The crimes he stands accused of required whole armies of facilitators. Don’t the victims deserve to see them face justice too?

How reassuring to learn that police investigating claims of sexual assault against Mohamed Al Fayed have handed a file to the Crown Prosecution Service, a mere three years after the former Harrods owner’s death at the age of 94, and just decades after the first survivors made reports of abuse. The CPS has said it won’t provide a timescale for any decision, to which we might remark: no shit. With this case, the one thing you could never accuse any of the authorities of is being bound by anything approaching a timescale.

The story does, however, certainly have scale. So far, more than 400 allegations including rape, sexual assault, sexual exploitation and human trafficking have been made against Al Fayed by at least 156 women – abuse he got away with, having died without any charges ever being brought against him. The claims span the years 1977 to 2014. At least 21 women came forward while he was alive, and there have been extraordinary rundowns in news articles and documentaries about all the alleged enablers of his wicked behaviour, from lawyers to mouthpieces to security henchmen to the doctors who carried out “purity examinations” on his young female PAs.

Discussing people’s bodies can be fraught. We asked eating disorder experts how to do so – or not – responsibly

In the age of Ozempic and people being open about plastic surgery, discussion about people’s bodies is rife. At the same time, nobody seems quite sure how to talk about them, as shown by recent coverage of celebrities like Ariana Grande.

It is a fraught topic. We asked eating disorder experts for guidelines to follow when talking about other people’s bodies, and how to do so without doing harm.

This moreish show about a do-gooder keen to save the day stars Hugo Weaving and The Pitt’s Shabana Azeez … and it’s pressure-packed from the get-go

Hugo Weaving plays the eponymous airport chaplain in this pacy and moreish eight-part series, which was co-created by Elise McCredie and Jude Troy, and directed with jittery flair by Bonnie Moir and Tig Terera. In case you were wondering, yes, that profession really does exist.

I doubt the lives of real airport chaplains are anywhere near as frenetic as those of this show’s protagonist, Tobias Wallace (Weaving), whose existence is a testament to that old saying: “Not all heroes wear capes.” Sometimes, they wear hi-vis.

There are countless initiatives around the world that can inspire people and spur them into action. Amid the devastation of the climate crisis, our journalists strive to highlight these stories of hope

• Climate campaign 2026: help us reach 30,000 acts of support

The news is very often about the bad things (especially if you’re on the Guardian’s environment desk). Wildfires, floods, tipping points, billionaires making huge profits and buying themselves island refuges for the apocalypse … And yet, ticking along beside that is the steady pulse of what the rest of humanity is doing in response to the climate crisis. From housing developments with no cars to buildings made out of hemp, all over the planet people are ploughing ahead and changing their neighbourhoods and cities and the world.

But as news stories typically need to be about new developments or things people didn’t previously know about, it can be hard to cover all those brilliant initiatives being undertaken in the background – no matter how cheering they are. Which is why, back in 2023, we decided to ignore the usual rules about what constitutes “news” and start writing about them anyway. Readers, we knew, would like to hear about them.

Climate campaign 2026: help us reach 30,000 acts of support

Robert Corrigan has been dealing with the ‘smart’ rodents all his life – and believes there are better solutions to deal with the growing infestation in the world’s cities

“The rodents have paid for every single bill I’ve ever had – every mortgage, every car payment, every pint of Guinness,” says Dr Robert Corrigan. “It’s been a great ride and I’m still at it.”

New York-based Corrigan is one of the most respected voices in the world of rodentology. Now in his 70s, he has devoted his entire adult life to studying rats and our relationship with them.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food, and the basic they scrimp on? The former reality star and author talks family heirlooms, organic veg and splurge-worthy jeans with the Filter

• How I Shop with Fred Sirieix

Millie Mackintosh rose to fame as part of the original cast of the reality show Made in Chelsea, filming five series before leaving in 2013. She has since established herself as a fitness, health and beauty ambassador, releasing her own beauty collection with Boots in 2017, and publishing Made: A Book of Style, Food and Fitness.

After choosing to go alcohol-free, she shared her journey in the bestselling Bad Drunk, co-written with Dr Ellie Cannon. Mackintosh speaks candidly about the realities of motherhood, mental health and self-care on Instagram.

A total of 17 people have now been arrested over Saturday’s crash in which car drove wrong way along dual carriageway

Five more people have been arrested by detectives investigating a crash that killed seven people, including two police officers.

PC Matthew Blades, 37, and PC Tom Clough, 38, were killed on Saturday when a Volkswagen Passat, which had been pursued by police, was driven the wrong way down the A66 near Middlesbrough and hit their marked armed response vehicle.

Ottawa’s ‘focused response’ to levies imposed by Donald Trump on Canadian products comes after trade talks collapsed last week

• US politics live – latest updates

Canada has announced it will impose tariffs on a wide range of key American industries including cosmetics, dairy, wood products and outdoor equipment in the coming weeks, as it retaliates roughly “dollar for dollar” against levies imposed by the US.

In a strong Canadian countermove to tariffs levied by Donald Trump, which took effect on Saturday after trade talks collapsed the day before, Canada’s finance and industry ministers on Tuesday called the measure a “focused response” to what they see as unfair trade practices.

Anthony Seldon’s book alleges Badenoch asked fellow Tory ministers ‘if anyone was interested in changing the captain’

Kemi Badenoch plotted with fellow Conservative cabinet ministers to remove Rishi Sunak as prime minister months before the general election, it has been claimed.

Anthony Seldon, who has written political biographies of every prime minister since John Major, has alleged in a new book that Badenoch, who was business secretary at the time, phoned several other cabinet ministers to ask “if anyone was interested in changing the captain”.

PM known to be keen to attend UN general assembly after meeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine

• Europe live – latest updates

UK officials are making preparations for a potential meeting between Andy Burnham and Donald Trump after the prime minister said he hoped to attend next month’s UN general assembly in New York.

Burnham is known to be particularly keen to attend the annual gathering after meeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Monday, when he pledged to help drum up more international support for Ukraine.

Exclusive: Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire sites predicted to emit 4.5m tonnes a year when fully running

The carbon emissions from just two planned datacentres in England will exceed all of the fossil fuel company ExxonMobil’s UK emissions, analysis has revealed.

Experts have said this demonstrates the “serious threat” datacentres pose to the UK’s legally binding climate goals.

Government resilience campaign aims to ensure people can cope in a national disaster, in order to free resources for most vulnerable

UK citizens will be told to stock up on tinned food and take steps to ensure they are prepared for national emergencies as part of a new government campaign to improve the nation’s resilience.

The new campaign from the Cabinet Office will set out ways people can prepare for extreme weather events and potential attacks from hostile states, including stocking up on bottled water, sources told the Guardian.

Drivers concerned that bus operator’s offer to retrofit cabs on 730 buses will not be complete by next summer

London bus drivers have resumed strike action over having to work in high temperatures, amid fears that proposed improvements to air conditioning will not be complete by next summer.

About 1,500 members of the Unite union working across north London and Essex are taking part in the four-day strike from Tuesday to Friday, after industrial action earlier this month. Further stoppages are planned for the coming weeks.

Philip Jerome, 49, repeatedly tried to contact actor in hope they would begin a relationship, court hears

A fan obsessed with Billie Piper has been jailed for 12 months after breaching a stalking prevention order.

Philip Jerome, 49, from Winchester, had a sexual interest in the singer and actor, and repeatedly tried to get in touch with her in the hope they would end up in a relationship, a court in Hampshire was told.

Smaller than a football pitch, Crevan has a rich history – but how rich its buyer needs to be is strictly under wraps

An island in the Venice lagoon boasting a Napoleonic fort and lush gardens is up for sale.

Described as an “enchanting oasis of peace and beauty”, Crevan offers a “spectacular view” of Venice’s main island, but is far from its crowds.

The White House has threatened sanctions on any country that trades with Iran in another bid to economically isolate the country, as US military efforts falter. Launching what he called Operation Economic Outcast, the US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, compared it with D-day. China, Iran’s biggest trading partner, has already signalled that it will not cooperate with Trump’s attack on the Iranian economy. Lucy Hough speaks to Julian Borger, senior international correspondent

MVRDV – the firm behind Marble Arch Mound – says Rotterdam ROCKS! will inspire visitors to live sustainably. But in an era when the greenest building is the one that already exists, this tottering cairn looks set to misfire

‘It looks like something Shrek would throw up,” sniffed one online commentator, unflatteringly comparing Rotterdam ROCKS!, the recently unveiled proposal for a waterfront site in Europe’s largest port, with the vomitings of a cartoon ogre. Designed by Dutch architectural firm MVRDV, which gave London the supremely underwhelming Marble Arch Mound in 2021, Rotterdam ROCKS! (the use of EMPHATIC CAPITALS connoting an in-your-face energy) is the winner of a major architectural competition intended to create “a new world wonder”.

But instead of a modern Hanging Gardens of Babylon or contemporary Colossus of Rhodes, MVRDV’s super slick renderings depict a pile of artificial “rocks” (or ROCKS!) stacked together in a humongously scaled tottering cairn, wreathed in suspiciously luxuriant foliage and sluiced by a preposterous waterfall.

Social media trend feeds on footage shot from cars racing down busy roads, with potentially lethal consequences

The hashtags tell the story of the potentially lethal social media subculture where young men film themselves hurtling at illegal speeds down busy roads: #speedhunters, #needforspeed, #racing.

The fast-driving internet trend on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube is fed by footage shot from a driver’s perspective of cars going “#fullsend” – the jargon for roaring down dual carriageways – and “#gapping” or “#swimming”, as in weaving dangerously through packed traffic. The posts attract thousands, sometimes millions of views and have been described by Andy Burnham on Monday as “truly reprehensible”.

Star Wars has embraced the magic of puppetry since the 70s, but Trekkers have been starved of any muppet action … until now. The creators of Strange New Worlds talk about boldly sewing where no one has sewn before

It’s life, Jim – but very much not as we know it.

In fact, when it comes to the latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the life forms in question are less flesh-and-blood and more fabric-and-felt – as the series becomes the latest sci-fi show to embrace the magic of puppetry.

If Catherine Herridge’s petition to the US supreme court fails, she’ll be on the hook for a daily fine until she discloses her sources – a case unsettling press freedom organizations

For 18 days this summer, veteran journalist Catherine Herridge walked to her Washington DC mailbox and dropped off a check for $800. The money was required by law to cover a judge-imposed sanction after she was found in contempt of court in 2024 for refusing to disclose her sources. It fell to her 21-year-old son James to provide the moral support Herridge needed. “He understands the pressure that I’ve been under,” she said. “It was very hard, personally.”

The check drop is now on hold. The judge who issued that order, Christopher R Cooper, has since clarified that Herridge doesn’t need to pay the fine until she has a chance to plead her case to the supreme court, which she petitioned late last week.

Our cartoonist looks back at the big storylines and fresh looks as the English top flight swung back into action

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

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

Once a cheap store-cupboard staple, sardines are fast becoming a luxury food item. Last year, #SardineGirlSummer saw influencers promoting the health benefits of sardinemaxxing, while sardinecore became the must-have fashion trend. Now, demand is accelerating just as Morocco’s sardine stock has collapsed, causing shortages on supermarket shelves. The Guardian travels to Matosinhos in Portugal, the cultural home of the sardine industry, to investigate who is profiting from the boom, how it has affected local fishermen, and what sustainability looks like in an era of global heating

Hundreds of millions of pounds of dirty money are being deposited at post offices every year. So why are the police reluctant to investigate the scale of the problem?

• Last chance to buy the summer issue of The Long Read magazine, now with 15% off. Click here to order

Leicestershire police won’t say who first told them about Jigar Gheewala, but you can see why, once they had heard of him, they decided to find out more. Gheewala was unemployed, had no apparent income, yet lived in a £1.3m house and sent his three children to private school. “He was a declared bankrupt, with a bank account that was absolutely not reflective of what it should be,” said financial crime supervisor Laura Panter of Leicestershire police’s economic crime team. “That was our starting point.”

Over the course of 2020, despite being on benefits, Gheewala’s bank account received more than £880,000 in cash in 200 different deposits. He was, it turned out, a money launderer, but not the kind you’ll see in the movies. Gheewala’s deposits had been made not in Liechtenstein or on Grand Cayman, but at various post office branches in Leicester, one thick wodge of banknotes after another.

Although mobiles blared in public are nothing new, this crop of headphone-dodging irritants are truly maddening. It’s time to take them on

‘Interesting cities can’t be quiet”, runs one of grime DJ and music industry thinker Elijah’s epigrams – and in its essential spirit, he is right. Silent, tidy, prim cities should be treated with suspicion. Any such atmosphere denotes that something has gone wrong at a macro level: either you’ve wound up in an authoritarian regime or, worse, Switzerland.

But not all urban sounds are created equal, and some are more unwelcome than others. Take the tide of (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) reels crashing on the shores of our collective attention on public transport, thanks to the astonishing number of grown adults who think it’s OK to surf the slopwave without headphones.

Dan Hancox is a writer and editor covering music, politics and cities. His latest book is Multitudes: How Crowds Made the Modern World

Wonder why they’re posting flirty photos and wearing tight T-shirts? It’s a thirst trap strategy in motion

Despite being a card-carrying member of the International Order of Confirmed Homosexuals, I have spent quite a lot of time lately thinking about Abdul El-Sayed’s biceps. I mean, have you seen them? The progressive Michigan senate nominee is jacked and he knows it. He almost always wears a tight black T-shirt to show off his muscles and incorporates a lot of fitness content in his campaign.

I’m not the only one who has noticed El-Sayed’s prominent muscles. They have had a lot of coverage, and are seen as part of a wider attempt to rebrand the Democratic party. Which, I don’t need to tell you, has a serious image problem; a poll in March found that the party is looked on even less favourably than the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. So, to make it look less like a party that is full of out-of-touch technocrats who sound as if they are reading from a 500-page PowerPoint presentation every time they try to explain anything, Democrats seem to be trying to up the sex appeal.

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.

Listening to debate, you’d think bringing English water companies into public ownership was a radical socialist idea. Here, we call it common sense

• Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

Every few months, there are more shocking headlines about the behaviour of England’s water companies. The latest are about the ever-increasing pay of the chief executives and chief financial officers, which rose to a total of £25.3m across 14 companies over the past year. Meanwhile, people living in England struggle with rising water bills and untreated sewage being discharged (often illegally) on to beaches and in to lakes, and companies such as Thames Water are on the brink of insolvency and want government backing.

It’s not surprising that we’re in this situation: England’s water companies have long been accused of putting the interests of shareholders above those of customers. From their perspective, the privatisation of water has been an astounding success. Between 1991 and 2019, dividends to the shareholders of the parent companies totalled £57bn, which averages out to more than £2bn every year. The majority of these private parent companies are foreign-owned, so the profits aren’t even kept in Britain.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

As a child, being taken to the Caribbean celebration was a drag. But once sound systems arrived in the 1970s, it became an unmissable yearly pilgrimage offering a sense of freedom

My earliest memories of the Notting Hill carnival are of being mildly irritated. In its 1960s infancy, the event was strictly a Caribbean affair, transplanted to Ladbroke Grove as authentically as was practical. Its purpose was as obvious as its origins: giving Caribbean arrivals a chance to celebrate themselves by bringing the vibrancy of the home they left behind to these drab streets for a couple of days.

Vital as this was – and it really was – it didn’t cut much ice with surly 10- or 11-year-olds like me, being dragged around behind parading steelbands. Yes, it was great to see so many Black people out in the open together and your mums and dads laughing and having a good time, but did we need to be here? There was football to be played and bikes to be ridden, yet so many of us were being forced to walk for what seemed like miles following “old people music”.

A person’s wish to die can be shaped by whether they have access to proper palliative care – and in England and Wales, too many do not

• Zubir Ahmed is a transplant surgeon and former Labour minister

As a doctor, I have spent much of my professional life caring for people at some of the most vulnerable moments they will ever face. I have seen the anxiety that surrounds the prospect of dying, and the desperate wish of patients and families to avoid unnecessary suffering.

Naturally, we all want people facing the end of life to be treated with kindness and respect. But when considering the debate on assisted dying, true compassion demands that we ask a more fundamental question. What kind of society are we building if, before we’ve fixed the systems designed to care for people, we introduce a system designed to help them die? As a former health minister who has seen the system from the inside, I am able to say it is not ready or equipped to answer this question.

Zubir Ahmed MP is an NHS vascular and transplant surgeon, and served as the parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department of Health and Social Care from 6 September 2025 to 12 May 2026.

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.

More than half of what Brits eat is ultra-processed. Now we’re a nation of food snobs – with no ingredient safe from judgment

Lewis Bassett is a young sociologist and chef who I first encountered through his podcast, The Full English, where he thinks about the cultural meaning of, say, Delia Smith; gazpacho; whelks. This was thinking you didn’t know you needed until you heard it. Now he’s written a book of the same name, asking: why do we eat the way we do in Britain, and why do we think the way we do, even about the stuff we wouldn’t be caught dead eating?

About 57% of all the food eaten in Britain is ultra-processed, which feels familiar from at least a decade of hand-wringing about it, but is radically defamiliarised when set against the rest of Europe. In France it’s 14%, and Italy is also in the teens. It’s amazing they don’t all live to be 150. And while this plainly has its roots in inequality, there is a hefty side order of attitude, which Bassett contemplates while working through the history of sourdough, curry and olive oil, and describing his own life cheffing in fancy kitchens and gastropubs.

A fundamental rupture in the values that have united North America is not a problem that can be wished away: this is a warning to the western alliance

The Canadians are exceedingly angry. I realise this can sometimes be difficult for foreigners to deduce, given our national struggle to express the full range of human emotion outside ice hockey riots. However, let me assure you that the prime minister Canadians saw take the stage on Saturday morning in the wake of the collapse in trade negotiations with the US was a Mark Carney practically vibrating with fury.

“You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked,” he said, in a rare press conference that was as candid and clear as he ever tends to be. “That’s fine … We’ve got the reserves, we’ve got the resilience, we’ve got the plan, we’ve got the focus. We’re gonna respond, we’re going to focus on what we can control and what we’re going to build.”

Jen Gerson is a Canadian commentator and co-founder of The Line. She lives in Calgary, Alberta

Moscow hopes western politics will weaken support for Kyiv. The UK and Europe’s answer should be to make Ukraine increasingly capable of defending itself alone

The events of the past few days on Europe’s borders may mark a turning point in Russia’s war on Ukraine. While the political skies in Kyiv have darkened for Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the military picture looks brighter. Ukraine can already send swarms of drones against Russian oil facilities, e-commerce warehouses and airfields. Andy Burnham’s arrival in Kyiv marks a step forward. Britain is releasing classified information on its components of Scalp, the French version of the Anglo-French Storm Shadow cruise missile, enabling its assembly in Ukraine. This is more than another weapon for Kyiv. Britain is helping Ukraine become less dependent on the western armoury.

Moscow sabre-rattles, but Britain should hold its nerve. Kyiv has been at the mercy of its allies, waiting to replenish weapons stockpiles and release sophisticated arms. Producing its own hi-tech armoury gives Ukraine greater freedom of action because western governments have let go. Two years ago it was different. Joe Biden waited until November 2024 before letting Ukraine strike deep into Russia with US weapons. Yet thresholds once deemed dangerously escalatory have since been crossed without provoking a Russia-Nato war. Kyiv is now being trusted with something more consequential: a measure of weapons independence.

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.

Two activists who organised commemorations of the bloody crackdown on China’s 1989 pro-democracy protests now face jail. Remembering is not a crime

For decades, Hong Kong mourned when the mainland could not. Its huge annual Tiananmen vigil kept alive the memory of the 1989 pro-reform protests in Beijing, and of the massacre that suppressed them. Along with Macau, it was the only place in China where the anniversary could be publicly marked and the truth preserved.

But the crackdown on the 2019 uprising in Hong Kong has crushed the freedoms that the region once enjoyed. That year’s vigil was the last. On Friday, two leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance, which organised the commemoration, were convicted of incitement to subversion under the draconian national security law. Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, and Chow Hang-tung, 41, face up to 10 years in jail.

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.

Jonathan Michie on his father’s efforts in the 1970s to map out concerns regarding widespread social coercion driven by automation. Plus a letter from Callum Brown

Jill Lepore asks why nobody listened to warnings about the threats posed from the AI revolution (Democracy v the machine, 18 August). As she is a Harvard professor, her piece is understandably US-centric. But in 1972 there was an international gathering of AI researchers and others in Italy to tackle the ethical and social implications of AI.

This “Serbelloni group” of global experts (they met at Villa Serbelloni on Lake Como) was led by my father, Donald Michie, the director of the University of Edinburgh’s department of machine intelligence. The group mapped out early concerns regarding potential political tyranny, the erosion of human autonomy and widespread social coercion driven by automation.

Carol Taylor and Howard Williamson respond to Katriona O’Sullivan’s article on the grinding reality of living in poverty

Reading Katriona O’Sullivan’s article (Can anyone be too poor to buy a toothbrush? Yes – I know, because that was me, 19 August) reminded me of when I was a community worker at the Park Hill estate in Sheffield in the 1970s.

When I (young and naive) asked the mums why they bought chips for their toddlers for lunch rather than spending the money on fresh fruit (I cringe now in embarrassment), they pointed out that a bag of chips was the price of a couple of apples and one of them filled the kids up. I began to understand, and to also see why they spent money on cigarettes. As O’Sullivan says, “a few bottles [of alcohol] can feel like an escape”.

Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emission zone in London is celebrated by Lorna Henderson, George Coleby and Leonard Neamtu after a study showed its health benefits for children

In light of the astonishing results achieved in lowering air pollution by the introduction of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) in London by Sadiq Khan (Ulez led to better lung size and function among London children, study finds, 18 August), should we now not extend this philosophy into every city in the UK to save lives?

Surely it is a human right to breathe clean air? Why does Ofsted or the Department for Education not insist on air-quality monitors and give data for each school so parents are aware of the risks?
Lorna Henderson
Newcastle upon Tyne

Readers respond to an editorial on preserving the homes of writers such as William Blake, Ted Hughes and William Wordsworth for the public

Your editorial (The Guardian view on writers’ houses: a museum of one’s own, 18 August) rightly laments that George Eliot has no publicly open home despite efforts to secure one. The same is true, remarkably, of William Blake, and he is at least as worthy a cause, and arguably even more influential.

Poet, painter, printmaker and author of the words behind Jerusalem, Blake has no open home anywhere. Of his nine addresses, only two survive. In London, the apartment he rented is disappearing behind new development. The other, his cottage in Felpham, West Sussex, where he and his wife, Catherine, lived from 1800 to 1803 and experienced an outburst of creativity, is the only one that could ever open to the public.

• Cameroon international joins from Brighton

• He says United are the ‘club of my dreams’

Manchester United have completed the signing of the Brighton midfielder Carlos Baleba in a deal worth up to £70m. The Cameroon international is the third midfielder to join this summer, after Andrey Santos and Youri Tielemans.

Baleba has signed a five-year contract with the option to extend for 12 months after United agreed a £65m deal plus £5m in add-ons and a sell-on with Brighton. It takes the club’s spend on midfielders to about £148m.

• Root says cricketers need to avoid ‘stupid mistakes’

• Carse dropped from squad following handcuffs incident

Joe Root has spoken of his desire to remodel England’s dressing room into a group that inspires “supporters to look at us and not just revere what we do on the field but off it as well” after the conduct of the nation’s cricketers was once again called into question following the emergence of videos showing Brydon Carse being escorted from a Derby nightclub in handcuffs late on Saturday night.

The England captain said he was “really hacked off” to be forced once again to address player behaviour, after a string of similar stories over the past eight months. But he repeatedly and pointedly referred to Carse’s misdemeanour, which led to the 31-year-old being briefly arrested on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly before being de-arrested and released without charge, as an “isolated incident”.

• Boston was one of the finest players in the sport’s history

• Wigan plan series of tributes in Thursday’s Hull KR clash

Andy ­Burnham says he is “heart­broken” by the death of Sir Billy ­Boston after the prime minister led tri­butes to the rugby league icon.

Boston died on Tuesday at the age of 92. He was one of the sport’s all‑time great players, scoring almost 500 tries during an illustrious career for Wigan Warriors and Great Britain, and last year became the first man in rugby league history to be knighted for his services to the game.

• Slovenian powers to victory by more than three minutes

• Leader breaks rivals on brutal climb at halfway point

Tadej Pogacar arrived in red, lit the fuse on the climbs and turned stage four of the Vuelta a España ⁠into a private exhibition on Tuesday, powering away with almost 50km remaining to win alone in Andorra la Vella.

The Slovenian, bidding to ⁠complete his Grand ⁠Tour collection by ​claiming the Vuelta for the first time, attacked on the road to the second climb and quickly reduced a high-altitude battle into ⁠a one-man procession.

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We see Manchester City have managed to flip Savinho for quite the profit. Football Daily had previously assumed this sort of wheeler-dealing was restricted to the Dion-Dublin-adjacent property market, or the Harry-Redknapp-infused used car scene, but it seems we were mistaken. We have no idea how City ended up trousering a £44.2m markup on a player who cost £30.8m two seasons ago, and has achieved the square root of eff all since, but they’ve done it. Consider standing stock still and allowing a ball to clank off you and into the net in an FA Cup tie at Newcastle analogous to installing a new bathroom suite and giving the front room a lick of paint, or taking a microfibre cloth and some polish to the crevices of that grimy dashboard. Result! Goal! Ker-ching! That’s 75 million-nil!

Re: the ‘hand of God’ ball’s sale (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs, full email edition). I understand Peter Shilton did, in fact, intend to bid but couldn’t get his hand up high enough” – John Myles.

As much as people dislike Chelsea (the football club that is, not the posh area of London, which is quite nice if a bit dull), Xabi Alonso’s wild experiment to attempt to score so many goals that it even offsets Robert Sánchez’s constant Keystone Cops-style performances in goal is going to be wonderfully exciting” – Noble Francis.

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• Four WSL academy teams will play in WNL from 2027-28

• FA says move will raise standards and help young players

Four Women’s Super League academy sides will play in tier three of the pyramid from the 2027-28 season after the controversial proposal was approved by the Football Association’s board.

The change forms part of what the FA described as a package of reforms to the Women’s National League “designed to strengthen the women’s football pyramid, raise standards across the league, and improve the development pathway for young players”.

Nearly a decade after I watched him defy Erdoğan at great personal cost, the ex-NBA player is using his hard-won freedom to turn transgender people into a punchline

Nine years ago, I watched Enes Kanter ask America to take him in. It was May 2017, inside the National Basketball Players Association’s offices in midtown Manhattan. Kanter had just returned from a frightening detention at Bucharest airport, where Romanian border police told him Turkey had canceled his passport. He’d just turned 25, an NBA center with a green card and no country he could safely call home.

“I’m open for adoption,” he joked from the head of a table in a nondescript conference room, addressing a dozen reporters hastily summoned by his manager. Then he turned serious: “My next move is to just become an American citizen.”

• Center Kate Koval departs after one season with Tigers

• Anna Minaeva of Russia joined team earlier this month

• Kim Mulkey hoped two could be ‘ambassadors’ for peace

Ukrainian center Kate Koval is leaving LSU less than two weeks after the Tigers brought in a player from Russia.

LSU coach Kim Mulkey said Monday night that Koval was leaving for “personal reasons”, adding that the program will “respect her privacy on her decision”.

• 215 of 235 donated brains showed signs of CTE

• Condition can only be diagnosed after death

• Symptoms include problems with memory and mood

At least one in four former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 was found to have had chronic ⁠traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), according to a study released on Tuesday.

Out of the 878 former players who died during that time frame, 235 donated their brains for study, researchers said, with 215 ⁠of those donated brains ⁠found to have CTE, ​a degenerative disease that can only definitively be diagnosed after death. CTE is associated with repeated blows to the head, including concussions. Symptoms include difficulty with attention and memory, dementia, mood disorders and headaches.

The Slovenian is one of the best players on the planet. But factors largely beyond his control have started to turn his career into a slog

Luka Dončić must feel as though, these past few months, he’s been twirling in a washing machine. He announced a separation from his fiancee in March; reports followed of a prolonged custody battle over their two daughters. As Dončić plays in the NBA and his children live in Slovenia, he doesn’t see them much as is. But after the reports of the rift with his ex emerged, he started playing some of the best basketball of his life: he led the Los Angeles Lakers to a 15-2 record in March, a stretch that included a torrential 60-point display against the Miami Heat. Behind Dončić’s brightening star, the Lakers seemed to be sharpening into a real contender. Then Dončić tweaked his hamstring in April and the illusion shattered. He watched from the sidelines as the Lakers limped out of the playoffs with an inevitable second-round defeat to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Actually, Dončić must feel as if he’s been in turmoil for the past few years. He made his first – and so far only – NBA finals in 2024, leading the Dallas Mavericks there with a barrage of awesome shotmaking. As the best offensive player on the court while playing through multiple injuries, Dončić and his Mavs lost to the far deeper Boston Celtics in five games. As thanks, the Mavericks traded Dončić to the Lakers, citing defensive concerns, when what had really doomed them against the Celtics was that no one aside from Luka – who led his team in points, rebounds, assists and steals in that series – could play at the requisite level to win.

British No 2 looks back on ‘Fery-tale’ after dealing with injury and shares his ranking goals before US Open debut

“I was around 300 in the world and still really struggling with my arm,” Arthur Fery says as he explains how life has changed from this time last year when, after his shock appearance in the Wimbledon semi-finals, he rose to No 36 in the rankings. His run of five victories, which produced a stunning turnaround in his career, was celebrated as a glorious “Fery-tale”.

But it does not take long in the company of the measured and thoughtful 24-year-old for the grit to emerge from the deeper shadows in his story. There has been more pain than glory in the long hard slog to this point but, amid the doubt caused by his injury, Fery’s self-belief has remained intact. As he says in Cincinnati, his success at Wimbledon provides a dizzying contrast to the testing times he has endured.

Local media report discovery by German investigators after attempted attack on cargo and military logistics hub

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German investigators uncovered a third drone and suspected military explosives thought to be connected to an attempted attack on Leipzig airport, local media have reported.

The drone was discovered in Kabelsketal, just to the west of the airport, along with about 50g (1.8oz) of a suspected military explosive on 14 August, 10 days after the unsuccessful sabotage. Leipzig airport is a cargo and military logistics hub used by Nato and Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines for transporting military supplies.

Bradley Townsend reportedly killed by a drone on 10 June in Donetsk region after joining up with separatists

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A man from South Yorkshire is believed to be the first British citizen to die fighting for Russia in its war against Ukraine.

Bradley Townsend, a 33-year-old fisher from Barnsley, left Britain in April to join up with Russian separatists in eastern Donbas to aid in their invasion of Ukraine, despite having no previous combat experience or familiar ties to eastern Europe. Alongside 49-year-old Ben Stimson and 39-year-old Aiden Minnis, Townsend was granted Russian citizenship for joining the country’s military campaign.

Beijing says it will take ‘all necessary measures’ to protect its interests as US steps up efforts to isolate Tehran

• Explainer: could US sanctions threaten China-Iran ties?

China has denounced the threat of US sanctions for its trade with Iran, saying any such measures would be illegal, and warned it would take “all necessary measures” to protect its national interests.

Beijing’s rejection of the US threat of secondary sanctions for any country or entity continuing to trade with Tehran had been predicted. China buys an estimated 80% of Iran’s oil exports and it has defied previous US efforts to limit the flow of revenue to the Tehran regime.

NHS has target of eliminating the cancer by 2040, but up to 4 million eligible women are not up to date with screening

Millions of women in England who have missed cervical screening appointments will be offered free home testing kits on the NHS.

The move comes amid concerns that only two-thirds of women attend in-person cervical screening appointments when asked to do so, leaving as many as 4 million women not up to date.

Maxwell sought to vacate Epstein-related conviction, alleging hidden trial evidence and juror’s abuse history

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A federal judge has rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal effort to throw out her 2021 conviction on sex-trafficking charges and 20-year prison sentence, calling her claims “demonstrably meritless, and generally based on speculation, distortions, and/or outright falsehoods”.

In a 67-page decision filed on Tuesday, US district judge Paul Engelmayer for New York’s southern district denied the former British socialite’s petition for relief, finding that Maxwell had failed to make a substantial showing that her constitutional rights were denied when she was convicted for her role in crimes linked to late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Exclusive: Economic harm of CO2 pollution from Rosebank and Jackdaw forecast to far outweigh any boost to UK

The climate damage caused by developing the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields under consideration by the UK government would destroy their economic benefits many times over, according to an analysis.

It estimates the economic damage caused by the carbon pollution from the oil and gas produced would be between £119bn and £336bn in the coming decades, compared with the £28.7bn in value to the UK estimated by Adura, the fossil fuel company promoting the new fields.

True figure likely to be much higher as it only covers about half of continent and does not include August totals

At least 35,000 more people died during Europe’s four record-breaking, back-to-back heatwaves this summer than would normally be expected, according to incomplete figures from barely half the continent.

Excess mortality in three of the EU’s larger countries – Germany, France and Spain – alone has already exceeded 25,000, according to the provisional national figures, and experts say the toll will rise significantly once August totals are consolidated.

A local initiative is testing simple ways to stop algal blooms in the River Fal threatening some of England’s most biodiverse marine habitats

On a rocky beach in Cornwall, a group of wetsuit-clad freedivers and snorkellers are wading into the shallows. Below St Mawes Castle, built by Henry VIII to defend Falmouth harbour, they disappear in a swish of florescent pink and green fins.

They are volunteers, trained by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust to use underwater cameras and floating GPS devices to detect changes in marine habitats over time.

Two volunteers, Simon Tagney and Max Behnert, prepare to survey the seabed beneath the 16th-century St Mawes Castle. Photograph: Luke Gartside/The Guardian

Henry Astor looked back to his grandfather’s time for the inspiration to find older varieties that could help nature on his Cotswold farm

It is the earliest harvest Henry Astor can remember. But walking through the scorched wheatfields of his Cotswolds farm, signs of life are everywhere – swarms of insects, kaleidoscopic wildflower meadows, bushy hedgerows several metres wide. A yellowhammer perches on a nearby tree.

There are 18 other red-listed birds on the farm, says Astor, who this year ringed 23 barn owls, three kestrels, two little owls as well as goshawk chicks. “Last winter we had clouds of goldfinch, chaffinch and greenfinch,” he says. Britain has lost 73 million birds since 1970; but at Bruern Farms, a small but welcome reversal is taking shape.

Actor best known as Jon Snow in Game of Thrones will now play Gilderoy Lockhart in show’s second season

Kit Harington will replace Nicholas Hoult in HBO’s Harry Potter television series, after the Skins actor left the production because of scheduling conflicts.

Harington will play Gilderoy Lockhart, the vain and inept defence against the dark arts teacher, in the season based on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second novel in JK Rowling’s series. The casting change was announced just two weeks after Hoult was confirmed for the role.

Death rate three to four times higher than among general population blamed on isolation of those leaving care

• ‘He was left on his own’: the care-leaver lives lost to a system that abandons them at 18

Profound isolation contributed to the deaths of more than 100 care leavers in England in a year, with a dramatic drop-off in support from social services at 18 leading to catastrophic consequences, a review has found.

A government-commissioned report into the early deaths of young people who left care described the problem as a national tragedy and said many were left on their own “at the height of vulnerability” before they died.

Bills have jumped 42% in England over the past 10 years – and that excludes the cost of breakfast clubs and extracurricular activities

Parents of primary schoolchildren in England will pay 42% more for after-school childcare this year than they did 10 years ago, with annual bills now exceeding more than £2,800 a child in some parts of the UK.

A Guardian analysis of data collected by the children’s charity Coram has revealed that the annual cost of after-school care for children aged 5 to 11 in England has risen by 5% over the past year to £2,636.

Family of three-year-old allegedly thrown into pit at Cambridgeshire zoo say he is happy to be back at home

A three-year-old boy who was seriously injured in a zoo’s crocodile enclosure has been discharged from hospital and is settling back in at home, his family has said.

The child returned home a few weeks ago and was “happy to be home, playing with his toys, sleeping in his own bed and being a big brother”, his parents said in an update posted online.

Oliver Blume faces workforce at German HQ as carmaker struggles against Chinese competition and US tariffs

The chief executive of Volkswagen has faced boos and whistles of protest at the company’s headquarters after telling thousands of workers that a comprehensive reorganisation, which could include job losses and factory closures, is vital for its future.

As Oliver Blume urged more than 10,000 workers on Tuesday to “pull together”, saying drastic restructuring measures at the struggling manufacturer were essential, they held up banners and shouted slogans, including: “Our jobs are not your balance sheet adjustments”.

Self-described misogynist and his brother, Tristan, are playing role to generate income from online attention, Miami court filing says

Andrew Tate rented supercars and borrowed a yacht to appear “uberwealthy” and generate online engagement, his lawyer has said.

Legal representatives for the self-described misogynist social media influencer and his brother, Tristan Tate, have claimed the pair deliberately portray themselves as far wealthier than they are because their “business model depends on online attention”.

Unannounced trip reported by US media is said to be Ratcliffe’s first known visit to Russia as CIA chief

The CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has made an unannounced visit to Moscow, US media reported, after flight data showed an American military aircraft flew to the Russian capital, where a US diplomatic motorcade was later spotted.

CBS News quoted sources familiar with the situation as confirming Ratcliffe’s trip, saying it was his first known visit to Russia as CIA chief. Axios separately confirmed the visit, quoting a US official.

After decades of declining religious affiliation, churches in southern California have seen an increase among gen Z

Alicia Martinez pulls on an oversized, chocolate-brown leather jacket – an incongruous choice for the July heat in Los Angeles. Later that day, she plans to see The Odyssey in a frigid theater. But first, there is mass.

Martinez, 24, enters Our Savior Parish, the castle-like church beside her workplace, the University of Southern California. Inside, she dips her fingers in holy water, makes the sign of the cross on her forehead, and enters the main part of the church in hushed reverence.

Bitcoin rises above $80,000 for the first time since May amid uncertainty over US fiscal plans

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Gold prices hit their highest level in more than three months on Tuesday as continued conflict in the Middle East and ongoing political uncertainty fuelled the latest rally in the precious metal.

Gold is viewed as a safe haven by investors and its price tends to rise at times of uncertainty.

Also: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed his surprising sympathy over the construction of datacenters across the country

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you from a sunny park in New York City, which was supposed to endure rain all weekend but in fact delivered the best weather of the year.

‘We are hitting a different chapter’: OpenAI leader warns of threat of ‘persistent’ AI cyber-attacks

OpenAI announces slowing pace of development after hack by rogue agent

OpenAI launches ChatGPT for Teens with stronger safeguards

‘Digging the grave of my profession’: the Hollywood creatives training AI to do their jobs

Will AI give you the job? Automated hiring tools spark discrimination and secrecy lawsuits

After more than 15 years of laptops in the classroom, do Australian schools need a rethink?

Crypto bank part-owned by Trump family offers depositors way to ‘gain favor’ with White House, experts say

Did someone wearing Meta Glasses film you today? Are you sure?

Danish toymaker also scores success with KPop Demon Hunters, Star Wars and botanicals products

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Lego sales have risen by more than a fifth as tie-ups with the football World Cup, Formula One and the hit film KPop Demon Hunters as well as its flower-based and Star Wars kits drive demand.

The toymaker said its revenues had increased by 21% to 41.9bn Danish kroner (£4.8bn) in the first six months of 2026, driven by strong growth in the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions, offsetting stalled sales in China.

Rise in claims linked to heat-related deaths and illness, especially among older people, could drive up premiums

Europe’s intense heatwaves could hit insurers’ earnings as companies face a rise in claims linked to heat-related deaths and worsening health conditions, the rating agency S&P has said.

While a long summer of extreme heat will have increased drought and wildfire-related claims, the rating agency said there would also be fallout for life and health insurers, and for the reinsurers who provide financial protection to insurance companies.

British film-maker and director of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy who was described by Alec Guinness as having ‘balls behind the camera’

Bouncing from war zone reportage to cold war espionage, Hollywood horror to Sherwood Forest swashbuckler, Harold Pinter to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the director John Irvin, who has died aged 86, was nothing if not eclectic.

“I’m a bit split,” he said. “I like playing with expensive toys, yet I also like the miniatures. I hate being pigeonholed, and I like to do the unexpected.”

Wanda and Marion Wulz defied the unbridled patriarchy of fascist Italy by shooting dancers, fencers and other famous women – as well as their cat Mucincina

‘In those fascist times,” says Federica Muzzarelli of Italy in the 1920s and 30s, “women were not free. They were regarded as mothers and homemakers. But the Wulz sisters were determined to create their own destiny. They chose photography as a way of being independent – and to show through their images that women could live that way.”

Muzzarelli is the curator of Wanda and Marion Wulz: Avant-Garde Photography in 20th Century Italy, a show about to open at the Estorick Collection in London. The Wulz sisters experimented with blended and altered images more than half a century before Photoshop was invented. The most famous image to emerge from their studio was I + Cat, a self-portrait of Wanda superimposed on the face of the family pet. But the show aims to cast Marion in a new light, showing that she was no mere assistant, but rather equal to her sister in terms of photography, as they championed feminism in fascist Italy, keeping the idea of women’s emancipation alive at a time of unbridled patriarchal ideology.

In this week’s double bill , a grown-up woman confronts her adoptive mother. Plus: the Spanish Armada tries to overthrow Elizabeth I. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Atlantic
A drama with minimal dialogue that can still stir such deep outrage is proof of its power. But there is a guttural cry in this week’s double bill that, somehow, makes you even angrier about the Sixties Scoop – the period when Canada removed Indigenous children from their families. Patti Bird is fighting to get her kids back while, flashing forward 18 years, Esther confronts her adoptive mother. Hollie Richardson

The seventh in the series takes longstanding lead gangster Tate, played to the hilt as always by Craig Fairbrass, to the White Isle to knock some heads together

The seventh instalment in this seemingly never-ending series opens with a line of voiceover from star Craig Fairbrass, summarising forthcoming proceedings nicely: “They killed my best friend, now they all have to die.” The real-life hardman Pat Tate might have been murdered in his 30s in Essex in 1995, but that hasn’t proved a setback for his invincible fictionalised counterpart, played to the hilt throughout the entire franchise with hard-headed gusto by Fairbrass. In this one, Tate is in Ibiza, but rather than larging it, he’s intent on tracking down his enemies and exacting the titular retribution. Various arms dealers, guns for hire and, perhaps more unexpectedly, the CIA, provide a bit of grit in the oyster.

The director here is series veteran Nick Nevern, having appeared in ROTF: Marbella in 2019, and stepped up to the director’s chair for 2023’s ROTF: Vengeance. Retribution is at its best when engaged in stylised slow-motion action sequences that play out like The Untouchables, if The Untouchables had a soundtrack influenced by Paul Oakenfold and was made on about 100th of the budget. Dialogue is not its strong point, and is mostly made up of interchangeable gangster film cliches. (It’s all, “These are very serious people” and “You remind me so much of her”.) You may not be ponying up to watch a Footsoldier movie on the basis that you’ll be hearing curlicued witticisms worthy of Oscar Wilde, but it is possible to write gangster-speak with a bit more zest. Even Nick Love’s The Business gave us: “The geezer was so hard even his nightmares were scared of him.”

Mia’Kate Russell’s 80s-set Ozsploitation horror is a tad slapdash, but the grungy gore and seething catfights save it from dud status

Here is a muddled if energetic effort from Australian writer-director Mia’Kate Russell. There’s a little too much blurriness around the edges, making relationships and motivations slightly opaque, while the last-minute entrances and exits are a bit on the haphazard side. But as a study of seething girl-on-girl anger that leads to ultraviolence, it’s a gas.

Set in Australia in 1986 (presumably because this means no mobile phones, and thus no calling for help), a trio of high-school besties prepares for a night of partying before the summer ends. Penny (Bailey Spalding) is planning to go to university to study law and asks her girlfriend Toni (Tahlee Fereday) to come with her. The two have only recently become lovers and they haven’t yet come out to their buddy Amy (Alexandra Jensen) – a sweet, childlike teen who still carries a stuffed tiger toy around for comfort.

This nonsensical film sees an OCD-afflicted scientist fending off assassins while hanging from an aerial wire, and fails to get pulses racing for even a minute

In this silly, low-adrenaline thriller, the title star is a rickety old zip wire bolted into the side of a mountain in the Italian Dolomites that was never intended for human use. It was constructed in the first world war to sling weapons and supplies hundreds of feet down the valley – and is still used to get the occasional goat off the mountain. But for the second half of this film, a world-famous British research scientist with an extreme fear of heights dangles from it, fighting off highly skilled assassins in increasingly preposterous ways.

The scientist is Amy (MyAnna Buring); she has discovered a cure for lung cancer, and her drive is explained in syrupy hospital-ward flashbacks to her mother dying when she was a teenager. Amy also has OCD – she is so anxious about germs that she never takes off her rubber gloves, and has an assistant in her lab to do anything that involves touching or handling objects. (Like all the characters, she never gets beyond a stereotype.) Her research is bankrolled by a big pharma company, whose CEO is played by Saffron Burrows (now seemingly mandatory casting for ropey British thrillers).

The oberek is a traditional dance beloved of state folk ensembles – but a new generation of musicians is reconfiguring its music into wild new forms, merging folk steps with electronics and the sound of Chicago footwork

It’s 6pm on the first day of OFF festival in Katowice, and a crowd is gathering in front of one of the stages to watch newcomers Tercet Imperial. Sporting disco outfits of nylon jackets, tracksuits and Chicago Bulls caps, keyboardist Piotr Zabrodzki deploys resonant acid melodies, while drummer Jan Emil Młynarski plays a rapid, irregular rhythm that brings to mind the scattergun beats of footwork, the ghetto-house subgenre that grew out of Chicago in the late 90s.

Not many of those jerking their limbs to the music in front of the stage are likely to realise that they are listening to a distinctly Polish sound: that of the oberek, a traditional dance in triple metre whose name derives from the Polish verb “to spin”, because it usually accompanies couples whirling across dancefloors in a circular motion.

Despite their fast rise, the Manchester indie-pop band are happily going at their own pace. But what – if anything – did they learn from the advice of Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon?

When Westside Cowboy played Later … With Jools Holland earlier this year, fellow guests Duran Duran offered some advice. “Nerves are just your mind telling you that you’re about to do something extraordinary,” Simon Le Bon told the band, who were “cacking their pants”. Le Bon’s words didn’t really help. “I was hoping for some real advice,” says vocalist and guitarist Reuben Haycocks, laughing. “Like, where do I look?”

The Manchester band have had to learn the ropes quickly. By 2025, only two years after forming, they had won Glastonbury’s emerging talent competition, supported Geese on the year’s buzziest indie tour and signed to a major label. “We’d be lying if we said there wasn’t a little bit of pressure,” says vocalist and guitarist Jimmy Bradbury.

The historian shares the astonishing story of a Peterloo massacre survivor. Plus, a delightfully wholesome new pod that is ‘Desert Island Discs … for words’

From the People’s History Museum, this series is about the Peterloo massacre in Manchester, 1819, which the host David Olusoga calls the “ground zero of industrial capitalism”. Touching on systematic disenfranchisement (Manchester didn’t have a single MP) and state-sanctioned violence through the extraordinary story of survivor William Cheatham, it’s an invigorating if sobering listen. Nell Frizzell
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As part of the Beastie Boys, the rapper shot to fame and notoriety in the 80s, before bandmate Adam Yauch’s death saw him withdraw from the spotlight. He returns with a solo album that sees him reckon with greed, mortality – and his past

‘It’s funny how far a joke will get you,” Michael Diamond grins. This time 40 years ago, the New York rapper known as Mike D was working with childhood friends Adam “MCA” Yauch and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz on Licensed to Ill, their 1986 debut album as the Beastie Boys.

The “joke” in question is that record’s cartoonish send-up of frat-bro culture, set to fusions of hard rock riffs and hip-hop beats. As for how far it got them: destinations included global stardom, a page in the history books with rap’s first US chart-topping album, and the crosshairs of British tabloids as they roused a generation to “fight for your right to party”.

A brilliant new biography that does it subject the favour of taking her seriously – even if few else did

Barbara Cartland was famous for dictating her novels. With a pekingese clamped to her hot pink bosom she would lie back on a library couch and exhale a story about virginal girls taming wayward dukes, damaged airmen or misunderstood surgeons. Meanwhile Miss Savory, Mrs Smith or Mrs Morgan, picked for being unfidgety and sneezeless, would take everything down in immaculate Pitman shorthand. Cartland reckoned on being able to polish off 8,000 words a day. “In this way,” she told one of the many reporters who quizzed her on her astonishing productivity, “the typescript for an 80,000-word novel is finished in a fortnight.” At her peak she was pushing out 23 books a year which added up to 723 in total. Only Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare topped her lifetime sales of 750m.

Cartland was a dictator in other ways, too. Husbands, dogs, houses and the local council were all expected to bend themselves to her indomitable will. Resistance, let alone opposition, was futile. The managing director of the company that printed her books suggested that she read Nietzsche on the perceptive grounds that they had a lot of ideas in common. Oddly, he also declared himself madly in love with her. Behind that marshmallowy exterior, all pink chiffon, candyfloss hair and soft, smudgy lines, there lurked sinews of high-tensile steel.

A writer and activist links the climate crisis to battles for justice around the world in this vital book

It has become increasingly difficult to change our minds, to question our own views or to find common ground with people we disagree with, all of which makes Natasha Walter’s new book both refreshing and exhilarating.

In her ebullient 1998 debut The New Feminism, Walter hailed Margaret Thatcher as a trailblazer. In this fiercer, bleaker work, she rips into the “glossy language of aspiration feminism”, “the message that the individual woman can do anything she wants if she only has the necessary courage”. That kind of feminism inspired an “explosion of books and films about pioneers and heroines, about bossy women and gutsy girls” which retold the feminist story as “a succession of isolated campaigns, led by outsize individuals”.

The American poet and essayist weaves memoir, fiction, criticism and lyrical lament into a tale of friendship in an age of existential crisis

“Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental,” writes the multi-award winning Jamaican-American poet, essayist and playwright Claudia Rankine in the disclaimer to her latest work. “Unless it isn’t.” The pretzel-logic of this statement, its assertive ambiguity, sets the tone for a book that digs directly into the question of what we are to do with the idea of truth, when the world we live in is asking us “to hold, visually and emotionally, realities we do not yet have a viable system of language for”. In Triage, Rankine borrows from her personal history and from a world whose landscape now encompasses “the rise of fascism, the implementation through deportations of the Great Replacement theory, the starvation of devastated populations subjected to war and climate change”, and uses the material she gathers to pose a simple question. When faced with realities such as these, what do you do? Do you stand, or do you fall?

The book begins with a friendship. Two young people – our narrator, and another she refers to only as “the theorist” – meet in college in the late 20th century, and are drawn to each other. They’re passionate; they’re idealistic; they’re committed to the activism of the time (“shantytowns were built on campus to protest apartheid South Africa”) and steeped in the texts and authors and philosophical conceits of the humanities. Over time, they develop a game. “When we spied each other during the day,” the narrator explains, “we had to collapse.”

A Guardian correspondent’s sobering account of the US betrayal of Ukraine – and the possible reasons behind it

American presidents have struggled to get the measure of Vladimir Putin. When George W Bush met him in 2001, he reported that he had “looked the man in the eye”, got a “sense of his soul” and found him “trustworthy”. Barack Obama thought Putin was making a mistake with his interventions in Ukraine and Syria, but didn’t do much about it. Joe Biden backed Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion, yet his fear that Putin would reach for the nuclear button if backed into a corner made him risk averse. He worried about the impact of the sort of long-range strikes against Russian territory that Kyiv is now launching on a daily basis.

This caution frustrated Ukrainians to the point that they looked forward to Donald Trump shaking things up after he won re-election. Be careful what you wish for: the returning president thought his rapport with Putin would be enough to get Russia to sign up to an immediate ceasefire. In Trump’s head it was President Zelenskyy, fighting a war he was bound to lose, who was the problem.

Developer Patrick Grant was born in Australia and lives in New Zealand, but a childhood of British TV inspired him to set a comedy game in a bleak vision of the north

Something is amiss in the dingy town of Slagford, and curious scamp Pip Bunting is the only one who can find out what. So quit your mithering, it’s time to discover just how grim it truly is up north.

A Pocket Full of Slagford is an upcoming retro-styled 3D puzzle adventure game set in a surreal alternative-reality near-future northern England that never escaped the clutches of Thatcherism. The story follows the misadventures of a young local lad from the eponymous Slagford after he takes ownership of a mysterious relic that lets him wreak havoc on reality.

Players will get what they expect from the new CoD title: boots-on-the-ground military action with a slight tactical edge. But what’s with all the distractions?

There’s a lot riding on this year’s Call of Duty, the inescapable first-person shootfest that’s been lobbing a grenade into the autumn release schedule since 2003. Previous instalment, Black Ops 7, performed poorly compared to previous titles, forcing Activision to post a semi-apology to fans. And that’s not the only challenge Modern Warfare 4 is facing: there’s a new indie shooter, Wardogs, promising a feel somewhere between classic CoD and Classic Battlefield. Then, lurking on the horizon, in mirror shades and an exotic sports car, is Grand Theft Auto 6, which is surely going to smash and grab all the attention (and money) from the market in mid-November.

The good news is that, judging by the early access beta test that ran over the penultimate August weekend, we’re definitely getting what we expect from a Modern Warfare title: quasi-authentic boots-on-the-ground military action with a slight tactical edge. The weapons and general gunplay are highly effective, from default assault rifle, the Han 86 – a classic CoD beginner’s gun with decent fire rate and handling – to the bullet-spraying Nightshade SMG and the absolutely lethal KG-7 Vulcan sniper rifle. They all feel good to hold and fire, and there’s enough balance to let you experiment with slightly more offbeat numbers like the burst-fire Hyeon AR and the possibly overpowered Mar-9 marksman rifle.

Developers who met through Australia’s improv scene and publishers of comedic party games have united for this slithering challenge in which you play as one extended limb

Most stealth games cast you as a spy, an assassin or a master thief. My Arms Are Longer Now dispenses with most of the criminal person, to send in just one spectacularly badly behaved limb. It slithers across floors, winds around furniture, steals things and slaps anyone within reach – finally answering the question nobody asked: what if your own arm turned to crime?

As Toot Games co-founder Matthew Jackson puts it: “You are the bad thing that happens to the people.”

Academics and a former classification board director say Halloween: The Game’s ban due to ‘incentivised drug use’ highlights an incoherent set of standards

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Halloween’s Michael Myers is one of film’s most feared boogeymen, responsible for some of the most brutal on-screen deaths in horror cinema. The US video game developer Illfonic looked to reproduce those terrors in its upcoming title Halloween: The Game, with gruesome killings a major focus of the gameplay: for instance, you can stomp another player’s head through a toilet seat, or fry their brain by throwing them through a television screen.

But Australians will not be able to play Halloween, because it has been refused classification by the Australian Classification Board, which means it is banned from sale within the country. And it’s not because of the violence or murders.

Edinburgh comedies by Whisper Theatre, Lightning Rod Special and Olaf Falafel are exploring what it’s like to be a dad, from the hilarious and melancholic to the devastatingly accurate cringe

In a historic masonic lodge in Edinburgh’s New Town I find myself raising my hand. The call has gone out for fathers in the audience and I join our hosts, Dick and Dale, along with another volunteer on stage. It’s just us four guys at a campsite, practising trick shots with a baseball, busting some moves and shooting the breeze. But bubbling underneath is an existential crisis.

This is Well-Balanced Dads, from Chicago’s Whisper Theatre Collective, created by Dick and Dale themselves – AKA Richie Schiraldi and Britt Anderson. They’re sporting headbands, bum bags and tank tops blazoned with “Best. Dad. Ever”, each with a different back print – one’s a power drill, the other’s a barbecue. Both have bushy moustaches and they supply us volunteers with our own. There are bursts of classic rock – Foghat, Kenny Loggins, Creedence Clearwater Revival – as we join them on a road trip and other volunteers are cast as hitchhikers.

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
With icky and edgy jokes, the comedian offers an authentic inquiry into her childhood in her sophomore show

A standup’s debut show usually tells us who they are, then with their follow-up, they branch out. Kemah Bob has done things the other way around. After 2024’s Miss Fortunate, a wild shaggy dog story about a disastrous trip to Thailand, she now delivers that delayed “this is me” set, an open-hearted inquiry into how she got here and her origins as the child of a poor black family, the descendants of slavery, in the southern US.

That inquiry is prompted by misgivings on Bob’s part, coolly laid out here, about her career in comedy – which she loves, but worries is infantilising, and (see the receipts from that successful last fringe run) financially precarious. Is she leading a grownup life – or should she start doing so? There’s a thinking-aloud authenticity to that exploration that is very endearing in Love Child. Her audience cheerfully used as a sounding board, she casts her gaze back across generations of Bobs, and her own journey to the UK, to work out what life she ought now to lead.

At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 30 August

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Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh
Cheka considers her tendency to ‘live life like a joke’ in a frank hour, with her frustrations leaving a lasting impression

Kate Cheka wasn’t supposed to be here. After her debut hour two years ago, she swore she would never do the fringe again. But now she’s back, mic in hand and eight months pregnant, walking us through her life’s greatest romantic escapades, from Marseille to Texas and Nepal to Berlin. She does it all with mountains of energy – if you thought the fringe was exhausting at the best of times, just imagine doing all this with a baby on board.

But, as she will tell us later, maybe there’s a reason she wants to give everything she has to her last pre-birth show. In an hour that’s more storytelling than laugh-out-loud standup, she weaves in political eye-rolls, thoughts on the rise of the far right and her tendency to date white men with access to property.

Zoo Southside, Edinburgh
A handstand artist and a juggler slide, toss, stack and stand on umpteen glasses without a drop of wine in sight

This Swedish circus two-hander begins with the performers offstage, and what sounds like the high-pitched notes of a glass harp. But the wine glasses here – first six of them, then dozens – are used for acrobatic tricks rather than music.

Stina Otterström is a handstand artist, Arttu Lahtinen is a juggler. Together, they execute a series of increasingly fiddly, full-bodied duets. Otterström’s strength is immediately contrasted with the fragility of this most familiar, yet hazardous, of props. Her first inversions involve holding the stems between her toes, passing them from one foot to the other, or balancing their bases on her soles. Lahtinen gives us variations on the tablecloth pull-trick and the buzz wire game, balancing glasses on planks of wood that he glides perilously close around Otterström’s body. Empty glasses are expertly slid, tossed, stacked and stood upon. Have we no wine here?

At Zoo Southside, Edinburgh, until 30 August

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Yang has taken more than 500,000 photographs since he first moved to Sydney in the late 1960s and now devotes most of his time to untangling the past

As a young adult, William Yang discovered that his family’s story was actually a murder mystery. His uncle, William Fang Yuen, was killed by an employee on the family’s farm in far north Queensland in 1922, but his mother refused to tell him the full story. In 1990, he travelled to Innisfail in search of the truth.

One aunt told Yang that his uncle and the worker had got into a fight over a gambling debt, and the worker had stabbed him to death with a spear. A cousin said a gang was involved. A local woman, who had been a child at the time, remembered it as a card game gone wrong.

Comedian returns in new film, adding a retired US general to a list of pranked celebrities that include Buzz Aldrin and Donald Trump

The first full trailer for Ali G: Who Iz I? has been released online, revealing some of the escapades and pranks – and their victims – that will appear in the second feature-length comedy starring the academically challenged west Staines rudeboy character created and played by Sacha Baron Cohen.

Sporting new dreadlocks but still wearing the clothing that was favoured by young white Britons copying US hip-hop and Black streetwear fashions in the 00s, Ali is back to contend with the issues of the day – as well as the pregnancy of his long-term girlfriend, Julie. In the 20 years since the character has been away, he says that “the world went to crap: there was Covid, wars and Ed Sheeran”.

From killings in Gaza to the alleged use of a sonic weapon on a vigil in Belgrade, the Lebanese-British artist reveals how his work for activist group Earshot is inseparable from his art

Lawrence Abu Hamdan has a double identity. He is an artist who, in 2019, jointly won the Turner prize; and one of his works is, for my money, among the most striking on show at this year’s Venice Biennale. But he is also the director of a young NGO, founded in 2023, called Earshot, which investigates human rights abuses using sound evidence. In less euphemistic language, that means, on occasion, investigating horrific killings. He and his team might analyse the direction and position of bullets Israeli soldiers have fired at emergency workers in Gaza, or build evidence that a sonic weapon was likely used to disperse a mass silent vigil in Belgrade.

The foundational work he did in this field was a project with the London-based research agency Forensic Architecture for Amnesty International. Back in 2016, he interviewed rare survivors of the unimaginably barbaric conditions in Syria’s Sednaya prison. There was a paradox at play in this murderous place – prisoners were held in complete darkness, and enforced silence, killed for making any sound. Listening was both the inmates’ only source of information, and a tool for survival and resistance. Their acute sonic memories of screams of distress and pain; keys turning in locks; bread being slapped down outside their cells; even of lice being snapped – helped Abu Hamdan and his colleagues build a picture of the prison architecture and its conditions, nearly a decade before it was opened to the light after the fall of the bloody Assad regime.

From bowl cuts to extreme mullets, punk dos to bad dye jobs, a terrible hairstyle can never be forgotten – even decades after it has grown out

It’s the late 1990s. Big, round, feathered fringes are a huge deal at my primary school. Most of my friends have one, influenced by Britney Spears or Emma Bunton. I, too, have a fringe. Mine, as you can see, appears more inspired by Kevin Keegan circa 1993.

Sauces, reductions, deglazing: our expert panel has plenty of options for making the most of undrunk vino – whether you’ve got just a capful or a whole carafe to get through

What can I do with wine left over from a party?
Rob, by email
This is a novel concept, perhaps, but the answer essentially comes down to the quantity: “If we’re talking dribbles of red or white, that’s simple,” says Jon Atashroo, head chef/owner of Where There’s Smoke in North Yorkshire. “They go into sauces, whether that’s for pasta or to deglaze a pan before making a gravy.” Joe Otway, chef/co-owner of Higher Ground in Manchester, couldn’t agree more: “Reducing wine, be it white or red, in the base of anything is generally a good idea.” Take something tomato-based, such as ragu or chilli, as an example: “Once you’ve sweated the vegetables and there’s caramelisation on the bottom of the pan, a glass of red wine will add acidity, depth and sweetness.” And remember, you can always freeze wine dregs for later use: simply pour into ice-cube trays and stash.

Moving on to medium amounts, we’re talking “stewy, fish-type things”, Atashroo says, perhaps moules marinière. Another good option is pickling: “A basic recipe is one part caster sugar, one part white-wine vinegar and one part white wine. And if you’re pickling something like beetroot, cook it in that mix, while if you’re using cucumbers, say, they go in cold.” That said, a current Atashroo go-to is altogether sweeter: “Weigh some red wine, though I don’t see why it wouldn’t work with white wine, too, add 20% of its weight in sugar, and reduce to a syrup – you’re looking for the consistency of strawberry sauce.” The result is complex and acidic, “almost like reduced port”, and great for drizzling over vanilla ice-cream. While we’re talking desserts, few things are better than fruit (peaches, figs, pears) poached in wine, either.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Our writer spent weeks putting capsules, sheets and liquid detergent through their paces to find the best for your clothes and the planet

• Sustainable cleaning subscriptions that make life easier

Nothing makes falling into bed more enjoyable than freshly laundered sheets, especially if they’ve just been dried in the sunshine. It’s a definite bonus, though, to know your clean bedding won’t bring you out in a rash or pollute your local river.

Laundry detergent can be a troublesome product. A few years ago, I suffered a full-body rash after using pound-shop detergent on my sheets. I switched to a big-brand product and never had a reaction again, but there’s still the question of whether its ingredients may be causing environmental harm after they’ve gone down the drain.

Brilliant for managing breakouts and refreshing puffy eyes, but after months of treatments, is Shark’s light therapy device the one our writer would buy now?

• The best LED face masks

Of all the LED masks I’ve tested, the Shark CryoGlow feels like the most heavily marketed. Touted as a one-stop shop for anti-ageing, blemish-busting and undereye cooling, it’s trickled its way into countless influencer morning routines and post-work wind-downs, slowly but surely filling up my social media timeline.

As an acne-prone woman whose work life revolves around beauty tech, the adverts are well placed. But that doesn’t negate the fact that, to the average consumer, LED therapy still reeks of pseudoscience. If my younger self got wind that I was strapping a glowing mask to my face every day, she would die laughing.

It’s a saviour at family mealtimes, but which bottle of red sauce does our reviewer relish the most? (Spoiler: it’s not Heinz)

• The best supermarket mayonnaise

I was that kid who put ketchup on everything, from fries to french toast, and if my parents wanted me to eat vegetables, they’d have to cover them in the stuff (the sugar cravings of my youth have subsided, but I still love ketchup mixed into peas). So I was pleasantly surprised by this test group, because even the most economical sauces performed well.

Tomato content varied greatly (though not always in line with price), with the most tomato-heavy products containing almost twice as much fruit as the least. This information is presented in two ways: the first is the amount of raw tomato used before the sauce is cooked down into puree (more than 200g per 100g of finished product is high, less than 150g is low); the second is a straight percentage of tomato puree used, which is a more transparent measure (above 50% is high, while less than that I’d consider low, so check the label if you want more fruit in your sauce). Products made with fewer tomatoes are sometimes thickened with modified maize starch. I’ve also listed the total sugar content.

With gentler formulas and lower prices, children’s toiletries can work just as well for adults. From nappy rash cream to nourishing bath milk, these are the products that have earned a place in my routine

There may be plenty of worrying headlines about children using adult beauty products from younger and younger ages, but what about the reverse?

I’ve been a beauty editor for more than a decade, but when I had my first child in 2020, I was immediately impressed with the body washes, bath products and moisturisers designed for babies, particularly as someone with eczema and sensitive skin. The products’ gentler, often fragrance-free formulas are easier on my skin, tend to cost less, and result in a less cluttered bathroom, since we can all use the same things. These are the ones I’m still using – on the entire family – five years on.

Cost of living has hit campaign group while multinationals are threatening to squeeze out independent breweries

For centuries, the wooden real ale pump has been the hallmark of a good British boozer. But now problems are brewing for the proper pint, as the Campaign for Real Ale has seen its membership sink to an eight-year low and its accounts show it is firmly in the red, making an £800,000 loss last year.

Real ale is a traditional draught cask beer, a “living” product that is produced and stored in its cask. It differs from a cold, fizzy lager, in which the yeast is killed and carbon dioxide is added. Real ale contains live yeast so it continues fermenting until it is served.

In an extract from her new book, the Prague-born food writer shares two ways to preserve summer vegetables so they can be savoured year-round

Preserving the abundance of summer produce is a wonderful way to extend the season long after the gardens have faded. Opening a jar in the colder months offers more than just something good to eat; it also holds joy, patience and memories. When winter comes knocking, we are ready with something sweet, sour or salty waiting on the shelf, reminding us that summer will return and the sun will shine again.

A fun and easily customisable snack, to be enjoyed by kids and adults alike

Corn is a late-summer staple in our house, but its arrival often leaves me feeling a little blue (end of summer and all that). So, instead, I like to entertain more and make the most of the warm, light evenings. These nachos are a great snack for adults and kids alike (just adjust the chilli for younger palates), and a solid base that can be tweaked any which way. Have some lovely ripe tomatoes to hand? Chop them up and throw them in, too. Avocados at their peak? A side of guacamole would be a dream. Got a well-stocked spice cupboard? Add a little sweet smoked paprika and even some crushed coriander seeds to the fried beans. Make it to your liking and pantry, and enjoy with friends, ideally in the evening sun.

Hot days call for cool dinners, and these are Japan’s nutty, salty and sweet solution. Fiery or pickled accompaniments optional

Although every culture craves something different in hot weather – chilled beetroot soup in Lithuania, cooling buttermilk drinks in India, gazpacho in Spain – what many of these dishes have in common is a certain soothing silkiness as they slide down the throat, plus a decent helping of salt. Japan’s zaru soba, which Namiko Hirasawa Chen of Just One Cookbook describes as her family’s “go-to meal when the summer heat and humidity soar”, is no exception. Cold, slippery noodles paired with a savoury dipping sauce, it’s a simple, satisfying dish that’s ready in 15 minutes, and can be accessorised with crunchy salads, sweet seafood or creamy tofu sides for something more substantial. Traditionally served on a bamboo mat, or zaru, to allow the noodles to drain, you can get away without one at home (though lose the seaweed and you can call it mori soba instead), this is definitely one to stick in your summer repertoire alongside the chilled soups, watermelon salads and cucumber sandwiches.

He has chased a deer across a dual carriageway, eaten an entire tray of chocolate brownies and jumped head first into a canal. But despite all the worry he brings us, he is extraordinarily lovable

Ernie found his way into our hearts and home about nine years ago, when he strategically crawled into my lap during a family visit to meet a litter of puppies. While all the other beagle puppies ran wild, Ernie sat comfortably on me with his long, soft ears dangling down. We chose him because of his placid nature and named him Ernie after my mum’s late dad, who coincidentally also had short legs and a bit of a round belly.

After a few weeks we realised that Ernie was anything but placid. His gentle temperament quickly morphed into an unruly and persistent need to find his way into danger.

Following the all-clear, Kevin and Jade found a new openness in discussing sex and intimacy – and also a shared desire for exploring polyamory

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

Since the all clear, my relationship with my sexuality has shifted a lot

Make the victim feel safe and able to talk at their own pace, and consider any danger the perpetrator currently presents to younger members of the family

A young adult woman in our family has recently shared that her older male cousin once touched her inappropriately when she was aged six and he was aged 12. This happened 18 years ago. Then a second incident allegedly occurred eight years later.

She shared the story with her parents this year and the information was then shared with her cousin and other family members. He stated that he cannot recall either incident.

In 2001, Scott Westerfeld travelled from New York City to Sydney to see Justine Larbalestier. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, they navigated the crisis as best they could, together

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

I noticed Justine before she noticed me. We were at a literary award ceremony, and she was wearing a dress upcycled from a black Velvet Elvis painting, talking to a man three times her age.

I asked my friend, Carol, who knew everyone, why I’d never seen her before. Carol explained that she was an Australian academic, researching the history of publishing, and led me across the room.

We want our balance back, but we can’t access the money to pay for essential repairs and settle an electricity bill

Last November, Lloyds Bank informed me, in my role as treasurer of my parish church, that the church account was to be closed and that I should open a new business account instead. This can only be done online, but a fault with their system prevented me – and local branch staff – from doing so.

At the branch staff’s suggestion, I opened the new account with a different bank in early March. Since then, I’ve been trying in vain to get Lloyds to transfer the balance from the closed account.

It has not paid me for months and I am in severe financial distress, and apart from my husband while I try to sort it out

I stopped receiving my NHS pension in May and, when I rang to ask why, I was informed that I was deceased.

I have repeatedly called to no avail and my emails have received auto-generated responses.

Sign-up perks may capture the attention but should the focus be on the interest-free overdraft?

• Students on their biggest financial shocks

• The best student deals and discounts

• An insider’s tips on student money

In the scramble to sort out university accommodation, join freshers group chats and work out how a student loan payment is meant to stretch across a whole term, there is one big decision that is easy to put off but worth getting right: which student bank account to open.

Student accounts work like any other current account but come with two extras that don’t apply to the general public: an interest-free overdraft, and a lot of perks designed to hook you in as a customer for life.

It said that was what I was due after I submitted a claim for £300 for energy exported through my solar panels

British Gas paid me more than £38,000 by mistake, then had no idea how to reclaim it. I receive quarterly feed-in tariff (Fit) payments for energy exported by my solar panels.

In May, I submitted a claim for £300, based on my meter reading, and I received an email stating that I was due £38,611.59.

Creatine has become the go-to supplement for anyone wanting to give their fitness a boost and build muscle. It’s even made it out of the gym, with influencers touting its cognitive benefits. But what’s the science behind creatine, and does the evidence stack up? Madeleine Finlay hears from science editor Ian Sample and Dr Justin Roberts, professor of nutritional physiology at Anglia Ruskin University

Is it true that … we should all be taking creatine?

Athletes and fitness influencers use creatine, but what is it? And does it work?

Foundayo will be available on private prescription, with pharmacists warning of counterfeit GLP-1 problem

A new daily pill that treats diabetes and helps with weight loss will be available in UK pharmacies from Monday.

Pharmacists said the move would be welcome for people who cannot use weight-loss jabs, but also issued a warning over the growing problem of fake, unlicensed or counterfeit versions of GLP-1 tablets.

Miranda Luby was only 36 years old when her tinnitus arrived in the middle of the night, without warning and for no clear reason

One night two years ago, I was lying in bed when I began to hear a high-pitched, electronic hum. The scene that followed would be comical if it wasn’t so traumatic. I roamed around the house in my PJs, frantically pressing my ears against various electrical appliances. It took half an hour to realise the sound was coming from inside my own head.

I’d heard ringing in my ears before, rising then falling, like a one-note crescendo of an orchestra. As a kid, I used to believe the myth it was the sound of dying ear cells, playing a swan song for a frequency I’d never hear again. This was different. This time, it didn’t stop.

As weight-loss drugs gain popularity in the US, brands are scaling back their ranges – and frustrating customers

In March 2023, the model, activist and writer Tess Holliday announced that she had been working as a size and inclusivity consultant for H&M. The fruits of their partnership felt like “one of the most meaningful things that I’ve done in my career”, she told US Vogue at the time. The fashion juggernaut had committed to an expansion of its sizes, from XL to 4XL, and to increased body diversity of its models.

This bucked a trend, coming at an otherwise gloomy time for plus-sized fashion. By 2023, the fashion industry was in the grips of an Ozempic-fuelled celebration of skinny bodies, after its brief flirtation with curves during the body positivity movement of the late 2010s.

The event feted its 25 year anniversary with labels like Zambesi, promising emerging designers and an explosion of Māori and Indigenous culture

New Zealand fashion week took place in Auckland this week at the heritage-listed Shed 10 on Waitemata harbour and other venues across the city. Founded by Dame Pieter Stewart in 2001, now run by entrepreneur Feroz Ali, the 25th anniversary featured a mix of established names, exciting newcomers and a dramatically enhanced Indigenous program. The event boasted three separate group showcases of creatives from not just the Pacific region, but India, Taiwan and the US, in addition to the inaugural New Zealand Indigenous fashion symposium.

If ‘lifespan’ is the time you’re alive and ‘healthspan’ the years you’re disease-free, then ‘hotspan’ is the period you’re attractive and vibrant. Want to increase yours? Experts share their tips

Forget 12-step skincare routines, red light therapy and injectables – the single most important thing you can do for your skin is wear UV protection. “Not just sun protection, but UV protection, every single day, regardless of weather or season,” says Dr Jennifer Owens, resident aesthetic expert at the Reborne Longevity clinic in London. “Up to 90% of visible skin ageing is caused by UV exposure – nothing else comes close in terms of impact.”

Cute, egoless canines offer a break from a world that feels dominated by ‘nepo babies’ and ‘Maga lady aesthetic’

What do Nicole Kidman, a pair of “nepo babies” and a beagle called Sansa Martínez Berlingeri have in common? They all appear on the covers of the all-important September issues of Vogue and Dogue. But the winner of the unofficial battle of the covers? The one with the keenest sense of smell and a penchant for playing with socks.

The September covers of British Vogue and Vogue US have come under intense scrutiny after their recent release, while their canine counterpoint, Dogue, has been almost unanimously celebrated.

From Nike’s infamous 110s to £250 and back again, sneakerheads are rediscovering why cheaper shoes can be worth just as much hype as much more expensive ones

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When Nike’s Air Max 95 trainers first landed in Britain back in the mid-1990s, they looked unlike anything else. Created by footwear designer Sergio Lozano, the shoe had wavy layers running down its sides, neon yellow accents, and visible ‘Air’ bubbles underfoot. But in the UK, one detail quickly became as famous as the shoe itself: its £110 price tag.

The Air Max 95 immediately picked up the nickname “110” because spending £110 on trainers seemed outrageous at the time. Owning a pair quickly became a status symbol among young men across Britain, while in celebrity circles they were worn by everyone from Jay-Z to Kylie Minogue.

From smoked kippers in Northumberland to dolphin spotting in Dorset and a palm-fringed village on a sea loch in the Scottish Highlands

The historic harbour is the hub of this working East Neuk fishing port, home to a fleet of about 30 small trawlers and creel boats. Their catches are sold at the covered market on the quay each weekday morning, and served at the harbourside Dory Bistro and Chip Ahoy at the Larachmhor pub. Pittenweem (which means “place of the cave”) also has a Victorian-era swimming pool next to the beach, which is filled by the tide twice a day. After falling into disrepair, it was saved by a local group called the West Braes Project and reopened in 2021, along with the crazy golf course. Early each August, there is an annual arts festival with exhibits by nearly 200 artists in harbourside spaces, heritage buildings, homes and studios. Pittenweem is flanked by two other pretty harbour villages, St Monans and Anstruther, while a third, Crail, is a little further north; the Fife Coastal Path links them all. The Bank in Anstruther has harbour-view rooms (doubles from £120 B&B).

The city’s rich history and culture have so far flown under the radar, but its fiercely proud inhabitants are determined to change that

We have hardly begun walking before I spot the side alley, curving away from the main road in a patchwork of sunlit yellow walls, shuttered windows and shadowy archways. “What’s up there?” Elena, my guide to the city, pulls a wry smile. “That is Carmine. As a kid, I was warned not to go there.”

I turn up the alley. There’s a lot of graffiti. Next to an anarchy symbol, someone has sprayed “morte al decoro” – death to decorum. I’m intrigued. We go further, finding a labyrinth of colourful streets filled with bars and restaurants, a few just opening up for the day.

Five travel writers share their favourite holidays at home, from gravel biking in Scotland and a steam train ride in Yorkshire to rowing all the way from Oxford to London

One of my best UK holidays was the week I spent in June 2013 rowing from Oxford to London with two friends, James and Tom.

As holidaymakers descend on Brittany this summer, trebling the population of some villages and towns, local people are unimpressed

Name: “Parisians out!”

Age: It officially commenced at the start of August.

Service charges used to be a matter of choice, but now consumers feel obliged to pay them for even a cup of coffee. How do we navigate this minefield and who is really profiting?

In a London pub, Greg Double was brutally confronted with the reality of Britain’s evolving tipping culture. “I was annoyed about the pint being eight quid, but then when you put service on top, it’s absolutely criminal,” he says. In the past, you might have told the bar staff to keep the change or have a “drink” on you, but since when did we routinely tip in pubs? Or coffee shops? Or, worst of all, at self-service machines? Tip creep is happening.

Tipping was awkward enough in the UK when the general rule was 10% at a restaurant, plus anxiety about whether you should tip the hairdresser, babysitter or food-delivery driver. Now, with tipping suggested ever more frequently, US-style, it has become a minefield to Britons. The amounts edge higher – in fancier London restaurants, a 15% service charge is relatively commonplace. And it’s often asked for – in coffee shops for example, when you pay – before any service is delivered.

Dutch sustainable smartphone revamped with new chip and more RAM without sacrificing modular design

Fairphone’s top Android for 2026 is a little faster with more memory while maintaining full compatibility with its previous phone, including its repairable and ethical chops.

The Fairphone 6+ continues the Dutch cooperative’s mission to make consumer electronics longer lasting and more sustainable, containing 51% either recycled or ethically sourced materials while being fully repairable at home with just the one screwdriver included in the box.

They relayed to me that the driver wanted more money. I went to grab my wallet, but they told me to put it away

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I travelled alone a lot when I was younger and often got myself into stupid situations. You think you’re immortal when you’re in your 20s.

One such occasion happened when I was 25 and travelling solo in Egypt, not long after the turn of the century. I had taken an overnight bus from Cairo to Dahab, which dropped me and my fellow passengers off in the middle of nowhere. I had to get a shared taxi into town at about 3am – one where everyone sat up the back in a ute tray – then find somewhere to stay.

A Green party member and a Labour-voting Brexiter didn’t agree on the EU, but what about renewable energy and the NHS?

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

Joe, 41, Trafford, Greater Manchester

Occupation Press officer at a university

North Shields’ Gabriele Keenaghan was 12 when she was evacuated from Nazi Austria in 1939. She remembers the shock of leaving her family at Westbahnhof station

Gabriele Keenaghan still remembers the day in April 1939 when she said goodbye to her grandmother at a Vienna railway station for a Kindertransport to Britain – tears were strictly forbidden.

“I was apprehensive and I was worried because Nazis in black uniforms were on the platform,” she said. “I was only 12 years old so I think they were frightening … terrifying.

The Guardian’s Luke Harding discussed Trump, Putin and the state of the war in Ukraine, his expulsion from Russia, his new book Betrayal, and his career as a foreign correspondent

Ipswichred asks: Why is Russia considered a wider threat when it cannot even defeat Ukraine?

Pressfreedomorbust asks: What do you think is the likelihood of Russia taking military action (drones or troops) against another country such as Poland or Estonia? This would force Nato to use its military resources on this second conflict instead of supplying Ukraine.

Russia says it is at war not just with Ukraine, but the “collective west”. Accordingly, it carries out a number of hostile actions against the UK and EU countries. They include sabotage (undersea cables, bombs on cargo planes), disinformation and support for pro-Russian Eurosceptic parties (AFD in Germany, Reform in Britain, etc.)

Last year Moscow sent a swarm of decoy drones into Poland, to probe Nato’s defences. European leaders are generally reluctant to describe the Kremlin’s acts as war, preferring to use the qualifier “hybrid”. For now Putin is bogged down in Ukraine. In the meantime, Russia’s diversionary behaviour will continue. I wouldn’t rule out some kind of military “provocation”, probably limited in scope, against a Nato country.

He’s safe. There was much speculation around the time of the full-scale invasion that Putin was sick and possibly dying. This turned out to be wishful thinking. Similarly, there is little prospect of a palace coup or popular revolution in Russia. The reality is Putin will stay in power for life. Most people support him, state propaganda is as potent as ever, and the security services keep a close eye on dissent. Many of those who oppose him left the country in 2022. The majority are passive and fatalistic. The fate of Alexey Navalny - murdered in a Siberian gulag in 2024, likely on Putin’s orders - sent its own grim message.

With limited electricity and poor ventilation, many families in Nasirabad have little to shield them from temperatures of up to 50C

As the first light reaches Nasirabad, a queue of men, women and children has already formed outside the town’s ice factory, with their buckets, sacks and plastic containers. Among those hoping to buy some ice to help their families endure another scorching day is 12-year-old Taimoor, in his school uniform. He says it is his most important task of the day.

“If I do not bring the ice, how will we endure the heat at home?” he says. “And how will we drink water that feels as though it is boiling?”

As people grow used to AI chatbots, we’d like to hear your views about Google’s search engine

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

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

How did it affect your plans for either further education or getting a job? Did you go through resits? Tell us

The government plans to introduce a new “stepping stone” qualification from 2028 for students in England who do not achieve a pass in GCSE maths or English.

The new preparatory level 1 qualifications - one level below GCSEs - will “give students the essential knowledge and skills before they resit English or maths GCSE,” in an effort to “end the resit treadmill”, the government said.

We would like to hear from frontline or key workers about how the heat has affected them in the workplace this year

With record high temperatures across the UK this summer we want to hear from those whose work meant they couldn’t escape the extreme heat.

August 13 marked the hottest day of the year so far with temperatures reaching 38C in London and 37C recorded in other parts of the country; this marks the first year temperatures of 37C and above have been recorded on three separate days in the UK. Climate scientists are saying the incoming Super El Niño is likely to deliver more record breaking hot weather next year.

We want to hear from young people who have chosen to start their own businesses rather than follow a traditional career path

A growing number of Gen Z are starting their own businesses, with the number of Start Up Loans taken out by young founders rising by 132% over the past five years, according to analysis by the British Business Bank. Meanwhile, Hiscox analysis of Companies House data found nearly 400,000 Gen Z directors are now running UK-registered businesses.

We’d like to hear from people aged between 18 and 29 who have started a business about what inspired you to do it and how you got started. How is your business going? What have been the biggest challenges and rewards? Do you see yourself continuing to run your own business in the future?

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