Modern lifestyles seem to be exacerbating the problem of bromhidrosis – an underresearched condition that is widely misunderstood and devastating for sufferers

If Hayat goes out to eat, she’ll choose a table far away from other diners, ideally by a door or open window. She likewise tries to avoid people at the cinema or on planes, even if it means paying extra – whatever it takes to avoid being too close to others.

She chalks it up to a persistent past insecurity. “I still have that paranoia … It’s just in my head, because of everything I went through.”

Toor’s electrifying pictures have made him a global star – and he’s even painted Zohran Mamdani. As the artist hits London’s prestigious Courtauld Gallery, he talks about Manet, mullahs and the mayor

In Salman Toor’s paintings, queer south Asian men hang out in bars, twerk at trippy gatherings and lose themselves in phone screens. Sometimes they huddle in the back of taxis or pillow-fight on beds. In one portrait, a brown man stares apprehensively while facing customs officials. For the 43-year-old Pakistani American artist, it’s crucial that these figures take centre stage, after years of being demonised and erased.

“It excites me that the cuteness and sexiness of brown protagonists can become familiar,” says Toor when we meet at his sun-drenched Brooklyn studio, a few weeks before his first solo show in Europe. “Their stories are not a gay side story in a family saga. It’s the main story. And everyone else is in the background.”

The problem is not famous people speaking out, as they always have. It is the feeling that leaders have failed, obliging celebrities to fill the vacuum

Every time a public figure in entertainment speaks up about politics in a way deemed “controversial”, it is as if it’s the first time that has ever happened. The outrage is fresh; critics rediscover and announce, as if they have just captured an elusive, profound notion, that art should be separate from politics. A form of disciplining is dispensed. Please, Mr or Miss Moneybags, with your preening notions that you have anything intelligent or informed to say about immigration policy or Palestine. Stick to football. Stick to pop music. Stick to acting. Stick to children’s shows.

Even at a time when a political moment has engulfed everything, this response continues to be born again, without regard for history or ability to confront rupture. The horror of Gaza has broken the art world, roiled Hollywood, fractured literary institutions. And still, as Ed Sheeran stands alone on stage following the withdrawal of all his support acts (in solidarity with Macklemore, who was removed from the tour due to a pro-Palestinian speech), he told his audience that he wants his music to be “about unity, not division”. The speed at which his tour unravelled is not evidence of the incompatibility of music and politics, necessitating that they remain separate to avoid that “division”. It is a study in how it is becoming increasingly unnatural to separate them.

The latest in our ongoing series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort films remembers a 1987 teenage girl classic

There is probably a Swedish word for the emotional state engendered in me by Dirty Dancing. A kind of turbo-nostalgia which blends solace, joy and a sense of continuity with a yearning so acute I can feel it in my ribs.

I must have been around 12 years old when I first watched Baby (Jennifer Grey) and Johnny (Patrick Swayze) fall in love while bumping pelvises as dance partners (before Strictly Come Dancing, this trajectory felt more surprising.)

Intensified by this year’s super El Niño, fires in Borneo and Sumatra are emitting toxic air for swathes of the population in Indonesia and its neighbours

For months, parts of Indonesia’s Borneo and Sumatra islands have been ablaze. The fires are sometimes lit illegally as a cheap way to clear land for plantations of oil palm, of which Indonesia is the world’s largest producer.

So prevalent is the technique that it even has a special term: slash and burn.

Finland, Sweden and Norway modernise underground infrastructure as Russia’s war in Ukraine revives fears of conflict on their soil

Across Finland, Sweden and Norway, cold war bunkers are being given a new lease of life as Russia’s war in Ukraine revives fears of conflict in northern Europe.

In the three countries, the work brings together multiple eras. The traces of the second world war and the cold war now coexist with contemporary infrastructures, revealing how these societies have adapted their protective measures over the decades.

The underground levels of a hotel in Helsinki.

After a plane journey in shackles, an Iranian woman found herself in the middle of Africa in a country she did not know existed. She is one of thousands deported from the US on the back of shadowy deals made with dozens of countries. An in-depth investigation reveals the ‘show of force’ costing American taxpayers millions

No one would tell the shackled detainees onboard the US immigration plane where they were going. The officers in charge would taunt them when they asked, they said. It was only when the seat-back video screens finally showed a map that the 18 migrants worked it out.

Children born after 2025 will experience three more years of brutally fire-conducive weather as global heating intensifies

European babies will face almost twice as much extreme fire weather as their great-grandparents if climate action does not ramp up quickly, a study has found.

Global heating under current policies will expose a child born in Europe in 2025 to three more years of brutally fire-conducive weather over their lifetime than someone born in 1950, the researchers found.

School leaders’ union says new system is worse than one it replaced and has left members feeling overwhelmed

Headteachers in England want Ofsted to stop grading their schools, saying its new inspection regime is harming their mental health and creating greater stress than the system it was designed to replace.

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said it has given the education secretary, Lucy Powell, “countless examples” of the damaging effects on its members since the new inspection framework was introduced a year ago.

Exclusive: Government warned ‘skills revolution’ at risk amid slow start to project with target of 30,000 starts by end of parliament

Labour has been warned its “skills revolution” to tackle youth unemployment risks failure, after its flagship apprenticeship scheme enrolled only 160 young people in its first eight months.

The shortfall, highlighted in a report by the Fabian Society, leaves the government well off track of achieving its ambition of 30,000 “foundation apprenticeship” starts by the end of this parliament.

Lib Dem leader says he is proud of party’s record at Brighton conference

Kemi Badenoch has pledged to bring back tax-free shopping for tourists by reversing a post-Brexit rule change, the Press Association reports. PA says:

The decision to scrap the VAT refund scheme for international visitors in 2021 left the UK “less competitive” than many other European destinations as the country left the EU, the Tories said.

Badenoch, who personally announced the abolition of the VAT refund scheme when she was a Treasury minister in 2020, said retailers were being “let down by a policy that is driving their customers away.”

The Tories have pulled off a spectacular U-turn. Kemi Badenoch used to say tax-free shopping was a costly giveaway and now she’s trying to sell it as an economic miracle.

If they really think it’s such a great idea, they should explain why they scrapped it in the first place and how they’d pay for bringing it back.

The UK is one of the most-visited countries in the world with international tourism driving billions into our economy. We are supporting the continued growth of this industry and the government is working to meet our ambition to welcome 50 million international visitors a year to the UK by 2030.

Visitors can still claim VAT relief where the items purchased are shipped directly to their home country as exports.

Yes. Yesterday I talked about the need to have a temporary tax cut in fuel duty because people are paying a huge amount of the pumps, and we showed how we could pay for it. I’m showing through our growth strategy how we can pay for more tax cuts.

UK transport secretary Heidi Alexander warns ‘there may be some delays as things reset’

The UK transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, has just said that the technical issue at Prestwick Centre has been fixed – but warned there could be “some delays as things reset”.

She said on X:

There has been a further IT issue affecting @NATS.

Engineers have fixed the problem and systems are resuming.

Funding boost for facilities and fixed dates for trials designed to encourage more survivors to come forward

Specialist courtrooms prioritising cases of rape and other serious sex offences are to be introduced across England and Wales, with campaigners welcoming the move as potentially transformative.

The changes, designed to encourage more survivors to come forward, will include the provision of private entrances and waiting rooms, and facilities equipped for recording evidence in advance and observing sentencing remotely.

Jensen Huang dismisses warnings from former Anthropic researcher and others as ‘doomsday narratives’

• Business live – latest updates

The boss of the chipmaker Nvidia has said AI will not develop to a point that will lead to the extinction of the human race within a few years, rejecting such assertions as overblown “doomsday narratives”.

Jensen Huang, the co-founder and chief executive of the $5tn AI chipmaker, said the claims made on social media by the former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon that AI could become “superhuman” and kill off humanity within the decade was “irresponsible”.

Study finds overall differences between groups of newborns by sex that are likely to be determined by biology

The question dates back to the first man and woman: how does the world shape the behaviour of the sexes, and what differences, if any, are present at birth?

Untangling the contributions of nature versus nurture has proved challenging for scientists, and controversial at times, but a new study of babies sheds light on at least one aspect of the puzzle.

Guardian investigation reveals fossil fuel links of IPCC authors, with experts declaring the body’s conflict of interest policy ‘not fit for purpose’

On her first day as an expert author on the world’s most important climate reports, Prof Julia Steinberger knew nobody else, so she sat down at a stranger’s table for breakfast.

“Hi, I’m Julia. I’m from the University of Lausanne,” she said. The man across the table replied: “I’m Mustafa Babiker. I work with Saudi Aramco.”

While world leaders prepare for annual UN gathering, shifts in the global order continue in the face of a disruptive American president

In the event of a midterms election battering, it is possible that a deflated Donald Trump, constrained by a Democrat-controlled Congress, will gradually have to face up to the indignity of irrelevance.

While continuing to sign off Truth Social posts with his usual, “Thank you for your attention to this matter”, no one will actually be paying much attention. His meandering press conferences will no longer be carried live by TV networks. The Republican party will move on to the question of his successor. Trump could announce he had changed the name of the Champs-Élysées to Sunset Boulevard and even Google Maps will stifle a yawn. He would become that most pitied of political animals, the lame duck.

While global billionaires and multinational companies have been lured to its shores, many islanders feel left behind and priced out, with food bank use increasing

On a late Friday afternoon on the Channel Island of Jersey, tourists and locals are flocking to St Helier’s waterfront where the town’s sprawling beach has emerged at low tide.

In one direction, they face the calm waters of St Aubin’s Bay, ringed by a seaside promenade and punctuated with a tidal island hosting the 16th century Elizabeth Castle.

Whether its a nod to frontline Covid heroes or a return to biology in a world of digital noise, there’s a rich vein of new films featuring organ deliveries, including Runner and the latest Resident Evil

Hollywood loves a ticking clock – especially when there’s a delivery involved. For decades, dangerous cargo has been entrusted to certain types of action hero: spies, soldiers, hitmen, Jason Statham.

Lately, however, Hollywood seems interested in a different kind of hero – not to mention a different kind of cargo. Forget your nuclear launch codes, stolen diamonds and mysterious briefcases, for human organs are the new MacGuffins du jour, and the medical professionals charged with getting them to the ICU have become unlikely action heroes.

When my husband and I adopted her, Bud had to go on a strict diet. Thankfully, she got healthy and became the diva everyone loves today

Bud came into my life at the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020. I work at RSPCA Norwich as head of animal welfare and, when we all had to work from home, I offered to foster Bud, a blue-fronted amazon parrot. My husband and I thought it would be a short-term thing, but by the time the pandemic had settled down we had really bonded with her, so she never left.

Back then, Bud had a crisp addiction and was too overweight to fly. She was about 200g heavier than a parrot should be. We had to put her on a strict diet because she had some health concerns – we found a lipoma, a fatty lump, on her keel bone (which runs down from the breast); it doesn’t bother her, but we still have to monitor it. Thankfully, she has lost weight; her feathers are all better quality and she loves her life.

In the UK, 18 million people are hard of hearing – yet there is no dedicated centre for the Deaf community. Now urban planner and activist Amanprit Arnold has made it her mission

Meeting outdoors became second nature for most of us over this long, hot summer, but Amanprit Arnold doesn’t get the luxury of choice. She’s sitting at a terrace table when we meet at a cafe because she’s a member of the Deaf community (Deaf with a capital D denotes membership of a unique cultural and linguistic minority).

“Nowhere in London is specifically designed for me,” says Arnold, who was born deaf and used hearing aids before getting cochlear implants at 21. “Inside a cafe, the acoustics can be so bad. It’s much easier for me to hear out here.”

In When America Roared, Pulitzer-winning reporter Jonathan Kaufman looks back to a decade of greed and excess, and uses it to explore where we are today

Donald Trump is “so much a creature of the 80s but even in the 80s, everyone made fun of him,” Jonathan Kaufman said. General Electric CEO Jack Welch, “the most prominent business figure in the country, maybe in the world, mocked him. No one took him seriously.

“Even today, if you look at the [White House] ballroom, you look at all the things he’s doing, it’s this 1980s aesthetic, right? You can just see the way he looks at the world: the glitz, the cheapness, the gold brocade everywhere. That screams 1980s. All he needs is big hair and leg warmers and listening to, I don’t know, synthetic pop, and he’d be right back in 1985.”

Arthur Plummer got a bike when he retired at 65 and joined a cycling club as one of its youngest members. Now he is its oldest but still racking up 5,000km every year

When Arthur Plummer retired at 65, he bought a secondhand bicycle. His sister was a member of a cycling club for seniors in the Canadian city of Waterloo, Ontario, where they lived, and Plummer joined, too, becoming one of the club’s youngest members. Now he is 92 and its oldest member – but he still cycles thousands of kilometres every year. His odometer for this year so far reads 4,270km (2,650 miles). After our conversation, he intends to cycle another 40km.

“I love cycling,” he says. “Wherever I go, even if I ride on the same roads, there’s something new happening. When I get on my bike, I feel great. I come home at about 3pm and I feel exhausted. However, it’s the nicest feeling. It’s exhilarating, and it’s resulted in me being extremely healthy.”

Stephanie Cole, star of television, radio and stage, has died. Here are her career highlights, from Doc Martin to Coronation Street

• Stephanie Cole, Coronation Street and Open All Hours actor, dies aged 84
  

War, AI disruption and markets in turmoil: the warnings are all there. But lessons from the 2008 crash could help us

There are obvious reasons why the UK flops and flops again, but that isn’t the point. This annual debacle is now part of our national identity

Given that Britain’s politics are quite a sizeable reason that we do so badly in Eurovision: here’s something that will definitely, absolutely, categorically help us do better in the competition … interference from MPs.

Digital, culture, media and sport committee chair Caroline Dinenage has announced that MPs will scrutinise the UK’s reliable failure in the competition to see where we’re going wrong, with a hearing to be held over the coming months. The answers surely don’t take that long to work out.

Trump’s mess has rekindled Yemen’s civil war and a years-long conflict between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia

When the US and Israel launched a war of aggression against Iran in late February, Tehran’s allies in the Middle East jumped into the fray. Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia fired rockets at Israel, while Shia militias in Iraq attacked US bases and diplomatic outposts. But the Houthis, who control large parts of Yemen, mostly stayed on the sidelines.

Over the past few weeks, however, the Houthis have changed their tactics and have entered the conflict in full force. They led a rapid advance along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, seizing a strategic port city and several islands that gave the militia control over the Bab al-Mandab strait, a vital waterway for energy shipments and other global trade. Thanks to Donald Trump’s war, Iran and its allies now dominate the Middle East’s two major regional energy chokepoints: Bab al-Mandab and the strait of Hormuz.

Humans have always been capable of transcending the lock box of daily life with little more technology at their side than wood, string, a baton and their voices

At this fundamentally exhausting moment in human history, we find ourselves slap bang in the middle of a progress arms race, where everything – literally everything – is posed as perfectable.

That’s not just thanks to the AI industry, though its acolytes shout the loudest when they tell us that their plagiarism robots can help us blast through life more efficiently. Somehow, the myth of endlessly optimisable production has infiltrated every part of our lives.

Nigel Farage’s tactics are to play up the anxiety and resentment that people feel. Labour’s job is simple: to offer hope and change

Despite the energised start Andy Burnham has made as prime minister, plenty of his party’s MPs and hardcore activists are still haunted by a familiar sense of insecurity. Underpinned by a political version of impostor syndrome, it runs deep – and, bar the odd spell of Labour optimism, it always has. So it is with the battle between Labour and Reform UK that will define an election that could arrive much sooner than some people think, and a widely held ambivalence on the left about the possibility of Nigel Farage’s party taking power. Reform is apparently in deep trouble, yet also still in with a serious chance. How come?

Investigations into the party and its leadership’s finances by both the Metropolitan police and parliament’s standards commissioner may worsen Reform’s woes. Those investigations predate the two recently announced £36m donations from the crypto tycoons Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo, which themselves risk being backdatedly ruled illegal and are reportedly already being spent on 400 “field agents”. The two mega-donations symbolise two connected stories. One is about the possible buyout of our fragile democracy. The other centres on how, from much of the public’s perspective, all the allegations about Farage and his party might have already turned into an indecipherable blizzard. So, although Reform is down, it is still far from out.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

Until now I’d never realised how much work is involved in sorting out a parent’s affairs, and how much heartbreak

In all the talk of the five stages of grief, I don’t recall one of them being spending hours on hold to energy suppliers. Perhaps I misunderstood, though, and that’s entirely what they’re about. This call won’t take long (denial); aargh, are they ever going to answer? (anger); if I hang on for five minutes more, they’ll definitely pick up (bargaining); they are never, ever going to pick up (depression); and I live on hold now – this is my life (acceptance).

You hear the term “sadmin” bandied about, you understand there’s paperwork to do after somebody dies – but until it’s you who has to do it, you don’t realise how much, what it entails or how encompassing it is. My mum’s death has basically become my full-time job. The hours are terrible, the pay is worse and the promotion prospects sobering, to say the least.

As the organisation meets this week, it remains the best hope for restoring order. But it relies on goodwill from the US president – and that is lacking

If all goes to plan, at some stage in the coming weeks 15 diplomats will emerge from a small sound-proofed room deep in the bowels of the United Nations headquarters in New York and announce the organisation’s next secretary-general.

The person they choose will face a combination of challenges unlike any that their predecessors have had to deal with. Two of the security council’s permanent members, the US and Russia, are engaged in wars of choice that have no end in sight. A UN commission of inquiry has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, but the UN has effectively been reduced to the role of bystander, pushed out by Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. The climate crisis is creating a cascade of new humanitarian disasters, while every day now seems to bring a new security threat caused by the unregulated rise of AI.

Steve Bloomfield is the former international editor of the Observer and a previous winner of the Orwell prize

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.

OpenAI claims its agents have solved the Navier-Stokes problem. But questions remain about how useful and independent its work really is

On 8 September, OpenAI claimed that its AI agents had solved the Navier-Stokes problem, one of the most famous and difficult challenges in mathematics. Had a human solved it, they would have collected both prize money and plaudits from their fellows. The announcement instead ignited what some mathematicians have called an “existential crisis” in their field over the power of AI, and accusations that OpenAI misused human work.

The maths behind Navier-Stokes is difficult to understand, but the critiques levelled by mathematicians will be familiar to artists, office workers, or anyone else concerned about AI. OpenAI’s results, like any arising from a large language model, depend on digesting work by human mathematicians. The OpenAI paper cites sources, but many believe the company didn’t give sufficient credit, especially to several mathematicians believed to be very close to a solution – bad form that erases human ingenuity and hogs all the glory. The mathematician Tristan Buckmaster also has concerns that work he was doing on Navier-Stokes using OpenAI’s Codex model was seen by the OpenAI team. OpenAI has denied directly accessing this material, but could not rule out that data from Buckmaster’s use of their products “helped improve our model”.

The compelling documentary series is drawing to a close. But following people from childhood raises difficult ethical questions

In 1963, a television crew documented the lives of 14 children. Michael Apted, then a young researcher, saw Seven Up! as an opportunity to expose the British class system, juxtaposing public schoolboys with counterparts from children’s homes and council estates. Seven years later, Apted returned to direct an update – then went back again, and again. For the most part, his subjects followed the socioeconomic paths one might have predicted. But what emerged over the decades was much more piercing and poignant than initially envisaged. It turned out – as its participants have noted – that the programme was as much about life itself as class.

The final instalment, 70 Up, currently being shown in two parts on ITV, is extraordinarily moving. We know that the children we see in the original footage will struggle with divorce, bereavement, depression, homelessness, redundancy and ill-health. Two of the original participants, and Apted himself, have died; Nick Hitchon, the boy from a Yorkshire farm who became an expert in nuclear fusion, gave a final interview days before his death. Yet these closing episodes, directed by Asif Kapadia, also capture deep joys such as parenthood, and the satisfaction of the self-knowledge they have earned. There are no simple arcs of redemption or tragedy, but something more muddled and nuanced.

Readers respond to William Pettigrew’s article about the lasting significance of the slave trade to Britain’s politics, economy, institutions and culture

William Pettigrew’s book, Britain’s Slave Traders: A Forgotten History, adds a further dimension and depth to our understanding of how entrenched and significant Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade was. The landmark University College London’s Legacies of British Slavery project previously documented the “compensation” payments to 46,000 persons who, at the time of its abolition in 1834, had a financial interest in slave ownership – the £20m paid out is generally reckoned to be worth around £17bn at 2019 prices, or 40% of total government expenditure in 1834 – a vast national debt that was only fully amortised in 2015.

The earlier study thus highlighted the extensive involvement of sections of the British public in profiting from slavery, and the further financial benefit from “compensation”. The recent study tracks back into the prior history from the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade through the 18th century, and shows how its tentacles throughout that time reached out deep into the economy and society. The economic impact over this whole period should not be underestimated. As Pettigrew observes (Slavery was not a footnote to British history. It helped shape the nation, 14 September), the slave trade provided some of the seed funding for the Industrial Revolution. The flow of income back from the Caribbean sugar plantations provided capital surpluses to fund new industries, through an expanded banking system, not to mention personal wealth. Defending these assets in turn stimulated the growth of the British navy, and its eventual control of the seas.

Readers reflect on an article which explored whether we should be cleaning ourselves twice

With reference to your article about the merits, or not, of double cleansing (Double cleansing: should we really be cleaning ourselves twice in each shower?, 15 September), I wish to report that I shower once a week, while in between times wash daily with soap, flannel and a bowl of water (which then flushes the loo). I do this because I am deeply concerned at our misuse of the planet’s resources. We currently use fresh water at a faster rate globally than it can be replenished. Here in the UK, it is predicted that by 2055 we will have a 5bn litre a day shortfall for public water supplies – with a further 1bn litre a day deficit for the wider economy. My skin is perfectly healthy and I don’t smell anything other than naturally human.
Judith Russenberger
London

• All right, so I am a man, and I suspect that this piece is aimed at women, but do we really need all this? It is now nearly 10 years that I have not used any body wash or hair shampoo. My showers last no more than two or three minutes: any more is a waste of hot water. The run-off from these “cleansers” is not environmentally friendly.

The actor Cheryl Hall certainly made an impression as a Kent county councillor when I served with her as a Labour member. After her first win for the party in Ramsgate South in 1993, she held the seat in 1997, while on the same day standing unsuccessfully as the Labour parliamentary candidate for Canterbury.

She deployed her acting skills to make her points forcibly on a NOC (no overall control) council run by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, specialising in the arts and culture. Indeed, her approach to debate was no holds barred for an old-fashioned council that had probably long needed a shake-up.

There should be provision for people who find themselves out of work when they approach state pension age, writes Peter Wade

I am now in my 61st year, haven’t worked for more than two years and have stopped applying for jobs (‘I feel invisible’: over-50s reveal harsh realities of trying to get a job, 17 September). The bulk of my career was as an advice worker, specialising in debt, housing and energy advice.

Some years ago I worked with a client in her late 50s who had been a hospital cleaner. She had expected to retire earlier, but the changes to women’s state pension age meant that she faced several more years before retirement. She could no longer do the physical work of cleaning, yet starting a new career while managing her physical health seemed a daunting prospect. At the time I was looking at this situation from the other side of the desk. Now my perspective is rather different.

Liverpool look stronger at the back, youngsters shine for Brighton and Brentford, and James Trafford makes his England case with Leeds

• Premier League table | Top scorers

In the week that 16-year-old Max Dowman has been thrust into the spotlight, it was another teenager who gave us a glimpse of the future in Brighton’s impressive win over Arsenal. Charalampos Kostoulas – nicknamed ‘Babis’ in his homeland, in homage to former Argentina striker Gabriel Batistuta – has already started twice as many Premier League games as he did in his first season in English football, when he was a backup for Danny Welbeck. The 19-year-old repaid Fabian Hürzeler’s faith in him against the reigning champions. Despite his tender years, Kostoulas already possesses the physical attributes to mix it with the best. He caused Gabriel Magalhães and company problems all afternoon, capping it off with a brilliant goal from 25 yards, his third in eight days. “We always knew that he’s capable of scoring goals out of nowhere,” said Hürzeler. “He just has this intrinsic motivation of really improving every day. He gets more and more professional, he understands the demands from the Premier League more, he understands our demands.” Ed Aarons

Match report: Brighton 3-0 Arsenal

Match report: Bournemouth 0-1 Liverpool

Match report: Fulham 1-1 Manchester United

Match report: Leeds 0-0 Crystal Palace

From F1 feuds to tennis’s soap opera love triangle, we run through half a dozen rivalries that have defined (not so) sporting culture

A boxing rivalry so intense that their sons got to copycat it 35 years later, yet the original is simply the best. That the preening, poetry-spouting, monocle-sporting, Jodhpur-wearing Eubank would irritate the rough-and-ready ex-squaddie Benn was hardly surprising. But the depth of the animosity was remarkable.

Carrick’s side were short on inspiration, despite the summer spend in midfield, and the lack of quality in the final third was stark

One of the more damning aspects of Manchester United’s tortured rebuild is their inability to multitask. So much money has been frittered away, pushing United into the ridiculous position of going one position at a time each summer. Last year was all about the attack and the recent window was about central midfield, even though the options at full-back do not look strong enough to cope with a season back in the Champions League.

United remain a listless, drifting operation. The ownership is reviled and the fanbase is becoming increasingly mutinous. It was not just Gary Neville seeing red as he commentated on United’s dismal efforts away to winless Fulham. There was an ominous shift in the mood in the away end at Craven Cottage, summed up by the boos that greeted Michael Carrick substituting Kobbie Mainoo with 10 minutes to go.

The Chargers star is huge, can run and has a golden right arm. But he has never quite reached the heights many expected for him

Justin Herbert is one of the most promising quarterbacks in the NFL. In fact, Justin Herbert has forever been one of the most promising quarterbacks in the NFL. That adjective, “promising,” continued to be load-bearing on Sunday, as Herbert and his Chargers turned in an underwhelming performance in a 26-14 loss to the Raiders. Los Angeles are now 0-2 on the year, with those losses coming to the team that just picked No 1 in the draft and a moribund Arizona who picked No 3. Stockholders in Herbert’s growth were taking a beating in after-hours trading. But, as ever, there’s plenty of reason to debate whether Herbert underachieved or whether his team let him down.

Herbert is 6ft 6in, can run, has a golden right arm and is capable of making astonishing throws. NFL decision-makers view him as roughly the sixth-best QB in the league but also say things like, “He should have more accolades at this point.” Certainly, he should have more wins this season, but on Sunday the 28-year-old found himself outdueled by one of the league’s senior citizens in Vegas quarterback Kirk Cousins, who is 10 years his senior. Herbert completed 15 of 27 passes for a touchdown and two interceptions, and he also took three sacks. Cousins threw a pick and took two sacks but was much more efficient from down to down (8.7 yards per attempt to Herbert’s 7.1), and the Chargers offense mostly sputtered. In 13 possessions, Los Angeles put together two long touchdown drives and otherwise didn’t march more than 30 yards in a series.

Our photographer, Tom Jenkins, captures the colour and razzmatazz as college football arrived in the capital, hot on the heels of successful NFL outings in recent years

Rarely has Wembley Way seen or heard such a commotion. The famous 500-yard long concourse leading to the national (association) football stadium in London played host to a sea of raucous American football fans on Saturday, as they gathered to mark the first ever top-tier college football game on British turf.

Pundits from Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff Show were broadcasting live from outside the venue – a curious spectacle in which the hosts even ate fish and chips in front of a fake Grenadier guard – as thousands of supporters around them waved placards and chanted college anthems. It fuelled a tailgate party atmosphere that wouldn’t have felt out of place in the States.

Above: Pundits for the Fox Big Noon Kickoff Show discuss the game with both head coaches in a temporary studio built on Wembley Way. Below: Brady Quinn, Mark Ingram II, Matt Leinart and Urban Meyer eating fish and chips as they present the show, while fans wave placards. Click on the images to reveal individual photo captions.

Chinese swimmer Yu Zidi wins the first major title of her young career – but says her performance was ‘only so-so’

The 13-year-old Chinese swimmer Yu Zidi set an Asian Games record as she scorched to gold on Sunday’s first full day of competition.

The schoolgirl, who turns 14 next month, took the women’s 200m butterfly crown in a Games-record 2min 05.08sec.

• Remco Evenepoel dominates men’s event in Montreal

• Marlen Reusser denies Zoe Backstedt in women’s race

Remco Evenepoel etched his name into the history books with a dominant fourth successive men’s world time-trial victory in Montreal on Sunday.

The 2024 Olympic champion came into the race as the overwhelming favourite and he did not disappoint. Evenepoel was already more than 30 seconds ahead of the rest by the second intermediate time check, just over halfway along the 39.2km (24.4 mile) route.

• World No 294 lets victory slip in agonising fashion

• JJ Spaun triumphs by two shots at Wentworth

We will come to JJ Spaun and Jeremy Clarkson later. Only those without an ounce of compassion in their body could feel no sympathy for Manuel Elvira. The Spaniard, without a professional win to his name, stood on the 18th fairway at Wentworth’s West Course with one of golf’s most extraordinary stories in his grasp. Having just eagled the 71st hole and found the short grass on the friendly par five, the 30-year-old who began tournament week as the world’s 294th ranked player knew a birdie would seal the PGA Championship title. A par would force Spaun into a playoff.

What happened next was a form of sporting torture rather than the realisation of a fairytale. Elvira pulled his layup into a bunker, flew the green, fluffed a chip into another sand trap and missed a bogey putt from 4ft. He did exceptionally well not to burst into tears. The disastrous 18th meant Elvira finished in a four-way tie for second place. Even Spaun, a winner on his Wentworth debut, had to be bashful at the manner of success.

• McCullum: Brook has ‘grown as captain and person’

• England begin ODI series against Sri Lanka this week

England’s white-ball coach, Brendon McCullum, was full of praise for the captain, Harry Brook, after Saturday’s eight-wicket victory over Sri Lanka completed a T20 series whitewash and took the side to No 1 in the world.

Brook, player of the T20 series against Sri Lanka, has now won 23 of his 26 completed games as captain. If he is not yet considered a suitable candidate as Test leader, the cap fits nicely in the smash and grab format.

CDU suffered heavy losses in two regional elections, including in home state of former leader Angela Merkel, where it polled just 4.9%

EU senior diplomats will resume talks later today on maintaining sanctions against nearly 3,000 Russian individuals and companies, with the issue deadlocked over the status of tycoon Alisher Usmanov.

The EU last week agreed a one-week extension to stop the sanctions expiring, after France joined Slovakia in pushing for Usmanov to be removed from the list.

Two leaders meet in French territory off Canada as Ottawa seeks stronger relations with EU while fighting trade war with US

The leaders of France and Canada have pledged closer ties to grapple with rising geopolitical tensions, climate change and the erosion of democratic values, after ⁠they met in a ⁠French territory off Canada’s Atlantic coast.

The two leaders’ visit to Saint-Pierre ​and Miquelon – the first by a French president since 2014 and the first by a Canadian prime minister – came just weeks ⁠after Donald Trump posted an image showing the islands, as well as all of Canada and other countries in North America, covered by the US flag.

PM hopes to be firmer with US leader than his predecessor without provoking diplomatic warfare, as the Iran war weighs on the UK economy

No international relationship has more power to determine the success of Andy Burnham’s premiership. So you might imagine the stakes for the prime minister’s first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump on Tuesday would be high.

Yet Burnham may prove to be a lucky general. The balance of risk has shifted. Trump is unpopular at home, where inflation remains high, and is mired in an intractable conflict in Iran that has the potential to sink his midterm dreams.

In a 60 Minutes interview, ex-husband describes moments leading to the 2023 killings

In his first televised interview, Patrick Clancy, the ex-husband of Lindsay Clancy, described the moments leading up to the 2023 killings of their children and how he coped in the aftermath.

Patrick Clancy responded to online criticism and conspiracy theories from people who supported Lindsay Clancy and believed he did not provide enough care to his wife at the time.

Tensions grow as Trump tells Fox News he is considering ‘wiping Iran out’ after attacks on Riyadh by Houthi rebels

Governments across the Middle East are bracing for an escalation of violence after Iran claimed it had received intelligence that the US was preparing for a renewed bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic.

In a potential sign of growing tensions before the UN general assembly in New York this week, Donald Trump cut short a weekend visit to the Camp David presidential retreat on Sunday with no official explanation, and a new security alert was issued by the state department to all US citizens in the Middle East.

Exclusive: The tax-funded research aims to protect British wildlife from the human-caused climate crisis

Vaccines for ash trees, skin treatments for newts and gene-edited swallowtail butterflies are among 14 tax-funded projects from the UK’s “invention agency” aiming to accelerate nature’s ability to adapt to the climate crisis.

The £54m accelerated adaptation programme from the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) – a public body that funds high-risk, high-reward tech projects – aims to investigate applications of biotechnology that can speed up wild species’ evolution and help them to adapt to new threats such as global warming and disease.

Fondly known as the ‘goth’ of New Zealand’s bird world, the black robin now has a population of 350 adults thanks to a pioneering breeding programme

The black robin, once the world’s rarest bird before an extraordinary conservation project brought it back from brink of extinction, has been crowned New Zealand’s bird of the year, after record voter turnout.

The tiny bird is found only in the Chatham Islands, 800km east of mainland New Zealand. Called kakaruia in Māori and karure in Morirori – the language indigenous to the Chathams – the birds are also fondly known as the “goth” of New Zealand’s bird world, for its striking black plumage, black eyes and a little pointy black beak.

Environmental Protection Agency asked firm to choose rules it wanted for dicamba, then put the choices in a proposed federal rule

The EPA allowed pesticide giant Bayer to pick from a menu of regulation options for the controversial and destructive weedkiller dicamba, newly released internal agency documents show.

The documents provide an unusually clear look into the process of developing pesticide regulations, which is typically done out of public view. It shows in detail how the EPA asked Bayer which regulations it wanted, received a response from Bayer, then put Bayer’s choices into a proposed federal rule.

People are increasingly crossing paths with the wild animals as homes ring the outskirts of forests, sparking a new era of coexistence

Every year, as summer draws to a close and fall begins, California’s bears get hungry.

Black bears have long roamed the state, hunting for acorns, ants and pine nuts by the bucketload to pack on calories before hibernation. But increasingly, for every berry and root, there’s an even greater temptation: our trash and the detritus of human existence.

Jane Adetoro, Christina Walters and Rebecca Walters from Uxbridge were found on 13 May

The deaths of three sisters found in the sea off Brighton beach did not involve any criminality or third-party involvement, police have concluded.

The bodies of Jane Adetoro, 36, Christina Walters, 32, and Rebecca Walters, 31, from Uxbridge, west London, were found on 13 May. A postmortem conducted that month confirmed all three women died by drowning.

Self-described moderates say Ed Davey’s party offers them a home as Conservatives shift further right

Climbing the party-branded stairs of the Brighton Centre with a Liberal Britain tote bag over his shoulder, Cody Butler looks quite at home at the Liberal Democrats’ annual jamboree.

But asked how he is finding it, the 21-year-old replied: “Odd.” The former Tory activist resigned as chair of the One Nation Conservative Network and left his old party in July, arguing that centrists, remainers and members worried about the climate crisis and conservation were no longer welcome in the party. A week ago, he joined the Lib Dems.

Exclusive: Stark health inequalities in terms of deaths before age of 75, NHS data reveals

Adults with severe mental illness are nearly five times more likely than their peers to die from serious physical diseases before the age of 75, according to research.

The analysis of NHS data by the Rethink Mental Illness charity reveals that people with severe mental health problems die 15-20 years earlier than the wider adult population, largely due to preventable physical conditions.

On Friday, MeToo journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin was released from prison. She returns to a landscape changed by censorship, and a new generation of feminists

When Jasmine, a once active member of China’s MeToo movement, organises feminist activities in Beijing, she often does so under the guise of an art or cultural event. She avoids publicising them on social media, instead sharing details privately in her personal circle.

It’s very difficult to imagine what happened during the MeToo period, she says, “when one survivor could speak publicly about her experience and trigger a broader discussion about sexual harassment.”

The model, who struggled with addiction and prescription medication dependency, died at a rehab facility

Presley Gerber, son of supermodel Cindy Crawford and businessman Rande Gerber, has died aged 27.

According to the Los Angeles county medical examiner, the former model died on Sunday 20 September at a rehab facility. The cause of death has not been disclosed.

Move would mean deaths would rise in wealthier nations, according to NUS-Lancet Prime commission – which modelled a response to a flu pandemic based on population size, not purchasing power

An extra 2.7 million lives could be saved in the next pandemic if countries share vaccines in a less selfish way, a new study has found – although the death toll in richer countries would rise.

Researchers modelling a hypothetical global outbreak of flu found that fast-tracking vaccine development could cut deaths from 58.5m to 23.9m.

Anti-ICE protesters gather and demand transparency at site where 28-year-old was shot in torso

A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and wounded a Venezuelan man on Sunday afternoon in Texas’s capital city, Austin, prompting demonstrations at the scene against the Trump administration’s hardline anti-immigration campaign.

The man, identified by relatives and his lawyer as 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, was taken to a hospital in Austin in a serious but stable condition, officials said, before being taken into custody. He was shot once in the torso on the city’s north side, Austin’s police chief, Lisa Davis, said at a news conference with the mayor and other city officials.

Unions, thinktanks and others say overhaul could provide investment Britain needs

Unions, thinktanks, environmental groups and charities have come together to call on ministers to boost the financial firepower of the national wealth fund to empower it to invest more in Britain and rebalance the country’s economy.

Lower energy bills, the revitalisation of the UK’s industrial heartlands and the provision of more high-quality jobs could all be unlocked by scaling up the NWF, according to a statement from organisations including the TUC, Greenpeace, WWF and the New Economics Foundation.

Turbocharging the retrofitting of homes and buildings.

Giving the public a bigger stake in critical infrastructure through taking part-ownership stakes in key projects.

Launching a targeted investment programme to bring new green industries to communities hit hardest by deindustrialisation.

Supporting a network of regional banks to funnel money into the small businesses that hold up local economies.

Action against Ofcom comes as social media companies are being accused of using courts to slow down implementation

Meta has launched a fresh legal challenge against Britain’s media regulator in the latest of a slew of actions by social media companies who are accused of using the courts to slow down implementation of the Online Safety Act.

Lawyers for the parent company of Facebook served notice during the week in an appeal against placing WhatsApp and Instagram, which are also owned by Meta, in a category that subjects them to additional duties.

David Sacks convinced Trump against any restrictions on AI – putting the White House out of step with its own party

As lawmakers from both sides of the aisle in the US have joined together calling for the regulation of powerful artificial intelligence models, one of the few vocal naysayers has been Donald Trump. He’s called the perceived dangers of the technology a “hoax” and a “scam”, arguing that the government already has “tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies”.

It’s a starkly different stance from those of his former adviser Steve Bannon, the Republican Texas senator Ted Cruz and even the heads of the world’s leading AI companies. But it’s directly in line with the opinion of David Sacks – a prominent billionaire venture capitalist and Trump’s onetime AI and crypto czar, who has pushed back publicly and forcefully against recent claims of an impending AI apocalypse.

Unit1 hopes to offer lower cost version of shows such as Abba Voyage, showcasing living and dead artists in any venue

The former chief executive of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s entertainment group has obtained a near-£15m investment for his UK music tech startup that hopes to recreate classic concerts by manifesting musicians as digital avatars.

Unit1 was set up last year by Barney Wragg, an entertainment executive who ran Lord Lloyd-Webber’s Cats-to-Evita empire for five years from late 2011. It has secured the $20m in funding from a group of investors, including tech backer Balderton Capital through its partner Daniel Waterhouse, who made early investments in Spotify.

The Brit award winner on being scammed by a model agency, coming to terms with sexual assault, and wrestling with impostor syndrome

Born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, in 1994 and raised in Bewdley, Becky Hill is a singer and songwriter. She began making music at 14, performing in a band called Shaking Trees, before reaching the semifinals on the first series of The Voice UK. She has since had two top 10 albums and collaborated with David Guetta, Chase and Status, Joel Corry and Rudimental, and won the Brit award for best dance act in 2022 and 2023. Her latest album, Rebecca, is out on 13 November.

This was taken for a kids’ modelling agency, which we later discovered was a scam. Every stage of the process – getting pictures taken, sending them to the agency, getting them back – cost us more money. We’d wire over £100 and get nothing in return. Our family wasn’t rich, so Mum didn’t tell Dad what we were up to – he probably doesn’t even know about it to this day. As for my modelling ambitions, I never pursued it further. I was cute until the age of seven, then started to go on the turn.

The rugged roads and lush vegetation of southern Portugal are showcased in this weaving-together of disparate threads of history and landscape

In a sea of doomsday ecological documentaries, Maureen Fazendeiro’s pastoral marvel is a sight for sore eyes. A solo debut feature for the Lisbon-based French director, this hybrid film studies the historical and geographical contours of Alentejo, a rural region in southern Portugal. The opening is set to a jaunty soundtrack of energetic percussion beats and twinkling organ notes, taking in the resplendent vistas of the landscape, with its rugged roads and lush vegetation. We see, too, a small archaeological tool hunt for ancient relics beneath layers of golden dust. Mirroring these acts of care and attention, Fazendeiro’s film takes the form of a cinematic excavation, fusing present-day tableaux with archival materials, folkloric legends with historical records.

The abundant use of tracking shots not only takes in the wondrous biodiversity of Alentejo but also facilitates a fluid movement between separate epochs. Observational scenes of green hills, boundless blue skies and roaming livestock are overlaid with narrated excerpts from second world war-era letters written by German archaeologists Georg and Vera Leisner. Credited with producing the first inventory of megalithic monuments in Alentejo, the pair imbues their wartime correspondence with the joy of discovery and the sadness of exile.

Gove and Nicola Sturgeon join a simulated cabinet facing an escalating crisis. Plus: Stacey Dooley investigates ‘heightmaxxing’. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky One
Using political figures from our recent past, this docudrama maps out a British response to an escalating pattern of Russian aggression. Alongside Michael Gove (who gets to cosplay being prime minister at last), politicos including Harriet Harman and Nicola Sturgeon take their places round the cabinet table. Credible commitment to the concept is essential to make the drama elements work, and all manage it reasonably well – particularly the unnamed Potus with Russian sympathies … Phil Harrison

Religion and collective resilience are beacons of hope in an electricity-deprived DRC in this otherworldly documentary debut

In Nelson Makengo’s feature documentary debut, night stretches on to infinity. The film opens on a black screen – a void of darkness – while a recording of a fervent sermon sounds like rolling thunder. In Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an electricity shortage has long plagued the inhabitants, leaving them to cling on to religion as a beacon of hope. Their plight is worsened by climate disasters resulting in floods. Viewed through Makengo’s lens, nocturnal life acquires an otherworldly dimension, as basic human necessities become an elusive luxury.

Shot mostly in Makengo’s neighbourhood of Kisenso, the film observes the ways in which struggling city dwellers adapt to a life lived in the shadows. Meals are eaten by candlelight, while churchgoers wear light-up medallions to illuminate their prayer books. Such survival tactics speak to a collective resilience, while also rendering these previously mundane activities eerily dystopian. The matriarchs of the community lament the rise of crime and sexual assaults that occur in the absence of public lighting, while younger members of the neighbourhood raise funds to retrieve stolen electric cables. In the absence of state support, this community spirit is the only energy that perseveres in times of extreme precarity.

Sanjeev Bhaskar plays a patriarch handing over the family firm in a spinoff of The Split. It’s full-on sudsy fun right from the off

I do like a soap that doesn’t hang about. That works itself up to a creamy lather and invites you to shut the bathroom door against real life and dive into a hot bath with it immediately for a much-needed break.

The Split Up delivers full-on sudsy fun from the start. From the team behind The Split, it’s another glossy tale of a family-run family law firm specialising in the never-too-complicated divorce cases of any high net worth individuals in their vicinity. This time, it’s written by Ursula Rani Sarma instead of Abi Morgan, the family is British South Asian and the location is Manchester not London, but beyond that it’s very much business as usual. A case of the week functions as the still eye of the ever-growing storm composed of the love lives, personal concerns and professional ambitions of the interrelated lawyers and their friends, colleagues and enemies – who are often, of course, one and the same thing. Mild glamour meets much plot; viewer happiness ensues.

The Split Up is available on BBC iPlayer

Bestselling book The Good Immigrant launches a series of thoughtful explorations of race – starting with the hosts of Pod Save the Uk. Plus, a look at an outrageous heist

Launching alongside a 10th-anniversary edition of the essay collection by writers of colour, this podcast sees its editor, Nikesh Shukla, reconvene with the book’s contributors. A series of thoughtful conversations about what has changed and what’s stayed the same when it comes to race in the UK starts with Nish Kumar and Coco Khan on England flags, and why humour is essential to their political podcasting. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

Thousands of knock-off records worth a fortune are being seized in the UK by anti-counterfeit police stings

From 2017 onwards, Rehan Ahmed styled himself as a savvy business owner. But behind the facade of a successful entrepreneur lurked one stark fact: his empire was built on fakery.

On Friday, the man behind the biggest-ever UK case of producing fraudulent vinyl, who sold counterfeit copies of records by some of the world’s biggest artists including Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Kendrick Lamar, was jailed.

Kings Place, London
Works by the not-quite-minimalist composer’s included her Realm Variations and quartet Stringsongs in a compelling concert

There’s no one quite like Meredith Monk. So often grouped with her lionised contemporaries Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley and La Monte Young, she is 83 to their 90-odd years and sports long plaited hair as reliably as Reich wears a baseball cap. Yet she refuses the label “minimalism” for her music, and composition is just one element of a creative life that also takes in singing, choreography, film-making and drawing.

Monk was not present at this performance marking the launch of Phaedra Ensemble’s new album of her music, though she did loom briefly over the audience on video, professing “it’s a dream of mine for this music to be recorded and played”. (Compare that to the fortunes of Glass’s works.) But she had been closely involved, having invited the group to record some of her music after hearing them play.

Omar and Jamal Ikram, 21-year-old brothers, are making lo-fi glitchy dance-pop with the melodic sensibilities of Bollywood music

From Aldershot, Hampshire
Recommended if you like 2hollis, the Hellp, Jai Paul
Up next New single Wish U out now

You, like me, may be growing tired of the 2020s’ so-called “indie sleaze” revival, which has so far yielded a few good parties and not that much good music. But the music of the Twins – Aldershot-born brothers Omar and Jamal Ikram – is made of sturdier stuff. The 21-year-olds are progenitors of a sound they call “Bollywood electronic” – a strain of loud, lo-fi, ultra-glitchy dance-pop that sounds like 2hollis if his songs were heavy with screwy samples of south Asian pop. Their debut album, last year’s Turmeric, captures the still-potent appeal of Jai Paul’s classic Str8 Outta Mumbai – which fused the lackadaisical sheen of 2010s electronic pop with the shining rhythmic and melodic sensibilities of Bollywood music – and, as is de rigueur for the contemporary era, makes it bolshie and frenetic, taking in the euphoric aggression of early Skrillex and unnerving noise of Aphex Twin.

Turmeric was a minor hit, thanks in part to Fuckersby, a collaboration with on-the-rise British rapper Fakemink, as well as the Twins’ monthly NTS show, also called Turmeric, which turns one this month. (Its combination of classic British pop stars such as Lily Allen, Punjabi artists such as Sukshinder Shinda, and contemporary electronic acts the Hellp and Sophia Stel gives it the feeling of a late-night pirate radio station totally out of time and place.) The duo’s follow-up EP There&Back, released in May, polishes up the Twins’ sound a little, but not that much – if anything, their collaborations with Rada and Varg2TM on There&Back are even louder and wilder than anything on Turmeric. The duo’s future plans aren’t clear, but their mission is: “We don’t want brown kids to feel like they have to fit into anything,” Jamal said in an interview. “People are always gonna try to label what you’re doing, but you don’t have to move like that.” Shaad D’Souza

Gladwell’s highly readable investigation into US gun culture fails to engage with the bigger questions

Once, while having a steak dinner with Republicans in a small town in Indiana, the man sitting opposite me asked: “How do you cope in London, when Muslims elected that mayor and you have all that gun control?” I’d been in enough such situations to know that there was no “winning” a conversation that starts like this and so did my best to playfully bat the question away.

“Well, the Muslims didn’t elect a mayor – Londoners elected a Muslim mayor,” I said. “And we don’t talk much about gun control for the same reason we don’t talk about polar bear control: we don’t have many polar bears and we don’t have many guns.”

Writing from firsthand experience, the author offers an affecting meditation on art, mental fragility and faith

“What’s in your head?” Dolores O’Riordan’s raw, plaintive refrain loops through the Cranberries’ 1994 hit Zombie. A protest song about the Troubles could, on paper, hardly seem further removed from Derek Owusu’s third novel, about a young writer recovering from a mental health crisis. But in an author’s note before The Recovery House begins, Owusu instructs the reader to listen to the song “at least two to four times before going beyond this page”. Gradually it becomes clear that the song’s central question is one Owusu’s protagonist asks in various forms throughout the novel.

Can we ever fully understand what is going on in our own heads? We meet Jamal, a young novelist who has woken up in a recovery house – a residential alternative to hospital admission – after a breakdown. It transpires that he has overdosed, is an alcoholic, and has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. He is in a frazzled, frantic state, initially less interested in getting better than in piecing together how he got there.

Her last case was 50 years ago, written by Agatha Christie just before she died. Could I really follow in the footsteps of the Queen of Crime?

When I was asked to write the first full-length Miss Marple novel since Sleeping Murder was published posthumously, 50 years ago in October, I immediately thought of my granny. My first encounter with the world of Agatha Christie was through her. Now I come to think of it, she was a rather Marple-ish figure in many ways: a keen knitter and gardener with a brilliant mind (she could complete the “big” crossword in seemingly about 15 minutes), highly perceptive about people and human nature and with a powerful moral compass. While kind and generous beyond measure, at times, like Miss Marple, she showed a steelier side.

Christie created Jane Marple in a Christmas magazine story called The Tuesday Night Club in 1927, and this “white-haired old lady” made her book debut in 1930 with The Murder at the Vicarage. Rivalling Hercule Poirot in her readers’ affections, Miss Marple eventually appeared in 12 of the author’s 66 detective novels, plus 20 of her 160 short stories. With more than 1bn Agatha Christie books sold in English, and another 1bn sold in translation, they are some of the most perpetually loved works ever written. But though Sophie Hannah was commissioned by Christie’s family to publish an authorised continuation of her Poirot novels in 2013, no one had ever been asked to write a new Miss Marple. Until now …

The author of The Corrections talks about a new TV adaptation, the future of reading and why creating new work is ‘horrible’

When HBO dropped its plan to adapt Jonathan Franzen’s bestselling novel The Corrections in 2012, the author was so relieved he says he performed his first and last cartwheel on the lawn of his home in Santa Cruz, California. There had been an attempted film adaptation before that, but he had been unsurprised by its failure, having warned that it was impossible to condense his densely plotted doorstopper of a novel into a feature-length film. This time, Franzen had signed up as co-writer, with filmmaker Noah Baumbach. He says that HBO was “excluded from the development process. Mistake, because we didn’t know how to do TV.” Franzen himself hadn’t even owned a telly until a few years earlier and certainly didn’t have cable, so as he was wrestling with the script, he began renting box sets. Around three episodes into one drama series, he realised “we have no idea what we’re doing. This is not how you do TV. This is bad,” he recalls. The result, he says, was “one of the worst pilots anyone has ever made”.

Franzen used to think TV was the “enemy” of the serious novelist. In a well-known 1996 essay for Harper’s Magazine about the decline of high literature he had complained bitterly about the “banal ascendancy of television”. But after the HBO series failed, he watched Breaking Bad, Nurse Jackie and Silicon Valley and loved them. In the age of social media, AI and the endless scroll, TV has started to look like a “friend”, he says now. And The Corrections is finally being adapted into an eight-part Netflix series, with Meryl Streep playing Enid Lambert, the matriarch clinging to dreams of hosting a perfect last family Christmas, even as her husband Alfred is in terminal decline with Parkinson’s and dementia and their grownup children’s lives are falling apart in terrible, comical ways. Once Streep announced she was in, Franzen felt the “chances of making this show have gone up above 50%”. He says he’s a month away from finishing the script.

PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox; Arbitrary Metric
The latest work from the team behind Paratopic is part compulsive time-loop management sim, part eerie subterranean adventure

Fetch the chair from storage. Deliver a message that causes disgust. Clean vomit in the afternoon and pour another glass in the evening. In Roman Sands RE:Build, you provide concierge service to delirious, broken people who couldn’t care less about the sweat on your forehead and the bags under your eyes.

In this reimagining of the 2019 visual novel Roman Sands, crafted by the team behind the Americana horror road trip Paratopic, you’re trapped in a beach resort and tethered in a time loop. The task is deceivingly simple: fulfil menial directives from four gluttonous individuals, unlock tools and items to open more rooms and then do it all over again.

The first console I ever bought, it was hyped as a threat to the PlayStation, then mocked as a flop. But now, as it marks its 25th anniversary, it’s looked back on with misty-eyed reverence

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Nintendo GameCube, the first console I ever bought with my own money. I vividly remember getting on the bus after school with a year’s worth of savings safely zipped into the pocket of my bag and going to a branch of Currys, where I dumped a bunch of notes, coins and vouchers on the counter to collect my pre-order. (It turned out that some of the vouchers from the previous Christmas had expired, but the guy at the checkout clearly felt so sorry for me that he redeemed them anyway. If you’re out there, Currys guy: thank you for taking pity on a desperate 13-year-old.)

If it hadn’t been for the ill-fated Wii U console, whose failure to take off in 2012 resulted in the first unprofitable periods in Nintendo’s game-making history, the GameCube would be remembered as the company’s biggest flop aside from the infamous Virtual Boy, from 1995. Released in Japan this week in 2001 (and in May 2002 in Europe), this surprisingly powerful purple cube sold much less than the Xbox and the PlayStation 2. With its squat, colourful form and unusual controller, arranged around a big traffic-light-green A button and small analogue sticks designed for small hands, it had a hint of Fisher-Price about it.

The distinctively British RPG is returning courtesy of the makers of Forza Horizon – with comedy talent such as Richard Ayoade and Natasia Demetriou voicing sweary characters. We had our first play and spoke to its developer

When Playground Games was founded in 2010, its objective was straightforward: to make the best cars in video games. Operating out of an unassuming white building in Leamington Spa, the studio sought to challenge Gran Turismo with its critically acclaimed British racing alternative: the acclaimed free-roaming Forza Horizon series. Yet as the team grew, so did their ambitions. Now they are making the most intriguing British fantasy game we have seen in many years.

For those who have never ventured into Albion, Fable is a quintessentially British role playing game. Created by Lionhead Studios for the original Xbox in 2004, it boasted cheeky charm alongside world-altering player choices, and its droll writing was brought to life in later iterations by national treasures such as Stephen Fry and Simon Pegg. Thanks to its unique blend of farce and fantasy, Fable grew into a globally beloved franchise – before Microsoft unceremoniously shuttered Lionhead in 2016, after mandating that the studio turn its star series into a multiplayer game. The result, Fable Legends, was never released.

We have a first play of the forthcoming Tomb Raider remake and speak with its developers. Can they improve on the gameplay without losing what made the 1996 original such a classic?

We join Lara Croft in St Francis’ Folly – inspired by the Unesco-listed monasteries of Meteora in Greece – as the light shines through the cracked ceiling and a flock of bats glide across the vast ruins below. When Lara leaps down to the monastery’s crumbling pillared courtyard, it becomes clear that these screeching, leathery creatures aren’t just set dressing. As they lurch towards her with unpredictable movements, she dispatches the swarm with a flurry of gun fire and panicked punches.

It’s a suitably cinematic reintroduction to our heroine and her very first adventure. Co-developed by longtime Lara custodians Crystal Dynamics and Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, Legacy of Atlantis is a reimagining of the classic 1996 game Tomb Raider, and this familiar cliffside location is now brimming with new life and believable detail. Yet while our reunion gets off to an auspicious start, I have my concerns. It feels like reconnecting with an old friend at the pub, only for them to begin spouting conspiracy theories two pints in.

Hackney Empire, London
There is real skill in making us laugh about things that are depressing. And the gags come thick and fast in the ex-Mash Report host’s touring show

Nish Kumar is angry. And why shouldn’t he be? The world is one big, damning catastrophe. So here the ex-Mash Report host is, in his trademark linguistically dextrous, mile-a-minute style, to run us through the current affairs and colonial-history hellscape. Yes, we get Donald Trump jokes. And yes, there’s more than one mention of how the internet has corrupted us all. But, God, does it feel good to hear someone, clearly enraged, scream the things this Hackney audience is, more than likely, also thinking.

He’s the UK’s leading lefty comedian – and for good reason. There is real skill in making us laugh about things that are, broadly, very depressing. Of course, Kumar knows he is preaching to the converted; he states plainly that his audience are a bunch of non-heckling, hand-raising “geeks” who are already on board with his views. Part of the show grapples with that discomfort; he believes passionately in standup as an art form – and it has made him big money – but for the first time, he’s wondered whether now is the right time for his usual political satire. Should we really be laughing when things are, well, this bad?

Touring until 27 November

Minghella theatre, Reading
Soprano Claire Booth’s mouth is isolated against a black background to capture the racing brain of a desperate woman, with added operatic flair

There is a long preamble to Samuel Beckett’s short play, performed in darkness by an unstoppably animated mouth. First, Luciano Berio’s experimental Sequenza III, performed by soprano Claire Booth, which becomes a musical companion piece to Beckett in retrospect for its stuttering repetitions, gasps and throat-clearings. Then a trio of short films about the Irish playwright’s relationship to Folkstone (where he got married in 1961). It is a three-part programme, part of the 2026 Beckett Biennale, culminating in the drama.

None of the buildup is required. The mouth, also played by Booth, is still arresting in its speed and urgency, reaching for a truth that rests just beyond its rapid articulations, even as syntax breaks down.

Under the direction of Rufus Norris, the setup is academic, the theatre part of Reading University’s campus, but the production has nothing dusty or donnish about it. It is impressively delivered by Booth, who captures the racing brain, the split interior self and the speed of desperation to replay a life that seems to be flashing before a woman’s eyes – or rather, her mouth – from her birth to this moment in a field, among the cowslips at the age of 70, which might be the moment of death. You glean, from the repetitions and verbal hiccups, that it has been hard, loveless and undermining, yet there is an insistence on speaking it aloud.

Birmingham Rep
Alex Keenan perfectly captures protagonist Chris’s bewilderment and cheeriness in Ned Bennett’s ambitious new staging

The most alarming moment in Mark Haddon’s young adult novel is when Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old on the autism spectrum, flees his Swindon home for London. After a perilous train journey, he arrives at Paddington station and is overwhelmed. The book’s text becomes a barrage of fonts and type sizes to express the information overload: announcements, shop signs and adverts all shouting for his attention.

That sense of cacophony, a sensory assault of products, people and places, characterises Ned Bennett’s ambitious new staging of the Simon Stephens adaptation for Birmingham Rep and Melting Pot. Eleanor Bull’s bare stage, an outsize studio in white, alternates between clean geometric lines, such as the row of pastel-coloured houses that form a picture-book street, and more detailed high-definition projections.

Touring until 28 May.

Byre theatre, St Andrews
Warm-up routines lead into a reverie about life on the stage in Company Chordelia’s funny, carefully calibrated show

The inevitable aches and sprains of an ageing body take on heightened significance for a seasoned dancer turning up to work each day. Revel by Company Chordelia is a whimsical rumination on these changes, and a personal riposte to the fear that you might “make a spectacle of yourself” if you don’t stop at the “right” moment.

It is conceived and staged by the artistic director Kally Lloyd-Jones, who performs with the co-creator Steinvör Palsson, a well-known teacher and choreographer in the Scottish dance community.

Some fans were hesitant to turn the page after Sheeran’s tour resumed in Philadelphia after the removal of Macklemore, who spoke out in support of Palestine

“This is not usually how I would open the show,” Ed Sheeran told the crowd at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday night, a humble preamble to a three-plus-minute speech addressing the greatest controversy of his career. Shaky-voiced and stealing glances at the monitor at his feet, he looked every bit the chastened superstar.

“I have tried in my career not to be a political commentator of any kind, because I want my music and shows to be about unity, not division, about humanity, not politics, but this is a humanitarian issue and I cannot hide how I feel about it any more,” Sheeran said. He described the Hamas-led attack at the Nova music festival in Israel on 7 October 2023 as “horrific”, and expressed heartbreak over civilian deaths in Gaza and the West Bank, describing the situation as “catastrophic and unjustified and disproportionate”.

Stage and screen actor admired for her television roles in Waiting for God, Tenko and Doc Martin

Stephanie Cole, who has died aged 84, was a skilful actor with a powerful voice. She was also an exemplar of the strong, no-nonsense characters that she played with layers of vulnerability, humour and kindness.

She made her television debut in a 1968 episode of Z Cars and maintained a solid screen career before coming to prominence as a leading member of a strong female ensemble in the BBC series Tenko (1981-84, and Tenko Reunion, 1985), as the stoic Dr Beatrice Mason, doing her best to maintain the health of her fellow internees in a Japanese prison camp during the second world war.

The 76-year-old rocker on her pre-gig routine, the one reality show she’d go on and who she’d cast as herself in a film about her life

Your new album is called Freedom and the title track interpolates The Girl Can’t Help It. You’re going to be rocking until they take you out in a box, aren’t you?

When I was 35, a journalist stupidly asked me, “When are you going to retire?” I said, “I will retire when I go on stage, turn my back on the audience, shake my ass, and there’s silence.” This followed me my whole career, so when I got to 65, I said, “I will retire when I go on stage, turn my back on the audience and my ass shakes by itself.”

Her catchy videos have racked up billions of views, but Rachel Accurso’s statements on everything from Gaza to LGBTQ rights have caused a stir. She talks about screen time, song fatigue and speculation she might enter politics

The YouTube star Ms Rachel, toddler whisperer extraordinaire, spots me before I clock her, and even from a distance and without her trademark pink T-shirt and denim dungarees, she is instantly recognisable by her wave, which is accompanied by an enthusiastic bounce. I half expect her to say, “Hi, friends”, as she does at the start of many of her videos. Instead she bounds over, wearing a classic off-duty mum uniform – Sesame Street sweatshirt, grey leggings, baseball cap that reads “Mama” – and removes her oversized sunglasses. She’s very sorry, she says, rubbing her eyes, that she is so tired – but her manner remains unfailingly, characteristically peppy.

It is only seven years since Rachel Accurso, who used to be a preschool music teacher, uploaded her first video to YouTube, a counting song for preschoolers called Bubble, Bubble Pop!. She and her husband, Aron Accurso, who worked as a music director on Broadway, made the video because their one-year-old son had a speech delay and there seemed to be a dearth of quality videos online that could help toddlers learn to speak.

Cellista, an aerialist who regularly performs upside down with her cello, shares what her life looks like training for the stage

Mastering the cello is hard enough, but Cellista also regularly performs upside down. She’s based in Las Vegas, but the aerialist spoke to us while traveling in Germany, and told us about what her life looks like training and writing for the stage.

Walking on to the plane with the kids in tow, I could almost hear people think, ‘Oh my God, I don’t want to be seated next to them!’

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I won’t lie – I was having nightmares before the trip. When my family immigrated to Australia from Europe, my husband travelled ahead to organise a place for us to live. I followed him seven weeks later with our four children, all aged under seven. I was a ball of stress for weeks in the lead-up.

Walking on to the plane with four kids in tow, I could almost hear people think, “Oh my God, I don’t want to be seated next to them!” And I completely understand.

Which supermarket syrups ooze with potential? We put 10 of the finest, grade-A bottles to the test

• The best supermarket runny honey

Though today’s maple syrups vary dramatically in intensity, complexity and taste, they’re all of decent quality and have that classic and unmistakable flavour. I avoided blended or maple-flavoured syrups for this test, and instead tried only 100% pure, grade-A maple syrups, using Agriculture Canada’s flavour wheel and four-step tasting process as a guide. I poured a small shot into a glass to observe the colour. Then I followed the tasting process: I smelled the syrup with three quick sniffs, took a small sip and swirled it around my mouth before contemplating the flavours. Step four is to assess the flavour intensity. Alongside appearance, aroma, texture and taste, I awarded extra points for specific provenance and organic certifications, as well as for value.

Prices vary greatly, and although the dearest bottles taste divine, so do the cheapest. Each pure maple syrup is unique in flavour, with nuanced notes from mild clove tones to intense, woody and almost menthol-like piney flavours. Like wine, maple syrup has the tang of its terroir: it’s an artisanal product that tastes of the land.

Is an Oxford shirt the ultimate wardrobe staple? Are skin-tight fits ever a good idea? And what’s the perfect fabric for autumn and winter? Our menswear expert has all the answers

• The best white T-shirts for men

The photo above stopped me mid-scroll: Harry Styles, before his 30-show residency at Madison Square Garden, dressed in a big white shirt and smart tailored trousers. After a summer spent parked in front of three fans with ice packs on rotation, when wearing actual clothes felt like punishment, here was proof that normal service had resumed.

So, now the rain’s back and autumn’s creeping in, it’s time to follow Harry’s lead and reintroduce some structure to your wardrobe: coats, knitwear, tailoring, all the pieces that make you look forward to getting dressed in the morning. One staple that’s long overdue a comeback? Shirts.

Loop and tube bands are cheaper than a gym membership and take up less space than weights – our exercise buff put 18 to the test

• The best treadmills for your home

Movement breeds motivation, not vice versa. If you want a fast ticket to a regular training habit, you need to remove the friction between you and that first rep. When the sofa looks more appealing than getting a sweat on, it pays to have a simple, quick, convenient way to kick into workout mode. That’s where resistance bands come in.

Portable, lightweight, compact and convenient, the right set of bands could be the path of least, er, resistance to easy home workouts and reaching your fitness goals.

From sweaty kit to grubby trainers, here’s how to wash, repair and care for activewear more sustainably

• The best moisture-wicking underwear, socks and base layers

As a running and cycling journalist, I spend a lot of time in sportswear. Lycra is my leg coverage of choice, polyester or merino wool my base layer, and I reach for technical materials like Gore-Tex if the weather isn’t playing ball.

A near-daily workout schedule means my washing machine’s sportswear setting takes a hammering to avoid having a laundry basket overflowing with sweaty, salty, sour-scented clothes. But even then, tops can develop hard-to-shift smells in sweat-prone areas, synthetic materials can start to bobble and lose shape, and my sportswear occasionally gets a foamy detergent residue that hasn’t been properly rinsed out, particularly during wet or intensive training sessions.

Scottish breakfasts are worth getting up for: think eggs and potato cakes in a freshly baked roll, or toasted barley bread laced with sticky plums and honey butter

I’ve long wanted a space to cook the food that really excites me, and Clementine, which opens its doors in north London next month, is exactly that. These two recipes capture what the cafe is all about. This is food that feels both considered and completely unfussy: crisp morning rolls stuffed with folded scrambled eggs and tattie scones, and griddled barley bannocks served warm with salted honey butter and roast plums. Breakfasts worth getting out of bed for.

From the blissful threat of ‘death by chocolate’, to a book made of sponge and the lemon drizzle to end them all, these are the bakes that left the biggest impressions

The Sorting Hat sponge I made for my son’s Harry Potter party is not the best cake I’ve ever tasted. That would be anything baked by my granny, or the coffee religieuse (a choux pastry puff) I ate in Boulogne-sur-Mer with my mum. But it’s the most surprisingly edible cake I’ve ever made – a vaguely Jamie-Oliver recipe with buttercream filling and tinned mandarin slices. It didn’t only work; it tasted great, and wasn’t quite as teeth-screechingly sweet as expected. My one regret is that I over-pimped the decoration: it looked so sinister in the fridge with its cold, Sorting Hat stare that the next day I stuck on googly eyes and further sparkles. This perhaps explains why everyone assumed it was a poo emoji cake, despite it being a Harry Potter party with heavy-touch theming. That people thought I actually wanted children to eat shit is a shame, but it still remains my greatest culinary success. Catherine Shoard

Our main course arrived heavy and somewhat intimidating, and left picked completely clean

Earlier this month, a kind-of Turkish ocakbaşı opened on a corner in London’s Soho. The brains behind Kid are chef Sertaç Dirik and restaurateur David Carter, and I say “kind-of” because, yes, while it has a Turkish-influenced menu – sucuk with grilled peach, pide, börek, hummus, içli köfte with aged beef – and the whiff of live fire, nothing either of them does is ever remotely straightforward, hence the buzz around their new place.

Carter founded Smokestak a decade ago in Shoreditch, a wild, Americana-tinged barbecue joint where, somehow, he made brisket in buns and peach cobbler old fashioneds London’s hottest ticket. Five years later, he opened Manteca, also in Shoreditch, a reimagining of the Italian trattoria for the 2020s, followed by Oma, his Greek-influenced Michelin-starred venture in Borough, and its little sister Agora, and all of them remain dependable places where you get serious bang for your buck. All of those influences – American smoke, Italian flair and Greek boldness – are present and correct at Kid. Dirik’s story, meanwhile, has about it elements of TV’s The Bear: a Copenhagen-trained chef cajoled home to bolster the family business and going on to create the hugely loved Mangal 2 in Dalston. What Dirik and Carter have in common, aside from reputation, is a love of setting fire to stuff, in a culinary sense rather than in a Prodigy’s Twisted Firestarter sense. Kid’s Galata mackerel is testament to this: it’s almost completely blackened and has an incredible hit of smoke in its flesh.

This fruity central European pancake dish can be served as part of a main course or as a dessert. Our resident perfektionistin flips through a selection of the best recipes

Schmarrn, or schmarren, Anja Dunk writes, is “peasant food at its best: filling, simple and comforting”. The usual English translation, pancake, a dish we generally associate with delicate desserts is, I think, somewhat misleading; schmarren, as it’s also spelled, bears very little resemblance to a thin, lacy crepe, and instead sits somewhere between our own plump, rich Shrove Tuesday numbers and a batter pudding. Indeed, you’ll find it on the sweets section of restaurant and cafe menus, but in Germany, Dunk reports in her book Strudel, Noodles and Dumplings, it “passes as a main meal, not dessert, because it is very filling and not particularly sweet in flavour”, and also, I suspect, because “it takes 10 minutes to make from start to finish” and is therefore a brilliantly quick supper. (“Quite frankly,” she adds,” as a mother, I find this recipe a godsend.”)

Austro-Hungarian in origin, it’s eaten in both Germany and Austria, and there are many variations, including kaiserschmarren (studded with rum-soaked raisins), savoury potato schmarren, semolina schmarren and bread schmarren, though fruit, often apples, but also stone fruit or berries, seems to be the most common pairing. Whether you’re serving this as a main course (it goes very well with sausages) or afterwards, it’s a very handy addition to the repertoire, especially when paired with soured cream or ice-cream.

A Reform politician and an NHS worker had different takes on Nigel Farage, but could they agree on renewable energy or tax policies?

Chris, 42, London

Occupation Electrical supervisor of the maintenance team at an NHS hospital

Rory left the monastery after feeling lonely; with Orla, herself a Catholic, he’s been making up for lost time

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

We had sex after a week. I remember thinking afterwards wow, everything has changed

Anna Malos and Georgie bonded over their shared love of travel and horses. By their third date, an awkward encounter cemented their relationship

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

Georgie and I met at a kick-boxing club in London in 2004. We sparred together in a few beginner classes, just hitting soft pads. Although I didn’t pay her too much attention initially, I immediately recognised she was tall, elegant and very good looking.

It wasn’t until the club’s Christmas drinks that things kicked off between us. We started talking and couldn’t stop. We’d both travelled and worked in Latin America, and also loved horses – Georgie had volunteered with a horse-riding business for tourists in Ecuador. The sparks were flying all over the place.

David (left), 34, a children’s doctor, meets Dec, 31, a culture and sex writer

What were you hoping for?
A sweet-hearted madman who would make me belly laugh.

Scam emails are increasingly using psychological tricks, such as using near-identical URLs like miсrosoft.com

You’ve read the email carefully and it looks legitimate. The link it asks you to click on has none of the usual red flags: there are no weird numbers or extra parts to the URL. You feel safe to proceed.

But if you had looked slightly closer you may have noticed something slightly wrong with one of the characters. Just as in the headline of this piece where instead of “a” we used the Cyrillic “α”.

It just goes to show that the split-second decision you make when clicking a link is often the most vulnerable part of the whole security chain.”

Energy bills are scheduled to rise next month but there are innovative ways to heat your home and save money

When Giles Gibson turns on the hot tap in his home, the water that comes out of it is not heated by gas but by the tiny datacentre strapped to the tank.

Attached to the hot water cylinder in his London home is a compact computer server that generates heat and then transfers it as it operates.

An app and a register of trusted traders may give greater protection to consumers but it is too late for some

In hindsight, Sheri Ingram, 35, can see the red flags. Lee Slocombe, a builder hired to renovate her ex-boyfriend’s home in the south Wales valleys, offered to do the work cheaply because he had materials left over from another job, then asked for money upfront to buy additional supplies.

“At the time, we believed him,” says Sheri, who was in her early 20s when it happened, and had just left university. The couple budgeted about £8,000 for work that included removing a supporting wall and building an extension with a balcony.

From a blue-grey converted iron chapel in Cheshire to a shiny black infill townhouse in London

Since the ancient Olympics, athletes like Hyrox competitor Joanna Wietrzyk have experienced runner’s diarrhoea. What does the science say about extreme exercise’s ‘mechanical jostling of the intestines’?

Soiling yourself in public sounds like a bad dream. But the Australian athlete Joanna Wietrzyk has now apologised for doing just that at the Hyrox games in Beijing on Saturday.

Wietrzyk won the fitness race but not before using communal equipment with faecal matter visibly running down her legs – and muddying Hyrox’s reputation.

Natalie Greenwood says surgery is no ‘magic fix’ for chronic pelvic pain – a view backed up by a new study

“It’s really frustrating to be in this cycle of continuous surgery. It makes you feel helpless,” says Natalie Greenwood, of a condition that affects her so badly she is “non-functioning most of the time because of the constant fatigue”.

Greenwood, 36, needs to have an operation every few years to limit the impact of the endometriosis that gives her chronic pelvic pain, as well as extreme tiredness and brain fog.

Collagen powders, gummies and pills have boomed in popularity in recent years boosted by claims that they smooth wrinkles, promote glossy hair and help with joint pain. Amid the noise it can be hard to figure out whether there’s any actual science behind the promise of looking younger for longer. Luckily Dr Xand van Tulleken has spent the past three years writing Make me well: a quest to understand the confusing world of wellness, and his chapter on collagen dives deep into the evidence. He tells Madeleine Finlay what collagen does in the body, how we can get it without splashing out on expensive supplements, and why getting to the truth behind wellness claims can be so hard

Handstands display a mastery of one’s physical form that I have never quite felt – and they look cool. Experts share their advice for building up strength and practicing

My aspirations in life are modest: I want to write, spend time with my loved ones, and someday find a lipstick that flatters my skintone. But perhaps my greatest ambition is this: I want to be able to do a handstand.

Why? It turns the world upside down. It seems fun. It displays a mastery of one’s physical form that I have never quite felt. And it looks cool! Maybe it has to do with that one time in third grade when all my friends could do a handstand and I couldn’t, but that’s for me and my therapist to sort out later.

Brand returns to its physical and unconventional roots as it battles undergoes stark restructuring

Back when a young Lee McQueen was showing at London fashion week, there was Dante, the show in a Hawksmoor church with a skeleton in the front row and a blaring soundtrack of organ music and gunfire. And there was Voss, where models were trapped inside a giant mirrored box set up as a psychiatric ward.

Twenty-five years later, the Alexander McQueen brand returned from the Paris schedule to a creepily beautiful subterranean 17th century London chapel, with steel harnesses, bulky ankle strapped heels that looked like electronic monitoring tags, and a chain mail dress of tiny silver skulls.

To mark Oxfam’s Second Hand September, here are some of your best thrift discoveries and the stories behind them

Oxfam’s Second Hand September campaign encourages people to avoid buying new clothes for 30 days and choose preloved pieces instead. From £28 Prada skirts to £5 wedding dresses, we asked people to share their favourite fashion finds and the stories behind them.

Innovative journalist who as fashion editor of the Daily Mirror brought the latest 1960s looks to millions of readers

Felicity Green made a career on tabloid newspapers in their most masculine era when, after secretaries and tea-trolley ladies went home, whole buildings could be as all-male as a foundry or a battleship. By 1961 she was an associate editor across Mirror Group newspapers; in 1973, as the group’s publicity director, she was the first woman on the main board of a publisher. When she found out in 1978 that a new – less experienced, male – director was paid £30,000 a year, more than twice her salary, she resigned, insulted.

Green, who has died aged 100, knew how extraordinary her value had been to the group. The Daily Mirror, at its peak of five million-plus readers, besides being a household’s source of news and sport, offered families access to what we would now call pop culture – showbiz, celebrity and especially style. Newspapers were a main advertising medium through the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and agencies yearned for content to attract women, who controlled household purchases, and young people, a new market for discretionary spending.

Steven Kolb tried to stop activists demonstrating against the use of wool – but he can’t curb consumers’ growing concern about where their clothes come from

On Sunday afternoon, Mason Melito took a front row seat at the Cos show at New York fashion week. A campaigner at Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), Melito wasn’t on the guest list – instead, he and four other activists had planned to briefly disrupt the catwalk show with the aim of drawing attention to the use of wool by the Swedish brand.

Protests on the catwalk have a long, rich history. Since the 90s, Peta have regularly stormed shows in an attempt to draw attention to the industry’s use of fur and leather. It’s a typically peaceful practice that happens regularly – during some shows, the catwalk is so long and security so swift that show-goers don’t even notice. (Sometimes, Peta take a different approach: in 1996, during a lunch, a protester famously dropped a dead raccoon on to Anna Wintour’s plate.)

The Alpe Adria loop is an eight-day walking trail that crisscrosses borders, taking in dramatic peaks, glorious meadows and charming places to stay

‘Achtung! Staatsgrenze!” OK, the signpost marking the “state border” didn’t have exclamation marks but, with its no-nonsense Prussian font, it did feel quite shouty. The only thing was, no one on the Feistritzer Alm – a peaceful sweep of Alpine pasture at the meeting of Austria and Italy – was paying any attention to it at all.

Hikers hiked straight past. Mountain bikers used it to prop up their cycles. Cows grazed willy-nilly. And the patrons of the Schutzhütte Oisternig enjoyed their cold beers regardless of which country they were in. While official boundaries may have changed in these parts over the centuries, the magnificence of the mountains has not.

Beautifully situated refuges with superlative views offering sanctuary to intrepid hikers and climbers

A good mountain hut, I reckon, should be small and only accessible on foot after considerable effort. Throw in a bit of historical interest and I’m bound to be happy. In which case, Cabaña Verónica in the Picos de Europa is a fine start to this list. It sleeps six, and at 2,325 metres requires a two-hour trek from the nearest cable car station, never mind road. It has incredible views and a friendly custodian who keeps things in good order. Yet the real attraction is that this place was formerly a gun turret of a US navy battleship that was scrapped in Bilbao in 1960. An enterprising engineer, Conrado Senties, had it carried up on horseback and reassembled on a plug of rock in the middle of nowhere. Don’t ask why, just enjoy the eccentricity.
€15, reservarefugios.com

From the foothills of the Pyrenees to the peaks of the Dolomites, you share your top views, meals and adventures at altitude

• Tell us about a trip to Germany – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

No doubt your first thought on hearing the words “double-decker” is of a bus. But in the Swiss village of Stans, an old wooden funicular carriage ascends to the station, where a double-decker cable car awaits. Inside, a spiral staircase leads you to an open upper viewing deck. At the summit, the views back to Lucerne are superb, and there are alpine marmots to spot too. There was a wedding ceremony going on at the summit on our trip!
Martin

Perched above the clouds in northern Italy, Santnerpass refuge doesn’t just look stunning. It’s a marvel of eco-building – and vegetarian cuisine

‘I think my boots are falling apart!” shouts Nigel just as we hit the pinnacles, a whole range of them jutting up and out from the mountainside, all thrillingly tall, spiky and knobbled. Through them we painstakingly step, fingers aching in gloves, heads sweating in helmets – squashing up narrow chimneys, squeezing through mighty boulders and inching along slender ledges on a twisting path that’s only just discernible through swathes of sharp white scree.

I know how Nigel’s boots are feeling: the going is far harder than I was expecting. This is only the first day of our annual trip to the Dolomites, a vast range of breathtaking sawtooth peaks in northern Italy, but my head’s already full of the thought I have every year as we start out: “If only you’d got fitter.”

Fantastic display and two-day battery life plus everything that’s great about Google’s more pocketable Pixel Pros

Google’s latest super-sized Pixel takes everything that’s great about the relatively pocket-friendly 11 Pro and adds a huge, high-quality screen and a big battery.

That makes the Pixel 11 Pro XL one of the largest smartphones available in Europe and the US, competing directly with Samsung’s giant Galaxy S26 Ultra and Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro Max, with an equally sizeable £1,279 (€1,399/$1,299/A$2,099) price tag – £80 (€100/$100/A$100) more than last year with less memory because of the cost of RAMageddon.

Precise moment of equinox in UK is 1.05am on Wednesday – but day and night will not be equal until Friday

The September or autumnal equinox takes place this week. It marks the astronomical beginning of autumn in the northern hemisphere and spring in the southern hemisphere. This year, the precise moment of the equinox falls at 01.05 BST on 23 September.

It is commonly said the equinox is when day and night are equal, because the name derives from the Latin for “equal night”, but in practice that is not quite true. An equinox occurs when the sun crosses the celestial equator, the imaginary projection of Earth’s equator into the sky.

Brigg, Lincolnshire: As my attention turns to drilling next year’s cash crops, I create a disturbance out in the fields

Sometimes a moment of surprise has years of experience behind it. Last week as I was out in the oilseed rape fields applying a cocktail of microbe food (molasses, humates and fish paste), I had quite a shock when up went a large flock of grey partridges, a covey of 26. Twelve would be considered large, with red-legged partridges only ever appearing in pairs, but I’ve not seen 26 grey here in my lifetime.

This is testament to our nature‑friendly approach to farming, including this year planting specific margins to encourage sawfly larvae, crickets, weevils and ground beetles. These insects form the entire diet of grey partridges (and yellowhammers) during their first two weeks of life. In addition, rather than just planting overwinter cover crops and “catch” crops to mop up loose nutrients and protect the soil from the elements, I now add millet, the seed of which is a boost for older birds. The idea is to create a mosaic of habitats that connect through the landscape.

You don’t have to reveal the contents, but I’ve seen families torn apart by unexpected inheritance plans

My wife and I have three children and several grandchildren. Our will may contain some surprises for them. Is it better to reveal its contents while we are still alive, or let our beneficiaries discover them when we die?

We gave our children considerable financial help, enabling them to buy their first homes. We have also made sizeable contributions to our grandchildren’s education funds.

Former charity worker tells Big Brue festival in Somerset of the strange comforts that helped her during imprisonment

It is a TV show about women confined to prison in the US, but Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe found watching Orange is the New Black with her fellow inmates a strange comfort after smuggling episodes into her Iranian jail cell, downloaded on to an illegal USB stick.

The British-Iranian former charity worker was detained in 2016 for more than five years and kept in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.

The Adolescence actor and the psychologist Orly Klein asked fathers to write to their sons. The results – from famous dads to the wisdom of strangers – were moving and motivating. Here’s a selection

What can I say? From the moment you and your sister were born my heart has been full of a love I never thought was humanly possible. As a baby you were filled with wonder and so much energy. You had a beautiful, mischievous and inquisitive nature, which has always made me smile. You were climbing, running and jumping everywhere. You’d walk into a room wearing shoes that were four times, five times, 10 times too big for you … Sometimes they were ye mother’s.

Moment of reckoning for ‘Mr Nice Guy’ of music, who embraced Macklemore’s political cred only for pro-Palestine rapper to be dropped under pressure from billionaire

Ed Sheeran has long been known as the “Mr Nice Guy” of music. His is an unthreatening kind of pop stardom; he looks and talks like the bloke who might be standing behind you in a pub, rather than someone selling out stadiums. He champions other artists, he celebrates different cultures. His songs are about love, heartbreak and friendship. People get engaged at his concerts.

But this week, one of the most successful musicians in the world faced the biggest controversy of his career, and found himself dragged into exactly the kind of political row he has spent his career avoiding.

Has your accommodation provider gone bust? Have you been able to find alternative accommodation?

Nearly 70 students in Dundee have been left scrambling to find new accommodation for the new academic year after a university housing scheme went bust.

It is the latest in a string of issues with university housing schemes amid severe financial strain on the sector.

We’d like to hear from people in the UK who have abandoned or delayed plans to get on the property ladder

UK house prices rose for the first time in four months in August, while mortgage approvals fell to their lowest level in more than two years amid increasingly difficult conditions for first-time buyers.

The boss of Britain’s largest housebuilder recently described it as the most challenging time to buy a first home since the financial crisis, pointing to rising interest rates, student debt and squeezed wages. Meanwhile, research from the Building Societies Association found 59% of renters aged 25 to 44 thought they would own a home by now but do not.

We would like to speak to people about how their early years coloured their relationship with cash

We would like to speak to people about how their childhoods shaped their attitude towards money in later life.

Do you think the way you manage money has been affected by your upbringing? Did your family talk about money openly, or was it a subject that felt taboo? And how has that shaped your attitude to your personal finances today?

The Guardian is looking for single men of all ages to talk honestly about the experience of being unattached

The Guardian is looking for single men of all ages to talk honestly about the experience of being unattached. Whether you are 16 or 100, we want to hear the unvarnished truth about what it’s like to live as a single man today.

Are you trying to find love? Or are you happy living life as a bachelor? Do you find the experience of modern dating – with all its red flags and height requirements – to be a minefield? Or are you attracting more attention than ever before?

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