Everything you need to know (and more) about every squad member. Click on the player pictures for more information

As a nation we face a choice: either follow the far-right rhetoric of hate and division, or unite under our values of decency and determination

• Jeevun Sandher is Labour MP for Loughborough

Like you, I was horrified when I watched the video of Henry Nowak’s death. I cannot imagine what his family are going through.

He was 18 years old. I think of my family members about the same age as Henry, with their whole lives ahead of them. I know how devastated I would feel if they were murdered.

Jeevun Sandher is Labour MP for Loughborough

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.

Plays about political extremes, religious sects, swimming the Channel and an 80th birthday party are among the highlights at this summer’s arts spectacular

Producer Francesca Moody has shown a sure touch for spotting fringe hits (Fleabag and Baby Reindeer among them). Her new offering, by Australia’s Hannah Reilly, is about a feminist podcaster who becomes an online “slutfluencer” to earn some easy money, but has a price to pay.
Summerhall, 6-31 August

As recent conflicts expose vulnerability of fertiliser markets and its effect on food security, VunaNexus offers an alternative

When staff answer the call of nature at the European Space Agency’s headquarters in Paris, their urine is not simply flushed away – it is turned into something much more useful. While urine-diverting toilets are often associated with smelly festival loos, there is nothing bohemian about recycling nutrients from human pee, said David de Chambrier, the chief executive of VunaNexus.

The process isn’t so different from recovering minerals in used electronics.

He’s pink, dotty and as British as a Boots meal deal. In recent months he’s duetted with pop stars, appeared on Saturday Night Live and been declared the UK’s equivalent of Mickey Mouse. What’s behind this strange comeback?

Margaret Thatcher wasn’t to blame for the closure of Britain’s coalmines. Mr Blobby was. A harrowing spoof documentary exposed this horrific truth during the finale of Saturday Night Live UK’s debut season. Back in 1992, drilling activity at Nottinghamshire’s Grumthorpe Colliery awoke an evil entity buried underground. Mr Blobby promptly went on an unstoppable murderous rampage, ripping off miners’ limbs and becoming “an atom bomb made flesh”.

Mr Blobby being disinterred is an apt metaphor. Recent months have seen the pink-and-yellow agent of chaos unearthed and on the comeback trail. He has appeared on primetime TV shows, duetted with popstars, and convinced nostalgic punters to part with a surprising amount of cash to get their hands on Blobby-themed merchandise. What has prompted the comeback of a character once considered irredeemably naff?

Restaurant dining is a terrific and expensive treat, so how can you be sure to get the best from every menu? Experts give their advice, from looking for the strangest dish to going easy on the booze

For many of us, going to a restaurant is a real treat, so you want to make the most of every mouthful. From starters to small plates, how can you ensure that you have the best possible dining experience? Restaurant critics share the insider secrets to ordering well when eating out.

PM says Britons are ‘reasonable, tolerant people’ and backs MP’s legal action against Grok firm over fake sexualised images

• UK politics live – latest updates

Elon Musk is “interfering in our politics” and attempting to create division, Keir Starmer has said in a significant toughening of government language about the X owner.

It comes after weeks of posts by Musk on his social media platform about the murder of Henry Nowak, many of which have used far-right themes and talking points.

Farage’s party brings in £9m largely from crypto billionaires in three months, more than twice that of Labour and Tories

• UK politics live – latest updates

Reform UK is raising millions more than the other political parties from private donations, bringing in £9m largely from cryptocurrency billionaires in the first three months of the year.

Nigel Farage’s party took a £3m donation from the cryptocurrency and aviation investor, Christopher Harborne, who is a British-Thai dual citizen, and £4m from the cryptocurrency entrepreneur Ben Delo, who is relocating to the UK from Hong Kong.

Exclusive: New loopholes for developers will exacerbate extreme disparities across country, charity coalition warns

The poorest and most nature-deprived communities in England will be further left behind in their access to green spaces if proposed changes to planning laws go ahead, a report finds.

More than 7.4 million people in England live in areas completely devoid of immediate biodiversity, including 1.4 million children under 15, the report commissioned by a number of wildlife and environmental NGOs says.

Group calls ceasefire a ‘roadmap to annihilate part of the Lebanese people’, throwing regional peace talks into doubt

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Hezbollah has rejected a US-brokered ceasefire plan agreed by the Lebanese and Israeli governments, throwing the future of a truce in Lebanon and regional peace negotiations into question.

The group’s leader, Naim Qassem, called the ceasefire plan a “roadmap to annihilate part of the Lebanese people” in a statement delivered on Thursday.

Criticism comes from across political spectrum after blow to Friedrich Merz’s government

Germany’s unprecedented failure to win one of the rotating seats on the UN security council has prompted an intense round of soul searching in Berlin, and raised questions about its claims to international leadership under Friedrich Merz.

The council vote on Wednesday, which elected Austria and Portugal to a two-year term along with Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe, was a blow to Merz’s struggling government, which has sought to position itself as a leading European voice on the world stage.

Despite Labour’s promises to increase recruitment, school census shows a fall of nearly 2,000 teachers since last year

The number of teachers working in England’s state schools has shrunk for the second year in a row, even as the government said it was meeting its promises to increase recruitment where needed.

The annual school workforce census shows there are 466,300 teachers in state schools this year, a fall of more than 1,900 since last year due to declining numbers in mainstream primary and secondary schools.

Exclusive: Analysis shows resort has yet to recoup Disney’s investment despite record revenue and 16m annual visitors

Disney has still not recouped $4.2bn of its investment in Disneyland Paris after more than 30 years, even though the resort is now its best-performing international outpost, according to an analysis of recent filings.

The sprawling theme park complex swung open its ornate iron gates in 1992 and now attracts about 16 million visitors every year. It is wholly owned by Disney and is home to two theme parks – the fairytale-inspired Disneyland and Disney Adventure World, which launched its largest-ever expansion in late March. The lavish land, themed to the hit animated movie Frozen, is part of a $2.5bn (€2bn) investment by Disney, and its new chief executive, Josh D’Amaro, was on hand for the opening alongside Emmanuel Macron.

Founder of Greensill Capital says there was no finding he acted dishonestly after his company collapsed owing £1.6bn

The disgraced former financier Lex Greensill has been banned from running a UK company for nine years after he was judged to be unfit because of the 2021 collapse of his £1.6bn supply chain invoicing firm.

The government’s Insolvency Service said on Thursday that Greensill had signed a disqualification undertaking, bringing the case to an end before a trial was due to begin on 8 June.

Pulp Fiction director writes in Sight and Sound that ‘since the pandemic … it seems almost impossible for a new movie to come out that I don’t pick to death’

Quentin Tarantino has criticised contemporary Hollywood, calling it “a flavourless sausage factory”.

Writing in Sight and Sound magazine, Tarantino said that “since the pandemic … it seems almost impossible for a new movie to come out that I don’t pick to death”. He added: “Flaws, implausibilities, audience pandering, miscast performers or just plain stupid shit usually torpedoes every new movie coming out of the flavourless sausage factory that used to call itself Hollywood.”

Some will question its credibility – but the alternative future to the one imagined in the Global Justice Report is far more bleak

• ‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival

In our increasingly dystopian world, who wouldn’t want to at least be open to a utopian antidote? The Global Justice Report, published on Thursday, outlines how to build a prosperous, equitable world within safe planetary boundaries. It’s a push from the modern eco-socialist left in a global battle for ideas that will shape the future.

Based on past social achievements and future energy transformation, it indicates that the overwhelming majority of people on the planet could, by the end of the century, work less and earn more – while keeping temperatures down and avoiding much of the current destruction of nature. It is an ambitious, comprehensive and upbeat plan, and a stronger argument around which to build a political campaign than abstract goals of net zero or decarbonisation.

As São Paulo faces a climate-induced water crisis, campaigners are fighting to reverse the impact of pollution and illegal deforestation on its largest reservoir

In a small motorboat laden with water-monitoring equipment, biologist Marta Marcondes and community activist Wesley Silvestre Rosa cross Billings reservoir on the far southern edge of São Paulo. Bright white herons glide over the water, which is flanked by thick dark green clusters of Brazil’s Atlantic forest, as the boat heads towards one of the more polluted parts of the reservoir.

“We see where sewage is entering, we see what has been deforested and how that has affected the water quality of the reservoir,” Marcondes says.

Click your way through the group stage and the knockouts to crown champion

The star of The Fast Show and Father Brown – as well as the original Arthur Weasley – on friendly death eaters, famous Brummies and Chinese trains

What were the best and worst moments shooting the Harry Potter films? bumble1
The worst part was being away from home and the long hours. The best bit was the work and talking to the other actors. I look back with great fondness on that. I remember saying to Alan Rickman that the collective noun for actors is an anecdote.

Michael Gambon was the king of stories. He’d start a joke and you never knew where he was going. But he’d hone them; they were finely crafted – some of his best work was backstage. Richard Griffiths was also a great raconteur. His stories were brilliant, and completely unpublishable.

Want to spend less time on your phone? We asked psychotherapists, professors and specialists for practical (and achievable) ways to cut down

• The best screen-free activities

Everywhere you look, people are glued to their smartphones. If you haven’t noticed this phenomenon, it’s likely because you, too, are glued to the little dopamine-deliverer.

In March, Meta and YouTube had to pay a combined $6m after a US court found that the tech companies’ platforms were designed to be addictive. Put such tempting apps in a device that’s carried everywhere, and that’s a recipe for compulsive behaviour.

​As World Cup fever begins, we go beyond terrace chants and team anthems to look at footy-mad songwriting, from Cardiff rap to Zimbabwean rumbira ... and Rod Stewart

Ah, fathers and sons and football. Here, Rod gets teary-eyed remembering how his dad used to cheer him from the touchline: an inessential but sweet and heartfelt song. Though Rod once told me that he tended to shout at his own son from the touchline, because he never tracked back.

When Dave Grimstead left the police after more than 30 years, he knew just what he wanted to do: solve some of its most intractable mysteries. The founder of Locate International explains why the country needs him and his volunteers

When it comes to cold cases, crime dramas get a lot wrong. “In reality, you’d never reach the end in nine neat episodes, all wrapped up, with a timeline that moved nicely along, building tension,” says Dave Grimstead, who spent more than 30 years in the police. Real cold cases are rollercoasters of false leads, rabbit holes and dead ends. “They’re never solved by one heroic detective, either,” Grimstead adds. “It requires a much bigger team than you see on TV.” But one cliche does ring true – the detective who can’t give up. Most will have at least one unsolved case that stays with them long after the spotlight has moved elsewhere. In a free moment, they will find themselves following a lead, putting in calls. Decades later, they might still wake up thinking about it.

One of these cases, for Grimstead, was the disappearance of Melanie Hall in June 1996. Hall was 25 and never came home from Cadillacs, a nightclub in Bath where she was last seen arguing with her boyfriend. Grimstead was a detective constable in Avon and Somerset’s major crime team at that time, and what began as a missing person investigation soon began to resemble a murder inquiry. Hundreds of hours of interviews and CCTV footage, searches, reconstructions and TV appeals failed to reveal what had happened to Hall. In 2009, one of Grimstead’s supervisors, Mike Britton, was still investigating it, fitting it round his caseload, when her body was found in a bin liner beside the M5. Although this happened just days before Britton’s retirement, he cancelled his plans so he could work on the case as a civilian investigator. It is still unsolved.

My friends and I wanted to tell the story of Cuban life, without interference. Before long, I was being isolated, monitored and interrogated

• A version of this essay was previously published in the Dial under the title The Sneeze. Translation by Lily Meyer

One day, in the middle of 2014, my friend Carlos Manuel Álvarez asked me to join him on the newsroom’s balcony. Wind gusted in our eyes. Elbows on the railing, we stared at the sea as we talked. We were killing time because neither of us had a computer to work on. All of them were in use. At OnCuba, the magazine in Havana where we worked, only editors got their own computers. The rest of us had to share, which sometimes meant waiting an hour. Several of my university friends and I had lucked into contributing roles at OnCuba, and even though we weren’t on staff, we were always in the newsroom. It was a way to keep our group together.

Sometimes, over beers, we dreamed aloud about a newsroom coup. We wanted to topple Hugo Cancio, the publisher, and turn his resources – a giant office with multiple rooms and a balcony with sea views; computers and internet; money; connections – into the media outlet we wanted. Something with our imprint.

Our plan is radical – but by transforming how we live on a finite planet, nearly everyone gains

• ‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival

Imagine a future in which everyone enjoys high levels of wellbeing; where 90% of the world’s population doubles their income but works half the hours we work today. A world in which the bottom half of humanity sees its share of global wealth rise from just 2% today to 30%; a world where we consume enough, but nobody over-consumes. And imagine achieving this on a planet that can comfortably sustain human life without its climate breaking down.

Against the bleak techno-authoritarian futures now being sold to us, a radical new vision for global progress in the 21st century feels urgently needed. The most credible vision is one in which the habitability of the planet is a precondition for human development and equality.

Tony Blair’s departure as PM should have prompted a fresh start for Labour. But Starmer’s sad, backward-looking government remains in his thrall

Now half term is over, let’s have a quick quiz. Reading these lines, can you spot the common theme? Westminster has been mesmerised this week by the messages of a famous Blairite, Peter Mandelson, especially his damning exchanges with fellow carrier of the Blair torch, Pat McFadden. Last week’s big news was an essay written by Tony Blair himself. That was followed by a report on youth unemployment written by Blair’s former secretary of health, Alan Milburn. The story of this summer is shaping up to be a battle for the Labour leadership between Andy Burnham, whom Blair called “an outstanding member of my government”, and Wes Streeting, who is an outstanding member of his fanclub.

Catch it? That’s right: were little green men to visit Britain, they would think it under the control of some guy called Tony Blair. If not chief executive of these islands, he’s certainly the chair. If it’s not him in the spotlight, some other back number from the class of ’97 is hastily pressed into service. Just taken a massive tonking in the local elections? Better call Harriet Harman and Gordon Brown into No 10 for the photos. On it goes, through Jonathan Powell, Michael Barber, Liz Lloyd, Tim Allan. Need a walking contacts book to charm Donald Trump? Let’s call Peter … Oh dear.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

We hear so much about Victoria Beckham being funny, but it’s Wagatha Christie villain Vardy who delivers the real quips and zingers

The first I knew of Rebekah Vardy was when she appeared after more dots than anybody has ever used before, in the whodunnit denouement of Wagatha Christie. “It’s .......... Rebekah Vardy’s account,” read Coleen Rooney’s bombshell statement, instantly transforming her frenemy into a household name.

Turns out no PR is bad PR though, because seven years and a long-running legal feud later, villain of the piece Vardy has a primetime TV show on ITV1. I probably wouldn’t hold your breath for flowers or chocolates though, Col, even if reviewers hadn’t given The Vardys such a kicking.

The ceasefire has held just enough to prevent a return to all-out war, but neither side is close to achieving peace

The US-Iran ceasefire is entering yet another round of escalation since it came into effect on 8 April. This week, there have been further strikes on Iran by the US, and Iranian retaliation on Kuwait and Bahrain, alongside Israeli escalation in Lebanon. Earlier flare-ups over the past two months were quickly contained. Both sides have tried to keep the balance between no war and no peace. But as this ceasefire drags on it risks becoming yet another Middle East stalemate, albeit one with international economic and political consequences.

Four obstacles are preventing progress. The first is trust. Iran does not believe Donald Trump can deliver a deal, much less stick to one. The fear is not only that Washington will walk away again but that the goalposts will keep moving, where first nuclear limits are imposed, followed by missiles, then regional policy and finally further political concessions dressed up as security guarantees.

Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House

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.

Nothing does more for your ego than realising you can make a better decision than a bot with all of human knowledge at its digital fingertips

I am not, by nature, an early adopter. There comes a point in our lives where change becomes more irritating than exciting and, I suspect, I reached it sooner than most. But when a workplace recently tasked me with exploring practical applications for AI, I spotted an opportunity to cast off my luddite inclinations.

It turned out AI was very good at mimicking most of the things I could already do. Irrespective of quality, it could churn out articles, reports, presentations, fiction, even podcasts with stammering hosts. That was no use to me. What I wanted help with was all the stuff I was useless at. There was an obvious target: DIY.

The Oprah-approved book is said to have left out important financial details, so why does the writer remain a pin-up for wronged women?

A strong contender for the most satisfying TV clip of the year comes from a recent interview by Oprah Winfrey with the writer Belle Burden, whose memoir, Strangers, was parked at the top of the US bestseller lists for months. Burden tells the story of how her husband coldly walked out on his family, only returning, she tells Winfrey, to inform the kids the marriage was over and demand of the wife on whom he had cheated, “I’m starving – can you make me a sandwich?”

There are many small cruelties in the book, but this, among the worst, triggers outright pantomime incredulity from Winfrey, who murmurs, “Even the cameraman said ‘oh’.” Burden wanted to model kindness in front of her daughters; she wanted to show her husband exactly what he had walked out on. “So,” says Winfrey, arriving at what appears to be the outer limits of her famous ability to empathise, “you made him the sandwich?!!” Burden smiles, weakly. “I made the sandwich.”

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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.

Everything is material for Nige, who made a rare appearance at PMQs to ask question about Henry Nowak case

There was a rare sighting in Westminster on Wednesday. The lesser-spotted Farage. A species so elusive that not even David Attenborough has previously recorded him in the wild. Nige blinked several times, trying to get used to his unnatural surroundings.

He looked sunbaked. His time on the run ever since the Guardian revealed his previously undisclosed £5m handout from a crypto-billionaire in Thailand has clearly been spent mainly outdoors. Sleeping under the sun, moving by night under the stars. Anything to keep one step ahead of journalists asking awkward questions. One twitcher thought he had maybe caught sight of him on the Costa del Crime.

Proper debate is at risk of being crowded out of the political arena by extremists peddling racially aggravated conspiracy theories

In Germany, it is a Brandmauer, a firewall. In France, it is the cordon sanitaire – a refusal by mainstream parties to do deals with the far right. That resolve has weakened in recent years, but naming the taboo still serves an important function. To invigilate the line where radical conservatism turns to ultranationalism, it is first necessary to say it exists.

That is not happening in Britain, as has become clear in the aftermath of Henry Nowak’s murder. The episode is disturbing. Police failed to recognise the severity of a young man’s stab wounds and, after being misled by a false claim that he had carried out a racist assault, briefly treated the dying victim as a suspect. However difficult and confused the scene was, this was a catastrophic outcome. It is right that every aspect of the case be thoroughly reviewed.

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

The shocking case of a man left on the breadline after being recruited to work in the UK’s care sector should prompt ministers to act

The risk of mistreatment for overseas workers recruited for jobs in the UK on health and care visas is well established. Examples range from rip-off agents’ fees and illegally low pay to conditions akin to debt bondage, with passports and wages withheld. But Shabin Shaji’s employment tribunal win over Swan Care Solutions Ltd is thought to be the first time that an individual has succeeded in forcing a business to hand over unpaid wages. His victory should give hope to others in similar situations. It is also a chilling illustration of how migrant workers can become trapped in an unbalanced system in which they have too few rights.

Mr Shaji, a computer science graduate, left his home in south India in 2023 and paid £17,000 to an agent who helped him to get a job with Swan in Stafford. Last month, a judge in Birmingham awarded him nearly £30,000 after he spent a year without work, pleading with Swan for shifts that never materialised, while living off scraps and the kindness of strangers. He eventually found other work, but has since returned to India. Swan lost its licence to sponsor migrant workers.

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

Readers respond to an article by Nesrine Malik on what we lose when we trust machines over humans

Nesrine Malik is right to worry about the effect that AI may have on writing (AI is devoid of meaning and humanity. That’s why its vapid voice suits this political moment, 1 June). The examples she cites of fabricated quotations and unreliable research should concern anyone who values truth and public trust.

However, I suspect the deeper problem is not AI’s bland prose but its relationship to evidence. The writers caught out by false quotations were often not trying to deceive. They believed that they were using AI as a research aid while retaining editorial control. Yet somehow, fiction entered the factual record. The issue was not laziness but misplaced confidence in a system that can produce plausible reconstructions without distinguishing between what was observed, inferred or simply generated.

Mat Watkinson and Keith Flett respond to Jonathan Liew’s article asking why many self-professed progressives still use Elon Musk’s social media platform

Jonathan Liew wonders why people are still on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X (If you’re still on Elon Musk’s X, ask yourself this: why?, 28 May). There is an obvious answer: all major companies refuse to leave it. Sadly, it’s the quickest way to complain and get a result.

The BBC, supermarkets and travel companies are all in thrall to its power, because they know they can reach us as swiftly as we can reach them. They’re terrified of the oligarch’s influence. No one should have that power, but it will only start to crumble if these major influences on our lives leave X.
Mat Watkinson
Scarborough, North Yorkshire

Roberta Leem-Bruggen says she was working full-time hours in NHS settings but was considered a ‘non-earner’ and therefore not eligible for childcare support

Jamie Evans’ letter on childcare eligibility and the “nerd tax” (28 May) strongly resonated with me because I have experienced versions of this problem throughout higher education.

In 2020, I was a single parent studying for a clinical master’s degree. I spent over 40 hours a week on compulsory NHS placements while completing academic work. During that time, I received universal credit, including the childcare element, which enabled me to continue my studies.

Many people in developing countries cannot access preventive hygiene, key to attacking climate-driven superbugs, writes Helen Hamilton

As the UK swelters in unseasonably high temperatures, Andrew Gregory’s article underscores the growing urgency of a critical global health threat (Climate crisis is accelerating antibiotic resistance across world, study says, 26 May).

While drug misuse remains a key driver, the climate crisis means bacteria are mutating and spreading faster than ever before. Yet missing from this urgent global discussion is the foundational defence mechanism against the spread of infection: clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene.

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Updates from the first day of the series at Lord’s
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2nd over, first ball: England 4-0 (Duckett 0, Gay 4) It’s Kyle Jamieson and he has a present for Emilio Gay: a full toss! Gay guides it away behind square and smiles like a man who wasn’t expecting that.

1st over: England 0-0 (Duckett 0, Gay 0) The bowler is Matt Henry, the first ball a damp squib – a grubber outside off. Duckett leaves it, and the next one, which at least reaches the keeper aboce his ankles. Duckett does play at the third ball, and misses! He leaves the fourth and nudges the fifth and sixth. That may be the most sedate over of Duckett’s career.

Russian teenager wins 6-1, 6-3 to reach first slam final
Mail Katy | Sabalenka ‘wants to quit tennis’ after exit

First set: Kostyuk* 0-4 Andreeva (*denotes next server)

At 30-all, an unreturned serve gives Andreeva game point. A long rally plays out … Andreeva throws in a moon ball … and Kostyuk dismissively pulls off a winning drop shot! Deuce. Can Kostyuk finally get on the board? No, because Andreeva, on her second advantage, pummels a forehand deep to Kostyuk’s right, and Kostyuk can only frame the ball into the stands. This is turning into a very different story to Madrid.

All eyes will be on Team Melli amid the ongoing conflict with the US and Israel, making their campaign one of the most unusual and unpredictable of recent times

This article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June.

England are upbeat going into the toughest fixture in international football but the hosts’ threat will be amplified by the returning Bonmatí

The equation sounds simple: avoid defeat on Friday and England will qualify automatically for the Women’s World Cup. The reality of the task ahead is far more complicated. Facing the world champions, Spain, like the Serra de Tramuntana mountain range that towers into the sky behind the Estadi Mallorca Son Moix, is an imposing barrier between the Lionesses and Brazil 2027.

A positive result in Mallorca would do more than guarantee England a shot at glory next summer. It would send a powerful statement that England remain a force to be reckoned with if they can tame the game’s greatest technical midfield, again.

• Supporters groups condemn ‘immoral’ u-turn

• Fifa says policy a safety measure to prevent injury

Fifa has been accused of putting revenue ahead of fans’ health after banning reusable water bottles from being taken into World Cup stadiums.

In a late U-turn, the governing body rowed back on its advice that empty, transparent, reusable plastic bottles would be permitted inside venues, instead prohibiting them “to prevent risk and injury to players and attendees”.

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With every squad for the Geopolitics World Cup now finalised – Turkey, Jordan, Ghana and Uzbekistan were the last teams to confirm their 26-man rosters on Tuesday – we now know exactly who is making the trip to the tournament. But as a leading expert in rejection, constantly trying and failing to convince your inbox to let us out of the spam folder, Football Daily is just as interested in those who have been snubbed than those that will be subbed. The reactions to the omissions was also fascinating: sure, being selected to represent your country at the GWC is cool, but have you ever had to trawl through the Social Media Disgraces of Harry Maguire’s mum as she reacts to her son’s omission from the England squad with all the rage and injustice of Germany reacting to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles? And with that image seared into our collective brains, we humbly present our Omitted XI (4-3-3), the best non-knacked players (of qualified nations) that didn’t or won’t make it on to planes bound for the USA USA USA, Canada and Mexico.

Drawing on his own family’s experience, the Real Madrid and Germany defender is advocating for refugees and challenging stereotypes

As a child, Antonio Rüdiger would look out of his bedroom window to see whether anyone was playing on the field it overlooked. It was not a big pitch, but it had two goals, enough room for six-a-side and was where a young Rüdiger honed the skills that would take him to the top.

He grew up in Neukölln, Berlin, in a community largely made up of refugees, where his parents settled after fleeing civil war in Sierra Leone. It was, by his own account, a tough area, and football kept him out of trouble.

A first win at a World Cup is the floor-level target for a team that still relies heavily on the ability of Mohamed Salah

This article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June.

England could face knockout ties against DR Congo, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina before facing Spain in the final

By Opta Analyst

Who will England have to beat to win the World Cup for the first time since 1966? We can’t predict the future but, with the help of the Opta supercomputer, we can give a probabilistic estimate of what could happen. Let’s establish the “what if” scenarios and map out England’s potential route to the final.

• Chair compares Guardiola with The Boy Who Cried Wolf

• ‘He never thought he would stay more than four years’

Khaldoon al-Mubarak has revealed Pep Guardiola “quit 100 times” as Manchester City manager, with the chair comparing the empty threats to The Boy Who Cried Wolf, one of Aesop’s Fables.

Guardiola left City last month after 10 successful years during which he led the club to 17 major honours. He initially signed a three-year deal and while he agreed four extensions – in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024 – he was hesitant each time. Mubarak, who described himself as Guardiola’s “psychiatrist”, was instrumental in keeping him at City.

Opinions, the game loves them, and after Arsenal’s hugely divisive final, here’s my truth – feel free to yell back

What the world needs now is one last hot take on Arsenal and the Champions League final before we are all brought together in beautiful symbiotic harmony by the World Cup.

Key questions such as: was it a good game? Was this the perfect way to take on the best midfield and attack in world football or the ultimate illustration of footballing cowardice? Why didn’t all the people in the UK want Arsenal to win? Why did some Arsenal fans find that annoying? Could it possibly be that people are different and want different things from football matches they consume in very different ways?

The former Seahawks quarterback won a championship with Seattle and was a 10-time Pro Bowler. That doesn’t mean he’s seen as an all-time great

When a quarterback makes 10 Pro Bowls, wins the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, and leads his team to one Super Bowl win and (almost) another, you’d expect his Hall of Fame discussion would be fairly uncomplicated.

But in the case of one Russell Carrington Wilson, who appeared to announce his retirement on Wednesday after 14 seasons to join CBS Sports as an analyst, that discussion is multi-layered – much like Wilson’s career and legacy.

The New York Knicks are fighting history as well as the Spurs. On Wednesday night in San Antonio, they took a crucial step towards defeating both

It is uncommon to begin counting down after the opening game of an NBA finals, but these are uncommon times in New York, and the Knicks have been counting since Richard Nixon was president, their coach, Mike Brown, was three years old, and their opponent, the San Antonio Spurs, played in the American Basketball Association as the Dallas Chaparrals. After the Knicks took Game 1 105-95, the anticipation in New York rose to yet another level.

Game 1 was not a good game, but it was a great game. The first quarter was ragged. So was the second. Neither team could shoot from distance – the Knicks shot 31% from three, the Spurs 26%. The Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama, the sport’s heir apparent, made his finals debut with six turnovers, 6-for-21 shooting from the field, defensively alive but never transcendent. Both Wembanyama and Jalen Brunson, the Knicks’ superb, always underestimated engine, took nine three-pointers. Each made two.

Howard Bryant is the author of 11 books, including The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism and Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America.

Conservation groups say work has begun in protected coastal area, while prime minister insists project will bring jobs and investment

Protests in Albania over a proposed luxury resort backed by Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are set to intensify after opponents rejected an offer from the country’s prime minister “to discuss solutions”.

Thousands took to the streets of Tirana for a third straight day on Wednesday, some of them brandishing inflatable flamingos in a nod to feared environmental damage, amid mounting calls for the project to be blocked.

Darren Jones’s messages include requests for advice on the reshuffle and remarks about former business secretary Jonathan Reynolds

The prime minster’s close ally Darren Jones sent his commiserations to Peter Mandelson after he was sacked as US ambassador in messages that were not disclosed as part of the humble address release.

Jones’s texts also included requests for advice on the reshuffle and disobliging comments about the then business secretary Jonathan Reynolds and the influence of trade unions.

Plan departs from policy of bringing CDC staff back to US for treatment and offering support to all health workers

Former top US officials and other experts are urging the Trump administration to abandon plans for an Ebola quarantine and treatment centre in Kenya, as the union for workers with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls for Americans exposed to Ebola to be brought home for treatment.

Soon after the US revealed it was setting up a field hospital in Kenya for the Ebola quarantine and treatment of Americans, the Kenyan high court blocked the order – but the Kenyan and US governments moved forward anyway, with the first American responders reportedly landing at the Laikipia airbase on Saturday.

Family members said the author of the landmark comic book memoir ‘died of sadness’ after the death of her husband last year

Marjane Satrapi, the French-Iranian artist, film-maker and graphic novelist whose acclaimed memoir Persepolis helped reshape international perceptions of Iran, has died at the age of 56.

In a statement provided to French news agency AFP, relatives said she had “died of sadness” after the death of her husband, the Swedish producer Mattias Ripa.

Violence flares before protests on Thursday over president’s decision to remain in office after his term expired

Fierce clashes have taken place between government troops and militias allied with the opposition in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, damaging property and forcing some civilians to flee.

In the runup to the fighting, which started on Wednesday afternoon, opposition leaders embedded with militias set up positions in their clan strongholds the city.

Electric shock is one of the biggest causes of death among wildlife in the country but a court ruling is a first step to making power lines safe

Peque, a small black howler monkey, scratches her head as she sits on a thick wooden branch in a wired enclosure with seven other orphaned baby howler monkeys at a rescue centre in Nosara, on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast.

Last year, Peque was one of more than 100 animals to arrive at International Animal Rescue Costa Rica (IARCR) as a result of electrocution on power lines, which primates such as monkeys frequently mistake for trees and vines.

​The first heatwaves of the season reveal how ​ill-prepared governments across the continent are to protect people from increasingly dangerous temperatures

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Meteorological summer has begun, ushered in with scorching heat that struck before spring was up. Although western Europe is now mostly free from last week’s heat dome – which shattered temperature records for May in the UK and Ireland – it is already bracing for yet another sweltering summer. Oppressive days, restless nights and furious fires are brewing. On Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organisation warned us all to prepare for the imminent return of the warming weather pattern El Niño.

Scientists have not worked out how many people died during this latest bout of hot weather, but one environmental epidemiologist’s early modelling pegged it at 250 extra deaths in the UK alone on the weekend before temperatures peaked. The full death toll is likely to be particularly high because the heat struck before people had properly adjusted their behaviour to stay safe in the heat.

Campaigners say builders’ demolition of nest site highlights weak protection of wildlife from development

A building that was a noted nesting site for swifts, among the UK’s most at-risk birds, has been demolished during the nesting season, highlighting significant weaknesses in the protection of wildlife from development, campaigners say.

Contractors for the housebuilder Hill Group carried out the demolition of Regent House near Dorking station in Surrey over the last few weeks, during the nesting season which runs from 1 March to 31 August.

Governments urged to act to prevent potentially disastrous impacts on human resistance to medicines

The use of antibiotics on livestock will rise by nearly a third in the next 15 years without government intervention, according to new global estimates, with potentially disastrous impacts on human resistance to essential medicines.

Animal husbandry accounts for close to three-quarters of global use of antimicrobial medications and in many countries their use is poorly monitored. Some herds are routinely dosed and in many countries antimicrobials are used to increase the growth of animals bred for meat.

Veteran broadcaster makes ‘one of hardest decisions of my entire life’ weeks after revealing spread of cancer to spine

The veteran broadcaster Bob Harris has announced he is stepping down from BBC Radio 2 after 30 years so he can focus on “getting well again”, six weeks after revealing his prostate cancer had spread into his upper spine.

The 80-year-old host of The Country Show and Sounds of the 70s, known as “Whispering” Bob Harris, said his health problems were forcing him to step down and that it had been “one of the hardest decisions of my entire life”.

Civil rights scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw warns Birmingham City University’s decision part of extremist campaign that has ‘travelled across Atlantic’

A leading US civil rights scholar has urged Birmingham City University (BCU) to reverse its decision to close its black studies course, comparing it to the attack on diversity, equity and inclusion in the US.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles and Columbia University, expressed “profound concern” about plans to withdraw the MA in black studies and global justice, just months after the course was launched.

No service expected on Circle or Piccadilly lines with Metropolitan and Central lines also badly affected

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A London Underground drivers’ strike has brought another day of transport disruption to the capital on Thursday.

Transport for London (TfL) had urged the RMT union to call off the strike, the second 24-hour stoppage this week in a dispute over the introduction of a four-day working week.

Cenk Uygur was due to appear at SXSW alongside streamer Hasan Piker but Home Office cancelled travel authorisation

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A leftwing US political commentator has described the UK government’s decision to ban him from entering the country as “haunting and hilarious” and “Kafkaesque”.

Cenk Uygur, the founder and a host on Young Turks, a well-established progressive media outlet, was banned earlier this week from entering the UK to attend a speaking engagement alongside Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer who has become a popular figure on the US political left.

US president alleges there is ‘big cheating’ in elections for governor and Los Angeles mayor as results are pending

Donald Trump has alleged without evidence that Democrats are cheating in California’s primaries and claimed in a late-night social media post that the US attorney’s office in Los Angeles was investigating.

As counting continues in the most populous state in the US, the president’s unfounded remarks are likely to further alarm election observers, who have warned of the risk of escalating misinformation in the absence of a final result.

Islamic State-linked militia blamed for raids in North Kivu as governor says three patients with disease fled clinics

Rebel attacks around a town that is one of the centres of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have left more than 30 people dead over the past few days, complicating the response to the disease.

At least 10 people were massacred in raids on three villages around the city of Beni, in North Kivu, in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

After the dramatic termination of Scott Pelley, four of the show’s seven full-time correspondents are out under Bari Weiss’s leadership

For many years now, CBS News employees entering the network’s New York headquarters have walked by a poster showing the seven correspondents who have helped keep 60 Minutes the most-watched show in news for 52 straight television seasons: Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Bill Whitaker, Anderson Cooper, Sharyn Alfonsi, Jon Wertheim and Cecilia Vega.

Over the last tumultuous week, three of those correspondents – Pelley, Alfonsi and Vega – have been fired. Cooper – who is also a CNN primetime anchor – announced in February that he was leaving the show. Amid the most significant uproar in the show’s lengthy history, CBS News staffers and 60 Minutes veterans now have two central questions: who will be left to make the show’s 59th season, which begins in September? And will it still feel like 60 Minutes?

Minimal gains on battlefield as Kyiv largely halts Moscow’s spring-summer offensive; Ukraine missile maker tests homegrown Patriot alternative. What we know on day 1,562

Russia’s failure to advance on the battlefield is why it is escalating its air raids on major Ukrainian cities, analysts say. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) thinktank said the strikes were also aimed at distracting from the impact of Ukrainian long-range attacks into Russia. The Finnish Black Bird Group’s latest data shows, according to Reuters, that Russian monthly territorial gains have fallen sharply compared with the same period last year. Ukrainian open-source group DeepState this week said Russian troops in May saw their smallest monthly gains since October 2023 – 14 sq km – despite a 37.5% spike in assaults by Russian forces.

“Ukrainian forces have largely halted the Russian spring-summer 2026 offensive so far, and Russian forces in May 2026 have gained a presence in only a fraction of the territory they did in May 2025,” said an ISW assessment. This year, Ukrainian forces have also recaptured territory. John Helin, Black Bird Group analyst, said: “If the Russians can’t find ways to pick up momentum significantly, the goal of capturing Donbas this year is slipping out of their reach fast.”

Mathieu Boulègue of the US-based Center for European Policy Analysis said Moscow’s war machine was also grappling with shrinking industrial capacity due to western sanctions, as well as dwindling stocks of nearly all weaponry. “They are really slowly, I think, changing the cost-benefit calculus of the Kremlin,” he said of Russia’s appetite for continuing the war.

Ukraine’s Fire Point, a missile and drone maker, said it had test-flown a ballistic missile meant for air defence as Kyiv wrangles with a dearth of ammunition for foreign-supplied missile shield systems such as Patriot. The Fire Point CEO, Iryna Terekh, said “a fully controlled manoeuvring flight of the FP-7.X missile” took place and it would form the basis of the future Freyja anti-ballistic interceptor.

A Ukrainian attack on “non-residential buildings in Simferopol” in occupied Crimea killed at least three people and wounded seven others, the region’s head Russian official, Sergey Aksyonov, said early on Thursday. Separately, Moscow-installed authorities in the Donetsk region said a drone strike hit a bus, killing seven people and wounding 11. Officials said the bus was hit at Yenakiyevo as it travelled from Moscow to Simferopol in Crimea.

Russian shelling killed at least three civilians in Ukraine’s frontline city of Kramatorsk in the east and Moscow’s forces attacked areas near the south-eastern city of Dnipro with drones and missiles, officials said on Wednesday. Vadym Filashkin, governor of the Donetsk region, said 11 people were injured in the daytime Russian attack on residential buildings in Kramatorsk.

In the southern city of Kherson, one person was killed in a drone attack that destroyed 36 apartments in a residential building, said Oleksandr Prokudin, the regional governor. The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Oleksandr Hanzha, said there had been three Russian strikes near the region’s largest city, Dnipro, injuring eight people and triggering a large fire. Three people were in hospital in serious condition. Ukraine’s president. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in his nightly video address that Russian forces struck food storage areas and a postal depot with drones and missiles.

Ukrainian drones hit energy and military sites in St Petersburg early on Wednesday, hours before international guests gathered for an economic forum, in a deep embarrassment for Vladimir Putin, Luke Harding and Pjotr Sauer write. Guests arrived for Wednesday’s opening ceremony under a pall of thick smoke. Ukraine also struck the nearby Kronstadt naval base and shipyard in Leningrad oblast, home to Russia’s Baltic fleet, setting fire to the Russian guided-missile corvette Boikiy.

Deliveries in 30 minutes or less coming to Manchester and Birmingham and fresh groceries service to start in London

Amazon is expanding fast-track deliveries in the UK, including adding fresh fruit and vegetables to same-day services, after closing its standalone grocery stores.

The firm said it would expand Amazon Now, its ultra-fast delivery service that already delivers goods in less than 30 minutes to parts of London, to also serve Manchester and Birmingham this year.

IPO could raise up to $75bn, giving SpaceX market value of $1.77tn as it sets up Musk for extraordinary wealth

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is looking to raise $75bn (£55bn) from its blockbuster stock market listing next week as the rocket company aims for the largest initial public offering ever.

If the stock market launch – primed for 12 June – goes as planned, founder Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, could make history as the first trillionaire.

Business secretary to meet European counterpart on Friday as EU industry leaders worry about retaliatory measures by UK

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The UK business secretary, Peter Kyle, is to raise concerns about EU plans to dramatically reduce tariff-free imports of British steel with its trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, in Brussels on Friday.

The UK steel industry has previously warned of “devastating” consequences from the new quota system being planned by the EU, which will cut overall tariff-free imports from non-EU countries by 47% on 2024 levels from 1 July.

Registrations up 7% in the month, with battery EVs recording fastest growth and Tesla jumping 45% as motorists look to cut fuel bills

British car sales rose in May to their strongest level for the month since before the Covid pandemic, driven in part by strong growth from the Chinese manufacturers BYD and Chery.

Car registrations rose by 7% to 160,662 during the month, according to figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), a lobby group.

Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro is in the soprano’s DNA, but she’s never thought about directing it. Creating her own production has been daunting and fascinating – and her son’s building blocks even helped

I am not one of those performers who has spent their life on a theatre stage or film set thinking, “I wish I could direct this”. However, earlier this year, I found myself with an unexpected six-week gap. A scheduled project had been delayed for technical reasons, and it was at this time that Wild Arts’ producer Max Parfitt asked how well I knew The Marriage of Figaro.

I have lived with Mozart’s opera for as long as I can remember. Susanna’s “Deh, Vieni Non Tardar” was one of the first major arias I sang, aged 12 or 13, while studying in Los Angeles. Later, I wrote my final high school paper on Figaro, the adaptation from Beaumarchais’s play to Da Ponte’s libretto. I even translated the entire score word for word, which is probably why I still know it so deeply. My Metropolitan Opera debut at 19 was in Figaro, singing Barbarina. I performed my first Susanna on the same New York stage a few years later, and I’ve since sung the role many times all over the world.

As the largest display of Native North American art ever seen in Britain arrives in Yorkshire, its artists are asking timely questions about their history, our planet, and humanity’s place within it

Hold to This Earth, the largest exhibition of contemporary Native North American art to be shown in Britain, arrives as the United States gears up to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Selected from Santa Fe’s Tia Collection, its artists represent more than 35 tribal nations, offering a counterpoint to that colonialist history. Their work explores a continent whose beliefs and traditions date back not centuries but millennia, and whose more recent past is marked by its original people’s exploitation, their experiences too often buried or ignored. Perhaps above all, though, “the work is incredibly timely”, as the show’s curator, Sarah Coulson, points out. “These artists are dealing with pertinent issues now.”

Many artists tackle present-day concerns head-on. Yatika Starr Fields’s sculptures, for instance, use tents salvaged from an encampment of thousands of demonstrators fighting the Dakota access pipeline that threatened the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux. Politics mixes with pop culture and global tradition in another new commission, a huge vessel by the ceramicist Diego Romero. It has a palette that recalls ancient Greek pottery, but its celebratory comic book-style characters are drawn from an old sci-fi movie about Mayans going to space.

Successful jokes are thin on the ground in the musty sixth installment of the once-popular parody franchise, taking aim at everything from Scream to Sinners

The Scary Movie series has always depended on timing. Not necessarily in its gagcraft, which has oscillated between occasional sharp jabs and many beyond-broad blows, but in its position on the release schedule. This was especially true of the first installment, which arrived in theaters just a few months after the 2000 release of Scream 3, capitalizing on the new wave of slashers while holding a spoofy Viking funeral for that just-concluded trilogy. A quarter of a century later, horror endures and there’s no reason to think spoofs can’t endure in parallel along with it as Backrooms and Obsession have ruled the early summer box office.

The sixth Scary Movie, repeating the first movie’s unnumbered title as a simultaneous nod to and act of reboot branding, is releasing too soon after those surprise smashes to incorporate them into its litany of gags (not even some last-minute ADR references, guys?). It’s stuck far further back, doing a composite of the fifth and sixth Scream movies from 2022 and 2023, respectively. On the other hand, with the recent Scream 7 largely abdicating its self-referentiality entirely, Scary Movie arrives as the last horror-comedy holding the torch for in-jokes that its self-serious cousin couldn’t bother with.

This look at the shocking 1992 murder of Rachel Nickell bravely gives you the unvarnished tale of her family’s struggles to deal with the tragedy – and the impossibility of coping with a living hell

All murders are shocking, but few unsettle a nation in the way that of Rachel Nickell did in 1992. She was stabbed 49 times while walking on Wimbledon Common during the day with her two-year-old son, Alex. The viciousness of the attack, in a public place and in front of a child, lingered darkly in the minds of the public, especially since Alex being the only witness enabled the killer to remain at large for years.

It is a crime that has been discussed, analysed and dramatised, but never quite in the way The Witness does. Across its three episodes, narrative emphasis rarely falls where we expect it to, because the main characters are not the police or the killer but the family Rachel left behind: Alex (Jahsaiah Williams, then Max Fincham as the older boy) and his devastated father André (Jordan Bolger). This harrowing new perspective proves to be rewarding.

Sarongs and Spice Girls feature in the footballer’s photo album. Plus: more from Sam Campbell’s oddball comedy. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Two
“He knows he’s going to be photographed; he knows he’s going to cause a sensation.” A clever concept to profile people in new ways, this time focusing on Becks. It starts in 1986 with a photographer who, after hearing that his teenage nephew’s mate has just won a national football skills competition, goes to capture his triumph. From there, the photo album includes a sarong, a Spice Girl and a gay magazine cover. Hollie Richardson

Bardem has the absolute time of his life terrifying everyone in this remake of the classic thriller. It’s a masterclass in tension, sublime directing – and never forgets the power of a jump scare

“Ever look around and wonder if we deserve all this?” a woman asks, standing by their sprawling mansion’s swimming pool with her handsome, ripped, fellow lawyer husband.

“No,” he replies.

Cape Fear is on Apple TV on 5 June

Ibragimova/Tiberghien
(BIS)
Violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cédric Tiberghien, on period instruments, offer zest-filled and elegant readings of four Beethoven sonatas

Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien get their Beethoven cycle off to a flying start with zesty accounts of the Op 12 set alongside the evergreen Spring Sonata. They perform on period instruments – she, a 1570 Amati violin; he, a replica 1794 Walter fortepiano – but there’s nothing academic about these fresh-as-a-daisy interpretations.

Among the Op 12, the D major sonata crackles with an almost capricious theatricality. One moment they are teasing, the next goading each other into greater feats of athleticism. Ibragimova explores the widest of dynamic ranges, accompanied by Tiberghien, whose quicksilver right hand is matched by a percussive left that would give a timpanist a run for his money.

This memoir of a man who moved around China chasing low-paid work for 20 years is an indictment of a shocking system, read in a suitably austere way

Hu Anyan’s memoir about working in the Chinese gig economy began life as a blog before being turned into a wildly successful book that has sold nearly 2m copies in China. It chronicles the daily grind that is working a series of unskilled jobs for insultingly low wages and where there is no such thing as career progression.

Hu is one of 300 million so-called internal migrants in China, people who move around the country chasing work. Over 20 years, he does 19 jobs in six cities, many of them in terrible conditions. He works as a security guard, hotel waiter, delivery driver, bicycle salesman, bike courier, gas station attendant and at a logistics warehouse where he is given only four days off a month. There is a reason, he notes, why so many new recruits fail to make it through the three-day trial, which, of course, is unpaid.

Born on a tiny, impoverished South Pacific island, Pene Pati remembers going to school without food. Now he is performing in operas at La Scala and the Met

Along roads of scarlet hibiscus and exuberant tropical foliage are the white churches of Samoa. On Sundays the choir, singing in pure harmony, rises up to the cathedral ceilings in one soaring voice of divinity.

Pene Pati, once a child in those churches, is now a commanding, magnetic presence on the world’s greatest gilded stages – a universe away from the tiny, impoverished South Pacific island of Upolu, where he was born. A tenor specialising in the lyrical repertoire and bel canto, he is booked out until 2029, from the Metropolitan Opera to La Scala to Royal Albert Hall. Last month he received the pinnacle of arts awards in France, the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres – a medal, he joked in a subsequent interview, that he’d been wearing around the house, much to his wife’s disdain.

A Sydney screening of La La Land with live orchestra was rescued by a brave (and skilled) amateur pianist. What happens when classical performers, or their instruments, suddenly collapse? Plus, Tavener’s mystic pantomime finally gets to the stage

Music’s equivalent of catching a home run at a baseball game happened on Saturday in Sydney, when a 21-year-old university student jumped in to save a performance of the movie La La Land with live orchestra. The band’s keyboardist had fallen ill and couldn’t perform in the second half. Unable to find a replacement at such short notice, the conductor Justin Hurwitz (winner of two Oscars for the film’s music) asked the audience if there was a pianist in the house. Sterling Nasa answered the call, and performed in the second half, improvising a solo, and not getting a tempo change or key signature wrong.

It’s a great story – and incredible that an audience member had the requisite sight-reading and technical skills to carry it off. Could it happen in a classical concert? There have certainly been moments here too when an audience member has saved the day. The best of those stories comes from the summer of 1974, when the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus brought Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana to the Proms, conducted by André Previn, with the baritone Thomas Allen among the soloists. You can actually hear the shocking moment from the live radio broadcast when Allen collapses into the cello section in an episode of the BBC World Service’s Witness History. He had fainted and was carried off the stage. After a brief pause, Previn chose to keep going rather than stop the performance.

The violence of male entitlement is embodied in the charismatic son of a Mississippi pastor, in a sharp portrait of cruelty and inheritance

‘To woman he gave a womb, and to man he gave dominion’, that’s what I teach my boys,” the Rev Sabre Winfrey Jr tells his wife, Priscilla, midway through Addie E Citchens’s formidable Women’s prize-shortlisted debut novel, Dominion. In Citchens’s hands, that dominion is exercised not only through violence, but through charisma, piety and the banality of male entitlement.

Set in the fictional town of Dominion, Mississippi, at the turn of the millennium, the novel follows the Winfreys, a prominent Black church family whose putative grandeur conceals a deep and hereditary decay. Sabre leads the largest congregation in the state from the pulpit of Seven Seals Baptist church, dispensing wisdom through sermons and local radio broadcasts, exuding the oily confidence of a man convinced that God speaks exclusively in his register. The longsuffering Priscilla writes those sermons, raises their five sons and silently maintains the machinery of his authority without ever receiving credit for it.

A revelatory account of the life of George Forster, whose rejection of racial hierarchies stood out amongst his peers

George Forster was 10 when he left his home in present-day Poland and travelled to Russia with his naturalist father. During the expedition, which began in 1765, Forster collected plant specimens and helped with botanical research. Wide-eyed, he journeyed along the Volga river, encountering Muslim Tartar traders and Cossack warriors. There were also the emaciated figures of German settlers, who lived in poverty under the territory’s despotic governor, their campsites little more than holes burrowed into the riverbanks. The experience of cultures so distinct from his own stirred a lifelong enthusiasm for travel and exploration in Forster. It also awakened his compassion for others – irrespective of culture and, especially, race.

At a time when racism pervaded public opinion as well as the philosophical texts of luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, Forster moved brazenly to critique and correct them. How he was able to transcend the conventional beliefs of his day is the central question of Andrea Wulf’s new book – and the answer is in its title.

The outspoken crime novelist talks his provocative new book, his hatred of technology and why the film adaptation of LA Confidential is a ‘turkey’

James Ellroy does not own a computer, his publicist explains, so will a phone interview be OK? When the self-proclaimed “mad dog of American crime fiction” picks up his landline at the appointed hour, it transpires that he has never owned a mobile phone either. Nor sent an email. Nor figured out how to turn on his ex-wife Helen Knode’s TV set.

“Everything is very complex and it’s satanic to me, the dependency that people have on computers,” Ellroy, 78, says cheerfully in a bass baritone drawl from his pad in Denver, Colorado. “I don’t engage in internet chat and I understand there’s all this crazy shit on the internet and people with the most outlandish beliefs on God’s green Earth.”

Written in breathless multilingual prose, this coming-of-age meets state-of-the-nation novel is an incredible literary performance

Three twentysomethings “drive and dream of an impossible night on an endless street. moving as a massive through mad sticky traffic, destination: where else? manchester, wilmslow road, the curry mile, yo!” Thus opens Sufiyaan Salam’s high-octane debut novel, written largely in gen Z lowercase – and you’re in for a ride.

The Boyz are British Pakistani friends in their early 20s. Immy is “something of a bad-boy muslim slut who don’t never text back”; Khan is “the mogul mowgli himself … the type to recite Warren Buffett epigrams like they’re hadiths”; and Haris has “a mind that never switches off, philosophy subreddits doing bares”. Each is looking for an escape – from their past, present, someone else, or themselves – and they come together for one night “cruising and bruising in a hire car towards what might just be the natural elastic endpoint of a friendship beginning to fray”.

PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox; Yacht Club Games
This brilliant adventure creates a whole world from one character with a unique ability

You could mistake Mina the Hollower for something found on the liquid-crystal display of a Game Boy Color around the turn of the millennium. Like the pocketable Zelda and Pokémon games of the time, it presents a kind of snow-globe reality that you peer into from above, relying on imagination to decipher each two-colour clump of pixels into a tree, or a skeleton, or a cloaked mouse wielding a hammer twice her size.

This is Mina, our hero: she jumps, she moves at a clip, and she can delve downward into the soil or floorboards, tunnelling underfoot for a moment or two before popping back up, like an inflatable forcibly submerged in a swimming pool. This is her signature move, perfectly elastic in sensation – the way the released button springs back against your thumb! – and in application. The burrow-jump is an excavation tool, unearthing any treasure you happen to dig through, and a navigational one, used to hop over gaps, reach high-up spots and nose into tiny hidden spaces, where more treasure almost invariably awaits.

The PS5 era has been in some ways disappointing for Sony – on Tuesday, the company revealed a slate of games they hope will change that

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PlayStation’s future has looked a little uncertain these past few years. Although the PS5 has sold well and been very profitable, the brand is far from the runaway market leader it was in the PS2 days. Earlier this week, Game File dug into Sony’s most recent earnings reports to illustrate how PlayStation has been selling fewer and fewer of its own flagship games since a peak during the pandemic. About 54.1m copies of games either developed or published by Sony were sold in the 2018 financial year; in 2025, it sold 32.1m.

Sony has put out some great homegrown games since the PS5 was released in 2020, from Astro Bot to Ghost of Yōtei, but it has also had some expensive and very public failures and cancellations; PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, who retired in 2024, placed big bets on live-service games and only a few panned out (hello, Helldivers). Sony also seems to have rolled back on releasing its single-player PS5 games on PC after a polite interval of time, suggesting it wants to preserve what advantage and exclusivity it has.

Launching in the UK this month, this new pint-sized console revives the motion-controlled video game boom of the 00s – with better, safer tech

For a wonderful moment in the noughties, video games became a truly universal pursuit. As I witnessed my controller-phobic aunt swing a Wii remote and nail a tennis serve, while my great-grandmother furrowed her brow over sudoku puzzles on her Nintendo DS, it seemed my long-derided hobby had finally gone mainstream. The Nintendo Wii flew off the shelves, inspiring a wave of competitors such as the Xbox Kinect camera that encouraged people to play games by moving their bodies. But the tide turned: outside of still-niche VR gaming and the odd controller-waggler on the Switch, motion-controlled gaming has barely been seen for more than a decade.

Now, 20 years later, a new console is aiming to get the whole family flailing in front of the TV once again: the Nex Playground. Launching in the UK later this month, the first thing that struck me about this family-friendly device is just how tiny it is. The size of two and a half Rubik’s Cubes taped together, this impressively unintrusive device swaps cumbersome controllers for camera-controlled minigames, putting you and your family directly in the game. Using a wide-angle lens and AI-powered tracking tech, the Nex Playground offers over 50 games that track players’ bodies as they leap, flail and dance about the living room. It’s not hard to see the appeal.

When Ben Elton didn’t distract from the pain of moving my body, I found the perfect solution – the interactive smartphone game Zombies, Run!

At 56, I am running my first marathon, an old, fat, bald dad surrounded by millennials in body-hugging Lycra and smiles that look AI-generated. But I am ahead of them. For they are only competing for positions and personal bests, and I am being chased by zombies.

The black dog of depression hit me around the time of my last birthday. I didn’t feel I had achieved anything of note for an eternity. I used to work out but, for years, work kept getting in the way. I decided to kill two circling, carcass-sniffing vultures with one stone and run my first marathon.

Barbican theatre, London
Impeccable vocals and slick staging make for dazzling set pieces in a tame production that’s missing the emotional centre of the 1956 film

Five years ago, the Barbican staged the first of three Cole Porter musicals in quick succession. A sublime revival of Anything Goes was fun, frothy and polished to perfection. Kiss Me, Kate followed, and now this show, about the romantic shenanigans of the American east coast gentry.

Immaculate in its song and dance, it is smoothly staged from the minute the (doomed) multitiered cake is wheeled on for the upcoming wedding in Long Island. But something is missing from the love triangle between socialite Tracy Lord (Helen George), her pining ex-husband Dexter (Julian Ovenden) and square fiance George (David Seadon-Young) – with undercover journalist Mike (Freddie Fox) thrown into the romantic pot for good measure.

King Street Social Club, North Shields
Teeing up a forthcoming solo album, the rapper doesn’t reheat his old Beastie Boys sound, instead throwing down everything from ballads to Kraftwerk references

Adam Yauch AKA MCA’s death in 2012 from cancer aged 47 effectively ended the stellar recording and performing career of hip-hop trio Beastie Boys. Since then, bandmates Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond have made few public appearances but the latter is now back in the fray. His first appearance on a British stage in almost 20 years is in, of all places, a bingo hall in the north east, where he surely becomes the first legendary rapper to yell: “Wassup, North Shields?!”

With turntables on stage, hip-hop clobber in the audience, a six-piece band in matching outfits and bingo tables at the back, this unlikely show feels simultaneously low-key and an event. Mike D is backed by 5D – who include his sons and are more than half his 60 years – whose slamming grooves and crunching guitars aren’t Beastie Boys reheated, but certainly have the same inimitable joie de vivre.

The Glaswegian standup on joining the ego-less Saturday Night Live, smiling at himself in the mirror and why he’s not slept in his new house

Behind the scenes, is SNL UK a tightly controlled machine or complete chaos?
It’s genuinely a combination of both: mayhem that is very well organised. Making a show from scratch from Monday to Saturday is going to be chaotic but they’ve got the best of the best in the crew. All the wardrobe people, the camera crew, the set designers … they’re just incredible. There have been moments I’ve thought: are we going to pull this off? But every single time, we manage brilliantly.

Where were you when you got the call saying you were going to be a cast member?
In Daniel Sloss’s bedroom. He woke me up … To be honest, I have no idea. I just make up a different story every time.

From modern art giants such as Helen Marten to the most exciting up-and-comers, this weekend’s art party showcases the best and brightest the capital has to offer – free of charge

With hundreds of world-class galleries, thousands of stunning exhibitions and countless talented artists, London has a serious claim to being the art capital of the world. Sure, it’s also got sky-high rents that make surviving as an artist nigh on impossible; and yes, perilous economic conditions mean that galleries are closing at an unprecedented rate (the brilliant Tiwani Contemporary announced last week that it would soon be shutting for good). But there’s still plenty to celebrate. And that’s where London Gallery Weekend comes in.

Now entering its sixth year, the event brings together London’s biggest, brightest and best galleries for a weekend-long art party. There are talks, walk-throughs, performances, poetry readings and gigs taking place across the weekend, with galleries open late throughout – and admission to everything is free.

Robert dos Santos decided to make his first film after being held at gunpoint once too often. The resulting drama, only available on VHS, is a broadside against AI: ‘Someone once said that if your mum can do it, it doesn’t have value’

The new film This Is How the World Ends is a fine piece of work; the story of two siblings finding each other at a party held at humanity’s end, it is basically On the Beach set at Burning Man. However, what is really remarkable about it is its method of release, as the first straight to VHS film in 20 years.

In the early 2000s it was estimated 90% of British households owned a VCR – the last halcyon days of the format, before it was replaced by DVDs, and then Blu-ray, then streaming. In 2016, the world’s last VCR manufacturer Funai Electric ceased production. To release a film straight to video, in other words, is to make watching your film as difficult as possible.

New four-part documentary reignites criticism of Operation Peyzac, in which officers posed as music industry figures to gather intelligence

It was the undercover police operation that led to 37 people being jailed after officers set up a fake recording studio and record shop on a north London housing estate.

Now, a four-part television documentary has brought Operation Peyzac back under the spotlight, prompting renewed scrutiny of the tactics used by undercover officers and calls for the operation to be examined by the UK’s ongoing spycops inquiry.

Schapiro’s stunning images of jazz greats in New York – from Dizzy Gillespie to Elvin Jones – make up a new book featuring a foreword by late saxophone icon Rollins

The Center for Photography at Woodstock (in Kingston, New York) recently opened the first-ever New York Upstate Photography Biennial, featuring the work of 39 artists who live and work across the Hudson valley and beyond. The show, co-curated by Marina Chao and Adam Giles Ryan, highlights the diverse work of photographers in the upstate region. Their images will be on view until 6 September 2026

It sounds like you both see sex the same way, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith – and perhaps that’s part of the problem

• Read more Leading questions

My husband and I have been married for five years and are having trouble with our sex life. From the beginning of our marriage (we only started having sex after marriage) I wanted sex more frequently than him. In the first year or so of marriage we’d have sex two to three times a week which I enjoyed, although sometimes hoped for more.

A few years into our marriage my husband had a very stressful time at work. Sex dropped to roughly once a week, typically on the weekends. He picked up running to help deal with the stress and really enjoyed it.

A higher price does not necessarily mean better fabric, fairer pay for workers or greater sustainability. To guarantee you’re buying ethically, experts say, you need to dig a little deeper

Does paying more for a T-shirt mean that it’s more likely to be ethically made?

In short (sleeves): no. People who spend their time investigating fashion companies’ supply chains and employment practices seem united in the conclusion that money cannot necessarily buy us a clear conscience.

Summer is here, and your May favourites show you’re feeling the heat

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Our on-again, off-again relationship with summer finally went official in May, with temperatures soaring across much of the UK. Many of us sweltered in the heat, ordering fans to try to get a good night’s sleep during the unprecedented heatwave, and shade shelters to keep us out of the sun’s glare.

But we also couldn’t help embracing that summer feeling, with many of your May favourites reflecting a little more time spent outside. Many of you got back to nature and went camping, with some of your fellow readers’ top camping products making the list, such as an ingenious washing line and a flying disc. From comfy holiday sandals to a cult favourite K-beauty SPF, these were your favourite things in May.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food and the basics they scrimp on? The former footballer talks Lego, Rich Tea biscuits and spending money on experiences with the Filter

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Karen Carney is England’s fourth most-capped football player, competing at four World Cups, four European Championships and the London Olympics before retiring in 2019. In 2022, she began leading a landmark government review into the Future of Women’s Football in the UK, the recommendations of which were successfully backed by the government in 2023.

She was part of the first all-female punditry team for ITV at the men’s World Cup 2022, led ITV’s coverage of the men’s Euros in 2024 and contributed analysis to the women’s Euros in 2025.

Need a pair of grown-up shorts? A summer sandal that works with everything? Or perhaps just a really cute bag? Our expert’s monthly edit is here to help

• 52 women’s summer wardrobe updates for under £100

Weddings! Wimbledon! It’s June, which means that summer has well and truly arrived. The May heatwave may have flagged some gaps in your warm-weather wardrobe, so here are some of this month’s juiciest style updates.

Read on for everything from the season’s most chic capri pants to bikini bottoms for under £10, plus some tips on under-the-radar brands to keep an eye on. Keep cool out there, comrades.

Whether you want a stick, a spray or a tinted cream, our expert’s favourite formulas can provide year-round sun protection

• The best face moisturisers for every budget

There’s nothing quite like the warmth of the sun on your face after a long, dreary winter. But before you bask in it, you should always apply an SPF. That’s especially true if you use retinol serums, which can increase your vulnerability to sun damage. If you’re not wearing an SPF every day, you might as well toss the rest of your skincare out of the window.

As well as the risk of sunburn, UV rays cause longer-lasting, deeper skin damage, resulting in age spots, pigmentation and premature ageing. But if the thought of slathering sticky sunscreens on your face every day makes you want to spend your life in perpetual shade, you’ve come to the right place.

Best face SPF overall:
Beauty of Joseon relief sun rice + probiotics

Best budget face SPF:
E45 Sensitive Sun face cream

We pop open a selection of fun but healthy fizzy flavoured waters that should satisfy even the fussiest princess

I am not a princess about many things, but there has to be sparkling water in the house. Refreshing, enlivening and occasionally hangover-clearing, it is an essential. Thankfully, my husband is aligned with me (it would never have worked with someone who answered: “Tap’s fine”, when offered water in a restaurant).

I’m not fussy about my fizzy, though – SodaStreamed tap is fine – but I am increasingly seduced by the rainbow of new flavoured, unsweetened sparkling waters such as Dash Water and Aqua Libra that have turned up of late. Depending on how you look at them, they offer a healthy take on fizzy drinks and/or bring a bit of bling to an otherwise neutral beverage. “They make water a fun drink,” says the chef and author Jesse Jenkins, who co-founded sparkling water brand Yew.

Layers of oregano bring a pungent earthiness to this simple supper of baked white fish and spuds

In her enthusiasm, my dog pulled me over in front of a group of teenagers the other day, so I have been using an antiseptic called Citrosil on my elbow, hip and ear. So much so that clothes I wear often, tea towels that have been hung on my shoulder and my bag all seem to have Citrosil hanging about them, like the teenagers around the bench (two of whom came to my aid). I put this down to the smell having got into my sinuses, or personal paranoia, until a woman in the supermarket commented, also saying how reassuring she found it. Separately, I keep having thoughts about chips fried in olive oil with oregano sprinkled on top, which I put down to a comment by a friend a few weeks ago, until I realised that thoughts of chips were also due to the Citrosil on my elbow and in my sinuses, because it doesn’t smell only like hospital corridors, my grandma, lemon and turpentine, but also oregano.

Looking at the ingredients on the Citrosil bottle, the herbal element is actually thyme essence, although thyme and oregano are in the same family and both contain molecular compounds called thymol and cymene, whose decisive component smells – medicinal, tarry, woody, floral – are combined so intoxicatingly in thyme, oregano and marjoram. Smells that bring to mind chips, braised vegetables, köfte and flatbreads.

From station‑side markets to late‑night hotel rooms, ​you can take pleasure in the smallest everyday eating rituals

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June has arrived in a blur of train tickets, suitcases, book signings and half-finished cups of coffee. The publication of our fifth cookbook, Honey & Co Daily, has brought with it the strangest combination of feelings: delight, gratitude, nerves, excitement, exhaustion and, on occasion, mild panic. When you imagine it from afar, a book tour sounds wonderfully glamorous, but in reality it involves early alarms, missed trains, unfamiliar hotel rooms and the constant worry that you have forgotten something important – and that no one will show up.

Even so, this has also been one of the most rewarding experiences. We spend so much time writing recipes and stories, and hoping they will find their way into people’s homes, lives and kitchens. Getting to meet the people who let this book in, to learn which recipes have become family favourites, and to chat with them about a new way with quince or aubergines (there is always one) feels like an incredible gift every single time.

Drink brands such as Yahweh and Praise Energy say they’re raising awareness for Christianity – but are they just treating Jesus like an uncopyrighted Mickey Mouse?

By now, you’ve probably noticed the trend: every celebrity and influencer appears to be chasing the same prize. We’re deep in the era of the celebrity beverage.

Kim Kardashian has Update energy drinks. John and Hank Green have the Awesome Coffee Club. Blake Lively sells sparkling grapefruit juice. Even Danny DeVito, somehow perfectly cast for the role, is the face of a limoncello.

Charles and Alice have reconnected in their 60s, but he finds her soggy sponges foul, while she says his ashtrays are worse. You tell us who is giving you that sinking feeling
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Whenever I see Alice’s cloths, I imagine all the bacteria that must be crawling over them

Charles would prefer to throw all dishcloths away immediately after using them

My ‘niblings’ gave me a positive reason to return to the home town where I’d experienced homophobia as a boy. Over time, they transformed my sense of family and self

When I found out I had become an uncle, I was 22 and on a year abroad as part of a languages degree, living in Madrid. I’d spent much of my time there having raucous fun on the city’s gay scene, dancing till the early hours then sloping off with Spanish men. It felt a long way from my family life back home in Bolton.

As this was 1997 – a time before mobile phones – calls from landlines had to be rationed to once a week. But my mum phoned to tell me my sister had gone into labour and then, two days later, the phone rang again with the news that I had a nephew. It felt like an abstract concept, not quite real.

As the far right fulminates about who ‘belongs’ in Britain, let’s remember Fritz Lustig, who arrived here in 1939, just months before war broke out. Initially jailed as an ‘enemy alien’, he played a vital role in a top-secret military intelligence unit

When the Nazis came to power in Germany in January 1933, Fritz Lustig, my father, was a 13-year-old schoolboy growing up in Berlin. He was a budding musician with dreams of becoming a professional cellist but, by the time he left school four years later, it was clear that under the Nazis, even though his family had largely cast aside their Jewish heritage, his options were going to be extremely limited.

Neither he, nor any of his anxious relatives, could possibly imagine the scale of the horrors that lay in store – but after the anti-Jewish pogrom of Kristallnacht in 1938, it was impossible to ignore the gathering storm clouds.

While many young people are struggling to get work, an average date night costs north of $200. No wonder so many are resigning themselves to being alone

Name: Solo-maxxing.

Age: Newish.

Experts explain how small, regular sums can build wealth over time, from your 20s through to retirement

Thinking about investing? There are compelling reasons for moving at least some of your money away from standard savings accounts and into the stock market. There are also risks, but over the long term the rewards can be better.

Many people are put off by the idea that you need to be wealthy to start investing, or over a certain age. But even if you can only afford to set aside £50 a month, it is worth considering. And while there are important factors to consider before you start, it is rarely too early, or too late, to take the first step.

ScottishPower apologises for charging error, as millions face higher costs under revised energy price cap

The energy bill from ScottishPower sent Richard Palmer into an immediate panic. It said he had to pay more than £8,400 straight away or risk his credit history being impaired for years.

The 76-year-old felt he had no option so he paid the bill, using half of his savings to do so, even though it amounted to nine times what his annual payment would normally be.

Although I voluntarily handed in the licence, the agency’s action has made it far harder for me to get it back

I suffered a spinal cord injury in August 2024. I voluntarily surrendered my driving licence to the DVLA, only for it to revoke it instead. This makes it much, much harder to get it back later on.

I’ve since been told that I need to take a medical driving assessment to get the licence back, but I am unable to take one because I do not have a licence. I am now on my third application, with evidence from my spinal consultant and an off-road driving assessment confirming that I can drive with hand controls. This was submitted two months ago, and the DVLA still can’t update me.

Urgent renewal emails and huge discounts figures are used to pressure people to hand over their data

You have had McAfee antivirus software installed on your laptop for years after becoming fearful that your computer would be infected. So when an email arrives to say your protection is about to expire, you are not surprised. Better still, there is a “renewal discount” of 89% if you pay on the same day.

“Once the expiration date has passed, your computer becomes susceptible to many different virus threats,” the email warns.

A new survey reveals the average person in Britain will spend 41,000 hours flicking idly between news apps and social media – and, in all likelihood, getting increasingly miserable

Name: Doomscrolling.

Age: The term first emerged in 2018, but took off in 2020 (when the doom got especially heavy).

The neurologist Orlando Swayne doesn’t suggest everyone can recover. But he does argue that early, targeted and intense therapy can sometimes bring about life-changing improvements – and we have a moral obligation to provide it

Claire was in bad shape. She had been brought to the ward on a stretcher and hoisted on to a bed where she lay curled up in a ball. She was unable to speak, her eyes flat and face expressionless. While she could move her right arm a little, her left arm and both legs were immobile.

Life had changed dramatically for Claire, a mother of three in her late 30s, many months earlier, when she collapsed while on a night out with friends. A weakness in an artery at the base of her brain had ruptured, spilling blood around her frontal lobe. She was taken to hospital, where surgeons removed two side plate-sized pieces of bone from her skull to relieve the pressure on her brain. She spent months in intensive care.

New issue of the American Journal of Public Health focuses on parallels between marketing for cigarettes and UPFs

The new issue of the American Journal of Public Health focuses on ultra-processed foods, and reveals that big tobacco companies used strategies that helped them sell cigarettes to sell ultra-processed food products, including Lunchables, geared toward children.

The parallels between ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and cigarettes include not only how UPF products were formulated and marketed to drive excess consumption, but also the growing body of evidence linking UPFs to a variety of health risks. For UPFs, these include cardiovascular diseases, certain cancers and cognitive health decline.

A few lucky runners can look forward to ‘an orchestra of neurochemical changes’ when they lace up their trainers. Why do the rest of us just get sweaty? And do other forms of exercise have the same effect?

The runner’s high, where pavement-pounding drudgery turns into something like a chemically enhanced experience, is an elusive state to pin down. Some people seem to get it during most of their runs; others rarely, or barely at all. A few lucky Couch to 5kers claim to experience it within their first few sessions, while some professional athletes doubt that it even exists. This is partly due to individual differences in brain chemistry, and partly because the way you train has a significant effect on how likely you are to experience it.

If you’re on the verge of throwing away your trainers, though, there’s good news: runner’s high is real, and there are ways to maximise your chances of experiencing it, even if you’d rather hit the pool or the river than the trail. On your marks, then …

The sundress is back – here’s how to make it short but not (too) sweet

One sunny day recently, I looked around and realised that every woman in my vicinity was wearing the same dress. Not the same dress, exactly. But the same dress. A maxidress, colourful but in a tasteful sort of way. Floaty, probably with a tiered skirt. Wholesome and vaguely rustic, but also a bit fancy. You know the dress I mean, because if you have been at any outdoor event between 2019 and about last Thursday, you have had the same experience. The maxidress has colonised summer dressing, and it’s out of control.

So I am here to tell you that the maxidress must die. Ha! Not really, but also sort of yes, really. It started so well. When the maxi first landed, it beguiled us all. Floor-length, after all, was new fashion territory for anyone born after about 1965, so it felt fresh and exciting, plus you could go to a party in flat shoes and not have to shave your legs. Result! But somewhere down the line the maxidress has got a bit Motherland. It has become a garment that somehow represents the tense negotiation between prettiness and exhaustion that defines modern womanhood. A dress you wear for a holiday selfie that you retake 14 times before posting on Instagram with a joie-de-vivre caption.

Think self-tan is too much effort – or too risky? Not any more. The latest products are so simple to use you can just go with the glow

I can’t be without a facial self-tan in spring/summer. Keen to offload heavier coverage foundations that can slip, slide and suffocate in the sunshine, I reach for a subtle tanner as a warmer, lighter and, truly, easier base layer for makeup.

People wrongly imagine self-tan to be too effortful, fiddly and risky, and understandably wonder where to slot it into their skincare routine, but a new crop of facial self-tanners simplifies both these issues.

Hundreds of thousands of supporters travelled to north London to celebrate their team winning the Premier League. Here’s what they wore …

‘The only thing I haven’t got are the underpants. Everything else is Arsenal,” says Shane, a memorabilia and kit collector perched outside north London’s Clissold park with his daughter, Erin. Known online as Highbury Gunner JVC, the 47-year-old wore an Arsenal-buckled belt, a club tie in a player pattern and a club shirt with a red and white vintage-style duffel bag. The showstopper, though, was his bespoke jacket made from curtains by the designer Joe Brim, finished with an Arsenal medallion and watch, and yellow customised Dr Martens. A collector since the 1970s, he says: “I could complete a catalogue from the 90s; my house is like a museum.”

Favourite shirt … Liv Samuels in his Arsenal badge Hawaiian top

Series two of Rivals has brought big, bouncy locks into vogue. From Slash to Grace Jones to Bono’s mullet, here are other looks to copy if you dare …

***

One thing that has come raging back in vogue upon the release of Rivals, season two, is Jilly Cooper’s hair. That’s no surprise – Rivals has revived a lot of things we thought we’d seen the back of: smoking; dinner parties with an aperitif segment; braces (the trouser variant); a haughty expression. Give it a couple of episodes and we’ll have made our peace with naked tennis in time for Wimbledon.

Over one weekend, we hiked, swam, slept in a woodland cabin and camped on a hillside – while also supporting community-run projects

The children were asleep in the little tent behind us, wrapped in two sleeping bags, each with an extra helping of wool blankets. Earlier, all I could see were their little faces half-lit by torchlight as I read them a book about rivers to the sound of rain on canvas. They fell asleep as fast and thick as the fog pooling in the valley below.

My partner and I sat outside, huddled together under a waterproof coat, cheek to cheek, perched on our daughters’ foam swim vests because the ground was saturated. We were laughing. As parents, absurdity and beauty make for familiar bedfellows.

The Cambrian Line hugs the shore, offering easy access to the Wales Coast Path, the Cadfan Way pilgrimage route and glorious Cardigan Bay

From the graveyard of St Michael’s in Ynys, Wales, the view was ravishing: the Italianate oddity of Portmeirion sparkled on the opposite shore; the peaks of Eryri (Snowdonia) rippled in the distance; and, within the River Dwyryd’s broad swirl, sat the tidal island of Ynys Gifftan. “No one’s lived there for years,” said a passerby pointing to the isle, “but it’s just been put up for sale – £350,000, if you fancy it.”

I rather did, but sadly my modest savings don’t stretch that far. Wales’s “armpit”, geographically speaking – which is how some people refer to that chunk of Gwynedd where estuaries perspire into Cardigan Bay before it curves round the outstretched Llŷn peninsula – looked like a spectacular place to be marooned.

I love exploring Poland by rail. When I heard about a new back-to-the-80s service, I booked a retro seat …

Trainspotters jostled on platform 2 as sunshine lit up the polished olive-green carriages of the 11:07 from Warszawa Główna (Warsaw main station) to Poznań. As I was readying to board, a man, sporting bow tie and braces, zipped past me, making it to the steps first. Excitement was palpable. But then this was no ordinary train, but rather an event. A throwback in time.

The Polish parliament had declared 2026 as the Year of Polish Railways, and there is a double jubilee under way: the 25th anniversary of the long-distance operator PKP Intercity and the centenary of Polish state railways. To celebrate, a series of retro rail journeys called Nieśpieszny (“Unhurried”) has been launched.

Piòle are the Italian city’s working-class neighbourhood taverns. Of the few that survive, many have gone upmarket – but I was looking for the real deal and affordable home cooking

Turin is one of Italy’s most serious food cities, shaped by the culinary legacy of the House of Savoy and, more recently, the slow food movement – a reputation reflected in its historic cafes and restaurants, where meals can feel refined. But that’s only part of the picture. As a local, I’m drawn to something far less formal: the piòla.

Piòle were never quite restaurants. They were places for a glass of barbera (poured at the counter from a cylindrical, quarter-litre carafe, the tubo) in rooms worn smooth by decades of use. Regulars played cards, argued about football or politics, and lingered without ceremony. Food, if it appeared, was simple and to the point: anchovies in green sauce, hard-boiled eggs, cold cuts, perhaps a plate of agnolotti (stuffed pasta).

Around 5,000 hopefuls logged on for the chance to sleep over in the furniture store’s Sydney pop up. Caitlin Cassidy scored a coveted stay, but could she keep her sanity?

If you came of age in the early 2000s, you have probably seen 500 Days of Summer, an indie romcom that romanticised Ikea showrooms as the perfect place for a date.

It was thanks to this film that I jumped at the chance to sleep over in what is effectively an Ikea showroom. The caveat being, I would do so alone and, instead of kookily standing in a waterless shower and pretending to cook in a fake kitchen, the taps would work.

GLP-1 drugs such as Mounjaro are helping millions of people rapidly lose weight. But the changes happening inside the body go far beyond the number on the scale.

Neelam Tailor investigates the growing debate around the possible risks of rapid weight loss from jabs and yo-yo dieting, which include loss of lean mass and consequences in older age. Experts say the debate isn’t just about weight-loss drugs, but about how modern dieting culture has shaped our bodies for decades

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

Pop the champagne, fire the glitter cannons, let off some sky lanterns and then get castigated for the fire hazard and risk to wildlife they cause. Lo and behold it is the 250th Guardian Thursday news quiz, and a special bumper edition at that. Twenty-two questions await you on topical news, general knowledge, pop culture, and the re-appearance of every regular round we’ve previously had, and could remember, and which didn’t cause us legal problems. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 250

Tebay, Cumbria: Some of my ancestors were fell pony hauliers and our farmhouse used to be a coaching inn. Might they have called in for a drink?

There is always some waiting around at lambing and calving time, so I like to have a project ongoing. Some years I have written books; this year I’m researching my family tree, in particular whether any of my ancestors may have visited Low Borrowdale farm when it was a coaching inn in the 18th century. I knew they had been involved in fell pony haulage around the north of England, but could they have called in here for a drink?

I’m mainly investigating the Binks family – my maiden name. Almost within living memory, there is my grandad’s grandad, George Binks, a fell pony haulier who lived in Great Asby from 1862 to 1934. My grandad told me which house he lived in, eight miles from our farm. Two more generations of George Binkses take us to 1785, when one was born in Middleton-in-Teesdale and died in 1840 at Kirkby Stephen, 11 miles away.

In 2025, the tech journalist invited artificial intelligence to do nearly everything for her, including editing the book she was writing about the experiment. Some of it was useful, some not – but it was her time with a chatbot companion that really shook her

For a year, Joanna Stern decided to turn herself into a “lab rat” – the object of her own experiment. Throughout 2025, she invited artificial intelligence into “every corner” of her life. She let AI answer her texts, decide what she ate and cooked, mow her lawn, fold her washing, drive her places, parse her mammograms and even, in the darkness of a burner phone, be her lover. The resulting book, I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything, asks all the big questions, including: what happens when AI can do everything humans can do? And what comes after that?

If anyone can produce answers, surely it’s Stern. Last February, she ended a 12-year stint as a personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal. During her tenure, she won an Emmy for her short documentary E-Ternal: A Tech Quest to “Live” Forever, which explored digital legacies, and built a reputation for product reviews that were outlandishly creative and fiendishly stringent. She once took an Apple watch jetskiing on the Hudson river to evaluate its connectivity.

Team is working to digitise archive of correspondence donated by public, charting relationships, social history and evolution of language

After four decades together, Tatiana and Steffen Missbach still write each other love letters. “A good love letter is specific – not only declaring your feelings but also, you know, ‘good luck at music practice, I’ll be thinking of you’,” said Tatiana, 66, a retired personnel manager. “If he’s leaving early on a work trip, I like waking up and finding one at the breakfast table waiting for me.”

Steffen, 68, a car appraiser, said it was his way of giving Tatiana “something to hold in her hands for the time that I’m not there, when I can’t be here to speak the words”.

He stood down as boss of the NT – and threw himself into kayaking, writing and DIY. The veteran director talks about his new start aged 60, mourning his mother – and directing Death of a Salesman in Turkish

There were several big endings for Rufus Norris in 2025, all crammed into the same few seismic months. Firstly, the close of his tenure as director of the National Theatre after a decade at the helm. That planned ending collided with the loss of his mother, who died three weeks before he left the NT. On top of that, a significant birthday concluding his 50s.

So what did Norris do after turning 60, on the other side of the Big Job, alongside the grief of losing a parent? DIY, plenty of kayaking and a house move, it turns out: “It felt important to have a complete break,” he says. “I’m a bit of a workaholic, but I’m also a bird of simple brain so I can as easily lose myself in how to build a shed or do up a place.”

From rising fuel, fertiliser and feed costs linked to the conflict in Iran to the impact of climate change, farmers around the world are facing a range of pressures. We want to hear how these challenges are affecting you

Farmers are facing rising costs for fuel, fertiliser and animal feed as a result of the conflict in Iran, adding to existing pressures on the industry.

The sector is also grappling with extreme weather after the UK’s hottest May day on record, alongside wider concerns about the impact of climate change. Europe also experienced record-breaking temperatures in late May and the UN has warned about the imminent return of El Niño – a powerful weather pattern that raises global temperatures and worsens some rainfall.

How has the search for work been for you? How many job applications have you made?

The number of young people not in work or education in Britain could rise to 1.25 million by the early 2030s without urgent government action, a landmark report has warned.

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

We would like to hear from recent graduates and current students aged 18 or over about their views on studying for a degree

According to the latest British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey, the proportion of people who believe a university degree is not worth the time and money has jumped from 14% in 2005 to 34% in 2025.

The survey found that younger graduates, with experience of the fee system, are more disillusioned than those who did not pay fees.

We would like to hear your stories of nightmare holidays that wouldn’t be out of place on screen

With the release of Two Weeks in August, along with new series of Four Seasons and White Lotus, it seems we can’t get enough TV about holidays from hell.

With this in mind, we would like to hear your own stories of holiday mishaps. Do you have a nightmare holiday story that could have inspired a TV show? Tell us all about it below.

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