You don’t need to be a super athlete to take part in parkrun. Whether it’s pacing yourself or picking the perfect shoes, here’s how to find your feet at the UK’s favourite 5k

• The best running shoes for every runner

I have a gym membership and walk everywhere, but I’m not what you’d typically picture when you think of a fitness writer. Compared with the Guardian’s running experts, I’m a not-particularly-enthusiastic amateur.

But what I lack in speed, stamina, and gazelle-like grace, I make up for with dogged persistence. Since 2014, I’ve run 355 parkruns in 63 locations. That’s a lot of hours – especially given my finishing times.

‘Perhaps it’s all a fever dream,’ suggests parody candidate, expected to be Reform leader’s only challenger for seat

Count Binface had been looking forward to a relaxing journey back to his home planet of Sigma IX when Nigel Farage dropped a political bombshell on Tuesday.

Instead, Britain’s hottest new political property said he was left with no choice but to perform a swift intergalactic handbrake turn when news broke that Farage had resigned as MP for Clacton, triggering the possibility of a byelection in the English coastal constituency he has represented since 2024.

Johnson reprises his role from the original animation and has fine rapport with his young co-star Catherine Laga’aia, but the whole enterprise feels cynical and pointless

Disney’s animated super-hit Moana from 2016 – having been followed up by a dull sequel two years ago – now gets a competent but basically pointless and unexciting back-to-basics live-action remake. Screenwriter Jared Bush modifies his original script, Broadway stage veteran Thomas Kail makes his movie directing debut and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s songs are revived. Nineteen-year-old Australian Samoan actor Catherine Laga’aia takes the role of Moana, the headstrong teen daughter of a Polynesian chief; her wise and kindly grandma Tala, who recognises Moana’s heroic leadership destiny, is played by New Zealand actor Rena Owen.

Moana has to go on a quest to restore the heart of the goddess Te Fiti, the lack of which is causing an eco-crisis on her home island of Motunui. To do this, she must join forces with the swaggeringly arrogant demigod Maui, in which role Dwayne Johnson returns in his own actual person, which is almost as cartoonishly muscly and vast as the animated version. Maui has a spurious quest of his own, to retrieve the hook which is the source of his power and to do this he must confront his own nemesis. This is the giant crab Tamatoa, which as before is voiced by Jemaine Clement and is a character which is of course just a 3D animated version of the 2D cartoon original, like Heihei, Moana’s less-than-hilarious pet chicken.

The Frenchman is a footballer, flautist and a thespian. There’s no question he is the most thrilling and compelling figure at this year’s tournament

This has been the World Cup of characters, bold fashion statements, and bantz: we’ve had Thomas Tuchel rubber-banding around the England dressing room like a teen at his first all-ages rave, and Iván Barton booting Miguel Almirón from the field as if sentencing him to death. Mauricio Pochettino and his $500 overshirt have brought fresh energy and inspiration to the wardrobes of convex middle-aged men the world over. Jokester Javier Aguirre’s avuncular “fuck you” at Anthony Gordon has pushed bilateral relations between Mexico and England to their warmest point since the British-brokered peace that ended the Pastry War of 1839.

Erling Haaland has shown it’s possible to be Jaws in front of goal and Scooby Doo once the ball is in the back of the net, that there’s nothing about football so important that it can’t make way for some silly bit of online comedy. Even Harry Kane, a man who often seems like he was media trained in the womb, has squeaked thrillingly, if briefly, to life.

Reform keeps Tice on the bench, sending in attack specialist Yusuf in effort to take back control as byelection stunt unravels

You can often tell when Reform is running scared and losing control of the political narrative, because that’s when Richard Tice is put back in his box. Everyone but Dicky knows that Dicky is a halfwit. A man whose very life force is dependent on Nigel Farage’s continued existence. Without Nige there would be no Dicky. He is the tick with no autonomous nervous system. Just a kneejerk response with too much money. Dicky likes to boast of his small fortune. Mainly because he started with a large one.

At times like these, Reform goes for its pet rottweiler: Zia Yusuf. No Nige-like temper tantrums for Zia. That’s because he lives in a constant state of extreme perma-rage. It must be as exhausting for him as it is for us to experience. There is nothing that doesn’t make him angry. Most politicians do a nice line in passive aggression. Zia’s USP is active aggression. He is the aggressive’s aggressive. The self-made millionaire who is always unhappy and feels let down by others. The man with so much money that he can afford to do politics as a hobby. He longs to be a professional politician but will only ever be an amateur.

The US president is in combative mood as Nato leaders meet for a two-day summit in Ankara. There are divisions over Russia’s war in Ukraine, defence spending, and the US-Israel war in Iran with signs of the fragile ceasefire collapsing. 

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is holding talks with leaders as he rallies the European cause against Russia’s war that has reached the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, as Nato allies present an increasingly united front against an unreliable US.

Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent Shaun Walker

Exclusive: The details behind the financial transactions that bankers have flagged up to the National Crime Agency

The rise in public support for Reform UK – and Nigel Farage’s own prediction that he expects to be the UK’s next prime minister – has put the party and its leader in unfamiliar territory.

Their policies and candidates are coming under greater scrutiny, and now, so is their funding.

President calls Iranian leadership ‘scum’, rails against alliance, repeats demand for Greenland and threatens Spain

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

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Donald Trump has declared that the ceasefire with Iran is over as he arrived at the Nato summit in Ankara, launching an angry broadside in which he complained about the military alliance and repeated his demand for Greenland.

The US president, sitting alongside the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, called Iran’s leadership scum and “sick people”, and added that he was “very upset” with the alliance and even threatened to cut off all trade with Spain in a row over defence spending.

• British wildcard stuns the No 9 seed 6-4, 7-6 (4), 6-0

• Fery will face Alexander Zverev for place in men’s final

It would have been perfectly reasonable for Arthur Fery to have finally betrayed a few nerves as he stood a point away from establishing a two-set lead in his first grand slam quarter-final. Any tension or fear he may have felt, however, was completely overpowered by his unwavering self-belief and certainty that has defined the greatest fortnight of his life.

Leading by a set and 6-4 in the second set tie-break, Fery leapt forward to meet Flavio Cobolli’s second serve on the rise, and he immediately followed up his sweet backhand return by sweeping forward to the net. Fery’s subsequent backhand drop volley stopped dead on the grass, killing the second set in the process.

MPs demand publication of full report that outlines catastrophic consequences amid concerns for food security

Members of parliament have demanded full publication of an explosive report by the UK’s spy leaders that found the collapse of ecosystems overseas would have catastrophic consequences for the UK’s national security, warning that the UK has “no future” if the findings are not urgently acted on.

Despite growing concerns for the UK’s food security, likely to be worsened by the third heatwave this summer currently afflicting the UK and swathes of the northern hemisphere, the government has refused to publish the full report, which has circulated among defence officials for more than a year.

Ellis, 28, was executed in 1955 after fatally shooting her abusive partner David Blakely

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Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK, has been granted a conditional pardon in light of evidence that she was a victim of domestic abuse and coercive and controlling behaviour.

Ellis was executed in 1955, aged 28, after she shot and killed her partner, David Blakely, whom she met two years earlier while working in the nightclub she managed.

Alliance leaders, who had feared the worst, will hail US president’s renewed support for article 5 as key victory

An erratic and at times irascible Donald Trump has said he felt a “tremendous love” from western leaders at the Nato summit, only hours after lambasting them over their defence spending and not helping the US in attacking Iran.

The US president’s mixed messaging dominated the final hours of the two-day gathering in Ankara, Turkey, beginning with him publicly calling Iran’s leadership scum and renewing his demand for control of Greenland.

Mohamed al-Wahidi died when a missile struck his taxi shortly before Egypt played Argentina in their last 16 match

A Palestinian aid worker who had organised screenings of World Cup matches in Gaza was killed by an Israeli missile strike just before the game between Egypt and Argentina on Tuesday evening.

Two brothers aged eight and 10 and another man who was in the street near the site of the attack were also killed.

John Edwards resigned in June after independent investigation following claims of sexual harassment and bullying

The UK information commissioner who resigned over sexual harassment and bullying claims is understood to be taking legal action against a woman who flagged his conduct.

The science and technology secretary, Liz Kendall, said she was “appalled” by the fact that John Edwards was preparing to serve legal papers on one of the “incredibly brave” women at the ICO who had raised concerns about his behaviour. Edwards resigned from his post as the UK’s data regulator in June after an independent investigation.

Image of man in underwear, blindfold and bound to iron rod has been widely shared on social media

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

An Israeli soldier’s photo of a Palestinian man from Gaza stripped to his underwear, blindfolded and bound face-down to an iron rod corroborates extensive reporting on Israeli torture of Palestinians in detention and itself may constitute a war crime, rights groups have said.

The image was shared on a now-deleted personal social media account, with the Hebrew-language caption “good morning”. It was brought to wider public attention by a Palestinian writer and activist who goes by Tamer.

Father of boy refused entry to pool says case is reminder that some Dutch do not acknowledge reality of racism

When Henri Duiker went to check whether his 12-year-old son and his friend were enjoying their first “disco” swim evening alone, he was baffled. Instead of being in the water, Henri’s son was standing alone by the desk at the Watergeus pool, in Zoetermeer in the Netherlands.

He did not have any ID to prove he was under 13 and pool attendants had told him he could not swim – although his friend of the same age and size had not been not asked for his documents.

In a country where xenophobia has a legacy, a recent well-funded iteration has emerged that feeds on post-apartheid failures and local insecurities

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It’s been a terrifying few weeks in South Africa. A campaign against African immigrants has gathered steam, resulting in the deaths of at least four people and the mass fleeing of thousands of others. I spoke to Fezokuhle Mthonti, a cultural historian and writer based in Johannesburg, about what’s driving the campaign, and how it threatens to tear apart the very fabric of South Africa.

“Abahambe!”, translating to “They must go!”, is the campaign and protest movement’s battle cry. Mobs and protesters have so terrified African migrants in South Africa that thousands are sleeping on pavements in fear of being attacked in their homes, and hoping for repatriation to their home countries. Malawian, Ghanaian, Nigerian and Zimbabwean governments are among those that have so far arranged for tens of thousands to return. It’s a distressing state of affairs for a country that many African migrants saw as a place of hope and opportunity.

‘Sea cures’ are not new but the idea that exposure to oceans, rivers and lakes can be medicine for the brain is gaining traction

Watching the waves break across the vast, roaring ocean in front of him, Dave Phillips felt out of options standing on the cliff’s edge in Cornwall several years ago. The former British army corporal had lost a number of loved ones in quick succession, and the compounding effects of untreated post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from his military tours had become all-consuming.

“I’m from a generation where we didn’t talk,” says Phillips, 67. “I tried dealing with it myself and ended up standing on a cliff edge thinking, ‘Yeah, this is the way.’”

Moving to the UK in the 1950s, the Trinidadian musician endured racism and built his own instruments from waste. After his death aged 96, his widow recalls his patience and positivity

Wearing rusty steelpans hewn from oil drums around their necks, Sterling Betancourt and his 10 bandmates faced a sceptical crowd as they stood outside the recently opened Royal Festival Hall in London in 1951. Jokes about “black magic” were heard. Then they began striking their pans with mallets and those watching were stunned by the beautiful music that emanated.

The Trinidadian musicians were playing at the Festival of Britain – the government-funded jamboree celebrating British and Commonwealth cultural excellence as the country shook off the trauma of war – and that day they introduced a mellifluous style of music to the UK that has since been passed down from generation to generation. When Betancourt died on 3 June, aged 96, there was little fanfare. As a musician, he was never “famous” in the sense of having hit records or headlining festivals. Yet this warm, humble nonagenarian – and MBE recipient – was among the last of the Windrush-era musicians who changed the DNA of British music. Later this month, his steelpan music will return to the Royal Festival Hall for Steel Scenes, a festival marking the 75th anniversary of the Trinidad All-Steel Percussion Orchestra (Taspo), the group he played with in 1951.

Nearly a quarter of market traders now hold master’s degree, PhD or medical doctorate, research shows

One in five young market traders now holds a master’s degree, PhD or medical doctorate, according to exclusive figures shared with the Guardian, in a sign of how Britain’s markets are attracting an unexpected new generation of highly educated entrepreneurs.

Separate data from Kerb, the street food collective behind some of London’s best-known food markets, points in the same direction. Almost three-quarters of its founders have university degrees, including one in four with postgraduate qualifications. About 95% work in their businesses full-time rather than treating them as weekend side hustles.

PS5, PC, Xbox Series X/S; Ubisoft Singapore/Ubisoft
Ubisoft has removed all the boring parts of pirate life from its fantasy RPG, creating something more focused and fun

Edward Kenway isn’t your dad’s Assassin’s Creed protagonist. Neither sworn to ancient oaths nor given a noble destiny, he’s just a guy who likes coin, dislikes rules, and whose gold-chasing, rule-dodging lifestyle sees him embroiled in an ancient war between Templars and assassins quite by accident. After he’s shipwrecked with a man named Walpole who turns out to be a Templar, Edward assumes Walpole’s identity in the hopes of securing the bounty he mentioned.

Edward wears life lightly. The world around him is violent and chaotic, and those in his vicinity are more obsessed with double-crossings than a Mission:Impossible movie writers’ room. Ed just smiles, undeterred by it all, and gets on with plundering. It’s all just fun and games to him, and he is set on conquering the Caribbean on his own terms. He is a brilliant extension of the player, in that way, and that’s what this remake of the 2013 pirate-themed Assassin’s Creed does so well: the sense of freedom.

‘In the Pamir Mountains, there’s salted yak milk every morning for breakfast. You stay warm at night on the floor in the yurt burning yak dung in the furnace’

My parents and grandparents migrated to the US from Afghanistan in 1979, just a few weeks before the Soviets invaded. I grew up in Los Angeles, but would visit my grandfather in Virginia once a year. He would always make photographs and film little interviews. It was his enthusiasm in capturing moments of our everyday lives that sparked my interest in documenting the world around me.

I was six when 9/11 happened. From that point on, the domestic and global perception of my motherland was always driven by the negative connotations drawn from the headlines – terrorism, war, images of sandstorms, guns and desperation. But at home in LA, I would see the beauty of our culture, the food, the handicrafts, the art we had on the walls, the music and poetry, and the stories, artifacts and photographs my parents had from their time in Afghanistan. Their photographs from the 60s and 70s showcased the country at a time when it flourished. One day, I told myself, I’m going to make a project that shows the world another side of this incomplete story.

Last summer, a 14-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by an asylum seeker in Epping and this small community was engulfed in protest. Can it recover?

When Sherzod* moved to Epping in 2025, he was dreaming of a little garden, long dog walks in the forest and more space to breathe. At 20, he had moved from Uzbekistan to the UK to study law, then lived in north London for decades. In his mid-40s, after establishing himself in a media job, he began visiting the forest – 5,900 acres of green lung saved by the Epping Forest Act 1878. The pretty shops of the old south-west Essex town delighted him. “I just liked the high street, I liked the people,” he says. “The people were really friendly.”

Epping was created by the canons of Waltham Abbey in the 13th century as a market town on the road from London to Cambridge. Its high street is still thriving. There is a Gail’s bakery and an M&S Food shop; the four-bed semis in the estate agents’ windows are listed at just shy of £1m.

Forget swimming pools. If you really want to show you’re one of the ultra-rich, you need your own snow room. You can even put one on your yacht

Name: Snow rooms.

Age: About 10 years old.

Love them or hate them, the versatile sandal is back – just choose the right ones and wear them the Copenhagen way

The flip-flop is an essential text of summer style. The Dalai Lama wears flip-flops. Surfers wear flip-flops. They are a beach classic, a staple of campsite shower blocks, non-negotiable after a pedicure. Like a pair of blue jeans or a cloth tote bag, they have a utility that transcends fashion.

But when flip-flops step out of their lane – when they become a fashion shoe, a public-facing shoe – rather than a shoe you leave by the back door – they raise hackles. Every single time we get a heatwave, a lively debate about whether flip-flops are acceptable in the office follows, without ever being resolved. When Jennifer Lawrence wore flip-flops under her Dior gown on the Cannes red carpet in 2023, there was an outcry over the perceived flouting of the film festival’s “elegant footwear” policy.

• Defender unable to train with squad on Wednesday

• Declan Rice and Marc Guéhi also trained individually

Reece James is a doubt for England’s World Cup quarter-final against Norway in Miami on Saturday after he was again unable to train with the squad on Wednesday.

The right-back has been unavailable since he injured a hamstring in England’s second group game – the 0-0 draw against Ghana in Boston. Thomas Tuchel knew at the time he would be without him for at least two games and probably for a potential last 16 tie, which is what transpired.

• Repeat of last World Cup final v Argentina still possible

• ‘We have to deal with it,’ France’s head coach says

Didier Deschamps has insisted he is not concerned by the appointment of Argentinian officials to oversee the World Cup quarter-final between France and Morocco on Thursday, with a repeat of the 2022 final against Argentina still possible. “We have to deal with it,” he said. “I trust the referees. Our opponent is Morocco, not the referee.”

The France head coach, though, is not a natural diplomat. This was a characteristically combative display from Deschamps, who spent at least 90 seconds at the end of his press conference explaining why he really did not have time to answer one final question, before reluctantly answering, grumpily. He could not resist a jibe at those, many in the north African media, who had criticised the French official François Letexier’s performance during the last-16 game between Argentina and Egypt on Tuesday.

• Statement says decisions ‘raised serious concerns’

• Association rues ‘controversial and influential incidents’

The Egyptian Football Association has questioned the “fairness” of the national team’s 3-2 loss to Argentina in Tuesday’s World Cup last-16 encounter.

Having gone 1-0 up through Yasser Ibrahim early on, Egypt thought they had doubled their lead in the second half when Mostafa Ziko scored at the end of an excellent move. The goal was disallowed after a VAR review, however, with the referee, François Letexier, adjudging Marwan Attia to have committed a foul in the buildup.

• Russia banned since full-scale invasion of Ukraine

• Many national associations opposed to reintegration

Uefa is prepared to block the return of Russian teams to international football after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) provisionally lifted the country’s suspension from global competition.

Fifa has indicated it will review its position after imposing a ban on Russian teams in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago. It said on Tuesday that it would “analyse the decision before deciding on next steps”, and Uefa’s stance sets up another potential clash with the world governing body.

Country’s model prioritises joy while offering choice – and Erling Haaland’s World Cup exploits show that it works

At full time, the arithmetic felt wrong. A team from a country of 5.5 million people, back at a World Cup after 28 years away, had just beaten the five-time champions to reach a first quarter-final.

During Norway’s victory over Brazil on Sunday there was little between the fast feet of Vinícius Júnior and the raw power of Erling Haaland. But look at how that pair and others on the two teams were raised and a different story emerges. Neymar, Matheus Cunha and Vinícius grew up in a system that prioritises prodigies – spotting talent early and fast-tracking it through academies built around a single sport. Haaland, Martin Ødegaard and Antonio Nusa grew up with something altogether different.

There are far better ways to tackle climate breakdown, but successive governments have chosen to listen to the fossil fuel companies instead

The new prime minister will be looking for money? Well, here’s £21.7bn lying on the ground. The government could cancel its deranged, disastrous carbon capture and storage (CCS) programme at no cost to public welfare: in fact, it would greatly reduce the harm we will suffer.

Sorry, did I say £21.7bn? That’s the figure the government has been putting in its press releases for spending on this programme between now and 2050. But this covers only the first phase of the project. The climate experts Dr Andrew Boswell and Simon Oldridge worked through the data produced by the government’s Climate Change Committee, which was scattered across different spreadsheets, and discovered that the projected cost of the full CCS programme between now and 2050 is £264bn.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

His byelection stunt shows he is clearly rattled by a perilous position. Wildcards rarely endure: his future is behind him

Britain’s politics was never so weird. First, the people of Makerfield choose who should be the new prime minister. Now the people of Clacton are to confirm the man who is currently his most popular challenger. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is still running ahead of all other parties, and he is ahead of all other current leaders. It would be foolish to underestimate him.

Farage is a cut above the normal populist upstart. His image as the amiable duffer in the golf club bar was once that of a traditional Tory backbencher. He took to Brexit not as an economic theoretician but as a flag-waving nationalist. He exploited race as a populist issue, coded as immigration, but had little interest in any wider political programme. Brexit to him was simply a mid-career adventure.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

As the family travails worsen, it’s a wretched time to lose face and maybe millions of pounds to his tabloid tormentor. Epic battle, epic fail

It really hasn’t been a very good week for Harry. The fifth in line to the throne will retire to Montecito, his gated California fastness – not, as seemed at least possible a week ago, having visited his mother country to public sympathy and applause, mending a few broken fences and seeing his old dad again. Now instead it will be a retreat in confusion, not having stayed in a palace, or seeing his busy pater, and worst of all, bested at huge cost by the Daily Mail, the bete noire of all bete noires.

The prince might reflect that he has brought many of his troubles on himself. He will leave with the rightwing press chortling that, for a crusader for personal privacy, he has outed himself much more comprehensively than they ever managed with his rancorous TV interviews about how horrible his family has been to him, his glutinous Netflix series and, most of all, his memoir Spare, with its revelation, among much else, about his frostbitten penis.

I was famous once, and I’m sure I let my self-regard race ahead of my talent. Adoration has its limits, though, and everyone would do well to remember that

What’s wrong with people? I don’t mean ordinary people. I mean the superpeople. The excessively talented, the wildly successful, the world-famous, the widely adored, the wealthy beyond measure. Take Cristiano Ronaldo, Serena Williams and Taylor Swift, a triumphant trio for the ages. Each is blessed with the two things you need to reach the top: huge talent coupled with a ferocious work ethic. There’s an awful lot to love – if only they didn’t seem to love themselves quite so much.

Swift’s talent and generosity are as awesome as the wealth they’ve generated for her. Why, in a Disney+ docuseries about her huge Eras tour, we saw her distributing envelopes to emotional crew members, sharing out some of the profits. Wonderful! Who does that? On the other hand, who has themselves filmed doing that?

It refers to the total burnout experienced during periods of extreme heat and humidity – and never have we needed it more

It’s satisfying when one word sums up an entire philosophy or feeling – think hygge, schadenfreude – and there’s a new kid on the block that is particularly relevant right now. Natsubate is the reason so many of us feel utterly exhausted at the moment, as we battle through perilously high temperatures once more. Hailing from Japan, it translates as “summer exhaustion” and describes that feel-it-in-your-bones, all-encompassing dog- tiredness experienced during periods of extreme heat and humidity.

It’s a heatwave hangover, which often hangs about long after the boiling conditions. Next-level knackeredness. This is not just middle age; it’s natsubate.

A legal case on behalf of some 700,000 people against the country’s biggest housebuilders could be a catalyst for much-needed industry reform

Every new government – at least for the past decade or so – has come into office with a promise to build more homes. New ministers don a hard hat, take a trip out to a recently completed development and smile indulgently as a bright young couple get given the keys to a smart-looking new-build. Then follows a speech about aspiration.

The unspoken truth will be that it is not up to the minister how many new homes are built in his or her term. Instead, this decision is mostly made in the boardrooms of the largest developers, who together control the land and resources to dominate the market in this country.

Peter Apps is the author of Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen

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.

They suck up energy and water, and blast out heat. Just who is better off from all this investment – aside from tech bros?

The two great existential threats of our time – the climate crisis and AI – come hurtling together in the explosion of datacentres across Australia and around the world.

You can hardly avoid hearing about them these days, either with awed reverence of the promised benefits to humankind or with fear and anger given the implications for the climate, inflation, jobs and even housing affordability.

Plans for a mega-resort, backed by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, have spurred broader questions about who politics is serving

For more than a month, thousands have taken to the streets of Tirana to protest against their government, in the biggest outbreak of unrest in Albania since the collapse of communism more than three decades ago. What began with environmental concerns about protecting a nature reserve and the more than 2,500 species it hosts has become the flamingo revolution, questioning the very direction of the country.

Albanians are angered that multibillion dollar luxury developments backed by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump threaten one of the last wild areas on the Adriatic – Zvërnec, its lagoon and the nearby island of Sazan – and are furious at the lack of transparency surrounding the projects. The government says that deals are not finalised. But videos of bulldozers on beaches triggered the mass protests.

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 far-right leader has reached for the Trumpian playbook in plotting a possible path to the Élysée. The consequences are alarmingly unpredictable

Back in 2013, when a Socialist minister was accused (and eventually convicted) of tax fraud, the righteous fury of Marine Le Pen knew no bounds. Any politician found guilty of financial misconduct, she fulminated, should be ineligible for office for the rest of their lives. That was very much then. Although a court of appeal on Tuesday upheld her own conviction for embezzling European parliament funds, Ms Le Pen announced the same day that she would be the candidate for her far-right National Rally party (RN) in next year’s presidential race.

Confounding speculation that she was preparing to hand the baton on to Jordan Bardella, her young protege, Ms Le Pen has thereby made the biggest gamble of her political career. The court’s ruling enabled her to make a fourth bid for the Élysée by reducing an eligibility ban to a length of time already served. But it also insisted that she wear an electronic monitoring tag, restricting the hours in which she could campaign. That sanction has been circumvented by her appeal to France’s highest court, the cour de cassation – which may or may not be heard before the presidential election’s first round in April.

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 a report that disadvantaged white children have lower reading fluency than other groups, leading to disengagement and school absence

The critical issue of secondary school reading fluency is not a new problem (Third of disadvantaged white pupils in England leave primary school without being able to read properly, 4 July). A fundamental inability to access the curriculum due to poor reading and comprehension has always been the case for a significant cohort of students entering secondary education, although this has increased over time.

As a secondary school teacher, I am frequently left wondering about the exact nature of the literacy instruction occurring in some primary schools. Year after year, pupils entering year 7 lack the basic decoding and automaticity required to engage with secondary-level texts.

Prof Philip Leach and Prof Başak Çalı say governments must take action to give teeth to the European convention on human rights

The repression of free speech in Turkey worsens by the day, especially for anyone who is critical of the government or the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkey intensifies crackdown on public life in run-up to Nato summit in Ankara, 6 July). It is right to suggest that other governments’ silence encourages authoritarianism. The human rights philanthropist Osman Kavala (whom we represent) has languished in jail since 2017 in spite of legally binding orders for his release issued by the European court of human rights, which has recognised that he is the victim of a political prosecution. European states have repeatedly balked at putting any real pressure on Turkey to free Mr Kavala.

Instead of paying lip service to upholding the integrity of the European human rights system, governments must take concerted action to give it some real teeth.
Prof Philip Leach Middlesex University
Prof Başak Çalı Oxford University

Readers respond to a letter about the challenges facing families where their adult children are not able to lead independent lives

I was moved by the letter (3 July) from a parent whose child is not in employment, education or training (Neet). As a parent of a neurodivergent late-teenager who struggles with social communication and with making relationships beyond the family, I have found the prospect of his entry into adulthood a daunting, unsettling one.

As your correspondent makes clear, it’s easy to slip into the habit of comparison and begin to see your adult child as falling “behind” their peers who have now found places for themselves in the wider world – in work, but also in romantic relationships. Perhaps as a man it is most difficult for me not to make comparisons with my own teenage years, which now seem to me to have been marked, like those of so many, by experimentation, recklessness and a general disregard for order, routine and safety. All of which, I suppose, add up to a specific manifestation of the independence that we so often value in our children.

Readers respond to an article by David Batty about the postwar removal of babies from unmarried mothers, and his call for proper redress for survivors like him

I gave up my child for adoption in the late 1960s. I was just 20. It was my choice, but no choice at all (Britain’s apology for the scandal of forced adoption won’t – on its own – heal the wounds of survivors like me, 2 July). The circumstances were such that unless you had parental or a partner’s support, or a trust fund, it was practically impossible to keep your child. I have discovered through coverage of the government’s apology that some state funding was available. It was never mentioned to me.

I had planned to give up my child because I believed the propaganda: as an unmarried mother I could not give her a proper home. What I had not expected was the love I felt. When her father offered to marry me, I jumped at the chance and took the child away from prospective adopted parents. Three days before our wedding, the child’s father left me. My mother had not let me into the house once my pregnancy became obvious, so going home was not an option. I called the adoption agency and said goodbye to her in a small room somewhere near Baker Street.

• The 24-year-old beat German Max Kanter into second

• Norway’s Torstein Træen keeps leader’s yellow jersey

Olav Kooij emerged out of the heat haze in the Place de Verdun to win stage five of the Tour de France in Pau. In the first sprint finish in the 2026 Tour, Kooij, teammate to Paul Seixas at Decathlon CMA CGM, won with ease from Max Kanter of XDA Astana.

Yet Kooij, who took three stages in the Tour of Britain last year, almost did not start the Tour because of a lingering illness. “I was tired for the first two months of the year,” he said. “There were moments when I had no idea how long it would take.

• French Open semi-finalist Kostyuk beats Paolini 6-3, 6-2

• Czech No 9 seed Noskova defeats Elise Mertens 6-3, 7-5

A lot has been made of how open the women’s draw is – even before the ­defending champion, Iga Swiatek, and the world’s top two, Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina, fell in the first week. But sometimes it pays to be aware of the in-form ­players, ­whoever they are, and so it was no surprise to see Marta Kostyuk and Linda Noskova march into the semi-finals.

Kostyuk, the Ukrainian 12th seed who reached the semi-finals at the French Open last month, crushed the 2024 runner-up, Jasmine ­Paolini, 6-3, 6-2 on Centre Court while the 21-year-old Noskova, seeded ninth, saw off Elise Mertens of Belgium 6-3, 7-5 to make it 10 wins out of 11 on grass this year.

Attendance and viewing figures at T20 World Cup hit an all-time high – and the sport’s appeal is pushing boundaries

Women’s cricket is growing faster than the men’s game in many areas of the world, according to the International Cricket Council chief executive, Sanjog Gupta, who has defended his organisation’s reliance on the Indian market for driving expansion.

The first women’s Test to be played at Lord’s begins on Friday between England and India, five days after the ground staged the final of a record‑breaking T20 World Cup in front of a sellout crowd. Gupta, however, is just as excited by the sport’s potential in new markets.

• Carrick set to welcome player after World Cup

• United agree initial £48m deal to buy Chelsea’s Santos

Marcus Rashford is poised to be reintegrated at Manchester United after the World Cup, with the forward expected to start next season as part of Michael Carrick’s squad.

Because of a breakdown in the relationship between the player and club the 28-year-old, who has two years left on his contract, last played for United in a 2-1 Europa League win at Viktoria Pilzen in December 2024. There are no problems between Rashford and Carrick.

• Two-time Ballon d’Or winner joins on a free transfer

• Mary Earps and Nicole Anyomi also new recruits

London City Lionesses have announced the signing of Alexia Putellas at an event in New York, confirming the arrival in the Women’s Super League of one of the women’s game’s all-time greats.

The two-time Ballon d’Or winner was available on a free transfer after leaving Barcelona at the end of the season, ending a 14-year stay during which she helped them to win four Champions League titles.

• Losses increase between 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons

• Transfer spend and lack of one-off sales account for rise

The combined pre-tax losses of Premier League clubs climbed from £135m in the 2023-24 season to £948m in 2024-25, according to Deloitte’s annual review of football finance.

This rise was attributed by Deloitte to transfer spending and the absence of significant profits from one-off sales. Net debt of Premier League clubs was up to £3.6bn in 2024-25, compared to £3.5bn the season before, Deloitte found.

Australia’s superstar striker returns to the US after a seven-year absence – and will find a vastly changed landscape

When Sam Kerr last played for the National Women’s Soccer League’s Big Apple-adjacent club, it was called Sky Blue and the playing conditions were abysmal. The Australia striker spent three years (from 2015-17) accruing accolades for a team bereft of locker rooms or running water at its training facility.

This month, she came back to a vastly evolved franchise that has won two NWSL Championships in three seasons while implementing a comprehensive overhaul of its players, personnel and prioritization of player conditions.

Ndodana Mkhanyisi Tshuma, 45, is believed to have left UK for Zimbabwe before bodies of his family were discovered

A man suspected of murdering his wife and two daughters near Bedford has been urged by police to hand himself in after fleeing to Zimbabwe.

Nothabo Zandile Tshuma, 42, known as Zandile, and Natalie, 15, and Nala, five, were found dead in their £1.3m detached house in Carnoustie Drive, Great Denham. Police forced entry to the house on Monday after receiving reports the family had not been seen for days.

Exclusive: victims commissioner and domestic abuse commissioner call for pause on planned releases

A failure to put in place safeguards in advance of a change to the law that will result in offenders being released early will put abuse victims at risk, ministers have been told.

In a rare coordinated intervention, the victims commissioner and the domestic abuse commissioner have written separately to ministers urging them immediately to pause planned early releases of offenders convicted of crimes against women and girls in England and Wales.

Far-right leader plans to take part in 2027 race despite appeal court upholding her conviction for embezzlement

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has launched her presidential campaign after a decision by a court of appeal shortened her ban on running for office, allowing her to take part in the 2027 vote.

Le Pen said voters would decide her future. “I’m a citizen like anyone else, who is using their rights,” she said on Wednesday, attempting to brush aside legal woes that her political opponents said would plague her campaign for next spring’s presidential election.

Order frees funds from Trump’s 2023 sexual abuse and defamation verdict after supreme court appeal failed

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A Manhattan federal court judge has ordered the release of the more than $5m Donald Trump owes E Jean Carroll following her successful 2023 sexual abuse and defamation trial against him. Less than an hour after the judge issued his order, Trump filed paperwork indicating he was appealing the decision.

Trump had deposited this $5m jury award, as well as 11% interest, into a court-held account some six weeks after Carroll’s courtroom victory. Judge Lewis Kaplan’s order directs the disbursement of these court controlled funds, which now total some $5.8m due to interest accrual.

Police ‘exploring evidence’ of more than £1m in fraudulent activity involving 60 transactions and more than 1m emails

Three people have been arrested as part of an investigation into financial crimes involving the University of Greater Manchester, including allegations of fraud, bribery and money laundering.

Greater Manchester police (GMP) said the force was “exploring evidence” of more than £1m in fraudulent activity involving 60 transactions and more than a million emails, alongside the Crown Prosecution Service’s serious economic crime unit.

Experts warn that some marine species are at risk of ‘mass mortality events’ in ever-warming oceans

UK waters are being hit with an “extreme” marine heatwave, the Met Office has said, as scientists warn that high ocean temperatures globally could result in “mass-mortality events” for some species.

The forecasters said these elevated temperatures have developed rapidly because of last month’s heat dome, during which most of Europe sweltered in its worst ever heatwave that scientists said would have been impossible without the climate crisis.

Climate crisis prompts calls for workplace temperature limits and rights to heat breaks and adjusted working hours

As Europe’s sweltering summer continues, trades unions are mounting a push for new laws to counter deadly heat stress that is linked to an estimated 230 workplace deaths a year.

This year’s toll may be even higher, with 1,300 excess European deaths already connected to the June heatwave by the World Health Organization, and other estimates running as high as 20,000.

Estonia, Luxembourg and UK are the top three in biennial Yale University index in tackling pollution and other issues

Much of the world has made encouraging strides in reducing toxic problems such as water and air pollution that have long plagued communities. But there is still a widespread lack of progress among countries in dealing with the climate crisis, according to the latest edition of an influential environmental scorecard.

The biennial Yale University index again ranks Estonia as the best-performing of 177 assessed countries, after strong recent efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and protect its ecosystems. Luxembourg is second, and the UK is third, having moved up from fifth place in the 2024 index.

As the newly elected president, Abelardo de la Espriella, pledges to exploit oil reserves, environmentalists prepare to defend climate progress

It is hard for Yuvelis Morales Blanco to pinpoint when her activism started. Now 25, she recalls getting involved in land rights and environmental issues in Santander, northern Colombia, from a young age. Living near water, she says, has always shaped her connection to nature. “My parents are fishers on the Magdalena, Colombia’s most important river,” says Morales. “For us, the river isn’t just food – it embodies life, identity and culture.”

In April, she received the Goldman environmental prize for her leadership in Puerto Wilches, where she succeeded in halting oil extraction and fracking. Yet, it seems her struggle is only just beginning.

Activist is challenging ruling last year that restored colonial-era homophobic law against same-sex intimacy

Some of the UK’s top judges are hearing arguments over whether a Trinidad and Tobago court had the legal right to overturn a 2018 ruling to remove colonial-era homophobic laws that criminalise anal sex between consenting men.

The country’s “buggery law”, often referred to as its “sodomy” law, was created in 1925 and was written into Trinidad and Tobago’s 1986 Sexual Offences Act. In 2017 a Trinidadian LGBTQ+ rights activist, Jason Jones, challenged the law, and in 2018 a high court ruled that it infringed upon his constitutional right to privacy and equality.

PM suggests maintaining links with US president will be part of his continued responsibility to UK-US relationship

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Donald Trump has agreed to stay in touch with Keir Starmer after he steps down from No 10 despite his increasingly tense relationship with the UK prime minister over recent months.

After meeting at the Nato summit in Ankara, Starmer suggested that maintaining links with the US president would be part of his continued responsibilities to the strategic relationship between the two countries.

How to hit the 3.5% of GDP defence spending promise would be a matter for ‘the next prime minister’, MPs told

The Treasury has as yet carried out no analysis of the trade-offs necessary for the UK to hit the 3.5% of GDP defence spending promise made to Nato, the department’s chief secretary has said.

Under robust questioning in a joint session of the Treasury and defence select committees on Wednesday, Lucy Rigby repeatedly said that how to fund additional defence spending would be a matter for “the next prime minister”.

UK government urged to apply pressure on France to fix system or suspend checks by next week

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Cross-Channel ferry passengers and the port of Dover face “utter chaos and miles of tailbacks” under the EU’s entry/exit system (EES) unless the technology is fixed or checks are suspended by next week, MPs have said.

The home affairs select committee chair, Karen Bradley, urged the government to “apply maximum pressure” on the French authorities to act on the EES before peak holiday traffic arrives at the port.

Hotel did not allow two Muslim women to wear full-body bathing suit, which has become bugbear of European far right

An Austrian court has found an alpine hotel’s ban on burkinis discriminatory, a politically explosive ruling in a country where the far right is on the rise.

The full-body bathing suit worn by some Muslim women has become a bugbear of the European far right, which has campaigned to restrict Muslim dress in public spaces.

The disease will touch 92% of people globally, finds annual review, while ‘persistent’ inequities found to exist in access to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care

Remarkable scientific progress against cancer has changed very little for millions of patients globally, who face devastating physical, emotional and financial consequences after diagnosis, a new World Health Organization report has warned.

One person in five will develop cancer, according to WHO estimates, and the disease will touch 92% of people, either through their own diagnosis or that of a close family member.

In a rare move, Andy Beshear sent a note to the Republican senator’s staff requesting an update on the 84-year-old’s condition since he was hospitalized on 14 June

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During a bilateral meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Nato summit in Ankara, Donald Trump was asked about Iran, and he repeated his earlier criticism.

On Wednesday, while speaking to reporters alongside Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, Trump said that memorandum of understanding signed last month by the US and Iran is “over”, in the wake of the latest strikes.

Growing number of farm outposts using violence to seize territory, a process seemingly enabled by radical elements in Netanyahu’s government

The attack in Ein Arik came in the middle of the night and was aimed at the rudiments of life: the earth, water, roots and seedlings.

Ilham Karajeh awoke on Friday last week to find her family allotment raided and ruined. The thin black irrigation pipes had been sliced, grape vines cut and 70 young olive trees, the embodiment of the family’s aspirations for the future, had been uprooted.

July update projects GDP growth of 1% this year, making UK the third fastest-growing economy in the G7

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has upgraded its growth forecast for the UK, while leaving those for other G7 countries weaker or unchanged, amid hopes the economic impact of the Iran war may be less severe than feared.

In a July update of its World Economic Outlook, which was finalised before the latest outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East, the Washington-based organisation projected UK gross domestic product to grow by 1% this year – up 0.2 percentage points from its April forecast.

FCA clashes with Consumer Voice, alleging lack of transparency and conflict of interest

The City regulator is trying to get the only consumer group arguing for higher motor finance scandal payouts thrown out of court, alleging that its co-founders have not been transparent about their funding and potential conflicts of interest.

The accusations, laid out in legal filings on Wednesday, are the latest controversy in the long-running saga surrounding mis-sold car loans, with fears of large payouts having resulted in heavy lobbying by banks and a controversial intervention by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves.

Ofcom levies largest-ever consumer protection fine after finding firm deliberately mishandled millions of phone calls

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Virgin Media has been fined £28m by the UK telecoms watchdog for repeatedly preventing customers from cancelling their contracts over a near three-year period.

Ofcom discovered that Virgin Media “likely mishandled” millions of phone calls between the start of 2022 and autumn 2024, with deliberate call-dropping tactics, unnecessary call transfers and putting customers on hold for “no reason”.

VW to propose 100,000 job losses to board and says car plants could be put under foreign ownership to save jobs

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The German car industry has warned of a potential collapse of employment in the sector in Europe unless society and workers accept that “bold decisions” are needed to address competition from the Chinese and other rivals.

Volkswagen is preparing to formally propose up to 100,000 job losses, a move that has triggered a wave of protests.

Spliff in hand, the Greek artist and architect explains how his Venice pavilion was inspired by Picasso’s Guernica, Charlie Kirk’s widow … and a hatred of pavilions

‘Do you mind if I’m smoking while we’re talking?” enquires Andreas Angelidakis as we both recline on a bean bag in the form of a fallen classical column. “Do you mind if it’s narcotics? If it’s cannabis?” He extracts an elegantly constructed spliff wrapped in pink cigarette paper from his black Nike windcheater and lights it up. “It’s my medicine for anxiety,” he says, before reconsidering. “No, I’m just addicted.”

The artist likes to see the world in a slightly altered state – which you can tell as soon as you set foot in the Escape Room, the name of his installation in the Greek pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. The pavilion, which was designed by M Papandreou and inaugurated in 1934, the year that Hitler met Mussolini here, has been furnished with a light-up dancefloor, Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Relax is pumping from the sound system and wilted classical columns hang from the ceiling or are arranged as seating on the floor.

The latest new chapter in Sam Raimi’s classic franchise goes harder than ever before but there’s something missing

With the release of Evil Dead Burn, there are now just as many Evil Dead movies not directed by Sam Raimi or starring Bruce Campbell as there are entries with that original team in place. The next film, Evil Dead Wrath, is already set for a 2028 release, when it will officially tip the balance toward non-Raimi film-makers. And unlike the non-James Cameron Terminators or the Spielberg-free Jaws sequels, these post-Raimi Evil Dead movies (which retain the director’s services as a seemingly enthusiastic producer) have so far enjoyed box office success, decent critical notices and appreciation from their horror fanbase.

Yet all three of the post-Raimi Evil Deads still feel as if they take place in the shadows of what came before – specifically, the original 1983 indie horror classic about a bunch of young people who stumble upon the Book of the Dead in a cabin and accidentally unleash demonic hell upon themselves. The reasoning must be that with so many dopey horror comedies failing to competently imitate the splattery slapstick of Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness, and with Ash’s story continued in a three-season TV series, a new version’s only hope is to recapture the nasty (and, yes, sometimes darkly comic) transgressions of the first film. Evil Dead Burn comes closer than the others so far – though maybe not close enough to obliterate the comparisons entirely.

The beloved BBC sitcom is now a quarter of a century old. Ahead of two TV celebrations, here are 25 things you didn’t know about television’s funniest workplace mockumentary

Fetch the acoustic guitar and twiddle your TM Lewin tie because it’s the 25th anniversary of The Office. Yes, it’s a quarter of a century since we were introduced to Wernham Hogg paper company’s David Brent – a friend first, boss second, probably an entertainer third.

To commemorate the majestic mockumentary’s silver jubilee, actors Martin Freeman and Mackenzie Crook are reuniting to present a BBC documentary looking back at the show. Meanwhile, co-creator Ricky Gervais is releasing a retrospective special on his YouTube channel.

Australian director Natalie Erika James demonstrates the power of movies as vessels for cultural commentary in this intoxicatingly creepy production

The body horror genre has been around for a long time, nibbling at the edges of the zeitgeist, but it seems to be having a moment, or about to. Every new title – recent examples including The Ugly Stepsister and Together – arrives in the shadow of Coralie Fargeat’s hideously impressive The Substance, a rare example of a sticky-icky flick that spectacularly defied the high/low art divide and even snagged a handful of Oscar nominations. Also having a moment (a terrifically long moment!) are Australian horror movies, with recent years delivering oodles of critically acclaimed titles – among them Talk to Me, Late Night With the Devil, Leviticus, You’ll Never Find Me, You Won’t Be Alone, Sissy, Relic, The Invisible Man, Bring Her Back and Beast of War.

Into that Venn diagram overlay between “body horror” and “Australian” comes Saccharine, the new film from writer-director Natalie Erika James, which takes a bold route into exploring eating disorders and body dysmorphia, demonstrating yet again the great power and malleability of horror movies as vessels for cultural commentary. James has a knack for visualising core themes: first in her excellent feature debut Relic, a horror film about dementia that illustrates time’s deteriorating forces in individual images: a mouldy fruit bowl, an overrun tennis court.

As the History of Advertising Trust turns 50, our writer revels in its vast archive, remembering the bread boy on his bike, the suggestive coffee-drinkers and the Hamlet smoker adjusting his comb-over

• Iconic British adverts – in pictures

Hanging over the toilet in the gents’ loos at the History of Advertising Trust’s archive in deepest Norfolk is a photograph of Ian Botham. It’s not just the cricketing great’s mullet that tells you this is 1986, but the fact that Beefy is smoking a cigar. The caption below answers the question that has troubled philosophers since Aristotle: “Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet.”

If the past is a foreign country, then the history of advertising is a whole alternate universe, one in which excitable metallic martians induced us to buy Cadbury’s powdered potatoes with the slogan: “For mash get Smash.” It’s a place where bowler-hatted chimps dressed as removal men wooed us into buying PG Tips tea, while legions of sports stars energetically advertised carcinogenic smokes.

As the Bayreuth festival turns 150, we look at the composer’s huge and enduring influence, and wonder what might have happened to classical music in his absence?

One hundred and fifty years ago this summer, Richard Wagner wanted to change the world. Not only the musical world, but nationhood, political thought, even the idea of what it means to be human. The inaugural Bayreuth festival opened on 13 August 1876, with the first complete cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen staged in Wagner’s custom-built Bayreuth Festspielhaus in Bavaria. The first audience included kings, emperors, aristocracy and politicians as well as Europe’s musical and creative elites (Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Bruckner and Liszt among them). Wagner, who had been a revolutionary on the streets of Dresden in the 1840s, intended the Ring’s four operas to usher in a new world, one redeemed and made wise by this epic story of power, love, redemption, betrayal and renewal.

The titanic impact of Wagner is almost impossible to grasp today. Stage design aside (having the orchestra entirely hidden in the pit and darkening the auditorium were two of his innovations at Bayreuth) his legacies are felt across the arts from the way Wagnerism gripped German philosophers and Paris’s painters and poets in the 19th century, to the seismic changes he wreaked in cultural politics, and the toxicity of the antisemitic bearers of the Wagnerian flame after his death in 1883.

Norah Jones hosts the legendary rock stars as they return to the studio for a new album. Plus, mindfulness meditation with the Getty Museum

This official Rolling Stones podcast is hosted by Norah Jones and released across six weeks, with each chapter charting the making of the band’s upcoming studio album, Foreign Tongues. Unsurprisingly, it’s a polished exercise in PR for one of the world’s biggest acts. Its first episode is also something of a tribute, as it considers how Mick, Keith and Ronnie returned to the studio following the death of drummer Charlie Watt in 2021. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Adams’ maximal minimalism was framed by Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and Joan Tower’s parallel feminist statement, with Florence Price’s The Heart of A Woman adding a Broadway flourish

Orchestras have thrown themselves on this year’s anniversary of American Independence (or “Freedom 250” as the marketers are catchily dubbing it) with an eagerness born of a repertoire of big names and broad appeal. A year of Gershwin, Barber and Bernstein, Adams and Glass? Full halls all round. You can even throw in John Williams and Duke Ellington (just go easy on the Carter and Crumb) and you’re on to a winner. Just ask Kazuki Yamada and the audience of Friday night’s generously filled Symphony Hall.

Harmonium – John Adams’ 1980 landmark experiment in maximal minimalism – was the advertised centrepiece (and will travel down to the Proms with the CBSO later this month), but the framing was the curiosity here: conceived by Yamada as two facing musical panels.

The England and Arsenal player grew up with Enrique Iglesias on repeat, and knows the Bridget Jones soundtrack by heart. But what football song gives her goosebumps?

The first song I fell in love with
I used to have a cassette player with these fuzzy foam headphones, and only two cassettes: Hero by Enrique Iglesias and How Do I Live by LeAnn Rimes. I would play them over and over.

The first single I downloaded
Michaela Strachan by Scouting for Girls. I thought it was fascinating that they’d written a song about her, even though I wasn’t quite sure who she was until I saw her on telly.

From Desiderius Erasmus to Luis Rubiales, a cultural history of this most intimate of gestures

If, on a European holiday, you get flustered greeting people – should you kiss? how many times? – spare a thought for Dutch theologian Desiderius Erasmus. Visiting England in 1499, he found a nation of enthusiastic kissers. “Wherever you go, you are received on all hands with kisses; when you take leave you are dismissed with kisses,” he wrote in surprise, or possibly, alarm. On the continent, the fashion for greeting with a peck on the lips had long fallen by the wayside (probably because of sexual propriety), but the English held firm. It didn’t matter if the other person was of the opposite sex, everyone puckered up.

Whether you like to snog, smooch, suck face or osculate (the scientific term), kissing seems so natural and instinctive, it’s hard to imagine it having a history at all. But just as kissing is not seen in all cultures, so, historian of emotions Katie Barclay writes, its meanings have changed across time too. From foot-kissing knights to baby-kissing politicians, to the “shut-up kiss” of Hollywood romcoms, this rich and fascinating history reminds us that kissing is, and always has been, a contested public gesture as well as a private pleasure.

The chills are genuinely spooky in this haunted-house tale about contemporary precarity – a debut that speaks to our times

There are, MR James tells us, five conditions that must be met for a perfect ghost story: the pretence of truth, a “pleasing terror”, no explanation of the machinery, no gratuitous horror, and that the story belong to the writer’s (and reader’s) “own day”. In Lauren Mooney’s sharply observed debut novel, Danielle lives a precarious existence as a PA at a dilettante arts charity called Hodgepodge (strapline: “for ideas”). She types emails, makes tea and increasingly finds herself running personal errands for her monstrous boss Jeannie. Jeannie seems to see no difference between working for the charity, and working for her.

After a horrible breakup, Danielle finds herself unexpectedly homeless. With no savings, no bank of Mum and Dad, and no room left in her overdraft, she winds up staying alone in Jeannie’s ancestral home, a rambling pile in the middle of nowhere. “We could do with somebody to take care of the place,” Jeannie says, as Danielle bursts into uncharacteristic tears. “You’d be doing us a huge favour.”

Collector of dream stories from across continent finds ‘surprising consistency’ in the way they are structured

A young woman discovers in a dream that she is responsible for the Holocaust and tries to come up with schemes to make amends – and then gets distracted by a business meeting. Another woman dreams she is being chased by murderers – and ends up chilling in front of the TV with them. A man gets to advise Emmanuel Macron on social policy – and talks to him about haircuts and dog training instead.

Dreams can turn our innermost fears and darkest fantasies into miniature dramas. But an anthology of recollected dreams harvested from online forums across Europe shows how the story arc of the subconscious often bends towards anticlimaxes.

This fantastical journey through family, folktales and a world beneath our feet is witty, uplifting and gorgeously written

Daniel Mason’s latest novel sees him return to the verdant New England landscape that so captivated readers of 2023’s acclaimed North Woods. This time, though, he hops the border from Massachusetts into Vermont – and effects a deeper shift in the process. Where North Woods was a foray into history, telling the tale of a house and its inhabitants over three centuries, in Country People Mason turns his attention to literature and mines the rich seams of text, from myths to Milton to Shakespeare to Tolstoy and all points in between, that make up his novel’s foundations. This is, at its core, a story about stories; a tale about the tales we tell each other, and our children, and ourselves.

It’s also a far simpler thing: the linear account of a year in the life of a contemporary family. On the surface, this might look like a step back from the scope and ambition of North Woods, which spooled out over hundreds of years in a polyphony of forms and voices. But if Country People teaches us anything, it’s that surfaces are only ever a fraction of what we’re dealing with – or, to borrow from one of its three, gloriously baroque epigraphs: “for every terrestrial stream, there run a thousand below the earth. For each pond, a hundred inner seas.” The book’s action is driven, in fact, by its characters’ compulsive need to dig deeper: to burrow into their physical and metaphorical landscapes for meaning, for inspiration, and on occasion just for the hell of it. Sometimes the digging in Country People is literal; often it’s metaphorical. And occasionally – well, occasionally, it turns out, the boundary between the two isn’t as solid as it might first appear.

The massively multiplayer online role-playing game has grown into a virtual social space and part of daily life for thousands of players

In a small stone chapel, on the edgelands of a medieval wilderness, two women are getting married. The attenders are draped in rainbow capes, glowing armour and top hats. A scantily clad, muscular man with angel wings officiates the ceremony. Over the heads of the two brides hover the words “I do” in bright yellow text. This is RuneScape, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (or MMO) set in the Tolkienesque realm of Gielinor. Turning 25 this year, it has, over its lifetime, become a crucial virtual social space and part of daily life for thousands of players.

Lancashire-born Amelia, one of the pixelated newlyweds, met her wife on a dating app but first bonded through their love of the game. “Our first and second date was pretty much exclusively talking about RuneScape,” she recalls. Four years later they were married, shortly followed by their in-game ceremony. Morgan – a 26-year-old from the Midlands – is one of Amelia’s closest friends. They met through the game and run UWU Girls together, a RuneScape clan that Morgan founded in a bid to cater to players across the gender spectrum. “We do IRL meetups, and for a lot of these women, it’s been their first meetings with strangers online – and that’s the same for me.”

With players leaving EA’s series once life there felt like a grind beset by ethical concerns, this quirky new sim promises a better life elsewhere

For 26 years, the life-sims genre has been dominated by one series: The Sims. Originally designed by Will Wright, creator of Sim City, EA’s virtual dollhouse series has grown into a $5bn [£3.8bn] empire with the constant release of new games, expansion packs, and collaborations cementing its place among the bestselling video game franchises of all time. But things are beginning to change. New contenders are emerging and turning the heads of even loyal players in The Sims community.

The most recent, and promising, of these is Paralives, once the solo project of indie designer Alex Massé, who is now employing a small team of developers. Released on the PC games platform Steam in May 2026 as an early access title (meaning it’s technically unfinished and looking for user feedback), it sold 250,000 copies in just eight hours. On that first day, the concurrent player count hit 78,603 – not far off The Sims 4’s all-time peak of 96,328 in 2022. While Paralives is a small project, this success is understandable. Following the news of EA’s controversial acquisition by a Saudi-backed business consortium, some simmers are looking for what they see as a more ethical alternative. But this is only part of the game’s appeal. The real draw is the game’s focus on creativity over realism: the quirky details that made many fans fall in love with The Sims in the first place.

Nintendo/TNX; Nintendo Switch
A joyful collection of vibrant rhythm games includes catching veggies in mid-air, practising dance choreographies and speaking to an alien

It has been a strange decade for the rhythm game genre. The legendary progenitors Rock Band and Guitar Hero are seemingly gone, yet companies are manufacturing plastic guitars again. Tango Gameworks, a studio best known for delivering survival horror hauntings, made Hi-Fi Rush and it ruled, but Microsoft sold the studio. Indie titles such as Sayonara Wild Hearts and Rift of the NecroDancer have done well on the margins, but now Epic Games has swept in, adding a rhythm action mode to Fortnite so now its mainstream again. All these titles have reinforced the ideas laid out by their forefathers: rhythm can intersect with video games as much as it already intersects with our everyday lives.

Few series hold this ethos to heart as strongly as Rhythm Heaven. Dormant since 2015, a new entry, Rhythm Heaven Groove (known as Rhythm Paradise Groove in Pal territories), doubles down on the concept of offering bitesize, rhythm-based experiences where you follow auditive cues to perform all manner of increasingly exhilarating actions with just a few buttons. Whether you’re catching veggies in mid-air, practising dance choreographies, or speaking to an alien, each mini-game is intended to be a vibrant, micro cacophony with its own rules.

With the much-anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto VI only available as download, Sony is following suit

Sony said on Wednesday that it would stop releasing new video games for the PlayStation console on disc in January 2028 following a shift in consumer preferences.

“Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only,” the company said on its official PlayStation blog.

Theatre503, London
Mixing naturalism and fantasy, Katie Đỗ’s debut is conceptually inventive but flawed by over-short scenes and scant emotive appeal

This debut by Vietnamese-American playwright Katie Đỗ travels across realms. It begins in the afterlife, with a whimsical scene of heaven as a place that is built out of a character’s happiest moments on earth.

The play spans several decades in the life of one family, and mixes naturalism with dreams, fantasy and interior life. That makes it formally inventive but the switches render the drama diffuse, leaching its emotive power rather than adding layers.

London Palladium
The Eurovision star leads a glittery production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s blockbuster but this booming show lacks context and clarity

This amped-up version of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s rock opera is presented by the same triumvirate who near enough blew the critics – and crowds – to heaven with their 2016 revival. Tim Sheader is again director, designer Tom Scutt’s set has a similar scaffold structure (but with some audience members standing around it this time) and Drew McOnie is once more the choreographer.

The production, in spirit, goes back not just to the first century when Jesus of Nazareth rises to become an inspiring preacher, radical tearaway and thorn in the side of the temple clerics, but also to the 1970s era of hippy-dom and flower power from which the original show arose.

Swansea Grand theatre
School locker room banter has a sinister edge in Jonathan Houlston’s shrewd debut, which pairs the toxic tropes of Adolescence with the group dynamics of Laura Wade’s Posh

In Jonathan Houlston’s strikingly astute and utterly gripping debut play, a school’s locker room is a retreat for its pupils. Here, hypermasculinity is performed en masse, first dates are held in secret and reputation-threatening confessions are whispered cautiously.

We first meet the boys as a pack, and collectively they play up to the tropes we’ve been on high alert about since the TV drama Adolescence. Banter sprinkled with “your mum” jokes flows, chat about sex reduces their female classmates to goals, and nude pictures are shared around like trophies.

This late-night escapade became a word-of-mouth festival favourite. The show’s creators discuss the method behind its madness – and why you’ll laugh without knowing why

Deep within the cavernous Banshee Labyrinth in Edinburgh’s Cowgate, robed monks stand ominously on stage after midnight. It’s 2024, halfway through the Edinburgh fringe, and nobody really knows what’s happening. But in this dungeon-like sweatbox we’re about to experience a work in progress that is equal parts joyous and utterly unhinged.

Two years on, Underground Monk Show is back. While some shows arrive at the fringe with a clear elevator pitch, this one is still impossible to define. “It’s so funny because that’s constantly what we ask ourselves,” laughs co-creator John Norris, also the brains behind the absurdist comedy gem Mr Chonkers. If you were to attempt to explain what happens, you might say that the show follows the whimsical monks who, over the course of an hour, each experience a spiritual awakening of sorts, spurred on by a magical body of water that turns their visions into reality. There are flashbacks, dream sequences and a portal into another world as the performers shuffle up and down the aisles, moving together as one unit.

With strong showings for newcomers Pluribus and Widow’s Bay, nominations for the 78th Emmys, hosted by Mariska Hargitay, are out ahead of the 14 September show

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The 2026 Emmy award nominations have been announced. Here is the list of the key categories.

Hackney-based visual arts charity Autograph has received the entire photographic estate of Jamaican-British photographer Armet Francis – a major gift that brings more than 70,000 images into their permanent photography collection

Report says new film has finished filming – although title and release date not yet confirmed

Twenty-four years after Staines’s foremost political interlocutor was last seen on the big screen in Ali G Indahouse, Ali G is set to return to cinemas.

As reported by The InSneider, a new movie has wrapped production, with filming locations including Oxfordshire, where Baron Cohen was spotted in character last summer, and in the US. A title and release date have not been confirmed and representatives for the star declined to comment.

The standup on bad gigs at motorway service station hotels, her nan’s reviews and the pressure to be ‘prize pig’ at the Edinburgh fringe

Who did you admire when you were starting out?
I loved Lee Evans because of how he ran around on stage. I want to be more like him but I just physically can’t. I try to sometimes; I’ll move my arms. Now I understand why he was so sweaty!

Best heckle?
I was doing a gig and this woman was quite drunk and talking really loudly. I said, “Hello, what’s going on here?” And she went, “Don’t worry about me, love. You’re losing them as it is.” And I was like, OK. Well, that’s brilliant.

Lindsey Santoro: It Was Like That When I Got Here is at Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 19-30 August

It’s my job to unpack beauty culture – but I’m still not immune to it. Plus, it’s a particularly strange time to be a bride, beauty-wise

My 91-year-old grandmother had her 1954 wedding album out on her lap when I visited the other day. “I wanted to remember how beautiful I used to be,” she sighed.

Every time my mom comes across a photo of her own 1984 nuptials, she says the same thing: “Look at how skinny I was!” (Or, sometimes, “Can you believe Daddy wore a white tuxedo with tails?” Which I cannot.)

From repainted walls to imaginary lawns, estate agents say modified photos help buyers ‘visualise the potential of a property’. But how much AI enhancement is too much? Agents, viewers and trading standards experts tell all

It is twilight on a desirable street in Chiswick, or it could be Hampstead, Wilmslow or Hove. A spectacular sunset has left a vivid stripe of orange fading into a violet sky. Against this saturated backdrop, a large Victorian house is clearly outlined despite the darkening atmosphere, perhaps thanks to the lights blazing from every single room. The effect is dazzling, in an unhinged, halfway-through-an-exorcism way. It is also quite obviously fake: a digital trick previously achieved with software such as Photoshop, but increasingly using quicker, cheaper AI programs.

If you are one of the many Britons for whom browsing expensive property listings is a big pastime, you’ll be familiar with the dusk shot, one of the many ways estate agents try to make their wares stand out in the endless scroll of Rightmove, Zoopla and Instagram. It is a level of artifice that most of us are prepared to overlook. We understand we are being sold a dream and we are generally happy to be transported to a world untroubled by the energy crisis, nosy neighbours or natural shadow.

Too hot to sleep? From temperature-regulating mattress toppers to a fan quiet enough for the bedroom, here are our best buys for sweaty nights – and what to avoid

• The best fans, tested

If there’s anything more uncomfortable than enduring a heatwave in Britain, it’s sleeping through one.

But hot nights are only going to get more common if the climate crisis continues its long march. While Britons are already accustomed to poor sleep – with the average adult getting just three days a week of good kip, according to the Mental Health Foundation – heat doesn’t help. Dr Allie Hare, consultant in sleep medicine and co-president of the British Sleep Society, says: “Being too hot during sleep can significantly reduce sleep quality and duration. In particular, it can reduce slow wave (deep) sleep, the stage of sleep that helps us awaken feeling rested.”

Snack packs, swim fins, and a foundation brush for applying sun cream … we asked you for the one thing worth making suitcase space for

• The best suitcases – tested

Counting down until your next getaway? We thought so. It’s peak holiday season, so to help you get in the mood (and get a head start on packing), we asked you for the essentials that always make it into your suitcase.

From tried-and-tested luggage and day-to-night sandals to long-journey entertainment for kids, our reader recommendations and Filter favourites will provide lots of inspiration for your next trip.

Spacious enough to cook two pizzas at once and simple enough for beginners, Gozney’s gas-and-wood-fired oven is an impressive piece of kit – if you have the budget

• The best pizza ovens – tested

Whether you like yours thin-crust, deep-dish, simply margherita or loaded with extras, for pizza-lovers everywhere, there’s nothing more satisfying than making your own. And while a compact or mid-size pizza oven will more than suffice for a weekly family pizza night or casual entertaining, if you’re serious about pizza – and I mean super-serious about pizza – you’ll need a big oven, such as the Gozney Dome Gen 2.

Spacious inside, back-strainingly heavy, and complete with an all-singing, all-dancing display and control panel, the Gozney Dome will cook two 10in pizzas at once (or a single 16in one). Its size allows it to handle full meals, too: an included pair of meat probes means you can roast anything from a whole chicken or fish to lamb chops or a joint. More versatile than its first-gen gas-only predecessor, the Gozney Dome Gen 2 can cook with hybrid fuel. Add the optional wood-fire control kit (£174.99), as I did in my testing, and even smoky, authentic flavours are at your fingertips.

From serums to hand soap, fragrances to hair stylers, here are the beauty buys that justify the price tag and the ones you can happily get on a budget

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Walk down any beauty aisle, and you’ll be told every product is essential, transformative and worth hocking a kidney for. For every £300 miracle cream that claims to somehow change your entire facial structure, however, there’s someone – usually on social media – insisting you can buy a perfect dupe of a cult luxury fragrance. It can feel bewildering.

After more than 15 years working in the industry – and testing hundreds of products a year – I can confirm that beauty is rarely as simple as luxury v high street. But there are a few insider realities about how beauty products are made, priced and marketed that are worth knowing before you decide which are worth the spend – and which ones aren’t.

Reboot your surplus zucchini as a condiment to complement just about any savoury plate

Mountain Feed is a super-cute garden nursery and store in Ben Lomond, California, with a blog I’ve followed for years (it teaches everything from bee-keeping to cheese-making) and which answers that age-old question, “What should I do with all this zucchini?!” in my favourite way – namely, through lacto-fermentation. Lacto-fermented courgettes are a great alternative to fermented or pickled gherkins, and perfect as a condiment alongside just about any plate of savoury food, especially when they’re spiced with lots of chilli.

This comforting dish gives all the pleasure of stuffed vine leaves without the hours of labour. Serve alongside a lemony salad that’s rich with toasted seeds

I wanted the comfort of dolma without spending hours coring, stuffing and rolling. Traditionally, for this Iraqi dish of vine leaves, various vegetables are filled with fragrant rice and often with meat, too, making it a true labour of love. This pie captures all those familiar flavours but, by layering everything instead, the vine leaves become silky and tender. A bright, lemony spinach salad adds freshness and contrast.

Electronic scales are a non-negotiable, say connoisseurs. Add a pinch of patience, some trial and error, and you, too, can master the French press

What’s the best way to make coffee using a French press? Mine always ends up too watery or too strong.
Yoanna, St Andrews, Scotland
“Coffee is one of those rabbit holes where it really depends how much money and time you want to spend,” says Ben Kovar, head of coffee at Campbell & Syme Coffee Roasters in north London and Hertfordshire, but a little investment goes a long way. “A grinder will make a big improvement. If you’re just brewing for you and, say, your partner, I’d recommend a hand grinder, because you’re not then paying for the electronics – you’re just paying for a good set of burrs.” (Comandante is Kovar’s go-to.) Of course, adjusting the grind size allows you to make coffee in a host of ways, but if Yoanna plans to stick with a cafetiere and has a good local cafe, Kovar would be inclined to head there instead. “Obviously it’s nicer to grind fresh at home, but they’ll most likely be using a top-end grinder, so that’s probably going to taste better so long as you use up a bag every two weeks. Plus, it’s nice to have a dialogue with your local barista.”

The water you use will dramatically impact the taste of your coffee, too, Kovar says: “Filter coffee is 98% water, after all. You might have spent a lot on a grinder, but if you’re using London tap water, say, it’s going to be too hard and not very nice.” A filter jug is a good starting point, but the main thing is to soften the water slightly. And don’t use the kettle straight off the boil: “Wait 30 seconds, then use the very hot water.”

The other bit of kit you’ll want is a set of scales. “You need to know what the main variables are, so how much coffee you put in, how much water, and use a timer for the brew – if you buy bespoke coffee scales, they usually have one built in,” Kovar says. (If you don’t want to fork out, though, standard kitchen scales will work just fine.) Kovar uses 60g coffee for each litre of boiled water: “So, if you’re brewing 250ml, which is typically one cup, use 15g coffee.”

James Hoffmann, barista and author of The World Atlas of Coffee, then lets the coffee brew for four minutes. “Now grab a tablespoon and stir the crust that forms on top of the coffee. A lot of it will start to fall away, and you’ll be left with a few bits on top – some foam, some floating bits. Scoop those off and discard.” Then he does nothing at all for at least another five minutes. “When you do eventually push in the plunger, don’t plunge all the way to the bottom, otherwise you’ll stir up the sediment all over again.” You want the plunger to sit just on the surface of the coffee, then pour it gently. Ideally, decant the entire cafetiere in one go, Kovar adds, because, that way, you’ll get a consistent brew.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Sweet, herby tomatoes on crisp puff pastry, followed by a dessert that’s both fruity and floral – this is seasonal eating at its most delectable

Summer has to be the favourite season of any chef. I am so spoiled for choice right now with the bounty of beautiful British produce over the warmer months that I change the menu almost daily, so I don’t miss out on the chance to use all of it. If only the weather would keep up.

As a child, enduring break after break, I thought of myself as simply unlucky. Truth was, I needed to tune in to my aches, pains and well-founded fears

It was the first day of spring this year. I was topless, face-down on a foldaway travel table, as the masseuse uttered six words that brought my attempt at relaxation to an abrupt end: “I think your arm is haunted.”

I have broken my right arm seven times: seven breaks on seven separate occasions. Some years, my arm was in a sling more than it was out of one. The novelty of getting your mates to cover your cast in that 00s grafitti “S” and the relief of missing the bleep test at school quickly wore off.

My daughter’s scruffy little pet would fall asleep with me on the sofa, stilling my racing mind. And then he changed my life in an even more significant way …

I never wanted a hamster. My eight-year-old daughter, Lily, on the other hand, had folders. Habitat drawings and wheel specifications – a case for ownership of such rigour it bowled me over. As a boy I’d had a hamster, Jerry, and remembered him as fine – but nothing more than that. So I went to a Cardiff pet shop on a cold January morning in 2021 with no plan whatsoever to fall in love.

At the back of the enclosure was a scruffy one nobody else wanted. Skinny. A bit unkempt. When the staff member lifted him out, he yawned and looked at Lily as if he’d been expecting her. She named him Popcorn Sushi and took him home in a pink carrier.

An English Democrats voter and a retired university tutor had different ideas about whether it’s OK to fly flags, but could they find something to agree on?

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

David, 70, York

Occupation Retired modern foreign languages tutor at a university

One immediately called an ambulance, another went looking for my younger son. And I still remember the small face of the girl who held her arm around me

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I was at the park with my two young boys, aged five and seven, riding scooters along a wide path that looped around the grass. My eldest has cerebral palsy, so my husband had modified a scooter with a large base so that we could ride it together. My son stood at the front and I stood behind him. It meant he could join in just like other kids, and he loved it.

When you have boys, you need to run them like dogs – the goal is to burn as much energy as possible every time you’re out of the house. So even though it had started to drizzle, we set off on another loop of the park on our scooters. But when we hit a puddle coming round the bend, the scooter slipped out from under me. We fell sideways, landing on the ground. I realised my son wasn’t conscious. In that moment all I felt was sheer terror.

You can keep temperatures down without the cost – or environmental price – of air conditioning. Here’s some tips and tricks

• The best fans to keep you cool in 2026 – tried and tested

In the UK we are used to worrying about our homes being warm enough, but after struggling to cope with high temperatures in May and June the race is on to cool them down before the next heatwave hits.

And while it might be tempting to swap your desktop fan for a portable air conditioner, there are lots of low-cost, more sustainable ways to stop rooms overheating.

My elderly parents’ home was left uninhabitable, and they are owed £3,300 for repairs they had to fund themselves

My elderly parents spent much of last year dealing with what should have been a straightforward insurance claim after a dishwasher installation by John Lewis caused a leak.

Instead, it became a year-long ordeal, marked by repeated failures and an almost total absence of accountability.

‘Home fee’ qualification ends in 2028, leaving those hoping to study in UK not now eligible for British loans

British teenagers living in the EU could be priced out of UK universities in two years’ time as a Brexit rule change means they face the double whammy of paying costlier international fees, while losing access to student finance.

British passport holders living in the EU still qualify for “home fee” status at UK universities. But this will no longer be the case when the grace period ends in 2028, meaning the first wave to be affected are starting their A-levels, or equivalent, this autumn.

For months I’ve been trying to receive my FIT payment, which should be more than £1,000

I moved into my new house 14 months ago, and soon afterwards applied to ScottishPower, with whom the solar panels are registered for a feed-in tariff (Fit), for transfer of ownership of the panels and the tariff.

After many emails back and forth, I got a response saying they had all the information required.

For young people, flaunting eye bags and bed rotting has become a cheeky rebuttal of body optimization culture

Picture a typical hangover: a morning spent curled under a comforter, chugging Gatorade and shame spiraling about what you might have said at the bar the night before.

Not so for the young people who are “romanticizing” their hangovers on TikTok and Instagram. Instead, they are flaunting their dark eye circles and raging headaches as the aftereffects of a good time, broadcasting their bad decisions to the world with a glowy sheen.

There are more than 3,000 conditions in dermatology, experts warn – and chatbots’ recommendations can be flaky

• Read more in the Antiviral series

Who among us has not, in a moment of panic or curiosity, consulted the internet in search of solutions to a medical ailment?

Increasingly, people are turning to AI for health advice, and skincare is no exception. Purpose-built apps promise to identify that rash, while people are sending selfies to AI chatbots seeking “full skincare analysis” and personalised regimens of treatments. On Reddit forums, people post before and after shots of the results from their AI-recommended skin routines.

Yes, digesting food requires energy, but you need to do more than snack for a meaningful impact

It helps to understand what people mean when they talk about “metabolism”, says James Betts, professor of metabolic physiology at the University of Bath. Usually, they’re referring to metabolic rate; the amount of energy your body burns in a given time. This is largely determined by factors such as your size, age, sex and body composition.

Your daily energy expenditure comes from three main sources: your resting metabolism (the energy needed to keep your organs and tissues functioning), the calories burned processing food, and physical activity. Of those, exercise and movement are by far the most variable.

Study finds those who speak two languages have brains that appear around six years younger than those who speak one

Learning another language could slow ageing in the brain by up to 13 years, according to research.

People who speak more than one language seem to have younger brains and the more languages you speak and the earlier you speak them, the better, according to findings from a study being presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies conference in Barcelona.

Italian designer brings sculptural silhouettes and playful palettes to storied house, while it is hats off to Giorgio’s niece at her second Armani Privé show

The house of Balenciaga takes haute couture very seriously indeed. Cristóbal Balenciaga was so horrified by the rise of mass-produced clothes that in 1968 he abruptly shuttered his brand and retired to his native Spain, announcing that “high fashion is mortally wounded”.

So Pierpaolo Piccioli, who now helms the house, approached the brief of his first Balenciaga couture collection conscientiously, despite having 25 years of experience at Valentino. At a preview, the haute couture war room where he worked on the show for nine months was plastered with images that ranged from a 1961 Balenciaga dress to Spanish golden age art – Zurbarán’s chic saints, Velázquez’s doll-like infantas – and a monumental Hepworth pierced megalith.

I have a bagful of brushes but if I had to pick, these are my must-haves

My girlfriends have a habit of rifling through my makeup bag when we’re together to see what’s new, and last month one complained about how much precious space was taken up by brushes. These are very boring, I do understand, and I consequently rarely write about them. And yet, whenever I post a makeup application video online, they are invariably the products I’m asked about most.

My friend made me wonder which brushes, if I were allowed only, say, five, would I regard as must-haves? It has been a game only I would find enjoyable, but here is where I have landed:

Storytelling collection opens with mousseline skirt suit and ends with simple black dress in spirit of label’s founder

The first model on the Chanel catwalk was wearing a sheer mousseline skirt suit and carrying a tiny century-old leatherbound book of fairytales that once belonged to Coco Chanel herself. With the Lord of the Rings soundtrack booming through a stage set of giant parasol-scale poppies and lupins as tall as giraffes, the clothes narrated the stories in the pages. A row of buttons on the spine of a dress began with an ugly duckling, and ended with a swan. A Goldilocks minaudière handbag was fashioned in the shape of a golden sleeping bear. The lining of a jacket was hand-painted with a scene from Puss in Boots.

But Matthieu Blazy, holding the same book in his hands backstage after the show, told reporters that his favourite fairytale was the rags-to-riches story of Coco herself. “She climbed the ladder to find her golden goose, by making clothes for real women. Her clothes were never parodies. They were rooted in life,” Chanel’s creative director said.

Hot on heels of creating Taylor Swift’s wedding dress, designer brings his re-energising razzmatazz to Paris catwalk

The one person in the fashion industry who doesn’t want to talk about Taylor Swift’s as-yet-unrevealed wedding dress is the man who actually knows what it looks like. “It was a big honour,” was all that Dior’s Jonathan Anderson would say about dressing America’s de facto royal wedding. “But no, I can’t tell you anything about it. It will all come out in due course. It was a joy to work with her and we became very good friends. It is an emotional thing, doing someone’s wedding.”

Instead, Anderson wanted to talk about a very different American artist, sculptor Lynda Benglis, whose sensual slumped hunks of smelted metal inspired his haute couture collection. A wooden pavilion built for the show in the gardens of the Rodin Museum was soundtracked with the flutter of paper fans along the front row, and the haughty silhouettes of couture seemed liquefied in the city heat. A skirt of silver-foiled petals lapped and shimmered like molten lava. A tailored Bar jacket trailed threads of chiffon at the hem like drips of ice-cream down a cone.

The owners of Teffont House are aiming for modern rural hospitality that puts guests at the heart of village life

Walking into the Orangery at Teffont House during the golden hour, the restaurant is glowing. Sunlight falls across cocktails the colour of spun sugar, spills on to a terrace trailing constellations of fleabane, and bounces off spoons sinking into raspberry trifles. What really gives the room its sparkle is none of these things, however, but the fact it’s packed with local people. On a warm June evening this new hotel, 10 minutes’ drive from the Wiltshire village of Tisbury, already feels embedded in village life.

It’s the latest venture of the Beckford Group, which runs a small clutch of West Country inns and restaurants, including the Talbot Inn in Mells and the Beckford Canteen in Bath. The company has carved a niche in modern rural hospitality, teaming unflashy furnishings (all chalky pink and moss green paintwork framed by antiques and contemporary art) with menus designed for greedy locavores and pricing that delivers an unstuffy demographic. Underpinning all of this is an ability to tap into local communities to create soul. With this, the Beckford Group’s first hotel, it is making that connection more explicit by labelling it as a “village”, rather than a country house hotel.

The island has a culinary tradition as old as its ancient olive trees. Our writer savours its family-run tavernas, village bakeries and local produce

As someone with Cypriot roots and distant Greek heritage, I’m often asked the question: which is the best island? People lean in, expecting a secret – some tiny, untouched haven, known only to locals. My answer is always the same: Crete. With its fiercely proud identity, warm communities and exceptional food, it feels both deeply Greek and entirely itself.

For our anniversary weekend, my husband and I head to Lassithi, in the island’s far eastern corner. As a chef and food writer, I’m drawn to the area’s reputation for exceptional produce: Sitia extra virgin olive oil, creamy xigalo cheese, mountain honey and an abundance of excellent tavernas.

In his new book, Jack Thurston cycles the quieter roads and forgotten hill tracks of Scotland, exploring Britain’s most remote and rugged terrain

There aren’t many roads in Britain where you can pull over to cook breakfast and finish it without seeing a single car. While my friend Ben got the stove going, I wandered around the ruins of Dun Dornaigil, an iron age broch (stone roundhouse) more than 2,000 years old. Above us, low cloud drifted across the dark cliffs of Ben Hope. This was exactly the kind of lost lane we’d come to Sutherland to ride.

Our journey had begun the day before, in Lairg – the traditional “crossroads of the north”. With its Spar shop, hotel, train station and a population of about 800, Lairg is the largest inland settlement in one of the most sparsely populated regions of Europe. Sutherland – literally, the “southern land” of the Vikings, who held sway over the far north of Scotland from their stronghold on Orkney – tests life to its limits: bare mountains, impassable peat bogs and one of Britain’s wildest coastlines.

Discover where supplicants consulted Apollo in Delphi, the infant Hermes hid stolen cattle and where Poseidon created a love nest for a sea nymph

Some stories never get old. The poems and songs from Greek mythology – tales of tragedy, love and loss, war and revenge, jealous gods, magic and monsters – have been retold through the ages for good reason. Like all stories that really resonate, they deal in the flawed nature of humankind.

To the ancients, though, they were far more than legends; they explained the universe. From the Earth’s origins and the stories of constellations to ideas of justice and morality, they shaped the arts and sciences, and carved a shared cultural identity. Visiting Greece today, it’s clear how deeply rooted the myths still are in modern culture. From the capital (named after wise Athena) and beyond, this is a country steeped in legends.

This pretty little plant is carnivorous, so when placed next to plants affected by the insect pest it can be an effective living flypaper

The problem
The fungus gnat is the pest that just keeps coming. You dry out the soil, set up sticky traps, maybe even reach for the hydrogen peroxide, and just when you think you’ve have won, they’re back. The adults are harmless but maddening, drifting around your face and laying the next generation in any damp compost they can find. And most controls only deal with one stage of the cycle and leave the rest to carry on.

The hack
Butterworts are small carnivorous plants whose leaves are coated in a sticky mucilage that traps tiny flying insects, including fungus gnats. Keep one or two among your collection as living flypaper, catching adult gnats before they can breed.

Common misconceptions are that you don’t have the right skills, or you need to make a huge time commitment

Many people want to do good in the world. They want to connect and give back to their communities. But volunteering, much like Sunday meal prep or morning meditations, often ends up at the bottom of the to-do list – a nice idea we’ll get to when we have more time.

“For many people, volunteering is something they feel positively about, but don’t always prioritize or think they have time for,” says Matt Bertram, vice-president of volunteer services for the American Red Cross.

How to start meditating

How to start weightlifting

How to start budgeting

How to start running

The actor spent almost a decade fighting monsters – and making friends – on the hit Netflix show. Then, last year, it all came to an end. How’s he adjusting?

Finn Wolfhard is remembering his first experience of celebrity. It was 2016 and he was 13. The first season of Stranger Things had aired that summer, and he returned to his high school in Vancouver as if nothing had changed. But things had changed. “People didn’t know how to treat me, especially the teachers. Kids that didn’t even look at me before were paying attention to me or wanting to hang out.” He remembers a girl in the year above who really wanted a photo with him. “And I was like: ‘Oh, I can’t really take photos at school.’ And she wasn’t listening to me and pulled me into, like, a side hug. I remember thinking: ‘Shit, man. I have no control over this. This seems crazy.’ So, it was definitely weird at first, and something I still haven’t totally grasped.”

How strange it must be to have spent such a large part of your life playing a character that half the world knows, and has watched grow up on screen, turning from a wide-eyed, gawky, nerdy kid to a sharp-cheekboned (but still quite gawky) action hero. Nobody could have predicted how huge Stranger Things would become or how long it would last, fuelled by popular demand, then stalled by the pandemic. It concluded a decade later, at the end of last year, having reached the point where it was no longer sustainable for twentysomethings like Wolfhard to pass as high schoolers.

The answer to today’s puzzle

Earlier today I set you this puzzle about an imaginary game show.

At the end of the show two people will be chosen and each placed in a separate booth.

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

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

While the Reform leader casts himself as the victim questions about his finances are unlikely to disappear

• Farage quits as an MP amid scrutiny of his finances

For Nigel Farage, a year that was progressing quite nicely started to go wrong when the Guardian revealed he had received an undeclared gift of £5m from a crypto billionaire. Just 10 weeks later, he has been pushed into perhaps one of the biggest gambles of his political career.

That gamble is seemingly not with his role as an MP. Farage took more than 45% of the vote in Clacton in 2024, and the heavily Reform-friendly constituency was always likely to elect him again, even before all the other parties announced they would stand aside in a byelection they have dismissed as a stunt.

Some of its amateur matches pull in bigger crowds than European leagues but are more of a spectacle than a pathway to the professional game, say experts

Michael Owen, a man who once quipped he had never drunk tea or coffee, isn’t known for his adventurous palate. Safe to assume, then, that the former England striker was out of his comfort zone sipping Roxburgh rose juice and eating chilli-wrapped rice noodle rolls during his recent visit to south-west China’s Guizhou province.

The 2001 Ballon d’Or winner dusted off his boots for a match in Rongjiang county, the birthplace of viral amateur football league Cun Chao, also known as the Village Super League. Scoring twice in a 4-3 loss for local side Rongjiang Niubi, Owen endeared himself to the thousands in attendance, even if some weren’t familiar with the former Liverpool and Real Madrid player.

Residents and council say creating affordable housing is more urgent than ‘high-frequency trading’ in nearby City

Campaigners in east London are opposing plans for a datacentre in Brick Lane that they say will worsen the area’s housing crisis and drive long-term residents away.

The road, famed for its curry houses and 24-hour bagel shops, is the latest flashpoint in the rapid rollout of datacentres across the UK that aims to meet demand created by artificial intelligence.

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

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

We are particularly keen to hear from young people living in northern England who are not currently in work or education, or who have been struggling to find a job.

We would like to hear from people who have struggled to cancel their contracts or subscriptions with Virgin Media - or any other company

The UK telecoms watchdog has discovered that Virgin Media “likely mishandled” millions of phone calls between the start of 2022 and autumn 2024, which prevented broadband, landline and pay TV customers from cancelling their contracts.

The company has been fined £28m by Ofcom after it discovered evidence of call-dropping tactics, unnecessary call transfers and putting customers on hold for “no reason”.

We would like to hear from people who support national football teams outside of their own countries

In order to play for a country at the World Cup, a football player must have a “genuine link” to that nation, such as familial ties or citizenship. But the rule does not apply to supporting a country.

We would like to hear from fans who have supported national football teams outside of their own countries at the 2026 World Cup. Perhaps you follow a certain player, or the football clubs the team is associated with? Maybe you just like their style? Whatever the reason, we’d like to hear from you.

How long did you have to wait? Perhaps you are in a queue now. Tell us your experience

The EU has rejected calls to suspend its biometric border checks despite warnings from airports, airlines and ports that the system could lead to long queues and delays during the peak summer holiday season. MPs in the UK have also warned of potential disruption at the Port of Dover as holiday traffic builds.

We would like to speak to people who have been affected by the new system. Tell us about your experience – has the new system worked well or have you experienced delays? How long did you have to wait? What did you do to pass the time? Or maybe you are in a queue now? Tell us your experience.

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