Katie Kendrick, Cath Williams and Jo Darbyshire were subject to tens of thousands of pounds of hidden costs as their new-build freeholds soared in value, making their homes unsellable. Their campaign could finally end the ‘feudal’ system in England and Wales

When a leaflet about leasehold injustice landed on Cath Williams’ doorstep in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, nearly a decade ago, she barely gave it a second thought, tossing it straight into the bin. Had she given it more than a cursory glance, she’d have read about how residents on her new-build estate had found out the leaseholds for their homes had been sold without their knowledge, which could cost them all thousands of pounds. “Sometimes you get things through the door and you go, ‘what are they on about?’” recalls the 69-year-old retired university lecturer. It was of no interest to her. Or so she thought.

Williams hadn’t realised her home was leasehold when she decided to buy it. It was never mentioned in any promotional material, she says, and the word “leasehold” was only later added to her paperwork in pencil by an estate agent four weeks before her move in date – by then she had already paid her deposit and it was too late to back out. Her unease about what this would mean built over time and it soon became clear it would be a huge headache for her: any alterations to her home would require paying the leaseholder an ever-increasing permission fee, the property would decrease in value as the lease got shorter, and the ground rent could increase drastically over time. Ultimately, it could leave her trapped and unable to sell her home.

Brooklyn Peltz Beckham appears in a new ad for DoorDash, just months after attacking the family brand’s love of self-promotion. Where will it all end?

I see Brooklyn Beckham is on his DoorDash privacy tour. After Prince Harry and Meghan “stepped away” from royal family duties, they embarked on what South Park famously designated their worldwide privacy tour. When Brooklyn stepped away from Beckham family duties – which oddly appear to involve a regal level of shared mission, public appearances and emotional repression – he declared that he wished only for privacy.

And so to his DoorDash ad, which dropped on Monday. Brooklyn is becoming quite the Greta Garbo of food delivery service ads, having previously done a collaboration with Uber Eats. But this latest one for DoorDash, owner of Deliveroo, is an eyecatcher. “You’re probably wondering,” he begins – and honestly, he’d be amazed at what I’m actually wondering. “You’re probably wondering why I’m watching the Fifa World Cup 2026 at home,” smirks Brooklyn, throwing down several World Cup tickets on a table that also features items including some letters. “It’s a long story,” he chuckles, before viewers are … tantalised, I think it is? … with the caption slogan: “It’s complicated. More soon.”

Today, Jim Henson’s dark fairytale is seen as a classic of 80s high camp. But on release, it bombed. Here, members of the cast and crew remember laughter, tricky puppets and Henson’s ‘joyful magic’

Labyrinth arrived 40 years ago with David Bowie at his most devastatingly charismatic, a breakthrough performance by Jennifer Connelly, and lots and lots of puppets. The film about the quest of stroppy teen Sarah (Connelly) to rescue her baby half-brother from the clutches of Jareth (Bowie), the nefarious goblin king, was a dark fantasy that played out like a trippy Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As Sarah tries to navigate an ever-shifting maze, the story evolves into a thoughtful coming-of-age tale.

Director Jim Henson, the creative powerhouse behind the Muppets and Fraggle Rock, breathed life into Labyrinth, and his company Creature Shop designed a dazzling array of puppets to appear alongside the human cast. Labyrinth was visually groundbreaking, but audiences weren’t so keen – the film bombed at the US box office and some reviews were far from glowing. It was only years later, when the film was released on home video and then DVD, that it became the cult classic it is considered now.

Once a year, Dutch kids, parents and teachers take part in a walking festival, heading out for four nights in a single week to explore their neighbourhoods, exercise and make friends. It’s a tradition that seems to be genuinely transformative

I shouldn’t have been surprised that the rain didn’t stop the Dutch kids. All day it had been thunderstorming, and the forecast didn’t look so great for the evening. And yet at 5pm, hundreds of kids started arriving – many by bike – with their parents to Amsterdam’s Westerpark, a beloved city park that caters to a more residential area of the capital. Today, it functions as a starting point: volunteers coordinate registration, and groups of children gather, decked out in raincoats and eager to embark on either a 5km or a 10km excursion around the surrounding neighbourhoods.

It’s the second night of Avondvierdaagse (which literally means “four-day evening walk”) , organised by a group of neighbourhood volunteers. It’s not a race, but if children complete every night, they get medals, a bouquet of flowers and, if they’re lucky, a lot of sweets. It’s not just Amsterdam; across villages, towns and cities in the Netherlands, hundreds of thousands of Dutch people are doing the same: every year, kids spend four evenings in early summer exploring their neighbourhoods with their school friends and parents as part of the Week van de Avond4daagse. Some places had celebrated earlier; others were walking the following week. A variation of the tradition has even made its way to Suriname, one of the Dutch former colonies. There are also four-day cycling and swimming events. According to the Royal Dutch Walking Association (KWbN), which helps coordinate the events, half a million people take part every year, in 700 locations across the country, powered by tens of thousands of volunteers.

Dave Grohl spread the word about the ferociously funny quartet and now they’re supporting Foo Fighters in stadiums. Just make sure you switch off your phone’s flash if you go to their gigs …

They say brevity is the soul of wit and few bands have as much of both as Otoboke Beaver. Playing short, sharp songs packed with equal parts ferocity and black humour, next week the Japanese quartet will play easily their biggest UK gig yet, at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium supporting Foo Fighters.

“We met Foo Fighters at an overseas festival, and again in Japan,” says vocalist Accorinrin as we chat in a music bar in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, a couple of hours before Otoboke Beaver go on stage and eviscerate an audience at the nearby O-Nest. “Dave Grohl told so many people about us, which helped us a lot. He didn’t have to introduce a nobody band like us, but Dave is always looking for newcomers and he wanted to hook us up within the music industry.”

It’s a decade since the MP for Batley and Spen was killed by a far-right extremist. Her sister Kim Leadbeater, who took over her parliamentary seat, explains what lessons are still to be learned.

Jo Cox was a Labour MP for Batley and Spen, the place where she had grown up and had known her whole life. She was firmly pro-Europe, a passionate campaigner for social justice - and the mother of two young children, five and three years old. On 16 June 2016, at the height of a toxic Brexit campaign, Jo was murdered by a far-right extremist. He shot and stabbed her several times outside Birstall library in West Yorkshire, shouting “This is for Britain.” She was 41 years old.

Her sister Kim Leadbeater and her family set up the Jo Cox Foundation in her honour, and took on her former constituency. But a decade later, with far-right ideas increasingly mainstream and far-right violence more common, Leadbeater tells Nosheen Iqbal what lessons we can all learn from the tragedy.

Thumbnail image credit:

James Manning/PA Wire
Jo Cox Foundation/PA Wire

Ministry of Defence investigates after shots apparently fired within 500 metres of vessel near Isle of Wight

The Ministry of Defence is investigating reports that a Russian frigate, the Admiral Grigorovich, fired warning shots within 500 metres of a British yacht sailing a little over 20 miles south of the Isle of Wight.

No injuries or damage have been reported by the yacht, which continued its journey. A boat from HMS Tyne, a patrol vessel, has visited the yacht to gather details and check the crew are safe.

Ex-defence secretary John Healey and ex-defence minister Al Carns have given resignation statements to MPs

Speaking to reporters at the G7, Keir Starmer also defended the defence investment plan (DIP) draft that led to John Healey’s resignation as defence secretary last week. Starmer confirmed that Dan Jarvis, the new defence secretary, is getting some input before the publication of the DIP in its final version.

Starmer said:

The position on investment in defence is firstly that we increased last year defence spending from 2.3% to 2.6%, that’s the biggest increase since the 1980s, and that means £270bn will be spent this parliament on defence.

On top of that [the] defence investment plan which obviously gives us capability for the future. We will put even more money in relation to that. I’ve been really clear that’s required difficult decisions, I have taken the decision to reallocate money from other departments.

PM did not have bilateral meeting with US leader but says pair had ‘very productive’ conversations in group sessions

• Europe live – latest updates

Keir Starmer has denied being snubbed by Donald Trump at the G7 in France after the two did not have a bilateral meeting at the summit.

The prime minister, who did meet the US president in a series of discussions involving other leaders, said he had a series of “very productive, very good conversations” with Trump. He added that Britain was ready to play its “full part” in opening the strait of Hormuz after a peace deal between Iran and the US.

US president says Netanyahu has to be ‘more responsible’, as Hezbollah says deal hinges on Israel withdrawing

• Full report: Trump declares deal ‘all signed’ as G7 leaders try to tie loose ends

You can follow all the latest developments from the G7 summit in our Europe live blog:

We will be including any Iran-related news from the summit in our Middle East crisis live blog.

General secretary of TUC calls Reform proposal ‘a smokescreen for slashing women’s rights’

• UK politics live – latest updates

A law proposed by Nigel Farage to “strengthen women’s rights” could cost female workers money by removing equal pay for work of equal value, unions have said.

A proposal, made by Reform UK days before the Makerfield byelection, to introduce a “women and motherhood protection act” that it says will restore equality before the law has been described as “shameless and deceptive”.

Activists say blanket ban could prevent teenagers from finding peers and role models with similar conditions

Disability activists have said banning under-16s from social media risks cutting off a “lifeline for friendship” for disabled children and could push them into social isolation by preventing them from making connections online.

Charities and high-profile figures in disability advocacy said they were concerned that a blanket ban on social media would disproportionately affect teenagers who may not be able to meet people easily in real life or find peers with similar conditions.

Exclusive: Sources say Defra’s policy on livestock fails to distinguish between ponies and sheep

Natural England and MPs are urging the government to change its livestock rules to stop ponies on Dartmoor from being culled.

Semi-wild ponies have roamed Dartmoor for more than 4,000 years and have become uniquely suited to the boggy landscape, providing a charming sight for those who visit the national park.

Litter-picking creatures emerge from underground for global franchise targeting nostalgic adults and gen Alpha

Move over Paddington Bear. After almost 30 years off screen, the Wombles – the furry, litter-picking creatures who live beneath Wimbledon Common – are set for a comeback.

The characters, whose motto is “Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish”, are being revived after the consolidation of the brand’s intellectual property rights under The Blair Partnership, which will oversee its global development.

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Donald Trump: The US president is in France for the G7 summit where he is meeting with world leaders. The US-Iran agreement will be high on the agenda after Trump clashed with and threatened key allies. Why am I mentioning this in the Geopolitics World Cup blog? Because the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, took a punt and opted to give Trump a belated 80th birthday gift: a Germany football top with the number 47 on the back and “Trump” written on it. It is quite rare for Trump to endorse anything that is not branded “USA! USA! USA! but he seemed pleased.

Algeria: The Desert Warriors will hope to harness strong backing from local supporters ⁠when they open their campaign ​against the defending champions Argentina. Residents of Lawrence, Kansas have fallen in love ⁠with Algeria, who have made their base camp in the city 40 miles west of Kansas City and Petkovic praised the north African team’s newfound fans for their warm welcome.

Lawrence is located a little over 40 miles from Kansas City, a roughly 40-minute drive from the Metropolitan area that is hosting the base camps of Argentina, the Netherlands, and England for the World Cup. All three are staying at boutique hotels around the city. Algeria? Well, they chose the humble Lawrence DoubleTree.

So where did this come from? According to Stan Herd, a local artist, you have to go back to April, when it was officially announced that Lawrence would host Algeria. “I think everybody’s surprised at it,” Herd said. “We’re not.”

Sea ice is melting fast, worsening the climate crisis, but a bold attempt to rethicken it is showing early signs of success

‘This would have been a wild dream a year ago,” says Andrea Ceccolini, standing on Arctic sea ice just a 4-mile snowmobile ride from the Inuit town of Cambridge Bay, northern Canada. To his left are sky blue ponds of meltwater created in the last few days by a sun that no longer sets in the high north summer. To his right, the sea ice is still a brilliant white, the light dusting of snow on top continuing to sparkle.

“It’s incredibly different, the boundary – I mean, you can point to it,” he says. The difference is the result of a bold geoengineering experiment being conducted by Ceccolini’s company, Real Ice, funded by the UK government.

The late MP’s family, politicians and academics on the factors they believe have heightened division in the last 10 years

• How the murder of my sister changed Britain – podcast

Ten years on from Jo Cox’s murder, Kim Leadbeater fears that the consensus around “kinder, gentler politics” in the wake of her sister’s death was short-lived.

“Sadly and regrettably, over the last decade things are worse,” she says. Cox, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen and mother of two young children, was murdered outside a library in West Yorkshire in June 2016 by an English nationalist.

With Andy Burnham predicted to win Makerfield byelection, talk is turning to who would join him if he replaced Keir Starmer

• UK politics live – latest updates

Andy Burnham looks on the brink of returning to Westminster this weekend if polls showing he is heading for victory in the Makerfield byelection are to be believed. It is now clear his intention is to seek to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister as early as possible.

Talk in Westminster has turned to who could be part of setting the direction of a Burnham government. There are big questions over some of the key alliances – and whether Starmer would fight any challenge from Burnham, which could stall his advance on Downing Street. Here are the influential figures around the Greater Manchester mayor – and how they may fit in government.

A sinister new tablet threatens the honest-to-goodness toys’ existence, but Buzz, Woody and Jessie’s big tech moral battle feels compromised

The fifth episode of the Toy Story franchise is as slick and smooth as you like, as glitchless as Toy Story 6 or Toy Story 7 might be … or will be. As a piece of family-entertainment content it has the unblemished sheen of a brand new smartphone. But at heart, it has gone dead. For all the intensive, high-energy creative work that has clearly gone into this film’s every frame, the jeopardy, the novelty, the ideas and the passion are lacking; the crucial Toy Story theme of mortality feels underpowered, and the film even calamitously loses its nerve with its own big idea – those squeamish about spoilers had better look away now – the sinister way addictive tech devices are undermining the imaginative play that kids once had with honest-to-goodness toys.

Here a creepy tablet device called Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee) enters the children’s world, but ultimately proves to be capable of sentimental self-sacrificial heroism when it comes to their mental health. Really? At least Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear, the villain from TS3, had the courage of his evil convictions.

‘The studio wanted me to wear less. They wanted to see my muscles. But we were shooting outdoors in winter – and I had to put Vaseline on to keep my body heat in’

Cannon Films had the rights to Masters of the Universe and thought: “Let’s get this new guy. He’s blond, has good pecs … He can wield the sword.” I was convinced to do it but only very reluctantly – I didn’t want to play a toy. There was lots of excitement but also lots of worry. I’d been Soviet bad guy Ivan Drago in Rocky IV and now I was going to be this American hero. I was nervous and afraid people weren’t going to like it.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food, and the basic they scrimp on? The model and entrepreneur talks pants, lawnmowers and restoring classic cars with the Filter

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David Gandy is one of the most recognisable faces in fashion, starring in hundreds of campaigns for brands including Dolce & Gabbana, Burberry, Hugo Boss and many more. He was the first man nominated for model of the year by the British Fashion Council.

From 2014 to 2019 he designed a bestselling range for Marks & Spencer featuring underwear, sleepwear and more, and in 2021, he launched his own fashion and lifestyle brand, David Gandy Wellwear. A committed philanthropist, he has worked with several charities, from Save the Children to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, and backed the Centre for Social Justice’s Lost Boys report on the crisis facing boys and young men in the UK today. The David Gandy Wellwear summer collection is available now.

It’s called immersion diuresis – a normal physiological response by the body to being immersed in water

I’m midway into my hour-long swim when it hits: I really have to pee. This always happens. It doesn’t help to curb my morning coffee or use the restroom beforehand. My bladder doesn’t care.

Why does this happen? “It’s a normal physiological response by the body to being immersed in water,” says Dr Stavros Kavouras, assistant dean, professor of nutrition and director of the Hydration Science Lab at Arizona State University. And it’s not just me: “It’s something that happens to all swimmers.”

The World Naked Bike Ride is designed to draw attention to the vulnerability of cyclists in the city. But this year’s London event is in the news after half the riders used rental bikes

Name: World Naked Bike Ride.

Age: 22.

James Bond actor, who is only the second non-royal woman to be celebrated in this way, called the honour ‘truly overwhelming’

Dame Judi Dench is to have a West End theatre renamed after her, becoming only the second non-royal woman to be honoured in such a way.

The Shaftesbury theatre will be known as the Judi Dench theatre from February 2027 in celebration of the actor’s “unparalleled contribution to British theatre and the performing arts”.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Barney Ronay, Dan Bardell and Sid Lowe as debutants Cape Verde earn a draw against the favourites Spain

I’ve met many hardcore, violent fans, but the hostage-negotiating, cocaine-smuggling, Marxist-Leninist Alessandro Casolari still stood out

I had heard the name Alessandro Casolari on and off for years. From 2016 onwards, when I was researching my book on Italy’s ultras – a cross between English football hooligans and Hells Angels – the nickname “Caso” kept coming up. In the late 80s and early 90s, he had led the ultras in Ferrara, whose football club is known as Spal.

A red-brick city in northern Italy between Bologna and Venice, Ferrara has always felt sidelined, languishing in a marshy land of fog and floods. I used to go there quite often, drawn by its festivals and famous writers and film directors. A few years ago, when I started writing another book, about the Po River, I hung out there again, but I never bumped into Caso.

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About a month ago, Roberto “Pico” Lopes thought he was meeting his parents for a Sunday dinner in Crumlin on the outskirts of Dublin, but was met by a surprise party of friends, family and neighbours, all adorned in Cape Verde colours, to give him a special send-off for the Geopolitics World Cup. Dublin born and raised, Lopes looked positively delirious as he waved at the small crowd of loved ones. “We’re going to get a camper van and travel through the States,” beamed Lopes’s wife, Leah O’Shaughnessy, holding their seven-month-old son, Diego. “He probably won’t remember it, but we’ll be able to look back on the photos and videos and say that he was able to watch his daddy in the [GWC].”

Support in LA included those of past and present regimes, and opponents of both, but a match that captivated all could not dissolve troubles

Soccer unites. This is what we are told. It swoops in, majestic in the players’ grace, and gives a people – any people – a thing to rally around in good times and bad. It’s true, that does happen on occasion. But other times, as in Monday’s 2-2 draw between Iran and New Zealand here in southern California, the magic of this ridiculously simple game lies in its power to make one, or several, or several thousand, forget.

Before the game, Iranians worldwide had been divided by decades of political and cultural difficulty and the Iran team were hamstrung by interrupted preparations for what should be the pinnacle of any player’s career.

Luciana Alvarengue likes to think she had the smallest of influences on two of her old pupils as they take aim at another World Cup

For all Argentinians, sitting down to watch the 2022 World Cup final was special – but for Luciana Alvarengue there was additional emotion. In the Argentina side were not one but two players to whom she had taught maths at school: Enzo Fernández and Julián Álvarez.

“They are still my students, even if they are no longer in the classroom,” she says. “To see it with my son telling me: ‘Mamá, there are your students’ … that’s really nice.”

Our cartoonist offers up some observations after the tournament’s group games got under way in the US, Mexico and Canada

• Buy a cartoon | David’s favourite works of 2025

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‘I am going to fight on,’ said the PM. Perhaps his delusion was more deep-rooted than the others had feared

Shortly before he arrived in Évian at the beginning of the week, Emmanuel Macron set up a new WhatsApp group for world leaders. Only Keir Starmer wasn’t included. Call it the G6, if you like. The idea was to have a safe space to discuss how best to deal with the UK prime minister. Should they confront head-on that this was going to be his last G7? That next year’s outing would be an athleisure occasion with Andy Burnham. T-shirts just a tad on the small size. Should they club together to buy him a leaving present? A French World Cup football shirt signed by all of them?

Or was it best not to mention it at all? Just proceed on the basis that this was a perfectly normal occasion and they would all soon be meeting up again at another global get-together. Nothing to see here. A quick competition for a photo opportunity with President Zelenskyy, a few jokes, promises to make the world a better place and then everyone goes home without acknowledging Keir was about to get booted out of their select club. Still, at least Starmer was bringing his wife, Victoria. Maybe she would get to say a few goodbyes.

Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to block the Trump-Kushners’ plans to build on a nature reserve. But they’re not the only billionaires acting as if the whole world was for sale

Have the Albanians even said thank you once? It’s been moan, moan, moan for weeks now on the streets of Tirana just because Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner want to displace some flamingos and pave over a protected nature reserve to build a luxury resort. Judging by all the protests, the commoners simply do not understand what visionaries the Trump-Kushners are. Nor do they seem to understand Javanka were the ones who discovered Sazan island in the first place. It had just been sitting there, rotting in the sea, until our contemporary Christopher Columbuses spotted it from a yacht back in 2021 and swam to the island to explore. “We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated,” Ivanka recounted on the David Senra podcast in May.

She really put her barefoot in her mouth with that one. Kushner’s Albanian real estate adventures are not new; the country’s government granted Atlantic Incubation Partners, an LLC linked to Kushner, “strategic investor” status in 2025 shortly after Donald Trump won the election. But while anger has been brewing for a while, Ivanka’s tone-deaf comments were the final straw. Her podcast interview has been credited with drawing international attention to the project, and supercharging local rage. Turns out people don’t appreciate it when a foreign nepo baby waxes lyrical about “discovering” your land. Nor are they thrilled when billionaires want to take over your country’s largest island, which is public property, for private profit.

Winning this byelection wouldn’t make Reform disappear. Would Burnham really have the courage needed to see them off in No 10?

‘Well, good,” says a middle-aged woman outside Boots about the prospect of millions of migrants being deported. “Because we want the country safe.” I point out that, even as immigration has risen sharply for the last two decades, by every measure – murder rates, or numbers of people admitted to hospitals because of knife attacks and assaults – violence has fallen steeply. She doesn’t believe it. “It seems to be going up,” she says.

She is one of the voters who will determine the future of the country. This is Ashton-in-Makerfield, a market town in the parliamentary constituency of Makerfield. On Thursday, Andy Burnham will either be elected and swiftly move to overthrow Keir Starmer as prime minister, or he will be defeated, plunging Labour into existential crisis, with the near-inevitability of Nigel Farage as prime minister looming over the wreckage.

At a sold-out show in its home town, Swindon, all the bombast and conviction driving this Restore-linked outlet was there to see

If I asked you to name a popular politics podcast, what would you think of? Maybe The Rest Is Politics for centrist dads. Novara Media’s Downstream for young lefties, perhaps, or Triggernometry for conservatives.

While these podcasts have achieved mainstream success and recognition, the contemporary media landscape also allows fringe political shows to gain huge audiences and influence without the mainstream ever acknowledging them.

Oliver Haynes is a journalist and co-host of the Flep24 podcast

We have opened the AI Pandora’s box. Now we have to make the best of it

On 9 June, Anthropic released its Fable generative AI model. Three days later, the US government classified it as a dangerous munition, and used its export-control authority to prohibit any foreign nationals from accessing it. Unable to differentiate between Americans and foreigners, the company shut off access for everyone.

The government’s actions won’t help. The problem isn’t any one particular model; it’s the general trend of increasing AI capabilities. And any real solution requires the sort of collective action that just isn’t possible right now.

Bruce Schneier is a security technologist who teaches at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University

The regime has learned it must extract concessions rather than promises from the US, but any permanent deal still depends on ending the war in Lebanon

To understand why Iran agreed to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the United States to end the war, one must first understand how Iranian leaders believe they emerged from the war itself. For Iran’s leadership, this conflict did not begin with military strikes. It was the culmination of a years-long campaign of sanctions, covert operations, assassinations, economic pressure, and efforts to weaken and ultimately overthrow the Islamic Republic. Even episodes of domestic unrest, including the anti-government protests that culminated in the deadly January crackdown, are often understood in Tehran as part of this broader struggle. That worldview has profoundly shaped how Iranian decision-makers interpret both the war and its aftermath.

This perception is critical to understanding the confidence now evident in Tehran. The objectives of the war were hardly a mystery. A week into the war, Donald Trump demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender”. Both Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu openly called for regime change. The destruction of Iran’s missile capabilities, the dismantling of its regional influence, and the capitulation or collapse of the Islamic Republic were repeatedly presented as desired outcomes. None of those objectives were achieved.

Sina Toossi is a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, where his work focuses on US-Iran relations, US policy toward the Middle East and nuclear issues

While taking the boat to Dunkirk, I stumbled upon a remarkable deal. I’ve barely been on dry land since

In February, my sister and I took the ferry from Dover to Dunkirk. On the way back, I noticed there was a deal: spend €150 (£130) in duty free and get a free day-trip ticket. If you love Toblerone and know anyone who smokes, you can spend that without even blinking – and so it came to pass that I was back on the ferry within a month.

This was when I started to perfect the art of the day trip, even though I didn’t yet realise this would be the beginning of a beautiful loop. You arrive and go to the coast, which looks like Saint-Tropez when the sun is out, because even though Dunkirk is not a famous holiday destination, it is still France. Then you go to Carrefour and spend ages saying: “How is this fizzy wine €4.68? I wonder if it’ll be nice. Only one way to find out – buy 24 bottles of it.” You get back on the boat to return to Britain, which is where things get weird, because the offer is still on. Well, I still love Toblerone and I still know someone who smokes.

There are real concerns about how a social media ban for under-16s will work. But tighter rules could be a step towards a better internet for everyone

There is a long way to go before children under 16 in the UK are blocked from the main social media platforms – as Sir Keir Starmer announced on Monday that they will be. He proposed a date of next spring, although whether, and when, a ban comes in may be up to an eventual successor.

But whatever happens next, a crunch moment has arrived sooner than expected. Until recently, it seemed highly unlikely that the government would seek to restrict the tech industry’s access to children in the way it is now doing. Eighteen months ago, ministers sided with Ofcom in a row over the implementation of the Online Safety Act. Groups including 5Rights argued that companies should be made accountable for harm reduction, as well as obliged to follow new rules. For a mixture of economic and political reasons, the government seemed determined to stay on the right side of big tech and Donald Trump. Its approach was timid.

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.

The US-Iran ceasefire is welcome. But the US president is trying to disguise a failed war of choice as a diplomatic victory

The US-Iran agreement to halt fighting for 60 days is welcome, because even cynical diplomacy is better than war. But Donald Trump should not be allowed to call this a triumph. He has bought a pause after an illegal war of choice that failed to secure its declared aims, devastated Iran, destabilised Lebanon and sent shocks through energy and fertiliser markets, leaving many people poorer and hungrier. A campaign launched to display US military strength is likely instead to be remembered for demonstrating its limits.

A deal with Iran is better than war with Iran. But the US president is hailing as victory the partial easing of a crisis that he, and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, helped create. The measure of success will not be the reopening of the strait of Hormuz, which war had closed, but whether the next two months produce a verifiable nuclear settlement and put out the flames fanned by the US-Israel attacks.

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 respond to an article about what was once the UK’s most expensive house, which has lain empty for years

Grand properties lying empty when we’re in the midst of a housing crisis is ludicrous. Sam Wollaston’s article about a homeless person sleeping in the portico of a £200m palace, which used to be terrace houses, is the most apt and absurd illustration of the UK’s housing problem (It was Britain’s most expensive house. Why is its only resident a homeless man who lives on the porch?, 10 June).

For a long time, my partner and I lived in the affluent town of Henley-on-Thames. There, behind the famous Leander club, sat a sizeable disused property. Most days I’d drive past it on my way to work and lament that the pigeon-filled building wasn’t occupied. It took over a decade before it was knocked down and the area finally developed; presumably somebody owned it for all that time and sat on it for whatever reasons.

Dr Rajiv Prabhakar assesses the best age at which grants should be provided to young people, while Jeremy Galtress argues against redistribution

Polly Toynbee discusses capital grants for the young to counter wealth inequality (Young people need money because our system is rigged. Here’s a way to give it to them, 9 June). The age at which grants are accessed is critical for both policy and politics.

Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Agrarian Justice, published in the 1790s, proposed providing £15 to all 21-year-olds. The Social Market Foundation’s report is the latest addition to this literature, and promises policy impacts.

Readers respond to an report on experiments that have shown a left-turn bias among humans

It is not quite true to say that no one knows why people prefer to turn left and walk anticlockwise (Report, 10 June). Research by the French professor of physiology Raphaël Dubois in the 19th century revealed the existence of a phenomenon in the natural world that he called the “antikinetic gyratory movement”, caused by the rotation of the Earth on its axis.

During the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris, he observed a tendency among visitors to walk anticlockwise. In the years leading up to the first world war, he applied his theory to explain migration (of humans and animals) and war. I documented the latter in an article in the journal Peace & Change in 1986.
Dr Peter van den Dungen
Lightcliffe, West Yorkshire

Analogue music | Football songs | Money matters | Medical mysteries | Vintage comedy

The communications lecturer ARE Taylor believes old media formats are “presented as the remedy for our digital ailment” (Editorial, 11 June). As a 65-year-old whose journey in music began with a transistor radio, moved on to a radio cassette player and eventually to a record player, I can testify that these old technologies were just as “addictive, unnatural, unhealthy and harmful” as today’s, but in a beautiful, exciting, memory-filled, crackly sort of a way.
Alex Dickie
Edinburgh

• Your list (Sing when you’re winning: the 20 greatest songs about football – ranked!, 4 June) surprised me by not including Fitba’ Crazy, written in the 1880s by James Curran. Sung by Jimmie MacGregor and Robin Hall with a strong Scottish brogue, it was released as a single in the 1960s. Surely it is the oldest football song, and ought to be the Scotland anthem in the World Cup.
Richard Gosnell
Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire

• Discover and buy more of Ben’s cartoons here

• Order your own print of this cartoon from the Guardian Print Shop

Updates from the opening day of the royal meeting
Greg Wood’s preview and tips | Mail Tony

Royal Ascot Procession List

1st Carriage
The King
The Queen
The Duke of Wellington
The Duchess of Wellington

2nd Carriage
The Princess Royal
Mr. Peter Phillips
Mrs. Peter Phillips
Sir Ben Elliot

• Insists England ‘incredibly professional’ despite breach

• ‘I don’t think it’s a fair reflection of our dressing room’

Joe Root has acknowledged England have “let ourselves down” with some “disappointing” behaviour in recent months. These culminated in the episode in a Chelsea nightclub last week that has forced Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson out of the second Test against New Zealand and prompted Root to resume the captaincy on what he described as a “game-by-game basis”.

Stokes and Atkinson have been sidelined after breaking the team’s midnight curfew while celebrating England’s victory in the opening game at Lord’s. As a result Root has returned for a 65th Test as captain – with more perhaps to follow – more than four years after he stepped down from a role with which he said at the time he had developed “a very unhealthy relationship” that “started to take a bad toll on my own personal health”.

• Williams sisters have won six doubles titles at SW19

• French Open finalist Chwalinksa awarded wildcard

Serena and Venus Williams will rekindle their doubles partnership at Wimbledon this month after receiving a wildcard into the women’s doubles draw. The All England Club announced the recipients on Tuesday morning in one of the most highly anticipated wildcard announcements in recent memory considering Serena’s return this month after four years of retirement.

Serena, a seven-times singles champion, did not request a singles wildcard and the 44-year-old has remained coy about whether she plans to return for singles. Venus, a five-time singles champion, has also not received a singles wildcard. Venus has competed on the tour since her debut in 1994, only stopping due to health-related issues. She turns 46 on Wednesday.

Top-level rugby is fast becoming a different sport and finalists illustrate the domestic talent Borthwick needs to harness

For anyone who hasn’t yet watched them, the weekend’s two English Prem semi-finals were brilliant adverts for the sport. The game between Northampton and Leicester fizzed with speed and quality passing. The following day’s encounter between Bath and Exeter involved one of the best fightbacks and tautest finishes imaginable.

The upshot is a Northampton v Exeter final this Saturday, a showpiece with the potential to be just as absorbing. Henry Pollock v Greg Fisilau, Tommy Freeman v Henry Slade, Fin Smith v Harvey Skinner … not to mention two intelligent English coaching teams led, respectively, by Phil Dowson and Sam Vesty, and Rob Baxter and Dave Walder. If the Rugby Football Union is pondering future homegrown alternatives to Steve Borthwick there are some increasingly strong candidates.

• Players deny their decision comes from place of hate

• MLB says writing on caps is a violation of league rules

Major League Baseball has issued a statement critical of players who wrote Bible verses on their Pride Night hats after an incident at a San Francisco Giants game last week.

MLB celebrates Pride month during June and most teams choose a home game to acknowledge the LGBTQ community and its baseball fans. The Giants, who are based in a city with a large LGBTQ population, often make an extra effort.

The NBA postseason remains a psychodrama of moments, memes and memories unlike anything in sport. We look back at the biggest takeaways

Sometimes it’s just your year. When infectiously optimistic young mayor Zohran Mamdani was elected this past fall, there was a palpable vibe shift in the city. That’s not to say that there’s a direct correlation between the New York Knicks being NBA champions and the era of buoyant positivity permeating the city, but it’s also not to say there’s not one. Other American cities will, inevitably, have their moment in the sun again soon. But 2026 is the year of New York (someone get that memo to the Mets).

Josh Hokit’s comment, made after the match at the White House, was condemned widely, but not by the president

Donald Trump is facing growing pressure to condemn an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) competitor who used a White House appearance to push a sexist, racist and transphobic conspiracy theory about former first lady Michelle Obama.

At a UFC event on the south lawn on Sunday, the US president’s 80th birthday, Josh Hokit, a fighter, shouted into the microphone in front of Trump: “Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right, America?”

Essex have are top at the halfway mark, but another seven counties are within striking distance

By the 99.94 Cricket Blog

This article is from The 99.94 Cricket Blog

Stunning Barcelona triumph has kickstarted veteran’s push to win a record eighth drivers’ championship but Kimi Antonelli still stands in way

When the soaring emotions began to settle one question remained. After his life‑affirming maiden win for Ferrari in Barcelona, is Lewis Hamilton in contention for the Formula One drivers’ championship?

Typically, in a sport where there are innumerable competing voices, it depends who you ask. But with the 41-year-old’s consummate display at the Circuit de Barcelona‑Catalunya securing his first victory for Ferrari, there is no doubt Hamilton remains among the elite drivers on the grid.

Tech is helping to identify and save new specimens and could open ‘genomic goldmine’ of fungi data

The rise of AI and digitisation could be a turning point in the “race against extinction” faced by botanists trying to identify and save vital plants before they vanish, according to a major report from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

New technology is enabling scientists to track how flowering times have shifted by weeks around the world, rapidly identify new specimens and even get crucial genetic data from 180-year-old fungus specimens, potentially opening a “genomic goldmine”. Digitisation and online access to millions of specimens that were until now only accessible in archives is also producing new insights, especially in the global south.

Speaking after appeal court ruled ban lawful, Huda Ammori says fight will be won in the courts or ‘on the streets’

The co-founder of Palestine Action has said the battle to overturn the terrorism ban on the direct action group will be won – in the courts or “on the streets”.

On Monday, five court of appeal judges ruled that a ban on the organisation was lawful, reversing the high court’s February judgment, which they said had wrongly limited the home secretary’s discretion on national security.

Yum! Brands, parent company of KFC and Taco Bell, to sell Pizza Hut as it faces dated stores and growing competition

The struggling Pizza Hut restaurant chain will be sold for $2.7bn by parent company Yum! Brands.

Yum! Brands said in February that it was considering selling Pizza Hut and the chain looked to close 250 US restaurants. The pizza chain has struggled with outdated stores and growing competition.

Green algae have proliferated amid warm weather after Lincoln Memorial pool renovation turning water green

Donald Trump’s $14.2m attempt to turn the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool from what the US president described as a “filthy” and “dirty” site into a “beautiful” monument has encountered a hitch.

The water is green again.

The actor told Esquire magazine the couple have ‘a relationship that will stand the test of time’ and his family ‘were all there’ for the wedding

Tom Holland, the British actor best known for playing Spider-Man, has offered confirmation that he and co-star Zendaya have already got married.

The wedding of the couple, who have been together for some years and got engaged in December 2024, has been the subject of intense speculation, further fuelled by a red carpet remark by Zendaya’s stylist, Law Roach, in March 2026, that the ceremony had already taken place.

Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator, joins Democrats in bid to stop dismantling of Ocean Observatories Initiative

• US politics live – latest updates

A group of Democratic senators and one Republican, as well as two Democratic House committees, sent letters on Monday to the National Science Foundation asking it to reverse course on its plan to dismantle a sprawling ocean monitoring network, with House lawmakers going further and accusing the agency of acting illegally.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative is a network of more than 900 ocean sensors built at a cost of $386m. Over the last decade it has tracked ocean circulation, marine ecosystems, climate change and extreme weather, producing data freely available to the public and informing more than 500 scientific publications. The project was slated to run another 15 to 20 years.

Asda, Amazon and B&Q among retailers in talks to sell devices that feed into household sockets and can cut electricity bills by 30%

• Spanish homes save €10 a month via renewables expansion

Bosses of some of Britain’s biggest retailers are discussing plans with the government to start selling plug-in solar panels as part of a drive to encourage more UK homes to generate their own electricity.

Executives from brands including Currys, B&Q and Amazon met Martin McCluskey, the minister for energy consumers, on Tuesday to discuss guidelines for selling “balcony solar panels” to the British public.

The short-tailed roundleaf bat was feared extinct until scientist Iroro Tanshi found one in Afi sanctuary in Nigeria, and set out to protect the only confirmed roosting colony

Just after sunrise, a cacophony of whoops and chatter can be heard over the verdant forests of the Afi mountain wildlife sanctuary. Nestled within the Cross River rainforest in south-east Nigeria, and spanning an area about the size of central Paris, the steep sanctuary is a haven for endangered gorillas, drill monkeys, the grey-necked rockfowl – and the short-tailed roundleaf bat.

The Nigerian biologist Iroro Tanshi remembers the moment she first spotted the endangered bat in 2016, during a field expedition for her PhD research. “We were trapping near a roost that night, so we caught a lot of bats,” says Tanshi. But, she adds: “This looked very, very different. Big-eared.” She promptly turned to her identification guide, which revealed that the tiny furry creature she was holding between her fingers was Hipposideros curtus, better known as the short-tailed roundleaf bat, last recorded in the wild in the 1970s.

Amid fears the wreck will be more accessible to explorers – and new species – as the climate warms, conservationists want to create the region’s first underwater protected area

The harsh temperatures, treacherous currents and shifting pack ice of the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea, which crushed and sank his ship, Endurance, in 1915, led Ernest Shackleton to describe it as the “worst portion of the worst sea in the world”.

For more than a century, the inhospitable conditions, which present a challenge even for modern icebreaker ships, helped to protect the lost wreck, which was discovered in 2022, its structure still largely intact.

Conservatives accused of attack on ‘crucial safeguards’ and of fostering ‘climate of hostility’ towards judiciary

• UK politics live – latest updates

Refugee groups and lawyers have described Conservative proposals to strip judges of their powers to rule on asylum seekers’ appeals against deportations as “an attack on the concept of justice and equality under the law”.

In a speech on Tuesday, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said a Conservative government would quit the European convention on human rights (ECHR) and abolish the judicial tribunal system that claimants use to appeal against their removal.

Environment secretary raises concerns that customers would face ‘undue burden’ from £10bn plan

• Thames Water should be nationalised, says Burnham

• Business live – latest updates

The UK environment secretary has objected to a £10bn rescue proposal for Thames Water because it would place an “undue burden” on consumers, pushing the troubled utilities firm closer towards public ownership.

Emma Reynolds wrote to Iain Coucher, who chairs the regulator Ofwat, on Monday to raise concerns about the plan for the UK’s biggest water company as she is worried that customers will lose out.

Labour MP warns of voices fanning hatred on eve of 10th anniversary of the murder of her sister, the MP Jo Cox

• How the murder of my sister changed Britain – podcast

Political hatred and division in the UK is probably worse now than during the Brexit referendum, when Jo Cox was murdered, says Kim Leadbeater, Cox’s sister who is now also a Labour MP.

Speaking to the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast Leadbeater, who was elected to the same Yorkshire seat held by Cox in a 2021 byelection, said everyone in public life had a responsibility to try and ease tensions.

Exclusive: Commons motion calls for code of practice to be blocked amid concerns over impact on transgender people

A number of Labour MPs are increasingly doubtful that the guidance on how organisations should implement the supreme court ruling on sex as it applies in the Equality Act is workable in the real world, with some predicting it will unleash a wave of competing legal claims.

A total of 135 MPs, 69 of them from Labour, have signed a Commons motion calling for the code of practice drafted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, approved last month, to be blocked, primarily because of worries about its impact on transgender people.

New programs in the state work to teach high school and college students about Gullah foodways through hands-on projects

When students from Charleston county school of the arts in South Carolina entered a research institute on the African diaspora, staff greeted them with “welcome home”.

The field trip at the College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture was the culmination of a six-week English course about memoir. Students learned about the culture of Gullah Geechee people, the descendants of formerly enslaved West Africans who retained their customs, through the lens of food such as okra, red rice and beans.

Six months ago, at least 12 people, including eight children, died during a US attack. The US has never admitted the civilian deaths. Here, the Guardian pieces together what happened that day

Explainer: Why is the US bombing Somalia – and who are the airstrikes killing?

They had just settled down for breakfast when the noise came. Some paused in the eating of their slow-cooked beans – cambuulo – spooked by the haunting high-pitched hum. Others pressed their faces against windows, scanning skywards. Farmers in nearby maize fields watched the objects circling above Jamaame, a town in southern Somalia.

Shortly after 9am on 15 November 2025, Jamaame shuddered from a series of explosions.

Judge decides Timothy Hudson should face trial as an adult, though he will be held in an approved juvenile facility

A teenager charged with sexually assaulting and killing his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship turned himself over to the custody of federal authorities on Monday after a judge reversed his decision on pre-trial release now that the teen is charged as an adult.

The US attorney’s office in Miami confirmed that Timothy Hudson was in custody. US magistrate Judge Edwin Torres filed the order to revoke Timothy’s pre-trial release last Wednesday, but the order was sealed until Monday afternoon. The order stated that Hudson should surrender to US marshals at the federal courthouse in Tampa on Monday morning.

Ridglan Farms facility in Wisconsin was at the center of protests against the practice of using animals for research

A beagle breeding and research facility in Wisconsin that has been the focus of animal rights protests is shutting down, and a rescue group in Florida is taking in the remaining dogs.

“Not one dog will remain,” Lauree Simmons, founder of Big Dog Ranch Rescue in Florida, said in a press conference announcing the news on Monday. “No more breeding, no more testing, no more anything.”

Elon Musk firm adds startup behind Cursor app to its portfolio with xAI and reaches $2.8tn market capitalisation

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is buying the startup behind the AI-powered coding app Cursor for $60bn (£44bn) and has moved ahead of Amazon in valuation days after its stock market debut.

The company has agreed to buy Anysphere, which has capitalised on AI’s success as a coding technology.

IPO mints Musk as world’s first trillionaire – now SpaceX is public, it will be harder than ever not to have a stake in its future

Hi and welcome to TechScape. Nick Robins-Early here, US tech and power reporter at the Guardian. I’m filling in for your usual host Blake Montgomery, who is out this week on vacation.

Today, we’ll be talking about the historic SpaceX IPO and the US government’s surprise order to limit the use of Anthropic’s most advanced AI model over cybersecurity concerns. I’ll also share a dispatch from Web Summit Rio, South America’s largest tech event.

SpaceX makes largest ever stock market debut, minting Musk as a trillionaire

After SpaceX’s huge IPO, Americans’ financial future will be bound to AI

How much money did Elon Musk make in SpaceX’s stock market debut?

Japanese technology company at centre of Post Office IT scandal is negotiating settlement with UK government over faulty software

• Business live – latest updates

The chair of Fujitsu, the Japanese technology firm at the centre of the Post Office IT scandal, has resigned after its board became aware of his “woman-related inappropriate conduct”.

The company said on Tuesday that Hidenori Furuta had stepped down after two years in the role.

Some titles that once backed the Tories now ‘flirting with Farage’ as they try to gauge where readers stand

It was a Mail on Sunday headline with all the ferocity usually reserved for general elections, directed squarely at a political opponent. But in this case, the traditionally Conservative-supporting title was not targeting Labour.

The party in its crosshairs was Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain, the vehemently rightwing outfit that regards Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as too weak on deporting migrants.

When UK mockumentary Alternative 3 tried to spook viewers that scientists were vanishing as part of a sinister space plot it succeeded. Today, the resulting conspiracy theory has even seen Trump’s government launch an investigation

Over the past few months, a strange story has been seeping into the mainstream media from the more excitable corners of Substack and YouTube. Its claim: scientists whose work related to aerospace and nuclear research are either dying or going missing. According to an influential report in the Daily Mail in March, the disappearances form a “chilling pattern”: two, for instance, had worked together at an air force laboratory. The implications, in some accounts, are Hollywood sinister, with scientists working on top-secret breakthroughs running into dark forces who wanted to get hold of what they knew – or ensure their silence. And it all seems to have something to do with what we used to call UFOs.

On examination, these claims collapse. The “scientists” actually worked in disparate fields, from chemical biology to plasma physics. Several were actually administrators. Two had retired. One died of natural causes; another in a shooting spree. In any case, as the debunker Mick West pointed out, the “US top secret-cleared aerospace and nuclear workforce” is around 700,000, so normal mortality rates would predict far more deaths over the 22 months concerned – about 4,000. Nonetheless, Congresspeople have been warning darkly of threats to “national security”. The Trump administration has launched an investigation into a phenomenon that is often said to go hand-in-hand with something called “Alternative 3” – whose origins might end up surprising Trump and co.

When Rivers received a surprise letter from DeLillo, it encouraged him to set the author’s one-act play in an adult-free, postapocalyptic world

Nine-year-old girls reciting the gnomic prose of Don DeLillo – it sounds like an extreme English detention, but for film-maker Ben Rivers this was the foundation of his new movie, and the culmination of an unlikely friendship with the literary titan. DeLillo is an almost mythical figure of contemporary literature. His prose is precisely hewn, his narratives sophisticated and his preoccupations uncannily prophetic: conspiracy, terrorism, nuclear power, hypercapitalism – the 89-year-old New Yorker has been ahead of the curve for much of the late 20th and early 21st century. Rivers, a 53-year-old independent film-maker based in London, has been a lifelong fan, he says. So he was stunned to receive a letter from DeLillo himself one day in 2017.

A mutual friend had sent DeLillo a DVD of Rivers’ 2015 film The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, a hallucinatory parable set in a semi-abstract Morocco, and the writer responded with a hand-typed letter. “He thought that the film was really powerful and he was looking forward to watching it again,” says Rivers. “It was a beautiful thing to receive and very meaningful for me, being such a big admirer of his.” Rivers later sent DeLillo another of his films: 2019’s Krabi, 2562, co-directed with Anocha Suwichakornpong, “and he also wrote back about that, saying that he enjoyed it”.

The short-lived series had blood, guts, sex and epic stakes. It also had a ride or die friendship in a pair of foot soldiers

A sprawling cast of richly flawed heroes. Epic stakes. Elaborate sets. A family-man hero whose definition of good is skewed by the cruel world he lives in. Animated opening titles with a catchy theme song. Blood, guts, sex and a bit of incest: everything Game of Thrones did, Rome did better.

Rome was one of the most expensive TV shows ever made when it launched in 2005; its two-season run was shot on a massive, immersive outdoor recreation of the ancient city in Italy’s famous Cinecittà studios, and spared no expense on costumes, props or fake blood. When it came out half a decade later, Game of Thrones would follow in Rome’s footsteps with its puzzle wheel of plotting across factions and alliances, shocking betrayals and Shakespearean dialogue punctuated with c-bombs.

Audiences have propelled Spielberg’s alien thriller to the top of the box office. Yet some exiting the cinema appear to believe this sappy extravaganza is not the director’s finest hour

A sage person once told me every noted director’s career is an ongoing conversation with the audience. Some film-makers – Michael Haneke, say – sit on high, like a headteacher at an assembly, and loftily number the ways in which we’ve let ourselves and the school down. There are others – Lars von Trier and Ari Aster spring to mind – whose work sidles up uncomfortably close, gooses the viewer and then flees the scene sniggering before the relevant authorities can be alerted. The career of Steven Spielberg – arguably the most remarkable career in the history of popular cinema – has long depended on the audience being on the exact same page, looking up wide-eyed and guileless towards the light: his greatest films, from Close Encounters to The Fabelmans, invite further discussion, an awestruck back-and-forth.

You can therefore understand why Spielberg has broached the subject of social division with Disclosure Day, his much-trumpeted return to the summer event movie: he has almost as much skin in this game as the rest of us non-trillionaires. Yet if early box office has been solid enough, secondary indices – not least a slew of disappointed foyer texts from friends and loved ones – would suggest the film has itself proved distinctly polarising. In the US, market research firm CinemaScore – which polls opening-day cinemagoers to assess a film’s commercial prospects – graded Disclosure Day a B, the joint second-worst for a Spielberg film, ahead of AI: Artificial Intelligence (recipient of a harsh C), dead level with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Headmaster Haneke again shakes his weary head.

A 1,000-year-old vampire obsessed with removing men’s genitals is the main storyline in this body horror, filmed in trashy 1980s synth-heavy style

Wibbling willies! This gore fest from Iceland starts as it means to go on: parked on a quiet back road, where a balding 1,000-year-old vampire has lured a middle-aged man into his car with the promise of a quickie. The vampire’s head lowers into his poor victim’s lap. “Not quite so hard,” the man implores, unheeded. Just three minutes into the film, we get sight of a dismembered member – the first of many to come. Filmed in trashy 1980s style, with plenty of red smoke and a synth-heavy soundtrack, Thirst is over-the-top and deliberately ridiculous, though I couldn’t stop myself yelping at one or two moments.

This is not a film graced by first (or even second) rate acting, though Hjörtur Sævar Steinason gives an entertaining performance as the vampire Hjörtur, all weary nihilism with the occasional wrench of spiritual anguish. One night, he takes a shine to a young woman called Hulda (Hulda Lind Kristinsdóttir), who is being harassed by local cops over the death of her brother from a drug overdose. After watching him split the skull of a local thug in two, Hulda is understandably petrified. But Hjörtur reassures her that he is only interested in men. One of the cops pursuing Hulda is Jens (Jens Jensson), a uniformed officer of retirement age. His wife is a religious crank in a tracksuit who makes broadcasts for TV warning that the end is nigh – which it certainly is for some of Reykjavík’s residents.

The pianist and bandleader, who has died aged 91, had an inimitable style where bright, guileless melody met a fearless improvisational impulse

• South African jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim dies aged 91

Scullery Department (from Jazz Epistle Verse 1, 1960)

Born Adolph Johannes Brand in Cape Town in 1934, Abdullah Ibrahim spent his six-decade career defining the heartfelt sound of South African jazz. Making his professional debut as a pianist at 15 under the name Dollar Brand, it was his co-founding of the group the Jazz Epistles in 1959 that laid the groundwork for his journeying career. South Africa’s first Black jazz group, featuring trumpeter Hugh Masekela who would go on to become a star bandleader in his own right, the Jazz Epistles’ first and only album Jazz Epistle Verse 1 is a sprightly document of the South African take on bebop. Although album opener Dollar’s Moods is named for Ibrahim, it’s the record’s closing number Scullery Department that highlights his nascent skills. Heavy-swinging over a bluesy motif, Ibrahim’s playing artfully skips through an opening polyrhythm before taking a solo that refigures Thelonious Monk’s wonky melodic motifs into an earthy sense of groove that would go on to feature throughout his hundreds of recordings to come.

Unpack the latest viral moments and the week’s celebrity whispers with Clara & Munroe. Plus, the grim story of a man cashing in on the rise in young suicides.

If the first episode is anything to go by, Clara Amfo (let loose from BBC broadcasting) and activist Munroe Bergdorf could well be your fun commute companions. The pair are passionate, incisive and just the right amount of gossipy as they unpack the latest pop culture moments – such as what the loud conversation around Olivia Rodrigo’s baby-doll dress says about women in music. Our one complaint? Half an hour isn’t long enough! Hollie Richardson
Widely available, episodes weekly

(Geffen)
Gossips have rushed to the lyrics for details about her personal life, but the rest of us can just get on with luxuriating in Rodrigo’s funny, Cure-infused craft

With a certain crushing inevitability, the arrival of Olivia Rodrigo’s third album has been accompanied by a lot of frenzied decoding of its lyrics for references to Louis Partridge, the British actor whose relationship with the singer ended late last year. One magazine ran a 1,200 word essay, complete with annotations, panning its songs for nuggets of gossip: the fourth piece they’ve published on the subject in recent months. A British broadsheet plumped for a news story about the fact that Rodrigo had apparently changed the lyrics of a track called Purple, formerly a “very sweet and saccharine” love song, to reflect the end of their relationship. Over in New Delhi, The Hindustan Times was pondering rumours that the couple had actually got back together: “Interest in Partridge has grown after Rodrigo released her new album since fans believe the track Stupid Song has references to the singer’s relationship with him.”

Well, of course it has: for better or for worse, that kind of speculation seems to have become a major part of modern pop, and Oliva Rodrigo in particular has long been a beneficiary of the clickbait publicity it brings. Her breakthrough single Drivers Licence gained traction thanks to the rumour that its lyrics were about her former boyfriend Joshua Bassett’s dalliance with Sabrina Carpenter; Vampire, the lead single from 2023’s Guts invited yet more speculation about whether its subject was another ex or Taylor Swift. Indeed, she actively seems to encourage it: “I never talk about my personal life in interviews or in any public forum, so I guess the music is where people go to deduce things,” she recently told an interviewer, a line that seems to have a distinct hint of “go ahead, fill your boots” about it.

Surreal genius from Harry Hill, trailblazing women and a passionate ode to an incredible New York rapper – these are the best listens from the last six months

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Parenting is represented in all its hilarious, moving and truthfully plodding detail, in the story of a mother and her two little boys

The last day of maternity leave, and an unnamed mother of two decides to stage a “yes day”, full of treats and good feelings. Of course it does not go according to plan: the treats are deficient, misjudged and underappreciated; the good feelings are fleeting, quickly upstaged by anxiety, guilt or humiliation. This familiar-sounding scenario is the simple yet bracing premise of Lisa Owens’s second novel, following her impressive first comic fiction of female-centred modernity, 2016’s Not Working.

The academic E Ann Kaplan once wrote that “motherhood is the major emotional experience of my adult life” – certainly a relatable observation, and reason enough why some writers may swerve going through the experience altogether. But when using it as narrative material, the aim is to render the cluttered yet lonely planet of motherhood in some new way, drawing on the energies of honesty and idiosyncrasy to frame a common, universal adventure as something singular and memorable.

This fascinating intellectual history of imagined paradises takes us from Thomas More to Ursula K Le Guin

By definition, utopia cannot exist. In 1516, educated readers of Thomas More’s Utopia would have appreciated a tension between two possible derivations of this novel word: the Greek “eu-topos”, meaning good place, and “ou-topos”, meaning not a place at all. It might have been a compact warning that one should never attempt to turn utopias into reality. Those who have tried usually witnessed the model societies they founded devolving into grungily dysfunctional communes, weird sex cults, or both.

In this richly diverting intellectual history of the idea, we begin, as we must, with Plato, and the zany prescriptions of his Republic (“we should neutralise the poets’ influence on mothers”). Passing in silence over the potentially utopian aspects of Jesus’s thinking, we arrive at More’s utopia, where “nothing is private”, and so “the common affairs be earnestly looked upon”. The great Renaissance scientist Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis portrays a utopia of rational scientific experimentation – which, Wren suggests ingeniously, might have inspired Wakanda in the Marvel Black Panther films. The 17th-century duchess Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World imagines the author as a goddess elected by a world of human-animal hybrids who like science. In the 18th century, Sarah Scott’s Millenium [sic] Hall imagined an ideal society of women without men, as did Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland during the first world war.

This corrective to our habitual emphasis on competition had me writing ‘wow’ in the margins again and again

When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, the Industrial Revolution and British colonialism were in the ascendant. Charles Dickens had published Hard Times five years earlier; Queen Victoria nominally ruled a fifth of the world’s population. Darwin, writes science writer Rowan Hooper, crafted his evolutionary theory to deliver what he figured his audience wanted to hear: “an account of nature as a competitive struggle”. Natural selection was launched into a world that was “colonial, capitalist, patriarchal and ruled by the upper class” – and Darwin’s central message, crudely paraphrased by the philosopher Herbert Spencer as “survival of the fittest”, chimed with the times.

Hooper adores Darwin – his account of visiting Darwin’s Kent residence Down House radiates reverence (“it’s a pseudo-religious experience”). But he feels that Darwinism and its union with genetics in the so-called “modern synthesis” has placed undue emphasis on competition in the natural world and underplayed the roles of cooperation and collaboration. In redressing that imbalance, Togetherness is not an attempt to make evolution cuddlier and more palatable; rather, it is a corrective deeply informed by what we have learned since Darwin about how nature works. Written with immense charm and passion, and packed with eye-popping facts, it is also a paean to the wonders of nature and the value and urgency of preserving them.

The life of the Brooklyn Bridge’s chief engineer inspires this multifaceted novel

Washington Augustus Roebling, or “Wash”, was the chief engineer on the Brooklyn Bridge, which, when opened to the public on 24 May 1883, was the longest suspension bridge in the world. It was quite an achievement, but he didn’t do it alone. On the one hand there was his father, the austere and tyrannical John Roebling, who had designed and begun the bridge before his untimely death in 1869. On the other there was his wife, the accomplished and capable Emily, who, as well as providing moral and secretarial support, took on ever more responsibility for the project after Washington’s own health began to fail mysteriously.

Wash is something of a companion piece to Chief Engineer, Erica Wagner’s 2017 biography of Roebling. Spurning what she calls in her afterword “the clock’s time”, she has instead structured the narrative in accordance with “the soul’s time”; that is, by jumping backwards and forwards in time and place in a series of short chapters emphasising those individual moments, choices and encounters that together made this remarkable man who he was. It is a bold and engaging, if somewhat disorienting approach, giving this slender novel a vividness and intensity that might be smoothed over in a more traditional narrative arc.

Bart and co’s latest video game venture involved the show’s writers, animators and voice talent – plus a showdown between the two infamous tycoons. ‘It’s a true little Simpsons episode,’ say creators

Every generation gets its own Simpsons game. Them’s the rule-diddly-ules. For some, it was the arcade cabinets that swallowed pocket money throughout the 1990s. For others, it was The Simpsons: Cartoon Studio. For millennials like myself, it was The Simpsons: Hit & Run. Joe Zanetti, vice-president of operations at Monopoly Go! developer Scopely, traces his Simpsons gaming nostalgia back to Konami’s 1991 brawler, The Simpsons Arcade Game. “That’s the one that made such an impression on me,” he says.

It certainly did, because Springfield has just crash-landed in Monopoly Go! itself through a collaboration involving Simpsons writers, animators and voice talent alongside a new animated short starring Dan Castellaneta, Nancy Cartwright, Harry Shearer and Will Ferrell. While most licensed TV games have faded into obscurity, The Simpsons keeps finding new digital lives.

If you fancy roaring around Japan’s open roads, scaling impossible mountains and playing with post-apocalyptic Pokémon, this year’s highlights mean you can do so without leaving your chair

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch; Vertigo Games
This clever update captures the 1990s magic of the original… including some of the technical issues

The 90s were a gold rush for adventure games. LucasArts kicked off the decade with its legendarily irreverent Monkey Island games. Then, Cyan Worlds materialised to deliver a series of atmospheric and boundary-pushing odysseys with Myst and Riven. Nestled between these primary genre texts is The 7th Guest, a lesser-known but still notorious adventure that earned plaudits for its unique FMV visual style, blending live-action filmed footage with pre-rendered 3D backgrounds. It was remade originally for VR, and now has been reconfigured into something playable on PC and consoles, its digital cobwebs cleared and tricky puzzles tinkered with for a fresh (or nostalgic) audience.

We are dropped into the ectoplasmic shoes of an amnesiac apparition, arriving at the gloomy haunted home of a toy-maker. Armed with a time-bending lantern and a Ouija board-shaped map, your job is to solve a historical whodunnit by literally illuminating events from the past. It’s a melodramatic, surprisingly campy adventure that effectively evokes the overzealous CD-Rom horror of its original era.

From horror galore to Chinese action games, the key trends, trailers and surprises from Summer Game Fest’s many, many hours of streams and broadcasts

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Did you spend hours of your weekend watching a relentless series of video game adverts? No? I don’t blame you – Summer Game Fest, the collection of livestreams that has arisen in place of the giant annual E3 video game expo in Los Angeles, is extremely overwhelming. There are the bigger, longer shows: the PlayStation and Xbox streams, the main SGF show hosted by Geoff Keighley and Lucy James, Future’s duet of the Future Games Show and the PC Gaming Show. Each show is two hours long. Then there are all the indie showcases: cosy games, women-led games, Black voices in gaming, Day of the Devs. Between them, they show off hundreds of games that might pique your interest.

I picked out exactly 34 highlights here: the biggest news, the most interesting-looking smaller games. But from the barrage of trailers I was also able to discern some trends. Here’s what we can learn.

Marina Market, Cork
Michael Glenn Murphy is the accidental soldier and reluctant revolutionary reckoning with his past in Deirdre Kinahan’s touching drama of regret and return

A ferry terminal in steely morning light is the bare setting for Deirdre Kinahan’s poignant drama of return, as a man (Michael Glenn Murphy) in overcoat, suit and hat clutches a suitcase and considers his next move. In the 50 years since he left Ireland on a misguided impulse, Joseph Grace has never been back until now.

As a bus pulls up, he hesitates and turns away, assailed by memories. What follows in Louise Lowe’s atmospheric staging for Once Off Productions is a reckoning with Joseph’s past: a life swept up in 20th-century Europe’s upheavals, from the Western Front, to Roger Casement’s Irish Brigade of war prisoners in Germany in 1915, to the rise of Hitler.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Neons and videos mix with weaving and beadwork to address subjects as diverse as stolen land, ancestral traditions and queer identity. But the self-made nude steals the show

A breeze from the vast North American plains has blown across the rolling Yorkshire hills. The work of 38 Indigenous American artists has filled the galleries of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, transforming their underground space into a world of clay and earth, fabric and ceramics, painting and sculpture that talks of land, memory, oppression and freedom through art.

Everywhere, there’s a sense of ancestral identity, memory and tradition. It’s in the Navajo weavings of Tyrrell Tapaha and Melissa Cody, the patterned beadwork of Jeffrey Gibson, the dizzying geometricism of Dyani White Hawk’s towering column. They all use traditional aesthetics to explore new ideas: Gibson’s work is about how his queer identity meets his Indigenous culture, White Hawk pushes into pure abstraction, Cody mixes pixelated video game aesthetics into Navajo patterns, and on and on. Everyone here is taking the old ways and pushing them in new directions.

Hayward Gallery, London
Butcher bags, human sacrifice and cavernous black holes … in a world of dry art this stunning exhibition forces us to confront religion and mortality

It’s the clinging, transparent PVC that does it, a horribly surgical-looking, synthetic skin covering each of Anish Kapoor’s three paintings – can we call them that? – entitled Plastic Sacrifice I, II, III. They resemble a serial killer’s trophy art. Through the wrapping you gawp at three-dimensional purple and crimson entrails that slop off the wall, forming valleys and protuberances that, it seems, would collapse all over the floor if the carnage wasn’t contained by these butcher bags.

Sensationalist and macabre? Rembrandt’s painting Slaughtered Ox is just as visceral as it contemplates the flayed, hollowed body of a huge ox hanging upside down, its yellow fat and blood-dark meat a mirror of our own doomed flesh, not to mention the crucifixion. In the age of smartphones and minuscule attention spans, Kapoor gives artistic depth a go, addressing God and mortality, those themes of the old masters, in a metaphysical rollercoaster ride of a show, a divine bloodbath.

The Crypt at St Luke’s, Cork
Luke Casserly’s playful, participatory exploration of Ireland’s 10,000-year-old bogs involves touch, sound, taste – and an earthy perfume

Seated at a circular table covered in a mound of dried peat, writer and performer Luke Casserly might be presiding over an arcane ritual. When he holds a handful of peat in his hand and passes it to the small audience around the table, the initial air of solemnity dissolves into quizzical laughter.

A soundscape of birdsong and wind evokes the ancient landscape of bogs in the Irish midlands, where Casserly grew up. Part essay, part dialogue, this playful, participatory performance involves touch, sound, taste – and especially the smells of soil, moss and peat smoke, later presented as a perfume created by olfactory artist Joan Woods; a message in a bottle.

Click here to submit a picture for publication in these online galleries and/or on the Guardian letters page

Hugely successful London show to open in the US, with performances beginning in March

Marmalade bagels at the ready: London’s Paddington Bear musical is to open on Broadway next spring. The phenomenally successful show, which won seven prizes at the Olivier awards, will begin performances on 30 March at the Al Hirschfeld theatre in New York, currently home to Moulin Rouge! The Musical.

Luke Sheppard, the director of Paddington: The Musical, said that the well-mannered ursine hero “approaches life with curiosity, kindness and an unwavering sense of adventure – and what an adventure Broadway will be”.

From gymnasts in kitten heels to lovers stalked by a devil, Pieter Henket’s dazzling portrait series, Birds of Mexico City, can feel like being in ‘a museum where the art comes alive’

The world’s most successful gamer content creators, many of whom have spent their entire adult life on the platform, have met up at TwitchCon in Rotterdam

Aimee Davies, better known as Aimsey to their fans, is 24 but looks much younger. Sitting in a bland meeting room above the annual TwitchCon event in Rotterdam, they’re a barely contained whirl of energy in a beanie hat and T-shirt, all smiles and lightning-fast chatter. Aimsey (who uses they/them pronouns) is also a Twitch veteran, having started streaming eight years ago at the tender age of 16. A million subscribers tune in every week to see them chaotically play Minecraft and share snippets of their life. They have grown up, from teen to young adult, carrying a vast audience with them into maturity. What is it like to experience that?

“When you’re 16 you want to tell everyone everything about you,” they say as music blares from the event below. “When I came out as a lesbian, I told the world. Every part of my identity, my mental health struggles … I thought if I could help one person feel like they weren’t alone, I wanted to do that.”

Never mind leftovers – some dogs will eat anything, from electrics to wasps’ nests. We asked you to tell us about your pets’ most radical experiments in off-menu dining

I adopted my brother’s middle-aged westie, Maggie. She did tend to eat anything unattended, but usually leaned towards actual food. One memorable day, I came home to a living room carpet covered in what appeared to be termite mounds. Maggie had consumed about a kilo of chinchilla bathing sand and a second course of sanitary towels (the ones with wings). The latter contained some kind of absorbent gel, which made the vomit sculptures impressively solid – the vet who checked her afterwards (Maggie was remarkably unaffected, and certainly did not learn any lesson) remarked that it was something of a miracle that she threw it up. If not for my carpet. Fiona, 56, works for a non-profit research institute, Fulford, North Yorkshire

I have a partially sighted two-year-old red fox labrador and a more matronly five-year-old black lab. I have a long daily commute and my dogs come with me. There wasn’t space for a cage that was big enough for both labs in the boot of my small hatchback, meaning they had free access to the whole boot during our two hours on the road. Last year, the younger one, with possible assistance, ate up all the electrics she could get to, pulling them out from under the back seat. She also ate the floor of the boot, the polystyrene around the spare tyre and the backing of the back seats. All done in relative silence during our drive until the car suddenly stopped in the middle of the road as I was driving out of a car park one morning, with all the warning lights flashing. The entire car had to be rewired, costing around £8,000. Thank goodness for comprehensive car insurance. She is no longer allowed to travel in the boot unless she’s in her cage and, thankfully, nothing she ate needed advanced veterinary attention. Rebecca, 51, veterinary surgeon and researcher, Norway

You told us the barbecue upgrades that make a big difference. Plus, we’ve got you covered for Father’s Day with 62 tried and tested gifts

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Lighter, drawn-out days, warmer nights, and World Cup watch parties can mean only one thing: alfresco dining. If you’re itching to get the barbecue out, we’ve rounded up reader tips and tricks – and some of our own – to help up your grill game.

If you need an upgrade to your setup, the Weber kettle barbecue “makes incredible food without any faff”, says Alex David, who gave it top spot in his test of the best barbecues. Or Argos’s affordable drum-shaped grill “has everything you need and a little more”, and was Alex’s budget favourite.

The very best double creams have a wildly complex taste, but which brands are a little scoop of sunshine and which are much of a muchness?

• The best supermarket natural yoghurts

This was a tricky taste test, not least because 70% of these creams tasted pretty much exactly the same, which is a clear reflection of how homogeneous our conventional food system has become (much of our cream is made from milk sourced from thousands of farms across the country and mixed together). Even the packaging is more or less identical, with a printed plastic tub and a peelable plastic lid.

British double cream is about 48% fat, which is higher than whipping cream (35%) and just below clotted (55% plus). This matters in practical terms because that’s why it whips more firmly, holds its shape longer and is less likely to split when added to a hot sauce. Conventional cream does the job well (it’s white, neutral in flavour and whips well), but really good cream is thick, gloopy and wildly fatty, with an unbelievably complex taste and remarkably nourishing effect; it’s also eminently whippable. Scooping a blob of cream like that straight from the tub can replenish energy and satiate in an almost alchemical way.

We’ve tried, tested and rounded up 62 thoughtful gifts – from gardening gloves to a cold brew coffee maker and a parkrun keyring – to make the father figure in your life feel special

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Whoever you’re celebrating this Father’s Day – your own dad or a father figure in your life – our bumper list of gift ideas should help you think beyond the norm (though we have included some sock options, because sometimes it’s OK to go classic).

Whatever their age or your budget, we’ve focused on sustainable products that stand the test of time. All of the products have either been tested by me or by our own brilliant testers on the Filter and should still be going strong on Father’s Day 2027 and beyond.

Whether it’s fancy sauces or lesser-known cuts, skip the obvious with these creative garden party gifts (and not a pasta salad in sight)

• The best (and worst) chef’s knives – tested

Summer’s here, so you’ve probably got an invitation to a barbecue. If someone’s gone to the effort of hosting one, they deserve better than supermarket sausages and a bottle of wine grabbed from the corner shop on the way.

But what to bring that’s thoughtful and a little bit different? Whether it’s olive oil or ice lollies, green harissa or Lambrusco (yes, really), here are some suggestions from those in the know.

It’s all about ‘easy bowl food’, and grub you can shovel in on the sofa without having to cut anything up

What are the best summer TV dinners?
Mel, by email
Few are as committed to teas on knees as Ella Risbridger: “It appals my parents, but I eat on the sofa just about every day,” says the author of The Kitchen Book. The key, she says, is not having to cut anything up: “One-handed cooking is a good way of thinking about it,” which is to say that Mel should be looking for meals that require only a fork, a spoon or chopsticks. “That’s easier to do in winter, because then you’ve got the likes of casseroles, soups and stews, whereas a lot of summer food is based on big sharing platters, which are not ideal, because, while you can put them on the coffee table, there’s lunging involved.” Said movement not only upsets the balance, but often also results in spillages: “I’m currently looking at a lump of bicarb sopping up a turmeric stain on my sofa,” Risbridger adds by way of confirmation.

Other considerations of the sofa supper include getting as many textures and flavours as possible into every mouthful. “Wherever you dig, you want to be getting something good,” says Zena Kamgaing, author of Dinner Time. That’s why pasta is a regular go-to: “It’s easy bowl food. On a hot day, say, I’ll do a no-cook sauce by blitzing mascarpone with sun-dried tomatoes, a little harissa and fresh basil.” Risbridger, meanwhile, is partial to US-style chopped salads, although Vietnamese-inspired numbers also feature regularly: “Invest in a julienne peeler, because that can make salad feel fancy, and put any kind of protein in it: salmon, sliced steak.” Add rice – “Cold salad and warm rice is a delight” – or deploy twirlable cold noodles. “If you’re watching telly, curtains drawn, you’re not looking for a beautiful plate,” Risbridger says. “You want the focus to be on the deliciousness, and I cannot stress enough that a Vietnamese salad is the optimum, because it’s beautiful, but not in a way that means you have to concentrate on its beauty.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Perfect for the football, these half-time snacks are quick to assemble and sure to score highly with friends

Both of these sausage-based delights are great for a gathering, can be prepared in advance and go really, really well with ice-cold beers. God bless the sausage. Whether your team is winning, losing, embarrassing or delighting, everyone will consider you the Cristiano Ronaldo of half-time snacks if you bang either of these out. The prawn and sausage toasts can be made in advance and kept in the fridge with greaseproof paper between the slices, then you just need to fry them when you want them. Similarly with the hotdogs: prep everything in advance, then, when the whistle goes, boil the sausages, steam the buns and get stuck in.

This crunchy, spicy wonder has made a fortune for its Chinese creator – and inspired hundreds of British-Asian versions. Time to get tasting …

Walk down the specialist aisle in most British supermarkets and you will find a red jar with the kindly face of a middle-aged Chinese woman staring back at you. Branded Lao Gan Ma, meaning “old godmother”, these jars contain chilli crisp – a spicy, crunchy and moreish umami condiment that has made made hundreds of millions for Tao Huabi, the woman on the label. Doused over steaming dumplings, fried eggs, noodles and even ice-cream, Lao Gan Ma’s chilli crisp has become a social media sensation in recent years and has spawned a thriving cottage industry of independent chilli crisp producers in the UK.

“It’s such a convenient shortcut to flavour when you use it as a condiment,” says Fuchsia Dunlop, an expert in Chinese cuisine. “Every Asian cuisine has a form of chilli oil, but China and Lao Gan Ma invented chilli crisp and now the western world is more interested in authentic flavours, thanks partly to social media.” People, she says, want to have their own taste of that authenticity. “It’s far more exciting than a bottle of ketchup!”

A crunchy, tangy antithesis to traditional soggy rice salads

There are not many foods I will pass on, but a traditional rice salad is something I have never been able to get on board with – soggy dressed grains just don’t do it for me texturally. However, the current trend of roasting or pan-frying the grains is a whole other story. I love the added flavour it brings, the crunchy texture, and the way the rice soaks up everything with which it is enrobed. This gochujang dressing is my new obsession, adding enough spice to elevate things, and finishing with chunks of creamy avocado and a punchy hit of tangy lime. Serve straight away, or leave the roast rice to cool before dressing, it’s up to you. Either way, I guarantee it won’t last long.

Edward thinks of sex as playtime and has a vivid imagination, which Jane is happy to go along with despite being quite ‘vanilla’ herself

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

When I dreamed about Jane in a latex catsuit, we had one made

Brendan Maclean had never spoken with drag queen Karen from Finance in person, nor laid eyes on the man behind the makeup. Then came a chance encounter in Melbourne

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

I’d had a big, sparkly pop career in my 20s but by 2024 I was beyond my twink era, and getting by hopping from one weird gig to the next. Covid had really done a number on the music industry and, while my friend Paul Mac had kept me making music, I found myself drifting through a strange, boozy few years in Sydney. I’d been single since 2020 and my best friend was my cat.

Throughout that hazy time, I was as terminally online as ever. At 38 I was posting like a 20-year-old. One day, for no particular reason, I posted a track from the Dissociatives’ self-titled album from the mid-noughties. Paul, who I call my gay uncle, and Daniel Johns of Silverchair fame, had made just one LP together, and the obscure track, Thinking in Reverse, was one of my favourites.

Yusuf, 25, who works in finance, meets Hannah, 26, a PhD student

What were you hoping for?
Someone interesting, good chat is more important than anything. And a fun story. I like a random side quest.

Jordan wants one catch-all digital resource for him and Charlene, so their social lives don’t clash, but she prefers to communicate in person. You decide whose time is up

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

I’m not trying to control her but having one shared calendar helps us plan our lives together

Wuva staff’s kindness and empathy means we are able to plan more trips away

My husband has motor neurone disease (MND). For us to continue going away, we decided to buy a refurbished mobile hoist, which helps to get out of a bed, from the online mobility equipment company, Wuva.

It arrived quickly, but had been damaged in transit and didn’t work. I contacted Wuva out of hours via WhatsApp, and within five minutes I received an extensive apology and advised an engineer would call me shortly.

After falling for a scam call, ‘The Tech Chap’ host Tom Honeyands realised he’d given away vital details in social media posts

When Tom Honeyands realised he had been defrauded out of £70,000 he was furious and embarrassed – and left wondering if he had given away too many details on his social media videos.

Honeyands was on a work trip to Tokyo when he got a call from someone claiming to be from Lloyds bank. The caller asked if he had made a recent transaction in Singapore and when he said no, the scammer said his account had been compromised and that security details needed to be reset.

We booked our hotel because of its swimming pool but a hefty hourly fee to use it wasn’t mentioned

My partner and I paid £2,150 for a week’s all-inclusive break in Marrakech with easyJet Holidays.

We chose the Jaal Riad Resort Hotel because of its pool and spa. When we arrived, we were told that use of the heated pool cost £24 a person an hour, the Jacuzzi £24 for 20 minutes, and the hammam was £16 for 20 minutes.

A medical issue can send quotes for cover soaring but it is not worth risking going abroad without a policy

‘I nearly fell over when I saw the travel insurance quote,” says the retiree Bernie Lawrence. The 77-year-old from Fleet, Hampshire, says that after he developed heart problems, the cost of buying cover became “astronomical”.

Lawrence, who usually travels with his wife, Barbara, 79, says he had always been active and fit before suffering chest pains while out running in 2018. Nine days later, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery.

An increasing number of people are finding trail running relatively late in life – and they’re reaping the health benefits

Earlier this year, 62-year-old Karla Wagner placed second in the 100-mile division of the Grandmaster Ultras, an Arizona trail-running event designed for 50-and-over runners in the age group known as “grandmaster”.

For most of her adult life, Wagner, who is from Lander, Wyoming, avoided running because it triggered her asthma. But when asthma meds improved, she added trail running to her fitness mix and became completely hooked in her early fifties.

Many of us have reassured ourselves with the ‘five second rule’, but bacteria can transfer almost immediately – and sticks around for hours

You drop a piece of cucumber on the floor. Do you immediately throw it in the bin or reassure yourself of the age-old “five-second rule” and reckon it’s fine to pop it in your mouth after a quick rinse?

If you fall into the latter camp, John Tregoning, professor of vaccine immunology at Imperial College London, has some bad news. He refers to three studies into bacteria transfer that all point towards the rule being false.

Founded in 2004, the free weekly 5km event has grown into a global fixture of weekend life, taking place in parks, fields, seafronts and even prisons

An event to mark the millionth parkrun took place in west London on Saturday, acting as a celebration of the community cohesion and public health benefit that the charity has been aiming to achieve across the past two decades.

The former Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes joined thousands of locals and parkrun fanatics to mark the milestone in a west London park – the venue for the very first parkrun in 2004.

Footy Addicts helps amateur players find a game at short notice – and tackles the problem of loneliness

Cries of “Boss! Boss! Boss!” emerge from the pitch during a hard-fought game of football in a London park. There aren’t a lot of names used in this game, because most players only met just before kick-off. They were brought together by an app that’s injecting life into grassroots football.

Footy Addicts was invented to solve an infuriating problem for amateur players – the late dropout, which can lead to unbalanced teams and ruined games. The app brings together strangers who are desperate to play football, and who can step in after a cancellation to make up the numbers at short notice.

Taylor Swift and Timothée Chalamet lead the charge in blue and orange, as courtside style hits a ‘memeable’ peak

The World Cup may have kicked off in the US this week, but America’s attention is focused on a different sport: basketball. The NBA finals could end this weekend, with the New York Knicks potentially becoming champions for the first time since 1973. And with Knicks fever comes fan style, especially courtside, where celebrities have been showing their support in different ways.

For Wednesday’s Game 4, won by the Knicks, Taylor Swift and Este and Alana Haim all wore T-shirts in the blue and orange of the Knicks with their own Knicks-related pop culture pun: Swift’s read “Stevie Knicks”, while Este’s said “Knickeback” and Alana’s read “Knickole Kidman”. This was not shop merch. Vogue reported that Alana had made the T-shirts herself.

‘Late life’ male celebrities are turning the need for spectacles into a style statement as they refuse to disappear into fashion invisibility

A heart-throb for more than 40 years, Brad Pitt is no doubt used to people looking at him. But this week, that gaze was distracted by an addition to his face – aviator-style glasses.

Worn to watch the tennis at Roland Garros and with a pink trenchcoat when out for dinner in Paris, these retro glassesare more typically worn by younger men. That’s changed recently – they’re now becoming central to a makeover for men entering their “late life” era, but who aren’t willing to submit to the fashion invisibility associated with ageing.

Dear Frances offers the latest take on ballet flats, offering ‘a glove-like fit wearability’ – which is fine if you have nice feet

When is a shoe not a shoe? On sale this month is a pair that seems to pose the question – the no shoe-shoe is the work of the cult brand Dear Frances and the latest in a steady march of shoes that are barely there; a take on naked dressing but for the foot.

The Balla shoe, which the brand calls a “sock shoe”, covers almost the entire foot, but also leaves it – encased but on display – in a kind of flimsy foot-cage. According to Jane Frances, the creative director and founder of the brand, it “offers a unique, glove-like fit wearability” and “takes inspiration from the delicate strength of a woman”.

With his trademark glasses, his bleached hair and a thrillingly haphazard approach to colour, the artist’s signature style evolved and captivated decade after decade

If artist style is now a well-trodden path in fashion, there are some examples that stand out. David Hockney – with his trademark glasses, rugby shirts, trenchcoats and quirks like wearing a pair of yellow Crocs to meet King Charles in 2022 – might have been top of that list.

His flair for style was there from the start: a self-portrait of Hockney at 16 shows him dressed in a blue coat, red scarf and yellow tie, already with strong statement specs. As time went on, he developed his trademark look. The peroxide mop came in the early 60s, after he saw an advert for Clairol proclaiming “blondes have more fun” and his signature round spectacles replaced his NHS specs by the the middle of the decade.

The French cities of Marseille, Aix, Avignon and Arles boast a wealth of museums and festivals showing work by contemporary artists. Here’s how to make the most of a dazzling cultural summer

My wife and I moved from London to Marseille a little over five years ago when our British passports still conferred “right to reside” in France. That first winter on the beach, in short sleeves, as our daughters played in the topaz-coloured Mediterranean and the sun set across an ever-clear blue sky, I understood why this part of southern France has always been popular with artists.

I was recently speaking about this with the painter Fanny Nushka and her sailor husband, Benoît Bouchet, on the terrace of Café la Muse in Marseille’s “coolest” neighbourhood. She said: “It took a long time to go back to blue. It’s like being in Paris and painting the Eiffel Tower. It’s dangerous to paint the Calanques [limestone coves] as an artist from here.”

Can a long road trip work with children? I set out to relive a classic journey from Bilbao to Saint-Malo I did in my freewheeling 20s

The moment came on about day four. A cloud-like mist was drenching our faces, hair and clothes, despite the thick canopy of trees overhead. My six-year-old daughter silently trudged uphill pushing her bike, her mouth set in a grim line. I looked again at the blue blob on Google Maps, which seemed, unfeasibly, to indicate we were on the right path. I thought, again, about the diminishing supply of chocolate in my backpack.

“See! I told you! We’re having an adventure,” I said with forced jollity. She didn’t even look up.

A 1,600-mile journey to the wild peaks of Scotland, via Llandudno’s Victorian promenade and the bright lights of Blackpool proved an eye-opener in more ways than one

One of my favourite recent photographs is of me (unusually), perched on the bonnet of our car, about to set off on a solo, two-week road trip from our Sussex home to the wilds of Scotland, taking in Eryri (Snowdonia), Lancashire, the Lake District and Yorkshire. I had no idea that the research trip I was about to embark on – for my book, which traces the story of British holidays over 400 years – was going to reveal my homeland as somewhere I barely knew.

As a southerner, it was the northern half of Britain that I needed to discover. I’d stitched together my route with visits to museums, archives and classic seaside resorts that had once blazed so brightly. I’d visited Cumbria before, but the Conwy coast, the Lancashire countryside, Blackpool, Morecambe, Scarborough? All these were unknowns.

I found cinematic landscapes, wild freedom and thousands of miles of perfect solitude on my campervan adventure through the Nordic countries

It’s midnight, in June. Powder pink and dark grey clouds drift across a pallid sky, the palette reflecting in the motionless water of Lake Inari. Islets of pine and just-budding birch create pools of distorted shade close to the horizon of this 420 sq mile (1,080 sq km) lake in Lapland, northern Finland. There is not a sound. It’s so silent, I barely breathe to avoid disturbance. Only me, the lake and a moonbeam-coloured moth, whose wingbeat is inaudible.

I am sat beside my car-sized campervan, with mesmerised reverence for the rose-tinged panorama. I do not wish to go to bed and miss this moment. And I am loving the wild freedom and deliciousness of being entirely alone, with nobody in the world knowing my exact whereabouts. Ordinarily, I would be long asleep by midnight, exhausted after a day of work and family life. But I have left my husband and (adult) children at home in England for an eight-week solo camping adventure through Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway, with the singular aim of reaching Nordkapp (North Cape) and Knivskjellodden, Europe’s northernmost point at the top of Norway, in time for midsummer.

Wharfedale, Yorkshire: On the trail of a wood warbler, I find a suite of woodland plants rising up from a fascinating land formation – limestone pavement

Grass Wood is a magnificent fragment of ancient woodland owned and exceptionally well managed by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. It is home to some lovely plants, including lily of the valley and herb paris. What became my defining revelation about the place and, in truth, about this whole area was down to a wood warbler.

It is among my favourite birds, so getting to see the individual singing just off the trail required me to enter the trees, rise up a short bank, and then sit for a long time on a rocky ledge. Slowly it dawned on me that the platform on which I rested, while carpeted in moss, was also incised into a tessellated pattern. From these narrow cracks in the limestone arose a suite of woodland plants. It was dense with ash seedlings, ferns and sedges, as well as linear thickets of dog’s mercury, but there – unmistakably where my hand rested – were strips of flowering herb paris.

Rather than pouring away old aquarium water, you could use it as free plant feed

The problem
Houseplants need liquid fertiliser, but this can be expensive. Fish tank owners, meanwhile, produce litres of nutrient-rich water during water changes, which then gets poured away. Could it feed houseplants instead?

The hack
Water from a freshwater aquarium contains nitrogen, phosphorus and beneficial bacteria. Rather than discarding it during routine water changes, use it to water your houseplants, giving them a free feed.

I had just lost my brother when Joey arrived – also struggling and in need of TLC. Caring for him gave me a routine, and taught me that life is worth the fight

As a farmer’s daughter my life has been full of animals. Joey arrived soon after my brother’s sudden death when I was just 18. We were all reeling with grief. Then this tiny twin calf arrived, born to one of my brother’s favourite cows. His twin died almost immediately, but I rebelled against the pragmatic advice of the farm manager to let this one slip away too.

I hand-milked his mother and fed him myself, and took him home to my little cottage where I could watch him whenever I wasn’t at work on the farm, learning the trade. He took up residence there alongside my lurcher puppy, Gail, who accepted him without fuss. It was an unlikely trio – a grieving girl, a dog and a calf – finding our way through the fog of loss together.

Our favourite music, clothes and books used to be markers of individuality – but the algorithm has made us all sheep. Meet the style rebels fighting back

What are you into? What floats your boat? What music, films, clothes, art, books – anything, really – do you actually like? Do you find these questions more difficult to answer than you would have done 10 years ago? How about 20? You do? You’re not alone.

It has become impossible to ignore: personal taste has been seriously debased – if not completely destroyed – by technological advancement. We know the internet has radically altered the way we form our opinions and beliefs. Now we’re waking up to another sobering truth: it has wrecked our capacity to form our own preferences.

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.

Before Orange Is the New Black made her a star, Cox endured bullying, abuse, harassment and violence. She talks about the bad old days – and her fears they’re on their way back

Two days before she spoke to me, Laverne Cox had been at the premiere of a new, animated Animal Farm, in which she voices Snowball. The film is wildly controversial, for its absolutely unOrwellian, childish tone, complete with happy ending, but Cox had bigger things on her mind than film criticism.

“If we don’t wake up and don’t understand, trans people will be exterminated,” she said that day in April. “People’s rights are being taken away, people are losing their jobs, people are losing healthcare, people are being detransitioned in prison, gender-affirming care is being attacked, not just for children but also for adults. It’s never been about protecting women – it’s always been about creating a permission structure to scapegoat trans people, to dehumanise trans people, to take away our rights and to eliminate us from public life.”

From thousands of lives lost to an economic shock likely to plunge millions into poverty, the world is paying dearly

It would be hard to find a human on Earth unaffected by the US-Israel war against Iran. Several thousand have been killed. Millions are paying more each day in steeper food prices or at the petrol pump, and as inflation eats away at the value of their earnings.

For many, the final bill has not yet come, but it will eventually. They will pay for the long-term damage caused by the biggest threat of all to the global economy: uncertainty.

The bar she drank at, the bed she recuperated in, the canals she daytripped to, the studio she stormed out of, the easel she painted her final masterpiece at … ahead of a major Tate show, our writer finds Kahlo’s spirit alive in her home town

‘Today you’re going to eat art,” says Federico Valdez, a chef at the School of Mexican Cuisine and a man so passionate about food he has the word Queso (Cheese) tattooed on his forearm. “Today,” continues Valdez, “you’re going to eat history.” What unfolds, in a sun-filled dining room lined with Mexican flowers, books and artefacts, is a three-course feast inspired by Frida Kahlo, her life, her art and her loves, including her first lesbian affair.

The starter, inspired by her childhood fascination with revolution, is a lightly spiced Mexican take on pirozhki, the Russian favourite. The main dish – served with pulque, an agave-derived drink Kahlo loved – taps into her rebellious spirit. “It’s called Frida Against the World,” says Valdez, as we are presented with a giant stuffed chilli that sits amid a nutty, beany sauce similar to the one eaten at Kahlo’s wedding to Diego Rivera, then the most famous artist in the world, now much more in her shadow.

What are your thoughts about the ban? Do you welcome it or do you have misgivings?

The UK government has confirmed a social media ban for under-16s.

We’d like to hear from 16 and 17-year-olds about their views on the social media ban. What are your thoughts on the ban coming in when 16-year-olds will soon be able to vote (at the next general election), and when they can pay taxes and join the army. Do you welcome it or do you have misgivings?

We would like to hear about the holidays reads you’d recommend

Summer is here, which means lazy days at the beach or the pool with a great book by your side.

We would love to hear from people about their favourite beach reads. What books have you loved reading on holiday? What are the page turners that you keep returning to every summer and always recommend to friends? We would love to hear what books these are and why they make a great beach read.

Tell us about your favourite trip to Greece – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break

The new Hollywood adaptation of Homer’s epic work The Odyssey, released next month, is expected to give a huge tourism boost to Greece this summer. We’d love to hear about your favourite travel experiences in Greece, whether it’s island hopping, exploring antiquities in Athens, trekking in the Peloponnese or watching the sun set into the Aegean from the perfect beachfront taverna.

The best tip of the week, chosen by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet, wins a £200 voucher to stay at a Coolstays property – the company has more than 3,000 worldwide. The best tips will appear in the Guardian Travel section and website.

We’d like to hear from UK adult adoptees about they navigated their reunion with a birth parent

Guardian journalist David Batty has described the complex family trauma many adult adoptees have to navigate during reunion with their birth parents, often without professional support.

We would like other UK adult adoptees to share their experiences of adoption reunion. How challenging was it to forge relationships with birth relatives and to maintain them? What, if any, support did you receive? How did it impact your relationship with your adoptive family?

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