She has built an unlikely career in mould, maggots and excrement, cleaning for those who most need it. It can take months building trust with a stranger, before she and her boyfriend go in and transform everything

‘There might be a dead bird in the box room. We think it has been there for a couple of years,” says Bea Elton, raising her voice to be heard through her respirator. It is particularly robust, as she has a dust and cat hair allergy. “Not ideal,” in her line of work, the 28-year-old concedes.

Knowing it would be difficult to talk on the job, we spoke before we arrived, struggling into hazmat suits, shoe covers, gloves and masks in the overgrown garden outside the front door. “I refer to myself as a cleaner. I would never refer to myself as a cleanfluencer,” says Elton. The slick videos on her platform, CleanWithBea, which record her transforming homes fallen into extreme dirt, decay and dilapidation, tell a different story. She has more than six million followers across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, who have crowned her a celebrity of this genre, her audience keen to watch the imperfect made perfect in a world that feels increasingly out of control. Yet no matter how many of her polished videos you watch, nothing can prepare you for entering one of the homes she cleans in person.

Versatile character actor who gained international star status with standout performances in Jurassic Park and The Piano

Born in Northern Ireland, raised in New Zealand, adopted by the Australian film industry as one of its own and elevated to Hollywood stardom before he was 50, the actor Sam Neill, who has died aged 78, conveyed a seen-it-all worldliness without ever seeming jaded. With his floppy fringe and amused, rueful eyes, he was a man of decency, humility and wit. “I’m just Mr Triviality, as shallow as my washbasin,” he said. “No deep glacial lakes of profundity here.” The intelligence of many of his performances suggested otherwise.

Though he was never defined by one role, it was a pair of films released in 1993 which promoted him to the A-list and showcased his versatility. In Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster Jurassic Park, groundbreaking in its use of computer-generated imagery, he played a palaeontologist who is awestruck to find himself among dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA. He reprised the role in two of the film’s sequels, Jurassic Park III (2001) and Jurassic World: Dominion (2022).

The suffering of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya is no isolated case. The abuse of Palestinian detainees is happening in plain sight, yet nothing changes

“This is the end. I don’t see myself surviving. They brought me here to kill me.” These were the words of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya to his lawyer earlier this month. Abu Safiya was the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza. Eighteen months ago he was seized by Israeli forces and has since been held without charge or trial. He reports being struck with hammers and batons, daily beatings and loss of consciousness. The latest images of him show a much gaunter man than the one who had been the voice of besieged healthcare workers in Gaza, doing their jobs in impossible circumstances.

In June, Abu Safiya was transferred to Rakefet prison, an underground facility first built to hold senior organised crime figures, then closed on the grounds that it was inhumane. It was reopened in late 2023 by the far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Abu Safiya and the other Palestinian prisoners there never see daylight, a violation of the Geneva conventions. Across the Palestinian territories and Israel, about 3,500 prisoners like him are held under “administrative detention” that can be renewed every six months, indefinitely. Nearly 200 of them are children. Once a Palestinian is detained under these rules, they are essentially abducted by the state.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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The warm, gentle conditions I was hoping for turned out to be ferociously windy. The anchor couldn’t hold our boat in place. And then my mum got trapped in the cabin …

It started so well. A catamaran full of loved ones floating into the azure, taking pics, feeling glam, anticipating the sun sinking over the yardarm. I’d been reunited with my sister and family, who live in Australia, for the first time in three years, after Covid. Her husband, a fearless Australian giant, had got into sailing and offered to take me and my then 77-year-old mum, along with their three teens, out in the south of France for my sister’s 50th birthday. I knew sailing could get rough – my dad capsized us at the mouth of the River Dart when I was little – but it’s not every day you get such a generous invitation. How could I resist?

It was October. I was manifesting warm, gentle conditions, but instead the wind blew ferociously and stubbornly the wrong way. Before we knew it, we were charging up mountainous waves, then crashing into the void beyond. Our captain calmly steered while I sat below, feeling as if I was in a disaster movie, at which point I realised I hadn’t even located the lifejackets.

Indonesia’s government is grappling with how to manage waste at Bantar Gebang – Jakarta’s largest landfill – which supports the livelihood of thousands of waste pickers

On the outskirts of Jakarta, huge rolling peaks of rubbish stretch across more than 100 hectares (247 acres), towering over nearby villages. Each day a convoy of trucks plough in and dump more garbage into one of Asia’s largest landfills.

Here, thousands of people live on the fringe of the site and make their income picking through the waste and salvaging scraps for resale. The work is dangerous – earlier this year seven people died after one of the massive trash mounds caved in, burying them alive.

One manager expects takings to treble during England’s semi-final with Argentina on Wednesday; while national sales are up 10%

The beleaguered pub sector is getting a boost from England’s World Cup run, with some landlords reporting roaring sales as anticipation builds for a bumper night on Wednesday for the semi-final clash with Argentina.

Lisa Mayall, the manager of the British Oak in Kingswinford near Dudley in the West Midlands, was jubilant after England’s 2-1 win against Norway on Saturday night and brisk takings at the pub’s till. She expects hundreds more customers for the team’s next game at 8pm BST.

Extreme heat led to 440 deaths a day during June peak, say scientists, with climate crisis ramping up temperatures

The heatwave that affected England and Wales in June killed about 440 people a day during its three-day peak, scientists have estimated. Across the whole of the June heatwave, plus the one in May, about 2,700 people lost their lives prematurely.

The data starkly illustrates the danger of extreme heat, which is being supercharged by the climate crisis. More than 40% of the people affected would not have died without the 1.4C of human-caused global heating to date, according to the analysis. For comparison, about four people die each day as a result of road traffic collisions and about 35 a day because of alcohol and drug use, according to government statistics.

New Zealand actor built career as dashing romantic leads and charismatic villains across film and television

• Sam Neill’s 20 best performances

• A life in pictures

• ‘A true gentleman’: actors, directors and leaders pay tribute to Sam Neill

Sam Neill, the versatile New Zealand actor whose career spanned Oscar winners and blockbusters such as The Piano and Jurassic Park, has died aged 78.

The actor’s death was announced on Monday in a statement shared on his Instagram account. No cause of death was given, but Neill had only recently revealed he was cancer-free after being diagnosed with stage three angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, in 2022.

Politicians should not comment before facts established, says ex-chief constable, as Farage calls killing ‘premeditated murder’

Senior police figures and politicians have warned against speculation during the murder investigation into Ann Widdecombe’s death, after detectives said there was “nothing to suggest” political motivation following an intervention from Nigel Farage.

Devon and Cornwall police said on Sunday the killing was not being treated as terrorism nor as politically motivated. Officers said they remained open-minded about the motive and urged the public not to speculate, warning it was both unhelpful to the investigation and distressing for Widdecombe’s family.

Suspension of family reunion route has left many stuck in conflict zones or using people smugglers to reach safety

More than 16,000 refugees have been unable to reunite with families in the UK, leaving them either stuck in conflict zones or resorting to using people-smugglers to reach safety, according to the Refugee Council.

The government suspended the refugee family reunion route last September. It allowed a person granted refugee status to apply to bring immediate family members such as a spouse and their children under 18 to reunite with them in the UK. The indication was that the suspension would last until the spring of this year.

Three-year plan will deliver an extra 500 officers to patrol Jewish neighbourhoods after series of antisemitic incidents

More than £250m will be invested by the government to increase policing in Jewish communities after a spate of violent attacks, the Home Office has announced.

The funding over the next three years will deliver more than 500 additional officers across England and Wales in Jewish neighbourhoods and around schools, synagogues and community centres, while strengthening national counter-terrorism capabilities.

US military says it hit dozens of Iranian sites in strikes on Monday while UN chief warns that a return to full-scale fighting would be ‘catastrophic’

• US launches new attack wave on Iran as Tehran says diplomacy has proven ‘futile’

Esmail Baghaei also told the media briefing that Iran is ‌trying to ⁠agree ⁠a joint mechanism with Oman for the management of the strait of Hormuz but claimed that US pressure on Oman has hindered ⁠efforts. He did not say how exactly the US is pressuring Oman.

During talks on Saturday aimed at resolving the standoff over the strait, Oman proposed a plan to fully reopen both shipping lanes through the waterway, according to US outlet Axios, citing a diplomat briefed on the negotiations.

Alleged thieves in October 2025 robbery damaged a gem-encrusted crown worn in the 19th century by Empress Eugénie

Two men suspected of making off with €88m (£75m) worth of crown jewels from the Louvre museum in Paris last October have reportedly told investigators that the alleged mastermind behind the heist was disappointed by the haul and thought “they could have taken more”.

The French newspaper Le Monde cited transcripts of the alleged thieves’ questioning last month by two investigating judges in charge of the inquiry, offering detailed insights into the burglary that made global headlines and led the museum’s director to resign.

• Latest news as final week of World Cup gets under way

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I mean, just look at him.

In which regard, here are some words on the great man.

From harvests dampened by El Niño to wage and tax rises, getting coffee beans from crop to cup costs more than ever

Drinkers across the UK were shocked when a pint in some London bars hit £10, and now a cup of coffee is facing a similar inflationary rate. Some baristas are now charging £6.50 for a flat white.

Higher energy bills, inflated by the war in the Middle East, as well as government policies which have increased tax and wages, are filtering through into coffee prices, experts said.

Five years after the ultra-conservative Islamists retook Afghanistan, students describe male pupils being beaten for minor rule breaches and inexperienced teachers struggling to deliver lessons

Before he leaves for Kabul University each morning, Hashmat* checks his face for the beard he has been ordered to grow. Male students are required to grow their facial hair and wear traditional Afghan clothes and those who fall short are punished. Hashmat says he recently saw a classmate beaten for wearing trousers.

“They look at you before they listen to you. If your appearance is wrong, you are already in trouble before the class begins,” he says.

He beat brain cancer. Now your favourite DJ’s favourite DJ is on a UK tour, armed with experimental techno, Beastie Boys and Taylor Swift

Ten years ago this month, Japanese DJ Yousuke Yukimatsu had an epileptic seizure. When he didn’t show up for a festival booking, organisers got in touch with his friends in Osaka, who found him collapsed at home. He was taken to hospital where doctors diagnosed a brain tumour. “If no one had contacted me, I might have died,” he posted on a crowdfunding platform several months later.

In the black-and-white photograph accompanying the crowdfunder to support his work, Yukimatsu leans his head towards the camera, his buzz cut growing out around a thick ragged scar that curves from his left ear to the top of his hairline: he’d been through two craniotomies, plus extensive chemo and radiation therapy. The illness also left him with a realisation that he needed to make DJing his full-time job; to dedicate himself to his craft and make the world a better place. “If we can keep living [for] tomorrow, if I can encourage people … that’s what I’m always trying to do,” he says now. “The world is getting much worse than the time when techno was born [in the mid 1980s]. Weapons are being developed; it’s getting easier to commit a massacre. In Japan, if a musician speaks about politics, they can be hugely criticised. But I think it’s really important to speak up.”

The breed is supposed to be hard-working and hyperactive. This one would rather put her paws up or strike a pose for some adoring human

We didn’t plan on getting a dog, but someone told us about a working sheepdog in Ireland who wasn’t up to the job and therefore needed a new owner. In 2023, we travelled from Nottingham to meet her and I fell in love. It was clear that she was not cut out for working and wanted to be a lady of leisure. She was really affectionate and I could tell that she loved being around people.

Border collies are known for being hyperactive, wanting to chase a ball, wanting to do things all the time, but Daisy is the opposite. She is happy to cuddle up next to you. She brings a smile to people’s faces whenever we’re out. As soon as anyone meets her, she gets giddy and excited, rolling on her back and wanting tummy tickles.

Essays by the great and the good address the legacy of Brexit, but ignore the nationalist elephant in the room

This massive collection of essays by 43 different authors, including seven lords, four baronesses, one dame and three knights of the realm, may be the nearest we will ever get to a semi-official reflection on the causes and consequences of Brexit. Its editor, Sir Anthony Seldon, is honorary historian at 10 Downing Street and has written definitive works on successive 21st-century British administrations.

Yet the phrase “English nationalism” appears precisely once in its 600 pages – in a glancing reference to the line taken by the Daily Mail during the referendum campaign of 2016. Strikingly, while there is a fine essay by Aileen McHarg called On Scotland, there is none called On England. There is no attempt to provide even a broad overview of the tensions, contradictions and anxieties within the part of the UK where Brexit was won: non-metropolitan England. For much of the political and intellectual establishment, it seems, Englishness is still the condition that dare not speak its name.

These cool, cheap bars in old abandoned buildings became popular in the 2000s – and then tourists moved in. I went hunting for the bohemian spirit of the originals

‘Many ruin bars seem to be just tourist traps now,” says artist István, standing outside Instant-Fogas complex, which calls itself Europe’s biggest ruin pub, but looks more like a mammoth nightclub with several dancefloors.

“These bars were a hot topic 20 years ago, but many have become really commercial now,’ says István. “Ruin bars being expensive actually ruins their purpose. I’m a student, I like beers that are under 1,000 forints [about £2.50], and the big commercial ruin bars are typically much more expensive.”

Only when Guardian Money contacted the company did it discover the cash was wages owed to its staff

In May, our supplier, Yorkshire Water, made a surprise payment of more than £3,500 into my partner’s bank account.

We assumed that it was an error and we would be told to repay it.

In 2019 Eric Lampaert woke up unable to recognise his friends, his parents, even his own name. After decades of anxiety, abandonment and bullying, was his mind just trying to shield him from his past?

On the day his life changed, Eric Lampaert woke up and saw his hands. What amazed him was that they were moving in front of him, and he appeared to be the person in control of them. We’re drinking coffee in the Groucho Club in London, and at this point he lets go of his cup and wriggles his fingers. Lampaert is an actor and standup whose work has a strong clowning dimension. His hands always seemed to have minds of their own – and, sometimes, strong differences of opinion. But as he got out of bed that fateful morning, marvelling at the magical things on the ends of his arms, he felt only wonder. What he didn’t yet know was that he had lost his memory, and his life would no longer feel like his own.

That was seven years ago, on 17 March 2019, Lampaert says, a date not so much stamped in his memory as retrieved from his journal and recommitted. It was a knock on the door that told him “there were other things out there” beyond his bedroom: the Miracle Mile district of Los Angeles, housemates in the home he’d once shared with his estranged wife, and the downstairs neighbour who’d knocked to collect a bottle of bleach. Lampaert had borrowed it to clean coffee stains from the sink, but now he didn’t know the person at the door or the housemate wandering by. “Eric?” his neighbour said. “And I went: ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know …”

Thailand’s urban and rural environments are home to a vast population of stray animals whose safety depends on delicate networks of care. Photographer Jackson Morrow spent three years with the Soi Dog Foundation documenting the systems that shape their survival.

• Some readers may find these images distressing

It’s after midnight and Dr Bow is already awake when her phone starts to ring. She sleeps lightly when she is on call, and she knows who is calling before she picks up the phone.

Two dogs, recently rescued from an illegal dog meat trade sale, breathe through holes cut into canvas sacks as a trader kneels before the local police chief following an enforcement operation in Bulacan, Philippines.

The latest episode of Thomas versus Jude does not have to descend into a drama and team cannot afford to be distracted heading into the World Cup semi-final

Thomas Tuchel lobbed a grenade into the mix. Jude Bellingham picked it up and threw it back. There was an explosion of honesty in Miami, where everyone was struggling to maintain composure in the stifling humidity, and it needs to be dealt with before England try to reach a men’s World Cup final for the first time on foreign soil.

It is time for cool heads. Tuchel was searing in his immediate analysis of England’s quarter-final win over Norway, telling ITV’s Gabriel Clarke that the performance was sloppy, not fast enough and full of technical mistakes. Praise for the side’s mentality was there but slightly lost in the noise. It was the criticism that Bellingham was asked about and the way he responded, punching back at Tuchel’s comments with some forthrightness of his own, ran the risk of England’s campaign falling down because of a public disagreement between the head coach and the star player.

We assess the teams who played in the last eight as the business end of the tournament approaches

Didier Deschamps has seen it all before and certainly does not fear even the lowest of blocks. It is clear everyone is afraid of Les Bleus, which is understandable, and they are using it to their advantage. It is admirable how teams keep France quiet for lengthy periods but the game is too long to completely silence Kylian Mbappé and Ousmane Dembélé. Against Morocco an hour of patience was required but these forwards are used to it and Mbappé produced the magic that has powered this run, following it up with an assist. In a tournament defined by individuals, France has the best of a talented bunch.

How much do you know about the first tournament played in the United States?

• ‘Definitely ​an issue that will be examined and discussed’

• Fifa president calls 48-team tournament a ‘huge success’

Fifa officials will look at the possibility of expanding the World Cup by another 16 teams before the ⁠2030 event, Gianni Infantino said in an interview. The Fifa president told Bluewin, a Swiss media outlet, that growing from 48 to ⁠64 teams could make ⁠sense.

“That’s definitely ​an issue that will be examined and discussed in the relevant committees after this World Cup,” Infantino said. “When organising ⁠a World Cup, it’s important to organise it for the whole world – not just Europe and South America – but effectively the ⁠entire world.

• First competitive game between teams since 2002 World Cup

• Georgia braced for potential flashpoints in Atlanta buildup

It has been billed as one of the biggest grudge matches in the history of international football. After England’s players rode their luck against Erling Haaland’s Norway on a steamy night in Miami, they spent Sunday recuperating at their base in Kansas City as thoughts turn to facing Argentina in the World Cup semi-final on Wednesday.

Thomas Tuchel’s team will take on the reigning champions on what promises to be an emotionally charged occasion in Atlanta for the chance to play France or Spain in the final.

The far right leader’s career is not the issue: it’s whether a politician with her record has a legitimate right to seek office

For many years, I have observed Marine Le Pen and her party and how they operate in France. I have heard their xenophobic, anti-immigrant rhetoric and felt it contaminate French political life. It is a rhetoric rooted in the history of a party founded by figures from France’s postwar far right. Nothing they do or say surprises me any more. But even by their standards the crime is extraordinary.

A French court of appeal confirmed last week that Le Pen was guilty of a central role in orchestrating a scheme that systematically embezzled public funds for more than a decade. That the investigation also took 10 years may explain the absence of public shock waves, or why the focus has been on Le Pen’s future political moves rather than on her misdeeds. So let’s recap.

Rokhaya Diallo is a French journalist, film-maker, activist and Guardian Europe columnist.

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

The psychotherapist Amy Morin says uttering a ‘short, positive sentence’ can offer the cognitive reset we need. The idea makes me cringe – but then I can barely cope with returning defective trousers

Are you dreading a high-stakes meeting, a challenging professional task or an awkward conversation? I’m not, because I’m a craven coward who has dodged that kind of unpleasantness for years. If only I had a “power phrase” to activate, maybe things would have been different.

That is the psychotherapist Amy Morin’s advice for dealing with sticky situations. The author of The Mental Strength Playbook, Morin explained in Business Insider that a “short, positive sentence you say to yourself in the moment” is an effective two-minute cognitive reset. She used hers, she says, while answering challenging questions to land her book deal: “I activated my power phrase and told myself, I’m a strong, straightforward communicator.”

Prime-minister-in-waiting has been a key figure in overhauls behind the scenes of the game, as well helping to create the Hillsborough Independent Panel

Picking up the country when it is in a slump of self-doubt is perhaps within Andy Burnham’s reach. And football, close to Burnham’s heart, may provide the template. There have been several occasions in the past 20 years when English football has been in a state of anguish, but a nadir came in 2007, when Burnham made one of his most significant interventions to the national game. If England win the World Cup , expect the prime-minister-in-waiting to take at least a slice of the credit.

England had just lost 3-2 to Croatia at Wembley and failed to qualify for Euro 2008, the game where Steve McClaren was dubbed “the wally with the brolly”, the pouring rain adding to the sense of despair. At Wembley that night Burnham was with James Purnell, now poised to become his chief of staff in No 10, as guests of the Premier League’s then chief executive, Richard Scudamore. Burnham was the minister for culture, media and sport, having succeeded Purnell, who had been moved to the Department for Work and Pensions, this being the early days of Gordon Brown’s Labour premiership.

The twisting road to the candidate’s exit left a lot to be desired. But ultimately, reporters ferreted out the truth

After the New York Times published an article in early June about the Senate candidate Graham Platner’s treatment of the women he dated, the story’s main source reacted with disappointment and anger.

It was a “gift to the Platner campaign”, charged Lyndsey Fifield, who had dated the Democratic combat veteran years ago and who spoke candidly to the Times about that experience.

These financiers want to remodel the UK into a form that suits them – one that could threaten to erode the barriers between crime and business

This coming Tuesday, the government’s representation of the people bill comes back to the House of Commons for its third reading. It bundles up a multitude of measures, including an extension of the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds and welcome changes to voter registration. But thanks to the continuing furore around Nigel Farage and his extremely wealthy friends – such as the Thailand-based crypto-investor Christopher Harborne, who gave Farage a £5m “lottery win” personal gift and has donated in excess of £22m to Reform UK – the aspects of the legislation that have suddenly become its headline measures are focused on big-money donations.

The government has already implemented a moratorium – but only a moratorium – on political donations in cryptocurrencies, the encrypted digital assets that, to quote the Electoral Commission, “present particular challenges and risks in meeting electoral law requirements in identifying donors and ensuring they are permissible”. There is a new annual £100,000 limit on donations from British citizens living abroad. Other legislative moves will now take the form of amendments to the bill: they include new checks on whether companies making donations are above board by measuring their profit as well as their revenues, and a requirement for parliamentary candidates to declare any donation above £2,230 (although “personal gifts” will continue to be exempt).

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

The White House is working to change electoral rules in its favor. Protectors of democracy must have a counterplan

The second Trump administration is systematically eroding the institutional foundations of competitive elections without formally abolishing them. They have a plan to achieve what scholars of democratic backsliding call “electoral subversion”: changing electoral rules in their favor. Protectors of democracy must have a counter-plan of their own.

The White House’s approach to electoral subversion has multiple fronts. The administration has rewarded those who used violence to disrupt the last transfer of power, disabled the federal agencies charged with protecting election integrity, moved to extend executive control over voter registration, and threatened to withhold terrorism prevention funding from states who do not change their voting rules.

Larger vehicles crowd our roads and are far more dangerous to pedestrians. Let’s curb them before they do even more damage

We need an Ozempic for cars. They are growing at a phenomenal rate, wreaking havoc on the roads, squeezing out smaller vehicles in car parks and endangering pedestrians.

Like ever-hungry teenagers, cars in Europe are growing, on average, a centimetre wider every year, according to new research reported by the Guardian. And fewer than half of new cars in the UK can fit into a conventional parking space. As there is, remarkably, no width restriction for cars, no law can stop this growth until they reach the size of HGVs – that is, 2.55m wide – which are restricted.

Christian Wolmar is a transport commentator and author of The Liberation Line, the story of the railwaymen who rebuilt the railways in Europe after D-day

Strikes and bluster on both sides, with Israel urging on Washington, are endangering the progress made

The cycle’s familiarity should not obscure the gravity of the consequences as the US and Iran return to threats, strikes and a futile search for an exit from war via escalation. On Sunday, Tehran said that it had closed the strait of Hormuz again. The World Food Programme is already feeding 1.5 million fewer people this year owing to the illegal war launched by the US and Israel. Vulnerable countries are suffering most as existing crises are compounded: an extra 2.5 million people in Somalia and 2.3 million in Afghanistan are struggling to meet basic food needs.

Even de-escalation would not fix this humanitarian crisis. The full impact on food production has yet to be felt. The strait was key to global fertiliser exports; as prices soared, many farmers cut back on use. The drying up of remittances from migrant workers in the Gulf hurts Asian as well as African nations.

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

The author of the bestselling young-adult novel Orangeboy is ideally suited to address the crisis of teenage masculinity and reading

In 2017 there was outrage when the Carnegie medal, the UK’s oldest and most prestigious children’s literature prize, had no minority ethnic authors on its longlist, despite nominations for Noughts & Crosses author Malorie Blackman and Patrice Lawrence for her widely acclaimed young adult novel Orangeboy. At that point, no writer of colour had ever won. Nearly a decade later, Lawrence has become the UK’s 14th children’s laureate.

“I wanted to write lovely young men of colour,” Lawrence has said of Orangeboy, which tells the story of 16-year-old Marlon, who finds himself caught up in an underworld of drugs and violence. “I wanted to explore what makes lovely people do not very nice things.” Although dealing with gang culture rather than internet radicalisation, Orangeboy speaks to current anxieties surrounding boys growing up, captured in the award-winning TV series Adolescence. Toxic teenage masculinity is also the subject of a debut play, Physical Education, that opened in Swansea last week.

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.

Prof Myles Allen, Stephanie Loo and Toby Lockwood, and Olivia Powis, respond to an article by George Monbiot about ‘the great carbon capture con’

George Monbiot suggests that we can solve climate change without carbon capture and storage (The great carbon capture con: behold the wasted billions Burnham could claw back, 8 July). Physics says otherwise. The world is going to generate more carbon dioxide than we can safely dump into the atmosphere, and we can’t rely on our stressed biosphere and oceans to mop up the excess. Stopping global warming will therefore require capturing and durably disposing of carbon dioxide on a huge scale, which right now means injecting it back underground.

Where George does make a good point is in questioning whether carbon dioxide disposal should for ever be paid for using public money. Why should private companies be allowed to make large profits taking carbon out of the ground while the taxpayer foots the bill to put it back? The obvious solution: require those who extract fossil fuels to pay for the disposal of the carbon dioxide their products generate. If the fraction they store rises to 100% by mid-century, fossil fuel use would cause no further warming thereafter.

Too many people with assistance dogs are routinely denied access to businesses and services, writes Eleanor Briggs

Joanne Hewitson from Hartlepool only wanted to enjoy breakfast at her local pub, accompanied by her guide dog, Rosie. Instead, a member of staff wrongly and repeatedly demanded identification for her guide dog, making her feel so unwelcome that she felt she had to leave (Blind woman ‘livid’ after Wetherspoon’s pub asks for guide dog’s ID, 7 July).

Joanne’s experience is not unique. Guide dog owners are refused entry or told to leave pubs, places to eat, taxis, shops and essential services right across the UK, despite businesses’ own policies stating that assistance dogs are welcome.

As deadly blazes sweep across Europe, Jane Burston warns of the longer-term dangers of black carbon

The wildfires sweeping across Europe are damaging precious habitats, destroying property and taking people’s lives (Fast-spreading wildfire kills at least 12 in southern Spain, 10 July), yet they are even more devastating to human health once the flames have died down because of the huge amount of air pollution they generate.

As well as releasing carbon dioxide, wildfires also emit huge amounts of black carbon – often known as soot – into the atmosphere. Black carbon harms people’s health and is a major cause of the 7.9 million premature deaths annually attributed to air pollution. Witness the impact of toxic particles from Canadian wildfires in 2023, which killed 82,000 people, with the pollution stretching across Canada, the US and Europe.

Short shrift for stature comment | Fifa orange card | Basic decoding | Naming the PM | Memory test prep | Bayeux tapestry

You describe the 5ft 9in Arthur Fery as of “diminutive stature” (Report, 8 July). At 5ft 7in, Lionel Messi is even smaller than Fery, but I have never heard commentators describe him as diminutive. Closer to home, the previous Wimbledon winners Ken Rosewall and Rod Laver were of a similar height. Diminutive? You cannot be serious.
Derek Carline (5ft 4in)
Chorlton, Manchester

• After Donald Trump’s interference in sendings-off in the World Cup (Trump confirms he asked Infantino for review of Folarin Balogun red card, 6 July), perhaps it’s time to have an orange card for those who are sent off but have friends in high places.
Dr Colin Bannon
Crapstone, Devon

Over-by-over updates from 11am (BST) start at Lord’s
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And RIP Bazball – the best fun in those weird post-Covid days when life needed a bolt of joy.

News on Heather Knight’s retirement after a wonderful career – a mid-match announcement in the mode of Ben Stokes.

• Sinner recovers from Roland Garros with win over Zverev

• World No 1 faced only one break point in final

Jannik Sinner described his triumph at Wimbledon as particularly special considering his painful defeat at the French Open, after he recovered from a difficult first set to secure his second Wimbledon title with an impressive 6-7 (7), 7-6 (2), 6-3, 6-4 win against the second seed Alexander Zverev.

Sinner, the world No 1, successfully defended his Wimbledon title to clinch his fifth grand slam singles title and 30th championship ­overall. Last month, he was heavily favoured to win his first French Open but he lost in the second round against Juan Manuel Cerúndolo after leading by two sets and 5-1. He has bounced back at the first opportunity.

• Midfielder faced Villa in May’s Europa League final

• U-turn is further summer transfer blow for Newcastle

Aston Villa have hijacked Newcastle’s pursuit of Johan Manzambi, and are close to completing a £49m deal with Freiburg for the Switzerland midfielder.

Manzambi’s arrival will boost Villa before a season in which they return to the Champions League and represents a considerable blow for Newcastle. St James’ Park executives thought they had sealed a deal for the versatile 20-year-old, who has impressed at the World Cup, after flying to Germany last week but although Manzambi is understood to have offered them verbal assurances that the personal terms on offer were acceptable, he did not want anything formalised until Switzerland exited the World Cup, which they did following defeat to Argentina on Sunday. As soon as that happened, with Manzambi currently sidelined with a minor knee injury, Villa stepped in.

The sacked England Test coach reinvigorated an ailing team in 2022, but his super-aggressive style proved unsustainable

Farewell, then, to Bazball, the approach defined upon its adoption by the Collins English Dictionary in 2023 as “a style of Test cricket in which the batting side attempts to gain the initiative by playing in a highly aggressive manner”. In time the manner grew less aggressive, the attempts to gain the initiative less evident, and the results less convincing. Brendon McCullum, whose philosophies and nickname had inspired it, was always irritated by the term, describing it when he deigned to address it at all as “silly”, but while this is evidently true, Bazball without any of its defining characteristics was downright mystifying.

Ben Stokes was widely mocked in 2023 when, during a drawn home Ashes series, he said, in a speech given in the privacy of the dressing room but filmed and later released by the England and Wales Cricket Board: “What we have managed to do is we’ve managed to become a sports team that will live for ever in the memory of people who were lucky enough to witness us play cricket. What we have done is something a lot bigger than any Ashes trophy … be[ing] the team that everybody will always remember.”

• Pogacar wants calendar changed to avoid worst of heat

• Van der Poel wins ninth stage shortened amid high temperatures

Tadej Pogacar called for radical change to the professional racing calendar after another day of stifling temperatures, as Mathieu van der Poel won the shortened ninth stage of the Tour de France from Malemort to Ussel, with Tom Pidcock finishing third.

“If I had the power I would change all the calendar and not race in July and August in hot places,” Pogacar said. “I’d do a completely different calendar, but it’s not something I can do.”

If Steve Borthwick is to emulate Thomas Tuchel he must fully embrace the attacking talent which tore Fiji apart

Next year Steve Borthwick would love to be where Thomas Tuchel is now. A World Cup semi‑final in prospect, an entire nation transfixed and a team with another gear in it. Swap Atlanta for Sydney and Jude Bellingham for Henry Pollock and the same essentials will be required: big-match players, smart man management and the absolute belief that decades of disappointment can be overcome.

Tuchel and his staff even paid a visit to their rugby counterparts in March, albeit in the week the latter lost against Italy in the Six Nations for the first time. Borthwick has long been interested in how England‑based coaches deal with the sheer weight of expectation and has spoken to a number of Premier League managers on the subject.

Unmoved by the trappings of success, the new women’s champion is keen to use her enhanced status to help those less fortunate

Most new Wimbledon champions have a bucket list of things they want to do, gifts they would like to buy themselves or family, or even future goals of winning more grand slam titles. But Linda Noskova is not your average first-time major winner.

The 21-year-old Czech is surely the first woman to win Wimbledon with a nose ring – “I was maybe counting a little bit [on] someone having some things to say about it, but no one said anything bad” – but she intends to use her newfound platform for good.

French president hosts ‘coalition of the willing’ in Paris amid hopes that Ukraine’s recent advances could force Putin towards negotiations

Responding to the Paris summit on France, the Kremlin said it would “closely follow” the discussions today, but criticised the Coalition of the Willing as “the group of countries which want the Ukraine war to continue,” Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, Germany joined France (10:14) in summoning the Russian ambassador to Berlin over what the EU alleges were Russian cyber-attacks against several EU countries and Ukraine (10:38, 10:52).

Brent crude jumps nearly 5% and European markets drop, with airlines including Ryanair among hardest hit

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Oil prices jumped and stocks fell after the US launched a fresh wave of attacks against Iran amid an escalating standoff over the strait or Hormuz.

Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, rose 4.7% to $79.59 a barrel on the renewed hostilities in the Middle East.

Karachi’s chief police surgeon condemns increasing acceptance of domestic murders and rapes of women and girls

A white-bearded man looks straight into the camera, in the video circulating for the past few weeks on social media. “I killed my wife,” he says calmly in Urdu. “We have a give-and-take arrangement and when she refused to give, I said I would take.”

Hours earlier, the 64-year-old had walked into a police station in Karachi’s Orangi neighbourhood and confessed to murdering Asma Begum, a 58-year-old mother of four, in the home they shared because she had refused him sex.

Abir Al-Sahlani targeted on social media after condemning anti-immigration chants in European parliament

A Swedish MEP has filed a police complaint accusing a fellow MEP of racist hate speech after she was targeted on social media over her condemnation of far-right, anti-immigration chants in the European parliament.

The complaint, which was filed last week with police in Sweden, relates to the aftermath last month of the decision by some rightwing MEPs to erupt in chants of “send them back” following a vote aimed at increasing deportations across the EU.

Senator says in statement he has undergone battery of tests after weeks of mounting speculation about his health

The US senator Mitch McConnell on Sunday revealed for the first time that a fall led to his hospitalization, breaking the silence about the Kentucky Republican’s condition after weeks of mounting speculation about his health.

McConnell, 84, said in a statement that he has undergone a battery of tests as doctors try to determine what led to his fall. He explained the long silence about his condition by saying that “folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older”.

Allendale, Northumberland: Farmers use it as cover crop, and I sow it into bare soil – but not before I’ve had a close look at its stunning details

Cupped by bristly sepals, the five-petalled flowers of phacelia flare open at the tips, drawing insects to their abundant nectar and blue pollen. Hoverflies, honeybees, parasitic wasps, solitary bees and bumblebees – there’s life all around me as I hunker down among the plants.

I always have a ready packet of Phacelia tanacetifolia and use it for sowing into any bare soil among both vegetables and ornamentals. This part of the flower garden was rejigged in early May to curtail the spread of some vigorous Michaelmas daisies. It left a space for me to plant biennial cotton thistles, the giant Onopordum acanthium, which will tower above my head next summer.

Environmental and refugee groups have joined forces to benefit lives and wildlife in Wales and elsewhere

Shielding his eyes from the blinding midday sun, Abdullah, a Sudanese asylum seeker, gazes out at the expanse of green in Tŷ Mawr country park in north Wales.

“This place is so beautiful,” he says. “It feels a very long way from the Home Office.”

Timing of Devon switchoff ‘could not be worse’, says board, as members face an estimated £2m in lost revenue

Britain’s biggest community solar project has been forced to shut for the duration of its first summer by the government’s energy system operator to avoid overloading the local grid with renewable energy.

The north Devon solar farm was ordered to shut weeks before record high temperatures across Europe led to power supply warnings, due to concerns that the large amount of rooftop solar in the area could destabilise the power grid by triggering a “thermal overload”.

Byelection winner says heatwaves are causing ‘absolute chaos’ and workers need protection from unsafe conditions

The Green MP Hannah Spencer is to introduce a bill in parliament that would pave the way for a maximum workplace temperature in the UK, as the country grapples with increasingly frequent heatwaves.

If passed, the legislation will create an independent body to recommend maximum safe workplace temperatures and set out how those recommendations should be implemented.

Exclusive: Report warns an additional 50,000 people could be added to current record figure without bold policies

Andy Burnham has been warned that an additional 50,000 people in England will become homeless in the next four years without a radical “housing first” agenda of government.

The incoming prime minister’s leadership team is understood to have been briefed on projections, due to be published on Monday, showing the current record levels of homelessness rising 25% by 2030 to more than 230,000 people.

Exclusive: Deputy PM says opponents have ‘no solutions’ to possible collapse of justice system in England and Wales

• Drugs, drones and heat: Amber Rudd and David Lammy begin search for answers to prisons crisis

Opponents of plans to release rapists and sex offenders early from prison have “no solutions” to halt the criminal justice system’s possible collapse, David Lammy has said.

Under pressure from Labour MPs – including the former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips – to curb the early release scheme, the deputy prime minister said failing to implement it could leave no capacity across jails in England and Wales in November.

Premium cherry-on-the-vine are poised to take top spot in Britain’s £1bn-a-year tomato market

For a long time the classic round, red tomato has dominated British salads and sandwiches, but its supremacy is coming under threat as sales of rainbow colours and the upmarket rival “cherry on the vine” take off.

“Non-red tomatoes” sales are up 21% this year, a growth rate that far exceeds the overall market, according to Paul Faulkner, of Evesham Vale Growers.

Fire in Walthamstow affected one house and multiple gardens and sheds, according to London fire brigade

Residents have been evacuated from their homes after a fire at a railway embankment in east London.

Twenty fire engines and about 125 firefighters were called to the incident near Vallentin Road in Walthamstow.

Senator played major role in critical negotiations with Democrats and members of his own party on key issues

When Democrats and Republicans were earlier this year locked in a standoff that had plunged the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the longest partial government shutdown in US history, news of a path forward emerged in the form of a statement from Republican senator Lindsey Graham.

By announcing that the budget committee he chairs would set to work on a measure to fund the agencies leading Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign for the remainder of his presidency, Graham played a major role in rallying the GOP behind a plan that reopened DHS.

Israeli ambassador to US accuses Ro Khanna of political stunt to distract from support for Graham Platner

Ro Khanna accused the Israeli government and military of “lying” on Sunday about the US congressman’s detention by armed settlers and Israeli soldiers during a recent visit to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Khanna – a California Democrat – had posted video evidence on social media of Israeli settlers and soldiers blocking the path of his convoy on Wednesday in the South Hebron hills, near the village of Zanuta, where Israelis have driven Palestinians from their homes in what Amnesty International calls a government-backed “ethnic cleansing campaign”.

The fire is one of the deadliest such incidents in the popular tourist destination in ⁠recent years

An explosive fire at a popular pub in Thailand’s ⁠capital, Bangkok, has killed 27 ⁠people and left another 22 ​in critical condition, in one of the deadliest such incidents in the tourism hub in recent years.

Officials said they were investigating whether emergency exits may have been obstructed, hindering patrons from escaping the burning Rong Beer Na Lat Phrao pub.

Lillard, of Oklahoma, contracted polio when she was five and slept inside cylindrical metal device to help her breathe

The last known US person living with polio and relying on an iron lung has died aged 78.

Martha Lillard, who contracted polio at age five and spent most of her life dependent on an iron lung machine that helped her breathe, died on 26 June in Oklahoma, according to an online obituary.

Poorly handled investigations should be treated as threat to public health and damage not just staff involved, report says

Workers are being left burnt out by “poorly executed” disciplinary investigations at work that cost the UK economy £28.5bn a year, public health doctors have said.

Badly handled disciplinary proceedings damage not just the staff involved but also their colleagues and the organisation that employs them, according to the UK Faculty of Public Health (FPH).

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Software engineering was one of the best-paying professions in the US in 2022, but the advent of AI has disrupted it, leading to several layoffs and underemployment

Every weekday, Matt, a software engineer, looks forward to his four-hour train commute to Pawling, New York. It’s time he uses to work on his own project: a browser-based video game for which he writes every line of code himself.

“I am actively trying to keep my axe sharp,” said Matt, who did not want to use his actual name, to protect his employment. In the last six months, Matt’s job has increasingly shifted away from coding, problem solving and software architecture towards reviewing code generated by artificial intelligence. Convinced that the shift will weaken his skills, he’s doing what he can to keep them intact. “I am trying not to leverage AI where I can.”

Microsoft, Amazon and Google say they still aim to achieve net zero output despite construction boom

Microsoft, Amazon and Google’s collective carbon emissions have increased by nearly a fifth in the past year, driven largely by datacentre construction.

In the financial year ending March 2026, the three tech companies emitted 119m mTCO₂e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent), or about a third of those of France.

Meta was criticised for feature launched on Tuesday that automatically lets users generate images using content from public Instagram accounts

Meta has said ⁠it is discontinuing an AI feature launched this week that allowed users to generate images using public Instagram ⁠accounts, after drawing widespread ⁠criticism over ​privacy concerns, including from a Hollywood union.

“Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control ⁠over whether their public content could be referenced in this way,” Meta said in a statement.

The latest in our ongoing series of writers paying tribute to their favourite rewatches is a journey back to the 1986 cult fantasy

The 1980s were the golden age for the annoying little brother. Before the dawn of those mischief-dulling devices – the smartphone and tablet – a pesky sibling with a flair for invention could really make life hell for an aloof older sister. For me, mimicry and tickle torture were just the basics. My finest hour? Removing the slats in my sister’s top bunk-bed, so she hopped on to the mattress to come crashing down like Wile E Coyote.

In December 1986, our one sliver of common ground was that we both wanted to see Labyrinth. Me, because I was a hardcore Muppets fan, and Jim Henson’s fantasy flick was generating serious playground buzz (pre-internet, we had no inkling it had tanked at the US box office over the summer, breaking Henson’s heart). And her, because it was about a teenage girl who summons goblins to kidnap her baby brother (I suspect she went along just to learn the incantations).

Therapy brings childhood trauma to light in this ambitious tale of family rupture – a smash hit in Italy that fails to live up to its hype

A son leaves home for university and goes on to pay fortnightly visits to his parents for 20 years, dreading every encounter because of the oppressive control exerted by his father and the self-effacing passivity of his mother. Then one day, he changes his phone number and cuts off all contact. Andrea Bajani’s The Anniversary is written from the perspective of this son, 10 years after the rupture. The intervening decade has been, he says, the happiest period of his life.

The Anniversary has won Italy’s top literary prize and sold in the hundreds of thousands. It’s been lauded for shattering taboos, revealing families to be breakable structures and sons capable of defying their parents – even in Italy, where a Godfather-like idea of the absolute nature of family loyalty still pervades political and civic life. I came to it expecting some of the lurid revelation found in Knausgård or Houellebecq. What I found was something much simpler and quieter, exposing truths I thought we already knew: fathers can be oppressive and patriarchal; mothers can be occluded and powerless; children can be damaged, and therapists can help. Therapy aside, this was all material I recognised from neorealist Italian fiction of a much earlier era. Natalia Ginzburg, for example, showed vividly how totalitarianism seeped into the family through its patriarchal fathers, with mothers becoming hollow and timid in their wake.

A poser activist and an online troll strike up a homoerotic friendship in Safdie brothers collaborator Oscar Boyson’s scabrous story

‘I think it’s nice to be part of a community” is how Manhattan rich kid Balthazar (Jaeden Martell) justifies his favourite hobby: posting tear-soaked videos in which he sociopathically pretends to be one of the horde of American youth lamenting the national epidemic of gun violence. Longtime Safdie brothers producer Oscar Boyson brings that kind of scabrous attitude – not just to school shootings, but to social media, “incel”, self-help and US salesman cultures – in this squirming, energetically directed black comedy that is reminiscent of the take-no-prisoners libertarian satire of Jason Reitman’s early films.

Balthazar is trying to impress his crush, Eleanor (Pippa Knowles), with whom he enthusiastically plays the role of the victim in school-shooting drills. After he blows his chances by attempting to make out with her while showing her raw footage of the latest massacre, he ups his game. Preventing the next bloodbath would truly prove his commitment to the cause, and a trollish incel called deathdealer_16, who has been goading him in his chat, seems as if he might be ready to blow. Catfishing him by posing as a comely maiden of the internet, Balthazar sets up an IRL rendezvous.

This documentary about the billionaires who want to rip up society’s rules in favour of CEOs somehow manages to be more entertaining than terrifying. Although at times it’s a close call …

Matt Shea’s documentary is bookended by two stark facts. One is that the wealth of the world’s 12 richest people is equal to that of the poorest 50% of humanity (you can argue about whether 12 is exactly right, but it’s certainly a horrifyingly small number). The other is that in recent US election cycles, the fossil fuel industry has been replaced as the biggest political donor by a new force: cryptocurrency.

In an hour that manages to be more entertaining than terrifying despite sailing into very murky waters, Shea explores how a fresh breed of tech billionaires are looking to make a bold new move. He shows that in a traditional western democracy, the principle that citizens all have an equal vote and are all equally beholden to the law is heavily compromised by a tiny minority of rich citizens. These people influence what the electorate votes for, by bankrolling politicians and owning media companies, as well as using their wealth to ensure rules do not properly apply to them. But plutocrats still find this system frustrating, thanks to those pesky elections and that annoying rule of law. What’s next?

Tech Billionaire Takeover aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer

An Italian on an exchange to the glamorous UK capital gets involved with a sophisticated older woman in a tale of soap opera silliness

A year is about how long this very quaint film feels, although there are moments when the soap opera silliness, the photo-love yearning and the wooden Google-translate line readings are reasonably entertaining.

Olivia (Nina Pons) is a young fashion student from southern Italy who gets the chance of a lifetime to spend a year in our glamorous capital at the “London Academy of Couture” in South Kensington. Saucer-eyed Olivia apparently can’t get over the sight of two men kissing. She is almost-engaged to a wealthy young home town boy called Paolo (Matteo Bassi), though it will soon be revealed that the cut of Paolo’s jib is not all that it might be.

His epic exploration starts with the mystery of the African elephant. Plus: top prankster Oobah Butler takes on the housing crisis. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Two
Chris Packham begins his wondrous five-part series next to a Kenyan watering hole, laughing with pleasurable astonishment at the awesome creation that is the African elephant. Nobody would design an animal like that, so how did it evolve? The answer is an epic 4bn-year-old story of hunger, conflict and Earth-shaking natural disasters, all of which made the survivors stronger. Jack Seale

Food writer and music enthusiast Ruby Tandoh details a tender picture of the existential threat to the lute. Plus, a joyous celebration of the great outdoors with Caitlin Moran and Adam Frost

This indie “audio magazine” brings together documentaries of all stripes, the common thread being a sense of experimentation. The third issue features food writer Ruby Tandoh detailing a quietly beautiful portrait of the lute, an instrument on the brink of extinction, while Jess Shane revisits a groundbreaking experiment that gave children the tools to turn their reality into poignant poetry. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

The Cribs man had a youthful Bee Gees obsession and loves one particular 80s power ballad. But which song does he say is too rude for his funeral?

The first song I fell in love with
Only You by the Flying Pickets – at least according to my mother, who says [my twin brother and bandmate] Ryan and I would sing along to it on the Christmas Top of the Pops. We now use it as our walk-on song and it makes my mum quite emotional.

The first single I bought
Somewhere in My Heart by Aztec Camera, from Boots in Wakefield in 1988, after hearing it at the disco on a holiday at Pontins in Morecambe.

Yankee Stadium, New York City

The rapper celebrates 30 years of his classic debut album Reasonable Doubt with eye-popping visuals and special guests in a love letter to hip-hop culture

The beauty of watching Jay-Z live is more than just watching him calmly spit bars that effortlessly prove why his career has been this long and brilliant; it’s also the complex but lovely feeling of watching an audience (and the artist himself) relive the past. It’s almost unfathomable that 30 years ago, Jay-Z was starting out as a relatively unknown rapper from Brooklyn chronicling his life as a hustler. Quite possibly the greatest pure MC of all-time – encompassing flow, patience, humor, live ability and his taste as an auteur – Jay built a career on restrained tales of wide-eyed dreams and braggadocious stanzas about financial gain.

His 1996 debut album, Reasonable Doubt, was the start of that career, and on Friday night, I’m at New York City’s Yankee Stadium as Jay-Z performs the album’s tracks in order, front to back, making it impossible to forget its legacy in a visually stunning show that splits the difference between close connection and grand spectacle. At times, with a wide, movie-like screen backing Jay that shows funerals of presidents, footage of Mike Tyson, or his wife, Beyoncé, cutting his hair at the ballpark, the show feels influenced by previous tours like Watch the Throne mixed with the street romance of the 2002 movie Paid in Full. Yet the care and attention to detail ensures that the 50,000-capacity venue feels intimate, for the folks who heard the album and felt seen through its songs of regret and paranoia.

After beating Leonard Cohen to Canada’s biggest music prize and splicing dembow with classical, the cross-cultural artist is now confronting Colombia’s new president

When I speak to the Colombian Canadian musician Lido Pimienta, it’s in the run-up to Colombia’s presidential election, and she is worried. One of the two remaining candidates, Abelardo de la Espriella, “is so rightwing he wants to open up our beautiful country to fracking and the influence of the US,” she says – and at one point in his campaign, De la Espriella said he wanted to “disembowel” the left. He later waved that away as a mere figure of speech, but Pimienta fears that leftwing artists like her “would be target number one” for a De la Espriella presidency. He ended up winning in a narrow victory that brought praise from Donald Trump and a promise of “a new era, a change of order”.

Despite the potential risks, the singer-songwriter has never shied away from speaking her mind. Since the release of her breakthrough second album, 2016’s La Papessa – which beat Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker, the last album released during his lifetime, to win Canada’s prestigious Polaris prize – 39-year-old Pimienta has made ebullient, genre-defying records that hiss with indignation at racism, colonialism, misogyny and music industry expectations.

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

Dwayne Johnson and Catherine Laga’aia star in the latest Disney animation to get the live-action treatment, and the model-actor-singer proffers more of her signature lush soft rock

Moana
Out now
The 2016 Disney animation gets the “live action” treatment with a more-or-less remake starring Dwayne Johnson and newcomer Catherine Laga’aia, joined by, as you’d expect, animated versions of various critters, including Tamatoa the coconut crab (once more voiced by Jemaine Clement).

From novels by James Baldwin and Han Kang to a guide to quantum physics – a former Booker prize judge recommends immersive one-sitting wonders

A one-sitting read is typically the domain of the short story – a form that largely depends on a reader’s pure, unbroken attention. But there is some­thing special about the intensity of beginning and ending an entire book in a single day. Of all my reading experiences, these have been among the most memorable.

As a judge for last year’s Booker prize, faced with 153 books and just over six months in which to read them, it was my task to try to turn every novel into one that could be read in a day. While I loved the experience, it wasn’t exactly a recipe for satisfying reading.

The actor and activist tells the story of her brutal childhood in the deep south with eloquence and defiance

When Laverne Cox was eight years old and growing up in Mobile, Alabama, she saved up her pocket money and bought herself a fan decorated with Japanese geishas. The fan became her favourite plaything, a prop to be used while dancing in imaginary music videos or recreating scenes from Gone With the Wind in which she cast herself as Scarlett O’Hara. “I lit up, animated, whenever that fan was in my hand,” she recalls in her memoir.

But when Cox, who was raised as a boy, began fanning herself with it at school, her teacher, Mrs Ridgeway, yanked her furiously out of the classroom, paraded her and her new accessory in front of the other teachers, and then phoned her mother, Gloria. When Gloria came home that evening, she exploded with fury. She said Mrs Ridgeway had told her she too had a son who had been an effeminate child who was now living on the streets of New Orleans and wearing a dress. “You want to be in a dress on the streets in New Orleans?” shouted Gloria, who would habitually call Cox a “sissy” and other homophobic slurs. She then signed her up for conversion therapy, which duly failed. It did, however, reinforce the message that there was something deeply wrong with Cox and that she was ultimately unlovable. Three years later, she tried to kill herself.

Introducing a new sadistic psychopath and a corrupt secret society of Gotham grandees would mean Harvey Dent takes a backseat to Victor Zsasz and the Court of Owls

Matt Reeves’ The Batman was a strange beast from the beginning. Perhaps not comic-book weird in the usual sense – no cosmic portals or rubber nipples here – but strange all the same. This was a Gotham where Bruce Wayne seemed to have been styled by the ghost of Kurt Cobain, the Riddler appeared to have escaped from a David Fincher evidence locker, and the whole city looked as if it had been left to soak overnight in rainwater and civic corruption. The expectation was that Reeves would begin rolling back the bizarre in part two, perhaps leaving us with a more orthodox Batverse populated with mobsters and corrupt lawyers. Sebastian Stan seemed central to this, with rumours suggesting he would portray Harvey Dent/Two-Face, perhaps alongside Scarlett Johansson as his wife, Gilda.

In the last week, however, there have been suggestions that the sequel might just be priming itself for something a fair bit freakier. Hollywood industry veteran Jeff Sneider is reporting that the main antagonist this time around could be the Court of Owls, a sinister secret society of Gotham grandees who look at first glance like a murder-bird upgrade on the League of Shadows, but are really something nastier: the city’s masked, devious ruling class, living out of secret rooms and exploiting a property portfolio that probably goes back to the Pilgrims.

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

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

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

Sony’s announcement spells the end of a whole ecosystem built by superfan collectors – and signals a troubling shift in the industry

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Sony’s decision last week to quietly announce the end of physical games production for the PlayStation in 2028 is one of the most perfect PR disasters in recent gaming history – and considering what has been happening with Xbox, that’s saying something.

First, there was the timing. Sony posted the news of its decision on the PlayStation blog, less than a week after admitting that it would be deleting 550 movies from the digital libraries of PlayStation owners due to the end of a licensing deal – thereby perfectly illustrating the dangers of purchasing digital products. (Surprise! You never actually owned them!) The move is in stark contrast with the company’s stance on this very issue back in 2013. When Microsoft was attempting to push Xbox One as a digital-first console with strict controls on the sharing and reselling of its games, Sony brilliantly mocked its rival with a short video on how easy it was to lend physical games to pals on the PS4. Oh dear.

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

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

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

Royal Albert Hall, London
Shiny-suited and slick, the US standup fired off peppy and sometimes taboo-teasing gags about his cultural identity, married life and visits to a fertility clinic

You can’t say Aziz Ansari doesn’t know his audience. He begins Saturday night’s gig with a promise to finish well before the England kick-off. And his ending is underscored by a performance of national anthem-elect Wonderwall on the organ that looms above the stage. In between, we get a slick hour-long account of where Ansari’s life is at: three years into a cross-cultural marriage, partly resident in London (which may explain his feeling for the locals’ priorities), and trying, so far in vain, to start a family. In the hands of a hugely gifted comic who makes funny look easy, it all zips by – entertainingly, if a little glibly.

In that respect, it’s a return to pre-scandal Aziz, the gilded Parks and Recreation star who made it into the comedy big league with whip-smart social commentary so smooth it barely touched the sides. There is less sign here of the more troubled, later-career Ansari, whose work grew markedly less sunny after he was publicly accused of sexual misconduct. (He said he had apologised to the woman after learning of her discomfort, having believed the encounter was consensual.) Here, in a suit so shiny Ben Elton might blush, he fires off peppy and often provocative gags that skate eye-catchingly over the surface of his life, and our times, without ever carving too deep a furrow.

Nottingham Playhouse
The camaraderie and eccentricities of some model railway enthusiasts make for an endearing group portrait in William Ivory’s well-gauged comedy

Before the play begins, a tiny LNER InterCity zips in front of us. Our eyes follow it from one side of the stage to the other. Miniatures fascinate, and the train reminds us of the appeal.

It means that when we meet the old boys of the Market Deeping model railway club, celebrating a second victory in Stamford’s regional exhibition, we are sympathetic to their niche hobby. Yes, it may be eccentric to spend years perfecting an OO scale motive power depot, but look at the detail and gasp!

Royal Exchange, Manchester
A celebration of the cartoonist’s sexual awakening and queer identity as well as an investigation of darker family dynamics, this soulful show wears its heart on its sleeve

The “fun” in the title is short for funeral, a reference to the family undertaking business inherited by Alison Bechdel’s father. But there is some fun, too, in this heart-filled musical adaptation of the cartoonist’s illustrated memoir. First seen in the UK in 2018 and now revived by director Sarah Frankcom in a fluid in-the-round staging, it brings a light touch to a story freighted with emotion.

Published in 2006, the graphic novel describes the author’s sexual awakening – she kissed a girl and she liked it – one that coincided with the discovery of her father’s clandestine gay life. In the musical adaptation by Lisa Kron (book and lyrics) and Jeanine Tesori (music), it becomes a layered reckoning of past and present, as the 43-year-old Bechdel (Jodie McNee) reflects on her student self (Alice Audrey O’Hanlon) reflecting on her childhood self (Felicity Moore at my performance).

Braboeuf Manor, Guildford
Elegantly stitching the plays into two parts of the same continuing story, Tom Littler’s sunny al fresco productions play every possible tragicomic note

Two Shakespearean comedies dated to the last decade of the 16th century each seem to lack something. Love’s Labour’s Lost (c 1595) feels in need of a sequel, ending abruptly, with the usual climactic marriages suddenly deferred to the future. Much Ado About Nothing (c 1598) could use a prequel: there is clearly a tantalising backstory to the harsh sparring between Beatrice and Benedick.

By double-billing the plays, director Tom Littler explores the scholarly hypothesis (well advanced by HR Woudhuysen) that they may be, in Hollywood terms, parts 1 and 2. Some believe that a Shakespeare play, Love’s Labour’s Won, listed in documents but now missing, may have been Much Ado, which contains a possible Shakespeare in-joke about things seeming clearer “when you have seen the sequel.”

Odyssey director addresses industry fears over artificial intelligence and says rightwing criticism of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy is ‘irrelevant’

The Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan believes the kind of movies he makes – big-budget action films shot mostly on location – would survive the spread of artificial intelligence, a technology he says many people “disdain”.

The Oppenheimer and The Dark Knight director is promoting his latest blockbuster, an adaptation of the Greek epic The Odyssey, which will be released in cinemas this week.

Gallery director says collection of 140 paintings will offer a more balanced view of Manchester painter’s work

A new exhibition of work by LS Lowry will “bust a few myths” about the Mancunian artist, who the show’s co-curator says is still wrongly derided for being “naive and uncultured”.

LS Lowry: the Theatre of Life features 140 paintings by the artist, who captured working-class life in the industrial north-west of England during the early and mid 20th century.

Her breakup memoir and Vogue column made her the voice of modern dating. As her debut is published, she talks about single life, oversharing and why she still believes she’ll find love

There is a scene in Annie Lord’s novel that will be instantly familiar to any young person who has spent time at a pub or nightclub recently. Daisy and Maya, two best friends in their mid-20s, are lamenting the paltry state of the dating market.

“It’s just shit out there,” Daisy says. “Every time we go out there’s, like, one decent single guy and then about 40 gorgeous women with master’s degrees and shag haircuts and what’s even the point in trying.”

Latest film in franchise takes just $43m in North America and $95m globally, against a $250m budget

The Walt Disney Company’s live-action remake of Moana may be the No 1 movie at the North American box office but it did not make a big splash in its first weekend in theaters.

The movie, which cost a reported $250m (£187m, A$360m) to produce, earned just $43m from ticket sales in the US and Canada, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

A growing supplements market may be trying to capitalise on this claim, but the truth is we still don’t know what a truly healthy gut microbiome really looks like

The idea comes from a 2018 study involving more than 10,000 people in the US, UK and Australia. Participants submitted stool samples and reported what they typically ate. Researchers analysed the microbes in those samples and found that people who consumed more than 30 different plant foods a week tended to have a more diverse gut microbiome than those who ate fewer than 10.

But that doesn’t mean 30 is a magic number. Whether you eat 25 plants a week or 30 is probably less important than some would have you believe.

Vibrant, big-flavoured chakalaka and sweet but fiery mango chicken are always a smash at family summer barbecues

For me, chakalaka is the ultimate South African classic. It’s one of those dishes that reminds me of summer braais (barbecues) and big family get-togethers, and the combination of peppers, onions, tomatoes and spices is so vibrant and full of flavour that it enhances any meal you add it to. The mango chicken wings, meanwhile, are among my all-time favourites, and I often make them whenever I want something a little different for a braai. They’re always a hit at gatherings, and I never seem to make enough!

With five light modes targeting everything from fine lines to blemishes and pigmentation, CurrentBody’s latest mask promises a lot – and so does its price tag

• The best LED face masks

I’ve been testing LED masks for a couple of years now, and the CurrentBody Series 2 red-light face mask has long been my favourite option for anti-ageing. It’s comfortable, offers excellent coverage and powerful deep near-infrared treatments. Sadly, it doesn’t work for other skin concerns. It’s a one-trick pony.

So, when I heard that CurrentBody had launched its Multi Light Therapy mask with five different modes, I was interested to see how it would stand up to the stellar performance of its predecessor. As someone with hormonal acne, I was especially keen to try the mask’s “clearing” mode, but it also offers a calming “restoring” mode, a pigmentation-reducing “brightening” mode, and a distinctive “complete” mode, as well as the “anti-ageing” mode.

There’s no getting away from it: these are all ultra-processed, but which sponges are the life of the party and which are too sweet for comfort?

• The best (and worst) supermarket dark chocolate

Some of these taste tests – for instance, the oven chips one from last summer – surprise me with their overall quality and minimal processing. But others, such as today’s party cakes, sit firmly in the ultra-processed category, and often make contradictory claims, “handmade” and “carefully selected high-quality ingredients” being just two.

I want my children to enjoy treats without food anxiety, but we also owe it both to ourselves and to them to know what we’re actually eating. Unusually, the price of today’s cakes didn’t reflect processing levels. While more expensive products are often less processed, even the premium cakes included an array of emulsifiers (including mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, polyglycerol esters and sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate), preservatives, stabilisers, synthetic raising agents such as diphosphates, and glucose-fructose syrup, a heavily processed industrial sweetener linked to metabolic concerns. I’ve listed the number of additives in each product, excluding natural colours and flavourings, pectin, citric acid, carbonates and bicarbonate of soda, beeswax and glucose syrup. I also scored the cakes based on their appearance, taste, texture, value, certifications, animal welfare considerations and total sugar content (which varied greatly).

Electric models are selling out fast, so keep cool like the fashion crowd with an old-school concertina hand fan

• How to sleep in a heatwave

You must have noticed that portable fans are everywhere right now: on sweaty commutes, in stuffy meetings, and at shadeless sporting events. As the hot weather continues, neck fans, handheld electronic fans, and fans that spritz water are selling out fast.

But even if you can get your hands on one, they come with drawbacks: electric designs consume energy; they can run out of battery. And most are made from plastic, with concerns over how many poor-quality models will end up in landfill once the summer’s over.

They promise smoother skin with less regrowth – but which of these tools are worth the money?

• The best epilators – tested

Tired of waxing, bored by shaving and fed up with ingrown hairs? In the past few years, a quiet revolution has been taking place in the hair removal market, promising to banish stubbly regrowth and take away the pain of waxing and epilation. I’m speaking of the growing number of IPL (intense pulsed light) and laser devices suitable for home use.

Put simply, IPL uses pulses of light to make the hair go into its resting phase (stop growing) and fall out. IPL isn’t a permanent hair-removal solution such as electrolysis, but you should see a significant reduction in hair regrowth over time. With the right device, it’s also simple to do at home, fairly quick and almost completely painless.

Best IPL device overall for face and body:
Philips Lumea 9900

Best budget IPL device:
Bondi Body v2 laser @home

Wildly popular across China, these addictively fiery street food snacks spiced with cumin and chilli are yours for the making

One of the most welcome developments in the mind-bogglingly, gloriously diverse world of London dining options in recent years has been the proliferation of restaurants serving the food of the vast, automonous north-western Chinese region of Xinjiang, known by many of the predominantly Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghur population as East Turkestan. As this fact suggests, Uyghur cooking has many similarities with other Turkic cuisines, including a love of lamb and mutton, and an aptitude for generously spiced kebabs so good that they’re now an “iconic street snack” in the Chinese capital, albeit some 3,000 miles east, in the time-honoured colonial fashion, and renamed as “old Beijing skewers”, according to that city’s own Maggie Zhu. (In Uyghur, they are, I believe, kawap, though I’d be glad to have that transliteration confirmed.)

Happily, however, you don’t need to go to Beitun or Beijing to enjoy them – or even to Golders Green – because they’re incredibly easy to recreate wherever you are, as long as you have access to a smoking hot grill. I declare this the summer of the skewer!

The meal is like being handed a succession of phones showing memes you don’t understand

A couple of months ago, Nigel Ng, the Malaysian comedian better known as his alter ego, Uncle Roger, opened his first UK restaurant in the heart of London’s Chinatown. He’s a man who has built a global YouTube following of more than 10 million subscribers via pithy, endearing videos on how, for example, to make exemplary fried rice, not to mention why Jamie Oliver’s take on that classic dish turns his stomach. Big numbers such as “more than 10 million” make investors very excited, not least because 10 million viewers might potentially equal 10 million bums on seats eating “Chinatown fried rice”, which at Kawan comes with crispy XO chilli and Cantonese lap cheong, and costs £15.90 a bowl. What’s 10 million multiplied by £15.90? OMG! £159,000,000!! Everyone’s a winner. Let’s open a novelty restaurant! It is wonky business logic such as this that has led to Kawan.

On a Thursday lunchtime, six weeks after opening and with Roger having long since had his photo taken on the steps and already departed, Kawan is largely deserted, other than its poor staff, who are pleasant as heck, but who have about them the air of stewards rearranging the Titanic’s sun loungers. There are precisely zero avid Gen Zers queuing to spend their money on the “firecracker rolls”, and no Gen X parents handing over their hard-earned to please their Uncle Roger-addicted offspring with the barbecued pork “aji-no-bun”. What few customers there are, meanwhile, are mostly couples in their mid-40s peering at the “choco-orange ribs” glazed with orange and chocolate, then wok-seared, and “inspired by Uncle Guga”, who is, apparently, one of Roger’s collaborators. That’s just one problem with creating a restaurant out of in-jokes: it’s like being handed a succession of phones showing memes you don’t understand. Or, worse, memes that you thought were funny nine months ago, but are now photocopied in the parish newsletter.

These easy bakes are packed full of the good stuff, and will keep kids fuelled all summer long

My children are mostly vegetarian, which means that at home I’m always searching for what we call “rollercoaster foods” due to their obsession with being allowed on Mandrill Mayhem at Chessington World of Adventures. In other words, food that will help both of them reach the next level on the rollercoaster height chart – that is, food packed full of the good stuff (protein, wholegrains, healthy fats and nutrients). This muffin was created with that in mind: tasty (crucially) without tasting worthy, high in protein (9g per muffin), and mindful of sugar. It’s a mix-in-a-bowl job or, you could say, child’s play.

This spicy gin and citrus combo has a kick that belies its modest size

Gimlets may be on the small side, but they tend to make up for that by packing a pretty decent punch. This gently spiced, citrus-forward example is no exception, and makes for a gloriously summery aperitif.

Harneet Baweja, owner, Empire Empire, London W11

Rick and Rachel are non-monogamous – but they both know this arrangement may not work forever

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

I’ve tried knowing and not knowing, and I find both difficult. In an ideal world, we’d go looking for sex together

You and your husband need to have a frank discussion and decide whether you want to negotiate the next stage of life together or apart

I’m 55 and, after being a dutiful wife for 30 years, my sex drive declined after a traumatic hysterectomy eight years ago. My husband was patient and kind throughout. I love him dearly, but sex was never really the same afterwards, which I attribute to the surgery.

I’ve now been through menopause and suddenly find my libido returning. However, my husband no longer desires me due to weight gain. He can’t maintain an erection for long, and is very critical of my sexual performance. He’s seen a doctor, but nothing came of it, and he refuses couples counselling.

From Hollywood movies to confessional memoirs, three-person relationships are everywhere. But is it really possible to keep everyone satisfied? Happy trios, bruised couples and rejected lovers tell all

Priscilla can pinpoint the moment she realised that her throuple was falling apart. Her fiancee, Kiara, had started kissing their shared girlfriend, Olivia, in a way that went on for just a little too long. One night, after the three of them had gone out for a romantic dinner in Savannah, Georgia, where they live, Olivia and Kiara started kissing in the front seats of the family car and it seemed as if they were never going to stop. About 10 minutes in, Priscilla tried to reach out and touch her fiancee’s shoulder, but her seat belt was buckled. Unbuckling and leaning forward felt intrusive. And, anyway, Kiara and Olivia seemed to have forgotten all about her. Watching the kiss unfold, squashed into the back with all the baby seats and toys, Priscilla thought about how by rights it was her turn to sit up front. She was always in the back seat. She felt a flicker of something competitive. “I worried, am I desired less than her?” she recalls now. “Will I be replaced?”

In the early days, Priscilla felt giddy with the excitement of being in a throuple. She and Kiara had been together for eight years, and adding a third person to their relationship felt like a way of exploring non‑monogamy without losing one another, because every new romantic experience would be shared. Olivia was an old friend, so Priscilla and Kiara’s children were comfortable with her. When the kids were in bed, they would walk to the beach holding hands as a three, to watch the sunset. At night, they would curl up to sleep together, and form a kind of cuddle chain. Priscilla would cuddle Olivia, and Olivia would cuddle Kiara.

After meeting in then-Zaire in the 1980s, Steve Sherwood and Martha Meares became good friends. But when she planned to leave for England, he decided he wanted something more

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

It was 1986, I was 26, had been travelling for two years, and was making my way through Africa. I was camping in the grounds of a run-down hotel, the only campsite in Kisangani, a city in what was then known as Zaire. On my first day in town I asked when the next River Congo ferry would leave. Tomorrow, they said.

Overland trucks would arrive and spend two to three days in town. A truck travelling from Kenya to the UK came, and its passengers put their stools in a circle to eat dinner. I asked to sit with them. Martha from Sydney sat beside me on the last spare stool. We spent most of that night chatting and laughing and got on really well.

Fraudsters create false articles that appear to be from publishers such as the Guardian to share on social media

The Guardian article looks interesting. It says the billionaire Jim Ratcliffe has stormed out of a BBC interview after presenter Laura Kuenssberg revealed details of his personal financial affairs – and now the episode has been removed from iPlayer.

Among the detail in the piece is that Ratcliffe has been using an online investment platform to make money. The report says although the site has been kept secret, other people have used it too, and they have made a fortune. There is a link to the site where you can trade cryptocurrency, stocks and shares.

Experts say there will still be opportunities ahead in everything from teaching to hotels and the law

Entering the world of work often brings some uncertainty, but now there is another question: how can I AI-proof my career?

We asked people from across various industries what they think the impact of AI will be on careers, and which jobs may be less affected. While it is still early days for the tech, many had ideas about how you can best prepare yourself for a successful career in this new world.

The airfare for a baby on your lap could cost more than your own ticket. Here’s how airline charges and travel taxes can hit you

Ryanair recently stopped making parents pay to sit next to their children but depending on the airline the hidden extra costs involved in flying with children can be substantial. In some cases, you can even end up spending more for the baby on your lap than you paid for your own flight.

Your baby might not need a seat, but you are still likely to pay fees for them to travel. Some airlines offer discounts for children over two, while others whack families with the cost of a full-grown adult.

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

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

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

Ministers consider bringing e-cigarette laws in line with tobacco as data shows 20% of teenagers have tried vaping

Vapes could be sold in plain packaging as part of a range of proposals to stop them being marketed to children.

The UK-wide plans also include limiting device colours to white, black or grey, and keeping vapes out of sight in shops, according to the Department of Health and Social Care.

Not everyone experiences heat the same way, and studies show aggression, violence and road rage increase on hotter days

Recently, my husband and I embarked on what should have been a pleasant spring errand: a stroll to the local farmer’s market. But a passing heatwave had made it unseasonably hot outside. I cut him off on the sidewalk and he snapped at me, so I snapped at him for snapping at me. We spent the rest of the excursion in sweaty, stony silence. When we were almost home, he said, miserably: “I’m sorry! It’s just so hot.”

Our grouchiness was not simply a weakness of spirit. “Heat doesn’t just affect your body,” said Dr Susan Albers, clinical psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic. “It affects your mood too.”

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

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

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

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

• Read more in the Antiviral series

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

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

For many watching their team beat Norway at a south London nightclub the look was as important as the game

The Carpet Shop nightclub in Peckham, south London, is ordinarily packed with rowdy crowds at the weekend. But Saturday night’s liveliness was not congregated around the DJ on the dancefloor, the crowd was at the sold-out venue for England’s victorious quarter-final game at the 2026 World Cup, and the young spectators were there for the fashion as much as they were for the football.

Luke Grandon and Mattia Guarnera, both 27, are “massive” football fans, and their love for the game is expressed in their outfits. “I have a massive collection of vintage football shirts,” said Guarnera, wearing a white polo shirt with “LOVE” printed on the back from a limited-edition World Cup-themed collaboration between Lyle & Scott and the British artist Reuben Dangoor.

The discomfort is no reason to give up sun protection, and is not uncommon – not everyone tolerates every formula well

No good deed goes unpunished, as they say. For instance, when you responsibly apply sunscreen to your exposed skin, it sometimes stings.

“Complaints of sunscreen stinging are not uncommon,” says Dr Aditi Senthilnathan, board certified dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. “We also hear about sunscreen causing burning or stinging around the eyes after sweating.”

With the singer sporting an array of ties on stage, fans have been customising, repurposing and even creating whole garments from the office neckwear staple

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When Harry Styles kicked off his Together, Together tour in Amsterdam in May, he bounded on to the stage in navy pleated trousers and a blue shirt, topped off with a colourful floral printed tie from Celine.

Four days later, Styles paused mid-set at the same stadium to take in the crowd. “There’s a lot of ties in the audience tonight. I see you queens, I see you,” he said.

Maria Grazia Chiuri returns to city of birth with haute couture inspired by kimono shapes and draping the body

“This is a cultural problem, and a political problem,” said Maria Grazia Chiuri before her first haute couture catwalk show for Fendi.

The problem, as the designer sees it, is Italy’s unwillingness to acknowledge fashion’s role in culture by giving it space in museums. To challenge this, Chiuri has bookended her Rome catwalk event with two fashion exhibitions in the city.

Excited to be away from home for the first time, we spent a riotous week partying, while the owner and his elderly parents understandably – and often audibly – seethed

Twenty British 16-year-olds rent a remote Sicilian villa for a week of partying and late-night binge drinking. It sounds like a holiday host’s nightmare. Well, anyone’s nightmare. Add in the fact that the host was staying on site with his elderly Italian parents, as the teenagers partied on without a care for their own welfare or anyone else’s. This wasn’t a holiday from hell for my teenage self, but I’m pretty sure it was for our hosts.

It was 2013 and, for many of us, it was the first time we had been away just with friends. Let loose from familial constraints, it was easy to get carried away. I arrived a few days later than the others but was the main contact with our host, Pablo. This meant that, before I even set foot in the villa, I received a string of messages threatening to kick us out. The police had apparently already been called after two late nights of nonstop boozing.

From the Fanad peninsula in Ireland to the forested beaches of Finland, these are your favourite escapes without the fear of getting frazzled
• Tell us about your favourite food festival – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Saulkrasti’s long beaches and scented pine forests are an hour from Riga on the frequent local train. The forests come right down to the long, long sandy beach and the relaxing and well-marked trail takes you the 4km from Saulkrasti station through the trees to the big dune and blue river at Balta Kapa. We enjoyed a July picnic in the forest and occasional dips in the Mediterranean-warm Baltic, before returning happy to Riga.
Bruce

Bishop Auckland is abuzz with culture and family fun, thanks to the vision of Auckland Palace’s owners – and the new Kynren show featuring birds of prey, Viking raids and mythical beasts, which opens next week

Booming Hans Zimmer-style cinematic music reaches a crescendo, shaking my bones. Two turquoise macaws swoop within an inch of my hair and join a sky filled with nearly 250 birds. Hawks, kites, pelicans, and an owl soar and swoop around a pagan-looking wooden circle. Peacocks fuss at the makeshift river below, coaxed by two actors telling the story of humans’ relationship with nature. Grey clouds roll in, dark with rain. After all, we are risking an open-air performance in north-east England. I’m at a preview of Kynren: the Storied Lands, the latest gloriously unrestrained project in the market town of Bishop Auckland, 12 miles south of Durham.

I grew up near Bishop Auckland, which was once an important coal-mining and railway town. Last time I was here, its centre was dominated by discount stores. If, in 2003, you’d told teenage me that the high street would become an ode to art, history and culture, I would have laughed. Well, I would have grunted and turned up the Nu metal on my MP3 player.

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

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

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

From a seventysomething standup comedian to the founder of a highly successful spice business, seven people reveal why it’s never too late to embark on the life of your dreams

Many of us feel stuck in a job we dislike and midlife is a common time to reassess what you are going to do with the rest of your years, especially when finances require us to work into older age. How can you make a change, follow your dreams and finally do what you always wanted? Late bloomers share the secrets to having a stunning second act.

Before they left, the receptionist delicately straightened my father’s collar. I knew then they would be just fine

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

The food poisoning hit like a tsunami. I remember being out at a dumpling restaurant, grabbing a heap of napkins and just vomiting directly into them. I’ve never been sick like that in my life.

I was travelling in Xi’an, China, with my father, who was then aged 88 or 89. I really should have been in hospital but I didn’t feel I could leave my dear dad on his own. Instead I retreated to my hotel room, where I spent the night projectile vomiting. A horrible, embarrassing experience.

The former world champion swimmer turned BBC commentator on 5am starts with his mum, a Jaws epiphany, and why he struggled to come out

Born in Billericay, Essex, in 1970, Mark Foster is a former competitive swimmer and winner of 51 major international medals, including six world titles, two Commonwealth Games golds and 11 European titles. He represented the UK at five Olympic Games, and broke eight world records. He works as a commentator for the BBC during major sporting events. Foster’s memoir, My Double Life, is out now.

This was taken in a park in Southend, presumably – as the trunks suggest – near a swimming pool. I would have been with both of my big sisters and my mum. I was always stupidly smiley and never took life seriously.

A comms director and a charity worker disagreed on taxation, but how did they fare on the climate crisis?

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

Emma, 34, London

Occupation Thinktank comms director

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

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

The TV presenter – who has died aged 68 – worked for the BBC, ITN and Channel 4 and announced the death of Diana, Princess of Wales

• TV presenter Dermot Murnaghan dies of prostate cancer, aged 68

A successful television presenter requires some combination of dependability, affability, ego and ambition. Dermot Murnaghan – who has died aged 68, after revealing a diagnosis of late-stage prostate cancer on screen last year – had some of the higher scores in the business on the first two metrics but among the lower on the others.

The reliability made him one of the few to have anchored news slots on the first four major UK networks – Channel 4, ITV, the BBC and Sky News – while the relative reticence held him back from the absolute front rank of TV journalistic celebrity, although he had sufficient sympathetic recognition for cameos on quizzes (Pointless Celebrities, The Weakest Link), as well as a spell shuffling the question cards himself on the BBC’s Eggheads. Looking and sounding like an anchor should, he was also regularly employed to announce fake news – not in the Trumpian sense, but headlines within dramas – on shows including Absolute Power and The Gunman and in the film Wimbledon.

National Geographic explorers create dive lab after finding too few black film-makers telling African wildlife stories

When Pragna Parsotam-Kok and Noel Kok made a wildlife series for South African TV in 2015, they were struck by how challenging it was to access animals to film and how few other African wildlife documentary makers there were.

Their response was to set up the not-for-profit Nature Environment and Wildlife Conservation Trust (NEWF) and to host a conference for African wildlife film-makers, the first taking place in 2017.

Ambassadors for Gencore Global directed followers to Telegram channels promoting steroids, prescription medicines and experimental peptides

• ‘I felt dizzy’: body builder recalls how drug abuse caught up with him

• UK becoming ‘wild west’ for experimental peptides, expert warns

Fitness influencers who publicly represent a global wellness brand are involved in running an illegal steroid market on social media, the Guardian can reveal.

Gencore Global presents itself as a UK-based health and wellness company and has recently appeared at FitXpo North West, a fitness event in Greater Manchester. It has also sponsored a racehorse, launched a UK combat sports and influencer boxing promotion, and is set to attend the National Running Show in Birmingham next year.

Prediction markets have grown rapidly in popularity in recent years, particularly in the US. We’d like to hear confidentially from people in the UK who have used them

We’d like to find out more about how people in the UK are using prediction markets and what has attracted them to these platforms.

Prediction markets allow people to buy and sell contracts based on the outcome of future events, such as sporting tournaments, elections and financial markets. They have become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly in the US.

Has the pill format prompted you to consider GLP-1 medication for the first time? Have you already started taking it? Or has weight loss medication changed your lifestyle in other ways?

A once-daily Wegovy weight-loss pill has gone on sale at high street and online pharmacies in the UK, offering an alternative to injectable GLP-1 medications.

We’d like to hear from people who are considering taking a weight-loss pill, have recently started one, or are planning to switch from injections.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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