Jacob Wulfson’s fellow airmen decided his fate after a court martial at RAF Lakenheath – a distressing week for Sarah Steele, the academic he assaulted

• Explainer: how the US bypasses British courts to try its military over crimes in the UK

When Sarah Steele woke up on the morning of 2 December 2023, she found herself in a pool of cold water in a bathtub. She was naked and in the apartment of an American fighter pilot she had met in person for the first time the night before. She was confused. Her head hurt, and so did her neck.

This was the account Steele, a British academic, provided to prosecutors. They later accused the pilot, Capt Jacob Wulfson, of drugging and strangling Steele in his apartment in the east of England, and penetrating her vagina with his penis without her consent.

He’s almost certain to become the UK’s seventh leader in a decade. And with the rightwing press and the algorithm against him, he’s basically a meat sacrifice

Current state of British democracy: the guy who puts out the resignation lectern in front of No 10 is now so familiar that he has become a meme. On the internet, they call him Hot Podium Guy. William Hague’s old line about the Tory party being “an autocracy moderated by regicide” is now basically true of the country as a whole.

And so out Keir Starmer strides to give a speech that, in the grand tradition of Starmer oratory, occupies the curious liminal space between the instantly forgettable and the barely existent. What might comprise a Davina-style supercut of Starmer’s best bits? The time he described us as an “island of strangers”, or blurted out that Israel had the right to starve Gaza of food and water? When your most memorable quotes were so poorly judged, perhaps it might be best for everyone if you put the microphone down for a while.
Not everyone is a natural public speaker, which on one level, of course, is fine. What Starmer craved above all was a task, a clear set of instructions and a solution. To him the British state was essentially an item of flatpack furniture: insert legislation A into complex social problem B, screw voter demographic C as tightly as possible, and if in doubt, call the handy 24-hour helpline to speak to Morgan.

Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist

Our lovable yet unruly boxer Dusty forced me to wonder: if a dog has no morals, how do you teach it to be ‘good’?

When I carried my beautiful two-month-old puppy into our home for the first time, I couldn’t have imagined the scene six months later, as I led her through my local park experiencing such a toxic cocktail of emotions – guilt, regret, powerlessness – that I had tears in my eyes. It was a walk that many dog owners will recognise as having “gone badly”. My exuberant dog, Dusty, had approached another dog that did not wish to play with her. This shouldn’t have happened. I should have been able to call her back. Maybe I should have just kept her on the lead. Maybe I shouldn’t have got a dog in the first place.

Dusty started barking, jumping and circling the owner and her dog at high speed. “Do you want to have a dogfight?” the owner asked curtly, while I lunged around on the ground, all dignity jettisoned. “My dog just wants to play with yours,” I protested. “But mine doesn’t want to play,” she replied. “If you just let yours off the lead for a moment,” I countered, “I think mine would calm down. I promise you, she’s not aggressive.” Her reply: “So what do you call this?” Checkmate. As the seconds and then minutes passed, with Dusty still evading my reach, I began to wonder how long this might go on. Would the police have to be called?

As the former teen heartthrob turns 60, we look at his most intense, ironic, lovable roles – from a sympathetic scientist to a peevish puppeteer

It’s the Great Depression à la Disney when a tomboy, Natty, rides the rails in search of her lumberjack father. This marked the first time I saw Cusack, impressive as a wise young hobo, though not the first time I saw Natty’s wolf-dog companion: it’s Jed, sled-dog from The Thing!

(Warner)
From Count Dracula organ to choirs crying in Latin, the Devon band are scenery-chewingly preposterous​ yet nuanced on this epic about extraterrestrial life

Barely three minutes of Muse’s 10th album has elapsed before a choir make an appearance: a choir that isn’t singing so much as chanting in Latin, like something you might hear on the soundtrack to an occult-themed horror film. “Sanctus!” they cry. “Dominus!” And, inevitably, “Lucifer!”

The choir are harder to hear than you might think, battling as they are against everything else that’s going on during The Wow! Signal’s opening track, The Dark Forest: a cantering electronic bassline not a million miles removed from those you used to get on the hi-NRG records that soundtracked mid-80s gay clubs; a string section sawing away as if their lives depended on it; a distorted electric guitar playing frantic prog-metal arpeggios; and frontman Matt Bellamy wildly emoting through a chanson-like vocal melody: “Stars extinguish themselves in fear!” he sings. “We will all beg for extinction!”

Cornwall's housing crisis is forcing young people to live in vans. As second homes and short-term holiday lets drive up house prices, a growing number are turning to van life to stay in the place they love. The Guardian meets young people who say their van brings them freedom but also uncertainty, as they struggle to find water, safe places to park and secure a future

• ​’It can flip quickly from being idyllic’: the reality of life in Cornwall for young van dwellers priced out of the housing market

Some details in this film have been changed for safety reasons

Heatwave-related deaths climb in Spain, Italy and France as continent battles another day of extreme temperatures

Farryn Stock

Over in the UK, South East Water has announced a temporary hosepipe ban in Kent amid growing strain from the ongoing heatwave (31C today, 33C tomorrow).

“To safeguard that shared supply and prevent any homes from facing a sudden loss of water, we sadly need to ask our communities to not use their hosepipes immediately. We are deeply sorry for the disruption this causes, and we are incredibly grateful to everyone helping us protect Kent’s water.”

Second quake, at magnitude 7.5, was most powerful to strike the country since 1900, collapsing buildings in capital

• Venezuela earthquake – latest updates

Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, has declared a state of emergency after the country was struck by two powerful earthquakes that collapsed dozens of buildings and killed at least 164 people, a toll that it is feared could rise significantly.

Rodríguez said 971 people were injured and more casualties were expected. The two strong earthquakes hit within a minute of each other shortly after 6pm local time on Wednesday. The first had a magnitude of 7.2 and the second 7.5, the most powerful to strike the country since 1900, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).

Officers looking into reports the man had been ‘aggressive and disruptive’ and that passengers had restrained him

A police investigation has been launched after a man on a Jet2 flight died after reportedly being restrained by passengers.

A spokesperson for Greater Manchester police confirmed the death of the man, who was in his 30s.

Human Tissue Authority says bodies not transferred to freezer in time due to insufficient storage needs

Bodies in the mortuary at the NHS trust at the centre of the health services biggest ever maternity care scandal were found in a state of “advanced deterioration” due to not being transferred to a freezer in time, inspectors have said.

Human Tissue Authority (HTA) inspectors who visited Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust in March discovered eight bodies in a state of advanced decomposition due to not being transferred to a freezer within a sufficient timeframe.

Allies lobby to keep chancellor as ‘stable’ choice while Wes Streeting and Ed Miliband also in picture

• UK politics live – latest updates

Rachel Reeves has given her support to Andy Burnham to be the next prime minister, despite reports she is likely to be moved out of the role of chancellor if he becomes Labour leader.

The chancellor told the BBC she and Burnham were friends and did not appear to rule out accepting a more junior cabinet position. “I’m supporting Andy to be prime minister,” she said.

⚽ Latest news from day 15 | Vehicle hits crowd in Mexico
⚽ World Cup Q&A: post your questions for our US team
⚽ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Mail Taha

Mauricio Pochettino’s US team are having a great time at home – but the last couple years haven’t been all that easy, writes Jeff Rueter.

For more permutations chat, click below:

Chief executive claims CMA has forced airline to adopt ‘less transparent and less consumer-friendly’ approach

Ryanair has changed its family seating policy, after Britain’s competition watchdog launched an investigation into the airline’s charges for parents to sit with their children.

Europe’s largest airline said that as of Thursday, adults would be offered “free of charge” seats next to their children after they have checked in for their flight – but at the rear of the plane. All children on the booking will be allocated seats alongside them for no fee.

Pair of sick snakes discovered at club in County Durham presumed to have been dumped there by owner

For most golfers, the biggest hindrance they are likely to come across during a round is a strong gust of wind or getting their ball caught in a bunker. For golfers in County Durham, however, the obstacles that players have encountered are 3 metres long and covered in scales.

Two boa constrictors have been found on Blackwell Grange Golf Club in Darlington one week apart, with the first being found on 13 June during a children’s golf lesson when a 12-year-old girl’s shot landed directly on the snake.

British apples grown at home are often more expensive than apples shipped from countries thousands of miles away. And it's not just apples. Bananas, which are virtually all imported from tropical countries, are consistently the cheapest fruit available per kilogram on UK supermarket shelves. Josh Toussaint-Strauss investigates the peculiar economics of supermarket fruit, and discovers there are many aspects of our food supply system that don’t appear to make much sense

Caricom Reparations Commission’s Hilary Beckles explains how it will help address the ‘residual legacy of slavery’

• Barbados prime minister announces manifesto for slavery reparations

One of the key outcomes of the recent reparations conference in Ghana was the launch of the Caribbean’s manifesto outlining the “moral, ethical and legal case for reparations” for the enslavement of African people.

The Caribbean Community Reparations Commission (CRC), which created the document, says it is a strengthening of an existing Caribbean Community (Caricom) 10-point plan for reparations from the UK and other former colonial powers, and a response to feedback from the public, organisations and political leaders.

From Merlin the duck to Thierry Henry’s panic and the goalie who broke the internet, here are the tournament’s most glorious TV moments

The schedule-dominating football tournament has reached its midway mark, which means it’s time for isotonic drinks, orange segments and in-depth TV analysis.

From weepy cult heroes to watery bloopers, from panto villain to potty-mouthed pundits, here’s our highlights of the World Cup coverage so far …

I use a wheelchair and yearn to dance like I did when I was a kid. Could I possibly hold my own in a class led by inspirational disabled dance star Kate Stanforth?

From ballroom to hip-hop, I tried many different dance classes growing up, but nothing ever stuck for too long. My body never found its rhythm to any music, I quickly became exhausted from any physical exertion, and I concluded I must just not have been made for exercise.

My theory was confirmed when I was 13 – and I was diagnosed with Friedreich’s ataxia (FA), which is a rare, progressive neuromuscular disease that causes nerve damage, muscle weakness and mobility loss. Now, aged 29, I use a wheelchair and a lot of my coordination has been eroded. I still love to dance but it’s increasingly rare I get the chance.

So-called final outing for Johnny Knoxville and his daring, stunt-hungry pals might be close to a greatest hits reel, but there are enough laughs to warrant the nostalgia

The boy-men of Jackass, a three-season MTV comedy-stunt show turned periodic and beloved film series, have shown a willingness to engage in all manner of rectal probing in the name of shock laughs. (Perhaps most famously, Ryan Dunn, who died in 2011, inserted a toy car into himself before going in for an X-ray.) So it’s poignant to see the ageing crew take this to a natural next step in Jackass: Best and Last, where raspy-voiced fixture Steve-O submits to a prostate exam – performed by a wisecracking robot, of course. Later, the gang ingests the drug used to flush out digestive systems before a colonoscopy, and then attempts to play Twister with a grim, scatological timebomb looming. Cameraman Lance Bangs, as always, attempts to contain his retching.

It would be a stretch to describe this fifth and allegedly final Jackass film as reflective about the ageing process, at least any more than its predecessors. Even its sense of finality has been hinted at before: way back in 2010’s Jackass 3-D, Weezer’s nostalgic song Memories blasted over end-credits footage of the guys throughout the years, and 2022’s Jackass Forever had a similarly valedictory tone. In Best and Last, someone goes so far as to tease ringleader Johnny Knoxville about whether the audience can believe him about this being the last movie, given that he’s said that sort of thing before.

In a chilling new book, theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli says we’re back on the brink – and this time, leaders chronically lack the nous of Kennedy and Khrushchev. So why is he against rearming?

Should European members of Nato be rearming in the face of the Russian threat? And if not, I ask Carlo Rovelli, why not? The Italian theoretical physicist seems a good person to answer these questions since his timely new book, 85 Seconds to Midnight, is subtitled A Physicist’s Argument against Rearmament.

Rovelli, 70, brown eyed, genial, with enviably luxuriant grey locks, removes his glasses before answering. “The idea of the Russian military being a threat to Europe is ridiculous. Russia can’t even get to Kyiv! A few years ago, Russia had 4% of the world’s military spending and Nato had 40%.”

Now supporting each other through cancer treatment, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova trace the ups and downs of their decades-long relationship at the summit of sporting achievement

Here is a Netflix documentary with a real story to tell: the giant friendship and frenmity (or frivalry) between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, the two titans who throughout the late 70s and 80s dominated international women’s tennis and did so much to boost the sport whose existence, incidentally, helped to silence certain sexist reactionaries who doubted the feasibility of women’s football. The film shows us their intense relationship now, supporting each other as they both go through the challenge of cancer.

It’s a highly watchable film, which makes the strong and valid point that even in the cutthroat world of professional sport there is, in fact, room for real friendship and “sportsmanship”. But it leaves open the suspicion that the friendship between Evert and Navratilova, though perfectly genuine, may be a little more complicated than it looks here. And the dual storyline tilts the balance, just a little, away from the side of the story which for me is more compelling: the extraordinary drama of Navratilova’s courageous defection in 1975, when she was just 18, from communist Czechoslovakia to the US. She knew that she might never see her mother or sister again, and for a while faced the real threat of abduction by Soviet or Czech security forces. (Nureyev was 23 when he defected, chess star Victor Korchnoi 45.)

Annabel is embarrassed when she spots crumbs in Teddy’s facial hair, but he finds her nudges shaming. Who is being prickly? You decide

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

I don’t want to get his food on my face when I kiss him, and I don’t want him looking silly in public

“It’s been really sparky and perky and a reminder that international football is something people actually do for passion,” says our chief sports writer Barney Ronay.

From Gianni Infantino’s heavy reliance on a private jet to attend multiple World Cup matches daily, to ‘the wretched and mendacious’ mid-half advert breaks – as well as the entertaining managers and lessons in history: Barney reveals his best and worst bits from travelling around the US.

Despite Fifa’s ‘horribly compromised’ World Cup, Barney looks at how the contest still has a way of inspiring joy and unity, whether that’s through American hospitality, multicultural teams, or simply just entertaining football.

• ⚽ Latest news from day 15 | Knockout permutations

• ⚽ Player guide | Bracketology

The assumption that the England coach gave his team a rocket against Croatia at half-time is wrong. In fact he did the opposite

We’ve completed the Southgate leadership lessons and now we find ourselves at the beginning of the Tuchelosophy course. We can already see some of the key modules we’ll be studying over the next few weeks. But it’s important we’re ready to learn with open minds and ditch some of the old tropes.

The dominant simplistic narrative that accompanied the shift from Gareth Southgate to Thomas Tuchel was that the former wasn’t ruthless enough and therefore the latter will be more ruthless. There are already assumptions and interpretations of Tuchel’s actions and words being made through that lens which need challenging.

Miami is still a city where the stars come out to play – and on Wednesday one shone brighter than anyone else

“Water so clear you can see to the bottom, hundred thousand dollar cars e’ybody got ’em. Ain’t no surprise in the club to see Sly Stallone, Miami my second home.” So said Will Smith, and the actor-rapper’s observations ring true to this day. Miami is still a city where the stars come out to play. On this night, however, and unfortunately from a Scottish perspective, Vinícius Júnior came to play his way through their defence.

Just as thousands of Scots colonised Boston, so it appeared that the entire upper middle class of São Paulo had come to Florida for this big game. Brazilian celebrities had followed too, the most obvious being Ronaldinho, who not only officially signed for a third division Italian side while in the city, but was afforded a VVIP spot just outside the players’ tunnel where he could greet the players and Carlo Ancelotti, the coach, as they made their way out.

As we near the end of the group stage, writers from our newly expanded US soccer team Alexander Abnos, Pablo Maurer and Jeff Rueter will be online to answer your World Cup questions at 5PM BST (midday EST, 9AM PDT)

Post yours below the line now

We’re approaching the end of the group stages of the biggest World Cup ever. The Guardian’s coverage of the tournament has been greatly enhanced this year by the expansion of our soccer/football team in the United States.

Correspondents Alexander Abnos, Pablo Iglesias Maurer and Jeff Rueter have been as busy as you’d expect over the first few weeks of the tournament.

The irony of the superstar-heavy narrative is the way it embellishes rather than diminishes importance of the collective

“Cristiano Ronaldo’s record-equalling sixth World Cup got off to a disappointing start,” began the Reuters match report of Portugal’s 1-1 draw against the Democratic Republic of the Congo last week. And yes, OK: everyone knows how this game works and why everyone plays it. On one hand, perhaps the greatest sporting day in the history of the world’s 15th most populous country. On the other, 41-year-old man does not score. It’s no contest, really. Get those sweet keywords front and left. Harvest that delicious search traffic. Perhaps you even noticed how I just did exactly the same thing.

And yet something does feel qualitatively different this summer: a tectonic shift driven partly by events on the pitch and partly at the behest of the industry itself. This is a World Cup swimming in star names, and never have those star names been so unapologetically, unquestioningly invoked. France do not beat Iraq; instead Kylian Mbappé throws down the gauntlet to Erling Haaland, Harry Kane and the rest. According to Google, Miroslav Klose’s goals record has been searched more at this tournament than in the year he set it. At times the group phase has felt like an inconvenient distraction from the real business of the Golden Boot race. (Can Lionel Messi lift the one trophy he hasn’t won yet?)

Some, like Luca Zidane, have been bamboozled and an academic paper bears out Joe Hart’s opinion about its movement

Poor old Luca Zidane. The Algeria goalkeeper has had a turbulent time. In two matches he has conceded five goals, and a pair of them – first from Lionel Messi, then, more embarrassing, from Jordan’s Nizar al-Rashdan – have gone through his fingers.

No doubt he has received messages of support from his father – at least he hasn’t butted anybody – but it is hardly the ideal performance on the world’s biggest stage. But Zidane is not alone. Senegal’s Édouard Mendy and Iraq’s Ahmed Basil have got their hands to shots, but been unable to stop them. Is something going on?

To stay popular with the public – and his backbenchers – he’ll need to make big changes fast. That means changing the way the government borrows

A Labour leader arrives, shirt and smile ironed into place, in his hands a big idea. He has polished one slogan, prepped three anecdotes, memorised eight bullet points. He wants more cash for vital services, or workers to have a stake in their employers, or to take some utility into public control. Not so big an idea, really, but, right on cue, the attacks come from almost every side – breathless lobby reporters, sententious columnists, zombie Blairites. And they all agree on one fatal thing: the bond markets will never wear it.

The death sentence having been pronounced, all that remains for the politician’s proposal is a pauper’s funeral.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

The man who led Free France during Nazi occupation was single-minded to the point of obstinacy. But he believed in his own power to make history

How much of our political agency have we sacrificed on the altar of imagined constraints? That question has been troubling me since last week, when I stepped out of the glitteringly art deco Grand Rex cinema in Paris. I had just been to see part one of La Bataille de Gaulle, a two-part epic based on British historian Julian Jackson’s extraordinary biography of Charles de Gaulle. Both Jackson and the film, which focuses on the second world war, present the towering French general as a combination of stubbornness, arrogance and genius.

As a mid-ranking two-star general, De Gaulle had little inherent claim to be the face of France in exile. For four years after fleeing to London in June 1940, he imposed himself next to Churchill, and then Roosevelt. He bullied his way in to top-table discussions thanks to an ego the size of a nation state: a nation state he himself would embody fully. “I recreated France from nothing, from being a man alone in a foreign city,” De Gaulle wrote of his time in London. Immodest, yes, but also right.

Alexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir Generation Desperation is out now

At 17, I dreamed of impressing my first girlfriend with my knowledge of literature. Of course it all went laughably wrong

You’re probably enjoying long, hot summer days less than you used to. Apart from the roads and the rails melting and the sleepless nights, there’s that nagging feeling that we’re all going to hell in a handcart. Assuming, of course, that the handcart hasn’t packed up in the heat.

Until I was 17, I loved long summer days. I would be out for hours with my mates playing football, cricket and whatnot, or darting around woods and fields, secretly pretending I was one of the Famous Five. But then came a particular long, hot summer day, the scars of which for me have rather ballsed up all subsequent long, hot summer days.

As long as Israel continues its attacks on Lebanon, any deal between the US and Iran will be at risk

On 18 June, JD Vance stood in the White House press briefing room and tore into Israeli critics of the Iran deal that his boss, Donald Trump, had signed the previous day. The vice-president argued that Trump was the only world leader who was still sympathetic to Israel after nearly three years of wars and destruction across the Middle East. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government,” Vance said, “I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left ‌in the entire world.”

Vance also pointed out that, during the recent US-Israeli war on Iran, two-thirds of the defensive weapons used to protect Israel from Iranian retaliation “have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars”. Vance publicly scolded Israel’s leaders in a way they have rarely been criticized by a high-level US politician. And while Vance did not directly target his criticism at the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the subtext was clear: the Trump administration is willing to call out the Israeli leader for sabotaging ceasefire agreements so that he could prolong regional wars and maintain power.

Mohamad Bazzi is a Guardian US columnist. He is also director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University

The milestone called for the epic vision of a JFK or the soaring oratory of a Barack Obama. Instead it got a Trump rally

If that’s the way America celebrates its birthday, you would not want to be present at its funeral. The shining city on a hill is losing some of its lustre these days. The land that promised life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is struggling to deliver.

A milestone anniversary like 250 years of independence calls for the epic vision of a John F Kennedy, the immaculate timing of a Ronald Reagan or the soaring oratory of a Barack Obama. What it got instead on Wednesday was an 80-year-old convicted criminal who appeared in Home Alone 2 and seems hellbent on dividing the nation.

Although fleeting, sporting events have the enduring power to crumble divisions and highlight the beauty of kinship

“The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat,” went the tagline for the long-running TV show The Wide World of Sports.

We’re all familiar with those rollercoaster emotions whether we follow professional football or dabble in sandlot softball.

A document on an embryo adoption program may be marginal – but it marks an escalation in the pursuit of fetal personhood

The Trump administration quietly declared frozen embryos to be children last week. In a call for grant applications related to a nearly 20-year-old program meant to raise awareness about frozen embryo adoption, the Department of Health and Human Services referred to frozen embryos using the terms “child” and “children”, calling for screening standards for frozen embryo purchasers to be raised to those applied to parents seeking to adopt actual children. The document refers to frozen embryos as “children who already exist and are in need of a family”.

The language is strange and conspicuous in context, even if that context itself may seem marginal: what the Trump administration has done here is change its phrasing in the guidelines for a longstanding and somewhat obscure grant program.

Muslims in the UK, Europe and the US are increasingly fearful and frustrated as targeted attacks rise. Others must speak out

The chilling attacks that injured five men in Edinburgh at the weekend, including two who were struck as they left a mosque, have deepened the fear that many Muslims in Britain feel today. The case received remarkably little attention south of the border. A man has now been charged with five counts of attempted murder, allegedly “aggravated by reason of having a terrorist connection”. The facts of these attacks must now be examined in court in due course.

What is beyond doubt is the real and growing fear experienced by Muslim communities in the UK, Europe and elsewhere. The US president has said that “I think Islam hates us”. Increasingly open Islamophobic rhetoric from political figures, and a muted response from others, as well as violence towards Muslims, have left many feeling vulnerable and frustrated.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Keir Starmer came to power without a strategic concept of post-Brexit Britain’s place in the world. His successor must not repeat that mistake

Sir Keir Starmer had years in opposition to prepare for government. His likely successor, Andy Burnham, has weeks. Unlike the outgoing prime minister, Mr Burnham will bring past ministerial experience to the top job as well as lessons learned as the mayor of Greater Manchester. But as every veteran of No 10 attests, the pressures in that building – the intensity and unpredictability of events – are like nothing else.

To take office without clear priorities or a sense of how to drive an agenda through the machinery of government is a recipe for drift and loss of control, bouncing from one crisis to the next. That was Sir Keir’s fate. His failure to use the run-up to power more fruitfully accounts in large part for the truncation of his tenure.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Readers react to the brutal heat conditions affecting Britain and Europe

Last summer, I wrote to you warning of the growing threat that extreme heat poses to both patients and the NHS, that the demand for healthcare would rise as temperatures climbed, that our hospitals were ill-equipped to cope and that investment in resilience was urgently needed (Letters, 21 July 2025).

A year on, the UK is set for another record-breaking heatwave, yet little has changed. The UK Health Security Agency has also taken the rare step of issuing a red heat alert in parts of England – signalling a serious threat to lives (Report, 22 June). This marks only the second time that a red alert has been issued. The last, in 2022, coincided with five waves of extreme heat that combined to cause an estimated 2,985 excess deaths in England alone.

Martin Luck and Vaughan Thomas respond to suggestions that Andy Burnham could reduce the use of whipping in parliament

You suggest Andy Burnham might reduce the extent of whipping of parliamentary votes (What will ‘change’ look like if Andy Burnham becomes prime minister? 19 June).

I have long thought that whipping should apply only to matters clearly spelled out in a party’s manifesto. After all, that is what non-independent candidates stood on when they were elected. Votes on other matters should be free, with the party free to persuade its MPs by appealing to strategy and force of argument.

The key to continued social and economic inclusion in later life is threefold, notes Alan Walker

Your summary of the demographic challenges facing the world thankfully avoided the usual negative economic narrative about the “burden of dependency” (Editorial, 16 June).

The Scandinavian experience demonstrates your point about family-friendly policies being welcome in their own right. Extensive public childcare provision was introduced to further gender equality in the labour market, not to boost the birthrate.

Carlo Ginzburg’s mother | Half Man Half Biscuit | Memory test | Andy Burnham | Roman emperors

It is lovely to see an appreciation in the Guardian of the historian Carlo Ginzburg, and you rightly alluded to the murder of his father, Leone, by the fascist regime (Editorial, 22 June). It was disappointing that you did not find space to mention his mother, Natalia, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century in Italian or any language. It was of course she who raised their children, first in internal exile in Abruzzo and later, following their father’s death, in Rome.
Liz Potter
Birmingham

• Mick Balfour is right to bring up the Half Man Half Biscuit song All I Want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit (Letters, 18 June), but he’s attributed it to the wrong LP. It was of course on their 1987 album Back Again in the DHSS, not their 1985 debut Back in the DHSS. An important distinction.
Peter Collins
London

Cricket updates from Trent Bridge, play at 11am BST
Read the Spin | Simon Burnton’s preview | Mail Daniel

Email! “In the pre-match photo of Ben Stokes, he’s batting in a sleeveless top (and probably shorts as well) — presumably what he’s most comfortable wearing while doing a physical activity in this weather,” begins Smylers. “Has there been any discussion of relaxing player kit requirements during the heatwave? I’m in an office where we’ve been allowed to wear shorts this week; my children’s schools have told pupils to come in in PE kit rather than their normal uniforms. When the rest of us are making adjustments, it seems curious for profession cricketers to have to play wearing more clothes than they need to. Is it just tradition?”

I guess it’s mainly tradition and perhaps the need to slide. But as a lifelong member of the shorts-wearing community, I’d say that, when it’s really hot, the feeling is more one of freedom than of cooling so, once they’re focused, maybe it doesn’t make too much difference.

• League One: Notts Co v Leicester, Barnsley v Bromley

• York return to League Two with visit of Bristol Rovers

Wolves will launch the Championship season at home to Blackburn, while West Ham head to Burnley in a meeting of the other two relegated sides in one of the more eye-catching fixtures on the opening weekend.

The EFL fixture list was released on Thursday and Wolves will play their first Championship fixture since 2018 under their new head coach, César Peixoto, at Molineux at 8pm on Friday 14 August, with the former West Brom manager Tony Mowbray back for a second spell in charge of Blackburn.

• Fifa agrees joint venture with lobby group EFC

• Next edition poised to expand from 32 to 48 clubs

Fifa has agreed to create a joint venture with the lobby group European Football Clubs (EFC) to operate the Club World Cup, which is likely to mean more Premier League clubs enter the lucrative competition.

Chelsea earned about £84m from winning last year’s inaugural 32-team tournament, leading other big European clubs to lobby Fifa for it to be expanded to increase their chances of qualification.

• Teams must fit a driver cooling system for race

• First time heat hazard has been declared this season

Formula One’s governing body has declared a heat ⁠hazard for the Austrian Grand Prix at Spielberg’s Red ⁠Bull Ring ⁠this ​weekend, the first time this season that the designation has ⁠been used.

The race director, Rui Marques, said the official weather service ⁠forecasts temperatures higher than 31C during the race. Declaring a heat ‌hazard requires teams to fit a ‌driver cooling system, such as a liquid-cooled vest, though drivers are not obliged to use them and can take a ballast penalty instead.

Ahead of Saturday’s title unification fight in Brooklyn, the unbeaten American talks about family legacy, putting on for North Philly and life as one of boxing’s most feared fighters

For years, boxing’s chattering class has treated Jaron “Boots” Ennis less like a champion than a prophecy. The next great one. The future pound-for-pound king. The fighter who one day would justify the steady hype that has followed him since he emerged as a teenager from Bozy’s Dungeon in North Philadelphia as one of the country’s top amateurs.

Even now, undefeated in 36 professional fights with 31 knockouts and world championships at two different weights, Ennis approaches Saturday night’s title unification bout with Xander Zayas at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in an unusual position: celebrated as one of the world’s most gifted fighters while still being discussed as though his breakthrough lies ahead.

• Accused of being ‘primary conspirator’ in targeted plot

• Florida attorney: Potential sentence is up to life in prison

• Team decline to comment on cornerback’s situation

Detroit Lions player Terrion Arnold has been arrested in connection to a kidnapping and robbery in Florida and faces felony charges, officials said Wednesday.

Arnold, 23, is accused of being the “primary conspirator” before three men in their late teens were held at gunpoint, battered and pistol-whipped in February in Tampa, the city’s police department said in a statement. Some of their belongings were stolen, police said.

• IOC sets up £106m fund for all athletes at Games

• Milano-Cortina competitors will be first to be paid

The International Olympic Committee has broken with 130 years of tradition by deciding to pay athletes to compete at the Olympic Games.

Starting with the recent Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, all competitors will be entitled to a $10,000 (£7,600) grant from the IOC regardless of whether they are NBA stars or on the poverty line.

• Group 2: England, 186-7, bt West Indies, 148-5, by 38 runs

• Wyatt-Hodge scores 65 off 42 balls; Knight adds 43

England propelled themselves into the semi-finals of their home T20 World Cup with a 38-run win against West Indies on Wednesday evening at Lord’s.

A half-century from Danni Wyatt-Hodge and a laboured 43 from Heather Knight helped England put 186 on the board, although the hosts’ effort was not without its nervy moments: Knight ran out first Wyatt-Hodge then herself, while the Freya Kemp-Dani Gibson engine room failed to ignite this time as England finished seven wickets down.

• Middle East war uncertainty leads to delay for £80m deal

• November leg of new rugby tournament could feature branding

Qatar Airways has put its £80m sponsorship of rugby union’s new Nations Championship on hold due to the fallout from the war in the Middle East.

The Guardian has learned that while the state-owned airline remains committed to the deal, contracts have not been signed, and the inaugural edition of the new competition will kick off next week without a title sponsor.

Case of Andrei Pivovarov raises questions about how much control Cellebrite has over its own software

Russian authorities used tools from the Israeli company Cellebrite to break into the phone of a political prisoner, months after the company said it cancelled its contracts with Russia, an investigation by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab research unit has found.

The case raises questions about how much control Cellebrite has over its own software, which allows users to easily break into phones and examine their contents. The tools are sold worldwide and widely used by police forces in the UK and the US.

Fears of long-lasting energy crunch ‘slinking away’ as vessel traffic doubled in 24 hours to highest level since late February

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Oil prices have fallen below levels last seen before the Iran war started in late February as more oil tankers exited the strait of Hormuz.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell to a low of $72.24 a barrel on Thursday, slightly lower than the day before the US and Israel launched missile attacks on Tehran on 28 February. Prices have fallen more than 20% this month.

Pupils say LPS Hybrid’s combination of remote and in-person classes has transformed their school experience

Two years ago, Ellie Ball could barely bring herself to attend school. Today, the 16-year-old is planning to take four A-levels and hopes to study astrolaw – “It’s basically space law,” she explains – at university.

The transformation happened largely through a screen.

Estate agent is offering 30% share in former Russian spy’s house for £114,000, with the rest owned by council

The house in Salisbury where the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was poisoned with the nerve agent novichok is up for sale.

A 30% shared ownership of the house on Christie Miller Road is being offered for £114,000, with the rest being held by Wiltshire council.

Conflict threatens to worsen mounting tensions between the Vatican and rightwing Catholics in the US and globally

A far-right Catholic sect’s plan to ordain its own bishops on the first day of July has placed it on a collision course with the Vatican – posing a possible crisis for Pope Leo a little over a year into his papacy, and straining the Roman Catholic church’s already fraught relationship with rightwing and traditionalist Catholics in the US and elsewhere.

Founded in Switzerland in 1970 to oppose liberalizing reforms in the Catholic church, the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) has gained significant followings in the US, France, Argentina and other countries. The order, which has a large base of operations in Kansas, claims that more than half a million people worldwide attend its masses, though these numbers are difficult to verify. It counts nearly 1,500 priests, seminarians and other vocational members among its members.

LSE analysis highlights litigation linked to energy sources, water consumption and air pollution

The proliferation of datacentres and AI is increasingly at the forefront of environmental litigation around the world, from the US and UK to Chile to Ireland, a report has found.

In an analysis of about 3,600 climate-related lawsuits filed since 2015, the latest annual review of climate litigation by the London School of Economics (LSE) found a growing number of cases challenging the energy sources, water consumption and air pollution of datacentres, all of which have related climate implications.

More than 70,000 babies living in hot homes as climate crisis drives record temperatures

One in every six babies in England are living in overheated homes, causing sleep disruption and serious health risks, according to new analysis.

The National Housing Federation (NHF) and the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) found that more than 70,000 babies are living in overly hot homes as the climate crisis drives record temperatures across the country.

Despite millions of dollars of investment, crumbling infrastructure and erratic rainfall are pushing the Caribbean island to the brink

When St Lucia’s rainy season began in May, Madeleine Solomon, 55, breathed a sigh of relief. For months, she had been feeling the squeeze of an intermittent water supply that disrupted normal hygiene and food preparation, forcing families like hers to rely on water tanks, rainwater harvesting and bottled water bought from private companies.

“I’m thanking God every day because our situation was really bad,” she says.

Current heatwave is very moist, making it feel worse – especially at night – than all-time high of 40.3C in July 2022

• UK records its hottest June day and France its hottest ever as heatwave sweeps Europe

If people feel they are suffering more than usual in the latest heatwave, it is not their imagination. Not only has the June temperature record in the UK been broken, but humidity is also relatively high, causing a temperature of 35C to feel like 41C.

Content creation and online safety among new topics for 14- to 18-year-olds – but tweaks may be needed when social media ban comes in

Scouts are introducing badges in content creation, digital communication and online safety after consulting nearly 3,000 teenagers who said they wanted skills to help them navigate a world increasingly shaped by AI, social media and digital technology.

The new Explorer Scout badges, part of the Scout movement’s first major overhaul in almost 25 years, will require 14- to 18-year olds to explore how digital communities shape opinion, create online campaigns, investigate digital footprints and design toolkits to help others stay safe online.

Degrees still mostly boost lifetime pay, thinktank says, but those completing creative qualifications may end up worse off

A quarter of UK graduates can expect to be financially worse off after going to university, especially those who take creative or performing arts degrees, according to new estimates by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The research is based on the pay of students who graduated in the teeth of the global financial crisis in 2008. While the IFS projects that the majority will be £100,000 better off in lifetime pay thanks to their degree, about 25% might have done better without entering higher education once their likely pay, student loans and taxes are added up.

A 41-year-old man has been arrested after Isaac Clare-Watts, 26, found at Nine Ladies monument on Monday

A 26-year-old man who died in a suspected murder during a summer solstice event at a Bronze Age stone circle has been named by police.

Isaac Clare-Watts, from Nottingham, was found at the Nine Ladies stone circle in Stanton Lees in the Peak District in Derbyshire at about 1.38pm on Monday.

Mayor’s office grants extra 12 months to run pilot while London force procures long-term supplier

The Metropolitan police have been granted a 12-month extension to a pilot project with the spy-tech firm Palantir while the force carries out a procurement process.

The development comes weeks after the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, blocked a £50m deal between the Met and the US company to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations.

Many of France’s buildings are not designed for hot weather – and low-income housing estates are suffering the worst

Living in a sweltering, seventh-floor flat on a concrete housing estate south of Paris, Samira said she was feeling desperate as France experienced its highest temperatures on record this week. “Yesterday I sat down and cried, I thought I’m going to die,” said the 35-year-old single parent and former building caretaker.

Her flat in Ris-Orangis in Essonne is, like millions of apartments in France, poorly insulated and lacking in outside window shutters. “Blazing sun hits my windows all day – I can’t breathe, I feel dizzy, there is no air,” she said.

Transcript of congressional testimony shows Microsoft founder spoke of ‘veiled’ threats made by late sex offender

The Microsoft founder Bill Gates told US members of Congress that the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had sought to “blackmail” him over his extramarital affairs, according to a transcript of the testimony.

The tech pioneer testified behind closed doors before the House oversight committee on 10 June regarding his friendship with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 as he awaited trial for sex crimes.

Falling shares push tech mogul back down to billionaire ranks after SpaceX IPO made him world’s first trillionaire

Elon Musk was no longer a trillionaire by the time markets closed on Wednesday. Plunging shares in Tesla and SpaceX dragged the tech magnate down to billionaire status. As of 4pm ET, Forbes listed Musk’s net worth as $970.2bn.

Musk reached trillionaire status on 12 June after SpaceX’s historic initial public offering. The rocket, satellite and AI company’s debut on the stock market made Musk the first person with a net worth of more than $1tn. His fortune continued to hover around that gigantic figure in the weeks following the initial public offering (IPO).

Australian woman Leah Stewart no longer in critical condition but doesn’t yet have use of her hand

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A woman who was attacked by a great white shark at Sydney’s Coogee beach is no longer in a critical condition and “remembers the whole event in detail”, her brother has said.

Leah Stewart’s brother Joshua provided the update on a fundraising site on Thursday, writing that it was “amazing to hear from her so much sooner than anyone expected” and that his sister had been “overjoyed” to see her daughter for the first time since the incident almost two weeks ago.

British Chambers of Commerce chief calls for ‘home bias’ on retirement savings to close funding gap for SMEs

Pension tax relief worth more than £50bn should only be offered to savers who are prepared to invest in Britain, according to Andy Haldane, the president of the British Chambers of Commerce.

There should be a “home bias” that directs retirement savings into UK businesses, closing a funding gap that hampers the growth of small- and medium-sized businesses, he said.

Duty on imports outside new quota will double in move echoing similar changes in EU limits

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The UK government will halve the amount of tariff-free steel imports allowed in an attempt to counter a global oversupply of cheap Chinese metal and bolster its beleaguered local industry.

New “safeguards” will be introduced on 1 July and will coincide with similar new limits being introduced by the EU for the same purposes. The UK said it and the EU had agreed an approach that reflected each other’s “highly interconnected supply chains” after months of negotiations over retaining tariff-free access between the markets.

British carrier says it hopes to receive ‘more attractive proposal that better reflects’ its value

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EasyJet has opened talks with Castlelake, despite rejecting a fourth takeover offer worth £4.9bn from the US investment firm, with the airline saying it would open its books in the hope of receiving a higher bid.

The British low-cost carrier unanimously rejected the latest proposal, of 650p a share, saying it still “substantially” undervalued the company while flagging “significant questions of deliverability”.

The company has just a few hundred satellites in low Earth orbit but has state backing and is already reportedly negotiating with dozens of countries

Elon Musk’s Starlink has long dominated the satellite internet industry, but a Chinese government-backed project is aiming to challenge its position.

SpaceSail has just a few hundred satellites in low Earth orbit compared with Starlink’s 10,000-plus. But the company says it now has enough satellites to begin its first commercial application, is scaling up at speed, and is reportedly negotiating with dozens of countries to provide satellite internet coverage.

The artist’s likeness has become a symbol of resistance and heroism – but the truth is more complicated. As a major exhibition opens in London, has brand Frida obscured the real Kahlo?

I spend a lot of time in museum gift shops, and no matter where I might be in the world, I will see Frida Kahlo. Her likeness appears on socks, dolls, puzzles, water bottles, cushions, jewellery, mugs, eggcups, phone cases, shopping bags, votive candles, notebooks, keychains – just about any consumer goods, in fact, that can be formed or printed.

Her face has been reduced to a recognisable shorthand of monobrow, lipstick and extravagant floral headdress (her distinctive upper lip hair seldom makes the cut). Kahlo’s life and career are likewise stripped of detail, with children’s literature and popular art books sanitising her biography, shaping it into an inspiring tale of resilience in the face of physical pain, pride in her identity and art triumphing over adversity. She has been flattened into a beautiful but tragic figure.

From global loanwords and garbled Italian, the slang of the children of millennials doesn’t just share elements with Minionese – it may have absorbed it

I was four years old when Despicable Me was released in cinemas and the banana-coloured, overall-clad Minions took the world by storm. By the time I was seven, my siblings and I were using The Official Minion Manual to teach ourselves Minionese.

Minionese is, of course, the made-up language spoken by Kevin, Stuart, Bob and company, which consists of a combination of melodic gibberish and variations on genuine vocabulary from a diverse array of world languages. When the Minions shout “kanpai” (“cheers” in Japanese) or “para tú!” (a variation on the Spanish “para ti”), it might remind you of how gen Alpha slang, which primarily consists of nonsensical words such as “cap” and “mogging”, also draws on world languages. Consider the Bulgarian scat origins of “skibidi”, for example.

Spectacular shootouts and even broad comedy are packed into this Woo’s fierce 1986 thriller of vengeance and loyalty

The title of this John Woo 1986 action classic is taken from the 1985 Taiwanese charity single Tomorrow Will Be Better, released in the spirit of the west’s Live Aid and a huge pan-Asian hit. It is poignantly performed in one scene by a choir of sweet schoolchildren; their innocence is, of course, in counterpoint to the blood-drizzled bad guys, but it also speaks to the yearning of some of these criminals to redeem themselves: “Let our smiles show off our pride of youth / Let us look forward to a better tomorrow.”

Perhaps, with the perspective of 40 years, we can now see more clearly why John Woo’s movies are so addictive. Not merely for the much discussed, much imitated “balletic” gunplay sequences, but for the fierce, unapologetic streak of melodrama and sentimentality. Family is everything, but that doesn’t mean endorsing crime families.

Charlotte Ritchie presents a wildly ambitious and unapologetically brainy YouTube documentary that takes in Big Bang soundwaves, singing dolphins and an astonishing amount in between. Don’t miss it for the world

One of the big things to have come out of David Attenborough’s 100th birthday celebrations this year was the scale of ambition he had during his tenure behind camera. It was Attenborough who commissioned Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation and Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, two vast documentary series that became defining texts on the history of art and science.

The consensus seemed to be that this sort of thing – huge, cerebral, expensive – would simply not get made today, unless it was dumbed down and cut-price and rebranded as Amanda Holden’s Top 10 Renaissance Willies. So it comes as something of a surprise to learn that the Cosmic Shambles Network’s new documentary series, For the Record: An Incomplete History of Music, takes its title as seriously as it does.

As a new retrospective opens, collaborators of the Mikey and Nicky film-maker explain how she blazed a trail for female directors in Hollywood

In 1975, after more than two years of sifting through footage, Elaine May was still in the weeds editing her deeply personal gangster film, Mikey and Nicky, and Paramount Pictures and its CEO Barry Diller were losing patience. In a desperate move to retain control, the director sold the film out from under Paramount to Alyce Films, a phoney production company reportedly set up by May, the film’s star, Peter Falk, and a number of other co-conspirators. But the sale was halted, and May was ordered by a judge to deliver the film to Paramount, which she did, except for two essential reels which mysteriously went missing until the studio agreed to let her supervise the editing of the final cut.

Set in the flophouse hotel rooms and diners of Philadelphia, Mikey and Nicky is one long, panic-inducing hangout between two gangsters, one (Nicky, played by John Cassavetes) is on the run for robbing his boss, while the other (Mikey, played by Falk) is torn between hiding his best friend or handing him over. Nicky wants to evade the contract killer he knows is on his trail, but he also wants to drink beer, go to the movies and play hot hands with Mikey on the bus. Mikey wants to care for Nicky; you get the sense he’s been doing it for a long time. He wants to feed him antacids and milk to treat his ulcers, but he’s also got a family and has outgrown their dynamic. They go back a long way and their relationship, though full of love that is apparent in every look and gesture between the two, is also fraught with a history of small betrayals, the kinds of slights and indignities that only stay with you when you really know and love someone. Right at the heart of this unglamorous gangster film is one of the most beautiful and bleak portrayals of male friendship ever put on screen.

There’s more than a whiff of Taken in Kenji Tanigaki’s exhilarating martial-arts movie, in which a handyman goes after some evil people traffickers

It keeps happening: every few years, usually during a run of lethargic Hollywood spectacles, the Overton window of screen violence gets recalibrated by a muscular wonder from the east. Thundering along in the bloody footsteps of the Raid films and the Hindi punch-’em-up Kill, this martial-arts showcase from Japanese-born, Hong Kong-based director Kenji Tanigaki opens in generic dadsploitation territory. “Somewhere in Southeast Asia”, as a caption has it, mute Chinese handyman Wang Wei (Miao Xie) tears off after the traffickers who have nabbed his daughter (Enyou Yang). Having Hulk-smashed its way out of the Taken box, though, The Furious starts to crank it up. Boy, does it crank it up; the closing half-hour achieves a pummelling intensity unlikely to be matched by any other release this year.

There are one or two plot developments. Cribbing from John Woo’s buddy movies, Tanigaki has his hero run into an undercover journo (Danny Dyer lookalike Joe Taslim) with his own reasons for chasing the traffickers; this route-one approach bears out the advantages of keeping things simple while turning the dial to 11. The complexities are reserved for the frame itself: jaw-droppingly limber, seemingly boneless performers pull off bruising manoeuvres on concrete floors, with Tanigaki’s well-placed cameras capturing unexpected delicacies and flourishes amid otherwise crunching dustups. It’s as if someone has brought a crossbow and a ballpeen hammer to the dance, and they’re intent on using them.

Fed up with expensive tickets and omnipresent branding, some festival fans are creating their own anarchic, ticketless events full of glitter and silliness. They explain how it’s done

Picture the scene: it’s July 2025 and I’m DJing at a festival called Loveshack. I’m not fretting about losing the crowd to a different stage because there isn’t one: we’re in a barn in the Welsh countryside. The dress-up theme is 90s icons, and below me Joanna Lumley is talking to Andre Agassi while a cop from the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage video looks on. People’s possessions are strewn around but no one seems worried, because the crowd is just 60 members of my extended friendship group and everyone is having possibly the best festival experience imaginable.

In a world of overpriced and overrated mainstream festivals, tiny events like this are becoming more common. It’s true that tickets still fly out for the big fests: with Glastonbury having a fallow year, its 200,000-odd punters have hungrily looked elsewhere, leading to festivals such as Mighty Hoopla and Green Man selling out in a day. But there is a definite sense that festivals have been losing their independent, renegade spirit. Lineups feel samey, and despite high ticket prices there are a depressing number of onsite “brand activations”, where a bus covered in the livery for a new smartphone, say, makes you feel like you’re walking around in a 3D advert. As John Rostron, who runs the Association of Independent Festivals, says: “Not everyone wants to go to a festival and see a Dyson-activated tent.”

Roundhouse, London
In her first European jaunt outside of her headbanging band, the singer uses humour to turn angsty songs into rowdy collective catharsis

Hayley Williams swaggers on stage with a guitar and begins gleefully raging about her antidepressant of choice. Mirtazapine, a pop-punk ode to the drug that “makes me eat” and “makes me sleep”, swiftly rouses the audience into a boisterous singalong. Her chemistry with the crowd is so potent that it’s easy to forget this is Williams’s first London gig since supporting Taylor Swift on The Eras Tour with her band Paramore in 2024, and her first ever European tour as a solo artist. “I remember so many of you,” she says, beaming at the crowd. She points at someone in the front row: “You came on stage [for] Misery Business.”

For years, Williams had vowed to never pursue solo music. In fact, when she landed a deal with Atlantic Records at 14, it was on her insistence that she’d make music as part of a band. Now finally released from the contract she signed as a teenager, the 37-year-old’s third solo record, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, was a grief-stricken reflection on lost loves and lost innocence. On stage, she appears to heal those wounds with soulful artistry. A daring cover of Nina Simone’s Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood leaves the room in silence; a brief snippet of Didn’t Cha Know by Erykah Badu prefaces her viral hit Good Ol’ Days.

She has won acclaim and countless awards for her body-tapping, raspberry-blowing music. Now she has spent 15 years making her boldest work yet – an epic about birth, infancy and adolescence

It took Camille 15 years to make her new album. The Sound of Milk is a triple record, each part documenting a distinct stage of the French musician’s experience raising two kids with composer Clément Ducol: Naissance is from 2015, Enfance 2020 and Adolescence 2025. She could have put each one out when it was complete, she says, but realised she wasn’t ready. Her son and daughter, now teenagers, “were too little, and I would have felt too exposed to talk about it because it’s about beauty, joy, it’s very deep,” says Camille, calling from her home in the French countryside. “I needed to be able to step back and look at the journey. I needed to feel grounded enough to release it in a world that does not respect children and mothers.”

On the surface, much of Camille’s sixth album may sound very sweet. Naissance features no real instruments – it’s essentially a field recording of raising babies, all gurgles and found sound. Known for her vocal experimentation – beatboxing, raspberries – Camille saw it as a manifesto freeing singing from how disembodied it can be in pop. “As a woman, music is about a way of living,” she says. “It’s about breathing, being with my kids, singing along with what’s going on around me in an open world.” She calls Enfance a “pocket musical”: similarly atmospheric, it’s full of the kinds of ditties parents make up when they’re teaching kids about stairs and the washing machine – raising everyday maternal expressions up as art, I suggest. “I like what you’re saying,” she says. “All families are pieces of art. We create our values, our worlds, a way of talking to each other.”

The Brazilian musician, who collaborates with Indigenous artists and puts millions into philanthropy, explains his mission – and defends his jetsetting

When Alok, the most successful Brazilian DJ of his generation, was brainstorming the concept for his new live show, he considered calling it Rave New World. “But when I asked a gen Z kid, the daughter of my creative director, she made me realise how pretentious my idea was,” he says. “The grownups trying to find an easy way out for all of our problems.” Instead, “I started figuring out that it’s not about a new world, it’s about this world. We need to ‘Rave the World’.”

That new title might still seem trite to some, or hypocritical, coming from someone at the heart of a dance music industry with a heavy carbon footprint from constant flying: when I meet Alok, he’s about to board another plane at a private airport outside São Paulo. But dance music has often had a utopian bent to it, and Alok – who champions Indigenous Brazilians in his work and has partnered with the UN on climate initiatives – is certainly making efforts to better the world.

Ireland is trembling with nascent social unrest in this labyrinthine tale of one man’s homecoming

Irish author Keith Ridgway’s latest novel deals, both mischievously and menacingly, in ambivalence. The book’s epigraph is taken from a misty-eyed ballad pining for the “lofty” magnificence of the Cliffs of Dooneen. But these lines are appended with a footnote cautioning that “debate continues concerning the cliffs named in the song – whether they are in County Clare or County Kerry, or whether they exist at all …”

Place and knowledge continue to be wilfully unstable categories once the narrative begins. Bartholomew Port, known as Mew, says goodbye to his partner Mootie as he sets off on a trip from south London to his birthplace, Dublin. In the first of the novel’s Alice in Wonderland-style sleights of hand, Mew is transported to the Irish capital not by air or sea, but by slipping through bushes in Camberwell’s Burgess Park.

Alex Murdaugh’s conviction for the murder of his wife and son was recently overturned. Where does the truth lie?

In March 2023, 54-year-old Alex Murdaugh received two life sentences for murdering his wife and younger son at the family’s hunting lodge in Colleton County, South Carolina. Since the early 20th century, three generations of his family had been elected as state prosecutors in the “Lowcountry”, a sprawling stretch of lush, rancid swampland on the southern eastern seaboard, marked by severe economic and social inequality. The Murdaughs were the people who could send you to jail or the electric chair, all the while maintaining a veneer of good ol’ southern gentility.

In parallel with these public duties, the family ran a large law firm, specialising in personal injury. In a land of chronic alcoholism and rusty farm equipment, the Murdaughs conducted a brisk business in multimillion-dollar settlements for those who had lost a limb, a parent or their cognitive faculties thanks to someone else’s carelessness. But instead of passing on these life-changing wins to vulnerable clients, Alex Murdaugh used them to fund a lavish lifestyle, featuring big cars, prostitutes, opioid pills and a military-grade private arsenal. For good measure, he also embezzled many millions from his legal partners.

One evoked a hellish trip from Delhi after passengers had drunk unsanitary water. Another conjoured up an era when planes were thick with cigarette smoke. And one man collected them all …

If, a few years ago, someone told me that I would spend most of my 2026 scanning hundreds of airline sick bags, I would have wondered what had gone wrong with my life. Especially if you also told me I’d become a keen enthusiast for the beauty of their designs. But, as it turns out, making my new book Sicko has been one of the most joyful projects I’ve ever done.

It all began in 2023, when I met Trevor Cunningham. Back then I was making a film about his support group called Ask Trev – a free advice and guidance service staffed entirely by people called Trevor (there’s an astonishing 140 of them contributing to what he calls “a Trevorlution”).

A revealing new book, eight years in the making, singles out rebellious women from US history whose stories have often been sidelined

Margaret Corbin was a hero of the American Revolution, the wife of an artilleryman killed at Fort Washington in New York who took over his gun to fight the British. Grievously wounded, she became the first woman to receive a US military pension. In 1926, 150 years after the battle, her supposed remains were exhumed in Highland Falls, up the Hudson from Manhattan, and buried at the US Military Academy.

“There was so much energy and wonderful intention behind doing this,” said Denise Kiernan, of what remains the only monument to a woman at West Point. “And then in 2016 they took a look and said, ‘Oh wait a minute, not only are the bones not hers, they’re not the bones of a woman.’”

As football fans revel in the real world tournament, its digital counterparts continue to stumble in capturing the ​hyped up ​atmosphere

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I come with a warning to all football fans: if you’ve been enjoying the World Cup enough to think, “I’d like to re-enact this on a football video game”, do not go to Netflix and play Fifa World Cup: Launch Edition, the officially licensed game of the tournament, which streams via your smart TV or computer. Developed by the virtually unknown Delphi Interactive, it’s a juddering, dated calamity, with sluggish controls (via your phone, once you’ve downloaded the app) and commentary courtesy of Clive Tyldesley that delivers all the excitement of a robotic train station announcement.

Until this, it was largely agreed that the worst World Cup football game in history was World Cup Carnival, the first official Fifa tie-in, which was released on various home computers in 1986. Publisher US Gold thought it had a deal with the Manchester studio Ocean Software to repurpose its acclaimed title Match Day, but the agreement fell through. With three months to go before Mexico 86, US Gold was forced to effectively rebadge a dire 1984 sim, World Cup Football, by the fading developer Artic. To add some value to the package, the game was released in a fancy big box complete with a fixtures chart, a World Cup facts poster and some flag stickers. Nobody was fooled – the World Cup Carnival was a critical and commercial disaster.

As phrases like easter eggs and looksmaxxing enter everyday language, what other words from the world of video games might soon be mainstream?

Twenty years ago, video games were seen as a niche hobby dominated by hardcore enthusiasts, tucked away in obscure online forums and gaming meet-ups. Back then, the idea that governments would use footage from Call of Duty and gaming terms such as “killstreaks” as war propaganda would have been absurd. Then the 2010s happened: nerd culture popularised, previously online-only spaces began to meld with the real world, and gaming went mainstream.

Now, gaming references have entered common parlance – at the end of 2024, video game terms including “cheat code” and “cutscene” were even added to the Oxford English Dictionary – and they increasingly crop up in politics, too. Earlier this year, the official White House X account posted footage of military strikes on Iran interspersed with footage from the video game Grand Theft Auto. Six days later, another video was posted, this time interspersing military footage with clips from Nintendo’s 2006 game Wii Sports. Video game references aren’t reserved for the political right, either: in February 2026, Democrat representative of New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quipped, “Why does this guy always talk like a World of Warcraft npc [non-player character]?” in response to a post on X by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff.

When a company decided to shut down an online game’s servers, there wasn’t much the players who had bought that title could do – until a group called Stop Killing Games began lobbying for new consumer protection laws

You can never be sure how long an online video game will last. Developer BioWare shut off sci-fi shooter Anthem’s servers in January, after seven years. Electronic Arts discontinued access to The Sims Mobile the same month. Wildlight Entertainment shuttered its Highguard servers in March, mere months after the game’s release. Activision Blizzard took Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile offline in April. Dozens more games have had their servers shut down in the first six months of 2026, adding to an already long list of video games that are no longer playable.

There is little that players can do when a company decides to stop supporting online play. Communities work hard to keep their favourite games online, sometimes keeping dead games running on private servers, though that may not necessarily be entirely legal. Generally, though, when a game goes offline it is dead and it’s not coming back.

PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2, PC; Team Asano/Square Enix
Upbeat, charmingly retro RPG full of treasure-hunting, temple-roaming, monster-slaying and princess-saving is an absolute blast to play

You can’t help but wonder if developer Team Asano is in a private competition with itself to come up with the most ridiculous name for a video game. Following Project Triangle Strategy and Bravely Default: Flying Fairy we have this mouthful: The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. It’s a playable love letter to the Zelda adventures of yesteryear rendered in the studio’s trademark glorious 2D-HD art style, melding evocative pixel sprites with modern visual effects.

From west Philabieldia, born and raised, our hero is adventurer Elliot. The antagonist making trouble in the neighbourhood is a king’s dastardly aide intent on summoning an ancient evil. The story is pure after-school-TV schlock, fully voice-acted but still unafraid to make you sit through reams and reams of text, and the action comprises treasure-hunting, temple-roaming and dispatching monsters. It’s part Chrono Trigger, part Oracle of Seasons as our almost obnoxiously upbeat hero journeys through the ages in order to solve puzzles, tip his fedora and of course, save a princess.

A blooming new wave of musical theatre is exploring the plight of the planet with a playful and hopeful approach

Earth is a single woman with a lot to give; Humanity is a charismatic bad boy who turns out to be an inveterate taker. Their toxic relationship is told in Hot Mess, a musical created by Jack Godfrey and Ellie Coote, which works both as an eccentric romcom with broad commercial appeal and a serious analogy for our abuse of the once fecund, now depleted planet. A hot ticket at the Edinburgh fringe last summer and now on in London, it is at the vanguard of a newly blooming genre of musicals about the environmental crisis.

The RSC’s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind uses exuberant song and dance for the true story of a teenager who builds a wind turbine from an old bicycle in drought-ridden Malawi. Bryony Kimmings’ Bog Witch is a one-woman show with music and standup about the plight of the planet, while in New York the folk-pop musical Dear Everything was a response to climate emergency co-written by V (formerly Eve Ensler) and narrated by Jane Fonda. Meanwhile, in the West End hit Hadestown, hell is strewn with empty oil drums.

Aldwych theatre, London
Frank swings into the West End with a swaggering turn from Joel Harper-Jackson and plenty of style yet the script is flat

Ol’ Blue Eyes is back: first staged in Birmingham three years ago and workshopped since, this Frank Sinatra bio-musical has now hit the West End with big band energy. Its intriguing premise is the star’s nadir, those messy years in the late 40s and early 50s when it seemed like an extraordinary talent might come to a wasteful, tragic end.

We begin at the Paramount theatre, when our heart-throb has everything going for him: screaming fans, a devoted spaghetti-cooking spouse, a movie about sailors with Gene Kelly that’s going to deal with the pesky accusations of draft-dodging. In the lead, Joel Harper-Jackson marries smooth vocal power to Sinatra’s signature swagger – the head wobble, the corner-of-the-mouth smirk. Our hero’s weakness for women is played as a comically charming character quirk, with a bed-hopping rendition of Come Fly With Me involving Lana Turner, Judy Garland and Marlene Dietrich.

Young Vic theatre, London
Sophie Swithinbank’s urgent drama shimmers with spark and danger as an archive researcher finds herself trapped in modern-day misogyny

On the hottest day of the year, a conflagration. The Young Vic’s studio space fills with smoke as records of violence against women across the centuries are consumed by flames.

Even before the fire, Sophie Swithinbank’s urgent drama shimmers with spark and danger. Ash (an outstanding Adelle Leonce) barrels into her new job at an archive collecting historic material about women failed by justice. Ash is lairy, smart and cheeky – she bobs and bops around the files, disconcerting her boss Lily (Phoebe Ladenburg, in paisley skirt and pom-pom slippers). But the pair grow closer, through awkward silences and blurted confidences.

At the Young Vic, London, until 18 July

The Pit, Barbican, London
Greg Doran directs Shakespeare’s timeless poem of seduction, told with Lyndie Wright’s gorgeous, masterfully manoeuvred miniatures

Love comes with strings attached in Greg Doran’s tragic romance. First performed 22 years ago, this enchanting production of Shakespeare’s great poem of unrequited love is now tenderly narrated by Simon Russell Beale. With masterful puppetry and a playful air of seduction, there’s no wonder this conjuring of Venus’s pursuit of the handsome Adonis has had so many lives. Like love – and heartbreak – its magic is timeless.

No breath is wasted with these cheeky puppets, wooden in material only, designed and created by Lyndie Wright. A raunchy Venus weeps and begs as the gorgeous, occasionally petulant Adonis rejects her advances, more interested in hunting than in love. Venus moves with such ease, you hardly see the team of puppeteers holding her arms as she hurls herself down at Adonis’s feet, or curling her legs as she wallows in self pity. The five puppeteers swim around their characters, handing over control of a head and taking up a hand with surgical skill. Marionettes, shadow, rod, Bunraku and other puppets are used to build this ethereal world of miniature beauty – plus the exquisite ugliness of one angry, snuffly boar.

Photographer whose posed subjects and double exposures were inspired by surrealism and his Catholic upbringing

Duane Michals, who has died aged 94, was a pioneer of the “directorial mode” of photography, known for staging his tableaux and for posing his subjects in a range of roles from an angel to an everyman. The results were a mixture of the profound, the profane and the puckish, tilting at issues of life and death. As Michals was fond of saying: “I think that if you’re a very serious person, it’s very important to be very silly.”

He was inspired by imagery from his Catholic childhood and by surrealism. In Paradise Regained (1968), a man and woman in a sitting room are gradually, in a series of six photographs, divested of all their clothes and possessions (save a clock), as their room becomes filled with pot plants. This Garden of Eden-cum-garden centre is typical of his wit and wisdom, with the plodding story-boarding and seemingly profound engagement offering a sort of “photo-cartoon” philosophical inquiry.

Carol Allen-Storey’s intimate images capture the struggles mums face looking after kids with disabilities – but also the huge hearts of both parents and children

Late singer ‘absolutely not high’ when she fell on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2009, says estate after Winfrey claimed she had relapsed

Whitney Houston’s estate has refuted what they call “inaccurate and unfair” claims by Oprah Winfrey that the singer was drug affected when she fell off the stage during an appearance on her talkshow.

Speaking on Tuesday at the Cannes Lions conference in France, Winfrey claimed Houston was “back on drugs” during her two-part appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2009, during which she spoke about being clean after years of substance abuse and two spells in rehab.

In the final instalment of our five quizzes, the V&A Storehouse in London set 15 fiendish questions to test your knowledge of their collection

Forty years since Marks & Spencer started selling cans of gin and tonic, every supermarket and corner shop is full of ready-mixed mojitos, margaritas and negronis. Why are these so acceptable, given the moral panic over alcopops?

It was a sultry evening in early June, and I was heading to a party on the other side of London. The journey by tube takes an hour, so my boyfriend and I brought along some warm cans of margarita to pass the time. As the sweet reek of lime had begun to drift across the carriage, I spotted two women sipping cosmopolitans – Carrie Bradshaw’s drink of choice and for years the only cocktail I could have named – out of similar tins. Before long, we were all feeling lightly smashed.

Drinking on Transport for London services was banned in 2008 (the year of the great recession, just when we needed it most), but these days it seems the rule survives more as a suggestion. And conveniently, our cans were small enough to disappear into our pockets if necessary. As the writer and founder of @londondeadpubs Jimmy McIntosh puts it: “It might seem a bit uncouth to crack out a four pack of lager when travelling somewhere on public transport. But a canned cocktail feels more discreet and civilised somehow.”

Finding the weather too hot to handle? It will be a breeze with one of these soothing sprays

I wrote this from very sunny Corfu, while Britain enjoyed – or suffered, depending on your tolerance – a full-blown heatwave. Dyson’s new HushJet Mini Cool personal fan (£99.99) temporarily sold out (since restocked), and questions about Shark’s viral new ChillPill 3-in-1 Fan, Mist & InstaChill System (£129.99) were racking up in my DMs.

I happened to have the latter with me (so do many of you – it’s sold out in the prettier colours), and while it’s nice to look at and works well, it’s quite fiddly to switch the different heads.

Whether it’s Aquabeads or micro scooters, board games or storybooks, these are the toys that won over our writer and her merry band of testers

• The best gifts for five-year-olds

The good news about shopping for six-year-olds is that they’ll love almost anything you give them. The bad news? That makes it surprisingly hard to choose something really good. Between the plastic toys destined for landfill and the ones that hold their attention for all of five minutes, it can be tricky to find something that actually sticks.

At this age, children are usually in year 1 or 2 at school, able to read a little, full of curiosity, and starting to focus for longer (as long as you’ve got their attention). Play still matters hugely; it’s how they learn to share, problem-solve and build resilience – all without realising they’re learning anything at all.

The first portable fan from Dyson is stylish, easy to use and powerful. Did someone mention a 55mph top speed? Perhaps, but it’s so noisy you may not have heard them

• The best handheld fans

Two things will strike you when you pick up the Dyson HushJet Mini Cool fan for the first time. The first is that flesh-pink (stone/blush) is a bold colour choice for a product that already looks like it’s escaped from a certain NSFW section of the Filter.

However, once you’ve retrieved your mind from the gutter, you’ll notice that the different form of pleasure the HushJet Mini offers – impressively powerful wind speeds to keep you cool in heatwaves – comes at a price. This thing is loud with a capital L, and becomes even more so as you progress through its five settings. More “jet” than “hush”.

Bored of shaving? Enjoy lasting smoothness with our expert’s pick of the best epilators for leg, underarm and face grooming

• The beauty treatments you can do at home – and the ones you shouldn’t

With summer in full swing and mini dresses back in style, if you want smooth legs and underarms without the mess of waxing – or the scrapes and nicks of shaving – an epilator may be a smart investment.

In simplest terms, an epilator is an electronic device that uses rotating discs to grip and pull out hairs from the root. This gives longer-lasting results than shaving or depilatory creams – up to four weeks, depending on how fast your body hair grows. Epilators are also better at catching shorter hairs than waxing. Best of all, once you’ve bought your epilator, you’re all set – there’s no need to stock up on razor blades or wax strips, and no last-minute emergency salon appointments.

Best epilator overall:
Philips 8000

Best compact epilator:
Philips 4000

Avoiding Prime Day? Amazon isn’t the only retailer slashing prices this week – here are the best alternative deals on the products we love across home, beauty, fashion and more

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Prime Day is now in full swing to fill the summer-shaped gap in the bargain-hunter’s calendar. But what if you don’t want to fork out nearly a hundred quid a year for Amazon Prime, or indeed use Amazon at all? Plenty of other retailers have joined in by rolling out big mid-June reductions, and unlike Amazon, they don’t make you subscribe to a members-only club to get their best deals.

It takes more legwork to find deals across multiple retailers than to head straight to Amazon, of course, so we’ve done the research for you. As well as finding the lowest prices online, we’ve used price-checking tools such as Pricerunner and Idealo to scour price histories and check that these are real deals with genuinely new and notable discounts.

Beat the heat with pistachio sammies, fruit lollies, mint chocolate semifreddo and green-tea ice-box cake

During a recent traffic jam, on a day so hot it felt stagnant and seemingly eternal, I found myself in a private reverie of superiority. My fellow drivers, slumped in their baking metal shells, were observers to my good fortune: a homemade blackcurrant and white peach ice lolly – sharp and fruity, with a delicate almond flavour (the result of having used slightly underripe peaches) – plucked from the freezer in a rare moment of foresight. I licked it with the conviction that it was the only object of desire between Elephant and Castle and Acton Central in London. Ice lollies are fab(!) You will need silicone moulds and some wooden sticks.

Kitty Travers is owner of La Grotta Ices in London, and author of La Grotta Ices, published by Vintage at £25. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com.

Higher volumes are being produced, so prices are coming down, and there’s a now a whole range of exciting styles to choose from

As a fully signed-up member of the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati, I’m not especially nationalistic, but I’m more than ready to champion our best food and drink traditions. We can bask in a long history of winemaking – it dates back certainly to the middle ages and probably even to the Romans – which is now being seriously scaled up: in March, the Food Standards Agency reported that 2025’s English wine production was up 55% on the previous year. That, and the exceptional quality of those examples I’ve tasted in the past 12 months, seems reason alone to celebrate this year’s English wine week.

For decades, English wine has been dogged by a reputation for being all mouth and no trousers: bougie pricing, underwhelming drinking. While there’s been well-deserved noise about our sparkling wine, some curmudgeons question whether it’s really worth champagne prices. Meanwhile, our still wines can be considered a squinty novelty: bracingly acidic, incongruously expensive, something to say you’ve tried before you head back to the continental Europe aisle. But I’m here to tell you that English wine is finally finding its trousers.

Peaches and apricots are ripe here, ripe now. They’re perfect for everything from sandwiches and salads to puddings

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The apricot orchards at Godshill Orchards on the Isle of Wight consist of 4,000 trees made up of six cultivars: sunnycot, tomcot, flavourcot, ladycot, perlecot and digat. Apricots like moderately cold winters, mild and relatively dry springs, and hot, dry summers. So, despite capricious weather, it looks as if it’s going to be an extremely productive year in the UK, and for peaches, too. The soft stone fruit season begins earlier in Italy (the name “apricot” probably comes from the Latin praecox, meaning precocious), and it has been a good year here, too, so much so that there is talk of a glut. But I am jumping ahead.

Of all the soft stone fruit, apricots are maybe the easiest to read: pale flesh with a greenish tint is a clear sign they are not ready; a deep, glowing orange one that they are – and the stronger the colour, the sweeter the fruit is the general rule. It is true, though, that the shade is no guarantee of sweetness or texture, and there is always a chance that the flesh will be woolly and bland (I have solutions), but the hope is for fragrant and luscious fruit.

Mark the return of courgette season by using the vegetable as the centrepiece for a cheesy and peppery pasta sauce

Having made too much parmesan cream for mortadella sandwiches the other week, the rest was carried over from one column to the next, and a recipe for pasta with courgettes and almonds was improved significantly by two large tablespoons of the soft cheese and parmesan beaten into a soft-savoury cream with the texture (but not taste) of toothpaste!

This recipe is also one that welcomes courgettes back to the northern hemisphere – not that they ever went away, now that everything is available all the time. The season proper, though, is something to celebrate as more and more courgettes appear in the gardens of those fortunate enough to grow them (flowers blazing), on market stalls and shop shelves, and in veg boxes. So much so that, at a certain point, it will all get too much and gardeners will start talking about gluts, cooks will threaten chutney and food magazines provide 101 ideas. But I am jumping ahead.

The standup and Bafta-winner on experiencing grief at a young age, his mischievous grandmother, and why he refuses to learn to drive

Born in Watford in 1993, Jack Rooke is a comedian, actor and writer. He studied journalism at the University of Westminster, and began his standup career in 2014. Rooke’s breakout show, Good Grief, was written with his grandmother, Sicely, and documented their experiences of bereavement following the death of Rooke’s father, Laurie, from cancer. His next show, Happy Hour, became the basis for his two-time Bafta-winning Channel 4 comedy, Big Boys. Rooke is taking an updated version of Good Grief on a UK tour, starting at the Roundhouse in London on 14 August. Rooke is an ambassador for the suicide prevention charity Calm.

I am three years old and being pushed by my nan on a swing. She’s in a lovely powder-blue two-piece while I am sporting an iconic all-in-one black-and-white striped mini boiler suit dungaree scenario. For reasons we will never know, I look rather unimpressed.

More locations are offering debt advice, health services, cafes, social activities and support under one roof

Shortly before lunchtime in a London community centre, older visitors are chatting over coffee and crosswords as young families drift in and out. Kitchen volunteers from the Real Junk Food Project are preparing lunch at a “pay as you feel” cafe, using food that would otherwise have ended up in the bin.

Conversations inside the Victorian building at the East Twickenham Neighbourhood Association (ETNA) community centre range from financial advice to digital support, via childcare and legal services. There are counselling drop-ins and self-help groups, while down the corridor yoga is about to start. Over the course of the day, it all builds a picture of what community hubs offer local people.

Puff Puff, AKA Puffy, came to us aged 13 with no teeth, a broken ear and a cold – but was always there in tough times

Three of our cats had died of old age, leaving my family heartbroken. So Brandy, my wife, looked at our local animal shelter website and saw it had a 13-year-old stray cat with no teeth, a broken ear and a cold. Betty, as the staff had named her, had one day left to live before the shelter was going to put her down.

Brandy sent me along to see her. The warden said no one had visited Betty, but as soon as they opened the cage a Himalayan cat catapulted out of her blanket straight at me. I picked her up and knew I had to take her home.

Meg was married to a man but had fantasised having sex with women for years. When she met Jess, her knees buckled

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

I’d spent so many years visualising having sex with a woman

The Passport Office accepted applications for my two other children but refused the youngest with exactly the same documents

I am a Briton living in Switzerland and my three children are British and Swiss nationals.

When we found out via the Guardian that dual nationals, who live overseas, are now required to hold a British passport in order to enter the UK, we set about applying, so the children can continue to visit their English relatives.

Treasury also promises a new first-time buyer Isa with no upper age limit, as the ‘age at which a first home is bought is rising’

Isa reforms announced on Tuesday promise a new first-time buyer account with no upper age limit, and a tax on interest on cash savings held in a stocks and shares wrapper.

Savers and investors can currently deposit up to £20,000 a year in Isas, which offer the chance to earn returns which are not subject to tax.

We were charged the wrong amount, but because the bank says we have no evidence it won’t do a chargeback

I went to Paris to recover from the grief of losing my dog.

All was going well until I took a taxi from a rank outside Musée d’Orsay to my hotel near Notre Dame – a 12-minute journey.

Bank details at risk as criminals use AI to create fake sites and emails offering pre-release beta test version

Like millions of gamers around the world, you have been waiting years for Grand Theft Auto VI to be released. Now you have the opportunity to play the much-anticipated game before everyone else.

An email has arrived inviting you to play a pre-release “beta” version of the game so that you can alert the makers to any bugs before its official release later this year.

How much do our genes determine about our lives, and could they influence traits like risk-taking, antisocial behaviour or even violence? Ian Sample talks to Kathryn Paige Harden, a behavioural geneticist and professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin who studies how genetic factors shape human behaviour. In her book Original Sin she explores how nature and nurture combine to influence our likelihood of committing crimes, and asks whether the ‘cause’ of our actions matters for how we think about culpability

Order Original Sin from the Guardian bookshop

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As a kid, I did my best to avoid exercise. As an adult, I endured it for the sake of my health. Then I set myself a clear goal – and motivation was no longer an issue

It’s fair to say I don’t come from a long line of athletes. When I was growing up in the 1990s, sport was something other people did; we were not a family who cycled, much less jogged. In PE I was the wheezing child hiding behind the bins, pretending I’d twisted an ankle. When I contemplated working out – not often – I had the vague idea it was supposed to turn my body into something other people might find attractive.

I evolved from an unsporty child into an unsporty adult. Occasionally, mostly in an attempt to lose weight without having to stop eating croissants, I would attempt something like Couch to 5K, which I’d either abandon after a couple of sessions or see through to the bitter end out of the perverse determination to prove I’d been right all along: exercise was a mug’s game and endorphins an invention of Big Wellness.

Jenny Kleeman investigates ‘Biotech Barbie’ Cathy Tie, the controversial entrepreneur hoping to revolutionise human reproduction by letting parents edit their embryos

Meet Cathy Tie: serial entrepreneur, self-described “Biotech Barbie”, and the woman aiming to revolutionise reproduction by using Crispr to edit human embryos.

Beneath the tech-startup polish lies a provocative mission: to take the biological lottery out of the hands of nature and place it into the hands of parents.

Mobility can’t be tracked on a leaderboard, but it can help you feel better and make daily tasks easier

Fitness is often measured through numbers: how much weight a person can lift, or how fast or far they can run. But one important metric is harder to quantify: mobility.

Mobility gets overlooked, because the relevant exercises do not “have the instant visual appeal of traditional workouts”, says Tyler McDonald, certified personal trainer and senior brand manager for the National Academy of Sports Medicine.

How to start meditating

How to start weightlifting

How to start budgeting

How to start running

90/90 hip switches: Sit on the floor with the front leg bent at a 90-degree angle (thigh out in front of you and calf perpendicular to you) and the back leg bent at a 90-degree angle (thigh out to the side, calf roughly parallel to you). Slowly rotate your knees to the opposite side without lifting your feet off the floor. “This is fantastic for opening tight hips,” McDonald says.

Cat-cow stretch. With your hands and knees on the ground, arch your back towards the ceiling, dropping your head between your arms. Then, slowly drop your back and raise your head and glutes towards the ceiling. This helps with spine mobility.

World’s greatest stretch. Yes, this stretch has quite the name, but for good reason. Start in a plank. Bring the right leg forward into a low lunge position. Stretch the right arm overhead towards the ceiling, twisting the upper body. Then, bring the right hand behind the head and attempt to touch the ground with the right elbow. “It hits your hips, hamstrings and upper back all at once, making it incredibly efficient,” says McDonald.

Update the classic outfit when you want to look slick and office-appropriate … in a low-key, faux-effortless kind of way

Jeans and a nice top is a tried-and-tested formula when it comes to dressing for an evening out. It is the little black dress of real life. A local dinner, an outing to the theatre or cinema, a birthday gathering in the pub: these do not require a cocktail dress. Still, you want to look nice. So you wear jeans and a nice top.

If jeans and a nice top is the real life LBD, then jeans and a jacket is the normcore power suit. It is the no-nonsense, I’ve-got-this formula you need for daytime. It is an outfit that comes together in seconds and keeps on looking good and feeling comfortable for hours. It is grown up but not stiff, alpha but not snooty. It is – and this is important in our capricious climate, and when your commute can take you straight from overheated train carriage to chiller-cabinet level air conditioning – pitched neither too warm nor too cold, and offers flexibility. (You are wearing something under the jacket, you see. We will get to that.)

Glamorous, fashion-forward, fun – wigs are everywhere you look, with celebrities leading the way. But should you go for something flamboyant, or a more natural style? Time to test-drive a few

‘I think it’s the word – ‘wig’!” says Melanie Burrell, scrunching up her nose. “I prefer ‘hairpiece’.” It’s part of the reason why, when she opened her wig business in Glasgow in 2010, she called it Parrucche – the Italian word for “wigs” being a little more discreet, especially when it came to signage.

But the stigma once associated with wig wearing is quickly diminishing. Outside of Black and queer communities, where using hairpieces has long been commonplace, wigs were once associated with attempts to conceal hair-loss, or for fancy dress. But in recent years, their appeal has broadened. According to data insights company Statista, the global wigs and hair extensions market is predicted to reach $13.28bn this year. For men, toupees, now more commonly known as “hair systems”, are part of this resurgence.

Jonathan Anderson’s golden touch is on display in Paris with mix of metallics, brooches and ripped jeans

Fashion brands were tuned to the weather forecast in Paris in the run-up to the menswear shows this week – and aware temperatures would reach 40C on Wednesday. This weekend a decision was made – the Christian Dior show, originally scheduled for the afternoon, would be moved to 9am, to avoid the heat of the day.

The change in time certainly made the experience more palatable – as did (in possibly a fashion-week first) the cool towels handed to guests on arrival, umbrellas to block out the sun and personalised fans on seats. In the grounds of the grand Musée Nissim de Camondo, which is under renovation to reopen in 2030, those in the garden even had the benefit of the occasional breeze.

These ace shampoos gives my hair a deep clean without drying it out and aggravating my scalp

There’s an old trick used by backstage stylists to quickly and thoroughly rid models’ hair of the layers of stiff, sticky or flaky product buildup from the several previous catwalk shows that day: Fairy Liquid.

I have seen this in chaotic action and the squeaky cleanliness set my teeth on edge to the extent where I have been irrationally avoidant of “detox” and “clarifying” shampoos almost ever since.

With Cambridge South about to welcome its first passengers, it’s an ideal time to explore some of the university city’s lesser-known treasures on foot or by public transport

Flat fields of poppies and ox-eye daisies stretch out to a wide horizon. There are butterflies, vetches, salad burnet. Skylarks sing overhead and a cuckoo calls from the trees near the river. Legend has it that the poet Lord Byron swam here as a Cambridge undergraduate and, 20 years later, Charles Darwin surveyed its beetles. Heading through flowering meadows towards a nature reserve known as Byron’s Pool, I’ve walked a mile from the new £250m Cambridge South station.

Opening to passengers on 28 June, Cambridge South will be the first Great British Railways-branded station. The towering Biomedical Campus next door is Europe’s biggest medical research facility, with about 40,000 visitors a day. The station itself, with its 1,000 cycle-parking spaces, living roof and solar panels, feels like a model for sustainable transport.

This long-distance coastal trek takes in towering rock faces, isolated beaches and tasty pitstops

The fluorescent green gaiters seemed a ridiculous suggestion, but prove a godsend as we plod across the sand. “I bet you’re glad I told you to get a pair of these bad boys now, aren’t you?” my friend Luke jokes. We’re marching across a wide, crescent-shaped, honeyed beach. The sun is high in the sky and slivers of light flicker through a thick sea fog, as 6ft waves crash and fizz, their white foam licking the towering limestone cliffs.

I’m in Portugal, in the west Algarve, with two friends, hiking part of the Rota Vicentina, or Fishermen’s Trail, a 140-mile (226km) trek that runs from Lagos to São Torpes in Alentejo. Traversing cliffs that lead to wild, remote beaches like this one is part of the trail’s calling card. As the name suggests, it was originally carved out by fishers to reach otherwise inaccessible fishing spots along the Atlantic Ocean. Now it’s part of the Rota Vicentina, a hiking and cycling route spanning 466 miles across Portugal.

The creators of County Cork’s Sheep’s Head Way had to win over hundreds of landowners to complete the ambitious project, but the result is a gloriously unspoilt trail

The Sheep’s Head peninsula is clearly a good place to be a skylark. They seem to warble overhead at every turn, singing their little hearts out – and who could blame them? The hills here are high and heathery, the sea breeze is warmed by the Gulf Stream and the edge-of-the-world scenery is a realm of wild green slopes and endless blue Atlantic. If you had to choose a sky to lark in, the one that crowns this County Cork headland is a bona fide wing-quiverer.

The peninsula wows hikers, too. I’ve come to one of the south-westernmost points on the Irish mainland to trek the Sheep’s Head Way, a long-distance trail opened by the local community 30 years ago this summer. It took serious work to complete – more of which later – but it’s a delight. I’m walking the original 55-mile (88km) loop around the peninsula, although a longer, 63-mile option is now considered the official route. The way attracts a fraction of the numbers drawn to the Kerry Way and Dingle Peninsula trail further north, and thanks to its untrammelled paths and rampant, cliff-edged scenery, the rewards are grand, in every sense.

Come for the sun; stay for the seafood, jazz festival, galleries and coastal walking in this laid-back village within a city

South of the city centre, Le Mourillon is Toulon’s characterful and unpretentious seaside quarter. Once a fishing village, Le Mourillon is home to little shops selling Provençal produce such as huge garlic bulbs and tomatoes in vibrant shades, alongside lively bars and restaurants. It’s not as glamorous or polished as the likes of Antibes or Saint-Tropez – you won’t find designer brands – but it’s all the more charming for that.

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?

Thursday quiz fans inundated our mailbox with at least two messages pointing out that John Oliver had opened his HBO show discussing the problem of feral hogs, of which there are significantly more than between 30 and 50 in the US. If he starts opening shows talking about Sparks, Kate Bush, Syldavia and Alan Shearer’s fixations on distances, we truly will know where he gets his material from, and the Thursday quiz lawyers are ready. In the meantime, here are 15 questions on topical news, general knowledge and pop culture to see you on towards the weekend. Let us know how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 253

Safety concerns, caregiving needs, and, of course, finances all come into play when considering aging-in-place at home

My mom is the model boomer. At 77 years old, she runs her interior design business, organizes a book club, plays pickleball and dominates in mahjong. She is the picture of health; good luck matching the pace on her 5 mile walks. As is the trend for her generation, mom and her 83-year-old husband have chosen to continue living right where they are at home.

Circumstances led her to make age-in-place plans well ahead of her peers. When my dad died unexpectedly 22 years ago, my mom found herself widowed at 55 and living alone in a two-story, four-bedroom home. Mom wanted to remain in her community, so she downsized into a smart townhouse with a first-floor bedroom and bath, and nearby shops.

Climbing the career ladder may soon be a thing of the past, as workers prioritise their mental health and lifestyle. But job-dropping has its drawbacks …

Name: Job-dropping.

Age: About a month.

VolcanoTech’s sulphur dioxide detecting sensors are in already in use in a number of countries

Weather forecasts now include air quality warnings and cities have networks of air quality sensors driving real-time maps online.

Similar air quality sensors can warn of an imminent volcanic eruption. Just as a fizzy drink releases carbon dioxide when the pressure is released, rising magma emits dissolved sulphur dioxide as it rises. So a big increase in this gas warns that a volcanic eruption may be imminent.

Aiden is an unforgettable young caregiver in Walthamstow, east London, who has been looking after his mum for over half his life. Every few weeks, Aiden and other young carers get a rare night off thanks to tenacious council worker Satvinder, who fights to improve the recognition of young carers in her borough. This film joins them as they reclaim a few hours of their teenage lives back.

Is Mum OK? is released during Carers Week in the UK, a campaign that celebrates unpaid carers across the country and calls for better recognition and support for them. There are more than one million young carers in the UK – with an average age of 12 – which is the equivalent of two kids in every school class.

The writer who coined the word ‘enshittification’ tells us why AI will never deliver what it promises – and why it still appeals so much to those in power

A “centaur”, in automation theory, is a person assisted by a machine, and a “reverse centaur”, hero of Cory Doctorow’s new book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, is a “human who is conscripted into acting as an assistant to a machine”. Every warehouse worker who ever had to urinate in a water bottle because they couldn’t otherwise meet the fulfilment targets set by an algorithm is a reverse centaur. Reaching into the future, everyone who has to sit in a self-driving truck to make sure it doesn’t crash, presumably on minimum rather than truck-driver wages, is a reverse centaur; as is every lawyer no longer on lawyer’s money checking Gemini’s command of precedent, every indie band scraping a living doing covers of AI-generated hits, and so on. That, anyway, is the promise: AI is coming for your job, and it is coming for your kids’ jobs, and there is no point fighting it because the future’s already here.

Wiping out the world of work, and with it our ability to sustain ourselves and live autonomous lives, is only the beginning, if you listen to AI’s architects. Elon Musk has called it the single greatest threat to human civilisation, Sam Altman has said it will “most likely lead to the end of the world” and Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, memorably forecast that AI would come to see us the way we see animals: cute to have around but ultimately a resource to be exploited. “AI people claim they’re about to create God, by teaching words to a word-guessing programme,” Doctorow says. “It’s grandiose.”

Readers remember the Sherwood Forest tree that has failed to produce leaves for the first time in 1,000 years

After hundreds of years inspiring wonder in Sherwood Forest, the Major oak has died. We asked readers to share their memories of one of the UK’s most recognisable natural landmarks, said to have offered a sanctuary for Robin Hood, and the response was overwhelming, with many sharing heartfelt stories of childhood adventures.

Joanna de Graaf from Leicestershire wrote: “I grew up in Nottingham and we visited Sherwood Forest quite often as a family. I can remember being so excited to actually be inside the Major oak where Robin Hood and his merry men had hidden (and, for a little girl in the 1960s, Maid Marian too).

Kent Kiehl convinced the US legal system he can find violence in prisoners’ brains. His theories have been since used by defense lawyers – with grave consequences for prisoners

We’d like to hear from people in the UK about their experiences of trying to buy or sell a flat in recent months. Have there been any issues?

Getting on the property ladder is an achievement in Britain but for some flat-owners the home-ownership dream has turned sour.

High service charges, fire safety issues, and onerous leasehold conditions are among the issues that have affected flat valuations over the past decade. There are reports of owners, particularly in London, currently selling at a loss.

How did you cope? What do you remember of that period of hot weather? Tell us and share your pictures

The record temperature for June set in Hampshire in 1976 is expected to be surpassed during this current UK heatwave.

The highest June temperature on record of 35.6C was set on 29 June 1957 in London. This was then equalled on 28 June 1976 in Southampton during that year’s heatwave.

We would like to hear from Cape Verdeans in the UK and across the globe on the team’s progress in the tournament

Cape Verde is enjoying a fairytale World Cup, with their performance becoming the story of the tournament.

There was the shock 0-0 draw with Spain in their tournament debut. Then on Sunday, there was another when they drew 2-2 with two-time champions Uruguay in Miami. This now puts them in serious contention for a place in the knockouts.

How has the shortage affected you? How are you coping?

Health leaders have warned Britons are facing some of the “most severe” shortages of NHS medicines on record, including common painkillers, epilepsy drugs and HRT.

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has warned that medicine shortages pose a “serious risk to patient safety”.

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