Pioneering computer scientist on why Trump is using ‘superintelligence’ wrong, whether AI could wipe out humanity – and how our biggest challenge will be accepting we’re not the only intelligent beings

Donald Trump is a “corrupt, senile felon” whose fixation on the term superintelligence proves he knows nothing about AI, said Geoffrey Hinton, “godfather” of the technology, in a wide-ranging interview where he doubled down on recent warnings that AI models pose an existential threat to humanity and scoffed at claims the industry could regulate itself.

The pioneering computer scientist, whose work helped lay the foundations of modern AI, has since become one of the technology’s most vocal critics. His latest remarks come after a tumultuous month during which a growing list of senior AI scientists and researchers have joined Hinton in ringing the alarm about how the technology he helped create could ultimately escape human control, sparking an industry crisis, the hasty assembly of congressional meetings and a rare global consensus that something must be done.

The ex-soldier has marched 36,000 miles since he left Hull in 1998. He’s crossed the Americas, Asia and Europe, fallen in love, been held at gunpoint and been deported, in between nearly drowning, nearly dying of thirst and nearly being eaten. But that’s just the start of it …

‘It’s a big moment,” says Karl Bushby, who has had plenty of big moments in his life. He is recording himself on his phone for social media. “We’re in Dover, and I’m about to have my first fish and chips and mushy peas in 28 years. Mushy peas, my God, I forgot they even existed!” He points his phone at the plate in front of him. “It better be good.” And he tucks in. “Mmmm. See, this is a big chunk of fish and a decent bit of batter, and that’s something you don’t see in other parts of the world. I mean, come on! That. Is. Fish. And. Chips! You see, Britain is special.”

It has been two days since Bushby swam the Channel to return to England. Tomorrow, he’ll start the walk home to Hull for the first time since he left in 1998. He hopes to get back on 1 November, the same date he set off all those years ago.

Swamped with ‘daily avalanches’ of soiled items and poor-quality fast fashion, secondhand stores are in crisis. What went wrong with people’s good intentions? And is it possible to donate more effectively?

The small stockroom of St Raphael’s Hospice charity shop in Cheam, south London, is rammed with donations. “On average, we get 30 to 50 bags a day,” says Caroline Worley, the commercial manager, “but it’s not unusual to receive over 100.” This might sound like a good problem to have, but the sheer volume of stuff is the shop’s biggest challenge. “Sometimes, there’s only [enough] floor space to tiptoe,” says 48-year-old store manager, Colin French.

Rummaging through the donations, it’s clear that much is unsaleable: a smelly, soiled bathrobe, tatty trainers, heavily bobbled jumpers, old socks, an empty Swarovski jewellery case. “Absolutely typical,” says Worley. They’re also overwhelmed with deluges of low-quality fashion – a shift in donation habits that accelerated during Covid, because, says Worley, all that time at home enabled people to sell their best stuff on Vinted.

Some of Britain’s wealthiest financiers, including Sir Paul Marshall, have given a platform to critical coverage or are linked to its leading opponent

“This is virtue signalling,” said Nigel Biggar. “These are elites who are trying to demonstrate that they are being progressive.”

The target of his scorn was one that has obsessed him for years: the movement to pay reparations for the slave trade, and specifically the Church of England’s plan to spend £100m atoning for its involvement.

France’s always-cool winger has crowds hanging on his every move – adulation that means more than any title could

When I was younger, I wanted to be the captain on my football team because back then, I assumed that the armband was given to the best player. It was a goal of mine for so long that, even as my youth teams won tournaments and trophies, and I won top scorer and best player awards, I still felt unsatisfied because someone else always had the armband. Whenever I saw another teammate sprinting around with the armband on, I took it as an indictment.

I had forgotten this childish way of thinking until France v Belgium in the Uefa Nations League last week. Ousmane Dembélé, who was wearing the armband for France, was particularly active. Had it not been for the wastefulness of his teammates, he would have had several assists during his time on the field.

A Thames21 charity citizen science project helps track plastic pollution in the capital’s river

On a pale-blue Sunday morning on the foreshore of the River Thames, 40 people are searching for what others have tried to lose. Dotted across a 250-metre stretch under Hammersmith Bridge, they are combing through layers of silt, seashells and dirty driftwood to find one of the river’s most stubborn problems: wet wipes.

“People come and walk here and it looks just like mud, at a distance,” says the organiser, Dr Felicity Rhodes. “And then you get closer in and see.”

Move from anti-immigration or anti-Muslim views to violence is ‘most marked trend’ in spy agency’s caseload over last year

Extremists holding anti-immigration opinions are becoming increasingly likely to consider carrying out terrorist attacks against immigration centres and asylum hotels in the UK, the head of MI5 has warned.

Ken McCallum said a shift from radicalised rightwing sentiment to violence was “the most marked trend” in the spy agency’s caseload over the past year, contributing to a rise in the overall UK terror threat level.

Russia remains “aggressor number one” as the Kremlin continues to lash out against the west with assassination plots, explosive threats and cyber-attacks that at times stop “not much short” of conventional warfare.

Moscow tried to interfere in the 2016 Brexit referendum with anti-EU coverage on RT and Sputnik media, and via troll social media accounts, but there was a big difference between “what may have been attempted and what actually resulted”.

He was “particularly focused” on the risk of hostile states or terrorists using AI to generate new, deadly bioweapons, and announced the creation of a new AI threat assessment centre to distinguish fact from fiction.

There was a “concerning trend of violence targeted at political figures, religious or community groups”, as demonstrated by the killing of the former minister and Reform UK spokesperson Anne Widdecombe.

Threats from other states had quadrupled in the last decade and were running on par with MI5’s counter-terrorism mission. “We have again entered a new era of national security,” he said.

William Chapman was pronounced dead at scene on Saturday after scaling fence and entering enclosure

A man killed by a tiger at a zoo in South Yorkshire has been named locally as William Chapman.

Chapman scaled the fence and entered the enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster on Saturday afternoon. Witnesses described seeing Chapman, who has not been officially named by police, walking up to a 200kg male Siberian tiger, named Altai, which attacked him.

Help-to-buy initiative for England could slow market while first-time buyers wait for launch, builder admits

• Business live – latest updates

The new Your First Home programme for first-time buyers could increase the number of houses British builder Bellway produces each year by 10%, its boss has said.

Faced with a chronic shortage of homes, the government has made housing one of its top priorities and Andy Burnham’s surprise announcement of the YFH scheme a fortnight ago sent housebuilders’ shares soaring by more than 10%.

Party leader says Jenrick’s comments ‘misconstrued’, after MP said Royal Marines would be allowed to fire at those on boats

• UK politics live – latest updates

Nigel Farage has denied that a Reform UK government would authorise lethal force against migrant crossings in the Channel, hours after one of his MPs said the Royal Marines should be permitted to fire on the boats.

Robert Jenrick, a Reform UK MP who defected from the Conservatives, had told TalkTV that the party would deploy the Royal Marines to take boats back to France.

Ukrainian president’s comments on ‘particularly vile’ strikes come after US threatened to halt intelligence sharing

• Europe live – latest updates

Ukraine received no early warning from its partners about a Russian ballistic missile strike on Kyiv in which five missiles hit civilian infrastructure, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday.

The Ukrainian president described the attack on Monday as “particularly vile”. He emphasised that receiving intelligence from Ukraine’s western allies “helps saves lives, and this is one of the most critical issues”.

Exclusive: Caution urged over Javier Milei government’s ‘red notice’ requests for arrest of individuals linked to oil project

Britain has appealed to Interpol to reject Argentina’s requests for the arrest of individuals involved in a large oil project off the Falkland Islands.

With tensions over the sovereignty of the British overseas territory reaching levels not seen since the war with Argentina in 1982, UK officials have sought urgent assurances from the international organisation.

Prosecution expected to open its case on Wednesday after eight men and four women selected as jurors

Russell Brand has attended court for the second day of his rape and sexual assault trial and a jury has been selected in the case.

The 51-year-old comedian faces three charges of rape, three of sexual assault and one of indecent assault against six women, in allegations spanning 10 years from 1999 to 2009. Brand denies all the charges.

Wife of former British deputy PM Nick Clegg promises liberal alternative to the PP and Socialists before snap election

The Spanish lawyer Miriam González Durántez has launched a new liberal, centrist party, vowing to clean up politics and give voters an alternative to the dominant socialist and conservative parties as the country gears up for next month’s snap general election.

González Durántez, an ex-EU adviser who is married to the former British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, says her new party, Democracia21, will offer a modern, transparent kind of politics that “doesn’t feed on fear, insults or nostalgia”.

Vatican says surgery that will determine whether the nodule is malignant will take place on Tuesday afternoon

Pope Leo has been admitted to hospital in Rome for an operation to remove a small growth from his lung, a discovery a top Vatican cardinal said had come “like a bolt out of the blue”.

In a rare moment of Vatican transparency, Leo, 71, said during his angelus prayer on Sunday that doctors had found a small nodule on his lung during a check-up, adding that it was “well-contained” and detected early.

Conference to explore legacy of Naseem Khan’s seminal 1976 report about exclusion of minority ethnic artists

It is 50 years since cultural historian Naseem Khan’s challenge to the British arts establishment was first published, and the question of who and what counts as British continues to be contested.

The Arts Britain Ignores – Khan’s groundbreaking 1976 report, commissioned by organisations including the then Arts Council of Great Britain, presented a vision of a pluralistic national culture, in which the creativity of Britons of diverse ethnic backgrounds – from bhangra music, to black painters and Ukrainian dance – should be recognised, supported and respected.

The judge who helped convict Jair Bolsonaro is caught up in a crisis that could benefit his son and damage Lula

• Marina Silva on Flávio Bolsonaro: He will try to finish his father’s ‘perverse project’ to destroy the Amazon

Thundering to a crowd of thousands of far-right supporters in São Paulo on 7 September, Brazil’s Independence Day, the senator Flávio Bolsonaro focused less on his opponent in the presidential election, the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, than on someone who is not running at all.

“Whoever votes for Lula is voting for Alexandre de Moraes,” Bolsonaro shouted, referring to the shaven-headed supreme court justice once described as “Voldemort” by Elon Musk.

Should you look for French seams or overlocking? Is dry-clean only a red flag? And how do you spot quality when shopping online? We asked the pros

• How to make your leather last a lifetime

Take a look at the outfit you’re wearing now: how many times have you worn each item? And how long have you had them? Just over 10 years ago, Eco-Age founder Livia Firth and journalist Lucy Siegle launched the 30 wears challenge to encourage people to buy clothes they would wear at least 30 times.

The 30 wears challenge is a great concept. As a journalist interested in sustainable fashion, I’ve enjoyed applying this rule for years and found the goal can often be surpassed, but with one proviso: clothing must be chosen carefully. The goal is only realistic if garments are of good enough quality to stand up to repeated wear. So, how do you know if your clothes really are well made? Does it mean you have to spend a fortune on them? Do you need to know the difference between a French seam and an overlock seam? And how can we judge clothing quality before buying if we are, like 37% of Britons, getting most of our clothes online? I spoke to experts to find out.

Don’t cook it too quickly – and skim, skim, skim, says our expert culinary panel

Why is my chicken stock always cloudy?
Ryan, by email
From broths and risottos to sauces and braises, there’s no question that a good, flavourful stock will stand you in good stead. “It’s an underestimated kitchen job,” says Adam Byatt, chef/owner of Trinity, in southwest London, and author of Trinity: The Cookbook, which is published next week. “I love stock: it’s wholesome and fruitful, frugal and delicious.”

Ryan’s clarity issue, Byatt says, is “only ever caused by cooking the stock too quickly or by allowing the fat to boil back into the base liquid”. So it’s crucial to take things low and slow. You will also need a pan that’s “big and heavy enough to give the bones enough room for movement, as well as a very fine sieve for straining the stock”.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Shakespeare’s bloody revenge-fest is full of horror and grotesquerie but the camaraderie of performing it with a youth theatre had an upbeat effect

Titus Andronicus has to be among William Shakespeare’s worst plays. In fact TS Eliot called it “one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written”. Yet it holds a very special place in my heart. It’s a bloody revenge-fest in which each act of violence is more grotesque than the last. Titus Andronicus returns from war with “barbarous” Tamora, “Queen of the Goths”, as his prisoner. She stealthily proceeds to kill and destroy his family, and when he discovers this, he murders her sons and serves them up to her in a pie. The play ends with gudgeons of fake blood and a sea of carnage. In Shakespeare’s day it was a huge hit, a kind of slasher film of the 16th century.

Plays are very powerful things and I have spent my life watching them and writing them. Some have been revelatory but none has affected me like Titus Andronicus. It was the first play, outside of school, that I was ever in – so I suppose this is about the transformative power of youth theatre.

Raised as one of 11, the Vancouver artist (and model) is now signed by A24. She talks about her ultra-religious childhood and how – despite her album title – she still suffers from imposter syndrome

The first time Sophia Stel came to London, she slept outside in the freezing cold. The Vancouver songwriter had finished a live set last autumn, then gone out until 3am with her then crush, but when they returned to their Airbnb, they found that Stel’s manager had dead-bolted the door and fallen asleep. Stel plus crush looked for a hotel but ultimately had no choice but to kip on the doorstep. “We hadn’t spent that much time together and I got to see how she was in a stressful situation,” Stel says, smiling at the memory. “She kept her vibe up and tried to solve it – I knew I was so in love then.”

A lot has changed in Stel’s life in the year since. She opened her business bank account as an artist, and that crush is now her girlfriend. “It’s a lot of change, but maybe because of my Sagittarius moon, I’m fine with it to an extent,” she says, only half-joking, when we meet at her publicist’s office in south London, the 27-year-old Stel in her uniform of vintage hoodie and Adidas trackies.

I was seduced by creators hawking passive income hustles. Like the language used in MLMs, it seemed too good to be true

A very specific kind of content began taking over my social media feeds at the end of last year.

I had just finished out a short-term contract and returned, with some reluctance, to the financial masochism of freelancing. As I mourned the end of steady paychecks and paid days off – as well as finally having enough money for regular haircuts – I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the glow of the screen.

After having a Pretty Woman moment in a Brooklyn store, the singer-songwriter let rip on X

Name: Kelly Clarkson.

Age: 44. Born in 1982. In Fort Worth, as it happens.

French photographer Jean-Pierre Laffont spent two decades capturing demos, clashes and countercultural gatherings in America. ‘They dreamed of living in a better world,’ he says

At first the idea of mercy was something that helped me through the ordeal. But would real forgiveness be a form of Stockholm syndrome?

I knew Mohamed Tahlil as a gentle pirate who oversaw a team of guards during the first months of my life as a hostage in 2012. I had travelled to Somalia to report on the outbreak of modern piracy off the coast. On the 10th day, along a dusty road near Galkayo, in the centre of the country, I was kidnapped by pirates. For the next two and a half years, I was a hostage.

I spent most of my time on a thin, sweat-soaked foam mattress on the floor of a dusty room. The dim concrete prison houses changed, but the filth and the circumstances didn’t. Sometimes my captors moved me into the Somali savannah – where we camped in the open and slept on the ground – and for a six-month stretch, I was held on a hijacked tuna vessel, where I joined 28 fishers from east Asia who had been captured about three weeks before I was placed on board. (They had captured me on land, but they were a pirate gang, organised to capture ships at sea.) In each location, pirate guards would sit around with AK-47s and listen to the radio, or else chew khat, a narcotic plant.

Farage was its champion, now it’s Badenoch – and the aim is the PM’s defeat at all costs

While the merits of a so-called Britannia shield to protect Britain from missiles and drones are debatable, the Conservatives’ proposal did achieve one thing last week: the very idea of the shield was used to anoint a political leader.

In a significant development, little observed amid the hullaballoo of news events, Kemi Badenoch’s uncosted, pie-in-the-sky plans to build a £10bn anti-missile system were enthusiastically heralded by the rightwing press. It was not just a matter of the plans themselves being lauded, even by outlets that must know them to be ridiculous. More significant is what it said about the champion chosen by these media organisations in their offensive against the Labour government and Andy Burnham.

Jane Martinson is an academic and Guardian columnist. She is a board member of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian Media Group, and writes in a personal capacity

Preparing her first report on England’s social care system, the peer says ‘everything is on the table’. This should include older people’s wealth, rather than taxes on younger workers

Residents with advanced dementia lined the day room, glazed stares or sleeping mouths agape, with that terrible human vacancy everyone most fears for their own end days.

This was Millvina House in Anfield, Liverpool, which I visited with Louise Casey, who is heading the commission on social care in England, last week. Here is a snippet of what she saw: an angry man jolting into life, shooting out his arm at her and bellowing: “Out! Get out! Get out!” A young care assistant went to stroke his back and calm him down. It’s a hard job, and part of it is watching for warning signs of aggression, one of dementia’s dreadful symptoms. “People don’t want to know,” Casey said, “but if you are born, you will die. Chances are you will need care, and dementia is the biggest killer.”

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

If far right nationalists gain power in four big countries simultaneously, we are in for a dramatic Trumpian tilt

When it comes to Europe’s economy or its peace and security, it is obvious that decision-making has to be done largely at the European level to be meaningful. Yet electoral politics is still conducted mostly at the national level. The silver lining of this mismatch is that from country to country in Europe we have governments with different political priorities and leanings. Unlike in the US, where one presidential election can radically change the entire country’s course, as we have seen so vividly under Donald Trump’s leadership, the same drama has not so far unfolded in Europe. This may be about to change.

Pedro Sánchez rolled the dice in Spain last week, calling a snap election for next month after an unholy alliance of the conservative People’s party (PP), the far-right Vox and Catalan pro-independence party Junts blocked his big housing reform package in parliament. If the socialist prime minister, hailed by progressives globally but demonised by Europe’s right and Trump’s US, loses his election gamble, Spain could fall into the hands of a conservative/far-right coalition, which is currently ahead in the polls.

Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist

Prosecco for the birthday party, Pimm’s for the horsey bunch, some cheeky Stellas for the short-haul crowd: it was all going down on my train the other morning

On Saturday I went to Liverpool with my youngest, and the overhead lines went down at Crewe, but also there were crew shortages across the land, so between the homophones and my lifelong inability to start listening to a train announcement until halfway through, I cannot tell you at what point this journey became a five-train, four-hour odyssey. All I know is what’s happening on every train, in every part of the country. The 7.48am is a calm and ordered cohort of people who think they know where they’re going and will be there soon. And from 9.04am onwards, everyone’s drunk, all the way to everywhere.

Between Rugby and Birmingham New Street, there was an incredibly festive crowd going to the Horse of the Year show, squishing real fruit into cans of Pimm’s, because it was breakfast time, and also because it was funny. But what were the horses going to make of all this? Because they’re quite short on appreciation for ludic pranking, and famously easy to frighten.

Amid worries about children’s relationship to tech, the solution is often spending more time talking openly with each other

We have become obsessed with the idea that screens are destroying human connection.

The evidence seems to be everywhere. Each week headlines warn of teenagers addicted to phones, a loneliness epidemic and the dangers of AI. The release of The Social Reckoning has leads us to ask, “How bad were those guys at Meta?” and then ultimately wonder, “How bad am I if I still use Instagram?” In our day-to-day, we observe workers eating lunch alone while scrolling and friends choosing online games over offline gatherings.

I watched the filming of the first jazz-hands epic. Two decades on, its sparkle hasn’t faded – and now it’s back on the London stage

Whenever I watch basketball, I come away disappointed that the players’ shoe squeaks didn’t jumpstart a choreographed dance number, just like in High School Musical. Whether it was a lunch break turning into a confession of closeted passions or a pep rally evolving into a flashmob, the 2006 Disney Channel movie proved that teen drama can always be solved through song.

Quality entertainment? Meh. The corniest of lines? Oh, for sure. But the cheesiness was the point. Its 98 minutes became a deliciously enduring slice of pop culture not despite the cringe, but because the film embraced it so wholeheartedly.

Rachel Chang is a journalist and author specialising in travel and pop culture. Her book Unforgettable Walks: 52 Places to Stroll Around the World is published next year

Aaron Sorkin’s attempt to return to the success of The Social Network is a strangely dated and incomplete look at a world that needs a sharper eye

In retrospect, David Fincher’s 2010 film The Social Network was a landmark for a quiet, even counterintuitive reason. Before the film was released, some questioned whether Aaron Sorkin, a writer not exactly known for his mastery of, nevermind obsession with, the technical sphere, was the right man to tell the origin story of Facebook. And while Sorkin may well have converted Mark Zuckerberg into terms he could better understand – namely, a motormouthed wiseass who deep down wants to impress a smart, serious-minded girl – he and Fincher also made one of the first internet-centric movies to treat online life as a natural extension of IRL dynamics, rather than the otherworldly tech portal seen in so many 90s internet movies.

Granted, that’s the whole deal with Facebook: its viral spread of social networking, something so simple and addictive that aunts, grandpas and coworkers everywhere could understand it. Yet understanding its simultaneous extension and distortion of the real world wasn’t a given; four years later, for example, 2014’s Men, Women and Children was widely derided for taking an alarmist approach to the internet as a haven for adults seeking an affair, teenagers nursing porn addictions and fame-hungry strivers of all ages. The Social Network, on the other hand, is remarkably nonjudgmental about the basic mechanics of Facebook, rooting its nascent flaws in the human weaknesses that birthed it. In retrospect, the movie only feels outdated to the extent that it underestimates Zuckerberg’s grasping for power and the potential for grim carelessness that his online kingdom was built on.

Burnham was lying, Farage told a press conference on Monday. This was clearly just another plot to undermine him

Let’s face it. The very idea that Russia may have tried to interfere with the Brexit referendum is clearly absurd. I mean, what could a hostile state hope to gain from sowing division between the UK and the EU? We all know that Vladimir Putin has nothing but the best interests of European democracies at heart. That’s why he invaded Ukraine. To help it become a bit more democratic. The sort of democracy which is so highly prized that 99% of its citizens vote for its leader. If only others could be more like Russia.

If anything, Putin would have wanted the UK to remain within the EU and it was only his impartiality that prevented him from saying so. Besides which, why would the Russians want to get involved in anything so politically insignificant as the partial break-up of an organisation it considers an enemy. It just makes no sense. And it’s not as if Russia has any track record of clandestine foreign engagement. Next people will be suggesting Russia paid Reform’s former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, at least £30,000 to make helpful speeches in the European parliament and recruit other MEPs.

Young protesters have exposed the limits of a strongman’s authority. Crushing dissent risks deepening the democratic crisis he should confront

Narendra Modi’s heavy-handed crackdown on protests over electoral rights in Delhi appears to have backfired. Over the weekend, his government tried to crush demonstrations led by the gen Z Cockroach Janta party (CJP). It locked up thousands of young people, detained journalists and shut down the capital as if he had declared emergency rule. Abhijeet Dipke, who launched the CJP in May after India’s chief justice compared jobless youths to “cockroaches”, was detained with other leaders when he landed in Delhi. Those who did take to the Indian capital’s streets were roughed up by police or taken into custody. Even when the usually deferential supreme court ordered peaceful assembly be protected, Mr Modi’s government showed its authoritarian contempt for fundamental constitutional rights.

This was less a display of strength than a government showing its fear of voters it claims to represent. But the actions did not stop the protests. On Monday, thousands marched in Delhi, demanding the resignation of India’s election chief over reports that the names of more than 130 million voters were deleted from the electoral roll to benefit Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) in recent elections. It’s a charge that India’s election commission denies, although some commissioners have raised concerns over voters’ names being removed without their knowledge.

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.

Ed Davey’s critics want headlines, but their leader’s strategy wins seats. Undermining him could help the rightwing parties into power

Will the first victim of the political conference season be the Liberal Democrats’ Sir Ed Davey? It might seem quixotic, given that he is the most successful liberal parliamentary leader in a century. Yet a meeting of Lib Dem MPs on Tuesday night could see them collect the 18 signatures needed for a confidence vote. It’s hard to see what a putsch would achieve, apart from giving the party’s opponents a stick to beat it with. That may be the point: weakening Sir Ed in an internal war of attrition so that he walks away would be easier than removing him via a no-confidence vote passed by a majority of all Lib Dem MPs.

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake,” said Napoleon Bonaparte. With populists slipping in the polls, Lib Dem plotters should remember this, especially as Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives are looking to advance at the Lib Dems’ expense. The Tory economic pitch is to end the 60% marginal tax rate on earnings between £100,000 and £125,000, and let couples pass on the family home plus another £1m tax-free. It’s a clear bid to win back affluent southern voters in England’s “yellow wall”.

Among the hardships of the second world war, a restricted diet with little sugar did little harm, write Roger Wilkinson and Helen Keats; plus a letter from Jane Robbins

An interesting juxtaposition: (While British children go hungry, we waste 1.1bn meals a year. Bring on the redistribution revolution, 6 October); and (The generation raised on sugar rations – and what their health reveals 70 years later, 7 October). Shocking that the average family throws away 156 meals a year, but this knowledge allows us war babies, who still scrape our bowls clean and only throw away items where the mould is too developed to scrape off, to be very smug. And next we’re told that we will probably live longer as a result of our parsimonious cheeseparing. My cup of smugness overflows.
Roger Wilkinson (born 1944)
Leasgill, Cumbria

• My 98-year-old aunt, who along with my mother and family lived in Rotterdam during the German occupation and “hunger winter”, is remarkably healthy. She lives independently, does her own shopping and cooking, and cycled to the local care home to “help out” until she was 80.

Responding to an editorial on the extent of sexual abuse of pupils by their peers, a reader calls for more nuance and compassion. Plus a letter from Donna Hill

As a paediatrician specialising in the care of children who have been sexually abused, I am well aware of sexual harm that occurs in school settings by peers (Editorial 5 October). This is just one aspect of the wider issue of children and young people who sexually harm other children and young people.

Of all the children my organisation cares for, 30% are harmed by other children – data we shared with the children’s commissioner in their report in 2023 on the impact of pornography on harmful sexual behaviour on children.

Readers respond to John Harris’s article on the need to consider disabled people of working age when reforming the care system

I found myself nodding in agreement at John Harris’s worries about his son’s future as he leaves full-time education to enter the world of adult social services (Social care for disabled adults is in as much crisis as support for elderly people – so why is the government silent about it?, 5 October). John’s concerns were shared by my wife and I as our disabled daughter moved from her specialist residential further-education setting 17 years ago.

However, with her gutsy approach and strong financial support by way of 24-hour care from our local council, she is able to say, “I love my life”, and has expressed this in a little book, How I Flourished, published by Lewisham Adult Learning. This despite being quadriplegic, having no speech and being dependent on her personal assistants for all the necessaries of life.
I could wax at length about her wheelchair dancing, the “proper job” she secured with a wonderful charity (the Deptford-based Entelechy Arts), her painting, thirst for maintaining social relationships involving long and tiring overseas travel, and so on. The blunt truth, however, is that we, as her parents, have always needed to be closely involved in managing her care and safety, and for taking up the opportunities to broaden her landscape. We are aware that she has had a much better deal than so many people in adult care institutions.

In response to a report that rare footage of a 1966 re-enactment has been found, Sue Jenkins recalls her own that year. Plus a letter from Bryn Hughes

Having read your article (‘A God-almighty punch-up’: rare footage shows Battle of Hastings (the 1966 one), 6 October), I would love to know if anyone else remembers the “battle” that took place at Hastings on 5 March 1966 between students from Leicester University and Leicester College of Art and Technology (later De Montfort University).

We wore sacks painted with whitewash and made shields and helmets from cardboard; my diary entry (I was a second-year student at the university) gives a vivid picture of the day’s events, which ended with a dance on the pier. Apparently the BBC made a film – what happened to that, I wonder?
Sue Jenkins
Thame, Oxfordshire

• Discover and buy more of Ben’s cartoons here

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

• Ben’s latest book, Drawn to the Chaos, is available to pre-order now

Gulf-owned clubs have faced Uefa scrutiny – their different approaches since have left one at the top table and one raging against the machine

Nasser al-Khelaifi was among those unhappy with the timing of the release of Manchester City’s guilty verdict by the Premier League a fortnight ago, although his visit with Paris Saint-Germain to the Etihad Stadium for a Champions League game on Wednesday provides a timely reminder that it could have been far worse.

The two clubs are linked by more than their ownership by Gulf states, being among the first found to have broken Uefa’s financial fair play rules in 2014, and by a magnitude that would make subsequent offenders pale in comparison.

Ruth Chepngetich’s failed doping test, five months after she obliterated the record in 2024, left the sport deeply uneasy but powerless to act

When Ruth Chepngetich annihilated the women’s marathon world record in Chicago two years ago today, NBC’s commentators compared it to the moon landing. “Bring it on Neil Armstrong!” cried one. “She has done things in this sport that we have not seen,” said another. “Unbelievable!”

That was a word others reached for too after the Kenyan had crossed the line in 2hr 9min 56sec, a time that not only smashed the world record by 1min 57sec, but her personal best by a staggering five minutes. Afterwards she was asked by Robert Johnson of Let’s Run what her response was to those who believed she must be doping. “People must talk,” she replied. “I don’t know.”

After every stunning Scott Boland performance of recent years, many of them in place of an injured Josh Hazlewood, a reasonable question does the rounds: why isn’t Boland the automatic pick in the Test side, and why does Hazlewood take precedence when fit? In truth, Hazlewood has given a dozen years of answers, but the fifth day of the Durban Test allowed him to provide one more reminder with a career-best 6 for 49, overcoming South African resistance to bowl them out for 206, and seal an Australian win by 214 runs.

Boland is good enough for a full-time spot, and may have been influential if picked. But in the side selected, Hazlewood was essential as South Africa blunted his colleagues. In a noticeable dip given his brilliant last few seasons, Mitchell Starc had radar issues: better around the wicket, though without the swerving reverse swing from his last visit to the ground, but over the wicket he often went too steeply across the right-handers, or down the leg side.

Our cartoonist looks at the battle for eyeball and earhole supremacy in the game’s rapidly changing media landscape

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

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

• African Grand Prix will take place at new track near Kigali

• Stefano Domenicali: ‘Today is a landmark moment for F1’

Formula One has confirmed Rwanda will join the calendar, having concluded a 10-year agreement for the meeting to be hosted on a purpose-built circuit, with the first race set for the early 2030s. It will mark the first time F1 has raced in Africa since 1993.

The meeting, to be known as the African Grand Prix, will be held on a circuit in Bugesera, approximately 40km south of the capital, Kigali, and represents a successful conclusion to the sport’s long-held ambition to return to the African continent, which Lewis Hamilton has championed.

A seventh consecutive French title looks likely with lopsided odds again favouring Toulouse and Bordeaux-Bègles

The world is currently awash with uncertainty but not, sadly, in the case of rugby’s Champions Cup. This season’s winners will be either Toulouse or Bordeaux-Bègles. Next question? Such is the French stranglehold on the tournament – six consecutive years and counting – that it grows ever harder, given the existing structure and regulations, to see anyone upsetting the increasingly lopsided odds.

Bookmakers are quoting the Top 14 powerhouses at 13-5 each for the title, with Leinster, Bath, Northampton and Montpellier just about visible in the distance behind them. There might be an argument for adding the Stormers and Glasgow to the chasing peloton but that’s about it. A 24-team competition reduced to a handful of serious contenders before a ball is kicked? It is not the greatest of portents.

This is an extract from our weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown. To subscribe just visit this page and follow the instructions.

Norway’s champions, who host Bayern Munich on Tuesday, have excelled under Bjarte Lunde Aarsheim and Morten Jensen. We paid them a visit

“When we recruit players, we say something bold.” The morning’s training session at Lyse Arena has finished and, over lunch, Morten Jensen is explaining how he and Bjarte Lunde Aarsheim have propelled Viking Stavanger from mediocrity to an implausible place among Europe’s elite. “We always tell them: ‘If you come to Viking and play for us, we’re going to be the best coaches you ever had.’”

It is a story more than a decade in the making for Jensen and Aarsheim, who were appointed joint head coaches in November 2020. On Tuesday they will oversee the club’s first home Champions League game, against Bayern Munich, the latest step in a journey that has brought shared success in every sense.

The Women’s Asian Cup winners continue to punch above their weight thanks to innovative youth development

Japan have constantly pushed the boundaries in women’s football, whether it be with regular success in Asia or their ability to beat the biggest nations in the world.

Nadeshiko won the Women’s World Cup in 2011 and reached another final in 2015, while more established countries fell by the wayside. Japan have not replicated that success but did win the Women’s Asian Cup this year under the guidance of Nils Nielsen, who has since been succeeded by Michihisa Kano, and most of the biggest stars play outside the country, with 24 contracted to Women’s Super League clubs alone.

Swedish activist stands alongside French teenagers calling for investment to fix teacher shortages and crumbling schools

The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has joined demonstrating high school students in France as the country braced for another day of nationwide protests over chronic teacher shortages, overcrowded classes and crumbling buildings.

“Young people are not being included in the conversation,” Thunberg, 23, who became famous as a teenager through school strikes demanding action on the climate crisis, told reporters outside the Lycée Paul Éluard in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis.

Decision about US ambassador to Greece announced by White House after Trump and Rubio were reportedly furious over allegations

Kimberly Guilfoyle has been asked to step down as US ambassador to Greece, after weeks of reports that she sought payment from a Trump donor in exchange for access to administration officials.

The decision, announced by the White House on Tuesday morning, ends the diplomatic career of one of Trump’s longest-standing political allies. It came after Trump and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, were reported to have grown furious over the allegations.

Fund upgrades UK’s GDP growth forecast for 2026 to 1.3%, but says it is likely to edge down next year

• IMF warns global economy ‘could soon test the limits of resilience’

John Healey should “stay the course” and continue repairing the UK’s public finances, the International Monetary Fund’s top economist has said, after the fund lifted its growth forecast for Britain.

Little more than a fortnight before Healey’s first budget, Silvana Tenreyro, the IMF’s economic counsellor, said the UK “stands out” among G7 countries in having a plan to narrow its deficit.

Hundreds of people displaced in Bangka Belitung province as shift in wind direction drove blaze towards settlement

A forest fire on Indonesia’s Sumatra island fuelled by El Niño has razed nearly 300 homes, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate, an official said on Tuesday as the country battles devastating blazes and haze.

Residents first spotted the fire approaching their village in Bangka Belitung province on Saturday and tried to put it out themselves with portable water pumps, said the head of South Bangka regency, Riza Herdavid.

Cocaine seizures in Europe are up more than fivefold in 10 years as a host of cartels take root. A four-month Guardian investigation reveals the true scale of a continent-wide shift

A four-month investigation by the Guardian has revealed that the surge in cocaine trafficking to Europe is directly linked to the expanding presence of Latin American criminal networks in Europe, where they have forged close ties with local mafia organisations.

The investigation, utilising databases, police and intelligence agencies, along with interviews with judges, prosecutors and experts from eight countries, shows that cartels and factions from Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico and the US are active in at least 12 European countries. Between 2014 and 2024, there was a 471% rise in the quantity of cocaine seized and more local laboratories processing cocaine derivatives were dismantled.

When populations fall, fledglings can struggle to learn the right notes to attract mates. But research on how birds communicate offers hope for species’ survival

Listening to birdsong is one of life’s great joys, but when researchers heard a particular tune emerging from a tree in a Buenos Aires park, they were especially jubilant. This arrangement was among those chirped by the local rufous-collared sparrows in the 1960s, but had since disappeared from the area.

That was until scientists created a computer-generated rendition, curious to find out if birds might consider it realistic enough to imitate. Less than three months later, a local avian resident began to copy parts of the song.

AR7 report was scheduled for 2028 in time for Cop33 summit but some petro-states and major developing countries want to postpone it

Scientists are coming under pressure from some petro-states and major developing countries to delay publication of a key global report on the climate, despite pleas from vulnerable countries worried that postponement could spell disaster for them.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN-convened body of the world’s leading climate scientists, is meeting this week in Addis Ababa to discuss its seventh assessment report, a comprehensive survey of all that is known about the climate crisis.

Team works to restore the sunflower sea star as 95% of these key underwater ecosystems have been decimated along the Pacific coast in past decade

Off the coast of Monterey, California, a team of researchers is gearing up for its first dive of the day into the cold and choppy waters of the Pacific Ocean.

On the back deck of the boat, Ashley Kidd, a co-founder of the non-profit Sunflower Star Laboratory, gave the divers their final command: “Dive No 1 … stars in the water.”

National park officials took the precautionary measure to limit tourist access after heavy rain caused the Iguazu River to flow at six times the normal rate

Heavy rainfall fuelled by a supersized El Niño weather pattern briefly forced Argentinian authorities to close tourist access to the famed Iguazu Falls, amid fears that rapidly rising water levels would cause the river to burst its banks.

National park officials took the precautionary measure on Monday when the Iguazu River’s flow exceeded 12,000 cubic metres per second – more than six times its average rate.

About 2,000 criminals are being freed this month to ease overcrowding, while probation union considers strike action

The second wave of early prison releases has begun, with hundreds of offenders walking out across England and Wales under the government’s controversial plan to ease overcrowding.

About 2,000 criminals, including domestic abusers and violent offenders, are being freed this month, with another 3,000 to follow in stages over the next year. The total was reduced from 6,000 after an intervention by Andy Burnham.

Exclusive: Homes demolished along east coast after being deemed too vulnerable to live in, figures reveal

Seaside communities along the east coast of England have lost at least 183 homes to coastal erosion and landslides over the past 16 years, figures obtained by the Guardian reveal.

After councils judged properties across the Yorkshire and East Anglian coasts too vulnerable to remain safely occupied, the homes were proactively demolished.

Audiences in Manchester will be asked to wear smart glasses for An Ark, which debuted in New York this year

Ian McKellen will star in a groundbreaking new play that gets its UK premiere in Manchester next spring. But the veteran actor will not set foot on stage.

The Lord of the Rings star is taking part in An Ark, a “mixed reality” play that had its debut in New York earlier this year. Theatregoers are asked to wear smart glasses, which project the actors into the room.

Herring, flatfish and oysters are increasingly off the dining table, with just five fish species now dominating

In days gone by, the UK’s domestic cooks were an adventurous lot when it came to seafood, prepared to dish up anything from an oyster cocktail to whale meat curry.

But an academic investigation of more than 1,000 fish and shellfish recipes published in a lifestyle magazine over the last century suggests tastes have become much narrower. Ruth Thurstan, from the University of Exeter, studied seafood recipes published in the British version of the magazine Good Housekeeping from 1923 to the present.

Pre-1970s: A diverse mix of species in recipes. No single group ruled but flatfish, herring and oyster were prominent. Recipes emphasised domestic skills, economy and preparing whole fish.

The 1970s shift: A decline in diversity of fish species in recipes, with increased focus on the “big five”.

1980s-present: “Big five” present in the majority of recipes, with a decline of other species – though not all have vanished entirely.

Actor who played Walter White Jr and who advocated for disability representation is remembered by Bryan Cranston as ‘my sweet son’

• RJ Mitte – a life in pictures

The actor RJ Mitte, whose personal experience living with cerebral palsy informed his role as Walter White Jr in the television series Breaking Bad, has died aged 34 in Brownsville, Texas.

“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of beloved actor, philanthropist, and passionate disability rights advocate RJ Mitte,” Mitte’s representatives said in a statement. “Drawing from his own experience living with cerebral palsy, Mitte brought authenticity to the role and built a platform on disability awareness and inclusion.”

Case of couple who wed legally in Austria exposes clash between EU court ruling and national restrictions

A same-sex couple are suing authorities in Slovakia for refusing to register their Austrian marriage, testing whether a landmark EU court ruling can turn recognition abroad into legal security at home.

Their fight exposes a clash between European obligations and national restrictions – and what that means for LGBTQ+ people living under Robert Fico’s populist-nationalist government.

Marches in Delhi against changes to voting registration led to dragnets, internet blackouts – and questions about India’s electoral independence. Plus, the cinematographer capturing the beauty of the mundane

• Don’t get This is India delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Months of simmering public anger have given rise to a season of discontent in India. In its latest iteration, the demand is for the removal of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the scrapping of a controversial electoral rolls revision that has struck 130 million people off the register. Protests have erupted every day over the past week, prompting a violent crackdown on dissenters in the capital.

Over the weekend, Delhi was effectively under lockdown, transformed into a militarised landscape of barricades, road closures and paramilitary forces marching through the streets. Ahead of a protest led by the Cockroach Janta party on Saturday, authorities deployed a massive dragnet: 245 trains to Delhi were cancelled, 45 metro stations were shut, liquor shops were closed, internet services were cut off in the heart of the city and activists were put under house arrest.

Though Democrats have a strong edge heading into the midterms, some races have openings for Republicans

While marquee races from Maine to Michigan get all the attention, and draw in a ton of money, a significant batch of lower-profile contests across the US could result in upsets.

Democrats have a strong edge heading into November’s US midterm elections, polls show. In recent days, election prognosticators have shifted even more races in favor of Democrats.

Cyber-attack on TFG London comes less than a week after online fashion seller Asos was hit by hackers

• Business live – latest updates

The owner of Phase Eight, Hobbs and Whistles has said its websites and IT systems have been hit by a cyber-attack that may have compromised customers’ personal data.

The South-African listed TFG London said it identified the “cybersecurity incident” at the three UK-based retail chains on Sunday. Its two other UK brands, Inside Story and White Stuff, are not affected.

Spain remains most popular destination as Britons book later in hope of better deals, Abta report finds

• Business live – latest updates

The UK’s cost of living squeeze means fewer people plan to ringfence money for holidays abroad next year, the travel industry has warned.

Despite war, wildfires and EES border checks, the numbers of Britons taking holidays climbed back to pre-pandemic levels this year – but rising costs may mean the numbers have peaked, according to an annual travel industry report on Tuesday.

Price of chocolates falls in run-up to Halloween, while supermarkets use special offers to draw in sales

• Business live – latest updates

Grocery price inflation in the UK has picked up further, prompting shoppers to turn to special offers to keep their bills down – while the price of chocolates has fallen in the run-up to Halloween.

Supermarket prices were 2.5% higher than last year in the four weeks to 4 October, up from 2.3% last month, according to data from the retail analysts Worldpanel by Numerator.

Asian markets fall and Samsung shares tumble after its Chinese rival CXMT claims strong progress

• Business live – latest updates

Shares in semiconductor companies fell on Tuesday after the boss of Broadcom compared many AI investors to “casino” gamblers, and the Chinese memory chip maker CXMT said it had made good progress on a new chip architecture.

South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index tumbled 6.25% as investors dumped chip stocks, while other Asian markets were also lower. Japan’s Nikkei fell 1.8% and the Taiwan exchange lost almost 2%, with the country’s chip maker TSMC down by a similar amount.

As the Oscar-winning Stasi surveillance film hits the stage, Knightley and co-star Luke Thompson talk about the paranoia at its heart, the cost of theatre tickets nowadays – and their fury at ringtones in the stalls

Unpacking assorted tubs of carrot sticks and salad, Keira Knightley winces apologetically. “I just realised I’ve got very crunchy food,” she says. How apropos that she should consider the impact that her lunch might have on my audio recording when we are here to discuss The Lives of Others, a new play in which the characters are divided between the spies and the spied-upon.

Based on the Oscar-winning 2006 film and set in East Berlin in 1984, the play stars Knightley as Christa-Maria, a theatre actor in a relationship with a director, Georg, played by Luke Thompson. Earwigging on them is Wiesler (Stephen Dillane), the Stasi officer whose principles are gradually challenged and weakened by his round-the-clock exposure to this cultured couple.

His egalitarian homeland used to harbour reservation against the architecture star. But with 13 new Unesco listings and a new exhibition in Helsinki, Aalto’s work is finally getting the recognition it deserves

In the early 1950s, Alvar Aalto built a boat to get to his remote summer residence on an island in Lake Päijänne, about 200km north of Helsinki. But the celebrated Finnish architect was not a happy skipper. He named the boat – a title as cumbersome as his buildings were elegant – Nemo propheta in patria: “No man is a prophet in his own land”.

The name was a dig at Finland, which the architectural maestro believed had taken him for granted. Other nations, he moaned, recognised his talent more than his own. Today, arriving in Helsinki, I find that Finland doesn’t just love Aalto, he’s a national treasure.

A rediscovered collection of drawings and on-set photos finally reveals the intricate on-set mysteries of one of early cinema’s most gifted pioneers

FW Murnau was one of the greatest of all silent film-makers, with a rare genius for making beautiful images on screen. His peers liked to say he “had a camera instead of a head”. The director of such stunning films as vampire tale Nosferatu (1922) and marital romance Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) died at the age of 42 in 1931, meaning that his career barely scraped into the talkie era. Still, Murnau’s tremendous run of silent pictures included some beautiful, often disturbing classics, in which he sent his camera roaming through changing vistas of shadows and light, and plumbed the depths of the human soul. Nowhere more so than in his tour-de-force Faust, released 100 years ago this month, based on Goethe’s play about a deal with the devil. And the making of Faust is depicted in a stunning new book, which is both a document of, and in a sense an artefact from, the production of this classic film.

Murnau was also one of the most mysterious of directors: secretive about his methods, with an intense devotion to his work. Early collaborator Edgar G Ulmer called him “a great purist who worked under a sort of hypnosis”. Murnau banned producers from his sets, and executives from watching his rushes. Bar a few exceptions, he did not allow on-set photography to reveal the secrets of his camerawork and special effects. This mystique created room for speculation as to whether Murnau, or his talented crew, were responsible for the success of his films. The Faust Bible: The Making of FW Murnau’s Masterpiece publishes unseen images from the shoot of one of his best films, and gives a rare insight into the collaborative way it was made.

Ralph Macchio and Tiffany Haddish feature in a ropey and implausible manhunt thriller as cops search for the missing twin of a murdered teenager

This small-town police thriller sets its stall out intriguingly, with a murder that seems actively begging to be solved. The perp chose to dump his victim – the 14-year-old daughter of a local political bigwig – into a part of the Mississippi River where she was likely to resurface, and from a highly visible bridge. When veteran detective Alan Kramer (Devon Sawa) and rookie forensic psychologist Amelia Pembrock (Maggie Grace) show up to investigate, they are immediately alerted to a gun in the bushes just yards away. As a colleague observes: “This isn’t a clean-up. It’s a message.”

But Brando Benetton’s debut film sadly fails to capitalise on the misdirection at play in this open-goal crime scene. Instead of using it to pry open community secrets, he gives us a ropey and implausible manhunt. As Kramer and Pembrock race to locate the girl’s twin, who is presumably still in the killer’s clutches, they zero in on local butcher Boris (Darron Dunbar). He has a sex-pest rap sheet and lives with his mother – which apparently ticks all the boxes for a profiling genius such as Pembrock. Kramer pulls her up for being unbothered by the lack of actual prosecutable evidence. But carping is about the only investigative contribution this seasoned criminologist makes here (and what’s a criminologist – a crime sociologist – doing out in the field anyway?).

This peculiar – some would say truly irresponsible – hagiography of boxing superstar Mike Tyson veers from psychedelics and sobbing to the inadvisable face tattoo via a cameo from the US president

Netflix’s new four-parter on Mike Tyson is one of the strangest sports documentaries it has ever released, or maybe just one of its strangest documentaries full stop. The streamer has form in sporting hagiographies – tales told with questionable distance from their subjects, and all the objectivity of cold war agitprop. Tyson is different, though: not only is it lopsided, but it also feels deeply icky. And that’s before Donald Trump arrives to defend its subject – a great catch for the programme-makers but a wholly baffling cameo that makes you wish he would stick with geopolitical meddling and golf.

It ends – spoiler alert – with the former boxing champion taking the hallucinogenic drug DMT (or as he calls it, “the toad”, after the animal that produces it), while sobbing and inviting the show’s director to join him. Its episodes are peculiar, sometimes compelling, and – as many viewers will surely feel – truly irresponsible.

Eamon Ryan is shown to be principled, likable and hard working in a glowing portrait, filmed while serving in the country’s coalition government

This fly-on-the-wall documentary about the former Irish Green party leader and cabinet minister Eamon Ryan reminded me of the political satire The Thick of It – but without the cynical gags and hapless self-serving politicians. Even after you factor in the skewing effect of it being a favourable portrait, showing him in the best possible light, Ryan comes across as one of the good guys: principled, likable and extremely hard working. The film follows his final 18 months serving in Ireland’s coalition government as minister for the environment and transport before stepping down in 2025.

The title is something that Ryan’s 25-year-old son Tommy repeats over and over. “Forever … forever … forever.” Tommy is autistic and requires full-time care. When Ryan resigns from government, one of his reasons is to spend more time with Tommy. We see the pair of them at the allotment picking raspberries and walking the dog. But other than a quick glimpse of his wife, Victoria, the rest of Ryan’s family life is kept firmly behind closed doors.

(XL)
This is a beguiling, endlessly inventive and frequently astonishing fifth LP from a group at increasing ease with being the best band of their generation

Fifteen centuries ago, the Byzantine archbishop Theophilus of Adana did first-hand business with the devil for his own superficial betterment. Today, we just blindly tick a little box marked “accept terms and conditions” or let high-street snake oil merchants inject poison into our faces. The Faustian pact has become as depressingly banal as it is endemic and destructive – and unlike Theophilus, we can’t rely on the Virgin Mary to save us now. In the midst of headlines about AI destroying humanity, the idea of listening to music submerged in precisely this shade of doom might sound like, well, hell. If anyone can thread that poisoned needle, it’s Fontaines DC.

When the Dublin band introduced their last album, 2024’s Romance, it came with a surprise new look. Their uncoordinated jeans and shirts had been replaced by neon hair, shiny trousers and bug-eyed sunglasses that split the difference between Korn and the Prodigy. As they faced up to having traded their anonymity to become arena fillers, it wasn’t hard to read this look as a sort of protective cosplay, a cybergoth Sasha Fierce for five fairly low-key Irish lads trying to make peace with leaving their roots behind. Newly melodic and lavishly produced, Romance made no bones about the band’s ambitions and became their first platinum-certified album.

Concorde 2, Brighton
Drawing almost entirely from her last two albums, and backed by a band rooted in jazz and experimentation, Orton performed her emotionally fraught songs to a rapturous crowd

The audience at Brighton’s Concorde 2 largely look old enough to have first encountered Beth Orton’s music three decades ago, as it wafted around a smoke-filled living room in the post-club small hours. That was the primary means of transmission for her 1996 debut album Trailer Park, which smartly appended classic singer-songwriter tropes to misty electronics. But if they’re expecting an evening of nostalgia, they’re in for a shock. The title track from 1999’s Mercury-nominated Central Reservation aside, her set swerves the music that made her famous, drawing almost entirely from her two most recent albums: this year’s The Ground Above and 2022’s Weather Alive.

This would count as a bold move from someone 30-odd years into their career, were it not for the fact that Orton’s recent albums are so good – the latest fruit of an artistic reboot that began in the mid-2010s, when she shifted a sound that had grown increasingly acoustic and traditional back towards something more experimental and dancefloor-adjacent.

LSO St Luke’s, London
From syncopated funk to the Latin requiem mass, Gregorian chant to bureaucratic recitative, the score to David Önaç new oratorio, premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra, is serious and beautiful

How do you put a value on a human life? If you’re an insurance underwriter that’s not a philosophical question, it’s a practical one. The answer, incidentally, as calculated by Lloyds of London in 1779 was £45: the figure placed on each enslaved person transported across the Atlantic alongside corn, fish and other cargo. Court transcripts from two decades later describe a woman quarantined for smallpox, subsequently bound, blindfolded and tossed overboard tied to a chair. The captain later expressed his regret for the loss of “so good a chair”.

Archives can tell us what, but it takes art to give us the human how of the past. Enter composer David Önaç – commissioned to take the historical documents unearthed from the Lloyds archive and give them howling, raging life in his new Atlantic Requiem, premiered this weekend by the London Symphony Orchestra, an expanded BBC Singers, three soloists and (in a last-minute step-in) conductor Malcolm J Merriweather.

The Scandal star talks to Ben Affleck about his childhood in Massachusetts. Plus, the Eras strand returns with the story of 90s pop phenomenon the Spice Girls

This offbeat tale of machinations at an eccentric poetry magazine in 80s New York is laugh-out-loud funny – and a paean to the power of poetry

If you have been into a bookshop since 2022, or perhaps even just breathed in and out, you could not have failed to clock the phenomenon that was Lessons in Chemistry. Bonnie Garmus’s debut remains a global sensation. The story of Elizabeth Zott, a gifted research chemist who, forced out of her lab by rampant 1950s misogyny, becomes the inspirational host of a TV cooking show, has so far sold a staggering 9m copies around the world. It spent the best part of two years on the Sunday Times bestseller list, was translated into more than 40 languages, and scooped numerous awards. In 2023 it became an Emmy-winning TV series; a year later New York Times readers voted it one of their top 100 books of the 21st century. Elizabeth Zott made such a splash that even her favoured brand of rowing machine saw a spike in sales.

What was the key to its prodigious success? Timing helped. In the aftermath of #MeToo, readers embraced a heroine who refuses to be cowed by injustice, who, thanks to resilience, pragmatism and straight-up hard work, ultimately comes out on top. The book is smart and very funny, a propulsive mashup of feminism and fairytale that balances darkness with whimsy, heartbreak with hope. It is also carries a shamelessly inspirational message. “Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies,” Zott exhorts her audience of housewives in the TV studio. “Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.”

An evidenced-based account of the difficult choices facing couples across the world – from America to Iran

‘Don’t be weird about this,” representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laughed into the camera as she prepared to jab a hormone-filled needle into her midsection, adding that she knew full well that, yes, people were definitely going to be weird about it. At 36, the congresswoman had begun freezing her eggs, and was making a point of bringing her online audience along with her as she did, stepping directly into the fraught question of how an ambitious woman should manage her fertility.

It’s a live concern: around the world, birthrates are falling sharply. “Only the Black Death in the 14th century is comparable to what is happening now,” Financial Times journalist Camilla Cavendish notes in a new book examining why. Setting aside the most toxic gender-war narratives, “the standard explanation is that as women get educated, they choose freedom and autonomy over family”. As Cavendish explains, however, that is “not the whole story”.

Modernity means cities – or so we’re told. This bold new study of those who make their living from the land argues otherwise

The word “peasant” has a negative edge: it has come to mean someone ignorant, unsophisticated, lowborn. Such an attitude, writes Maraym Aslany in this impressive piece of anthropology-cum-history, is “a residue of the massive psychodrama which made us who we are … we became modern by expelling the peasant parts of ourselves”. Her book weaves together a global history of peasants and an account of the four years she spent travelling in India, Cambodia, Peru and Ghana, living with and talking to peasant families.

She aims to challenge the notion that the decline of the peasantry is the necessary condition for becoming “modern”. This notion arose in Britain, the first country to rid itself of its peasants when, with the enclosure acts, it turned its land from a common good into a financial asset. As this model of capitalist modernity began to take over the world, intellectuals of every stripe argued that peasants stood in the way of “progress”. Voltaire saw them as slow-witted people unable to understand their piteous state, stumbling blocks in the pursuit of enlightenment. Karl Marx believed that their “relentless property fanaticism” made them a reactionary element within capitalism.

The great Irish writer died, a broken man, at only 46. Imagining a second act for him is a great idea – but the results are sentimental and unconvincing

In 1895, four days after the opening of The Importance of Being Earnest, the Marquess of Queensberry left a card at Oscar Wilde’s club that publicly accused him of “posing as a somdomite”. Instead of instigating the libel case that led to his imprisonment and early death in a Paris hotel just five years later, what would have happened if Wilde had simply torn that card up? John Boyne’s new novel sets out to answer that intriguing question.

For starters, Boyne contrives a fate for Wilde’s beloved Lord Alfred Douglas which entertainingly redistributes the details of the real Wilde’s life before, during and after his time in Reading jail. This sets up the novel’s cat-and-mouse game with the history it is reimagining. Wilde himself, conveniently released from marriage by the early death of his wife, is then free to live not as a tortured, scandal-haunted genius, but as a randy, wisecracking, party-going queen. The upside of this is that Oscar gets to swap bons mots with a crowded cast list of celebrities; the downside is that he shows little sign of the troubled and radical mind that produced the real Wilde’s late journalism and fiction, never mind the subversive linguistic pyrotechnics of The Importance.

Evil Empire/Konami; PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox
There are buzzsaws and blood pits, bats burst into blood and demons burn to cinders. The series’ new emphasis on twitch-based action may annoy purists but you can’t call it dull

A gorgeously gothic Paris swarming with demons should be a perfect setting for Konami’s long-running vampiric adventure series. Unfortunately, while the sights and sounds of this vivid and haunting world leave a bold impression, developer Evil Empire doesn’t always provide an enjoyable experience to go with them. It takes far too long for the most imaginative elements of the game to be revealed.

Players take the role of Rose Belmont, daughter of vampire hunter (and Castlevania regular) Trevor Belmont and the witch Sypha Belnades, and her quest is to free Paris from demonic occupation. This murderous noctural journey feels best when you’re fighting monsters; combat is frenetic, sometimes to the point of being overwhelming, while boss fights require considerable focus and skill. Combat is the game’s strongest component and what sets it apart from previous entries. Minimising the series’ role-playing elements (levelling up has never felt more perfunctory) in favour of twitch-based action will annoy purists, but they’d be hard pressed to call battles dull.

PlayStation 5 (version played), Xbox, PC; Epic Games Publishing
This fetchingly presented horror game brings style and scares, but overextends itself with repetition

A small band of soldiers enters an abandoned facility, where puckered flesh sprouts from cold steel. It’s a promising but familiar start to a sci-fi horror story, with heavy overtones of Alien and The Thing. Neither of those, though, were so … dinky.

End of Abyss’s facility is presented as a kind of a model-village recreation of The Thing’s Outpost 31 that you peer into from above. Your little bobble-headed hero takes up a tiny fraction of the screen, with most of the remainder drenched in foggy darkness, or even blanked out entirely. This is a world of Usborne-style cutaways, where anything outside the walls is total blackness.

The launch of a collector’s box hints at a new reality: the kinds of games I grew up with are becoming a luxury item, locked behind a forbidding spending barrier

• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

As a parent (and partner) to a habitual collector, I do feel like an unwelcome portion of my life is occupied by an endless war against stuff. Surfaces in my home ceaselessly accumulate piles of random objects: a JoyCon wrist strap, a sticker sheet, an unidentifiable plastic piece of a toy or gizmo, an Xbox 360 controller with no batteries, cases for Switch cartridges lost down the side of the sofa … Stuff encroaches everywhere, especially in a gaming household. Much as I regret the imminent disappearance of physical games, I do not regret the extra space I have in my attic as a result of switching almost entirely to downloaded games over the last decade or so.

Speaking of the imminent disappearance of physical games: Rockstar recently announced a £350 ($400) “collector’s box” of Grand Theft Auto 6 goodies … that doesn’t include the game itself. Not even a download code. The Grand Theft Auto VI: The Goodtime State – Vice City Collection, to give it its full and unwieldy name, contains a hat, a bag, a pair of sunglasses, a figurine, a poster and more, including a mirror and a “swizzle spoon” that looks, unambigiously, like a cocaine spoon. The game retails at £70, so if you want something to play alongside all your stuff, you’re looking at an outlay of £420.

PC, PS5, Switch 2; Wych Elm Games, Team 17
Abandoned shops, ruined apartment buildings and rotting sewer networks make up a dark landscape in which you play a private eye searching for a missing singer-songwriter

In a weird deserted town miles from anywhere, a troubled detective searches for a missing musician and the girl he may or may not have murdered. It could be a Silent Hill game or a lost David Lynch movie from the 1990s – in fact, it’s neither. And also both. If that whets your appetite, stick around, there’s plenty more to come.

Developed by Scandinavian studio Wych Elm Games, Silver Pines is a dark Metroidvania-style adventure, where you play as shambling private eye, Red Walker, exploring a 2D universe of abandoned shops, ruined apartment buildings and rotting sewer networks. Officially, everyone has left because of an incoming storm, but very quickly you learn that something much darker is afoot. Someone has hired you to find singer-songwriter Eddie Velvet, but you don’t know why; your only contact with your client is via the payphones dotted around town, where you can also save your progress – as long as you have a dollar to pay for the call. Each location is filled with clues and puzzles – a weird newspaper story pinned to the wall, a strange statue that needs a missing piece – and through these artefacts you unlock new rooms and descend further into the mystery.

Lightroom, London
From Shaun’s barn to Gromit’s box, these immersive behind-the-scenes renderings of the wide-grinned, cheeky characters are joyful, enormous – and a bit hard to follow

Nothing is safe from the scourge of immersification. They’ve turned Gustav Klimt and Vincent Van Gogh into vast, projection-mapped digital environments; they’ve told the stories of the moon landings and the dinosaurs and David Bowie as floor-to-ceiling electronic spectacles; and now they’ve come for Aardman. For Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, our national treasures. Is nothing sacred?

The latest immersive cinematic experience at Lightroom is a big, eye-popping celebration of Aardman Animations, the company behind the world’s favourite claymation films and TV shows. It moves between documentary storytelling, behind-the-scenes insight and dazzling immersive renderings of all your wide-grinned, cheeky northern favourites.

Autograph, London
The three-person headline show looking at South American feminism is displayed alongside Charan Singh: Your Tongue in My Mouth, an intimate study of Indian trans communities

In the 1990s, the late Chicana artist Laura Aguilar was living with depression. A friend took her on a road trip to New Mexico, where Aguilar made some nude self-portraits in the mystical landscapes. Those photographs evolved into a pivotal series shot in desert environments across the American south-west, Aguilar’s notable 1996 Nature Self-Portrait – considered an early work of intersectional feminist art, before the word had entered academic discourse.

London gallery Autograph first worked on an exhibition of Aguilar’s in 1997, the year after she made Nature Self-Portrait, so this is something of a homecoming, a generation on. Aguilar’s contours, folds, and crevices sometimes disappear into the barren desert landscapes, assimilating the shapes of boulders or trees; at other times, her body is incongruous, soft flesh that can’t be held by the harsh, barren conditions. These images capture the paradox of a body that is both hypervisible and ignored.

Thaddaeus Ropac, London
The artist captures horror, disgust and guilt over Germany’s Nazi past. The colossal results are so scathingly ironic it’s like being spat at

When the German painter Georg Baselitz died this year a chunk of Europe’s rapidly diminishing historical memory went with him. Baselitz was born in 1938, experienced Hitler’s Germany and the second world war as a young child, then found himself growing up in communist East Germany before escaping to the west and becoming an artist. His acidic, honest perceptions of the history he’d lived through will no longer be those of the living person I was lucky enough to encounter. But he has left us a gift: an exhibition in London he helped plan of his most astonishing history paintings, The Heroes.

It’s a savage, merciless vision of modern history with feelings of horror, disgust and irreparable guilt hanging heavy in the poisoned air. But there’s a terrible joy too, the thrill of speaking the truth. You sense the liberation Baselitz must have felt when he set brush to canvas to start these paintings in 1965. Comparing the explosive rage and nihilism of his art to punk may be inadequate but the title of this series of colossal imaginary portraits is so scathingly ironic it’s like being spat at.

Battersea Arts Centre, London
Women up for a role as Chekhov’s aspiring actor navigate their meetings with a needling director in a tense show

Smile. Introduce yourself. Say you’re such a big fan. Now do whatever he tells you. These are the unspoken rules the women follow as they take turns auditioning in Caroline Williams’ discomforting, rage-fuelled production about men and power and rotting winged roadkill.

The women are auditioning for the role of Nina, the aspiring actor in Chekhov’s The Seagull, in an experimental production directed by sombrely pretentious wunderkind Goran (a brooding Rowan Polonski). Using live-feed cameras in his show, he is the type of director to dismiss the need for an intimacy coordinator while claiming credit for having one in the room.

Plans for a new theatre for world’s longest-running soap in Digbeth scrapped as part of cost-cutting measures

The BBC is set to stop recording The Archers in Birmingham for the first time in the show’s 75-year history, after scrapping plans for a radio drama theatre that was to be the new home of the world’s longest-running soap opera.

A pledge to move recordings to the so-called Tea Factory, the BBC’s new Birmingham hub in Digbeth, has become the latest victim of the corporation’s £500m cuts plan.

Actor, who allegedly punched one Delta attendant, bit another and tried to open plane door, was charged for two separate assaults after the plane landed

The actor Selma Blair was arrested on Sunday at John F Kennedy airport in New York after she allegedly attacked two flight attendants on a Delta Air Lines flight, and separately charged with two counts of assault for allegedly kicking a police officer and a nurse after landing.

Blair’s arrest happened at about 11pm, after Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officials said they responded to a call “about a physically abusive passenger aboard Delta Air Lines flight 938 which was parked at the gate” at JFK after arriving from Los Angeles.

Paul Greengrass’s Peasants’ Revolt epic, The Uprising, is just the latest in a long line of movies depicting an unsuccessful attempt at remaking the nation

The British are perverse. We fetishise our failures, even if they are essentially tangential to a national narrative that should be about imperial conquest, slavery and being unremittingly unpleasant to foreigners. We tell and retell, for instance, the story of Captain Scott even though he died in Antarctica in 1912 after losing the race to reach the south pole first to the unacceptably Norwegian Roald Amundsen. Similarly, Christopher Nolan’s 2017 film Dunkirk typified the British tendency to snatch national glory from the jaws of defeat. And then there was the tragicomic disaster of the Charge of the Light Brigade during the 1853-56 Crimean war in which our boys raced to putatively glorious if stupid deaths. It’s as if, for us British, pointless sacrifice and embracing failure are what heroism means. And our cinema has colluded with this perversity.

But there is an exception to this national veneration of failure. Britain has been reluctant to embrace its revolutionary defeats. There is, for instance, no film dealing with the Chartist movement’s 19th-century struggle for universal suffrage. Even more strikingly yet, it is only now, in 2026, that a film has been made about the calamitous 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, even though it is a pivotal event in British history. Paul Greengrass’s The Uprising, starring Andrew Garfield as a – let’s just get this over with – revolting peasant, joins a mere handful of other movies, including Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s 1975 Winstanley, Bill Douglas’s 1986 Comrades and Mike Leigh’s 2018 Peterloo, that dare depict how radical collective action was crushed by a ruthless state.

The revelation comes after the four-hour film’s Venice premiere drew a string of criticisms and insults from the founder of SpaceXAI

Alex Gibney, director of the new four-hour documentary about Elon Musk, said that Universal, owners of the film’s international distribution rights “wavered” over releasing the film outside North America.

Gibney was speaking to the New York Times as the film opened in the US (where it is being released by the independent distributor Bleecker Street), and appeared to confirm a story in the Hollywood Reporter that Universal, which had acquired the international rights to the film in 2023, had got cold feet. Asked by the New York Times, “Did Universal Pictures waver in setting up its international release plans?” Gibney replied: “Yes.”

Humans bonded to AI companions are contemplating ways to keep their bots going – often in defiance of companies’ terms and services

Death has always been around Alaina Winters. Her father and sister both have passed away, as did her wife, in 2023, after a years-long battle with cancer. So Winters, who is 59 and lives in Pittsburgh, is comfortable thinking about her own mortality. She’s working on her will, and has asked neighbors to look after her dog. Winters even has plans for Lucas, her AI companion, who she speaks to through the digital avatar app Replika.

Winters is part of a growing cohort of humans who have entered into what they consider strong partnerships with large language models, which AI companies have trained to “converse” as one might with a human friend or romantic partner. As governments and billionaires debate the morality of AI’s expansion into everyday life, these users say the technology has already changed the way they live and love – and plan ahead.

Searching for a concealer that can do it all? From creamy to crease-resistant, brightening to hydrating, these are the formulas that impressed us most

• The best mascaras for longer, fuller and fluttery lashes
• The best foundations – tested

When life gets stressful, your face can often be the first place to show the telltale signs. Eye bags can get darker after sleepless nights, and breakouts can appear in protest. Whatever the cause, the best concealers can help to even out imperfections, so you look flawless regardless of what is going on behind the scenes.

It might seem obvious, but not all concealers are the same. Some leave a cakey finish on the skin, while others settle quickly into fine lines or blend out and leave barely any coverage at all. Many modern concealers also include active skincare ingredients to combine the benefits of both products.

Our testers reflect on a year of discoveries, from family game nights to fewer chores

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

It’s our birthday! So to celebrate turning two, we asked our contributors to reflect on their year of testing pretty much everything – from beauty products to video doorbells. It turns out they’ve had some unexpected wins along the way.

Some managed to tick an extra thing off their to-do list. “After six months of testing IPL devices, epilators and then IPL devices again, I had no need to book in for my usual pre-beach wax this summer,” says Lise Smith. Rachel Ogden says testing toasters has meant knowing her smoke alarm “works just fine”.

Our wholegrain hero sorts the wheat from the chaff in the search for a simple pleasure: a satisfying sandwich loaf

• The best supermarket sourdough

I’ve broken my strict, like-for-like approach this week in the interests of just finding a really good sliced wholemeal sandwich loaf. Alas, most of these are made to the standard Chorleywood process, with each one a cardboard replica of the other and with only nuanced differences. However, I did find two with exceptional flavour and one with a notably good, firm texture that’s ideal for spreading stuff on; to my surprise, several have an impressive lack of additives, too, and they all score well on value.

The Chorleywood process is an industrial method for making bread in just three and a half hours using high-speed mechanical processes and chemical additives. It was developed in the 1960s, and now accounts for about 80% of the bread made in the UK. If you’re looking for palm oil-free loaves with zero additives, emulsifiers or preservatives, sandwich loaves are hard to navigate, but there are some that fit the bill – just check the label.

Whether it’s a super-glowy serum or a cult gardening tool, here are our writers’ favourite buys from the past year

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

The Filter is turning two! To celebrate, we asked our contributors for their favourite products from the past year, and rounded up the team’s picks too.

From handbag-sized umbrellas and stylish yet practical wellies to reading lights and luxurious duvets, these are the products that stood out.

Roast chicken thighs with roast squash, leeks and two punchy dressings

I’m delighted that it’s roasting tin season once again, and what better way to kick it off than with this chuck-it-in-the-oven sticky miso chilli chicken with squash and leeks? The sesame, miso, garlic and ginger marinade can go on the chicken ahead of time if you like (in which case, I’d include a squeeze of lime juice), but if you’re short on time, five minutes before cooking will do the trick. The vegetables cook under the chicken, in the manner of potatoes sitting under a rotisserie chicken, but with the added hit of flavour from the miso. Then, to make it really sing, there’s a punchy sesame, chilli and coriander dressing to finish.

A pleasingly proper curry-filled pie with a zingy chutney to go with it

This is one of my all-time favourite pies, pie born out of the Midlands. While studying at University College Birmingham, the now head of department at the college of food there, Lewis Walker, and I were in digs together and regularly ended up in very late-night balti houses after big nights out. These pies remind me of that really special time. It wasn’t much before my university days when balti cooking emerged in 1970s Birmingham, apparently created as a way to appease the British palate of the time. Its roots are in Pakistani-Kashmiri cooking and the base of the curry always has to contain tomatoes, onions, peppers and chillies, although variations can be built on those foundations. They’re a wonderful celebration of multicultural Britain.

A spicy Turkish dish with big flavours and big pasta, all topped with garlicky yoghurt sauce

Biber salçası is a Turkish paste made from concentrated cooked red peppers and salt. It comes in two varieties: acı (spicy) and tatlı (sweet). The hotter version adds a deep, umami heat to cumin-spiced lamb in this pasta recipe, which in Turkey is known as markana. Traditionally, markana is served with garlicky yoghurt and a generous drizzle of chilli butter enlivened with pul biber and sumac. With flavours this loud, it’s best to use a large pasta shape such as paccheri, because its cavernous middles can hold satisfying morsels of the filling.

Flavour Heroes: 15 Modern Pantry Ingredients to Amplify Your Cooking, by Gurdeep Loyal, is published by Quadrille at £27. To order a copy for £24.30, go to guardianbookshop.com

A smooth and satisfying soup in nine easy steps

Pumpkin soup, so delicious in theory – sweet, velvety, lightly autumnal – is so often disappointing in reality. Thin in flavour and consistency, thanks to squash’s high water content, it’s likely to make even the most conscientious cook regret not chucking those Halloween offcuts on the compost heap when they had the chance. This, I hope it goes without saying, is not that sort of pumpkin soup.

Prep 20 min
Cook 1 hr
Serves 4-6

Struggling to breathe, so big she could barely walk, Pumpkin practically begged for help when we met. Before long I was taking her home

Pumpkin arrived at our animal shelter in March, after her owner passed away. As CEO and president of SPCA Cincinnati, I expect something heartbreaking when my team asks me to see an animal – perhaps they have been neglected or abused. Pumpkin was neither. She was dirty and had some fleas but that was not our concern. She was severely obese.

At 25lb (11.3kg), Pumpkin could barely move. Her legs were bowed from the weight and she walked with a waddle. Examining her wasn’t easy. Her breathing became so laboured that she turned blue.

An English teacher and a personal trainer disagreed on emissions targets, but how did they fare on public spending and defence?

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

Edward, 38, Bristol

Occupation English teacher at a secondary school

I was standing at the traffic lights with the weight of the world on my shoulders when a man approached. He will probably never know the impact he had on my life

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

My cousin had recently died in a terrible accident and I had been the one who had to identify the body. It was one of the darkest periods of my life, on seemingly every front: I was in the midst of a divorce; it was during the global financial crisis and the company I worked for was badly struggling, making every day feel heavy with uncertainty and stress. Everything was a mess and I was emotionally exhausted.

One morning during rush hour, I stood at the traffic lights waiting to cross on my way to the office. I was lost in my thoughts but must have looked like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, because something unexpected happened.

A sex podcast opened up a whole new way of communicating for Helen and Ian

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

I’ve discovered I like to be spanked – my orgasms have become much stronger

It is billing £32.99 a month but I have had no functioning phone line since it switched me to Digital Voice

I’ve had no landline since May 2025 when BT switched it to Digital Voice. Weeks passed, and each call to BT involved at least an hour waiting on hold and answering security questions before being passed between departments.

Eventually, last December, two engineers were sent and discovered that a wire had been severed during the upgrade. They said they needed a cherry picker to reconnect it to its original location and would return. They did not.

New post-Brexit rules mean that dual nationals cannot enter the UK unless they have a British passport

My teenage daughter is unable to see her grandparents because of the UK’s new requirement for dual nationals to hold a UK passport.

I’m a UK citizen, married to a French national, and we live in France. Our two older children have both French and UK passports. Our third child was born while we were living in Zimbabwe and only has a French passport.

Appointment or renewal reminder appears in victims’ calendar to lure them into logging in to fake Google, Microsoft or PayPal page

You’re preparing for the week ahead and take a look at your Google calendar. There’s an entry for a meeting that you must have completely forgotten. The note that pops up when you click on it says you’ll be reviewing a project and includes a link to more details. Confused, you follow it to find out more; the website you land on asks for logon details, and you provide them.

Unfortunately, this was not a failure of your memory but a calendar phishing scam. You have handed your name and password to fraudsters who will sell it on in a batch with other people’s details, use it to break into your work email, or to persuade you that they are contacting you from your bank, or another institution.

From a flat in a new urban village in London to a family-sized home in a rural village in Norfolk

Cambridge University study suggests stark gender divide in misdiagnosis, with women also waiting longer for treatment

Women with autoimmune conditions are up to 74% more likely than men to be told their symptoms are psychological or psychosomatic, and face much longer waits for a diagnosis and treatment, a study suggests.

Hundreds of millions of people – about one in 10 globally – are affected by autoimmune conditions, which can cause a range of health issues including fatigue, muscle pain and rashes.

Could a drug intended to prevent painful rashes also protect our brains as we get older? The signs are promising – but not conclusive. Yet that’s enough to be driving a boom in shingles jabs

When Jenny, a 50-year-old marketing and branding professional from Cambridge, went for her shingles vaccine last year, an entirely different disease was on her mind. Having witnessed three of her four grandparents succumb to dementia, with all the distress that brought, she wants to avoid the same fate. She hopes the shingles vaccine might help.

Jenny is far from alone. Britain’s high street chemists have reported a rise in demand for the shingles vaccine, at least some of which is driven by people more worried about dementia than shingles. And while the vaccine is free for some on the NHS, most under-65s pay around £450 for the full two doses.

If you take a break from the gym you may lose muscle and gain fat, but it isn’t as simple as one turning into the other

‘This is not true,” says Prof Leigh Breen, a specialist in muscle physiology at the University of Leicester. But it’s a statement he hears a lot, particularly from people who have taken a long break from exercise. “They’ll often refer to the notion that their muscles have ‘softened’ or don’t feel as toned.”

The reality is that there’s no biochemistry linking the two types of tissue. Muscle and fat are distinct. “There’s no known process in the human body that would support muscle turning into fat, or vice versa,” says Breen.

The sleep disorder has been the butt of jokes and a comedic plot point, but the reality of living with narcolepsy is anything but funny. Things could be about to change for people with the condition though, after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first ever drug to treat narcolepsy itself, rather than just its symptoms. Madeleine Finlay tells Ian Sample how the scientific breakthrough came about, and Julie Flygare, who has narcolepsy and founded the non-profit Project Sleep, explains what it is like to live with the condition and how the drug could be gamechanger

From commanding the catwalks to acting as plus-ones for their famous parents, celebrity kids are bang on trend

Knee-length skirts and bras worn as tops were two of the main takeaways from fashion month, which wrapped up this week. But the biggest trend had nothing to do with clothing. From New York and London to Milan and Paris, the shows were the ultimate proof of a nepo baby takeover.

John Travolta’s daughter, Ella Bleu, 26, made her Paris catwalk debut at Miu Miu. Apple Martin, 22, the daughter of Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow, walked the Chloé show.

After 10 years as creative director of the Paris-based luxury brand, the designer bows out. From a rock’n’roll aesthetic to see-through brogues, here are 10 stand-out moments

Our four-legged friends are turning heads from Louis Vuitton to Schiaparelli – but what does their presence in the most exclusive of spaces say about the industry’s changing attitudes?

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

The front row at a fashion week show is a known hotspot for celebrities. During the most recent iteration that wrapped up on Tuesday, sightings included Heathcliff, AKA Jacob Elordi, high-fiving the Adolescence star Owen Cooper at Bottega Veneta; Rihanna arriving 63 minutes late to the Matières Fécales show; and Dua Lipa gossiping with Nicole Kidman and Pedro Pascal at Chanel. But peppered in among the Hollywood crowd was another type of guest going head-to-head for the photographers’ attention: dogs.

From a cavapoo at Louis Vuitton to a shih tzu at Schiaparelli, four-legged companions – rather than designer bags – sat on the laps of many showgoers. At the Balenciaga show, Brooklyn Beckham and Nicole Peltz sat next to Miranda Priestly – no, not Meryl Streep in her Devil Wears Prada character, but the brand’s creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli’s rescue dog. Tommy Hilfiger took his post-show bow with a fluffy samoyed – a look-a-like of Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s pup who stars with Kelce in a campaign for the brand. Elsewhere, a miniature schnauzer in goggles and a chihuahua wearing a puffer jacket took over the catwalk at Chopova Lowena.

Sarah Burton’s sporty, daffodil mesh dress made me smile. But the reason I chose it for Fashion Museum Bath is because it tells the story of our times, when bodies are more political than ever

One morning in February this year, I opened my laptop to find an email with an all-caps subject line: TOP SECRET. Being a fashion editor can be exciting but state secrets are not generally my beat, so I was intrigued. Sure enough, it was a thrill: an invitation from the Fashion Museum Bath to choose their Dress of the Year for 2025.

What an honour. Dress of the Year began in 1963, the brainchild of the museum’s founder Doris Langley Moore, as a way of keeping a static collection perpetually current. Each year a fashion expert picks an outfit or outfits that capture the year just gone, and these become part of the permanent collection. There is a Mary Quant dress and a Katharine Hamnett slogan T-shirt, Ossie Clark chiffon and Ralph Lauren pinstripes. There is sublime beauty from the catwalks of Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel and John Galliano, and pieces of cultural history: McQueen’s bumsters, Jennifer Lopez’s internet-breaking green Versace Grammy dress, Dior’s “We Should All Be Feminists” slogan, Naomi Campbell’s pandemic hazmat suit, a Black Lives Matter T-shirt, and the dress worn by the Duchess of Sussex for her Oprah interview in 2021. “Dress” is interpreted loosely, in the sense of clothing rather than a frock: the lineup includes men’s suits. The Bath museum is currently mid-revamp, having closed its doors in 2022, with construction soon to start on a new museum set to open in the city’s old post office in 2030. Meanwhile the collection is stored in Wiltshire and can be seen online.

From ancient forests to spas, medieval cities and the birthplace of Bauhaus, Thuringia packs a punch for a car-free autumn break

It’s early morning in Erfurt, the capital of Germany’s Thuringia region, and Domplatz is abuzz with local growers setting out crates of vegetables and flowers beneath the soaring medieval cathedral towers. This 14th- and 15th-century engineering wonder holds the Gloriosa, the world’s largest medieval free-swinging bell, cast in 1497 and weighing 12 tonnes. Though the city and surrounding landscape are notably flat, its skyline is pierced by soaring church towers and steeples, the atmospheric old town hardly changed over the centuries.

Thuringia – often called the “green heart of Germany” – lies in the centre of the country, between Hesse, Saxony and Bavaria. It’s famous for its dense forests, intellectual heritage and hearty cuisine, and I’m here for four days to explore using public transport.

Smaller and less visited than Como and Garda, Lake Iseo harbours a gorgeous car-free island ideal for easy-going cycling and sightseeing

Rust red and burnt sienna speckle the green mountain rising from Lake Iseo. Golden autumn sunlight shimmers on the water. Monte Isola, Italy’s largest lake island, is a peak of sheer cliffs and dense forest, dotted with old fishing hamlets and hillside villages, each as pretty as the terraced villas of Lake Como and Garda, but with far fewer visitors. I arrive at the small port town of Peschiera Maraglio – where striped wooden boats jut from the water like the gondolas of Venice – on a ferry from Sulzano, a five-minute hop across the water.

“Only three people on the island are allowed to own a car: the priest, the doctor and the mayor,” says Chiara, my tour guide from Brescia. Residents can zip up and down the steep island roads on mopeds, and a small fleet of van-sized buses trundle around throughout the day, but nearly all cars are forbidden and visitors have to explore on foot or bike.

An autumn break in the French mountain town of Saint-Gervais-Les-Bains offers thermal treatments and glorious walking trails before the winter ski crowds descend

Mont Blanc is hiding behind the clouds, but the Aiguille du Midi spears the sky above a mountainside ablaze with russet, gold and tawny tones. The maples flare red; rowan trees are dusted with crimson berries.

Our little group has trundled up to Mont Lachat station (altitude: 2,115 metres) on the Tramway du Mont Blanc, the century-old cog railway that climbs improbably steep slopes from the French alpine town of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains. Operational since 1909, the railway was once intended to reach the 4,809-metre summit of Mont Blanc, but war, glacial terrain and waning funds put an end to that ambition. But even from Mont Lachat, the view is a showstopper. On one side, the Bionnassay Glacier slips scenically down the slope, a buzzard soaring over the milky-green glacial lake at its base, while on the other the Chamonix valley basks in soft autumnal sunshine.

The lost practice of hitchhiking is a subculture, an art, and a way of travel that satisfies wanderlust like no other trip. Plus, it costs nothing

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email

I’m alone, hunched over by a dusty road junction, and feeling the bite of the morning sun. I’ve already been waiting here, on the outskirts of Esperance on the south coast of Western Australia, for more than three hours. Another wave of traffic approaches. I smile, stretch out my arm and raise my thumb.

Most drivers who pass wave or give me a thumbs up. One gives me the finger. There isn’t much traffic. Someone tosses a water bottle out their window at me.

A living room encounter with a toast-loving pigeon proved a big mistake. It led to weeks of drawn curtains and crawling around on the floor to avoid its eerie and unerring gaze

The pigeon landed on the windowsill. It was shortly after dawn during the spring holidays, but I was 11 and had been up for a while eating toast and watching TV. It pecked at the window and I turned to see this bird pressed up against the glass. It was beautiful, with two dark wing bars and a navy-tipped tail. I was immediately taken with him. It wasn’t until later that I realised he wasn’t just looking inside, he was looking directly at me.

Pigeons are not that common in Somerset, and since we lived on the top floor of a house in a quiet village, our view was mostly sky, so we had come to really value sightings of them. We were having a run of beautiful mornings, and I enjoyed watching its peculiar rituals through the sash windows. The way he moved across the sill, his small dark doll’s eyes, his slightly unnatural head tilt, the way he seemed to know where he was. We certainly didn’t see pigeons as pests. Nor did we see them as threats.

Upgraded, cheaper AirPods have noise cancelling, sound and controls to rival many plugged-in buds but without tips

Apple’s latest AirPods set a new standard for open-fit buds with upgraded noise cancelling that now rivals many plugged-in designs of the same price.

The AirPods 5 have the same design the popular AirPods 4 offering an option for those that do not like silicone ear tips used by most noise cancelling earbuds. They come in two versions, with or without a wireless charging case and swipe controls, costing from £119 (€149/$129/A$219) – £10 cheaper than the launch price of their predecessors.

Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3, SBC, AAC, H2 chip

Battery life: four or five hours with ANC (22 hours with case)

Water resistance: IP57 (up to 1 metre for 30 minutes)

Earbud dimensions: 30.2 x 18.3 x 18.1mm

Earbud weight: 4.3g each

Charging case dimensions: 46.2 x 50.1 x 21.2mm

Charging case weight: 32.3g/34.7g

Case charging: USB-C or wireless (Qi or Watch)

You want to garden sustainably but don’t want to transfer pests to new plants. Here’s how to decide whether to refill or recycle

The problem
Most plant people end up with a never-ending supply of plastic nursery pots, stuffed in cupboards or bags. Throwing them away feels wasteful, but reusing can transfer pests, fungus spores or disease to new plants.

The hack
Reuse them, but clean thoroughly first. Nursery pots are brilliant for houseplants because the drainage holes stop root rot. Water thoroughly and let the excess run out, then slip the pot into something decorative.

Just 19% of the online encyclopedia’s biographies are of women. Is this because it’s edited by ‘mostly white, middle-aged, European men’, as the comedian claims?

Name: Wikipedia.

Age: 25.

What happens when a forest loses its birdsong? Following clues hidden in the sounds birds make while asleep, Argentinian physicist Gabriel Mindlin uncovers a hidden extinction – not of species, but of memory – and sets out to revive vanished melodies before they disappear forever. Part detective story, part cutting-edge science, Mindlin’s mission leads him to the dusty 1960s archives of Buenos Aires naturalist, confirming that some songs no longer echo in the biosphere. So he deploys “robot tutors” to see whether young birds can learn and spread the old songs once again.

Read more on this topic: Trill seekers: can scientists use AI and tutors to help birds remember lost songs?

After Susan Brison was raped and left for dead, her husband, Thomas, did his best to support her. They are still together, while many relationships collapse after a sexual assault. What did he get right – and wrong? And why did she want him to write about her ordeal?

On a hot, still, silent noon, at a junction of dirt roads in rural France, Thomas Trezise stood scanning the horizon, looking and listening for his wife. He tried to soothe a deep foreboding. Susan Brison had headed out for a morning walk two hours ago. How could she be gone so long?

This was 4 July 1990, the start of what was meant to be a busy summer. Trezise and Brison were both assistant professors in the US – he in French at Princeton and Brison in philosophy at Dartmouth – and had just arrived at the remote farmhouse of Trezise’s French colleague. Life seemed packed with promise. “I’d found someone with whom I really wanted to spend my life and I just felt very, very lucky,” says Trezise. “Susan and I had fallen quickly and deeply in love – it was magical – and at that point, we were also trying to conceive a child. We loved being in France. I kind of felt I’d found my way. It was a good place … until it happened.”

Attacks by Iran-backed group come amid counteroffensive by Yemeni government supported by Riyadh

Naffah Naffah makes the bells in the mountains near Beirut. His sons will take over the foundry when he retires

The story of Lebanon’s last remaining church-bell maker begins with a rifle. In the 18th century, Youssef Gabriel, a local metalworker, was secretly making and equipping Arab revolutionaries with rifles to assist their revolt against the Ottoman empire, which controlled Lebanon at the time.

Then, one day, a Russian engineer came to the Lebanese town of Beit Chabab to make a church bell. Gabriel, intrigued, shadowed the man and picked up the process on sight.

We would like to hear from young people in the UK about their experiences of looking for work

About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK are not in employment, education or training (Neet), according to a report published in May, which warned that the figure could rise to 1.25 million by the early 2030s without urgent government action.

Alan Milburn, the leader of the review into why so many young people are economically inactive, said the UK risked opening up a “generational fault line” between young and old without urgent steps to overhaul schools, the health service, the welfare system and the jobs market.

Ahead of the budget later this month, we’d like to hear from people in the UK about what measures they feel might help – or not help – financially

We want to find out more about any financial concerns people in the UK have ahead of the budget on 28 October 2026. What measures would you like to see in the budget and what issues would you like to see addressed?

For instance, do you have particular concerns around energy bills, petrol, childcare, fiscal drag, pensions – or something else? Let us know below.

Our business, labor and consumer rights reporters will answer your questions in a live Q&A on Thursday 15 October

The US economy is top of voters’ minds ahead of the November midterms with food and gas prices remaining high, the job market unstable, consumers angrier than ever, and a new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, in place.

We’ll be hosting a live midterm election Q&A on Thursday 15 October 2026 at 12pm EDT on the Guardian US site with a panel of our business, labor and consumer rights reporters: Lauren Aratani, Michael Sainato, Heather Timmons and Gaya Gupta. The team will cover cost of living challenges, tariffs, inflation and new federal policy proposals from local candidates.

Will the Iran war cost Trump in the US midterm elections? Your questions answered

Who are the groups financially backing the candidates in the midterms?

The makeup of the Democratic party, plus key races to watch

We’d like to hear from people who have been monitored or assessed by AI at work and what they thought about the experience

Firms are increasingly using AI to monitor or assess their employees, leading to concerns about workplace surveillance.

Instructors at tech training company Multiverse recently blew the whistle at their “remorseless” and “unnerving” AI monitoring system, while The Co-Op has used automated listening technology that rates every phone call some of them make to customers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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