Her shocking performances and stunning images made Mendieta the talk of the art world in the 1970s and 80s. Then she fell from a New York apartment block in 1985 – and her husband was charged with murder. As a major exhibition comes to London, her friends discuss her genius and their search for answers

In the summer of 1985, Ana Mendieta was playing with gunpowder and a chainsaw. Just 5ft tall, the Cuban American artist worked outside her studio in Rome, trying to figure out the scale of a new commission for MacArthur Park, Los Angeles. Her idea was to cut up trees and burn the gunpowder directly into them, creating a totem “grove” inspired by her recent trips to neolithic sites. It was a breakthrough of sorts – permanent, monumental work that built on her performance art – and in a photograph of her standing next to a test piece, Mendieta looks proud, excited.

She had arrived in Italy two years earlier, after winning the prestigious Prix de Rome and a residency at its American Academy. She alienated half the staff, but fell in love with the city, driving like a local (right hand on the wheel, left middle finger out the window). Mendieta admired Roman women, mailing her friend, the film critic B Ruby Rich, a newspaper clipping of a pro-choice demonstration. “She said, ‘Look, they’re not like American women,’” remembers Rich. “‘They’re showing women butchered and dead from botched abortions. Look how much fiercer they are.’”

Birds of War is an award-winning docudrama in which its own directors fall in love while reporting the horrors in Syria. They explain why they needed a psychotherapist to complete it

The air is thick with smoke and dust, the ground littered with the twisted remains of burning vehicles. Children scream and sirens blare as activist and videographer Abd Alkader Habak rushes to help the injured after the bombing of an evacuee convoy in Aleppo at the height of Syria’s civil war in 2017. A voice note bubble pops up on Habak’s phone screen. “My bird are you OK?” says BBC journalist Janay Boulos. “Get away from there, run.”

For more than a year, Habak and Boulos have been working to document Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s atrocities against his own people, their connection deepening all the time despite the physical distance. But this exchange represents the moment the pair’s relationship shifts from colleagues to something more. “I don’t want footage,” Boulos says, fear clearly detectable in her voice as she tries to follow things from her desk in London. “I don’t want anything, just please take care. I am here whenever you want to talk.”

Track record of Welsh Water shows public ownership is not the answer to all the woes in the utilities sector

Good news for Andy Burnham: one of the original 10 water privatisations from the Thatcher-era has returned to public ownership already. Thanks to a complicated turn-of-the-century corporate saga, Welsh Water, serving 3 million people, converted to not-for-profit status in 2001. It has no shareholders. Financial surpluses go “straight back into keeping bills down and looking after your water and beautiful environment”, as the website blurb puts it.

How’s it going? After a quarter of a century without dividend-hungry shareholders to feed, has the model proved its superiority? Not exactly. Welsh Water usually has high scores on customer trust metrics but its performance on bills and spills tends to be middle of the pack.

I thought I knew what it was to be a good citizen. But after seeing him scramble up a ditch, beaming with pride at his rubbish-filled bag, I realised what it actually involves

I’ve always thought of myself as a good person: a good citizen and a good member of my community – at least in the ethical sense of the word. I presumed being good required refraining from harming the world and the people within it. An example of this being that I never litter.

However, when I moved home to Staffordshire after graduating in the summer of 2025, my understanding of what it means to be a good citizen – what it means to be “good” altogether – changed significantly.

Japan has ambitious targets to increase overseas visitor numbers, but there are growing concerns about overtourism. One possible answer is two-tier pricing

Perched dramatically on a hilltop in western Japan, Himeji castle’s striking white-plastered, tiered roofs earned it the moniker “white heron castle”. The sweeping 17th-century complex is regarded as the finest existing samurai fortress, and attracts more than one and a half million visitors a year.

But as Japan seeks to manage greater numbers of foreign tourists, Himeji is one of the attractions raising admission prices for non-residents. The World Heritage site increased its admission fee to 2,500 yen ($15.50) on 1 March, but left the price for those who live in Himeji city at 1,000 yen ($6.20).

They were held up by an electric storm but, after the skies had cleared, Mexico kept the lightning bolts coming. This was a climactic night that utterly engulfed the senses and its ramifications will be far reaching. El Tri have broken a hex that had nagged and gnawed at the nation’s football psyche across four decades, winning a World Cup knockout game for the first time since 1986, and the head turner will be the manner in which it happened. Javier Aguirre’s players cut Ecuador apart in a stunning first-half performance and, on this evidence, woe betide whoever runs into them next.

As it happens that will be England if they overcome the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The last-16 tie will take place on Sunday; it will be the last of this summer’s matches to take place in Mexico, whose co-hosting has felt dwarfed by the behemoth further north. So what a thrill that the Azteca, with all its majesty and mystery, delivered an occasion of genuinely epic quality here. The atmosphere roared, rocked and pulsated throughout. It was an evening that should, for a few days at least, shift the tournament’s focus to a hotbed that sits apart from the self-imposed sterility elsewhere.

Ally of PM-in-waiting says four-year boost for the armed forces is an ‘unexploded bomb’

• Britain has finally grasped the nettle on defence, but tough choices lie ahead

Andy Burnham will have to find an extra £4.7bn for defence in his first budget, after Keir Starmer announced a £298bn defence investment plan (Dip) without having fully identified how it will be funded.

Sources close to the Makerfield MP said he would not try to renegotiate the Dip after the outgoing prime minister announced its details at a press conference on Tuesday.

President’s crypto ventures have eclipsed in revenue much of his property portfolio that took decades to accumulate

Donald Trump raked in more than $1bn from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released Monday shows, giving a substantial boost to his annual income.

In his second term, the president and his family have heavily invested in digital money and various crypto businesses with Trump announcing at the start of 2025 that he wanted the US to be the “crypto capital of the world”. Trump’s crypto earnings are in addition to profit from his legal settlements, real estate and royalty deals.

Typical bill will surge by £220 a year from Wednesday, forcing 13.5m homes to spend over 10% of income on fuel

Millions of households in Great Britain will be pushed into fuel poverty after months of volatility on the global gas markets as energy bills rise by more than £220 a year under the government’s price cap from Wednesday.

As the cap on gas and electricity rates rises to the equivalent of £1,862 a year, the number of households forced to spend more than 10% of their income on energy bills will increase to 13.5m from almost 11.3m in April, according to fuel poverty campaigners.

European scientists warn of consequences for weather patterns, the global climate and marine life

Temperatures on the ocean surface have hit a record high, raising fears of another burst of extreme heat this summer.

On 21 June, temperatures outside the polar regions exceeded the extraordinary highs observed at the same time in 2023 and 2024, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Wednesday.

• Coach accepts expectation that his side must win last-32 tie

• Spence set to start at right-back in place of injured Quansah

Thomas Tuchel has warned that England will reach the glamorous part of the World Cup only if they remember not to panic when they face the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the last 32.

Although the German knows his side are heavy favourites to go through in Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon, he is wary of the threat posed by the DRC. England will be under pressure to break down a low block for the third time in four games and Tuchel is keen not to let anyone think a successful group stage is cause for celebration.

Polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome is underdiagnosed and inconsistenly managed, according to Nice

Up to 4 million women with irregular periods should be investigated for polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, according to new NHS guidance.

PMOS, previously known as polycystic ovarian syndrome, is believed to affect up to 13% of reproductive age women, the World Health Organization estimates.

Visit to monarch planned for 6 September and will take Jamaica’s mission for reparatory justice to the ‘next level’

Jamaican officials will travel to the UK in September to formally lodge an unprecedented petition with King Charles to seek legal guidance on their slavery reparations claim from Britain, the country’s government announced on Tuesday.

Speaking in the parliament of the Caribbean nation, Olivia Grange, the culture minister, confirmed that the trip was planned for 6 September, and was intended to take Jamaica’s mission for reparatory justice to the next level.

Nearly 100 academy chief executives earn more than £200,000 a year, and at least one more than £500,000

The era of academy school leaders in England receiving “banker-style salaries” and hefty annual increases may soon be over, with the government to introduce limits on executive pay.

Nearly 100 academy chief executives earn more than £200,000 a year, with pay in academy trusts equating to anything from less than £5 a pupil to more than £150. Only a quarter of the high-earners were women.

Final vowel in words such as happy, baby and chilly varies clearly by social class across the city

Pronunciation of the “happy vowel” is one of the key indicators of social class in Mancunian accents, researchers have found.

A sociolinguistic study, led by Lancaster University, found that the final vowel in words such as happy, baby, chilly and city – known to linguists as “the happy vowel” – varies clearly by social class across Manchester.

David Lammy’s decision to increase minimum sentence for domestic murder victims follows years of tireless lobbying

David Lammy had gone quiet. Sitting in his ministerial office in the Palace of Westminster, the justice secretary had just been presented with pictures of women killed by their partners in their own homes, by their grieving mothers.

As she put the photographs in front of him, Carole Gould explained that her 17-year-old daughter, Ellie, was killed by fellow sixth-former Thomas Griffiths the day after she ended their relationship in 2019. Julie Devey, who was joining the call remotely, showed a photograph of her daughter, Poppy Devey Waterhouse, who was 24 when she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, Joe Atkinson, on 14 December 2018.

Ahead of England’s first knockout game of the World Cup, Love Letter to England celebrates what English people have in common

What does it mean to be English? Ahead of England’s first knockout game of the World Cup, Ian McKellen and the award-winning playwright James Graham have released a short film that attempts to answer that deceptively simple question.

The film, Love Letter to England, explores and celebrates what people across the country have in common. It draws on early contributions to the National Conversation, a UK-wide initiative that began last month.

Past and present leaders of wealthy nations such as UK and Germany have argued their actions are insignificant

On first hearing, it is a position that sounds reasonable. “When our share of global emissions is less than 1%,” Rishi Sunak argued when he was the UK prime minister in 2023, “how can it be right that British citizens are now being told to sacrifice even more than others?”

Sunak is not the only world leader to have cited such figures while delaying cuts to pollution. In 2019, Scott Morrison, Australia’s then prime minister, used his country’s 1.3% of global emissions to reject any suggestion Australia was not “doing our bit” on climate breakdown. In July, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, pointed to his country’s 2% share of global emissions while supporting loopholes in European climate targets. A few months later the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, followed suit, flagging the EU’s 6% share.

Egyptian photographer and curator Farida Mahdy was inspired to document her grandmother’s style after finding a collection of her photos

This image is a portrait of me and my grandmother, Ehsan Ouf, in her flat in Cairo. It is part of a project Grandma and the Fur Coat that I started in 2024. I lived with her for four years, while I was studying photography, and we spent a lot of time chatting and watching TV on that couch.

The dress I’m wearing is her engagement dress from 1971 – one of the very few items she wore as a young woman that she still has – and the fur coat she’s wearing was a gift from my late grandfather. I persuaded her not to sell it – and that is partly why I decided to start this project: to document how stylish she was. In the 70s and 80s she dressed like a celebrity, wearing brands such as Chanel and Dior. She had a collection of wigs, and even matched the colour of her cigarettes to her outfits.

All of these tales of murdered residents are horrifying. But the lack of attempt to really grapple with them makes this feel little other than filler TV

In Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman’s account of his movie-writing career in Hollywood, Goldman remembers hearing a true story about a firefighter who went back in to save a baby he heard crying just as he was about to leave a burning building, escaping with the infant as it all started collapsing behind him. It was, Goldman says, an unbeatable tale of real-life heroism and someone, of course, tells him he should make a movie about it. The problem, Goldman notes, is that what this man did, in its astonishing entirety, is what the hero of a movie is expected to do before the opening credits even roll.

The same principle is true on the small screen. What is a legitimately huge, intensely dramatic and traumatic life-defining event for the people involved is easily flattened almost to nothingness by the demands of the medium. Such is the fatal flaw of second-tier true-life crime documentaries such as Worst Neighbor Ever. This four-part US-based addition to the genre tells four stories about ordinary people who had the terrible luck of finding themselves living alongside … well, the clue is in the title. And, in a country with questionable attitudes to gun control, it often ended in tragedy.

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

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

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

With the British Museum’s blockbuster Bayeux tapestry exhibition opening soon, we follow in the footsteps of William the Conqueror and King Harold’s armies around Battle and Rye

‘Uh oh, look at these!” I call to my friends, Annie and Mike. “Ominous,” remarks Annie. Mike raises an eyebrow. We’re hiking the Pevensey Levels, marshland first drained in 772, home now to sheep and cattle, but also water spiders, living underwater in air-filled webs. The ground is pocked with endless impressions of horseshoes.

“It’s almost as if an army came this way,” I say.

When people form memories of the World Cup, it’s matches like this that do it. France once again won comprehensively, and against decent opposition, but the quality of their attacking play, and the sheer beauty of their goals, were difficult to fully appreciate in the moment. It’s the sort of thing that only comes into true focus upon reflection.

Kylian Mbappé drew alongside Lionel Messi in the race for the golden boot here with another brace of unerring finishes. Michael Olise should have had a hat-trick but made do with two assists and a virtuoso performance that left jaws across the floor of the New York-New Jersey stadium. At this point it is very hard to see beyond Didier Deschamps’ men, and there is equally the sense that there is more to come.

Decision vindicated. The Norway coach, Ståle Solbakken, had taken a major gamble in resting almost his entire side in the final group game against France, drawing stiff criticism, not least from those who had paid hundreds of dollars to witness a showdown between Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé. As Solbakken said, the decision would stand or fall on the result of this game.

Norway are in the last 16, players and fans celebrating with a communal Viking row led by Martin ­Ødegaard, and therefore his policy can be considered justified.

• Former captain says off-pitch ‘unrest’ key to shock defeat

• Having relatives there ‘was more important’ than results

Lothar Matthäus, the former Germany captain turned pundit, has blamed the team’s crushing World Cup defeat by Paraguay in part on the players’ dogged efforts to have their families, even parents, in tow, which he said had led to tension within the team and a lack of concentration on the football.

“While there’s a lot that needs to be processed about what happened on the pitch, what happened off the pitch also needs to be a topic of discussion,” Matthäus said.

Rudi Garcia railed against criticism of his side, who face Senegal in the last 32 with a spring in their step after the 5-1 hammering of New Zealand

Belgium had just beaten New Zealand 5-1 to secure top spot in Group G and, at least in theory, an easier last-32 draw, but Rudi Garcia was evidently irked. In response to the first question in a curt post-match press conference, he adjusted the microphone to ensure his point was heard.

“I really didn’t appreciate them being called has beens,” he said alluding to an article in La Libre, a French-language Belgian newspaper, that compared Kevin De Bruyne with a washed-up Hollywood actor after a flat display against Iran in their previous match in Los Angeles.

The class politics of extreme heat are very real and very dangerous – but that doesn’t stop the billionaire press from peddling its agenda

Every time you think the idiocy has hit rock bottom, it discovers a new level. It turns out there’s an even deeper hole you can dig for yourself than climate-science denial: heat-stress denial. Across the billionaire press last week, columnists and leader writers minimised the health impacts of the heatwave, particularly in schools. Expect more of this next week, when temperatures are forecast to soar again.

An editorial in the Telegraph (which represents the newspaper’s view) titled “Hot weather alarmism treats the public like children” maintained that “unlike in the seventies, when people were largely trusted to look after themselves, officialdom now feels the need to lecture the public about the risks of hot weather at every opportunity”. Extreme heat warnings are issued and weather maps are “painted in an alarming red”. Outrageous! Instead of issuing warnings, the government should just trust people to “take the appropriate precautions”. We should all “learn to live” with it. Quite right too: whatever happened to the bulldog spirit of ignorance and needless death? Cricket, warm beer, excess mortality: these are the markers of national character.

With her popularity flagging and a general election looming, the Italian PM sees a strategic advantage in the rupture

If Giorgia Meloni thought that she could put her April spat with Donald Trump over the pope’s criticism of the US war on Iran behind her, she had not banked on the US president’s capacity to bear a grudge.

Trump reignited tensions by telling an Italian TV journalist that the Italian PM had “begged” him for a picture at the recent G7 meeting in France. The Spanish newspaper El País suggested that Trump’s feathers had been ruffled by a video at the same meeting, showing Meloni appearing to scold him. In any case he doubled down on his tale in a Truth Social post, adding that Meloni wanted the photo to boost her flagging approval ratings, which he blamed on her failure to support the US in the Iran war.

Riccardo Alcaro is head of research at IAI, Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome

Although trekking is unusual for young women in Kashmir, I find strength and enjoy independence when I’m out in nature with my friends

Before sunrise, my two closest friends and I pack water bottles, food and biscuits into our backpacks. We put on whatever shoes we have, pull our hijabs tightly against the cold wind, and leave for the mountains above our village in Kargil, in Ladakh – part of Indian-administered Kashmir.

The things we usually hear on the trail are birdsong, flowing water and our own laughter echoing through the mountains.

As Harry Dunn’s mother, I’ve demanded accountability. The Guardian’s discovery of other victims of US personnel shows how urgent that is

• David Lammy to ask US about case of woman strangled by US fighter in UK

When I read about the case of Sarah Steele, the woman strangled by an American pilot, I felt a familiar sickness in my stomach. It took me straight back to the day I lost my son Harry and to the months and years that followed, when the US authorities did everything they could to deny us justice. It is almost unbearable to think that another British family has now been put through the same ordeal. I thought those days were behind us following our high-profile case, and that the US military and British police had learned their lesson. Clearly not.

What happened to Sarah, as revealed by a Guardian investigation, should shame every institution that allowed her case to slip quietly into the shadows. A woman abused on British soil by an American officer. The man responsible was a guest in our country. Yet instead of a clear and confident assertion of British jurisdiction by Cambridgeshire police, the case was allowed to drift into the US system, where a male military jury acquitted him of the more serious charge. I do not know whether the outcome would have been different under our system. That is not the point. The point is that Sarah was entitled to the protection of the law of the country in which she lived.

Charlotte Charles MBE is the mother of Harry Dunn

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The Dip couldn’t be more Keir if it tried: the military, the allies and probably not even Keir himself were happy

• Starmer warns Burnham not to borrow to fund defence as he reveals £15bn plan

There was an air of melancholy as the defence investment plan (Dip) was announced at Malloy Aeronautics in Maidenhead, Berkshire. A sense that the main figures were fading out of history even as the legacy was being written, as if the event were sepia-tinted.

The Dip was supposed to be Keir Starmer’s lasting bequest to the country. His gift to an ungrateful nation. And if it is to be his swansong, it couldn’t be more Keir if it tried: something that manages not to satisfy any of the major players involved – the military, nor our allies – and probably not even Keir himself. The story of his time in government.

Drug-resistant bacteria are no longer confined to hospital settings but are spreading into communities in every country

Why should a surge in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Europe be a concern across Africa or for people who don’t consider themselves to be at risk? Because it points to a bigger problem: the ease with which drug-resistant infections are now spreading, and not just in hospitals but within the community too.

The speed and scale at which people travel and interact in our interconnected world is increasingly helping to drive this, allowing drug-resistant pathogens to move rapidly through populations and across the world – including between high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where the burden is often greatest and surveillance more limited.

Does anyone seriously think this kind of amplification is harmless?

Elon Musk has long described himself as a “centrist”. He likes to pretend that he hasn’t changed his views; it’s the Democrats who have lurched to the left. He’s merely a free speech advocate; a self-styled “moderate” resisting the excesses of the “woke mind virus”.

But when you pay attention to his actual digital footprint – the tweets, the retweets, the algorithmic amplification – a very different, much darker picture emerges. The world’s richest person clearly isn’t interested in cultivating a neutral marketplace of ideas; rather, he has turned Twitter/X into a platform where far-right and racist content is repeatedly rewarded and amplified.

A warning from Latin America about US money, platforms, data and paranoid politics should not be dismissed lightly

When Colombia’s leftwing presidential candidate, Iván Cepeda, conceded defeat last week, he did so with notable grace. His ally, the outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, was much less composed. In a series of social media posts, Mr Petro argued that Donald Trump had interfered in the contest that brought the far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella to power. The claim should not be taken as proof of a stolen election. But nor should it be dismissed as paranoia.

Mr Trump did publicly endorse Mr de la Espriella. His razor-thin win was in contrast to the scale of his alarmingly rightwing programme. He promises mega-prisons, a war on rebels, a shrunken state, renewed oil exploration, fracking and corporate tax cuts. This won’t be easy. Mr Petro’s Pacto Histórico is the largest party in the country’s congress. Unsurprisingly, Mr de la Espriella wants to govern through executive decree coupled with militarised state power. He aims to “disembowel” the left.

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.

Sir Keir Starmer cuts civilian investment while deepening reliance on American power. That doesn’t feel like national renewal

Since Brexit, Daphne du Maurier’s final novel, Rule Britannia, has been seen as a prescient warning about the UK cutting itself adrift from Europe. After joining and then leaving the EU’s predecessor, the Common Market, in a referendum, Du Maurier imagined the UK facing such economic instability that its prime minister submits to a US takeover. Britain is occupied by US forces, sparking an uprising that eventually forces them to leave. Sir Keir Starmer’s defence investment plan (Dip) would not belong in Du Maurier’s novel, but has the same nightmare logic: a Britain adrift from Europe told that fiscal necessity and national security require deeper incorporation into American power.

It shows the strain inside Sir Keir’s government that the plan took a year to move from strategic defence review to partial funding plan. John Healey, the former defence secretary, resigned after deciding that the Treasury’s offer could not fund the strategy. His successor, Dan Jarvis, told MPs that the plan was worth £298bn over four years, which is £15bn above last year’s spending review settlement. Mr Jarvis said that he had secured £1.5bn more than was on offer when he arrived. Against the defence ministry’s demands, that looks less like a breakthrough than proof of why Mr Healey walked.

Prof Anne‑Marie Kilday of the University of Northampton highlights the value of universities for individuals and communities

I was pleased to read that the evidence is still incredibly strong that most graduates earn more than those without a degree, as pointed out in your editorial (The Guardian view on universities: public confidence in degrees is wavering – ministers should shore it up, 28 June). But the debate on earnings often overlooks a crucial point – widening access is one of the most effective levers for improving regional productivity and strengthening the national economy.

At the University of Northampton, our most recent assessment shows that we generate £366m of “gross value added”, a measure of economic activity similar to GDP, locally, rising to £823m nationally – more than £4 returned for every £1 of income. With the higher-education sector generating £52.3bn of income, any large-scale losses would first and foremost hit the public purse as well as further compound this country’s significant productivity problem.

Google search activity shows Andy Burnham has not put any upward pressure on borrowing costs, says Prof Costas Milas

“Believe Westminster, and the bond vigilantes are the ever-present, always hovering threat to political stability,” writes Aditya Chakrabortty (It’s not the bond markets Andy Burnham should be afraid of. It’s his own MPs, 25 June).

Indeed, there is unnecessary scaremongering regarding how bond vigilantes are reacting or will react to Andy Burnham’s economic policies. It all boils down to the Athenian statesman and orator Demosthenes, who noted 2,400 years ago that a state’s reputation is key to driving down the cost of borrowing and that therefore we should “maintain our character of being trustworthy” in all events. In practice, however, there is no evidence that Burnham is agitating markets.

Andy Burnham has a short window to demonstrate that he will follow a new path, writes Benjamin Selwyn

Andy Beckett is right to identify Andy Burnham as a figure on to whom renewed hopes might be projected (Burnham has brought hope back to Labour – but he must understand how quickly it can be punctured, 26 June). But those hopes must be understood in the shadow of Keir Starmer’s rapid dissipation of the electoral mandate secured in 2024.

That victory was built on a promise – implicit if not explicit – of material improvement. Instead, policies such as maintaining the two‑child benefit cap, cutting the winter fuel allowance, and failing to confront price gouging by utilities and supermarkets deepened the cost of living crisis for millions.

Readers respond to Andy Burnham’s speech at the People’s History Museum in Manchester that laid out his vision for Britain

We are told that regional devolution is the key to the UK’s growth and prosperity (Burnham sets out vision to transform Britain and fix ‘broken’ system, 29 June). But what are “regions”? Like nations, they have an objective reality (generated by geography, communications and economic activity) while also acquiring subjective allegiances (the inhabitants’ sense of belonging). In both cases, those allegiances can serve positive, progressive causes, or they can be exploited for narrow political advantage. George Orwell contrasted wholesome patriotism with chauvinist nationalism.

Similarly, “regionalism” can connote enlightened programmes of reform and regeneration (eg Liverpool), or it can serve the interests of political opportunists and their cronies (eg Teesside). Either way, regionalism cannot buck basic socioeconomic trends that sweep across the whole country, affecting some parts more than others: deindustrialisation, low investment and productivity, and inadequate public services (notably health and education).

Williams’s comeback at Wimbledon elicits disbelief and reverence among fans during her defeat by Maya Joint

The shapes and the silhouettes are the same. The movements are effortlessly familiar. The way she gathers the ball before she serves: not so much bouncing it as toying with it, batting it around her ankles, as if considering what an appropriate punishment might be. All this is as it ever was, like the words of a song you know by heart. So why does it still feel so strange?

It is a little before half past seven on a warm Wimbledon night when Serena Williams comes back from the dead. And no, this is not literally true (although she has cheated death more than once), but not a million miles away from what it feels like. Some spectators have brought old photos of her, and are holding them up as she walks on to court, like mourners at a vigil. As if they’ve managed to summon her through the force of their collective devotion.

• French Open winner beats Belgian 6-4, 6-7, 7-6, 7-6

• Zverev’s big serves breaks down tough opponent

Alexander Zverev’s serve is at once among the most potent and also the most perplexing weapons in tennis. When it is working as it should, which is about 98% of the time, the German feels all but unbreakable. And in whatever time is left, it can all fall apart.

Zverev, who was the No 3 seed last year, managed to succumb to Arthur Rinderknech in the first round, in a match that stretched to two days, despite hitting 76% of his first serves – the best strike-rate in the tournament – and winning all but three of 28 service games. “Dominant but defeated,” as Wimbledon’s statbot put it.

• Uefa fines Newcastle £5.2m for first breach of squad cost rules

• Chelsea and Villa hit with penalties for second year in a row

Newcastle have been fined €6m (£5.2m) by Uefa for breaching its financial sustainability regulations, while Aston Villa and Chelsea have also been given fines for overspending for the second successive year.

Following detailed submissions to Uefa’s club financial control body (CFCB), Newcastle were found to have breached the football earnings rule (FER) and squad cost rules (SCR), with both offences leading to fines of €3m each, plus a suspended fine of €7m.

• ITV has every England men’s international to 2029

• Deal adds to Six Nations and Nations Championship

ITV has agreed a deal for live rights to the 2027 men’s Rugby World Cup in a move that cements its position as the home of international rugby in the UK. The new contract will ensure that ITV has live coverage of every England international until at least 2029, as its joint Six Nations deal with the BBC gives it two-thirds of the tournament’s games and all of England matches.

The commercial broadcaster has also bought live rights for every game of the 2026 and 2028 editions of the new Nations Championship, which begins on Saturday with six matches including New Zealand v France, Australia v Ireland and South Africa v England.

• Men’s team relegated to National League in 2024

• Club hope women’s football will return in future

Forest Green Rovers have disbanded their women’s team for the 2026-27 season so that they can “concentrate their resources” on trying to return their men’s team to the English Football League.

The Gloucestershire club’s women’s side finished second in their regional division of the fifth tier of the English pyramid last term, narrowly missing out on promotion to the fourth tier by one point behind the champions, Torquay. They lost just one league match across the season.

The boy, identified as Klieber Moran, was the only reported survivor found on the sixth day of the ongoing search

A child has been rescued from the rubble in Venezuela, six days since the country was hit by devastating twin earthquakes.

The boy, identified by the Reuters news agency as Klieber Moran, was rescued early on Tuesday, the only reported survivor on the sixth day of rescue efforts, according to Venezuelan authorities.

Court rules against Trump administration on policy that people born in the United States are citizens

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The US supreme court has upheld the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, affirming that nearly all people born on US soil are American citizens and rejecting a central pillar of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.

The president had issued an executive order on the first day of his second term that sought to deny automatic citizenship to the children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said this order violated the 14th amendment of the US constitution.

The £45bn scheme to link cities across north of England with new or upgraded lines has no convincing or properly costed plan, committee says

Building Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) risks repeating the failures of HS2 with “no convincing plan” to deliver it within a £45bn budget, an influential committee of MPs has warned.

The government announced in January its commitment and funding for the NPR project to connect cities across the north, consisting of new or upgraded lines between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, York and Sheffield.

Critics call proposed limits on asylum claims a ‘quick fix that will create long-term chaos’

More than half of the people whose asylum and visa claims will be rejected under tightened human rights laws will continue to live in the UK, according to the Home Office’s own assessment.

Documents released on Tuesday show that plans to set new limits on article 8 of the European convention on human rights are expected to result in another 11,700 people having their claims rejected annually.

Singer has likened live show to theatre rather than a conventional concert but fans have criticised the performances and lack of crowd interaction

Lily Allen has defended the live tour of her latest album West End Girl, after fans complained about feeling short-changed by the 55-minute shows that have no crowd interaction.

Allen is currently on the UK leg of the world tour for the album that was inspired by her divorce from the actor David Harbour. The show sees her perform the 45-minute album in its entirety, without speaking to the crowd or performing any of her back catalogue.

Charmouth, Dorset: On a busy beach day, I find bright green gutweed thriving by the river mouth. It’s resilient – and loves the nutrients found in sewage

Charmouth beach is always busy. Even on grey and stormy winter days, walkers and their dogs patrol the hissing waves, and fossil hunters pick over rubble newly fallen from the black cliffs.

With summer here and school holidays approaching, the sands are strewn with visitors and the car park packed with glittering windscreens. It’s a lovely place to swim, as long as you heed the council signs warning of E coli and keep away from the River Char and its immediate outflow, which is often contaminated.

As the the shocking heatwave continues, our European environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan answered your questions about which countries have responded best, who is being held to account, and why people are surprised after decades of warnings

sloth_101 asks: Most reports still talk about this issue in terms of “records”? Technically, that might be correct but it feels like it’s missing the urgency of the matter. “Records” are meant to be broken. These records clearly are not. Isn’t there a better way to describe it? For example, how “climate change” is often replaced with “climate emergency” or “climate breakdown”?

Ajit: I had never thought about it like that before but I can see how it can be read that way. It is partly a limitation of the language and partly an issue of accuracy. Ideally, I would spell it out – “Germany has been hit by heat it has never seen before” – but, because we are talking about measurements since records began, rather than over a longer period of history. I prefer to speak of “record-breaking” heat. The urgency can still be conveyed by describing the damage that hot weather does to our bodies and stating the death toll, which comes to tens of thousands of people across Europe in a typical summer. Each year heat kills 10 ten times more people than murderers in Europe.

Ajit: So far there has been fairly little evidence of this happening. Far-right parties talk a lot about migrants and climate, but almost exclusively as separate issues. One recent exception is Switzerland, where a referendum this month on capping the country’s population at 10 million people linked the impact of migration on the Alpine nation’s natural resources, but the link here was more about environmental degradation than climate breakdown.

Some data suggests migrants tend to pollute about as much as the native-born population – flying more but driving less - so there is no obvious avenue by which they would hold foreigners responsible for increased temperatures. What seems more likely is that, as temperatures rise to intolerable levels in North Africa and the Middle East, increased migration to Europe will force far-right parties to confront the paradox that the migration they want to stop will be exacerbated by the fossil fuel pollution they support.

Wakelyns needs £1.2m to save its diverse organic crops and ‘micro’ enterprises including a bakery and honeybee hives

The aerial view of Wakelyns matches the experience of visiting it at ground level: in a region dominated by prairie fields of industrial agriculture, here lies a vivid green lung of land. Its sounds and sights in summer – the sleepy purr of the turtle dove, the vivid pink flash of a bullfinch – have vanished from most of the British countryside.

But Wakelyns is not a nature reserve – it is a thriving farm, a “living laboratory” for agroforestry and a hub for innovation and business. It is also under threat, and its owners must raise £1.2m to turn it into a charitable community benefit society.

Energy system operator says sum needed to deliver clean power targets while meeting rising demand is up by 50%

The cost of rewiring Great Britain’s electricity networks through the 2030s is now 50% higher than before the Labour government came to power, and could reach almost £90bn in the next decade, according to the energy system operator.

Building new high-voltage transmission lines and infrastructure to connect low-carbon energy to the grid in the 2030s was initially forecast by the energy system operator to cost £58bn.

Doctors say survey shows need for morning-after pill to be available at corner shops, petrol stations and supermarkets

Almost half of the UK population believe it would be difficult to access emergency contraception on a Sunday, while nearly two-thirds think they would struggle after 10pm, according to a survey.

The research, carried out by YouGov, found that only 7% of people believe it would be difficult to access emergency contraception during the daytime on a weekday.

Prime minister-in-waiting is seeking an interim base in the city centre before Ancoats site is completed in 2028

A civil service base that is under construction in Manchester has been earmarked for Andy Burnham’s No 10 North, according to reports.

The northern centre of government will be in Ancoats, on the outskirts of Manchester city centre, but the site is not due to be completed before 2028, according to the Manchester Evening News.

Reform UK leader’s Direct Bullion payment is double his fee from 2025

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Nigel Farage received £270,000 from a gold marketer for which he is a brand ambassador, his single biggest payment as an MP.

The Reform UK leader has been criticised in the past over his £400,000-a-year second job promoting the idea for Direct Bullion that people should buy physical gold and put it in their pension pots.

Winchester court hears accusations of offences by former petty officer Allan Grimson against males as young as 14

A former Royal Navy petty officer, jailed for life 25 years ago for murdering two young men, sexually assaulted four other boys and men in the same era, a jury has been told.

Allan Grimson was jailed in 2001 for battering Nicholas Wright, 18, and Sion Jenkins, 20, to death at his flat above a parade of shops in Portsmouth, Hampshire, in 1997 and 1998.

Fears of resurgence of HIV/Aids amid loss of access to PrEP drugs as at least 40 people arrested in ‘toxic’ climate

A “witch-hunt” is under way in Niger, where dozens of people have been arrested for homosexuality in the west African state following the introduction of a new penal code earlier this year.

Up to 40 people have been arrested and 16 men, including high-ranking military officials, have been imprisoned across the country, according to local media.

The AI company was forced earlier this month to suspend access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all foreign nationals

Anthropic has said the US commerce department has lifted export controls on its Fable and Mythos AI models, less than ⁠three weeks after ⁠the company ​was ordered to suspend access to its most advanced AI models over national security risks.

“We’ll begin restoring access tomorrow,” Anthropic said in a statement on X late on Tuesday.

Local officials said preliminary reports showed the centre was unregistered and operating inside a privately owned residential building

Fourteen children died after ⁠the roof of a tutoring centre collapsed in Pakistan’s eastern city of ⁠Lahore on Tuesday, ⁠rescue ​officials have said, as authorities opened the way for a possible negligence ⁠investigation.

Punjab’s emergency service said rescuers found children and a 30-year-old female teacher ⁠under the rubble of the private after-school facility. The ​children killed were aged ‌five to ‌16 with most below nine.

Twenty-nine-year-old beat representative Diana DeGette in deep-blue Denver district

The democratic socialist Melat Kiros unseated long-serving US representative Diana DeGette in Colorado’s primary elections held on Tuesday, the latest in a string of high-profile victories for the party’s insurgent left.

The Associated Press reported that Kiros had defeated DeGette for the Democratic nomination in the deep-blue first congressional district centered on Denver. Kiros’s triumph came a week after New York voters unseated two Democratic congressional incumbents and replaced a third who was retiring with candidates who had campaigned on standing up to Israel amid accusations that it was carrying out a genocide in Gaza.

Acquisition by Axel Springer ends three years of uncertainty over ownership of 171-year-old titles

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The European media group Axel Springer has completed its £575m takeover of the Telegraph, ending three tumultuous years of uncertainty over the future ownership of the 171-year-old titles.

The Germany-headquartered company, which gazumped the owner of the Daily Mail by tabling a blockbuster offer at the 11th hour, said it had now received all regulatory approvals in the UK, Ireland and Austria to take full control of Telegraph Media Group (TMG).

Lisa Nandy to ask regulators to assess mega-merger involving Channel 5, CNN and TNT Sports on grounds of media plurality and competition

The UK culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, intends to ask Britain’s media and competition watchdogs to examine Paramount’s $110bn (£85bn) acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery.

The WBD takeover deal will create a media powerhouse controlling assets ranging from: the Hollywood studios behind franchises including Superman, Batman and Top Gun; the UK’s Channel 5; the news channel CNN; TNT Sports, which broadcasts Champions League, Premier League and the Olympics; and the Paramount+ and HBO Max streaming services.

Law firms seek up to £4.5bn on behalf of 700,000 buyers of new-build homes

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Britain’s biggest housebuilders, including Barratt Redrow and Taylor Wimpey, face a multibillion-pound class action lawsuit over claims that they colluded over higher prices for homebuyers.

The lawsuit is being led by Mark McLaren, a former legal affairs manager at the consumer group Which?, on behalf of more than 700,000 consumers who bought a new-build between 2015 and 2026, against Barratt, Bellway, Berkeley Group, Redrow, Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey, Vistry Group and Bloor Homes.

Supermarket has lifted sales with Aldi price match, and has benefited from hot weather and World Cup matches

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Grocery inflation in the UK has not been as bad as feared so far, the boss of Sainsbury’s has said, but “pressure in the system” remains as the industry hopes for a swift resolution to the Middle East conflict.

Simon Roberts, the chief executive of the UK’s second-largest supermarket, said it was still early in the year and there was “still uncertainty where inflation will go”, but suggested it could come in well below the Food and Drink Federation’s initial prediction of at least 9% by December.

From classical painting to video games, this survey of the taboo and the twisted won’t let you look away

Museums are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Ignore the problems of the past and they’re criticised for being problematic. Rewrite their labels according to changing politics and they’re called preachy and woke. The fact is, history is filled with immoral art. But how do we know it when we see it? And what, if anything, should we be doing about it?

In her timely and punchy new book, the philosopher Daisy Dixon explores some of the most controversial artworks ever produced. She’s interested in how an artist’s character can influence their creations, and the harmful effects those creations can have on the world.

A devastating account of living through the war in Ukraine won this year’s prestigious prize – with the longlist spanning everything from hurricanes to hauntology

Millie Bobby Brown returns, along with the creative team behind Adolescence, for an often thoughtful yet ultimately lesser threequel

Despite the ever-increasing size and dominance of Netflix, the streamer has continued to struggle with its most obvious aim. While viewers might flock there for smooth-brained dating shows, tawdry true crime, Harlan Coben thrillers and junky romcoms, the platform is yet to be known for creating original movie franchises, the bread and butter of most old-fashioned Hollywood studios, for better or worse.

The problem Netflix often faces is that to turn a big-budget bet into a cultural event, it requires more than a low-stakes click at home and a brief weekend’s worth of chatter. Big numbers might have met wannabe franchise-starters Red Notice and The Grey Man but a lack of real long-term interest has meant that sequels haven’t followed, while its most expensive film ever, Chris Pratt vehicle The Electric State, sank with both audiences and critics. It’s why the success of last year’s KPop Demon Hunters, a genuine all-consuming juggernaut, was such an important win, even if the film technically started its life at Sony. A sequel is, of course, coming although there always felt like something a little accidental about the first film’s transformation into pop culture phenomenon, as if no one quite knew just what they had on their hands.

Low-budget film-maker Uwe Boll sets Hammer up for a further fall from grace by cannibalising all manner of tired tropes in this incoherent schlocker

Oh, Armie Hammer! Has it come to this? It doesn’t seem that long since you were in the Oscar-winning film Call Me By Your Name giving a sensitive liberal performance opposite Timothée Chalamet. Now here you are, striding around the streets and public parks of Zagreb, shooting Muslims, tasering teens and topping complicit deep-state judges to protest against what your character robustly describes as an “unfriendly takeover by Islamist extremists and the blind-sided woke left”.

Much has happened to this once garlanded actor and great-grandson of oil tycoon Armand Hammer. His reputation plummeted after allegations of sexual assault by former partners in 2021, relationships that Hammer has maintained were consensual. Criminal charges were since dropped for lack of evidence, Hammer has now returned to the silver screen – and here he is in a very cheap, incoherent and embarrassingly badly acted schlocker, written, produced and directed by Germany’s low-budget exploitation maestro Uwe Boll, which cannibalises all manner of revenge tropes. More importantly, the film has been promoted and publicised globally online with monumental hypocrisy by Elon Musk who like JD Vance is very keen to divert America’s attention from its own issues to the fiercely imagined lawless migrant-caliphate of Europe-stan. It’s another piece of shit to flood the zone.

Has reporter Sian Reese-Williams uncovered the truth about Llŷr’s death? Plus Jack Thorne-penned Enola Holmes returns. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Channel 4
As the second season of this gloomily gripping Welsh drama concludes, the tone is more elegy than explosion as the events around the controversial reservoir expansion continue to unfold. Budding journalist Caryl Huws (Siân Reese-Williams) is probing Llŷr’s demise but this puts her on a collision course with Robert (Robert Glenister), who wants the past to remain undisturbed. It has been a bleak study in small town ennui. Phil Harrison

The star delivers a breathtaking performance in Suzie Miller’s play about a judge under pressure, while Paddington gets everyone singing and Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy is back

Rosamund Pike rightly won an Olivier award for her restless turn in Prima Facie playwright Suzie Miller’s blistering legal drama – now a judge in court, now with mates at karaoke, now whipping out the ironing board before a party, now facing a family crisis. It’s a breathtaking performance in both senses and Justin Martin, a master at building tension, directs with customary flair. On NT at Home from 7 July.

As he prepares to play the UK, the 25-Grammy-winning musician (and Harvard law graduate) looks back on his astonishing journey from the barrios of Panama City to global stardom

“Well, I’ve been around,” says Rubén Blades, accurately. One of the most influential Latin musicians of the past half-century, the Panamanian singer-songwriter, 77, has been a defining force in salsa, collecting 25 Grammy awards – 13 Latin, 12 mainstream – and getting shout-outs from a new generation including Rosalía and Bad Bunny.

Blades has moved between music, law, politics and film as if they were all part of the same conversation. He has a Harvard law degree, made a presidential bid in Panama – he was also the country’s minister of tourism from 2004 to 2009 – and has had film roles alongside Jack Nicholson, Brad Pitt and Denzel Washington, all of which he sorted out on his own. “A manager would go crazy,” he laughs, his grey eyes crinkling on a video call from his home in New York City, ahead of a gig he’s playing in London.

‘Stevie Wonder and Prince played all the instruments on their albums, but in recording studios. I did it all in a back room at home – and then it won two Grammys’

I grew up as one of the YouTube generation, with the idea that you could create your own fanbase by making videos. So when I was about 17, I filmed myself in our family back room doing Stevie Wonder covers like Isn’t She Lovely, made up of six layered vocal parts sung by different versions of me, or Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing, where I played various instruments.

Glyndebourne, Sussex
This revival of Michael Grandage’s atmospheric production of Britten’s opera has numerous fine performances: Thomas Mole and Sam Carl are persuasive as Billy and Claggart, and Allan Clayton’s luminous Vere is a standout

Brutalist grey, its deck gently curved, HMS Indomitable looms over Michael Grandage’s production of Britten’s Billy Budd. Half-skeleton, half-cage, the ship is relentlessly claustrophobic, its hard edges softened only by coils of rope, hammocks and Paule Constable’s subtle, painterly lighting. No wonder the opera’s crowd of male bodies – clad here in spotless Napoleonic naval uniforms and grubby workwear – carries a palpable charge: visceral, violent, erotic. Thanks to the curved deck, those standing centre-stage of Christopher Oram’s set appear as if through a fish-eye lens or one of the officer’s telescopes. In this floating world at war, everyone is subject to scrutiny.

Premiered at Glyndebourne in 2010, Grandage’s production is now in the hands of revival director Ian Rutherford. The lines are firmly drawn between the goodness of the piece’s “angel” Billy Budd and the malevolence of its villain, John Claggart, whose “sexual discharge gone evil” (librettist EM Forster’s words) results in Budd’s death. Budd swings across the stage, lithe as a gymnast, unique in his physical ease. Claggart cowers and barks. The love “that could not speak its name” at the opera’s 1951 premiere has here found other ways to communicate; in one scene, Claggart bullies the terrified Novice in a chokehold that is simultaneously, unmistakably an embrace.

Nicky Woolf’s investigation into a rightwing YouTuber reveals much more than state interference in social media. Plus, why did a kid pretend to be Steven Spielberg’s nephew?

Lauren Southern tells journalist Nicky Woolf she feels as though she’s in a spy movie, “but the dumbest ever made, because I’m just a YouTuber”. Along with other members of the right-wing commentariat, the Canadian found herself linked with the Kremlin when a company she had worked for was revealed as a front for the Russian state. Her candour is striking, as Woolf’s investigation unfolds across six uneasy chapters. Hannah J Davies
Audible, all episodes out now

Candice Carty-Williams, Patrick Freyne and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

I just finished reading Wimmy Road Boyz by Sufiyaan Salam. I absolutely adored this book, a fantastic combination of violence and vulnerability set on Manchester’s Curry Mile. I became completely attached to the three main boys, and I loved all of the perspective shifts to different characters throughout the book. I fully weeped at the end – it was an unexpected but completely understandable ending. 10/10, everyone should read this.

Queenie Is Working on It is published on 2 July by Trapeze. To support the Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com.

Queenie’s ticking biological clock drives her chaotic misadventures in this sage and funny follow-up

A gynaecological examination is a good analogy for the kind of painful self-inspection at which Queenie Jenkins excels. The heroine of Candice Carty-Williams’s 2019 debut Queenie memorably begins that novel with a medical appointment for a mystery ailment that turns out to be a miscarriage. The sequel, Queenie Is Working on It, picks up the story eight years on, with the now 33-year-old Queenie back on the gurney, this time for a fertility checkup. “I didn’t realise they did condoms for anything other than … penises,” Queenie observes lamely as the unsmiling doctor sheaths a probe. Life has changed, but in many ways, Queenie has not.

Carty-Williams’s first novel about a stumbling Jamaican-British woman living in London, navigating romantic disaster and a mental health crisis, was a breakout bestseller. Reassuringly, her keen ear for female friendships – the deep affection, the stubborn solidarity, the ribald humour – endures, as does her understanding of how the particular experience of race suffuses the ordinary lives of Black women. These are the qualities that made Queenie feel unique and interesting in 2019. She remains so in 2026, but your patience for the new novel rather depends on your tolerance for her continued misadventures.

Robin Farquharson was a prize-winning game theorist, anti-apartheid activist and countercultural chaos merchant

Even as an undergraduate, Robin Farquharson was famous for being erratic. He provoked anxiety and goodwill in equal measure. His aim in life, according to an anonymous writer in an Oxford student newspaper, was “to become a contradiction in terms. Since last October, he has been cutting friends in the street; sleeping alternate nights in mysterious George Street garrets and obscure collegiate crypts.” The profile described his soul as “dogged, indomitable” and “fierce, incompatible”. Maybe. Later to become a prize-winning game theorist often hailed as a genius, he died aged just 42 in a squat fire on April Fools’ Day 1973. The poet Aidan Andrew Dun called him an “outsider among outsiders … a luminous ruin of a man”. For anti-psychiatrist RD Laing, he was “very intelligent and totally out of his fucking mind”.

Farquharson once joked he had been born a member of the master race in South Africa. He wasn’t entirely wrong. His father had founded a distinguished law firm in Pretoria; high-up politicians would regularly come over for dinner. He attended elite private schools – future pupils included the novelist Wilbur Smith and Elon Musk – and got himself a pilot’s licence even before, barely 16, he entered university. Later at Oxford he studied PPE, befriended Bertrand Russell and Rupert Murdoch (a self-declared Marxist at the time), and shared digs with future chancellor of the exchequer Nigel Lawson. Intellectually he was regarded as high-wattage but, about to land a starry All Souls College fellowship, he wrecked his chances by phoning the college warden to tell him he had a message from God he needed to share.

Two gay Afghan men find each other in Istanbul, in a much-hyped debut that fails to sustain the killer energy of its opening act

Everyone in No God But Us is performing. Families perform respectability; lovers perform fidelity; NGOs perform goodness; autocrats perform power. The drag queens in Bobuq Sayed’s anticipated debut novel are the most honest performers of the lot. They’re the only ones who admit they’re in costume.

Delbar is the “door bitch” at a drag club in Washington DC. Fresh out of college and not yet out to his family, he has no idea who he is. He knows who he is expected to be: the well-buttoned son of Afghan immigrants. He also knows who he might become under the spotlight; his drag persona, Sharia Raw, is waiting in the wings.

Normal Golf Game takes a tiresomely easy genre and makes it infernally difficult. Which deserves a round of applause

I have always struggled playing golf. I wish I didn’t. It’s a beautiful game in concept. A leisurely walk in the sunshine, slapping a ball around, sandwiches and beer consumed during and after play. Sure, you have to dress like Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch, and getting membership of an actual club is more complex than joining the Freemasons (although many offer a two for one deal with this), but you don’t have to be fit, you don’t have to even run. It is the only outdoor sport where a fat dad can be the best in the world.

The premise couldn’t be simpler: get the ball in the hole. But there is nothing worse in sport than knowing what you have to do and not being able to do it. Just ask amateur parachutists.

The blockbuster launch is expected to dwarf the box office takings of the year’s biggest movies with one industry analyst predicting it could make $1bn within an hour

It is, quite simply, the most anticipated piece of entertainment since the Star Wars prequels and now, at last, you can reserve a copy. At midnight last night, Rockstar opened preorders on Grand Theft Auto VI, the latest title in the epic open-world gangster adventure series, five months before its 19 November release date on PS5 and Xbox Series S/X.

Prices have also been confirmed, with the standard edition costing $80 in the US, £70 in the UK, and €80 in Europe. An Ultimate Edition (£90/€100/$100) will include exclusive in-game cars, clothes and weapons – the developer has confirmed that there will also be in-game stores that are only open to Ultimate owners. Anyone who pre-orders the game will get a Vintage Vice City pack filled with 80s apparel and other nostalgic items, which look to be straight out of Don Johnson’s Miami Vice wardrobe.

As football fans revel in the real world tournament, its digital counterparts continue to stumble in capturing the ​hyped up ​atmosphere

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I come with a warning to all football fans: if you’ve been enjoying the World Cup enough to think, “I’d like to re-enact this on a football video game”, do not go to Netflix and play Fifa World Cup: Launch Edition, the officially licensed game of the tournament, which streams via your smart TV or computer. Developed by the virtually unknown Delphi Interactive, it’s a juddering, dated calamity, with sluggish controls (via your phone, once you’ve downloaded the app) and commentary courtesy of Clive Tyldesley that delivers all the excitement of a robotic train station announcement.

Until this, it was largely agreed that the worst World Cup football game in history was World Cup Carnival, the first official Fifa tie-in, which was released on various home computers in 1986. Publisher US Gold thought it had a deal with the Manchester studio Ocean Software to repurpose its acclaimed title Match Day, but the agreement fell through. With three months to go before Mexico 86, US Gold was forced to effectively rebadge a dire 1984 sim, World Cup Football, by the fading developer Artic. To add some value to the package, the game was released in a fancy big box complete with a fixtures chart, a World Cup facts poster and some flag stickers. Nobody was fooled – the World Cup Carnival was a critical and commercial disaster.

As phrases like easter eggs and looksmaxxing enter everyday language, what other words from the world of video games might soon be mainstream?

Twenty years ago, video games were seen as a niche hobby dominated by hardcore enthusiasts, tucked away in obscure online forums and gaming meet-ups. Back then, the idea that governments would use footage from Call of Duty and gaming terms such as “killstreaks” as war propaganda would have been absurd. Then the 2010s happened: nerd culture popularised, previously online-only spaces began to meld with the real world, and gaming went mainstream.

Now, gaming references have entered common parlance – at the end of 2024, video game terms including “cheat code” and “cutscene” were even added to the Oxford English Dictionary – and they increasingly crop up in politics, too. Earlier this year, the official White House X account posted footage of military strikes on Iran interspersed with footage from the video game Grand Theft Auto. Six days later, another video was posted, this time interspersing military footage with clips from Nintendo’s 2006 game Wii Sports. Video game references aren’t reserved for the political right, either: in February 2026, Democrat representative of New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quipped, “Why does this guy always talk like a World of Warcraft npc [non-player character]?” in response to a post on X by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff.

Soho theatre, London
The co-host of Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update delivers an expertly constructed set of jokes about her quest to live a more embodied life

After serving an eye-catching apprenticeship in live comedy, Ania Magliano’s profile has now surged as co-host of SNL UK’s Weekend Update, a spoof news bulletin recalling to viewers of my vintage the work of the great Two Ronnies. Would Messrs Corbett and Barker have capitalised on TV success with a standup show about learning to love their sex organs? They would not – but times have changed. Magliano’s new set about living a more embodied life has all the qualities – great jokes; open and endearing personality; and very expert construction – to woo to her stage work the new fans she’s secured by cracking wise on the small screen.

The issue for the 28-year-old is alienation from her own body and its experiences. In Peach Fuzz, she looks longingly at other cultures, so much more corporeal than our own. But then, living in the UK, are there any bodily sensations worth savouring? There’s one obvious answer – but Magliano is already in therapy for her ambivalence about that, which is suggested here by a marvellously British and uncomprehending routine about an online sex influencer claiming to have experienced 27 consecutive orgasms. A later scene finds Magliano prompted by her counsellor to commune with her own genitals via an artfully held hand-mirror – as I dare say Descartes did when first theorising the mind-body problem all those years ago.

At Soho theatre, London, until 4 July. At Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 7-22 August and touring until 7 May

National Gallery, London
He painted leaves, grass and even bark with the precision of a chef applying a micro-garnish with tweezers. The result? Looking at his work feels a lot like eating your greens

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793-1865) is regarded as one of the most important figures in 19th-century Austrian art; an influential and admired teacher, and a somewhat radical figure regarding the established Viennese Academy. He worked during the Biedermeier movement which spanned the end of the Napoleonic wars until 1848 when various revolutions shook the ruling Habsburg empire and Austrian political elite. Biedermeier reflected the tastes and aspirations of a rising bourgeois society; terribly nice landscapes, genre scenes, floral and portrait pieces for the upwardly mobile drawing room. Within these genteel confines, Waldmüller intently focused on a more unflinching mode of depiction, concerned more with accuracy and integrity than the sentimentalising efforts of his peers, while also criticising the Academy’s teaching methods and eventually in 1857 even calling for the abolition of all academies.

If this collection of relatively small, minutely detailed landscapes is representative of an impassioned, radical painter tearing up the rule-book, it is far from obvious from their tightly controlled, rather unimposing visual appearance. Each shows a vista of a specific location – The Ruins of the Temple of Juno Lacinia near Agrigento (1846), View of the Dachstein from the Sophien-Doppelblick near Ischl (1835) – accompanied by captions which systematically list topographical details of note, followed by some light technical analysis: for the latter, “Waldmüller has distinguished the successive elements in the landscape with distinct changes in tonality, from the soft green of the valley to the blue-grey of the most distant mountains.” In the show’s only portrait, 1828’s Self Portrait as a Young Man, which incidentally dwarfs everything else here in scale, the caption draws attention to “his delicate fingers proclaiming his sensitivity and talent”: delicacy and sensitivity are the operative descriptors for the entire show.

Regent’s Park Open Air theatre, London
There’s much to love in Atri Banerjee’s fun staging, in particular Titania’s musical crew and a brilliant Bottom, but some of the wonder is missing

The magic comes in the music in Atri Banerjee’s production of Shakespeare’s comic romance. “Rock’n’roll, you can’t beat it,” says one character, and it feels like gig theatre in some breakout moments when fairies and Athenians grab a handheld mic for a musical number.

The lovely folk-infused melodies that accompany the drama – sometimes halting it altogether – are composed by Maimuna Memon. Titania’s fairy crew are a supercool four-piece group, variously playing electric guitar, violin, keyboard and other instruments. Theseus is a rock star; so is Puck.

After suffering the schadenfreude of gamers online, the Tony-winning Broadway musical offered redemption to Cliff Bleszinski

‘It was utterly heartbreaking, to be honest, and it certainly didn’t help with my drinking. I’ll leave it at that.” Cliff Bleszinski is recalling the launch of LawBreakers, the arena first-person shooter he put out in 2017. It had been his first project as the CEO of his own studio, Boss Key Productions. Before that, he was the creative figurehead behind hugely successful sci-fi shooter series, Gears of War, when he was known to millions of gamers as CliffyB.

“I retired from Epic and all of it, and I missed making neat stuff,” he says. “And my agent at the time was needling me: ‘Come on, you want to get back in, have your own studio? Look at what [Hideo] Kojima’s doing.’ And I was like: ‘OK, if Kojima can do it, so can I.’ Such hubris, right?”

V&A takes exhibition of more than 100 pieces by ‘artist in constant motion’ around Britain, from Dundee to Bristol

Kansai Yamamoto’s costumes for Ziggy Stardust, Bowie’s Berlin apartment house keys and his childhood saxophone are just some of the artefacts that visitors around the UK will be able to see when the V&A’s David Bowie archive goes on its first national tour this winter.

More than 100 pieces from the 90,000-item Bowie Centre at the V&A East Storehouse in London – some of which have never been publicly displayed before – will make up David Bowie: On Tour, which commences at the V&A Dundee in November.

A pop superstar widely perceived as a romantic has in fact mostly written love songs troubled by strife, ghosts and delusion. Ahead of her wedding, we strip away the gossip to see what Swift-as-songwriter has spent 20 years telling us

When she was 19 and already had her second album under her belt, Taylor Swift made a point of telling a would-be beau he was all wrong for her: “I’m not your princess, this ain’t our fairytale … It’s too late for you and your white horse to catch me now,” she sang in her 2008 song White Horse. Then as now, Swift liked a happy ending: she had no qualms rewriting Romeo and Juliet to end with marriage in Love Story, or imagining stealing a boy from his no-good girlfriend in You Belong With Me, both from the same album as White Horse. She just didn’t want a guy to come and rescue her from the messiness of life, like a prince in an early Disney movie whose appearance signals marriage, a happily-ever-after and, effectively, the end of a young girl’s life.

This story has always been an easy one to reject; even Disney was poking fun at it as early as Sleeping Beauty. And like many women of her generation, Swift has had a complicated relationship with all that marriage implies, at least in how she’s written about it. When she met Travis Kelce, the man she is now set to marry, she was fresh from her 2022 album Midnights, in which she made it repeatedly clear she can and will ditch any man, even a perfectly nice one, who stands between her and her ambition. “He wanted a bride / I was making my own name,” she sang on Midnight Rain. In Bejeweled, the tone toward a neglectful “baby boy” is even sassier: “I miss you … but I miss sparkling.” No man is going to end the Taylor Swift story, because there are only two forces that can end the unfolding of that story. One is God; the other is Taylor Swift.

Attorneys slam ‘scorched-earth tactics’ from Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios over $400m countersuit against the actor

Blake Lively has filed for $8m in fees and costs that she says resulted from her battle against Justin Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studios.

That figure is to cover the legal costs that Lively incurred from January to June 2025 in her fight against her director and co-star in the 2024 film It Ends With Us, as well as a petition for damages that was still pending when Lively v Baldoni was settled in May 2026.

The London summer opera company in leafy Holland Park has always punched well above its weight. As it celebrates its 30th birthday, its director of opera James Clutton picks some of his favourite moments from the past three decades

• Opera Holland Park’s 2026 season continues until 22 August.

The US motor company found that the hundreds of AI cameras being used for design and manufacturing checks were prone to pitfalls

Name: “Greybeards.”

Age: There’s a clue in the name.

Long before becoming TikTok’s latest main character, food cultures around the world have been soaking and stewing beans to delicious effect. And yes, you can tone down the side-effects

For months, TikTok home cooks have been spilling the beans on the nutritional power of soaking and simmering pots of cannellini, borlotti and black beans. There are more than 13,000 TikTok videos under the hashtag #beantok, with cooks claiming the humble legumes have alleviated their anxiety, perimenopause and inflammation. Pair that with “fibremaxxing”, and the bean has found itself recast from back-of-the-pantry afterthought to wellness main character.

But for many cooks and chefs, none of this is new. Many beans we eat today are native to the Americas and arrived in Europe by the 16th century, and were so readily adopted into Mediterranean cooking that it’s now hard to imagine those cuisines without them. “The Tuscans are even known as ‘mangiafagioli’: bean eaters,” says food writer Emiko Davies, who points out that beans were once the everyday nutrition of a largely peasant population.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food and the basics they scrimp on? The skincare expert talks vinyl, McDonald’s tea and the body lotion she buys on repeat with the Filter

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Caroline Hirons started her career working at the Aveda counter in Harvey Nichols before launching her successful skincare blog in 2010, which has since amassed more than 160m views.

Her debut book, Skincare, was a Sunday Times bestseller. Caroline launched her skincare app, Skin Rocks, and her skincare brand of the same name in 2022.

Potion kits, walkie-talkies and interactive pets … here are our top picks for seven-year-olds (without a Labubu in sight)

• The best gifts for six-year-olds

There are seemingly endless gifts available for seven-year-olds, which can make the choice feel overwhelming. This probably stems from their growing individuality. At this age, most children are becoming more independent and confident and can play on their own or with friends, without full adult supervision.

“At seven, children start getting into things such as kits, puzzles, cooking and sports,” says Rachel Carrell, CEO of the childcare company Koru Kids. “The key here is to pick things that stretch patience and perseverance without feeling like homework.”

Most swimwear relies on synthetic fibres, but some brands are taking steps to reduce their impact. We’ve rounded up the best bikinis, swimsuits and men’s trunks made from recycled and alternative materials

• The best sunglasses with UV protection

If your summer holiday is beckoning, you may have swimwear on your mind. And if you want to get some new gear with your responsible hat on, you may feel out of your depth. Swimwear needs to work hard, stretching to fit us and our movements, while withstanding tough environments like salt water, sunlight and chlorine. This generally means our bathers will be made from a human-made, petroleum-based fibre like nylon or polyester, but are there more environmentally friendly options out there?

“Better [swimwear] should first and foremost mean longer lasting and higher quality,” says Helen Lofts, a circular economy advocate and founder of the swimwear brand Davy J. “Nylon and polyester fibres are incredibly hard-wearing and robust but the elastane they’re woven with to form a stretch fabric is often not. The quality and density of the fibre weave within the fabric will determine how robust they are.” This means cheap, thinner swimsuits will start to go see-through and degrade much quicker than those with quality lining and a tighter weave.

From frozen hot-water bottles to a frizzy hair hack – our fashion team share their wisdom

• The best summer sandals for men and women

On a typical day in high summer you’ll come across two types of people: those who suffer and those who revel. Perhaps you’re a bit of both – you love beaches, but hate hay fever. Or perhaps you burn in the sun, but live for the longer nights sipping pink gin outside.

Believe it or not, there are elements of summer that even the Guardian’s fashion desk struggles with, which is why we’ve compiled this summer survival guide.

Sweetness and smoke are at the fore of these summer salads

We are at one of my favourite times of the year, but also one of the busiest, with the world seemingly hell-bent on fitting everything in before the summer starts proper. For us, family birthdays abound, with celebrations to organise, cakes to dream up and a constant worry about finding the right presents. Our anniversary is mostly forgotten amid the chaos! What is not forgotten is our deep love of sitting outdoors over long summer evenings that appear to make time stretch magically, languorously. Whether it’s lighting the barbecue or simply turning to my ancient but beloved griddle, a bit of Butch Cassidy-style smoke and swagger is what I am looking for in my food. Chargrilling courgettes brings out their sweetness, and givesthem tantalising, smoky notes, while smoked chillies lend even the freshest salad some attitude. Happy days.

Scotch eggs, fresh baguettes, arancini and tinned fish are all dependable dishes that won’t hamper a feast at the park or beach

What failsafe dishes can I take to a picnic? They’re so often disappointing.
Alice, by email
Ah, picnics … Idyllic in theory, tricky in execution. We’re really talking about food that’s structurally sound (and therefore travels well), can be eaten alone (or with salad) and is comfortable when left to sit around for a bit, which is why the humble scotch egg is such a strong contender. “I’d definitely bring a plastic container full of those,” says Luke Larsson, head chef and co-owner of Khao Bird in Soho, London, who, perhaps unsurprisingly, favours a Thai-style version. “Ours start with a soft-boiled egg wrapped in sai oua sausagemeat, which is a northern Thai sausage packed with turmeric, chilli, herbs and aromatics,” he says. That’s then coated in panko breadcrumbs and deep-fried. “Leave to cool slightly before packing them up, so they stay crisp,” Larsson adds, and pack some chilli jam or nam jim for dipping.

“I’m a big believer that picnic food should feel nostalgic,” Larsson says. “Unfussy things that you actually want to eat on the grass with a drink in hand.” Which brings us nicely to the jambon beurre, a sandwich that’s often demolished by Manon Lagrève, author of La Saison, after a family bike ride in France. “It’s always an occasion to make a delicious sandwich,” she says, so “get the best baguette you can, ham from the butcher’s, then I like to add comté and a few cornichons. And don’t forget the salted butter.” Rather than messing about with constructing barriers to stop any moisture from soaking into the bread, Lagrève recommends packing all the elements individually, popping them in a cool bag and constructing the sandwiches on arrival: “That enhances the picnic vibe too.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

From savoury pastries and chilled reds to cherry overload, discover what’s fresh and what’s become just a bit stale

Savoury millefeuilles (above)
Elegant savouries are all the rage on menus right now, for example, at Planque, which has a chanterelle and radicchio millefeuille with comte sauce. Think fancy deconstructed vol-au-vents with modern gastronomic flair.

Tomatoes, samphire and basil bloom in summer – as, of course, do the essential strawberries

Basil
The scent and flavour of summer: keep stems cut-end in shallow water, and out of the fridge. If you have a pot plant, stand it in a saucer and water from below in the morning as basil hates having wet feet overnight.

Graham and Josephine were friends for years, but after their spouses died they discovered a mutual attraction – and a fondness for adventurous sex

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

Our sexual preferences cover everything from vanilla to being tied up and spanked

You say you don’t put him under pressure, but he seems to feel it. Could you be overcompensating for your initial reluctance to have children?

My husband and I have one son, in his late 20s. We’ve always been devoted to him, keep in touch on a weekly basis and see him about once a month (he has a busy job and has recently started a new relationship, which seems to be making him very happy).

I never really wanted children, possibly due to my traumatic childhood: an absent, mentally ill father; and a single, emotionally imbalanced mother who made me the centre of her life. When my husband talked about having children, I gave it careful consideration and decided in the end to give it a go. Once our son was born, I embraced motherhood fully. We both adore him.

Philip, 74, an antiquarian book dealer, meets Carol, 66, who is retired

What were you hoping for?
Reciprocated love at first sight (I don’t ask for much in this life). To meet a kindred spirit who might even become a partner.

First Liza Shaw and Rohan were housemates, then they had a casual relationship. But a protest at Woomera would deepen their emotional connection

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

I met Rohan in 1998 in Lismore, New South Wales, where we were both going to university. Before that, I’d noticed him around town in his sarong and peacock feather earrings. He was distinctive and slightly dandyish, sometimes wearing dresses on campus. I had another partner at the time but our mutual friend introduced us, and Rohan and I became housemates.

We bonded living together and hosting dinner parties, where we’d talk about life and politics well into the night. I was intrigued by his friends. One time Rohan invited a member of the Black Panthers to come and stay at our house.

Trusted by millions, the finance expert has seen his name and face used to mis-sell a string of fake investments. And yet, he says, it would be ‘very simple’ for the government to stop them

This month, an email from a consumer landed in Martin Lewis’s inbox. It was from an elderly woman with a disability who had been scammed when she invested in a scheme purportedly endorsed by Lewis – and lost her life savings. “THEY ARE BASTARDS!” Lewis wrote at the top of his social media post about it. Even though the personal finance expert is a veteran campaigner against fraud, he says he had “tears running down my face”. He still sounds upset. “I felt a mixture of frustration, anger and sadness.” Not only for the plight of the woman, but for the “constant, ongoing deluge of shit from the scammers”.

Lewis never advertises anything. To hammer home the point, his social media profile picture has the words “I don’t do ads” tattooed on his forehead. But still, people fall victim to deepfake videos and frauds that appear to show him offering investments. The scale of harm is great enough that MoneySavingExpert (MSE), the company Lewis founded in 2003 and sold in 2012 for up to £87m – he is now its executive chair – has someone full-time handling these cases.

The car lease company won’t rescind my contract because it says the vehicle is driveable. The only problem is, it won’t even charge

My brand new Peugeot EV stopped working within a fortnight of delivery.

The dealer postponed the repair appointment by a month because it was too busy. Peugeot Assist, operated by the RAC, eventually collected it for repair under warranty two weeks ago, but it never reached the dealer.

Research suggests travel scams are on rise as experts advise doing some detective work to make sure holidays are real

Holidaymakers have been advised to carry out amateur detective work to ensure they do not book into fake accommodation this summer, as research showed a third of travellers had seen an increase in potential travel scams on social media.

Consumer experts have urged holidaymakers to do a reverse image search on photographs of holiday homes and check their locations on an online map to verify they are real.

Designed to mirror the stock market, they are an easy and cheap way to save. Here’s how to start investing in them

Tracker funds have been around for about half a century, providing investors with access to a range of assets without them having to make difficult and risky decisions.

Built to follow the fortunes of a given financial market index, trackers do not need management teams, which means they generally come with low charges. If you have a workplace pension, you probably already invested in one without realising it. If you want to start investing, you are likely to be directed towards a tracker fund.

Holistic care for incurably ill people has to include discussions about death and dying – but getting there is hard

It could be her usual generosity or disquiet, subtly disguised, but she leads by asking about “the kids”. Mine, not hers.

The question from a patient who has known me for years is a reminder that goodwill in medicine goes both ways. I scroll to a photo of my daughter, flanked by her brothers.

British-born, older men among those most likely to have disease found only postmortem, say researchers

One person a week dies with undiagnosed and therefore untreated tuberculosis in England, a study has found.

British-born, older men were among those most likely to have TB diagnosed only after death, researchers said, suggesting healthcare workers could be overlooking the possibility of the disease in these patients.

The hotter it gets, the faster our bodies lose water. Obviously, we need to replace it – but is anything better than plain H₂O? And does timing matter? Here’s what the science says

Hydration is important. In temperatures like those we’re increasingly seeing in much of the world, sweating can be the only way for our bodies to cool down, and our thirst isn’t always the best indicator of how much water we’ve lost or need. The consequences of not being sufficiently hydrated as temperatures creep towards the 40s can be severe, and can kick in much faster than most people realise. The good news is that remembering to drink plenty of water at regular intervals throughout the day will be enough for most people to avoid the worst. But if you’d like to understand why dehydration is so dangerous, whether you really need extra electrolytes, or if a cup of tea really can cool you down, read on.

To start with, it’s helpful to understand that our bodies are producing heat – and therefore losing water – all the time. “All the cells in our body are constantly using fuel for energy for various different processes, whether that’s movement or just staying alive,” says Dr Lewis James, a lecturer in sport, exercise and health sciences at Loughborough University. “About 75 to 80% of the energy that we use appears as heat.” If we didn’t have any way of dissipating this heat, then even lying on the couch would see your body temperature rise about 1.3C in a single hour (already enough to make you noticeably feverish) – but of course, we do. Normally, we lose a decent amount of heat through a combination of convection and radiation: the blood vessels in our skin dilate, allowing the blood to be cooled by the outside air. The problem is that when the external temperature goes up, this process becomes less effective and eventually stops working altogether. At this point, our main way of losing heat is through sweating: our bodies produce tiny droplets of warm water mixed with trace minerals, which (usually) evaporate on contact with the air, drawing heat away from the skin in the process. And as we rely more on sweating, it’s increasingly important to replace the fluids our bodies are losing.

Why do scary movies thrill some viewers and send others running for the hills? Our writer gets to the bottom of his fear of the genre – with the assistance of Freud, clinical researchers and his six-year-old self

I am six years old, and I am watching a man turn into a werewolf. The film is Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a 1948 comedy. I am staring up at our black-and-white TV fixated on the werewolf transformation unfolding in slow motion and I begin to scream so inconsolably that my parents must carry me upstairs to calm me down.

That night was the beginning of my lifelong fear of horror films and of the supernatural, of darkness and of being alone in a house.

This antioxidant may enhance the protection sunscreens provide, but it is no substitute for them

Sunscreen does two important jobs. It is largely used for its UVB protection benefits – blocking the rays that cause sunburn and are a major contributor to the development of skin cancer. But it also blocks UVA radiation, filtering out the rays that lead to signs of ageing.

Vitamin C does neither of these things, says Rosalind Simpson, a professor of dermatology at the University of Nottingham. That said, it is thought to help prevent sun damage in a different way.

Callum Turner wore one for three-day wedding to Dua Lipa, but the perennial favourite has never really gone away

If Dua Lipa’s Chanel wedding dress was among the most anticipated fashion moments this summer, her new husband Callum Turner’s wardrobe is proving just as influential. But forget the bespoke Louis Vuitton morning suit – it’s all about his polo shirts, which he wore in Palermo during the couple’s lengthy nuptials this month.

Turner’s polo of choice is a £75 terrycloth version by the French brand Octobre Editions, but he is far from the first to champion the preppy top that spans celebrity, sport and politics alike. During England’s first game at the World Cup against Croatia, the team’s manager, Thomas Tuchel, wore a merino wool polo shirt from Marks & Spencer. Pundits watching World Cup games – including Gary Neville and Patrick Vieira – were also wearing polos. For their post-match assessment of the Netherlands v Japan match, Roy Keane, Ange Postecoglou and Neville each wore a polo shirt in mint green, cream and beige respectively. And just last weekend, Andy Burnham appeared shortly after his Makerfield byelection win wearing a blue polo shirt with jeans and Birkenstocks.

As Andy Burnham stuck to his ‘cool dad’ look while the UK sweltered, many in the Paris fashion pack did the same

For many, dressing for an extreme heatwave means wearing as little as possible. But for some men, not even record-breaking temperatures can dissuade them from pulling on their favourite pair of jeans.

This week as temperatures in the UK rose sharply on the back of the climate crisis, Andy Burnham stuck to his tried and tested “cool dad” combination of dark jeans with a dark blue (not black as he pointed out to Kemi Badenoch) T-shirt as he made his way to London to be sworn in as MP for Makerfield.

Brollies are becoming year-round must-haves, as designers from Burberry to Blunt cater to people ducking out of the sun

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A bottle of water and a handheld fan are regularly deployed to keep cool while out and about in hot weather. With temperatures reaching record levels for June, though, a new heatwave accessory has emerged: the sunbrella.

On high streets around the country, people wielding umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun have become a common sight. On Thursday, as the Austrian Grand Prix declared a heat hazard, Lewis Hamilton was spotted in the paddock holding a Ferrari red umbrella that matched his race suit. And they’re popping up on catwalks, too. At the Dior show during Paris fashion week on Wednesday, guests including the actors James Marsden and Mike Faist were handed large cream umbrellas to help ease their discomfort as temperatures hit 38C.

From a less-crowded camino and the Slovenian Alps to a stunning river trail and Ireland’s remote Beara peninsula

Distance up to 74 miles
Duration 3-9 days

A landscape of forbidding peaks west of Bilbao plays host to an improbable world full of wild flowers, animals and resilient cheesemakers

Halfway across the first glacial depression, I leave the footpath to stand on a snow patch, disturbing a spider that runs off across the frozen crystals. A few yards farther along, the mountainside is awash with colour: tiny Alpine flowers alive with bees and crickets in a world surrounded by jagged peaks. A pair of chamois watch from a crag, then clatter off up an almost vertical face. Having stopped walking, I’m cooling down fast and put on a jacket. I am in Spain, I tell myself, during a European heatwave.

When I tear myself away from the wildlife, my hiking group are distant dots on a path that is snaking up a wall of rock. This is the Picos de Europa mountain range in northern Spain, a cluster of peaks rising to more than 2,500m and famed for the steepness of its slopes. I set off in pursuit, catching up with the group as they scramble over a ridge to find an unexpected view: a gun turret from a second world war aircraft carrier that is now a mountain refuge hut. (Cabin Verónica was cut from the USS Pulau in 1961 at a Bilbao breakers’ yard and dragged up here by mule.)

These traditional restaurants are the culinary backbone of this gastronomic capital, but finding the real deal means tackling offal – and red wine – for breakfast

I first went to a bouchon as a 20-year-old Erasmus student. I’d accidentally ended up spending a semester of my year abroad in the Auvergne countryside, which meant every weekend I’d thumb a ride to the nearest big city – Lyon. I didn’t know much about Lyon, except that it was famous for its food – in particular the hearty fare served up at these traditional restaurants with their red gingham tablecloths and chalkboard menus. So when I found myself eating stringy, overpriced beef muscle that cost more than my night at a hostel, I wondered what the hype was about.

But after nearly five years living in the city, I’ve now learned how to avoid the tourist traps (which largely line Vieux Lyon between souvenir shops selling fridge magnets and sweet shops). Historically, most bouchons weren’t in Lyon’s old town anyway, writes Yves Rouèche in Histoire(s) De La Gastronomie Lyonnaise, but in the neighbourhoods of Vaise, Croix-Rousse and La Guillotière, the gateways to the city in the Renaissance period where merchants and travellers stopped for the night.

From cliffside views of Lake Garda to post-hike saunas in Sweden, you share your most memorable walking trips

• Tell us about a cooler European coast – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

If you have a head for heights, then you can “walk with the gods” on the Sentiero degli Dei. It’s cut into the vertiginous hillside high above the Amalfi coast, offering heavenly views all the way to Capri and beyond. Ten breathtaking kilometres later, you’ll rejoin the earthly hordes of Instagrammers in the undeniably beautiful but crowded Positano. A super-convenient combined bus and ferry ticket from Travelmar takes you from any of the coastal towns to the start of the walk, in the lovely hamlet of Bomerano, in Agerola, and from Positano back to your base.
Brian

Slimmer, longer lasting and much easier to live with, new Oura sets a very high new bar for health-tracking wearables

Oura’s new Ring 5 is a massive upgrade for smart rings, dramatically shrinking in size and weight to bring them right into line with standard wedding bands and other jewellery. It is finally a smart ring you can genuinely forget you’re wearing.

The Ring 5 is a straight replacement for the popular Ring 4 and costs from £399 (€399/$399/$A649), though it requires a £5.99 (€5.99/$5.99/A$9.99) a month subscription to access anything but basic daily metrics. An Oura is not a cheap proposition.

Got a stick in a pot that you’re tempted to bin? All it needs is this little-known signal to flower again …

The problem
Most of us have bought an orchid, enjoyed its flowers, then been left with a couple of leaves and a bare spike. Many assume the show is over and bin it or leave it on the sill out of guilt, watering it occasionally while expecting nothing. There it sits, dormant, waiting for a signal most people never think to give.

The hack
Phalaenopsis orchids rebloom in response to a temperature drop. In their natural habitat, a cooler spell signals the change of season and triggers the plant to produce a new flower spike. Recreating that shift is the prompt most orchids are waiting for, and it’s simpler to do than you might think.

If you both agree on a date when you will either commit to one another or move on, you can avoid a drawn-out breakup or years of loveless coupledom – in theory

Name: The sunset stipulation.

Age: About six months.

She was the friendliest dog you can imagine – with an insatiable appetite for jeans, table legs and steering wheels. I will always miss that floppy-eared destroyer

Holly, my hyperactive mad hatter of a beagle, was a gift from my well-meaning sister. She was born into a beagle pack who were kennelled in a dog food factory in the Irish town of Edgeworthstown in County Longford. She bounded into my life one sunny evening, a bouncing, dribbling, velvet-eared bundle of puppy energy.

From the moment I laid eyes on her, it felt as if we were meant for each other. She quickly figured out that I was a softie, with an abundance of patience and access to her food.

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.

Since 2017, Iason Gabriel has worked at the tech giant, trying to anticipate – and think through – the impact of AI. But as commercial and geopolitical pressures escalate, can ethicists make any difference?

In 2017, a 33-year-old political philosopher named Iason Gabriel was told by a friend that he ought to apply for a job at DeepMind, the London-based subsidiary of Google where much of its AI research was concentrated. The suggestion was not an obvious one.

Gabriel was a cheerful but intense junior academic with a passion for Vipassana meditation and what his brother calls “enthusiastic” rock climbing. The eldest son of a Greek management professor and a British documentary maker, Gabriel split his time between teaching and international development work. At the University of Oxford, where he was a fellow at St John’s College, Gabriel taught courses on political theory and wrote papers on the moral contortions of “yuppie ethics” and the ethical blind spots of effective altruism. When he wasn’t there, he did crisis work for the United Nations Development Programme in Sudan and Lebanon.

In the second of a series on nationalisation, we look at the lessons from Clement Attlee’s administration

• Will Andy Burnham ‘go big’ in expanding the role of the state?

A prime minister with ambitious plans for state ownership. Private companies that put profits before investment. A country struggling with onerous debts.

The UK in 2026 with a new prime minister weighing up how and what price public utilities can be nationalised? No, this was Clement Attlee’s government in 1945, committed to taking over the commanding heights of the economy at a time when the country was on its uppers.

The actor’s sophisticated sense of humour and natural ability to make everyone laugh were there long before her famous sitcom roles
A life in pictures
Penelope Keith: the most spectacular sitcom snob ever to grace our screens

Penelope Keith, who has died aged 86, became justly famous for displaying a classy hauteur laced with mischief in TV sitcoms such as The Good Life and To the Manor Born. But I can vouch for the fact that something of that quality, honed by a sophisticated comic technique, lay within Penny herself. I first met her when I worked at Lincoln Theatre Royal, where she was a member of the company, in the early 1960s. I vividly recall her surveying a voluminous exhibition of paintings by a local artist in the theatre foyer, magisterially commenting: “Busy lady!” and sweeping out. Such style and assurance in a 23-year-old was rare.

The mischief was also there from the start. A year or so later I found Penny doing small parts at the RSC where she gained a certain notoriety even as one of the crowd in Julius Caesar: when Mark Antony had urged the citizens to lend him their ears, her voice had been heard to pierce that of the throng with a cry of “Ave an ear then.” She was clearly destined for bigger things and indeed starred as an acid-tongued murderee in the first play I ever reviewed for the Guardian, Francis Durbridge’s Suddenly at Home, in 1971.

Burnham announced that as UK prime minister he would set up a ‘No 10 North’ in Manchester to oversee a devolution of power and resources across the UK

Andy Burnham’s tenure as mayor of Manchester has come to an end after nine years. But after his Makerfield byelection victory, the PM-in-waiting plans to maintain his links with the city by setting up a “No 10 North” in Manchester to oversee a devolution of power and resources across the UK.

Burnham has asked Caroline Simpson, the chief executive of the Greater Manchester combined authority, to lead the new No 10 North and help put his vision of “Manchesterism” into practice.

We would like to hear from Cape Verdeans in the UK and across the globe on the team’s progress in the tournament

Cape Verde is enjoying a fairytale World Cup, with their performance becoming the story of the tournament.

There was the shock 0-0 draw with Spain in their tournament debut. Then on Sunday, there was another when they drew 2-2 with two-time champions Uruguay in Miami. After drawing 0-0 with Saudi Arabia in Houston, they have reached the round of 32.

We’d like to hear from people in the UK about their experiences of trying to buy or sell a flat in recent months. Have there been any issues?

Getting on the property ladder is an achievement in Britain but for some flat-owners the home-ownership dream has turned sour.

High service charges, fire safety issues, and onerous leasehold conditions are among the issues that have affected flat valuations over the past decade. There are reports of owners, particularly in London, currently selling at a loss.

Our wildlife series Young Country Diary is looking for articles written by children, about their summer encounters with nature

Once again, the Young Country Diary series is open for submissions! Every three months we ask you to send us an article written by a child aged 8-14.

The article needs to be about a recent encounter they’ve had with nature – whether it’s a nesting bird, a beetle on the move, a field full of flowers.

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