US consumers are starting to opt out of the streaming world as several services raise prices without offering many perks

It may not be quite as politically buzzy as the price of gasoline or eggs, but another household expense is going up for millions of people. Disney has brought the price-gouging experience of its theme park home again by raising the prices of most iterations and bundles of its Disney+ and Hulu streaming services. Whether you pay to watch them with or without ads, separately or bundled together, you’re probably getting a price hike of a couple of bucks per month. The few bundles that will remain the same price feature ad-supported versions of both services (plus ESPN). Don’t worry, though; paying extra to avoid the ad-supported versions of those services won’t mean that you’re missing out on some cross-promotional opportunities. Disney’s terms of service note that they reserve the right to insert ads before and after programming on whatever subscription tier they want, regardless of what you’re paying for. True magic!

This particular magic isn’t reserved for Disney, though. Price hikes among streaming services have become so common that The Verge has a dedicated page aggregating the news of them, which tends to arrive every few months. Apple, apparently high on Emmy fumes, has raised its prices four times in four years, keeping pace with many of its competitors despite a vastly smaller dedicated catalog. Depending on which version of Peacock subscribers use, they’ve seen their bills padded by five or six dollars a month just since the summer of 2025, including another increase last month. Netflix, meanwhile, hasn’t gone up since March 2026. That’s not a reprieve; that’s a sign another hike must be around the corner.

When a former Labour deputy leader joins a firm built on surveillance and military targeting, it deepens public cynicism – and democracy depends on trust

Whatever is said about Tom Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour party has a knack for landing headlines. In the past he did it at the expense of the rich and powerful – from News International, over phone hacking, to the Home Office, over its mass surveillance of our data. But his latest headline – that he has joined Palantir as a senior vice-president – has been at the expense of public confidence in the political class.

His new appointment is more than just a private career choice. It sends yet another signal to a weary public about just how far the rot in our democracy has spread.

Clive Lewis is the Labour MP for Norwich South

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Bullying, manipulation and intimidation can destroy lives, yet abusive authoritarians continue to rise to the top. How do they get away with it – and can they be brought to heel?

When Andrea finally resigned, her colleagues told her the truth they had always known about her boss. Some apologised. Others admitted they had watched what happened to her and said nothing. One offered the sentence I have been unable to forget: “You’ve been an emotional stab vest for us. You protected us.”

Andrea was a senior legal executive with decades of credibility when she began reporting to a powerful new colleague. Within months, something was wrong. Expectations shifted without warning and feedback contradicted itself. He spoke over her in public and undermined her in private. Slowly she began questioning not just him but herself, her competence, even her grip on reality.

The Four Weddings and a Funeral actor answers your questions on being confused with James Nesbitt, his own Sliding Doors moment and a new perspective since turning 60

How often do you get asked to recite that WH Auden poem from Four Weddings and a Funeral, and can you do it from memory right now? mattyjj and simoit
Not for a long time. I could probably do the first couple of lines: Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone / Turn out the lights? And with muffled drums / Something, something … let the mourners come. There you go. Terrible!

In Steve Coogan’s Paul Calf’s Video Diary, your character praises Orson Welles’ The Trial for its “tremendous energy”, while Paul says he would “rather watch Dave Lee Travis playing Macbeth”. What’s your actual opinion of The Trial [by Franz Kafka]? AdrianH1
God, it’s a long time since I’ve read that. I read a lot of those books in my younger days, but probably, like a lot of people, even those who are graduates of English literature, I’d be hard pushed these days to tell you what it was about, other than the persecution of some minor character.

Pippa Crerar had a front row seat for the PM’s first meeting with Donald Trump. What really happened during that 12-minute press conference? And as the Labour conference kicks off this weekend, she and Kiran Stacey discuss the ethics of journalist-politician karaoke

Please keep sending your comments and questions to Pippa and Kiran on politicsweeklyuk@theguardian.com

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You are not the only one, advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes. It will help to ask whether you have a time problem or a bandwidth problem

• Read more Leading questions

I love my life in so many ways. I have a rewarding job, I’m making stellar progress towards a graduate degree, I have incredible friends and community, plus I’m even reconnecting with estranged family. My cup is very full but I still feel grief and shame for how much falls to the wayside.

I have missed countless doctors’ appointments. My vehicle’s license plates have been expired for almost a year. I often apologise to angry friends and acquaintances after they confront me for not seeing them in months. My significant other says she doesn’t see me enough. So do my parents. I clock out of work and shudder at the thought of facing my growing avalanche of text messages. I panic whenever I receive an email that demands I arrange yet another appointment or submit to a lengthy phone call. The stack of forms I’m overdue to submit makes me feel so irresponsible, as if I’m the only adult alive who can’t seem to take care of business.

Chinese president’s proposals for lessening tensions come amid period of intense competition between the two countries over AI and trade

• Trump-Xi summit – latest updates

Xi Jinping has called for extensive cooperation with Washington to avoid the “Thucydides trap” that could put the US and China on a military collision course amid rising tensions over artificial intelligence, trade and Taiwan.

At the start of his summit meeting with Donald Trump in the White House, the Chinese president laid out terms for a mutual understanding that he said could steer the two competing superpowers away from future military conflict and on to a road of mutual gain.

Israeli PM attacks critics and calls New York mayor Zohran Mamdani ‘antisemitic’ in inflammatory address

Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an inflammatory address to the United Nations on Thursday, decrying what he said was a global anti-Jewish conspiracy and swatting aside criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza, as he faces down international isolation and a fight for political survival in upcoming elections in Israel.

As planned protests erupted on the streets of New York City, Netanyahu took aim at critics of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the international media, regional leaders such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leftwing commentator Hasan Piker and the New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani in an address that doubled as a stump speech to ignite his rightwing base for the elections.

A federal judge had ruled Trump administration must immediately return the outlets’ press passes and said ban likely unconstitutional

• Sign up for US Breaking News emails

Lawyers for the news outlets President Trump banned from the White House have requested an emergency hearing after several journalists were turned away from the building Thursday morning, in apparent defiance of a federal judge’s order to restore their access.

“This morning journalists from each of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO attempted to enter the White House and were turned away, and Secret Service agents confiscated the hard pass of journalists whose hard passes had not previously been confiscated,” a new court filing read.

‘If you’re not in the internal market, you don’t get the same protection,’ says French minister of policy designed to curb Chinese competition

France is leading a push to exclude the UK from the EU’s “Made in Europe” policy that could result in British companies losing out in the race to supply European countries with low-carbon technologies and electric cars.

The plans were raised by Andy Burnham when he met the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on the sidelines of the UN general assembly earlier this week.

Warning from union comes as corporation cuts local specialist correspondent roles as part of plan to save £500m

The BBC has been warned it risks entering a “doom spiral” of endless cuts and weaker public support for its services, as insiders anticipate the imminent closure of some TV and radio services.

Morale at the corporation is said to be extremely low as a series of cuts are slowly revealed to staff. In the latest announcement, the BBC said it would be reducing the number of local specialist correspondent roles.

Senior Iranian officials say Washington has four to five days to respond to its conditions for reopening the strait

The UK foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, has met his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, for the first time in New York amid warnings from senior Iranian security officials that the US has four to five days to respond to its conditions for reopening the strait of Hormuz.

The previously unknown apparent deadline was specified by Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of the supreme national security council, in a TV interview on Wednesday evening, and it is unclear what action Tehran will take if the US does not respond to Iran’s preconditions for reopening the vital waterway.

Datacentre hailed by government was supposed to start operating next year but may be held back into mid-2030s

A huge datacentre project hailed by the UK government will miss its launch date next year and could be delayed into the mid-2030s.

The site in Loughton, Essex, was described as the country’s largest AI supercomputer when it was announced in 2025, but power supply problems mean it now faces a lengthy wait before coming online.

• Carroll was assaulted by a man at his home while he slept

• Attacker found guilty of sexual offences after player testified

The former England forward Andy Carroll has revealed in his autobiography he was sexually assaulted by a man in 2021. The 37-year-old included the details in his book, Owning It. As a victim of sexual assault, Carroll was automatically granted anonymity.

Carroll revealed the incident took place at his home during a second spell at Newcastle. The offender – a friend of his former partner, who was staying away at the time – was later jailed for three years, with Carroll having testified in court.

Clip of the former Tory MP staring intently at fellow panellist is shared widely online

Rory Stewart has been an Afghan NGO leader, a Conservative leadership candidate, a Harvard professor, a popular podcaster, and the deputy governor of an Iraqi province.

This week, he created a moment that drew wider attention than any of them: he fixed a beady gaze on a fellow Newsnight panellist for the longest four seconds in television history.

As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each tells the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the conflict. Overcoming internet cuts and power outages, Mahmoud battles to provide his students an education

It is time for Mahmoud Seydam’s online lecture on museum architecture. He squats in front of the step he calls a table and opens his laptop.

“Is Mohammed the only one here?” He pulls out his phone and types into the students’ chat group that the lecture is about to start. There are two students now. Mahmoud decides to wait a little for the others to join.

Warnings about the catastrophic effects of vital ecosystems collapsing were not published under previous PM

• UK shares findings of damning climate crisis national security report suppressed under Starmer

UK spy chiefs warned government ministers of the catastrophic impacts on national security from the collapse of vital ecosystems around the world, driven by the climate crisis and the overexploitation of nature. But their report, which was supposed to be published almost a year ago, was suppressed under Keir Starmer. Now the government is briefing foreign ministers from other countries on the findings, with a view to gathering global support for more concerted action on the risks.

A government database has been hacked for the first time by a rogue OpenAI agent, which infiltrated part of the Australian healthcare scheme in June. OpenAI became aware of the hack in August, but only informed the government in September. Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has expressed his ‘extreme concern’ about the hack, which raises serious AI security concerns for governments around the world. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s UK technology editor Robert Booth – watch on YouTube

Locals hope agreement signed this week is step towards independence and end to US threats to annex island

Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, and Múte B Egede, the foreign minister, received a hero’s welcome when they landed back in Nuuk from New York on Wednesday night – and a nation took a collective sigh of relief.

Colleagues, friends and members of the public turned out to greet them at an airport where, just 20 months ago, the landing of a Trump-branded plane containing Donald Trump Jr had kickstarted a geopolitical crisis that the people of Greenland now hope is over.

Analysis reveals groups with sharply contrasting priorities – and who has drifted the most from Labour towards Greens and Reform

• Tactical voting at next election could push Reform into fourth place, poll finds

A new MRP poll suggests Labour would remain the largest party if a general election were held now, but would fall well short of an overall majority as Reform surged into second place.

Behind those headline figures, research from Survation and 38 Degrees casts new light on five distinct voter groups who are collectively defined as the “progressive majority”. These people share concerns about living costs and the NHS, but differ over immigration, the environment, political trust and the pace of change needed to address the UK’s policies.

Wallace and Gromit stop-motion models and other beloved creations raise money to train new generations of animators

Wallace’s reaction as the auction got into full swing might have been a trademark “good grief!” – and the enthusiasm of some of the bidding could have caused even the phlegmatic Gromit to show surprise.

Fans of Wallace and Gromit and other beloved creations of the Aardman studio seized the chance to grab souvenirs when more than 200 pieces – including Wallace, Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Chicken Run puppets that starred in Aardman productions – went under the hammer on Thursday.

TV heads hope the revamped show – back after four decades – will win over parents seeking quality shows amid concerns about addictive online content

For the generations who grew up watching Humpty, Jemima and Big Ted, the mere mention of the BBC’s Play School evokes a pang of childhood nostalgia.

The show, which featured much-loved presenters such as Floella Benjamin and Johnny Ball, became synonymous with wholesome children’s television during its run of more than 20 years on air.

Irish rock legends’ 16th studio album, described by the Edge as ‘a messy, provocative, sacred collection of songs’, to arrive in November

U2 have officially announced their first album of new material in nearly a decade, entitled Carnaval de Luz, to be released on 13 November.

Closing out the album’s 12 tracks is Torn, the final recorded performance by Dolly Parton, who duets with Bono on a song described in press materials as “a tender country song detailing broken family ties, that holds wider resonances”. Parton died aged 80 on 25 August.

The new prime minister has declared he wants to end 40 years of neoliberalism. But is he really prepared to be that radical?

In May 2025, when Keir Starmer was still prime minister, Labour politicians, campaigners and journalists gathered at the Ministry of Sound in London to watch a series of panel talks and presentations illuminated by the lucid glow of club lights. The day-long event was organised by a campaign group called Compass, and the subjects included child poverty, the Murdoch-owned media and the rise of the radical right.

“We felt as though the Labour government was failing, and needed to be pulled into the 21st century,” Neal Lawson, the founder of Compass, told me. The Starmer government’s support for the Conservatives’ two-child benefit cap, its equivocating stance on Gaza and its emulation of far-right rhetoric – crystallised in a speech on immigration, during which the prime minister suggested Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers” – were causing Labour supporters to rapidly desert their party. “The Starmer project was so obviously intellectually bankrupt. He was personally so disinterested in ideas and big thinking that I thought, this is never going to fly,” Lawson said.

Changes in guidance and science seem to have little impact on millions of devastated lives. It’s a shocking social crisis playing out behind closed doors

I’ve spent my working life covering neglected issues. But few are neglected like the devastating chronic condition ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome). In severe cases, the illness shuts down people’s lives almost entirely, causing an extreme loss of energy and a wide range of physical and cognitive symptoms that can prevent patients from working, socialising and, sometimes, even moving or eating. Yet these people have been more or less airbrushed from our minds.

To find out what this neglect looks like in practice, this week I put out a call on Bluesky asking people with ME/CFS about their recent experiences of treatment. I was immediately inundated with horrifying testimonies. “I’ve just been completely abandoned”; “a 10-year waiting list for treatment”; “we’ve given up seeking medical support”; “stuck in limbo”; “I just felt utterly unheard, invalidated”. I’ve been sent hundreds of shocking and heart-rending accounts.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Group shrinks ambitions from 20,000 to just 12,000 homes a year in an attempt to balance the books

The entire housebuilding sector is in a funk, grumbling about energy prices, the cost of labour, regulation, planning delays, taxes and more, but few have messed up a bad hand quite like Vistry. Three years ago this mashup of the Bovis, Linden and Countryside brands aspired to build 20,000 houses a year, and made itself the darling of the incoming Labour government by betting big on “affordable mixed-tenure housing” in partnership with councils, housing associations and institutional landlords.

The City, too, fell for former executive chair Greg Fitzgerald’s promise that a “capital light” approach of pre-selling homes via a partnership model would yield oodles of cash. The share price doubled to almost £14 between October 2023 and August 2024.

Endless pursuit of wealth and power by western leaders led us here. What strikes me most is how many saw what was coming

The symptoms of decline are everywhere you look. On Sunday, Germany’s far right won another state election, taking nearly 40% of the vote in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. France is preparing a €54bn fiscal squeeze, which could turn the screw still further on a foundering so-called European social model. At the UN general assembly, Donald Trump once again threatened to “annihilate” Iran, even as the fourth failed western war on a Muslim nation this century has added more than $100bn to Americans’ fuel bills.

There is little dispute over the symptoms. The great fight of our age is over the diagnosis, and the right has been winning it for years. Its story is simple and, as the latest German state election underlines, effective: the west is dying because of migrants, Muslims, trans people, “woke” and the “deep state”. So when I told friends I was writing a book called The Fall of the West: How They Really Lost It, they worried I had shape-shifted into Liz Truss, who, after being outlasted in office by a lettuce, produced Ten Years to Save the West.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist. His latest book, The Fall of the West: How They Really Lost It, is published on 1 October. Order your copy at the Guardian bookshop

Shortcuts work against the rewards of friendship: authentic relationships can surely only be forged when you’re not expecting a return on your money

What price would you put on friendship? In these hyper-capitalistic times, where nothing is beyond being given a monetary value, perhaps even Mastercard wouldn’t dare to claim that it’s priceless. A YouGov survey found that 15% of Britons say they have no close friends, while nearly one in 10 (8%) have no friends at all. The numbers are similarly dismal in the US. As we face this contemporary crisis of connection, it is little wonder that friendship, or at least the possibility of it, is increasingly being marketed for sale.

There has been a striking increase in online platforms and apps that promise to introduce you – algorithmically, through social mixers or a combination – to your next BFF. There’s Cliq, PLY, standing for “People Like You”, and RealRoots which promises user satisfaction with the tagline: “Make new friends. Guaranteed”. Meanwhile, 222 boldly declares it is “not a friend-making service”, but a means to “explore serendipity” through social experiences with compatible people.

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

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.

Both Greek and British citizens think the sculptures should be returned. What’s needed now is political will and courage

• Kyriakos Mitsotakis is the prime minister of Greece

For the first time in nearly 1,000 years, the Bayeux tapestry is back in Britain. Its arrival is a significant cultural moment, and a reminder that, in an age of social media and ubiquitous screens, historic objects still capture the public imagination.

The British Museum describes the tapestry as one of the “wonders of the medieval world”. But the museum already houses many wonders, including one that is instantly recognisable: the Parthenon sculptures, chiselled away and illegally removed from Athens to be taken to Britain more than two centuries ago by Lord Elgin.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis is the prime minister of Greece

My veg patch has turned into a chard jungle and now it’s chard for breakfast, lunch and supper

Chard. It’s hard with so much chard. As Jennifer Lopez might put it if she were in my gardening shoes, I used to have a little, now I have a lot. There was too little last year, for whatever reason. I probably did something wrong. This year, I sowed more. Come summer, the crop underwhelmed me again. So I sowed still more, throwing around seeds of as many varieties as I could get hold of. Then I went off to Croatia for most of August, where there is chard aplenty. That’s not why I go there, incidentally, but it suits me because I really like it, which is just as well because on the Adriatic coast it comes with every meal.

If you have not tried chard, I’d describe it as like spinach, but more substantial. In Croatian it’s called blitva, which oddly enough is the sound my belly starts making when I eat too much of it, as I do every summer there. It can get too much. In Split, I met a woman who was so sick of chard she got rather angry at the very mention of it. She was the cousin of the wife of a famous Serbian footballer I know. She wrote pop songs for a living, but she won’t be penning a love song to blitva any time soon, I can tell you that. As she started forking it off her plate on to mine, she spat out the word blitva as if it were a profanity rather than the sound of a stomach-gurgle. And now I, too, am taking its name in vain.

Conservatives long promoted a politics of sexual prohibition. Now such morals have been shed in favor of male domination

Under Kash Patel, the FBI will now hire you even if you have a history of hiring prostitutes, or of having sex with animals. The rightwing Maha influencer Alex Clark had a guest on to her talk show to discuss the idea that wives should provide sex for their husbands on demand. A new ad for a sports gambling website is being hailed as a victory for the political right, because it features a nude Sydney Sweeney clutching footballs to her breasts. The Tate brothers, who encourage their male followers to pursue compulsive sexual conquest and who have been accused of sex trafficking and violence in the operation of their online cam porn business, have reportedly been friendly with members of Trump’s circle. A dizzying array of elites on both sides of the aisle – conservatives very much included – seem to have been socializing with a pedophile financier, and were so unfazed by his constant coterie of underaged girl companions that one begins to wonder whether they were habituated to such scenes. A prominent conservative writer, best known for her opposition to gender transition care for children, has announced a new book claiming to tackle the problem of young women who are supposedly unwilling to have enough sex. And the women of the president’s members club, Mar-A-Lago, are so well known for their dramatic facelifts, and their lips so stuffed with filler that they cannot quite close their mouths, that their faces are now a shorthand in the world of plastic surgery.

Raunch, vulgarity, a boorish entitlement to women’s sexual service, and the aesthetics – and, indeed, the business – of pornography are being embraced by the right.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Hundreds of thousands are expected to die, millions to go hungry. This is not just about weather patterns, but about injustice

Some warnings are so grave that it is almost impossible to fully comprehend them. The descriptions of a super-sized, “Godzilla-level” El Niño already heating our planet would sound hyperbolic were they not issuing from eminent scientists. They say that the weather pattern, which occurs roughly every two to seven years, may be the strongest in at least a millennium. With its peak yet to come, the temperature rise in the Pacific Ocean has already surpassed the previous high.

The consequence will be huge amounts of heat in an atmosphere already experiencing frighteningly higher temperatures due to the human-caused climate crisis. Next year is almost certain to be the hottest on record globally, breaking this year’s record. The World Food Programme has warned that 50 million people are likely to be pushed into acute hunger. Others estimate that the extra heat from El Niño alone will cause the deaths of 450,000 people by February, from Nigeria and Indonesia to the US. That extraordinary toll is in addition to those killed by the wildfires, droughts and floods it is likely to bring – and also to deaths caused by global heating.

Ministers’ commitment to cutting youth unemployment is admirable, but how new qualifications will help is unclear

The first question that should be asked about plans to launch a batch of vocational GCSEs is: how will these differ from the roughly 50 similar courses that already exist? Is this primarily a rebadging exercise, aimed at boosting the qualifications’ status and name recognition, while signalling how seriously non-academic education is taken by Andy Burnham and his education secretary, Lucy Powell? Or is there something the matter with the existing courses that they want to put right?

The independent curriculum review completed last year recommended a moratorium on new technical  awards, except where there is an “exceptionally compelling” case for change. It also proposed that the Department for Education analyse existing ones, including how well they prepare pupils for 16-19 education; no such research has appeared.

Readers respond to an editorial on creating opportunities for today’s young people to build future careers

Your youth unemployment editorial (18 September) sees the crisis clearly, but reaches for the wrong tools. Placements, apprenticeships and work coaches cannot conjure jobs that do not exist. We need macro solutions to macro problems. Youth unemployment is not a crisis of skills or geography. It is insufficient government deficit spending. There is not enough money circulating to employ everyone who wants to work and that is a policy choice, not an accident.

Macroeconomists divide the economy into three sectors: government, households and businesses, and the rest of the world. One sector’s spending is another sector’s income. Put simply, government spending is income for the non-government sectors.

Dr Gillian McIver and Don Macdonald respond to an article on the low uptake of apprenticeship schemes

I agree with the Fabian Society’s finding that many people struggle to access apprenticeships because the system is so confusing (Only 160 apprenticeship starts in eight months on Labour’s flagship scheme, 21 September).

In my work in youth employment, students often tell me that they do not want to go to university and want to pursue an apprenticeship instead. But finding suitable opportunities is extremely difficult.

Jim McManners says Phil’s columns have inspired his teaching, while Ann MacAskill says she intends to follow his marvelling method

I was with great sadness that I read that Phil Gates’s country diary piece was to be his last (Country diary: A lesson from my final diary after nearly 40 years – keep looking closely, 19 September). It has become my habit to check the column as soon as I get my hands on the paper to see if it was a “Phil Gates diary day”, then to savour it.

This is partly, perhaps, because his diaries are from my own county, but mainly because I have never failed to learn something new and interesting about some overlooked or unspectacular species in the natural world, despite this being my subject.

Andy Burnham’s own goal | Investigating failure | Hedgehog-flavoured crisps | Crisp festival | Sitting prone

Before legislating to permit alcoholic drinks to be consumed in the stands at football (Report, 23 September), Andy Burnham should attend a rugby international. He will find that his view of the match is constantly interrupted by spectators coming and going to replenish their supplies and/or empty their bladders. Be careful what you wish for, Andy.
Robert Lee
Hampton, London

• So a parliamentary committee is to investigate the UK’s performance at the Eurovision song contest (Report, 18 September). I look forward to a committee of MPs explaining why my team, Reading FC, have consistently failed to achieve promotion from League One.
John Lovelock
Bristol

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Robert Earnshaw is in the BBC studio wearing the same rig he was in on Sky this morning. The thing with red and blue is you leave yourself open to accusations of dressing like Mario.

I can’t say I love the look of Xavi’s Netherlands outfit. The front three might be a handful, but there’s a severe lack of quality in midfield and the centre of defence is short of pace. For a coach used to Barcelona quality and principles, this is a tough gig.

• Over-by-over updates, second ODI from 12.30pm BST

• County Championship day one | Mail Taha

1st over: Sri Lanka 1-0 (Nissanka 1, Kamindu Mendis 0) Headingley is usually a great place to bat, so Sri Lanka will probably want upwards of 300. Fifty overs is a long time*, which means Kamindu Mendis can take a bit of time to get his eye in. He plays out five consecutive dot balls during an accurate opening over from Archer.

* Drink

• ‘The disaster was not caused by alcohol,’ says fan group

• Police say they had not intended to make such a link

English football’s leading fans’ group has criticised the UK Football Policing Unit for “bringing Hillsborough into the debate” around drinking in sight of the pitch.

Talk of changing the law to allow fans to drink at their seat or in the stands has resurfaced after Andy Burnham, the prime minister, said the rules were outdated and discriminatory and should be scrapped.

• ‘I want to try and win every single race. That’s my goal’

• Briton quickest in practice for Azerbaijan Grand Prix

George Russell has insisted he will keep fighting for the Formula One world championship until it is mathematically gone but while he made an encouraging start to his efforts by going quickest in practice for this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix the makeup of said numbers remains somewhat in limbo.

Russell is 81 points behind his Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli going into the race in Baku which is taking place on Saturday to avoid clashing with Azerbaijan’s national remembrance day. The Italian has eight victories this season including the past two in a row, coming through to win from 19^th on the grid in Monza and then taking the flag in Madrid.

Two years ago the Brazilian thought his time at Barcelona was ending but, two La Liga titles later, he is now captain and the most potent No 9 in Europe

For once, Raphael Dias Belloli puts the brakes on. The man who seems to be in perpetual motion, a footballer forever on fast forward, pauses, goes quiet for a moment and then, softly, utters something that says so much: “I think maybe people saw in me something I didn’t realise was there.” He did not know he was a leader, but he likes it. He did not know he was a captain, but according to his manager he is the “perfect captain”. And he did not know he was a No 9 either, but right now he is the best No 9 there is. In Barcelona or anywhere.

There was a time when Raphinha did not know whether he would be in Barcelona, when, feeling unwanted, he had accepted it was over, but this week he extended his contract to 2030. He will be 33 then: he would like to retire here and they would like him to retire here, too, a legend built on empathy and affection. “This is the best decision the club has made,” said Hansi Flick, the head coach Raphinha says changed his life. Sometimes you cannot get what you want so you have to settle for the best.

The Ryder Cup-style event has struggled financially since its legendary founder, Roger Federer, retired but still offers a spectacle unlike any other in tennis

The sight of a tennis player marching to the bathroom between sets has become increasingly common in modern tennis but Alexander Zverev’s journey back to the locker room in Prague nine years ago remains particularly remarkable. On this occasion, Zverev happened to be sandwiched between two of the greatest male players of all time. Neither legend was happy.

To his right, an incensed Roger Federer spent their walk back to the locker room brutally laying down the law: “I want a fist pump or a ‘Let’s go!’ every fucking point you win,” he said. “And every point you lose, you fucking take it like a man. Because the problem is, when you don’t have the [result] you want, it’s like: ‘Ah, I knew it. Fuck, shit.’ I don’t want … honestly!”

• Fight on 11 December will start in UK Saturday small hours

• Non-title all-British bout to be streamed globally on Netflix

The Battle of Britain is officially fixed for Wales. Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua will stage their long-awaited heavyweight blockbuster in Cardiff on 11 December after an 11th-hour standoff over the venue that threatened to derail the encounter.

The agreement ends years of false starts between the former world champions and clears the way for one of the biggest all-British fights in boxing history. The undercard will take place on a Friday night, with the main-event ringwalks at the Principality Stadium expected in the small hours of Saturday morning – widely reported to be around 2am.

• Coach ‘not just bunny hopping’ says Jess Breach

• Crowd of nearly 60,000 expected against New Zealand

Shaun Edwards has proven to the Red Roses he “wants to be there and to make the players better” rather than using the women’s game as a stepping stone, according to the England wing Jess Breach.

Edwards, a rugby league legend and hugely decorated defence coach in union, joined England on a consultancy basis this week and will be with the squad until the end of the WXV Global Series in October. The 59-year-old, who left the France men’s team this summer, has been helping England prepare to take on New Zealand at Twickenham on Saturday in front of almost 60,000.

Warwickshire bowled out Leicestershire for just 125 at Edgbaston, while Surrey racked up runs at Somerset

That man Jack Leach has got the breakthrough in Taunton. Michael Vaughan and Steve Finn have both been calling for Leach to be recalled into the Test side, definitely one to keep an eye on, particularly with the Bangladesh series early next year.

Leach snares his old England teammate Rory Burns who plays a loose sweep and gifts a top edge to Tom Abell.

His long career gives him the perspective to see how the game has been transformed, and what matters. “Cricket has changed a little bit, there are lots of offshoots, and the franchise world of course. But on a day-to-day basis, the measure of you as a cricketer is either Test cricket if you can play it, or otherwise the County Championship.

To do well in county cricket is incredibly satisfying, and being able to win the championship is a great marker in your career. It says a lot that the great Chris Woakes could have sailed off into the sunset, but he has stayed for weeks like this.” By Sunday, we will know how the die fell.”

Former Yes musician plays at sanctuary to raise awareness of animals that remain stuck in cages at ‘bile farms’

Rick Wakeman has played to all kinds of people around the globe, but he has now performed to an audience he had never encountered before – an enclosure of 150 bears.

The former Yes musician, who has gone on to have a prolific solo career, played the piano at a Vietnamese bear sanctuary.

The US rapper, removed from Ed Sheeran’s US stadium tour after voicing support of Palestine, has convened a charity show that will visit Dublin, Paris and London, with a North American run to be announced

Macklemore has announced a “Free Palestine” tour, a series of live shows that will feature the US rapper performing alongside musicians and friends to raise funds for humanitarian causes in Palestine.

The news comes after Macklemore (AKA Benjamin Haggerty) was removed from Ed Sheeran’s US stadium tour after he called for a “free Palestine” onstage and said he wanted the people of Gaza and “the occupied West Bank” to know “we have not forgotten about them”.

Monthly ‘thank you’ payments for people hosting refugees to be cut from £350 to £100 from next year

Ukrainian refugees in the UK fear they could be left homeless after the government quietly axed 70% of funding for hosts of the Homes for Ukraine scheme, reducing monthly “thank you” payments to them from £350 to £100.

The scheme was launched after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has provided support for 181,000 of the 234,000 Ukrainians who have since sought sanctuary in the UK.

UK watchdog fined video app in 2023 for failing to enforce minimum age limit and remove underage users

TikTok will pay a £12.7m fine to the UK’s data watchdog after dropping an appeal against a ruling that it did not do enough to keep children below the age of 13 off the platform.

The video app was punished by the Information Commissioner’s Office in 2023 for inadequate checks of who was using the platform, and failing to remove underage users.

Warning comes hours after Poland says fire at Starlink satellite station was ‘act of sabotage’

Russia could launch a limited military attack against a Nato country in the coming months, Danish intelligence said, in one of the starkest warnings yet by western security services.

In a report published on Thursday, the Danish defence intelligence service warned of a “low but growing risk” that Russia could launch long-range strikes on Nato infrastructure supporting Ukraine, or carry out a limited incursion into a neighbouring country with a small number of troops, potentially operating without insignia.

Role for Anant Ambani, son of India’s richest person, who also runs a controversial mega-zoo, met with incredulity

Newcastle University is facing a backlash from conservationists over the appointment of the heir to an Indian oil and gas fortune who runs a controversial mega-zoo as a professor of sustainability.

The university announced that Anant Ambani had been given a professorship of practice for “his work in conservation, biodiversity protection, animal welfare and environmental stewardship” and “significant contributions to advancing a more sustainable future”.

Furnace Brook in East Sussex was home to carp, tench, bream, roach and trout – and 15 trailer-loads had to be buried. The mystery led to a neighbouring farm, and a story of waste, pollution and dirty rivers that reveals a lot about Britain today

When Alistair and Diane Gould bought Furnace Brook in 2013, they had big plans. It was an idyllic spot: a stream-fed fishing lake nestled in a secluded valley in the High Weald, East Sussex, surrounded by woodland and fields. “People loved to come fishing here because it’s so beautiful,” says Diane. “Some of them had been coming for so many years that they got to know the individual fish.”

Diane moved here from Kent in 2000, when Furnace Brook was owned by a distant relative. Her two younger sons, then 10 and 14, flourished. They would chat to the anglers about the fish they were catching and throwing back in, and sell them bacon sandwiches. Her elder son, Simon, moved from London to join them in 2006 and became a keen angler himself, and then the fishing manager, or bailiff, looking after the fish and the landscape around the lake.

Exclusive: Levy that allows almost 16,000 houses to be built on Norfolk Broads will not cover cost of mitigating environmental damage, critics say

A new levy on developers to allow almost 16,000 homes to be built in the environmentally protected Norfolk Broads has been cut by tens of thousands of pounds per house, the Guardian can reveal.

Ministers say the government’s environmental delivery plans (EDPs) were created to unblock housing growth across the country and are a “win-win” for development and nature.

Britain has seen an explosion of migrating insects – in some cases from as far as northern Africa

It was a stifling evening in July and Matt Phelps was out for a stroll, when a piercing, whirring noise stopped him in his tracks. As an ecologist, Phelps knows his fauna – and he could think of no UK creature that could emit such a sound.

“It was like the classic sound effect of a cricket in a film, a beeping sort of little trilling sound,” said Phelps, who works at Knepp Estate in West Sussex. He returned with entomologist Graeme Lyons to track it down. But the sound, though incredibly loud, “seemed to be all around us … it was very ventriloquial”.

Unions say record high of nearly 25,000, including assaults on rail workers and public, shows need for more staff and policing

• Tell us: have you been assaulted on Great Britain’s railways?

The number of reported assaults on Great Britain’s railways has risen by a fifth to a record high of almost 25,000 incidents in a year.

Unions said the “horrendous” figures showed the need for more staff and policing, as the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) revealed a sharp increase in assaults on the travelling public and on railway staff last year.

Mick Ferris was crushed to death when the 130kg pane fell 26 storeys from the Corniche housing development

Two companies have been fined a total of £1.3m over health and safety breaches after a coach driver was killed by a falling window pane.

Mick Ferris, 53, was crushed when a window fell 26 storeys from the Corniche, a luxury development in Vauxhall, London, on 2 October 2018.

Thirty-seven-year-old in custody on suspicion of crimes including criminal damage with intent to endanger life

The far-right agitator and anti-migrant activist Daniel Thomas has been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage with intent to endanger life after he filmed himself appearing to slash the side of a dinghy in the middle of the Channel while a rescuer was onboard.

The arrest came as the Home Office recorded 781 arrivals in 10 boats on Wednesday, the highest number for a single day so far this year. Responding to the figures, the government said it would “push further and harder” to crack down on the people organising the crossings.

Legislators sent letter to Marco Rubio saying US interference is weakening Brazil’s democratic institutions

• US politics live – latest updates

A group of 31 Democratic members of the US Congress has sent a letter to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, criticising the Trump administration over “an apparent effort to interfere with, and potentially undermine” Brazil’s elections.

Latin America’s largest country will hold the first round of its presidential election on 4 October, with polls showing a technical tie between the incumbent leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro.

Man accused of being accessory to murders at Stalag 326 VI K amid race to prosecute suspects before they die

A 105-year-old man is under investigation on suspicion of being an accessory to multiple murders at a Nazi prisoner of war camp, German prosecutors have said.

The case, which is being handled by the public prosecutor’s office in Dortmund, centres on the Stalag 326 VI K camp in western Germany, in what is now the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Fighting escalates after Tigrayan rebels form new coalition aimed at overthrowing Abiy Ahmed government

There are growing fears of a return to civil war in Ethiopia after an offensive by fighters from Tigray into the neighbouring states of Afar and Amhara and the formation of a new rebel alliance aimed at overthrowing the government of the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed.

About 600,000 people died between 2020 and 2022 during a devastating war between the Ethiopian army and the political party and paramilitary group the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Both sides are now accusing the other of triggering a return to open conflict.

Taraneh and Romina Rahimi were charged with ‘waging war against God’ after joining protests against Tehran regime

The family of 21-year-old twins who have been sentenced respectively to death and decades in jail for protesting against the Iranian regime have appealed to the United Nations for help.

A formal “submission of information” relating to the case of Taraneh and Romina Rahimi has been submitted by British human right lawyers on their family’s behalf.

Treasury sources concede ‘less room’ for manoeuvre as global bond selloff also hikes government’s borrowing costs

• International bodies warn of rising debt and borrowing risks

• Burnham stands by claim UK is ‘in hock’ to bond markets

Oil prices lurched upwards again on Thursday, creating a growing headache for UK policymakers ahead of John Healey’s budget next month.

While Healey has been keen to present an upbeat picture of the UK’s economic prospects, Treasury sources concede the sharp jump in oil and gas prices means they have “less room” than a month ago.

Firm unveils further cost-cutting plan including job losses, blaming poor summer sales of private homes

Vistry Group, one of Britain’s biggest housebuilders, has cut its annual profit expectations after half-year losses ballooned as it grappled with a £600m pile of unsold homes.

Adam Daniel, the new chief executive of the Bovis Homes and Countryside owner, insisted “the issues can be fixed” as he set out a detailed turnaround plan that involves pulling out of private sales in south-east England and slimming operations to turn Vistry into a more focused, 12,000-homes-a-year builder.

US president’s suggested 90-day export ban before midterm elections could bring even higher fuel prices across Europe

The EU has warned Donald Trump against plans to ban US diesel exports to the global market, saying the move would negatively affect Europe and the US.

The European Commission has reacted with “concern” to reports this week that the US president could prevent diesel from reaching the global market.

Activists gathered outside the OpenAI offices on Monday during climate week in New York City

On Monday evening, protesters gathered outside the unmarked Manhattan offices of OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, holding signs calling to “Eat the rich, save the planet”. Over the next two days, groups also picketed outside the offices of fellow tech giants Google and Amazon; other protesters, including clergy, were arrested while disrupting a closed-door AI health summit in the city. Tonight, protesters will target a Brooklyn gas power plant that was set to close – until it was purchased to power AI datacenters.

The protests come on the heels of an Anthropic employee quitting his job with a warning that intensified an already-growing AI panic: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Spike Island, Bristol
Inspired by the shacks and sheds of the American south, Buchanan’s exceptional sculptures combine folk art and minimalism to memorialise the survival of enslaved people

When she was a kid, Beverly Buchanan visited tenant farmers and sharecroppers across the American south-east with her dad. There in the fields she saw shacks and sheds, shanties and shotgun houses. More than 100 years after the abolition of slavery, she saw in this rough improvised architecture a symbol of survival and perseverance, of a people making their own way against the odds.

Buchanan spent the rest of her life – a life marked by multiple chronic illnesses before she died in 2015 – translating that architectural heft into art. This show at Spike Island is filled with ramshackle, half-broken, semi-dilapidated little sculptures, each one based on the buildings of the south. There are houses made of scrap wood, churches made of cardboard, tiny barns hammered together and splashed with paint or covered with buttons. The one large sculpture here is great, a shed seemingly on the verge of collapse, but Buchanan’s physical condition forced her to work on a smaller scale as she was often stuck at home for long periods.

(Rough Trade)
Your favourite band’s favourite band unleash a thrilling and relentless 42 minutes of monstrous noise whose precise instrumental source always remains discomfitingly unclear

Gilla Band have attracted some impressive plaudits since announcing their fourth album this summer. A feature in Pitchfork heralding its arrival described them as “Ireland’s most influential band since My Bloody Valentine”. Should any readers feel this was a classic example of music journalism hyperbole, it was followed up with a succession of quotes from the Dublin quartet’s musical peers, all eager to attest to their importance, originality and impact. One of them, Selin Macieira-Boşgelmez – one half of Brighton-based punk duo Lambrini Girls – went so far as to say precisely the kind of thing about Gilla Band that people said about My Bloody Valentine 35 years ago: “They basically reinvented guitar music.”

Under the circumstances, there’s something faintly disappointing about the fact that Pugnello opens with a very prosaic and familiar sound indeed: that of someone striking a power chord on a distorted electric guitar. But then something disconcertingly odd happens. The power chord doesn’t fade away. It just … keeps going, for the best part of two and half minutes. That grinding drone underpins a track called The Angelus, punctuated by frantic bursts of warp-speed rhythm that would sound like drum’n’bass breakbeats were it not for the fact that they appear to be played live on a drum kit consisting entirely of snares. The drone is eventually replaced by a series of ferocious, shuddering bass explosions, overlaid with a sound that could, theoretically, be feedback, but most evokes a dial-up modem.

Theatrical rollout across 56 territories planned for documentary about Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza before film will stream on Guardian website

NAZA, the award-winning documentary from Israeli film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is set to be released in cinemas in more than 50 countries before a digital global release on theguardian.com.

The film, which the Guardian produced, premiered at the Venice film festival earlier this month, where it was met with a 25-minute standing ovation – a festival record. The documentary went on to win the special jury prize.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey might be the one to beat but a crop of competitors is starting to materialise

Reporting from fall film festivals used to be a more streamlined process – what’s good, what’s bad, what’s being sold, what has Oscars chances – but with each year, the season arrives with larger, more existential questions.

The 2025 run, from Venice to Telluride to Toronto, was notably underwhelming and took place months after Sinners went from box-office hit to legitimate contender and at the same time as One Battle After Another skipped festivals and went on to win best picture. The pipeline that had once birthed winners such as Birdman, Spotlight, 12 Years a Slave and The King’s Speech had no longer played as big of a part with Covid-affected Nomadland being the last fall festival film to win the top prize. Even without an awards hat on, there has been a more general lack of buzz, an excitement of something new that much harder to find as more films of considerably lower quality took up underserved space. If the trades are to be believed, a lot of it is down to studios choosing against the risk of bad buzz and potential embarrassment to A-listers because for every The Shape of Water or Poor Things, there’s a White Noise or Joker: Folie à Deux. So while this season might see new films starring Tom Cruise, Timothée Chalamet, Anne Hathaway, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Ben Affleck and Mikey Madison, none of them are braving a festival premiere.

A new Paramount+ series premiering Thursday turns pushy sports parents into glossy entertainment – with the children largely ushered off stage

Remember when pushy sports parents were deserving objects of our collective scorn? When Marv Marinovich and Jim Pierce were bywords for abusive fatherhood, Sarah Palin made the overbearing hockey mom a global punchline, and grim stories of pushy parents assaulting officials, kids and one another grabbed headlines and trained a harsh spotlight on youth sports? Well, the rebrand is in full swing.

Team Moms: Baseball is a glossy new reality series premiering Thursday that aims to recast the pushy sports parent as something well worth coveting, a sexy black hat with a designer label. From the makers of Love Island (ITV America), for Hollywood’s most rapacious studio (Paramount Skydance), with none other than basketball mom Kim Kardashian attached as executive producer, the Paramount+ series follows a cluster of parents whose sons attend Legendary Prep Academy – a Scottsdale, Arizona baseball hothouse with an intense focus on cultivating diamond gems. Anyone coming to this expecting genuine insights on a $40bn industry that’s now under siege from private equity, swallowing ever larger chunks of hard-earned family budgets along the way, should know up front: this is a closer cousin to Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise than ESPN’s 30 for 30.

This trip into the celeb couple’s Cheshire mansion is nowhere as real as they’d like you to believe. But their self-deprecation is hard not to enjoy

‘No one knows the real Rooneys,” says Coleen Rooney at the start of her family’s new reality-TV series, The Real Rooneys. “This is a side of us we’ve never shown before.” Coleen and her husband, ex-footballer Wayne, have had their personalities dissected in the tabloids every week for the past two decades; now we’re promised the truth. But how real can The Real Rooneys be?

There are two obvious problems here, the first being that the Rooneys’ lives feel like fiction: he was a generational sporting talent, a one-in-a-million player whose success has bought him and Coleen a ridiculous Cheshire mansion with a cinema, indoor pool and adjacent football pitch. To get back to the road you have to drive over a bridge across a lake. As we join them, Coleen is working out how to capitalise on a recent appearance on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, while Wayne is plotting an uptick in his media appearances that he hopes will make him a regular on Match of the Day. Technically, the Rooneys exist on our Earth, but – as they both admit, recalling their working-class childhoods in Croxteth, Liverpool – they have left ordinary life behind.

As the country trio once known as Dixie Chicks celebrate 20 years of their album Taking the Long Way, we count down the best of their catchy, sometimes controversial catalogue

One of eight singles released from the album Fly. Amazement at the sheer number should be matched by astonishment at their consistency. If I Fall … is just great. Organ-driven rock lent a Nashville twang by the fiddle, it barrels along, rich with the confidence of a band who know they can’t put a foot wrong.

(4AD/Remote Control Records)
The Australian musician’s fourth album blends mystery and intimacy with luscious pop-rock, bright, upbeat jangle and stripped-back acoustics

Julia Jacklin is an artist of dualities. Over her decade-plus career, the Melbourne singer-songwriter has examined the question of how to be both vulnerable but protected, spiritual but grounded.

Her second studio album and commercial breakthrough, 2019’s Crushing, introduced her to an international audience as an introspective storyteller. Rich in detail, Crushing delivered tales of heartbreak and betrayal with a kind of quiet impassivity, setting the scene for her own duality as an artist – at once open and reserved.

Royal Albert Hall, London
Julia Fischer, Pablo Ferrández and Jan Lisiecki brought poetry and virtuosity to Beethoven’s Triple Concerto tour de force and there was vision and cohesion in Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben; Errollyn Wallen’s energetic Flare opened a special evening

The year 1946 had its moments. The UN held its first meeting, Winston Churchill delivered his “iron curtain” speech and in London Sir Thomas Beecham founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Over 80 years, few ensembles have been as inventive or chameleonlike, embracing everything from film soundtracks such as The Bridge on the River Kwai to pumped-up rock anthems in Hooked on Classics.

This birthday celebration may have looked a little safe on paper, but each work represented a creative leap forward: in 1804, Beethoven’s Triple Concerto was the first to feature an entire piano trio as concertante soloist; in 1899, Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben was the composer’s most colossally orchestrated score to date. Vasily Petrenko, the latest in a line of RPO music directors that includes Rudolf Kempe and André Previn, proved an obliging accompanist in the Beethoven before delivering an affectionate and spacious account of the Strauss.

From spoof monarch to porn tycoon, the actor narrator goes to town on the larger-than-life characters in this Booker-nominated satire

In the 2003 novel Yellow Dog, Xan Meo is set upon by two men in a pub who cosh him over the head: “Like the statue of a fallen tyrant, he crashed sideways into the damp paving, and lay still.” Meo is a writer and actor whose late father was a dangerous gangster; the attack is in revenge for Meo naming an old associate of his father in print. Meo survives, though the injury leaves him with an altered personality. Where he was previously a conscientious husband and father, now he is a chip off the old block.

While Meo languishes in hospital, King Henry IX – who is struggling to conceal his boredom with the job – is informed that images of his 15-year-old daughter in the bath are in circulation. And Clint Smoker, star reporter and gossip peddler at the tabloid newspaper the Morning Lark, gets an unexpected tipoff.

The earl on his globally lauded eulogy for Diana, King Charles’s sausage fingers and toxic Raine, topped off with a lavish sprinkling of adverbs

Cheers were heard up and down the land. Halley’s comet made an unscheduled appearance in the ethereal night sky. In very heaven, angelic choirs rang out. A saviour had been born. A light to lighten the world. But enough about me. For this paragraph at least.

In my universally acclaimed funeral address, I aimed to speak for my sister. The real Diana. For only I truly knew her. She had the heart of a lion. And I had a glut of cliches. Yet when Diana had swept so triumphantly into the arena of royal life, I was but a callow youth awash with hormones and gripped by the self-centredness of adolescence. Nothing much has changed. Yet I know, with all my heart, that Diana would have wanted me to tell our story.

Is the price of stability necessarily the loss of freedom? Two possible future worlds are linked in the new novel from the author of Station Eleven

In her second novel, 2009’s The Singer’s Gun, Emily St John Mandel tells the story of Anton Waker, a young man desperate to make a break from his criminal family. His plans are thwarted by his cousin Ari, whose hard-nosed talent for operating outside the law has become a way of life. A decade later in The Glass Hotel, a painting called Swan Dive that hangs in the lobby of the luxury retreat stands as a symbol of escape from a trap that is closing. You will not need to have read either of these earlier novels to enjoy Mandel’s seventh, Exit Party, though their loose intertwining of narrative threads will provide extra pleasure and a sense of homecoming for those who have. It is also interesting to observe Mandel’s evolution from a writer of quirky tales of offbeat protagonists to a novelist whose world-spanning, politically resonant narratives now attract a wide and devoted following.

Exit Party begins five years into our future, in 2031. Ari Waker has just come out of prison after serving an 18-year sentence for the attempted murder by contract killing of her cousin Anton. Much has changed while she has been inside: a second civil war has devastated lives and blighted the economy, and the United States as such has ceased to exist.

This year’s shortlist for the Booker prize was announced last night. Our books editors answered your questions about the contenders, the judges and literary fiction

Kohtao says: Can’t believe the two best books – Switzy and Shadow of the Object - were cut. Huge shame as they really added something different to the range.

Liese: I was sad not to see Switzy on the shortlist too. I am a big fan of Emma Cline’s writing and felt that it did something really interesting. I am sure that, as always, there were plenty of arguments and some horse-trading among the judges to arrive at this list – which does still include ambitious and experimental work such as The Disappearers (Marlon James) and one of my other faves, the brilliantly weird Black Bag.

Charlotte: It’s interesting that even Jarvis Cocker, one of this year’s judges, said that he found the male dominance of the list “quite surprising, because generally speaking the male-written books weren’t as good as the ones written by women”. And it’s also surprising in the light of the recent debate around the lack of contemporary novels written by men – there was even a small press, Conduit Books, established last year to focus on new male writers. So perhaps we could say that’s succeeded! But in fact, a lot of the men on the list are very long established, and there are two previous winners among them – Marlon James and Douglas Stuart.

I would say that although the perspectives are predominantly male, they’re not necessarily similar in other ways – they encompass different sexualities, and as you say, one isn’t gendered at all (funnily enough, I hadn’t read it that way, but others on the desk did and that’s obviously how it was intended). It’s interesting that we have a female author, Elizabeth Strout, writing from a male perspective, and a male author, M John Harrison, writing from a female perspective. Though Harrison’s novel isn’t entirely from Marnie’s perspective, and for me there are many other themes that jump out from these books, beyond masculinity – anxiety about the world and the future, sexuality, history, oppression. As a shortlist, it seems pretty varied to me, and I didn’t find that I missed a female perspective when I was reading these books.

Returning with his first-ever adult novel, the bestselling author reflects on fame, YouTube and his brother’s AI controversy

By his mid-30s, John Green had done pretty well for himself. His debut novel, Looking for Alaska, had won a prestigious award for young adult literature. He and his brother, Hank, had launched a popular YouTube channel, where they regularly posted videos about their lives. With their combined incomes, Green and his wife were able to cobble together a living, buying a house and starting a family in Indianapolis.

And then, in 2012, he published The Fault in Our Stars.

They offer advice, referee card games and manage players’ tantrums – we caught up with some of the volunteer profs who keep the competitive game going at this year’s world championships

Professors may be the most revered characters in the fictional world of Pokémon (apart from perhaps the Gym Leaders). In Pokémon Red and Blue, Professor Oak greets the player in a pixelated lab coat, and later provides trainers with their first battle partner; since then, each successive generation of games has introduced another professor to aid and guide trainers through their journeys. If you’ve ever played a Pokémon game, they are often the first people that you meet, apart from your in-game mom.

But you may not know that there are also real-world Pokémon professors – volunteers who help organise the game’s competitive communities around the world. Instead of lab coats, they can be seen at events wearing red Pikachu-mascot shirts labelled “staff”, paired with black trousers and shoes.

From highlighted ledges to characters telling you what to do, blockbuster games are increasingly taking the challenge out of playing – and players are pushing back

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Marvel’s Wolverine, the latest action game from Sony’s stable of expensive blockbuster-factory studios, has had an unfortunate launch. Reviews were decent, if not stellar, but a series of viral video clips from reviewers and streamers have made it the scapegoat for a patronising flavour of game design that gamers have hated for decades. This clip, from Skill Up’s review, shows the player entering a beautiful wintry landscape before being overwhelmed by visual cues telling them what they’re supposed to be doing there. Sonar pulses point you in the direction of objectives. Targets – which, it bears emphasising, are shaped like targets – get an extra reflective visual effect so you know you’re supposed to pay attention to them. A trail shows you not just where to go, but where the level’s sole hidden collectible is.

It is hand-holding to the point of parody. Indeed, it reminded me of the sniggersome Mario in Unreal Engine satirical videos that makes the social media rounds every few months (“A mushroom? I should take a look at this”). Skill Up’s clip has been followed by hundreds of others, gleefully ripping into Wolverine with ironic savagery. In one much-copied clip, a streamer simply lays down his controller during a motorbike chase sequence and watches as Wolverine speeds on regardless, bouncing off the scenery as the game plays itself.

PlayStation 5 (version played), PC; Screen Burn
Tragedy, and an apocalyptic fog, befall a fishing community. It is up to outsider Simon to offer some kind of closure

You spend a considerable portion of Silent Hill: Townfall in a kind of foetal position, cowering behind objects that will be eerily familiar to anyone who lived in the UK during the 1990s. Cars seem to be modelled on the era’s boxy Volkswagen Golfs; logos adorning phone boxes should narrowly escape the attention of copyright lawyers at BT Group. (For millennials, the deja vu will likely intensify the horror, as if stepping back into a childhood nightmare.) Simon, the nerdy, unassuming star of the game, pokes his head around corners to catch a glimpse of the demonic entities that wish to maim him, before shrinking back down again with a downwards motion of the analogue stick. In such moments, it’s easy to imagine him wrapping his arms around his knees, clasping his eyes shut and wishing himself away from this place.

The game’s setting, St Amelia, is based on the fishing communities of the East Neuk of Fife. The terror lurking here is wonderfully specific: absent lairds, island poverty, an oil-drilling corporation. Anguished beasts lumber down quaint streets lined with sandstone houses and fluttering bunting. This venerable horror series may have shifted to Scotland, yet we remain firmly in classic Silent Hill territory – weather and all. St Amelia finds itself suffused in supernatural fog and the vast majority of its inhabitants have vanished following some kind of mass tragedy. The artful, evocative presentation is such that you can almost taste the in-game air, the briny seaside tang diluted by rainy mist.

PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC; Remedy
A surprisingly conventional game from a famously weird developer, this sequel to 2019’s Control is accomplished but safe

This is an arthouse action game from Finnish developer Remedy, masters of exactly this type of thing. It’s a sequel, however, so not only must it clear the high bar that its strikingly distinctive predecessor has set – it must also ideally arrive with a bushel of new ideas. There are clear and valuable strengths here in character progression and the lustrous presentation of its paranormal world, but Resonant doesn’t feel as enjoyably recondite or expansive in its influences as 2019’s Control did. As you wander New York brandishing supernatural abilities against glowing orange foes, the sad sense creeps in that you might be playing any number of games.

As paranormal event survivor Jesse Faden, your journey through the original Control was like a sequence of playable Twilight Zone episodes, battling prosaic household objects with supernatural properties that teased and twisted reality inside an endlessly fascinating supernatural government bureau called the Oldest House. You’d navigate architecturally impossible spaces bridging the subconscious and the bricks-and-mortar world, in order to defeat a malevolent fridge. That’s broadly true again in Resonant, albeit with diminishing returns. This time you’re playing as Jesse’s brother Dylan, waking up after years of containment in the Oldest House to find its contents have escaped into downtown Manhattan. So you head out of the interesting place, and into a setting you’ve explored before in Marvel’s Spider-Man, The Division, Max Payne, and others ad infinitum.

Sadie Coles HQ, London
Abstract, humorous yet deeply unsettling, the painter’s dazzling exhibition sees her caught between distant skies and the ugly reality on the ground

Nicole Eisenman’s 2023 exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery took its title from Hillary Clinton’s account of the 2016 US presidential election: “What happened.” With its absurdist riffs on contemporary American life, the show confirmed that Eisenman is among the most important artists of her time and that “what happened” was a disaster. So her return to London might be thought of as a sequel, with the working title: “So what do we do now?”

Eisenman is justly celebrated for her rambunctious, magpie and irreverent subversions of the conventional histories of art and society. A painter who has lately (and successfully) turned to sculpture, her work often places people in situations – ranging from crowded bars to town squares flooded with mud – that match broad humour to sharp technique in reflecting on how our identities are shaped by the company we keep. And yet my first thought on entering Sadie Coles’ gallery was the artist had turned her back on the world.

Wallace Collection, London
The British sculptor’s delicate, intimate and ready-to-pop creations feel right at home among Hertford House’s rococo masterpieces

Maybe it was that wine glass I broke this morning while unloading the dishwasher, but seeing a Rachel Kneebone porcelain sculpture suspended makes me nervous. Can those skinny wires really hold the weight? Should there perhaps be a soft landing just in case? Emerging from a tangled clump of ribbons and roses are a couple of bone-white bubbles, ready to pop. This is art that quite literally hangs in the balance; a sense of peril is what makes it so marvellous.

Born in 1973, the British sculptor is the latest contemporary artist to be invited to show her work at the Wallace Collection. Following in the footsteps of Damien Hirst, Flora Yukhnovich and Grayson Perry, Kneebone has positioned nine milky sculptures made between 2017 and 2026 throughout Hertford House. So this display, titled Metamorphoses, is an intervention – that’s the art world lingo. Except it feels different, like the contrast has been turned down. Sure, there are collisions as well as similarities, but seeing sculpted heaps of human and floral forms alongside the prized masterpieces for which the London gallery is best known feels … right.

Rose theatre, Kingston upon Thames
A rag puppet Montmorency, a fake moustache and an aria for reeking cheese add to the mischief of Jerome K Jerome’s very English story

Back from Lib Dem conference, Ed Davey watched this adaptation in his Kingston constituency of Jerome K Jerome’s novella about a trio of late Victorian gents rowing the Thames accompanied by fox terrier Montmorency. Might the up-for-fun politician suddenly drop on to the stage in a Scooby-Doo suit?

He didn’t, although Christopher Haydon’s perky production features one actor making an applause-winning entrance from an improbable location. This version is also certainly more liberal and democratic than the 1889 text whose language has often dated in meaning or propriety.

The actor we know as Dustin was a ‘theatre kid’ from age 11. Now he’s starring in a new staging of Rent. He discusses why the musical is as relevant as ever – and what it’s like being a child star in the internet age

Rent is a study in both joy and despair. The 90s rock opera spawned the kinds of irrepressible musical numbers – Seasons of Love, Take Me Or Leave Me – that would become Broadway standards, mastered and massacred in choir auditions and high schools across the world. Jonathan Larson’s self-described attempt “to bring musical theatre to the MTV generation” is also a capitalist critique: a drama about a bohemian coterie of penniless creatives sticking it to the man, all while their circle is ravaged by HIV and Aids. It still feels highly relevant today; see: What You Own – sample lyric “And when you’re living in America / At the end of the millennium / You’re what you own”.

Gaten Matarazzo says “that song may arguably be more impactful now than in 1996, considering what we know about what American media and world media would become, and our access to constant mind-numbing noise …” This autumn, he makes his West End debut as Mark, the struggling film-maker who chronicles the lives of his friends in New York’s East Village, and serves as the show’s de facto narrator.

The French photographer and actor’s deep love of Harlem and the Bronx was so strong it led to her being invited to gang apartments, child boxing matches and even a stranger’s wedding

But Kyriakos Mitsotakis says he cannot accept any arrangement that recognises British Museum’s ownership of the sculptures

• Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Britain would not cut up the Bayeux tapestry. So seize this moment and reunite the Parthenon sculptures in Greece

The Greek prime minister has said a deal can still be reached to return the Parthenon marbles with “political will” but his country will not accept a loan in the style of the Bayeux tapestry’s visit from France.

Writing for the Guardian, Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Greece “cannot accept any arrangement that would require it to recognise the British Museum’s ownership of the sculptures, or a scheme that would mean we ‘borrow’ parts of our own monument”.

Duo had US hits with their cover of Always Something There to Remind Me as well as Promises, Promises and more

Pete Byrne, the frontman of British new wave group Naked Eyes who carried them to repeated chart successes in the US, has died aged 74.

The news was announced on the band’s website and social media on Wednesday, stating that Byrne died peacefully in Los Angeles on 14 September after a brief illness.

From émigré roots to a titan of modern cinema, penning classics such as Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, a new retrospective celebrates the father of film noir’s incredible career

Like all survivors, Billy Wilder never forgot where he came from or what he had left behind. He was born at the start of the 20th century in Austria-Hungary and died at the start of the 21st in California, the inscription on his gravestone a nod to his most famous line: “I’m a writer but then nobody’s perfect.” Wilder, though, had a habit of of making flawless films throughout his career, a point proved by Almost Perfect, a comprehensive retrospective of his work, running at the BFI Southbank from 19 October until the end of the year.

Wilder was an inveterate self-mythologiser, a film-maker with a brand long before there were opportunities for promotion through Instagram accounts and chicken shop dates. He told a story of living in Berlin during his fledgling years in show business and being kept awake all night by “a toilet that was on the blink”.

American fashion designer and costumier who clothed glamorous showbiz celebrities, especially Cher

Most costume designers are novelists, supplying character, back stories, social placement and history, done in cloth. Bob Mackie was also a genius cartoonist, assembling details into an image, memorable on sight, that could hold anything from a small 1960s television screen to a concert arena.

Mackie, who has died aged 87, was master of the showbiz sartorial aesthetic that evolved on stage and in films to entertain in itself as well as project performers.

Buying preloved always feels that bit cooler, says celebrity stylist Bay Garnett, but how do you find a gem in charity shops or online? She reveals her top tips

• Your favourite secondhand finds

I’ve been championing secondhand shopping for decades. For my debut shoot for British Vogue in 2003, I dressed Kate Moss entirely in pieces I’d found in New York charity shops – including a banana-print top that cost $5 and a gold sequin jacket I found in the Salvation Army for $7.

I think every shoot I have done has had secondhand in it – vintage jeans, blazers, coats, belts, boots – and they are always the pieces the people I am dressing exclaim over and want. So, often they just look and feel cooler.

Whether it’s streamlining shoes or being strict with toiletries, we asked the experts for the home organisation hacks they swear by

• How to get rid of household clutter – without sending it to landfill

Few things conjure a sense of achievement quite like a clearout or bringing order to that cupboard of doom you’ve been ignoring for months. But how best to tackle this beast of a job?

To help you make a start, we asked professional organisers and declutterers for their tips and tricks, as well as the products they recommend to help streamline the areas everyone struggles with. From never buying round storage containers to getting the kids to help tidy up, these are the solutions they swear by.

A new smartphone needn’t cost a fortune. From Samsung, Google, Apple and more, these are the lower-cost models we rate most – and how to buy a refurbished handset

• How to make your smartphone last longer

Buying a flagship phone in 2026 makes little sense unless you’re really going to use all the features at hand. By comparison, the budget smartphone market has come on leaps and bounds in the past few years, and you can now get most of the features you’d want, including a high-quality OLED screen and a well-performing chipset, all for a reasonable price.

There’s more choice than ever for shoppers who don’t want to spend too much on their next upgrade, but many models simply aren’t worth your time. That’s where this guide comes into play. I’ve tested the latest models and pinpointed the nine best budget phones available right now – all you have to do is pick the one that best suits your needs.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food, and the basic they scrimp on? The retired diver talks scrapbooking, cheap chargers, and trouser fails with the Filter

• How I Shop with Laura Jackson

Tom Daley OBE is a retired professional diver who has won five Olympic medals, including gold at Tokyo 2020. Since retiring from competitive diving, he has hosted Channel 4’s Game of Wool: Britain’s Best Knitter, while continuing to share his passion for knitting and crafts through his Made With Love brand and YouTube channel. He is married to US screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, and the pair have two children.

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Readers and the Filter team share the best buys they still treasure, from charity-shop gems to Vinted bargains. Plus, the fashion experts’ guide to women’s basics

We love secondhand shopping here on the Filter – whether it’s Second Hand September or not. You can unearth one-off, affordable pieces, and feel good about not adding overconsumption to your list of things to worry about. So to inspire us, we asked you for your best-ever preloved finds, whether that’s furniture or fashion or more (and added a few of our own, too).

“An Ercol daybed I bought on eBay for £50, in need of some TLC,” reader Fiona told us. “Stripped, re-webbed and with a new cushion, it is now a thing of beauty and very comfortable.”

In which a UK coffee lover, long devoted to her moka pot, tiptoes gingerly into the world of coffee-derived drink products

My family has benefited hugely from charities that support healthcare, so it is with extra zeal that I’ll be drinking coffee with a slice of cake tomorrow to mark this year’s Macmillan Coffee Morning. In anticipation, I’ve been tasting some coffee-flavoured drinks.

I should preface this by saying that, when it comes to coffee, I am a creature of habit and, almost 30 years into my relationship with the stuff, I know what I like: short-ish, strong, preferably made in a moka pot and only a tiny splash of milk. I’m less faithful to brands, though I do rate Union’s House Roast, which is bold, crowdpleasing, not too bitter and sold in most big supermarkets. Much as my partner has tried to seduce me to the trendy charms of filter coffee, this leopard can’t seem to change her spots.

The weather is in transition, so here are some dishes to bridge the gap between crisp salads and hearty stews

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

The weather in London can’t quite make up its mind. You leave the house in the morning and immediately wish you’d brought gloves, but by lunchtime you’re carrying your jacket under your arm, and by dinner you’re closing the windows again. Summer hasn’t exactly gone, but winter has started sending little reminders that it knows where we live.

We love this time of year. The air feels fresh from the occasional shower, the days are still long enough to make something of, the light is perhaps the most beautiful it will be all year, and, for cycling, it is perfect. There are days when London seems to contain two seasons at once: summer in a sunny spot at lunchtime, winter the moment the sun disappears.

The pastry chef gives autumn’s best ingredients a golden glow-up

I have come to adore what the British autumn brings: beautiful apples, pumpkins, plums and quince galore. These pies not only sing the praises of this bounty, but put them front and centre. I also use ingredients such as piloncillo (a Mexican raw cane sugar), tonka bean (which adds a beautiful fig-leaf flavour) and buckwheat flour (for a wonderfully nutty taste). These aren’t always easy to find, but they are worth the extra effort, taking these bakes to the next level.

A well-seasoned and comforting meal to ease you into the autumn months

At this time of year, baked tomatoes stuffed with rice and surrounded by a packing-chip sea of potatoes are typical all over central and southern Italy, and in many other places besides. So much so that when I see a tray of those wrinkled red caps in a bakery or canteen-like tavola calda (literally, “hot table”), it doesn’t cross my mind that the hollowed-out tomatoes underneath might be filled with something other than rice. It was only when the woman behind the counter was wrapping my two portions of cannelloni and four slices of margherita pizza that another person’s order alerted me to the fact that these tomatoes were in fact filled with breadcrumbs, chickpeas, sausage, cheese and herbs. Suddenly, the tomatoes were the most appealing item behind the steamed-up glass, and the only thing I could want. We were in Tavola Calda in Latina, just south of Rome, during the lunchtime rush, which is why I didn’t feel able to add to my order, but then I was dissatisfied with my lunch.

But dissatisfaction gave me a reason to pull Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food from the shelf, for her chapter dedicated to stuffed vegetables, which draws inspiration from Turkish, Uzbekistani, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Greek, Egyptian, Persian, Syrian, Lebanese, Saudi Arabian and north African recipes. Having noted that almost any vegetable can be stuffed, Roden adds that the most common filling for a hollowed-out vegetable is a well-seasoned mix of chopped onion, minced meat, rice, chopped parsley, and maybe chopped tomato; and she then goes on to give seven filling variations – some with rice, some with meat (no pork), and with various herbs and spices. She also provides a not disappointing filling including chickpeas, which is what I have adapted, also with inspiration from the busy Tavola Calda, for this week’s recipe.

Rhonda believes Ned ruins woks. He reckons he has famous chefs on his side. You decide whose argument is in flames

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

He whacks the heat right up, which stains our wok and makes it really hard to wash up

The person doing the cooking is in charge of the temperature – plus a wok is supposed to blacken

Financial pressures suspected to be behind figures showing failed marriages are lasting longer in England and Wales

Couples are putting off divorce because of the cost of living crisis, lawyers have said, after figures showed the average length of a marriage ending in divorce in England and Wales reached a record high last year.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) released figures on Wednesday showing that the average marriage ending in divorce in 2025 lasted for 13 years. This is the longest since records began in 1963 and up from a record low of 8.9 years in 1985.

At 51, I want many more years of a healthy, happy sex life. So I decided to compile my own guide

When I got divorced after 28 years of monogamy, I was excited to be having sex again, but had concerns. I was 48, and the last time I’d been single was in the 90s; terrified of pregnancy and hyperconscious of HIV/Aids, I hadn’t considered condomless intercourse an option back then.

Now, at 51, I’ve been wondering how important barrier protection is for me. Though I haven’t hit menopause, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says that “by 45 getting pregnant naturally is unlikely”, and HIV/Aids prevention and treatment have improved significantly in the last three decades.

A Reform politician and an NHS worker had different takes on Nigel Farage, but could they agree on renewable energy or tax policies?

Chris, 42, London

Occupation Electrical supervisor of the maintenance team at an NHS hospital

A First Saver account was set up by my mother when the children were born which we planned to use to fund them through university

My mother set up NatWest First Saver accounts for my children when they were born. The accounts are held in trust for when they turn 18 and my parents have paid into them monthly to help fund them through university.

My mother is now in the final stages of Alzheimer’s and I have registered financial power of attorney for her.

In her weekly column for the Guardian, Anna Tims solves readers consumer problems – ranging from the devastating to the ridiculous. She answered your questions on AI chat bots, consumer protection and how companies keep getting away with terrible customer service

TLouis1990 asks: What are your tips for getting the best out of customer service? Are there mistakes we all make that make issues worse?

Anna: I like your question; too often we focus on what customer service agents owe us rather than vice versa. Remain calm and polite is my top tip. That’s not always easy, especially when you feel you are being messed about, but it’s essential. Temper and rudeness is not only unfair on call centre staff, it can backfire on you. Companies may refuse to deal with abusive customers. Occasionally, when I’ve contacted a press office about a reader’s complaint, I’ve been so horrified by transcripts of their treatment of agents that I’ve dropped the case.

When you complain, include all relevant information such as booking references, your address, screenshots of relevant bills or letters to save to-ing and fro-ing. You basically want to ensure that they can identify you quickly on their system and that they have evidence of the problem. If you’re phoning, have all that information at your side. Make a note of who you spoke to and when in case you have to follow up. And be reasonable in terms of timescales and redress. Demands for £500 in compensation when you report a burned Deliveroo may stop you being taken seriously.

Anna: Thank you for your thank you! If you mean companies I’ve dealt with professionally, there was a now defunct utilities company who offered a reader a spa day to help her recover from the stress its blunderings had caused her. Bagcraft, a luggage store in Essex is a stand-out. A customer had ordered two suitcases for a New Year’s holiday. One of them arrived from the manufacturer with a fault. The store owner reordered it and, worried that it would not reach the customer in time, set off the day after Boxing Day on a 820 mile round trip to deliver the cases in person.

Readers often write in to praise Le Creuset for its no-quibble lifetime guarantee which has resurrected the most ancient of steelware. And speaking as a customer, I was amazed when the online plant supplier Primrose informed me that part of my order was unavailable, sent a generous voucher unbidden as an apology and answered my subsequent questions about suitable alternative plants with prompt, personalised responses. And no, they didn’t know I was a journalist!

People in the UK are more interested in oral health than ever - and you can now buy prebiotic toothpastes and brushes that cost up to £600. Yet we remain in the midst of a serious dental crisis

A December 1969 report from the consumer magazine Which? explored a relatively new gadget that, it predicted, many people would be giving as Christmas presents: the electric toothbrush. For those who hadn’t yet seen one, the magazine described it as “not that much different in principle from an ordinary brush – you have a stick with a brush on the end. The difference is that an electric one moves the brush head for you”. Progress indeed.

Nearly six decades on, electric toothbrushes can do a lot more than merely jiggle, offering multiple speeds and movement sensors for real-time tracking of where you’ve brushed – some even promise gum-massage or tongue-cleaning modes. Prices range from about £25 for a basic Oral B model to £599.99 for a Philips Sonicare model that gives “smart coverage feedback”. The latest super-toothbrush – a mere £419.99 – features a camera and a built-in water jet to clean between teeth, using AI to identify gaps. Created by Dyson, it’s still, essentially, a stick with a brush on the end (although there is another toothbrush on the market that’s shaped like a mouthguard, with individual brushes, that claims to clean your teeth in 20 seconds).

A 90-minute wait on a motorway hard shoulder was terrifying with lorries thundering past

My partner and I were among a group of passengers left stranded for 90 minutes on a motorway hard shoulder after our coach driver was arrested for suspected drug driving.

We had boarded the Cambridge to Brighton Flixbus service at Gatwick. The coach was an hour late, was visibly damaged on the outside and the driver set off without closing the luggage hatch.

It’s natural to want to soothe eye irritation, but mishandling could lead to more problems, experts warn. We asked them for advice on how to deal with it properly

It may feel like a gritty, annoying sensation, or a sharp pain. Either way, you may have the same problem: something is stuck in your eye and needs to come out.

Addressing the situation incorrectly can lead to bigger issues such as infection, scarring, an ulcer or corneal scratches, which are abrasions on the clear covering of your eye. Ignoring the dilemma can lead to similar consequences.

A growing number of men, including singers Shaggy and Harry Styles, are taking up pilates. When I realised I could no longer touch my toes, I decided to try it out

I realised something needed to change when I nearly toppled over trying to tie my shoelaces. I was on a busy high street, with people rushing past holding shopping bags, when I saw my open shoelace spooled on the ground. I bent down to deal with it and felt gravity move against me. Only a quick flail of my arms stopped me from faceplanting. When I raised myself back upright, I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. This can’t be right, I thought.

Bracing my foot on a bin to finally fix my shoelace, it dawned on me. I’d become rusty. My core strength was nonexistent, as was my flexibility. Years behind a desk had taken a toll, not helped by an after-work routine of watching TV or playing video games on the sofa. But after getting home and doing some research (yes, from my sofa), I found a potential remedy: pilates.

Test using urine and vaginal fluid samples raises hopes thousands of lower-risk women could be spared internal ultrasounds and hysteroscopies

Doctors have developed a simple test that could help rule out womb cancer in women who experience bleeding after menopause.

The approach has the potential to transform care for thousands of women each year and spare them from invasive and uncomfortable tests that can also be costly for healthcare systems.

As diet trends proliferate on social media, it can be hard to work out which are backed by science and which should be ignored. From paleo to keto, raw food to intermittent fasting, each attracts a tribe of ardent followers. Now Daniel Lieberman, professor of biological sciences at Harvard University, has written a book to try to cut through the noise. In Fed Up, he uses his background as an evolutionary anthropologist to scrutinise the evidence, turning himself into a guinea pig in the process and trying various diets. In this podcast, he tells Ian Sample which one has remained part of his routine

Chore jackets and loose-fit trousers nod to ‘nonconformist glamour’ of Amelia Earhart and other pioneers

The Max Mara catwalk at Milan fashion week had well-cut coats, sturdy block-heeled boots, crisp white shirts and capacious suede handbags. What it quite deliberately did not have was shock value. “I hope everyone watching this show can recognise something of themselves in what they see,” said Ian Griffiths, the British designer who has been at this Italian house since 1987. “I think that’s really important. Without being critical of other brands or designers, so much of fashion alienates people and makes them feel that they aren’t good enough or thin enough or young enough to wear what’s being represented.”

Trousers were pleated and roomy, skirts long enough to be elegant but not long enough to trip you up. In shades of sand and chalk, grey and black, every piece was designed to work with everything else, and to blend into an existing wardrobe. The styling gestures – a popped collar here, a knotted belt there – stopped short of gimmick. The models could have walked off the runway and on to the Milan street – which, Griffiths said backstage, was the point. “The catwalk show is only the prelude to what to me is the real presentation, which is when I see women walking down the street in my clothes.”

The push to buy lasting, sustainable clothes is a good thing, but every wardrobe need a bit of mischief

I do hope you are wearing your zebra stripe trousers today. Anyone who is anyone is wearing zebra stripes this month, you know. If you haven’t yet got with the programme, I suggest you nip to the shops and snap some up before they are all gone. It would be mortifying to be the last one without a pair. Hurry!

Only teasing. Fashion doesn’t work like that any more. The days when people like me bullied everyone else into wearing banana yellow one season and puffball sleeves the next are over. Looking trendy is over. Timeless chic is the only show in town. Peacocking has been phased out in favour of understatement and personal style.

Milan show full of diaphanous dresses and visible bras celebrates ‘incredible feminist’ of the 1970s, Raffaella Carrà

Maria Grazia Chiuri has been having more fun with clothes since she decamped from Paris back to her native Rome to work at Fendi. “I have less of a uniform these days. I think it is because being back here makes me feel young again. I’m not sure my daughter appreciates [this attitude]! But I don’t care,” she said at a preview before her Milan fashion week show.

Not that Chiuri doesn’t approach her work as a designer seriously. She described her second ready-to-wear season at Fendi not as a show, or a collection, but as “the second part of the project I am working on for them”.

Stop ‘pushing through the pain’ or ceaselessly searching for the ‘right retinol’ – there are some great alternatives

Anyone with an internet connection will no doubt have heard that retinoids – a group of vitamin A-based compounds – are the most evidenced and effective ingredients in treating the visible signs of skin ageing. Message received loud and clear. But what often goes unheard are the voices of many beauty consumers who have found that they simply cannot use them. All too often, I see experts online telling those complaining of discomfort, unremitting dryness, persistent redness, stinging or angry reactions that they just need to “find the right retinol” or simply “push through” the pain barrier. But I will die on this hill: not everyone can use retinoids, and they can still achieve great results without them.

If I don’t convince you, believe esteemed consultant dermatologist Dr Justine Hextall (a woman I respect and trust so completely that I have entrusted her with my children’s skin health), because she agrees. While Hextall, as any good derm would, prescribes retinoids on a daily basis, she also sees patients for whom there is a more appropriate, kinder pathway. “While retinoids are effective, they can be difficult to tolerate and may not be used consistently in those with sensitive skin,” she says. “Consistency is the key in skincare.”

Under the Finnish capital lies a world of swimming pools, go-karting tracks, playgrounds – and even an art gallery

The moon is an impostor. Swimming backstroke beneath its surface, I look up at craggy hollows in close relief. White rock undulates in all directions, a forest of peaks rising next to a desert of craters. Every time I trick myself into thinking I’m somewhere celestial, the sound of children splashing brings me back to earth.

This is no lunar landscape but Helsinki’s underground swimming hall, excavated from granite bedrock and officially opened in 1993. These days, Itäkeskus uimahalli is one of the Finnish capital’s most visited leisure facilities, welcoming 400,000 people a year. Local people mingle with tourists, I will discover, during a week exploring Helsinki’s subterranean metropolis.

This once industrial area has been transformed into a vibrant artistic hub with a thriving food and drink scene

Located just north of the Centrale train station, Bolognina neighbourhood is more than just a Little Bologna. It is a completely different world from the medieval maze of palaces, churches and towers that define the city’s “Centro Storico”, which is increasingly filled with crowds of tourists as Bologna joins the big league of Italian getaway destinations.

A long-distance walking route in the south of France devised by the celebrated land artist offers intrepid hikers an opportunity to immerse themselves in nature and art

At 69, I had never hiked with a backpack and I had no idea what land art was. Nonetheless, when my friend Jackie, a nature documentary film-maker, invited me to join her and her friends Wendy and Sasha on a hiking trip to Refuges d’Art in the mountainous countryside of Haute-Provence, I said a resounding “yes”. We would be sleeping alongside sculptures by the renowned land artist Andy Goldsworthy.

First, I watch Rivers and Tides, a documentary on Goldsworthy’s work, and discover he has built exquisite ice sculptures and stone cairns in my own country, Canada. His work seems to speak to an older part of the soul. Then, I start walking up hills, gradually adding weights to my backpack until I can comfortably carry 9kg (20lb).

The Alpe Adria loop is an eight-day walking trail that crisscrosses borders, taking in dramatic peaks, glorious meadows and charming places to stay

‘Achtung! Staatsgrenze!” OK, the signpost marking the “state border” didn’t have exclamation marks but, with its no-nonsense Prussian font, it did feel quite shouty. The only thing was, no one on the Feistritzer Alm – a peaceful sweep of Alpine pasture at the meeting of Austria and Italy – was paying any attention to it at all.

Hikers hiked straight past. Mountain bikers used it to prop up their cycles. Cows grazed willy-nilly. And the patrons of the Schutzhütte Oisternig enjoyed their cold beers regardless of which country they were in. While official boundaries may have changed in these parts over the centuries, the magnificence of the mountains has not.

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

Last weekend the quiz master was taking in the sights, sounds and overwhelming history of Istanbul. Did that deter the writing of 15 questions on the week’s headlines, random pop culture and general knowledge? Absolutely not. However, you may detect a certain “Cats of Istanbul” flavour to today’s effort, which is in no way a transparent attempt to show off the quiz master’s holiday photos. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 266 – Cats of Istanbul special

The year’s most popular slang reveals what young people think about artificial intelligence – and it’s not positive

Name: “That’s AI!”

Age: Brand new.

Move over ready salted, salt and vinegar and cheese and onion. Gourmet crisps are everywhere, but which are actually worth trying?

It seems the era of the “holy trinity of flavours” – ready salted, salt and vinegar, cheese and onion – is over. Gourmet crisps are everywhere. Caviar and truffle flavours are on corner-shop shelves, while supermarket brands now include everything from glazed meats to blue cheese. We tasted 100 of the strangest crisp options available to find out which are worth coming back to and which should have stayed in the test kitchen.

100. Grouse and whinberry, Taste of Game
For someone who has tasted neither grouse nor whinberry before, after eating these crisps I never want to. Smelling as meaty as a butcher’s but tasting sweet, this is truly the worst of all worlds.
Taste: 0/10, texture: 2/10, novelty: 10/10

A feature called AI Overviews has been a profound change, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting

Google has put artificial intelligence at the front and center of its search bar. The most-visited site on the internet still shows the same list of links to users, but they have to scroll past a summarized response from an AI chatbot, a feature Google calls AI Overviews. The change to what was once the gateway to the rest of the internet has been profound, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting.

“AI is driving the most significant upgrade of the Google Search experience ever,” wrote Liz Reid, Google’s vice-president of search, last August. In May, the company said more AI is coming.

A teenager struggling with climate anxiety searches for hope in an unexpected place – writing letters to imprisoned activists. Max, 14, is on a quest to understand the human stories behind direct action and why so many climate protesters are in prison​. As replies begin to arrive, a dialogue bridging generations unfolds and connection transforms despair into purpose. ​When Max writes to the judge presiding over a high-profile trial​, he is surprised to hear the letter referred to in the judge's closing remarks

A conflict that began with tanks and then artillery is now pivoting around a new generation of drones focused on military, industrial, economic and civilian targets

Finally, in the dead of night, the threat above has passed. The rain has eased and the Ukrainian drones are ready, prepared by a ground crew shrouded in hard-to-detect green and red lights. A small succession of Ukrainian Fire Point FP-2 craft, miniature monoplanes with a 6-metre wingspan and more than 100kg of explosive, line up for an attack mission into occupied Luhansk, over 200 miles away.

The drone’s main piston engine is a familiar scooter’s buzz, but its launch booster is something else. The jet sound reverberates, almost painfully. A burst of fire lurches into the distance, the last of which signifies it is time for Ukraine’s 413 Raid drone regiment to pack and go.

The launch of an FP-2 drone during the mission into occupied Luhansk

In the last 15 years, she has gone from respected actor to stratospheric, garlanded star. Now she is back on TV as a chic sleuth in a racy car – despite being terrible at guessing whodunnit

It is high summer and, while Lesley Manville may be suffering a bit with hay fever and the heat (“I’m so white, all I do is burn”), she doesn’t do wilting. Soon to head outside to tend to the ailing garden of her London home, she is enjoying a rare period of rest after six almost unbroken months of Oedipus on Broadway and then Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the National. She keeps, incidentally, the Tony she won for playing Jocasta in Oedipus on a shelf by the computer, “next to its friend, Larry Olivier” – an Olivier awarded for the same role.

“You don’t go into a job thinking about awards,” she says, before grinning conspiratorially. “Listen, you don’t say to an Olympian, ‘Oh, is it OK that you didn’t win?’ Yes, you like to win!”

Whether produced by Russia, China or far-right influencers, deepfakes and disinfo are pushing multiple false narratives

Russian disinformation campaigns are varied in their falsehoods and strategies.

The narratives range from a deepfake Tom Cruise criticising the Paris Olympics to portraying a recent Russian attack on a train near the Ukraine-Poland border as a false-flag operation.

How did you find them? Were they helpful in getting you to the next stage in your education or in securing a job?

Teenagers are to be offered new vocational GCSEs in England, marking the biggest changes to the qualification for more than a decade.

From 2029, pupils will be able to supplement compulsory GCSE subjects such as English, maths and sciences with courses including building and construction, creative media production and child development.

We’d like to hear from people who have stayed together or continued living together after separating because they can’t afford to live on their own

The average length of marriages ending in divorce in England and Wales has reached a record high, with lawyers suggesting that financial pressures may be causing some couples to delay separating.

Rising housing, childcare and other living costs can make the prospect of maintaining two households difficult or unaffordable. Meanwhile, some separated couples are continuing to live under the same roof.

Is this a recent development, or are you a die-hard compact disc fan? What do you like about the format?

Despite the prevalence of music streaming services, CDs players appear to be having a resurgence.

John Lewis said searches are up 96% since July, and portable CD players are also proving popular, which chimes with a report this year that found CD sales are up 16%.

We would like to hear from people working in tech industries about their views on joining a union

For the first time, Meta has agreed to give a trade union direct access to its UK staff, according to the FT.

It will mean that Prospect trade union will be able to speak directly to the social media company’s 5,000 UK staff about the benefits of belonging to a union.

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