself pulled into a local production of Hamlet. I was moved by the rehearsal scenes: arguments over translations, personal relationships, the question of whether a performance is even possible under Israeli occupation. To me, Hammad proved that theatre is capable of carrying weight that other art forms cannot hold.

Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some must-read paperbacks, from a campus novel to a history of language

***

Memoir tells how the Jewish and Catholic parents of actor Isabelle and Caroline Huppert fell in love amid the rise of the Nazis. She explains why she wanted her ‘children’s children’ to know the story

Families have a way of appointing their own historians, even if the recruitment process remains obscure. In the late 1990s, Caroline Huppert – the fourth of five siblings, of whom the youngest is actor Isabelle – found herself alone with her father and a tape recorder. Over five days, he opened up about his life before and during the second world war. “I think I had that privileged position with him, because he had a taste for history, too,” she says. “But we didn’t have the same vision. I like the approach of what is called the nouvelle histoire, things like details of daily life in the past. With him, it was more emperors, kings, dates.”

More than 25 years later, their exchanges have led to her memoir, Une Histoire Cachée (A Hidden Story), a work that bundles up quotidian intimacy and big-ticket history in telling the story of how her parents, Raymond and Annick, fell in love. Their relationship so easily might never have happened: he was Jewish, she Catholic, and after they met in 1934 at Paris’s HEC business school, her haute-bourgeois family were opposed to them marrying. A big enough obstacle even before the Nazis invade France, and the young lovers are forced to flee the capital for the Free Zone near Lake Annecy. “I wasn’t aware of any of it in the least,” says the 75-year-old on a phone call from her home in Paris. “My parents weren’t people who talked about the past. They were always absorbed in the present, in action.”

Driving sims were overtaken by open world fantasy adventures, but new upgrades show how much joy there is in the genre

I have spent the last week careening around Japan in a Porsche 911, seeing the sights, racing other cars and occasionally veering off the road to plummet through an ancient bamboo forest. You all know what’s coming next … this wasn’t in real life, folks – it was in Forza Horizon 6, the latest instalment in Microsoft’s series of open world driving games set in authentic-looking, real-world locations.

Reviewing this game (which is out now on Xbox and PC, and coming to PS5 later in the year) has reminded me of the sheer fun and exhilaration that driving games can provide. It’s easy to forget, but this was the biggest genre in town from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Consoles were sold on how good their racing games were: the original PlayStation had Ridge Racer, the Sega Saturn had Daytona USA. Later came the dirt-track thrills of Colin McRae Rally, the chaotic destruction of Burnout, the sophisticated realism of Gran Turismo. They were the bestsellers of the era, showcasing the future of real-time 3D visuals.

Why are Nintendo releasing a straight-up remake of the space-flight shooter – with many of its original limitations – rather than a fresh new take?

The Nintendo 64 was not my first video game console, but it was my formative one. Getting to grips with 3D movement in Super Mario 64 with that weird three-pronged controller is one of my most visceral childhood memories; the long, long wait for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the background noise to a huge chunk of my youth. But back in the 1990s (in the UK at least), it felt as if nobody had an N64. When everybody had a PlayStation instead, I felt I was the only kid in my whole city who cared more about Banjo-Kazooie than Crash Bandicoot.

If even Zelda seemed comparatively niche in Europe in the 90s, Lylat Wars (known elsewhere as Star Fox 64) was a real deep cut. It’s a 1997 space-flight shooter starring Fox McCloud and his squad of animal pilots laser-blasting across different planets in nimble crafts called Arwings. I played this game to absolute death in 1998, when I got it for my birthday alongside the fabled Rumble Pak, which made your controller vibrate and shudder whenever something cool was happening on screen (fun fact: Lylat Wars was the first console game to feature controller rumble). But I really hadn’t thought about it much since. Then, last week, Nintendo announced a Switch 2 remake.

Microsoft; PC, Xbox Series X/S (PS5 due later)
Dreamy vistas of the country’s natural beauties are stunningly delivered – but won’t distract from thrilling high-end driving adventures

The Forza Horizon games have always been about drama. Not just the tension and excitement of racing, but also the sensory impact of the natural environment – the sun rising over a dense city, rain clouds hovering above a valley floor. There are moments in this game – perhaps after emerging from a dense forest, or coming up from an underpass – where Mount Fuji briefly appears in the distance, hazy yet majestic, the Platonic ideal of a volcano – and it almost takes your breath away. Fans of this series have been waiting years for Japan and now here it is, the whole country, reduced, remixed and repackaged as a driving paradise.

In many ways, Forza Horizon 6 is a continuation of what this series has always been about. You enter a festival-style driving competition then drive around a vast map splattered with various races and challenges, earning reputation by competing well and buying new vehicles for your extensive garage. There are slight changes this time – you start as a rookie not an established legend, so you have to qualify to enter the festival, and Playground has re-introduced the need to unlock successive levels of competition bringing back the sense of progression from the earliest titles in the series. You start out clattering about in slower C-class vehicles on easier circuits and have to work hard to start lining up against super cars such as the Ferrari J50 or Lamborghini Huracán.

Previously prohibited use of websites such as Omoggle that connect a streamer to a stranger’s video feed now allowed

Last week, at 4am, 19-year-old Sammy Amz was scrolling through X when something caught his eye: a popular Twitch streamer was competing in a 1v1 “mog-off” with a stranger, and losing.

The next day he opened the Omoggle gaming website and began to play. Quickly he matched with another user – green dots appeared on their faces onscreen, as the website began to compare their measurements: canthal tilt, palpebral fissure ratio, nose-to-face width ratio and so on.

Leeds Playhouse
Dash Arts’ community-inspired production finds warmth and urgency in the local pub – even if its theatrical elements don’t always cohere

The English pub is the perfect crucible for Dash Arts’ latest piece inspired by community workshops from creator and director Josephine Burton.

A storm is blowing into the town where the Albion pub sits, both meteorological and political. Inside the rundown establishment, Sanjana is a landlady who is on her last legs and ready to throw in the bar towel. Her husband has died and her loving teacher daughter only returns occasionally these days. That the pub is given the ancient name for Britain is no coincidence – a lot of research has gone into this, not least the workshops around the country attended by more than 700 people, whose conversations were shaped by Barney Norris into the script and by Jonathan Walton into songs.

69 Humber Street, Hull
Marc Graham’s debut stretches from festival short to full-length play, tackling inheritance, class and familial resentment with plenty of theatrical confidence

There are many reasons to admire Hull’s Middle Child, a small but determined company in Yorkshire’s East Riding.

It has a genuine interest in developing new writers, enormous ambition (the founders say they want it to be “the most influential new writing theatre outside London”) and it has become one of the first resident companies at the National Theatre under Indhu Rubasingham.

Wolterton, Norfolk
From an explosion of plywood chairs to something akin to bubblegum stuck to the walls, this imaginative exhibition reverberates with Barlow’s punk irreverence

Wolterton Hall is folded so deeply into the countryside of the Bure Valley that you can’t even see the grand Palladian mansion when you enter the gates to the estate. This was once one of the four power houses of Norfolk, built by Thomas Ripley for Horatio Walpole. Inside, Wolterton is dripping in 18th-century treasures, furniture, then-fashionable Belgian tapestries, fusty old portraits of important types – but now also, knobbly bodily things, strange almost familiar shapes stuck to walls and chucked down the stairs, as if someone– namely Phyllida Barlow – had come in and trashed the place.

It’s a difficult thing to know what to do with these former country stately homes. Many have adopted a contemporary art programme as a way of challenging their history and bringing in new visitors. Simon Oldfield – Wolterton’s artistic director, brought in by the new owners, the Ellis family, two years ago – has done more than that. He has reinvented the space, making room for new ideas to take over. There’s no better artist for that than Barlow, whose works seem to take on a life of their own wherever they go. Her exhibition begins at the entrance, where the explosive installation Untitled: Stacked Chairs greets you. The cacophony of red plywood chairs feels like a statement about throwing things out and starting again. It’s rebellious, disruptive and direct.

Brixton House, London
Paula Varjack’s kinetic play uses lip syncing and dance routines to show how prejudice turned a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ into a career disaster

The year is 2004 and the Super Bowl halftime show is about to begin. What would later become known as “Nipplegate” – in which Justin Timberlake ripped part of Janet Jackson’s bodice, briefly exposing her right breast – will be broadcast to 70,000 spectators in the stadium and more than 140 million TV viewers. This one “wardrobe malfunction”, lasting just nine sixteenths of a second, will lead to Jackson being blacklisted from much of the music industry for years, sending her career into a spiral while Timberlake’s continued to thrive.

Paula Varjack’s play interrogates the role that gender, race and age played in that fallout, while also serving as a loud and proud love letter to Jackson and her music. Initially inspired by a 2019 trip to Glastonbury, where Varjack saw Jackson perform and wondered why she had never played the festival before, the show highlights the injustice of a white, male-controlled and favoured music industry. Performed alongside fellow devisers Pauline Mayers, Julienne Doko, Chia Phoenix and BSL performer Vinessa Brant, the result is a kinetic multimedia analysis that uses lip syncing, killer dance routines, onscreen BSL by Cherie Gordon and puppetry to build their case. Directed by Emily Aboud, the production erupts with high-speed spirit.

French campaigner was drugged by her ex-husband and sexually abused by dozens of men over almost a decade

Gisèle Pelicot has described the moment she fell in love and was able to trust again after her rape ordeal orchestrated by her former husband in France.

Pelicot, 73, waived her right to anonymity during the trial of Dominique Pelicot, who was jailed for 20 years in 2024 for drugging and raping her and allowing other men to sexually assault her while she was unconscious, over almost a decade.

Speaking at the Hay festival in Wales on Saturday, she said she never thought she could trust a man again before meeting her partner, Jean-Loup Agopian.

The campaigner said: “It’s something that I didn’t think could happen, especially at my age, first of all, I didn’t really want to fall in love, but life decided otherwise.

“We met, our trajectories crossed at one moment and I met this young man of 73… You see, you can fall in love at any age, it happened to me, it can happen to you, I’m convinced of it.

“I didn’t think that I’d be able to trust a man, but it’s what happened to me, so you see that everything can be allowed in life, you must never despair.”

Pelicot appeared at the festival to discuss her memoir A Hymn to Life and was interviewed on stage by Lady Kennedy.

She said that “society has got to wake up” on the issue of violence against women, and that it’s an “appalling evil that touches all borders”.

She landed a role in hit TV show Skins at 17 and went on to star in the fantasy epic. Then she was drawn towards a mysterious spiritual community. How did she end up being sectioned?

• ‘This is a test. A horrible test’: read an extract from Hannah Murray’s memoir

At least once a week, Hannah Murray has this one overpowering thought: “Thank God I don’t act any more.” She might be climbing her stairs, mug in hand, or at her desk opening her computer, she might be taking a casserole from the oven, or browsing the high street in the East Anglian town where she now lives. The thought will arrive along with what she describes as a sort of total bodily relief. She tries to hold on to this “I’m not an actor any more” feeling because it’s accompanied, she says, by “a real surge of joy”.

It’s not just because she doesn’t have to strip for the camera any more, although there was plenty of that, starting with Cassie, whom she played aged 17 in the E4 hit show Skins, mostly in underwear. And it’s not because she doesn’t have to cope with the relentless focus on her weight, though there was plenty of that too, accompanied by questions from journalists: was she anorexic in real life? Were her parents worried about her weight? It’s not because she’s not recognised everywhere, as she was after playing Gilly in Game of Thrones, with grown men having tantrums if she didn’t autograph their whatever or pose for a selfie. Nor is it having to negotiate which body parts she will contractually agree to show. Or contending with the highs of landing a great part followed by the lows of wrapping the shoot only to be thrown back on to the audition carousel and told: “Please go in looking nice. They need to believe Benedict Cumberbatch could actually be attracted to you.”

The South African photographer says this image of his ‘soulmate’ evokes feelings of sadness and longing in him

Arya the great dane was two years old when this image was taken. She was at home in Pretoria, South Africa, with Johan Van Aarde and three other dogs. “It was May 2021, which is our winter season,” van Aarde says. “The courtyard doors that lead to our pool would usually be open, but as the sun and the moon exchanged places and we started getting cosy inside, I closed them.”

That evening, as he prepared dinner, Van Aarde noticed Arya sitting on the sofa, gazing into the distance. “It was as if she was contemplating time and memory, admiring the reflection of the moon on the pool,” he says. “Great danes are majestic creatures with gentle souls who communicate their thoughts with their facial expressions – and, oh boy, do they tell a story.”

Darren Aronofsky among proponents of using technology, while Guillermo del Toro says he would ‘rather die’

Under a white marquee on Cannes’ Croisette beach, with the Mediterranean glistening behind him and superyachts drifting across the horizon, the director Darren Aronofsky addressed an audience of executives and tech evangelists gathered for an “AI for Talent” summit.

“There’s so much pushback against AI,” said Aronofsky, who has faced criticism over his embrace of generative AI projects though his new studio, Primordial Soup, at a time when artificial intelligence has become one of the film industry’s most divisive fault lines.

English wine grown in Crouch Valley is fast becoming globally renowned – even the French are taking notice

It was a Thursday afternoon spent basking in the sunshine, strolling through rolling hills and expansive plains laced with fruit-bearing vines. Surely I must have been dispatched to Tuscany or Bordeaux but no, this was the scene a mere 20-minute drive from Chelmsford, Essex.

While the unassuming city might be better know as the stomping ground for the cast of The Only Way is Essex, with ITV cameras a frequent sight, the surrounding area could soon have another claim to fame as an emerging capital of English wine, which is on the up.

A student and a salesperson disagreed about drug​ policy and HS2, but would they see eye to eye on the Edward Colston statue?

• Want to meet someone from across the divide? Click here to find out how

Joe, 20, Southampton

Occupation Geography student

Whether you want long, short, Charli xcx-inspired or a classic suit, here are our fashion writer’s favourite looks to say ‘I do’

• The best wedding guest dresses for every budget

I’m getting married next year, so I know all too well that the hunt for a dress (or in my case, two – one for the ceremony, one for the evening) might seem exciting, but is actually quite daunting. There are many decisions to mull. Do you go traditional (veil at al) or for something more modern? Perhaps you dread the idea of wearing white and want to go for an alt-colour.

There’s also the long v short debate. Not to mention the overwhelm from everyone chipping in their thoughts on what suits you best. Just remember: it’s your day and ultimately your dress, so finding something you love is what matters most.

As temperatures soar across the UK, chill your space – and avoid energy-guzzling aircon – with our pick of the best fans, from tower to desk to bladeless

• The best portable neck and handheld fans

Our world is getting hotter. Summer heatwaves are so frequent, they’re stretching the bounds of what we think of as summer. Hot-and-bothered home working and sweaty, sleepless nights are now alarmingly common.

Get a good fan and you can dodge the temptation of air conditioning. Aircon is incredibly effective, but it uses a lot of electricity … and burning fossil fuels is how we got into this mess in the first place. Save money and carbon by opting for a great fan instead.

Best fan overall:
AirCraft Lume

Best budget fan and best desk fan:
Devola desk fan – stock expected at end of May

Our reviewer found Woolroom’s supportive, breathable and sustainable Standen mattress a total dream – but luxury comfort doesn’t come cheap

• The best mattresses, tested

The first time I slept on a wool mattress was a revelation. As is so often the case with bed-based Damascene moments, this one happened on holiday. The wool and pocket-sprung mattress in our Lake District hotel room was cosy but breathable even in the height of summer, and it proved far too comfy to leap out of for early morning walks.

Back home, I soothed the post-holiday blues by seeking out wool mattresses to review. First, I tested the Millbrook Wool Luxury 4000, which is excellent but didn’t quite live up to that hallowed Cumbrian memory. Then came this Woolroom Standen Wool mattress, which did – and even nearly toppled the Otty Original Hybrid as best overall in our best mattresses roundup, where I called it “a masterpiece”.

Secateurs, pizza ovens and sparkling rose in a tin … whatever your plans for the long weekend, here’s how to make the most of it

• Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Reasons to be cheerful #271: a warm, sunny bank holiday weekend. Here at the Filter, we need no excuse to kick off our shoes, grab a cold drink (and some SPF) and head outside.

To help you make the most of the long weekend, we’ve rounded up some of our favourite things. Whether it’s tools to spruce up your outdoor space, tipples to sip in the garden, a fake tan to jump-start your summer skin or fashion for warmer weather, summer starts here.

Can taramasalata, hummus or moussaka ever be fancy? Short answer: yes

Fenix, a new Greek restaurant on Piccadilly in Mayfair, is very much part of what I’m calling the “maximalist” group of modern openings. See also Lilibet’s and Simpson’s-in-the-Strand. Financial downturn? Never heard of her.

While restaurateurs are all over the media turning out their empty pockets and pleading poverty, this new offshoot of a Manchester institution casually throws down another Sims-style pleasure palace. The photographs of the sumptuously ornate, Athenian-influenced interior can’t be real, surely? Well, it turns out they are. As you leave six lanes of moving traffic behind you and enter Fenix, eureka! You’re suddenly in a cross between an Aegean god’s haven and the White Company’s bedding department.

Fish stew in the south of France doesn’t have to mean a complicated bouillabaise: bourride is a simpler and equally perfect match for a summer’s evening

Much as I love bouillabaisse, I’ve never come across rascasse, the spiny Mediterranean rockfish that’s the backbone of Marseille’s signature dish, outside its homeland. Bourride, another southern French fish stew, is a simpler affair that’s much easier to recreate here. Enriched with garlicky aïoli, it’s a lovely thing for a summer’s evening, and can be prepared ahead up to the end of step 7.

Prep 20 min
Cook 1 hr 10 min
Serves 2, generously

Global events and the climate crisis have left Britain’s food system dangerously exposed and in desperate need of an overhaul

The news that the Treasury was asking UK supermarkets to cap price rises on essential foods was greeted with predictable squeals of horror this week. Supermarkets were reportedly “furious”, while luminaries from the former head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies to the former chair of M&S could be found harrumphing about the evils of price controls.

But this caterwauling is a distraction from two unpleasant facts. Firstly, the food price surge over the summer and beyond is likely to be significant – and will come on top of a near-40% rise in the price of food since 2020 – due to a devastating combination of the Iran war and a forecast record-breaking El Niño, which will hammer global food production. And secondly, Britain’s food system is painfully exposed to such shocks. The long-held assumption that a global food system can be relied on to meet the nation’s needs, at a reasonable price, no longer applies.

The sweet drink is a staple in Spain and Mexico, and it’s being served around the UK as an iced beverage and even in desserts. Here’s how to drink it

Having lived through the “matcha revolution”, I’ve become used to giving unfamiliar drinks a go. From bubble tea to pumpkin-spiced lattes, coffee tonic to ube frappes, I’ll try anything twice and – compared to those beverages – horchata feels like a more palatable prospect. The refreshing yet creamy cold drink from Spain and Mexico is often compared to cereal milk, which has also gained popularity as a flavour in its own right and is increasingly cropping up on menus elsewhere.

Last month, Starbucks announced that, in the US, an iced horchata shaken espresso would be returning to its summer menu (this year joined by a new horchata frappuccino), having outperformed all previous seasonal iced shaken espresso beverages by an impressive 44%. In the UK, where horchata is less commonplace, I started spotting “dirty” versions, with added espresso, on coffee shop menus, alongside “dirty chai”.

From single mothers to fathers of autistic children and fellow adoptees – some relationships come along just when you need them the most

Lucy Crowe and Mikayla Jolley, London

Estrangement is not binary, but a continuum of reducing contact. Support plays an important role, whether or not people seek to reconcile

• The modern mind is a column where experts discuss mental health issues they are seeing in their work

Despite media stories occasionally highlighting high-profile family estrangements, in many cultures estrangement carries a stigma, a direct challenge to deeply held values about what family should be.

People estranged from families often feel shame or a sense they’ve failed, and carry the distress silently, in private. However, research on estrangement suggests it’s far more common than most people think.

The real question isn’t whether you are being lied to, but why ‘tall tales’ land so heavily with you

When I was 21, I went on a girls’ trip with university friends. Over dinner, one of the girls, who was known for being a liar, announced she had just heard from her doctor that she had cancer and needed chemotherapy. She never had chemotherapy and most of the group (especially me) stopped socialising with her after that. Five years later, she admitted she had been lying.

Recently, a new person joined my work and I think she may be a liar of similar proportions. We get along very well, are a similar age and are both chatty. She is also an over-sharer. According to her, this has been the worst six months of her life, involving injuries, escapades and traumatic events, some of which feel untrue. I feel I have to believe her or I’ll be the worst person ever. Yet, my instincts and life experience tell me these things are probably fiction or at least heavily exaggerated.

There is no universal definition of sex – and questioning what ‘counts’ can open the door to more fulfilling intimacy

I’m a sex educator. At the beginning of each of my classes, I ask a seemingly simple question: “What is sex?”

Some people might think it’s my job to answer that question. I do give accurate and inclusive information about sexual health, relationships and identity. But I don’t tell you what to do with that information or what value to assign that information.

The uncertain interest rate outlook is making tracker deals popular again. We look at the pros and cons of both types of loan

With some experts warning that we may have to brace ourselves for interest rate rises later this year, it might seem odd to suggest considering a tracker mortgage.

But, amid the economic chaos caused by the Iran war, for some people looking for a home loan or to remortgage, a tracker – where the rate you pay moves up or down in line with the Bank of England base rate – could be a good bet.

From a farmhouse with a wildflower meadow to an award-winning London flat with a neat garden for al fresco dining

Parents can can claim up to £2,000 a year for each child – but many are put off by the clunkiness of the scheme

Any parent who has ever used the UK government’s tax-free childcare system knows what a painful experience it is. Each month when I log into my account, I feel a sense of dread and frustration. Why is something that is such a lifeline for so many parents so difficult to use?

The scheme gives working parents an extra £2 for every £8 they spend on childcare. You can claim up to £2,000 a year for each child (or up to £4,000 a year for a disabled child).

Special anniversary edition of award-winning headphones are some of the best sounding you can buy, but cost far more than top Sony noise cancellers

Sony’s latest noise-cancelling headphones are a special anniversary set made to celebrate a decade of its prized 1000X series, designed to be plusher, slimmer, more comfortable and the best sounding yet.

The original 1000X launched in 2016, igniting a fierce rivalry with the dominant Bose and its QuietComfort line, which would push noise-cancelling technology dramatically forward as each tried to outdo the other with subsequent releases.

If I’d been taught this way of thinking as a child, I can’t begin to imagine how much easier things could have been

In 1981 the CD was born and so was I. Both arrivals were surprising and have drifted in and out of fashion ever since. As a baby, my majestic “chonk lord” status was cause for celebration and an indication of prosperity. But from a young age I noticed that my presence seemed to offend other people. When I was seven, I remember asking to have a go at skipping, after having turned the rope for everyone else. One child enlightened me on why I couldn’t: I was too fat to skip.

Children learn hierarchy from adults and then their peers. Who belongs, who doesn’t and why. My classmates learned from adults to see me as something to mock and despise. Even my own well-meaning father once sat me down and told me that nobody would love, trust or employ me due to my body shape. This didn’t shock me; I’d already picked up what everyone was putting down.

Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads

Guardian Australia joins ultrarunner Joanne Walker in an excruciating race through the Blue Mountains, where men outnumber women four to one

Somewhere before the finish line the body starts to break down, Joanne Walker says.

“The pain starts in your feet but before long it moves up to your knees and eventually you feel like you just can’t move your legs any more.”

After 30 hours with no sleep, running alone through the cold darkness of the Megalong Valley, the brain can break as well.

“At one point, I did not even know where I was going; I was swerving all over the shop,” she says.

From infections and allergies to brain diseases and autoimmune disorders, a wave of trials offers hope

Clinical trials of immunotherapies have rocketed in the past decade as researchers have turned their understanding of the body’s defences into powerful new treatments. Leading the pack are cancer therapies, but researchers have other conditions in their sights, from infections and allergies to brain diseases and autoimmune disorders. Here, we explore how these therapies work.

Cancer Research UK figures show number diagnosed with most serious form of skin cancer has risen above 20,000 for first time

The number of cases from the most serious form of skin cancer have reached a record high across the UK, according to analysis by a leading cancer charity.

Melanoma cases in the UK have risen above 20,000 for the first time ever, with 20,980 people being diagnosed with the form of cancer in 2022, according to analysis of the latest figures by Cancer Research UK.

Growing numbers of people are seeking improbable cosmetic surgery based on chatbots’ recommendations

Plastic surgeons are increasingly concerned about the rise of “AI face”, as more and more clients arrive in their offices with unrealistic AI-generated visions of what they want to look like.

Dr Nora Nugent, a cosmetic surgeon from Tunbridge Wells, has seen this first hand. Clients have started coming to her office with photos of themselves beautified by AI and a false expectation that those results are achievable with surgery. She is also the president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, and says many colleagues are having similar experiences.

Does Puerto Rican star’s debut collection for Zara spell the end of short shorts?

Men can breathe a huge sigh of relief this week, thanks to Bad Bunny, whose debut collection for fast fashion company Zara includes a pair of shockingly normal mid-thigh shorts.

While for the last few years, short-shorts have threatened to make every day a leg day, the sight of the Puerto Rican star wearing shorts that come comfortably to within a few inches of the knee will signal a welcome shift for many.

Take your lead from Harry Styles and go for short shorts, or dig out your favourite knee-length pair

The floaty, feminine aesthetic being worn by young pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter has been around since the 1960s. So why all the fuss?

• Don’t get Fashion Statement delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

In the music video for her recent single Drop Dead, pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo saunters beguilingly through the ornate rooms of the Palace of Versailles, her eyes fixed on the camera. It is an all round soft-girl production, shot by Petra Collins who captures a hazy teenage aesthetic close to a carbon copy of Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film, Marie Antoinette. But when the video aired last month, it was met with instant backlash online – not for her halting tourists from visiting the world heritage site for the day, but for Rodrigo’s Pinterest-inspired, pastel blue, babydoll ensemble.

The outfit – a floaty off-the-shoulder Chloé pre-fall 2026 babydoll top, styled with silky bloomers peeking out underneath and white pointelle knee socks – did not impress the keyboard warriors (likely, bots), who accused the singer of infantilising herself and invoking a ‘Lolita’ aesthetic. A few weeks later, Rodrigo donned a similar look (pictured top) on stage in Barcelona for Spotify’s Billions Club Live concert: a pink and white floral puff-sleeve babydoll top with matching ruffled bloomers from the small brand Génération78, offset by chunky black knee-high Dr Marten boots, equal parts soft and severe.

The reopened Train de Merveilles route takes passengers from the glamour of Nice to a grandiose alpine landscape

Nine-thirty on a sunny Tuesday morning, and the platforms at Nice-Ville station are buzzing. Office workers nudge their way past backpackers, passengers clamber on to trains heading east to Monaco and Italy, or west to Antibes and Cannes. My husband and I, however, are heading away from the glittering coastline and boarding the Train des Merveilles (Train of Wonders) into the Alpes-Azur mountains.

Back on track last December after a programme of major works closed the line for a year, it’s one of the most spectacular train routes in Europe, a two-hour journey that climbs 1,000 metres in 100km, linking Nice with the medieval town of Tende, surrounded by the soaring peaks of the Mercantour national park.

Travellers warned to beware of debit card cons after one was charged £1,500 for a kebab and another £3,000 for corn on the cob

When Lisa Selby* used her debit card to pay for two slices of barbecued cheese from a beach vendor in Rio de Janeiro, she expected to pay 40 reais (£5.90) for the snack.

But shortly after the payment had gone through, she realised that she had been charged 4,000 reais (£590) after the vendor added two extra zeros to the card reader.

Photographer Lorenzo Grifantini looks at how the Italian capital’s historic centre has gradually reorganised itself around the uninterrupted flow of visitors and the expectations projected on to it

By mid-morning, the area around the Trevi fountain is already difficult to cross. Visitors stop suddenly to take photographs while tour groups gather behind raised umbrellas, and security staff redirect the flow of people through temporary barriers placed around the monument. Nearby, souvenir kiosks sell rosaries, plastic gladiator helmets, bottled water and magnets in the summer heat.

Tourists pose for photographs in front of the Trevi fountain

Experts warn about the risks of cave diving without proper training, planning and specialised equipment after deaths in Vaavu atoll

The diving tragedy in the Maldives – which claimed the lives of four Italian divers inside an underwater cave, followed by the death of a Maldivian navy diver – has renewed warnings from experts about the risks of cave diving without proper training, planning and specialised equipment.

On Thursday, the Divers Alert Network (DAN), which coordinated the complex search and recovery operation at the Dhekunu Kandu dive site in Vaavu atoll, announced all the divers’ dead bodies had been recovered.

Colman, 31, a lawyer, meets Ben, 28, an assistant stage manager

What were you hoping for?
Brown eyes, decent chat, and if all else failed, a good story.

When my cat jokes are met with near silence, there’s only one thing for it …

I remember the first time it happened, in the band’s earliest days. We were playing a small festival in Yorkshire, before a seated audience in an arts centre. At the end of the first song there was an unfamiliar sound, like bacon sizzling, but amplified. It took me a moment to realise it was applause.

Up until that point we had mostly played in pubs, where everything we did was met with the same level of high-spirited indifference – the persistent, lively hum of people determined not to let a bit of music spoil their night out. Applause was new.

Mourne Mountains, County Down: At first it didn’t seem like much so we carried on, but then it got worse – we could hear the flames across the valley

It all started at around half past 10. We were at Hen, Cock and Pigeon Rock which is a good route with views of the Mourne mountains and the sea. We were walking up a path when we saw smoke in the distance. It wasn’t very much so we kept going. It has been unusually dry here, and the top grass was crispy, with squelchy mud underneath. We saw tadpoles in a puddle, but the puddle seemed small.

As we were going up one of the mountains, we saw how much smoke there really was. Soon after that we could see a ring of flames. We weren’t close, but and we could hear it across the valley. The smoke was starting to block out the sun.

From As Nasty As They Wanna Be to Saltburn and The Full Wax, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 What is the most populous city directly on the Mediterranean coast?
2 Which ruler last had a coronation in 1963?
3 What school subject, abbreviated, is plural in Britain but singular in the US?
4 Which married couple have 12 Olympic golds between them?
5 Gatsby, Gowen and Tibbs were which establishment’s long-term residents?
6 Which rodents are known as “nature’s engineers”?
7 Which act’s As Nasty As They Wanna Be was the first album declared legally obscene in the US?
8 What global climate event is ENSO?
What links:
9 Avatar (LA); Dangal (Mumbai); Behind the Scenes (Lagos)?
10 Xi Jinping; Primo Levi; Angela Merkel; Margaret Thatcher?
11 Saltburn; The Full Wax; The Good Earth; taekwondoin turned boxer?
12 Acca; in-play; moneyline; prop; spread?
13 Flamingo; Lobster Trap and Fish Tail; Mercury Fountain; Trois Disques?
14 White Dogwood (11); Golden Bell (12); Azalea (13)?
15 Fates of the Guadalupe storm petrel, Socorro dove and Stephens Island wren?

Global Pepfar program has long had Republican leadership and bipartisan support, but initiative is under fire

US midterm voters overwhelmingly support Pepfar, an initiative to end HIV/Aids that also has strengthened health systems against other infectious disease threats but has come under fire from the Trump administration.

About three in four (74%) likely voters in the US midterm elections say they support funding the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar), with voters more likely to back candidates who support Pepfar, according to a recent poll. Four in five (80%) of the voters said there is a moral argument for supporting lifesaving treatment for people at risk for or living with HIV/Aids, regardless of their personal choices.

Councils fix a pothole every 17 seconds – but getting on top of the repair backlog would cost £18.6bn. Why is it so hard to solve a problem that drives the nation crazy?

Marsh Street in the historic centre of Bristol is a modest little stretch of road with an office block at one end, a Thai restaurant at the other, and an almighty mess in between.

Along its length of 200 metres or so, the tarmac surface of the road is pockmarked with many dozens of cracks, patches, divots and holes. In some spots where the surface has worn away, three or more layers of road structure are exposed beneath. What is a bouncy enough ride in a bus or car is even more of an assault course for cyclists, a number of whom weave carefully down its length as they cut through the city centre.

Some locals fear Nansledan, touted as a blueprint for community-focused retail, is draining life from the town next door

A buzzard soars above wildflower meadows glinting with buttercups, as a giant construction vehicle whirs across a concrete pad where a new Tesco and a market hall are under construction.

The development could be seen as a vote of confidence in a great British tradition. The Prince of Wales this week cured his hangover after Aston Villa’s Europa League win by checking out building work on what could be the UK’s newest high street, in Nansledan, Cornwall.

We would like to hear about what you love about the great outdoors

As summer comes and our gardens, parks and woodlands burst into life, many of us are heading outdoors.

Scientific evidence shows how vitally important greenery and the natural world are for our mental and physical wellbeing.

Wherever you’re planning to watch the matches – we’d like to hear from you

The men’s World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada is nearly upon us, kicking off on 11 June.

Amid the excitement around the tournament, there has been controversy over Fifa’s ticketing process, the cost of travel, and security concerns for fans travelling to the US.

The Pensions Commission said 15 million people were currently not saving adequately for their retirement

Fifteen million people are currently not saving enough for their retirement, according to the Pensions Commission, who have warned this could rise to as many as 19 million without action.

The independent group of experts warned as many as 45% of working-age adults were not saving into a pension at all, despite nearly half of them being in work.

We would like to hear from people who have emigrated - or are considering doing so – due to rising anti-migration sentiment or policies

The Unite the Kingdom march attracted tens of thousands of people to the capital on Saturday. While some insist it was a display of national pride, others see the Tommy Robinson rally as a hostile display of anti-migrant sentiment. US vice president JD Vance appeared to align himself with those who attended the march at a White House press briefing on Tuesday.

We would like to hear from people who have emigrated - or are considering doing so - because of anti-migration sentiment or government policy. Since the UK is just one country where anti-migration sentiment has flared, we’re keen to hear from people globally who have made life decisions because of the current climate.

Wake up to the top stories and what they mean – free to your inbox every weekday morning at 7am

Scroll less, understand more: sign up to receive our news email each weekday for clarity on the top stories in the UK and across the world.

Explore all our newsletters: whether you love film, football, fashion or food, we’ve got something for you

Get smart, sustainable shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox, every Sunday

The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.

A weekly email from our star chefs featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas

Each week we’ll send you an exclusive newsletter from our star food writers. We’ll also send you the latest recipes from our star chefs, stand-out food features and seasonal eating inspiration, plus restaurant reviews from Grace Dent.

Sign up below to start receiving the best of our culinary journalism in one mouth-watering weekly email.

Upgrade your space today, with eight emails packed with tips to brighten up your home - whatever your budget

Embrace your space: the Guardian’s House to Home newsletter is bursting with tips and tricks to help you boost your bedroom and give your living room some love.

Sign up any time, and get eight emails direct to your inbox every Sunday morning.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world