Fructose, glucose, sucrose. Lactose, maltose, dextrose. Treacle, molasses … honey! The sweet stuff is everywhere, in everything from colas and cakes to fruit and veg. Are some forms healthier than others? And what about artificial sweeteners?

Many people try not to eat too much sugar, yet it is added to so much food and drink, it is hard to avoid. It goes by more than 50 different names on labels, is present even in seemingly savoury products and the alternatives are confusing and controversial. So is the sweet stuff addictive – and should you cut it out completely?

Rochford LGBTQ+ community say Reform council’s ban on flying pride flags or holding events states they’re not welcome

Before Reform gained control of Essex county council in the May elections, Chris Taylor and members of the Rochford LGBTQ+ community already felt they were witnessing a growing tide of political rhetoric around identity.

But they were still shocked when the county’s new leadership moved to ban Pride events in 74 libraries, scaling back events of “any particular groups or themes”, a decision they said was “straight out of Trumpland”.

Touring this bitterly divided constituency, what strikes you most is people want something better. But what exactly?

Keir Starmer teeters. The defence secretary exits, and thereby seems to confirm the prime minister’s demise. Andy Burnham scents a final, belated breakthrough, while most of the national talk is of violence, a country in crisis and malaise. And in Platt Bridge, a neighbourhood at the heart of the constituency where the fates of the Labour party, the current government and the country are all about to be decided, life still seems to be locked into an endlessly familiar pattern.

Amid all the redbrick terrace houses, too many shops are shuttered and empty. The latest casualty was a proudly independent baker who had traded for 40 years, apparently to be replaced by another tanning lounge. The main roads are clogged with traffic, while other streets tend to be eerily quiet. People speak of closed-down pubs, impossible private rents, and that ubiquitous British complaint: “There’s nothing for the kids to do.”

Our favourite music, clothes and books used to be markers of individuality – but the algorithm has made us all sheep. Meet the style rebels fighting back

What are you into? What floats your boat? What music, films, clothes, art, books – anything, really – do you actually like? Do you find these questions more difficult to answer than you would have done 10 years ago? How about 20? You do? You’re not alone.

It has become impossible to ignore: personal taste has been seriously debased – if not completely destroyed – by technological advancement. We know the internet has radically altered the way we form our opinions and beliefs. Now we’re waking up to another sobering truth: it has wrecked our capacity to form our own preferences.

Rebalance Earth is investing in Broughton Sanctuary to generate financial, environmental and social returns

From a high point on the hill, the North Yorkshire landscape unrolls below. The moorland above gives way to grassland, trees and then pasture, divided by the region’s traditional dry stone walls.

The view may be idyllic, but it belies the condition of parts of this land, belonging to the sprawling 1,100 hectare (2,500-acre) Broughton Sanctuary estate, near Skipton.

Alarm over the judgment and behaviour of the world’s most powerful man, and the consequent risks to the world, can only get worse

The main Nuremberg trial ended, Winston Churchill warned of an iron curtain descending across Europe, It’s a Wonderful Life received its premiere and, at Jamaica hospital in the borough of Queens, New York, Donald John Trump was born.

It was 1946, also the birth year of George W Bush and Bill Clinton, but on Sunday the current US president celebrates his 80th birthday in a style uniquely his own. Trump will stage a night of cage fighting on the once-pristine White House south lawn as part of events marking the 250th anniversary of US independence.

Keir Starmer says operation involving National Crime Agency has delivered ‘yet another blow’ to Russia and Putin

Keir Starmer said he directed British troops to seize a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker in the Channel in the early hours of Sunday, the first time the UK has led a naval capture since the start of the war in Ukraine.

The prime minister released a video on TikTok early on Sunday, showing heavily armed Royal Marine commandos boarding the oil-laden Smyrtos tanker, which had been sailing south of the Isle of Wight en route from Russia to India.

Sources say hardline measures will also prevent young users from being able to talk to strangers on gaming apps

• Why is the UK launching an ‘Australia plus’ social media ban and how will it work?

Keir Starmer will ban under-16s from major social media apps such as TikTok, Instagram and X in sweeping restrictions described as “Australia plus”, the Guardian understands.

Teenagers will be banned from all the main social platforms, and online products that are not covered by the ban – such as gaming apps – will face new restrictions such as having the option to chat to strangers removed. There will also be restrictions for older teenagers up to the age of 18 that prevent “scrolling” late at night – after 8.30pm.

Reform leader claims ‘anti-whiteness is institutionalised’ in UK as polls suggest Labour have lead in Makerfield

• UK politics live – latest updates

Nigel Farage has said he would ban foreign nationals from social housing and then deport them if they could not find private-sector homes, in a hardening of anti-immigration rhetoric before the Makerfield byelection.

Two recent polls in Makerfield have suggested Farage’s Reform UK is continuing to leak potentially crucial support to its far-right rival Restore Britain, which is led by the former Reform MP Rupert Lowe.

Anxious dead-of-night watch parties ended in celebration after 1-0 victory over Haiti in first finals match since 1998

It was around 2.28am in the UK that John McGinn ended 28, arguably 36, years of hurt – and anyone daft enough to be asleep will surely have stirred as chants of “no Scotland, no party” echoed from Boston to Glasgow.

The scenes after McGinn’s deflected goal and Scotland’s 1-0 defeat of Haiti were joyous. Sheer unbridled happiness. And relief.

US president says ‘let’s not blow it’ before peace deal is signed and urges against any further attacks after Iran says Israeli strikes won’t go ‘unanswered’

• Iranian hardliners in vociferous push to reject proposed peace deal with US

Israel says it has struck Beirut’s south suburbs, with explosions heard in the city. The Israeli military claimed the attacks on the Lebanese capital were in response to Hezbollah firing into Israeli territory.

The military were reportedly targeting Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the group’s stronghold known as Dahiyeh, according to a joint statement by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Israel Katz.

Police stop comes after far-right activist rose to further prominence on social media amid racial tensions in Britain

Tommy Robinson was detained by police on Saturday at Heathrow airport under counter-terrorism laws, after a week in which he rose to further prominence on social media.

It was understood the far-right activist, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was stopped and had his phones seized under section 3 of the Counter-Terrorism Border Security Act 2019.

Exclusive: Recovery efforts remain slow and passing of time makes it more likely they will be skeletonised

The International Committee of the Red Cross has said the risk that the thousands of Palestinians buried beneath Gaza’s rubble may never be identified is increasing by the day, as recovery efforts remain slow and many victims have yet to be retrieved, the Guardian can reveal.

“There is no doubt that these bodies could soon become difficult to identify,” said Pat Griffiths, the ICRC spokesperson in Jerusalem. “The longer it takes for human remains to be recovered, the more difficult it can be to identify them. The longer the deceased lie beneath the rubble, the more likely they will be in advanced stages of decomposition – even skeletonised – when eventually recovered.”

Exclusive: devolving tax is part of plans to give local areas more power in areas including justice, health and education

Ministers are considering handing over billions of pounds raised by business rates to regional mayors as part of one of the biggest shake-ups of the English tax system in recent years.

Steve Reed, the local government secretary, said the government was working on plans to devolve the tax, which has been the subject of recent protests by pubs and other hospitality businesses.

Researchers also discover that the ancient vines of Chianti, famed for its red wines, produced white fruit

DNA extracted from 2,000-year-old grape seeds found in ancient wells in Tuscany has enabled scientists to map the most extensive genetic history of grapevines recovered from a single site.

The findings revealed that vineyards of the Roman era formed part of the empire’s sophisticated agricultural network that might have influenced the development of modern winemaking.

Locals who were children nine years ago say they want to ‘carry on the legacy that older people started’

Yousra Cherbika was 12 when the Grenfell fire broke out, a stone’s throw from her home. She and her family were evacuated that night and spent over a year living in a hotel, where she had to continue studying and revising for her exams.

At school, she faced empty chairs for classmates who hadn’t returned after the fire – for weeks, no one knew if they were dead or alive. One of her friends never came back.

It could top 90F in several cities hosting World Cup games – and workers could pay the price with their health

As the World Cup kicks off, labor advocates and scholars warn that the workers making the tournament possible could face serious heat-related risks.

“It’s going to be extremely hot, and you just cannot leave people unprotected or you’re going to deal with a lot of injuries,” said Jonathan Alingu, co-executive director of Central Florida Jobs With Justice, which has been calling for worker protections at the Miami games. “Or, God forbid, something even worse.”

The 47th has his 80th this weekend – a milestone that surely shouldn’t go unmarked. Artists, activists, writers and thinkers send their messages to the man of the hour (even if they’re unlikely to get a party invite)

Cory Doctorow

Dear Comrade Trump: On this, the occasion of your 80th birthday, I write to extend my sincere thanks for all the work you have done. After decades of deadlock, you have inspired the world to action! You have done more to de-dollarise the world than any American leader in history. Without you, there would be no way that Ethiopia would be revaluing its national debt in yuan. You have done more to end the global dependence on oil than any leader (except, perhaps, for Comrade Putin). Without you, there would be no way that India would be chucking out its gas hobs and replacing them with induction tops. And, of course, you have done more than any president in history to end American dominance over the internet. Without you, there would be no way the EU would be racing forward with projects such as Eurostack and European Digital Infrastructure Consortium, with whole nations ditching American tech exports like Microsoft Office 365 in favour of free, open, auditable, transparent alternatives running on servers within the EU’s borders. Comrade Trump, you are, at long last, ushering in the post-American world, and a grateful planet salutes you!

Smac McCreanor, a content creator who recreates viral internet trends through dance, gets woken up by bunnies every day

Have you seen the video of Smac McCreanor pretending to be a parakeet? Dressed in green, she gracefully slides and sidesteps, occasionally lifting her arms – or wings? – mimicking the movements of a bird who went viral for his dance moves.

McCreanor, 33, translates the internet’s obsessions through her body, whether a green bird, emoji or objects being destroyed by a hydraulic press. A multi-genre dancer with 1 million Instagram followers, she has performed on So You Think You Can Dance and choreographed for the online video game Fortnite.

Jaya Saxena is a co-founder of Ravenous, a worker-owned food and culture site. She lives in Queens, New York.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

• This week’s question: Is ‘ripen at home’ fruit the supermarkets’ idea of a joke?

I’ve been struggling to get my head around the idea that a passkey, which can be a pin on your phone, or facial recognition, can be safer than using a complicated password and two-factor authentication.

I get that having something unique to your device, not stored on a company’s server, is unphishable and less hackable by cybercrims, but what if your phone is nicked and someone guesses the password? And what if you lose your phone?

She came directly up to me and offered the tray, accompanied by a torrent of incomprehensible Greek

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

The straps of my backpack dug hard into my shoulders as I trudged like a zombie through the sweltering heat. I was hitchhiking across the Greek island of Crete in summertime and had been dropped off in a small village miles from anywhere, hoping to pick up my next ride. It was 1978 and probably didn’t help that I looked every inch the hippie – jewellery, bushy beard and dusty clothes.

Cars passed only infrequently, maybe one every half hour. When they did, they hurtled past like unstoppable express trains, without a sideways glance my way. I took a seat on a low stone wall and hoped for the best. But after several hours under the relentless sun, I was beginning to think I’d never get out of the place. A few houses dotted the main road but the village seemed to be asleep.

Activists argue business model is ‘plantation tourism’ designed to benefit elite and disadvantage most Jamaicans

• Campaigners go to court to fight privatisation of Jamaican coast

Devon Taylor remembers when the Mammee Bay shoreline in St Ann, Jamaica, was filled with children frolicking in the ocean after school, fishers haggling with locals over the price of their daily catch and craft vendors carving souvenirs under almond trees.

“I grew up on Mammee Bay,” Taylor says. He recalls fetching seawater in bottles for his grandmother when she was no longer able to go to the beach, learning to swim in the shallows, and watching generations of fishers cast their nets. “That beach raised us. It fed us.”

The musician and the artist on their fiery relationship, a dramatic flight to Ibiza, and Jack’s most annoying trait

Born in London in 1983, Jack Savoretti is a singer-songwriter who has released eight albums. He married the artist Jemma Powell in 2010. Powell grew up in Sussex and worked as an actor, appearing in films including The Hole and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. Her new exhibition, with Mary West, Through the Eyes of the Eagle, is at the Chancery Rosewood hotel in London until 18 July. Savoretti tours his new album, We Will Always Be the Way We Were, throughout 2026. They live in Oxfordshire with their three children.

From his taut, sun-kissed portraits of LA to his vast psychedelic Yorkshire landscapes to his 70m iPad Normandy epic – here’s our pick of the artist’s best works

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

The multiple Grammy-winner muses tunefully on love’s ups and downs, while Peter Mullan stars as a local historian in a new comedy drama

Disclosure Day
Out now
A new Steven Spielberg movie is always an event, whether he’s in blockbusting Jurassic Park mode or gunning for Oscars. This new effort starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth and Colman Domingo sees the film-maker wrangling with a fave topic – UFOs – for an epic sci-fi drama involving whistleblowing, conspiracy theories and shady corporations.

Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports

Steven Spielberg presents a sci-fi conspiracy barnstormer, and the US singer and cellist returns with a rich, inventive new LP. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

⚽ Kick-off: 12pm local/1pm EDT/6pm BST/3am AEST
⚽ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden boot | Email Daniel

Stop press: Wikipedia advises me Chong’s full name is Tahith Jose Girigorio Djorkaef Chong and yes, he is named after the Bolton legend, who his dad loved at Inter.

As for Curaçao, Advocaat has resisted the urge to go with a back five – it hamstrung South Africa against Mexico, for what thats worth – to match up against Germany. Leandro Bacuna, of course, played for Villa in the Premier League, while Tahith Chong, who played for Man United a few times and is now at Sheffield United.

• Head coach ‘absolutely delighted’ with World Cup triumph over Haiti

• ‘Different approach’ needed in games against Morocco and Brazil

Steve Clarke suggested expectation weighed heavily on the shoulders of Scotland’s players after they laboured at times during the 1-0 win over Haiti. The game marked Scotland’s first at a World Cup since 1998 and delivered a first win since eight years earlier. The Scots top Group C after Brazil drew with Morocco. Yet with those teams, both ranked in the top 10 in the world, still to come there is an understanding Scotland will have to improve to realise their ambition of becoming the first team from the nation to reach the knockout phase of a major tournament.

“I am absolutely delighted with my players,” said Clarke. “Resilience, character had to be on the pitch tonight. There is no relief. Everyone told us it was a must-win game and we won. When you win a must-win game, you have to be happy with yourselves.”

The Liverpool icon has little left to prove but will be key for his country as they look to end a near-century wait for a victory in a World Cup match

Last week Orange, one of Egypt’s leading mobile network operators, released a series of humorous adverts starring Egypt’s Ahmed Fatouh, Rami Rabia and Hossam Abdelmaguid, where the trio’s optimism is met with scepticism as partners and family members struggle to take them seriously. Their crime? Daring to suggest Egypt might finally progress beyond the group stage of a World Cup.

If there is one thing Egyptians do particularly well, it is self-deprecation. Perhaps that comes from history. Despite winning the Africa Cup of Nations seven times, Egypt are still waiting for their first World Cup victory. The Pharaohs will kick off their fourth appearance at the tournament against Belgium on Monday knowing they failed to win any of their seven matches so far. That is the contradiction at the heart of Egyptian football. No African nation has won more continental titles, yet Egypt remain one of the continent’s World Cup underachievers. While other African nations aim to replicate Morocco’s 2022 semi-final success, many Egyptians would happily settle for something far more modest: a single group stage victory.

Irankunda and co have not yet earned golden generation status but they can revive Australia’s World Cup aspirations

There always was a familiar feeling to this youthful squad of Socceroos. That sense of deja vu. That you had seen something like this before. But it took Nestory Irankunda running to the corner flag to remember what it was.

By reviving Tim Cahill’s famous goal celebration, the new face of Australian football instantly connected this fearless crop of young footballers finding their way on the world stage to the greats wearing yellow that have gone before.

England’s squad arrived at Swope Soccer Village, their World Cup base, to find locals (and the local police) out in force

Before Thomas Tuchel and his England players departed for the United States, there was talk about their World Cup training ground in Kansas City being too open. It was motivated, in part, by the Southampton spygate scandal. Would England’s rivals be able to steal a glance at them? Tuchel even said the Football Association would seek to erect protective fences.

The nine-pitch facility at Swope Soccer Village is certainly sprawling but here’s the thing. Nobody is getting on site without going past the armed police officers at the entrance. There was a throwaway line from a steward on Saturday as England trained on the complex’s best pitch after flying in from Florida after their pre-tournament camp. “You guys see spying,” he said. “We see personal security.” The latter rather overrides the former. It was safe to say they have it covered.

• Hamilton leads British top three with Russell and Norris

• Championship leader Antonelli out just after taking second

Lewis Hamilton triumphed for Ferrari at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix with a magnificent drive to seal an emotional maiden win for the Scuderia. The veteran British driver and seven-times world champion ended a run of 40 grands prix without victory and denied his compatriot, second-placed George Russell of Mercedes, who was outmaneuvered by Ferrari’s three-stop strategy and his teammate Kimi Antonelli.

But there was intense drama behind Hamilton late on as Antonelli, the drivers’ championship leader, and his teammate Russell battled for second – with the Italian forced to retire straight after overtaking Russell with five laps left. Lando Norris of McLaren, as a result, rounded out an all-British podium, the first since 1968. Charles Leclerc of Ferrari, having fought his way up the field from 10th on the grid after a qualifying crash, was forced to retire at the last due to a technical issue. Max Verstappen of Red Bull was fourth, Oscar Piastri fifth for McLaren, Isack Hadjar sixth for Red Bull and Pierre Gasly seventh for Alpine.

• Updates from Edgbaston; 2.30pm (BST) start

• Get in touch: email James with your thoughts

2nd over: India 10-1 (Mandhana 2, Rodrigues 1) Pakistan’s skipper Fatima Sana has the ball for the second over. Mandhana pulls a short ball to the boundary rider on the leg side and is off the mark with a single. Rodrigues scampers a single to mid on, a direct hit would have been interesting… Mandhana tickles a single off her hip and there are just three runs off a tidy first over from the captain.

1st over: India 7-1 (Mandhana 0, Rodrigues 0) Jemimah Rodrigues arrives in the middle, she’s a class player. She looks at a wide down the leg side and then defends the last ball of a high octane first over. Phew.

For a half century, New York was the center of the universe but the joke of the NBA. In these glamour-filled finals, the franchise finally got its moment

The New York Knicks had been here before. As Jalen Brunson and his band of not-so-merry men stood at the top of this year’s NBA finals, they confronted not just the San Antonio Spurs, their foe on the court, but the very idea of what the Knicks themselves – as a team, as a franchise, as a symbol of New York City – could be. The team’s run to last year’s Eastern Conference finals was thrilling but had the aspect of an underdog romp, and ultimately ended in defeat. Was this the limit of what New York’s fans, Rabelaisian in their rages and saintly in their endless capacity for patience, could expect from their team? Brunson was dogged and clever but perhaps not quite elite, a Stakhanovite toiler in a league built for transcendent talents. Karl-Anthony Towns was elite but perhaps too soft, too sensitive, too “zesty” to carry a team to the NBA’s pinnacle. The questions hanging over the leading pair extended to a team forged in their image. The lineup was good; was it great?

Coach Mike Brown, in his first year with the franchise, had promise but no small amount of baggage, having landed at the Knicks after being dismissed by the Sacramento Kings following a horror start to the 2024/25 season. And then, of course, there was the weight of history: no title since 1973 and a litany of near-misses and false dawns in the intervening decades. New York had watched through the 1980s and 1990s as first Los Angeles, then Chicago (under the guidance of its own son, Phil Jackson, who won the 1973 championship as a Knick) propelled the NBA to global prominence, a narrative in which the Knicks filled the role of a dutiful punching bag. Hakeem Olajuwon’s block on John Starks to kill their hopes in 1994, the tragic heroism of Patrick Ewing, death by Tim Duncan in ’99, and all the fizzled promise of Carmelo and Stoudemire and Linsanity: the memories had faded but the scars lingered. The franchise was destined, it seemed, to remain forever on the fringes, a mournful witness to others’ joy. Could they do it? Surely they couldn’t: the curse of the Knicks had driven the fans, the team, the city itself to despair. Neurosis, not success, was hardwired into New York’s psychology. The center of the universe and the joke of the NBA: the city was Larry Fink off the court, and Larry David on it.

• Vekic defeats British No 1 6-0, 7-6 (6) to take title

• Raducanu let two set points and 5-2 lead slip in second set

Emma Raducanu walked through the storied clubhouse at Queen’s Club and down to the stadium court with a smile plastered across her face. She had arrived at this moment, another noteworthy final in front of a home crowd on a historic court, playing some of the best tennis of her career. Things were going well.

That smile was wiped off her face by a ruthless performance from one of the few true grass court enthusiasts in Donna Vekic of Croatia, a lucky loser, who was inspired by the occasion to produce her best tennis of as she clinched the biggest title of her career, edging past Raducanu 6-0, 7-6 (6) at the Queen’s Club.

Two clubs have emerged from the doldrums to reach the grand final in epic fashion thanks to remaining positive

It is not every day that two teams who finished second and third bottom of the Prem table only 12 months ago make it to a grand final. Regardless of this Saturday’s outcome Northampton and Exeter have shown every club in the league what is doable, with one big caveat. Squad depth and recruitment matter but not as much as the collective desire to stay positive no matter what.

Exeter needed every ounce of grit and resilience at Bath on Saturday as they held out for 41 phases to clinch a sensational 27-26 victory, having trailed 26-10 at half-time. Northampton, similarly, never lost the courage of their convictions against Leicester on Friday night, transcending the occasion to put seven tries past excellent opposition in another thrilling contest.

Strange things are afoot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, giving rise to an obvious question: how did we get here?

Rising from the South Lawn of the White House is a 92ft-tall skeletal structure known as “the Claw”. Beneath it sits an octagonal cage surrounded by sponsor logos, temporary grandstands and thousands of seats for a mixed martial arts card on Sunday night to celebrate Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and the Ultimate Fighting Championship brand.

The event has prompted comparisons to Idiocracy, Mike Judge’s satire of a future US where politics, entertainment and corporate branding become indistinguishable. Others have gone further, dismissing it as a “kleptocratic spectacle”.

Updates from around the grounds after 11am (BST) start
Women’s T20 World Cup latest | Mail Tanya or comment BTL

Time to go round the grounds on this sleepy Sunday, Lancashire making a better fist of things this morning at Stanley Park, 31-1. The sun is even straining to come out from net curtain clouds. Matt Milnes has swapped to the north end.

Harry Singh, slip catcher extraordinaire, is caught by his Kent counterpart, Ben Dawkins, off Hasan Mahmud’s first over of the day. Lancashire 19-1.

• Group 2: Scotland, 161-5, beat Ireland, 121, by 40 runs

• Kathryn Bryce struck 60 from 39 balls

Scotland recorded a historic maiden World Cup win on Saturday, beating Ireland by 40 runs. The Scotland captain, Kathryn Bryce, struck a powerful 60 from 39 balls and followed it with a brilliant one-handed caught-and-bowled to see off Alana Dalzell in the first over of Ireland’s chase.

It was also an emotional occasion for Kirstie Gordon, who switched allegiance to her native Scotland this year after playing a handful of internationals for England in 2018-19. Gordon had been in tears before play as Flower of Scotland rang out around the ground, but she was all smiles three hours later after returning figures of three for 16.

• Defensive lineman was No 7 pick in 2011 draft

• Off-field incidents, suspensions affected his career

Former NFL defensive end Aldon Smith died Saturday at the age of 36, the San Francisco 49ers said. The team did not disclose the cause of death.

Smith played six seasons in the NFL for the 49ers, the Oakland Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys.

The system of ocean current that moves heat in the Atlantic Ocean plays a key role in regulating climate. Today’s monitoring of it may be discontinued

Imagine we detect a large asteroid heading straight for Earth. We are able to intervene and prevent disaster, but instead we cut the funding needed to track it. A few million dollars, it was argued, was too expensive to have a chance to save society.

While this scenario isn’t real, the metaphor is alarmingly accurate. In Europe, we spend €1bn to monitor space for asteroids, even if the actual risk of a civilisation-ending asteroid strike is close to zero.

As technology advances quickly, firms should not lose sight of what qualities humans bring to jobs

A robot magician called D4YRL was rejected as a member of the Magic Circle last week, for being insufficiently human.

While D4YRL’s tricks were exemplary, the august organisation decided “he” did not engage the audience’s emotions as a flesh-and-blood performer would.

Imagine a world with more birdsong and less Nigel Farage. If this is the future, bring it on

Unpopular opinion incoming: there’s cool stuff brewing in the world. Microbots might one day mend spinal cords, a petri dish of brain cells can already play video games, and now the prospect of a new wonder: according to a New Yorker article on misophonia (the condition where unwanted noise triggers disproportionate, unpleasant cognitive and physiological reactions), a team of miracle workers are “using machine learning to develop headphones that … can quickly target and eliminate irksome audio”.

Now we’re talking! This project, led by Shyam Gollakota of the University of Washington’s Mobile Intelligence Lab, aims to develop headphones that selectively filter out triggering noises, leaving or enhancing the good sounds. Gollakota offers the example of sitting on a park bench, oblivious to loud talkers next to you but able to hear birdsong.

Don’t expect the Russian president to pursue peace. Instead, he could continue to expand the war beyond Ukraine’s borders – with dire risks for us all

Just about everyone reckons Vladimir Putin is in deep trouble in Ukraine. Everyone – meaning Volodymyr Zelenskyy, his European backers and western military analysts and commentators – seems to believe Russia’s dictator is heading for humiliation. They could all be wrong, of course. But what if they’re right? How might a desperate, cornered Putin, fearful for his policy and person, react to the prospect of defeat? On past form, he will escalate, not capitulate. His options range from trolling YouTube to waging nuclear war.

For Ukraine, the latest news is mostly good. Using sophisticated Ukrainian-made drones and missiles, it has forced the invaders on to the back foot. Russia’s tally of dead and wounded is said to be running to 30,000 each month. Its advance has stalled – and in some places has been reversed. Ukrainian airstrikes deep into Russian territory are bringing the war home to a misled, disillusioned public. St Petersburg burns. Fuel shortages cause panic buying. Prices and taxes are rising. Putin’s 2022 “special military operation”, which was supposed to bring swift victory, has now lasted longer than the first world war.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

Complete solitude may not be for everyone, but walking the windswept Harris hills by myself gave me the space to contemplate a difficult year

Sitting in a remote cabin earlier this year on the Hebridean isle of Harris, watching the fishing boats come and go in the little harbour, I felt the fog of the previous months finally beginning to clear. I kept thinking back to a cold November night, returning from Leeds to south London, when I finally admitted to myself that something needed to change.

I was exhausted from the long, frequent and often unrewarding round trips to visit my mum. At her care home in Leeds that autumn day, I had tried the usual tricks to summon a reaction from her – news of the grandkids, or re-reading poems and songs she’d written in her days as a primary school headteacher. But for the most part, she remained still and silent.

Graham Snowdon is the editor of Guardian Weekly

Questions about the efficacy of door-knocking feel valid. But I see it as a weapon against autocracy – and a spiritual workout

In the fall of 2024, I spotted a middle-aged couple standing on their front lawn in Bucks county, Pennsylvania. I waved and gingerly approached. The woman, whose name appeared in my canvassing app, told me she had never voted in an election before, had never seen politics as relevant to her life. And her husband, she said, was a lifelong Republican. But after the return of Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee, it felt like it was time to take a stand. They were both going to vote for Democrats up and down the ballot in November.

On the other side of the street, directly facing their house, were two of the biggest Trump 2024 flags I had ever seen, along with a life-size cutout of Trump on a third lawn.

Forget the Olympic and the rest. People across the planet remember where they were for their biggest World Cup matches

The connection between King Lear and the 1966 World Cup is little known, mainly because it affected very few people at a now defunct boarding school. I had been a surprise selection to act in the school’s production of Lear (yes, I played the Fool; yes, I was typecast). The day before one of the performances I fell and twisted something and was a doubtful starter for a part that required a lot of dashing about.

Matron prescribed sleeping pills. That night England were playing Mexico in that now-sanctified tournament – almost a must-win after a goalless start against Uruguay. I went to bed early, tucked my transistor under the pillow to hear the commentary, went spark out and only heard the result next morning: England 2 Mexico 0. The rest is national history.

A win for Labour would show how the party can speak to working-class insecurity without scapegoating minorities

The resignations from the heart of government this week will only deepen the anti-Westminster mood ahead of the Makerfield byelection. The departure of the defence secretary, John Healey, and his deputy illustrates that Sir Keir Starmer’s problem is not just his unpopularity. It is that his claim to competence is being challenged from the inside. When ministers resign saying that the government is too timid and its politics largely performative, they are not just criticising decisions. They are arguing for a different leader.

Step forward Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor and Labour candidate in the most consequential byelection for decades. Mr Burnham has not disguised his leadership ambitions if he wins the seat and enters parliament. His sales pitch is that he is Labour-but-not-this-Labour. He sells himself as a party insider who is outside Westminster; an experienced politician, but not one involved in the present governing mess. He styles himself as plausibly loyal but interestingly dissident.

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Writers do not only document the horror of conflict; they speak to a future that must exist beyond it

Last week, thousands of readers gathered for a literary festival in Kyiv, risking air raids to hear from writers. Four brutal years of war have not destroyed the appetite for writing, but fuelled it. Russia’s extensive and systematic attempts to destroy Ukrainian culture, and therefore identity, have rightly received widespread attention. Over 700 libraries were damaged or destroyed outright within the first three years of the full-scale invasion.

But that campaign has also spurred efforts to move away from Russian literature and the Russian-language titles that previously dominated the market. Ukrainian literature and publishing has flourished far beyond the powerful documentary accounts of war often awarded attention outside the country, with growing room for experimentation. Newer writing also attempts to bridge the gap between those on the frontline and those more safely at home.

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

Readers respond to an article about how people living with the condition are fighting against damaging stereotypes

Anne Karpf’s article is a powerful and timely reminder that people living with dementia are too often overlooked and underestimated (‘You’re treated like this is the end’: Meet the dementia rebels – diagnosed and determined to change people’s minds, 9 June). I particularly welcomed its emphasis on continued engagement through new experiences, learning, volunteering and social connection. Too often, a diagnosis leads others to focus solely on decline rather than on the person’s remaining abilities, interests and capacity for enjoyment.

My wife was diagnosed with dementia in her 50s. While she was able, she greatly enjoyed volunteering, embroidery, singing, eating out, social events and participating in a walking group. These activities brought purpose, enjoyment, and a sense of belonging. They also demonstrated that a diagnosis of dementia does not mean the end of a meaningful and fulfilling life.

Without investment in more radiographers, NHS waiting lists will continue to rise inexorably, says CEO of the Society and College of Radiographers, Richard Evans

In your article (Record number of people waiting for NHS diagnostic tests in England, 7 June), you quote Marlen Suller of Magentus saying that the solution to ever-increasing diagnostic waiting lists is for the NHS to “make better use of existing capacity, test patients faster, give them clearer information and use financial incentives to drive improvement”.

This implies that diagnostic radiographers – the NHS professionals who carry out diagnostic imaging tests – are simply not working hard enough, or that they would work longer hours if they were offered financial incentive to do so.

Rosie Wolfenden says that under the current tax system, and with rising costs, traditional business models are no longer viable

Thank you, Anita Chaudhuri, for writing about a crisis that is unfolding before our eyes and urgently needs the government’s attention (The British food scene was booming. Why has it suddenly gone bust?, 9 June).

Your article about restaurants struggling to stay afloat resonated deeply with me because it mirrors what is happening in the independent retail sector, alongside the pressures facing food and hospitality businesses. I have run Tatty Devine for 27 years and like to think of us as the Michelin-star equivalent of retail: specialists in our field, delivering quality, creativity and consistency in design. Yet we too have hit a wall.

Dr Tim Causer invites readers to help complete a transcription project and to explore the writings and correspondence of the philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham

Your article on the digitisation and transcription of German love letters is a wonderful reminder of both the goodwill of the crowd and the pleasures of archival research (Sixty thousand love letters and counting: volunteers help sift through vast German trove of devotion, 3 June).

We at the Bentham Project, based in the Faculty of Laws at University College London, have also benefited from such generosity through our Transcribe Bentham crowdsourcing initiative, which has made available online the vast manuscript archive of the philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham.

‘Coastal uplift’ exposes coral and kills marine life, as residents say shorelines extended by up to 200 metres

A powerful earthquake that killed at least 61 people in the Philippines this week raised the seabed by as much as 2 metres (6.6ft), exposing coral and harming marine life, the country’s environment department has said.

At least 40 people are still missing after the 7.8-magnitude quake off southern Mindanao island on Monday, according to updated tolls from the disaster agency.

With more than 670 confirmed cases and over 135 deaths, the disease has yet to be contained amid funding shortfalls, fear and disinformation

When an orphanage in Bunia took in a newborn baby after his mother died from Ebola, the nuns who ran it hoped they were giving the infant a chance for life. The baby survived for only another two weeks. Now four of the nuns who cared for him have fallen sick with the deadly virus.

It is a snapshot of the tragedies at the centre of an outbreak in which the number of victims is roughly doubling every week, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Shirley Firth is hoping those responsible for Lindsay de Feliz’s death in 2019 will finally be convicted

A Cambridgeshire mother in her 90s is hoping to finally see justice for her murdered daughter when a retrial into her death is due to open in the Dominican Republic this week.

The body of Lindsay de Feliz, 64, a successful author, was found in a shallow grave, close to her home in the north-west of the Dominican Republic, in December 2019.

Election of new Hungarian government in April has paved way for EU member states to agree to open talks

Ukraine and Moldova will take a decisive step towards joining the EU on Monday, as they embark on the first phase of membership negotiations.

The start of substantive negotiations, launched by senior EU officials and ministers from both countries in Luxembourg on Monday, will be a highly symbolic moment for the two countries that were both part of the former Soviet Union. It comes after Russia has intensified its bombardment of Ukrainian towns and cities, while sustaining huge losses for little territorial gain.

Artist and former footballer Luan Medeiros organised painting to bring joy to square after 122 people were killed in last October’s police operation

Months ago, the street was covered with dozens of bodies laid out on blue tarpaulins and black plastic sheets: victims of Rio de Janeiro’s deadliest day, when 122 people were killed in the bloodiest police operation in Brazilian history.

Now, however the asphalt and curbs of Saint Luke’s Square in the Vila Cruzeiro favela are drenched in the colours of the national flag after local artists and children repainted them, emblazoning the street with messages of support for Brazil ahead of the World Cup.

Two fires in 12 years wiped out all but a handful of the mature native pines in Victoria’s Wyperfeld national park, a key breeding ground for endangered pink cockatoos

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At the entrance to Wyperfeld national park, in north-west Victoria, more than a dozen pink cockatoos are sprinkled across a hedge row of pine trees like Christmas decorations. These are Aleppo pines, not the native conifers that the birds rely on for nesting habitat and as a primary source of food.

Still, the feathered ornaments appear quite content, nestled in among the spruce and ripping into pine cones with their dexterous claws and beaks, making gentle cracking sounds that punctuate the soft roar of Mallee winds.

Appearance of a western reef heron in north Wales is unlikely to be the last, as heating temperatures mean species can survive Britain’s winter, say experts

It is a tropical bird typically encountered between west Africa and India, but last week a western reef heron arrived in north Wales in what is believed to be the first ever sighting in the UK.

The heron was first spotted in Foryd Bay at the weekend before flying to nearby Caernarfon harbour where it fed among the boats.

Exclusive: Fighting Dirty taking legal action against government over proposal it says could import weaker standards

An environmental campaign group is taking legal action against the government over proposals that it claims could fast-track chemical hazard classifications from other countries with lower standards into UK law.

Fighting Dirty claims proposals to change the classification and labelling of potentially hazardous chemicals could result in the UK weakening standards on cancer-causing substances.

Forecasters were wrong about an immediate recession but right that we would be worse off outside the EU

As the 10th anniversary of the Brexit vote approaches, the verdict on Britain’s economic performance is clear: voting to leave has resulted in severe costs for households and businesses.

The immediate recession predicted in the Treasury forecasts ordered by George Osborne – dubbed “project fear” by the Leave campaign – did not happen. The impact from the Covid pandemic, wars in Ukraine and Iran, and Donald Trump’s trade battles also cloud the picture.

Founder of Bellacouche in Devon says personalised covers tap into growing interest in alternatives to traditional funerals

In the days leading up to his wife Claire’s death, Andrew Kent sat with her and talked about fabric leaves. She wanted them in different shades – greens, browns and golds, the colours she saw on walks.

Later, after she died, each of her three children would take one home. The others would be stitched to the wool cover Andrew was designing for his wife’s funeral shroud – the soft wrap she had chosen instead of a coffin.

Failure to clear up rotting, rat-infested site is a key issue for local people as they weigh up politicians’ promises

A mountain of rubbish sits behind a metal fence in the village of Bickershaw, where it has remained for more than 20 months. For many residents, it is a physical manifestation of the north-south divide as well as a rotting, rat-infested symbol of a broken system in which organised criminal gangs make millions while communities endure the toxic impact of their trade.

The 25,000 tonnes of household and trade rubbish is one of the largest toxic waste dumps in the country. Unlike many illegal dumps that appear in woodlands, by rivers and on farmland, this one is in the heart of a residential street, right next to a primary school.

Poolbeg Pharma to test the treatment in NHS hospitals and says it is also developing a GLP-1 weight loss pill

A London-based startup is about to trial a drug at six NHS hospitals that could stop people on cancer immunotherapy getting a life-threatening side-effect.

Poolbeg Pharma said its oral drug POLB 001 could make treatment for blood cancer safer by preventing cytokine release syndrome (CRS), when the immune system goes into overdrive and attacks the body, leading to organ damage.

US defence secretary cancelled appearance at D-day event in Langrune-sur-Mer after protest by residents

When news came that the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, would be travelling to Normandy to mark D-day, some in the seaside village of Langrune-sur-Mer – where the afternoon ceremony was slated to be held – felt they had to speak up.

“We found it unbelievable that they could send someone who held views and values contrary to democracy, human rights, peace and Europe,” said resident Chantal Richard. To her, the incongruence felt deeply personal. “We grew up going to D-day ceremonies, some of us had grandparents or parents whose lives were affected by this war.”

Two friends found Kathryn Woessner, 68, in wooded area almost entirely submerged in mud puddle

A woman has been rescued from a mud pit in Minnesota after becoming trapped for several days.

On 6 June, two friends, Adam Sandbeck and Mike Gravalin, were riding their all-terrain vehicles through a wooded area near Backus and Hackensack in northern Minnesota when they discovered Kathryn Woessner, 68, almost entirely submerged in a mud puddle.

From gold to water, California’s wealth was built on extraction. The AI boom is reviving an old question: who pays the price?

I was a fourth-grader in the public schools of California when I first learned about the Gold Rush. I remember our teacher, Mrs Dyer, passing down the story in the manner of lore.

On the morning of 24 January 1848, James Marshall, a New Jersey boy come west, stumbled upon four shiny nuggets alongside the American River. He tried to keep his discovery a secret, but the shout of “eureka” from the dirt streets of San Francisco rang out across the shore. It unleashed a force that could not be contained.

Some fighters will receive bonuses in ‘stablecoins’ issued by Trump family business World Liberty Financial

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) announced on Friday that it will pay bonuses to fighters in a form of cryptocurrency issued by Trump family business World Liberty Financial at the heavily publicized White House mixed martial arts event on Sunday.

The development connects the Trump family’s financial interests to the high-profile UFC competition being promoted on government property. The competition on the south White House lawn is scheduled for 14 June, Donald Trump’s birthday.

Keir Starmer ready to overrule Ed Miliband after warnings manufacturers would be penalised and jobs put at risk

The UK government is poised to water down its 2030 targets for electric vehicle sales after intensive lobbying by the car industry and unions.

The government is preparing to consult on less ambitious targets for the transition to fully battery-powered electric cars over the rest of the decade after carmakers and unions warned that they would penalise manufacturers and put jobs at risk.

Company said US government believes safeguards can be bypassed and product used to identify software vulnerabilities

Anthropic said it will “abruptly disable” its most advanced AI models for all users after the US government ordered it to suspend access to the models for foreign nationals, citing national security concerns.

The company received the export control directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals, without being given specific details of the national security concern, Anthropic said in a statement.

The company’s response to the launchpad blast has become a key test for Artemis III

As Blue Origin tells it, the most spectacular launchpad explosion in recent memory, which destroyed its pioneering New Glenn space rocket last month and severely damaged almost everything around it, was merely a blip.

“We will fly again before the end of this year. Gradatim Ferociter,” Dave Limp, the company’s chief executive, posted on X on 1 June, using the Latin form of its motto, “Step by step, ferociously”.

He’s now the world’s first trillionaire, after his rocket and AI company broke IPO records on its way to a $2.1tn valuation

Elon Musk is now the world’s first trillionaire. SpaceX’s historic debut on the stock market on Friday launched the CEO to unprecedented levels of wealth; his personal fortune now amounts to $1.1tn, an increase of more than $62bn since the previous day, according to Forbes.

The rocket, satellite and AI company raised $75bn from its record-breaking initial public offering (IPO), and is now valued at $2.1tn after its first day of public trading.

As he opens a career-spanning show in London, the Turner prize-winning artist gives us a private view of his giant studio and talks censorship, controversy and why disobedience is central to making great art

In Anish Kapoor’s 3,100 sq metre studio complex in south London, photographers, assistants and gallery representatives gather in an upstairs meeting room. The artist has a staff of 23 in London – 11 studio assistants, nine people in the offices, three stone masons at a yard in Battersea – and some have been with him for decades. When he’s in town, everyone wants a piece (“It’s like The West Wing,” says one gallery rep).

Anish Kapoor and his hazmat-suited assistant with some of the 31 parts of Ha Makom

The Teenage Jesus and the Jerks frontwoman shares her hatred of sandwiches and pop culture, plus her wish to evaporate and return to ‘the ether’

What’s the most chaotic thing that’s ever happened to you on stage?

I’m still waiting for that. Maybe it’s the most chaotic thing I’ve ever put forth from the stage. Once a quite drunken man called out a rather rude remark for me to suck his you-can-imagine-what, so I invited him up to the stage and cracked him in the neck with a blackjack [club]. He fell to his knees and I told him to suck it himself. I’m always prepared!

Those who knew him tell the remarkable story in a three-parter. Plus: a juicy drama about the scandalous Mitford sisters. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Channel 4

I had always dreamt of a grand fairytale wedding, but my boyfriend hated being the centre of attention. Watching a couple negotiate their differences on TV convinced me we could carry it off

I have been with my partner Martin for 10 years, and he has always told me that he doesn’t want to get married. He thinks that the institution of marriage is a way for the state to control us. He also thinks that marriage is inherently patriarchal – and, honestly, I can’t argue with him about any of this.

But the truth is that I’ve had my whole wedding day mapped out in my head since I was seven. As a child I loved daydreaming about adulthood, and a huge wedding was the most adult thing I could possibly imagine. When other children were playing Pokémon, I was thinking about precisely how many tiki torches I wanted to light the way to the blessing ceremony. I didn’t really visualise the groom; he was a kind of blurry Ken-doll figure. My visions mainly centred around myself.

Now on its third season, the Scouse sitcom doesn’t shy away from huge topics such as class, anoxeria and neurodiversity. But also, you’re never too far from a joke about ‘ye ma’

How had I not heard of this show? Had I heard of it, then forgotten? Questions plagued me as I caught up on two series of this week’s underrated gem. In my defence, G’wed is an esoteric title. I assumed it was the name of a person, place or ancient story, possibly borrowed from Celtic mythology. Turns out it’s scouse for “go ahead”.

Reviewers that saw previous series of the adolescent comedy noted its similarities to The Inbetweeners. A middle-class boy, Christopher, is forced to “slum it” with working-class lads, including his nemesis neighbour, Reece, at a new secondary school in Liverpool. Immature antics ensue, alongside merciless teasing and finally acceptance. Hearts are warmed, knob jokes hammered. The difference was, this show kept talking about grief, and had more to say about class than does your average fish-out-of-water premise.

The story behind the grainy footage of a dummy filled with butcher’s off-cuts is an extraordinarily eccentric and knotty joy – with the hoaxers resembling Scooby-Doo baddies

You will, no doubt, be familiar with the 1995 footage of a supposed alien autopsy. Since its yikes-inducing TV debut, the jittery black-and-white film is estimated to have been viewed by a billion people. Still, for better or worse, here it is again: a scrum of faceless hazmat suits hover over the corpse of a pot-bellied humanoid. Its forehead? Bulbous. Its expression? Pensioner outraged at price of bark chippings in local branch of Wickes. Over the next 18 minutes the suits proceed to dissect this appalled sod, slicing it open to reveal what appear to be various organs, condiments and splodgy, flopping … things.

“Those were lambs’ brains,” chuckles Trevor the butcher as The Alien Autopsy Scandal zooms in on a quivering hillock of the aforementioned horrors. Trevor was one of the individuals involved in the titular film, its production taking place not, as initially claimed, in a US military facility in 1947, but a Camden living room in 1995. Trevor had been approached by a sculptor to supply “guts” with which to stuff the “alien” mould that would, the latter had explained, be appearing in “a film”. Hmm. Nevertheless, guts – in the form of knees, hearts and miscellaneous entrails – were duly supplied. Anything else? “Pig eyes, ’cos they look like human eyes,” guffaws Trevor, before taking a hacksaw to the remains of a decapitated pig. Disgusting? Yes. But fascinating, too. And certainly no stranger than anything else in John Dower’s exquisitely directed documentary; a thing of great playfulness and eccentricity that, over three increasingly extraordinary episodes, unknots the tale behind the notorious film. Or at least does its best to do so. But the truth proves slippery and its gatekeepers are … well. Enter Ray Santilli (tinted glasses; deep shiftiness) and Gary Shoefield (tracksuit; air of one comfortable with the phrase “it is what it is”).

(Geffen)
Gossips have rushed to the lyrics for details about her personal life, but the rest of us can just get on with luxuriating in Rodrigo’s funny, Cure-infused craft

With a certain crushing inevitability, the arrival of Olivia Rodrigo’s third album has been accompanied by a lot of frenzied decoding of its lyrics for references to Louis Partridge, the British actor whose relationship with the singer ended late last year. One magazine ran a 1,200 word essay, complete with annotations, panning its songs for nuggets of gossip: the fourth piece they’ve published on the subject in recent months. A British broadsheet plumped for a news story about the fact that Rodrigo had apparently changed the lyrics of a track called Purple, formerly a “very sweet and saccharine” love song, to reflect the end of their relationship. Over in New Delhi, The Hindustan Times was pondering rumours that the couple had actually got back together: “Interest in Partridge has grown after Rodrigo released her new album since fans believe the track Stupid Song has references to the singer’s relationship with him.”

Well, of course it has: for better or for worse, that kind of speculation seems to have become a major part of modern pop, and Oliva Rodrigo in particular has long been a beneficiary of the clickbait publicity it brings. Her breakthrough single Drivers Licence gained traction thanks to the rumour that its lyrics were about her former boyfriend Joshua Bassett’s dalliance with Sabrina Carpenter; Vampire, the lead single from 2023’s Guts invited yet more speculation about whether its subject was another ex or Taylor Swift. Indeed, she actively seems to encourage it: “I never talk about my personal life in interviews or in any public forum, so I guess the music is where people go to deduce things,” she recently told an interviewer, a line that seems to have a distinct hint of “go ahead, fill your boots” about it.

Surreal genius from Harry Hill, trailblazing women and a passionate ode to an incredible New York rapper – these are the best listens from the last six months

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The Ivor Novello-winning musician has written works inspired by his family history. He talks about building music from testimony – and why the Windrush generation deserves new narratives

A briefcase-sized console with a large, sleek keypad, the MPC One drum machine is an eye-catching piece of kit. It can’t be easily overlooked among the various synthesisers, guitars, amps, samplers and vinyl albums in Renell Shaw’s studio in Wood Green, north London. This month, when the 38-year-old musician plays a double-bill show at Kings Place, five miles down the road, the treasured black box will travel with him – and it has special sounds.

“On stage, I’ll have my score and the MPC, with my grandparents’ voices stored in there. They’ll be there with the band in front of me,” says Shaw, artist-in-residence for Kings Place’s Memory Unwrapped season, a series of musical performances that explore nostalgia, transformation and future.

Riya Mahesh is the ‘insanely Texas girl’ and medical student whose music splits the difference between dazed ambient production and big-tent pop melody

From Boston, via Texas
Recommended if you like Grace Ives, Porter Robinson, Grimes
Up next Touring EU/UK in November

Riya Mahesh has perfected her own sweet, whimsical brand of plunderphonics; her seventh project as Quiet Light in six years, this year’s Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2, sounds a little as if it’s been chopped together from samples of Mahesh’s own memory. On Berlin, she sings to a wayward love interest over a moony breakbeat and IDM glitches, as a spoken-word part – what sounds to me like a recording of a lecture – floats in the background. Star100 starts all whispers and garbled laughter, before ceding space to Mahesh’s multitracked harmonies. Sometimes, Mahesh will suddenly deliver a wildly catchy chorus, something she clearly has an aptitude for – check Dealerz, her collab with Danish band A Good Year.

Leading authors including Sarah Waters, William Dalrymple, Bernardine Evaristo and Anne Enright reveal their perfect holiday reading

• Read our selection of 70 brilliant books for the summer

Zadie Smith
Margaret Busby’s Part of the Story: Writings from Half a Century is the record of one woman’s lifelong passion for the literature and life of Africa and its diaspora, wherever she finds it. A beautiful collection. The funniest and smartest novel I’ve read in a while is Black Bag by Luke Kennard.

Mark Haddon
Can I recommend some metaphorical summer travel? Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King, won the International Booker prize so you’re legally obliged to read it. But there are three other books on the shortlist I would strongly urge you to get your hands on. The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin, brilliantly fictionalises the story of the film director WG Pabst who fled Germany before the outbreak of the second world war, felt ignored in Hollywood and made the foolish decision to return home. On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, translated by Padma Viswanathan, is a short, sharp cleaver-blow of political horror set in a Brazilian prison camp. And She Who Remains by Rene Karabash, translated by Izidora Angel, is the story of Bekija/Matija who escapes an arranged marriage in Albania’s Accursed Mountains by becoming a “sworn virgin” under the ancient laws of the Kanun and living her life as a man.

The American author received ‘thousands of rejections’ over two decades before finally hitting gold with her first published novel

Just as I am about to interview this year’s Women’s prize winner, debut American novelist Virginia Evans, at the party on a drizzly evening in a leafy London square, we are interrupted because someone wants to congratulate her. The fan is Richard Curtis.

A warm-hearted weepy with a sprinkling of gentle humour, Evans’s prize-winning novel The Correspondent is prime Curtis material. In fact, he is too late. “I think he just wants to be my friend,” Evans jokes modestly – Notting Hill is her favourite movie of all time. A film of The Correspondent is already in the pipeline with Jane Fonda playing 73-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp, the crotchety correspondent of the title. Evans will be one of the producers and will have a cameo appearance, “walking a dog or something”.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Penguin Books, £9.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

The BBC’s chief international correspondent was awarded the prestigious nonfiction prize for The Finest Hotel in Kabul – which she hopes will bring more attention to the Taliban’s draconian treatment of women

• Women’s prize: Virginia Evans wins for fiction and Lyse Doucet takes award for nonfiction

Lyse Doucet first checked into Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel on Christmas Day 1988, as Soviet troops were withdrawing from Afghanistan at the end of a decade-long occupation. She expected to stay briefly. Instead, she remained for almost a year, and the hotel became her first Afghan home.

More than three decades later, it became the subject of her first book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, which has now won the Women’s prize for nonfiction. But while the prize recognises a remarkable work of reportage and history, the BBC’s chief international correspondent is more interested in what it might do for the country that inspired it.

My mum, the author Mary Hooper, who has died aged 81, left school aged 15 with no qualifications. Her last school report said: “Far too noisy and talkative.” When she was a young mother in the 1970s she read a short story and thought “I could do better than that,” wrote one up and sent it to Jackie magazine. To her surprise, it sold for £14.

She went on to write hundreds of stories and more than 100 books for children and young adults, before YA was an official genre. Among them were Newes from the Dead (2008), which won teenage book of the year at the North East Book awards and Bank Street best children’s book of the year in 2009; Fallen Grace (2010), which was nominated for the Carnegie medal in 2011; and Poppy (2014), which won the Young Quills Historical Association award that year, nominated by young readers.

If you fancy roaring around Japan’s open roads, scaling impossible mountains and playing with post-apocalyptic Pokémon, this year’s highlights mean you can do so without leaving your chair

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch; Vertigo Games
This clever update captures the 1990s magic of the original… including some of the technical issues

The 90s were a gold rush for adventure games. LucasArts kicked off the decade with its legendarily irreverent Monkey Island games. Then, Cyan Worlds materialised to deliver a series of atmospheric and boundary-pushing odysseys with Myst and Riven. Nestled between these primary genre texts is The 7th Guest, a lesser-known but still notorious adventure that earned plaudits for its unique FMV visual style, blending live-action filmed footage with pre-rendered 3D backgrounds. It was remade originally for VR, and now has been reconfigured into something playable on PC and consoles, its digital cobwebs cleared and tricky puzzles tinkered with for a fresh (or nostalgic) audience.

We are dropped into the ectoplasmic shoes of an amnesiac apparition, arriving at the gloomy haunted home of a toy-maker. Armed with a time-bending lantern and a Ouija board-shaped map, your job is to solve a historical whodunnit by literally illuminating events from the past. It’s a melodramatic, surprisingly campy adventure that effectively evokes the overzealous CD-Rom horror of its original era.

From horror galore to Chinese action games, the key trends, trailers and surprises from Summer Game Fest’s many, many hours of streams and broadcasts

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Did you spend hours of your weekend watching a relentless series of video game adverts? No? I don’t blame you – Summer Game Fest, the collection of livestreams that has arisen in place of the giant annual E3 video game expo in Los Angeles, is extremely overwhelming. There are the bigger, longer shows: the PlayStation and Xbox streams, the main SGF show hosted by Geoff Keighley and Lucy James, Future’s duet of the Future Games Show and the PC Gaming Show. Each show is two hours long. Then there are all the indie showcases: cosy games, women-led games, Black voices in gaming, Day of the Devs. Between them, they show off hundreds of games that might pique your interest.

I picked out exactly 34 highlights here: the biggest news, the most interesting-looking smaller games. But from the barrage of trailers I was also able to discern some trends. Here’s what we can learn.

Hundreds of video games were shown at June’s annual bonanza. After watching more than 15 hours of showcases, our video games editor picks the highlights

The sequel to a revered 2014 horror game from British developer Creative Assembly: this time you must evade the xenomorph on the surface of a storm-ravaged colony world.

Snape Maltings, Suffolk
This year’s Aldeburgh festival opened with a stripped-back concert staging by Rory Kinnear with Ryan Wigglesworth conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Trying to unlock the secrets of Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande, based on Maeterlinck’s symbolist play, is a slippery task at the best of times. Doing so in a barely there staging, with the orchestra on the platform with the singers, is even trickier. For the opening performance of this summer’s Aldeburgh festival, that was the challenge that reunited the conductor Ryan Wigglesworth, a featured artist this year, with the actor and occasional opera director Rory Kinnear.

Apart from some industrial-style pendant lights and a single high stool, there were no props or scenery – unless you count the orchestra, through which the characters stumbled as if the instrumentalists were the forest surrounding the castle. Costumes, likewise credited to Vicki Mortimer, were low-key: dark suits for the royal men, tattered bridal white for Mélisande, drab boiler suits for the silent onstage extras, who also provided the brief offstage chorus.

Regent’s Park Open Air theatre, London
Performers representing the four seasons of life – and a wide range of styles – dance to a ravey remix of Vivaldi

It was a great idea: a dance through the four seasons of life, with performers whose own ages range from spring to winter, set to a reimagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Neat. It’s amazing to see older dancers who can bring all the textures of their experience to the stage. But the thing with such a wide-ranging cast, who all specialise in different styles, is that the dance ends up being somewhere in the middle: everyone can do it but it doesn’t play to anyone’s strengths. The movement lands in a mildly street dance-influenced zone, locked into a basic 4/4 feel. It’s when you get a glimpse of a dancer’s signature – the brilliant Michael Naylor having a rave-up/meltdown in a club scene, for example – that you think, “Oh, this is what we were missing.”

Choreography is by the American Alexzandra Sarmiento, who works mainly in musicals and as a movement director in theatre, alongside director Tinuke Craig. The set-up is a trio of dancers for each season, always dressed in blue, pink and orange, who we come to realise represent the head, heart and gut of a person, although that’s not so clear at the start. The set does have boxes stamped with “HEAD”, “HEART” and “GUT”, but (to me, anyway) it wasn’t obvious because that didn’t seem connected with the dancing.

For the soundtrack, Vivaldi is chopped and spliced by DJ Walde, known for his funky hip-hop scores for ZooNation Dance Company. Back in 2012, composer Max Richter did his own genius rewrite of the Four Seasons, which has since been endlessly used in dance, and it is a mountain of a challenge to take on the same piece. Walde’s version mainly adds in some thumping beats side-by-side with the strings. At a couple of key points, such as that club scene, the Vivaldi is reduced to a sample and the beats take over, and suddenly everyone feels much more in their comfort zones.

Ultimately, there is not a strong enough sense of story or character or purpose to carry this show. It’s fantastic that Regent’s Park is committed to commissioning dance, to prove to general audiences that dance doesn’t have to have songs or script to be great theatre. But if you’re going to convert people, it has to be really, really good.

• At Open Air theatre, London, until 14 June

Theatr Clwyd, Mold
Emily White’s lyrical, if contrived, play is based on a real coastal village whose residents are being made climate refugees by rising sea levels

In 2014, residents of Fairbourne in Gwynedd discovered the local council had decided that maintaining sea defences was longer be tenable. Instead, as part of a process of “managed retreat”, this small coastal Welsh village would be abandoned to the sea by 2055.

This timeline has since shifted and been disputed, but while the village is not identified by name, it serves as the inspiration for Emily White’s Atlantis. Focusing on fisherman Bryn and his wife Gwen (Richard Elfyn and Vivien Parry), the action extends from 2011 to 2039, dramatising what has already occurred and imagining what is next as weather systems and a community both come undone.

Royal Opera House, London
Prodigal son Paul Lightfoot returns with Sol León for their first performance by a British dance company. The result is impressively choreographed, if in need of more heart

Paul Lightfoot is a prolific, multi-award-winning British choreographer, more than 35 years in the industry, making dance as a duo with his former wife Sol León. Yet this is the first time their work has been performed by a British dance company. Seems hard to believe.

The pair spent their careers at Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), as dancers and choreographers, then Lightfoot was artistic director from 2012 to 2020. But Cheshire-born Lightfoot trained at the Royal Ballet school, so this is a bit of a prodigal son situation, the Royal Ballet dancing an evening of the duo’s work: one two-decades-old piece revived, another that originated in lockdown that’s been dramatically recreated especially for this company.

The style of dance is so distinctive (influenced by that of NDT’s longtime director Jiří Kylián). It’s full of steps, exclamations, exaggerations and quirks. It is ultra specific, with constant switches of tone and timbre. The Royal Ballet’s dancers are used to demanding, ultra-contemporary movement but you can see how challenging it is to completely absorb a new style, and it’s interesting to see dancers play against type, like Vadim Muntagirov, a classical prince, now an ultra-serious, starkly angled figure in 2006’s Shoot the Moon. He’s one of five protagonists on a clever rotating set where different rooms and relationships come into view. Not so much a story as a set of (moderately opaque) situations. The style can be a bit Marmitey: Euro arthouse angst, well-dressed people in crisis to Philip Glass. Always a beautiful crisis, though.

The dancer most impressively invested in the work is Lauren Cuthbertson, almost reinvented for this piece. At one point there’s a live camera feed on stage and we see a closeup of Cuthbertson on screen, facial expressions as frantic as her body. She’s mesmerising, like a silent movie star scrolling through different roles – puffed cheeks, villainous pout – it could be comical if she weren’t so committed. The only thing is, there are so many expressions (and so many steps), it’s saying so much, that it almost doesn’t say anything; trying to tell a hundred stories, but sometimes one story is enough.

Disruption during performance of Inter Alia comes weeks after Pike berated audience member for texting during play

Rosamund Pike kept her cool after a phone alarm in the front row interrupted a performance of Inter Alia on Saturday afternoon.

The actor berated an audience member earlier this month for texting on their phone during the performance at Wyndham’s theatre in London.

Shadows glimpsed on a wall at sunset inspired this evocative portrait of the photographer and his dog, Lolly

Lolly – a chow-chow-cocker spaniel mix – was Tony Hertz’s dog for 15 years. “She had long black hair with a little white on her mouth, ears, eyebrows and feet, and a partially marbled tongue. She was quite cute,” Hertz says.

Hertz and Lolly were living in Pismo Beach, California, when he took this shot. At the time he was working on a photography series and book based around shadows, and he had taken her along on one of his regular sunset walks. Over a career spanning three decades, Hertz has photographed queens, popes and a president, but this was an attempt at something more personal. The photo was taken on a grassy area next to a Walmart. As Hertz sat down on a bench for a breather, he noticed in their shadows that Lolly was looking directly at him. “I positioned my phone so it couldn’t be seen in the shadow, composed the shot and then looked toward Lolly so that our profiles would be turned to each other,” he says. Hertz often wears his brimmed hats when seeking out new elements for his series, “to make them consistent with a little noir look”.

In this week’s newsletter: Are you indifferent to office sweepstakes and bored by endless stats? Fear not – there’s a bounty of film, TV and music being released this summer to take your mind off the on-pitch action

Have you, like me, got an incurable case of World Cup fever? Have you spent hours staring intently at the wallchart, attempting to memorise the kick-off times of all 104 games, even – no, especially – Uzbekistan v DR Congo? Have you signed up for the office sweepstake, played Bracketology, listened to approximately 831 preview podcasts (including the Guardian’s Football Weekly, of course), and quietly left your moral reservations about the Trump of it all at the front door? I’m all in.

For people with no interest in football, however, this must be the most hellish of periods, where every last billboard, newspaper front page (and website) and cola can is devoted to the sport. And that’s before you even switch on your TV, where the tournament has laid waste to regular scheduled programming.

Founded in 2004, the free weekly 5km event has grown into a global fixture of weekend life, taking place in parks, fields, seafronts and even prisons

The millionth parkrun took place on Saturday, acting as a celebration of the community cohesion and public health benefit that the charity has been aiming to achieve across the past two decades.

Those in attendance at the event in Bushy Park in west London included former Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes, as well as thousands of locals and parkrun fanatics alike.

Master the ultimate (and gloriously messy) finger food, in nine simple steps

When I first made these back in 2015, I noted that the British are “not enthusiastic” consumers of chicken wings. The fried chicken boom has changed all that, but these tangy, spicy versions, named after the American city rather than the beast, still aren’t as well known as they deserve to be, given what perfect finger food they make while watching (or pretending to watch) sport.

Prep 15 min
Dry 1 hr+
Cook 20 min
Serves 4 (with sides)

The very best double creams have a wildly complex taste, but which brands are a little scoop of sunshine and which are much of a muchness?

• The best supermarket natural yoghurts

This was a tricky taste test, not least because 70% of these creams tasted pretty much exactly the same, which is a clear reflection of how homogeneous our conventional food system has become (much of our cream is made from milk sourced from thousands of farms across the country and mixed together). Even the packaging is more or less identical, with a printed plastic tub and a peelable plastic lid.

British double cream is about 48% fat, which is higher than whipping cream (35%) and just below clotted (55% plus). This matters in practical terms because that’s why it whips more firmly, holds its shape longer and is less likely to split when added to a hot sauce. Conventional cream does the job well (it’s white, neutral in flavour and whips well), but really good cream is thick, gloopy and wildly fatty, with an unbelievably complex taste and remarkably nourishing effect; it’s also eminently whippable. Scooping a blob of cream like that straight from the tub can replenish energy and satiate in an almost alchemical way.

We’ve tried, tested and rounded up 62 thoughtful gifts – from gardening gloves to a cold brew coffee maker and a parkrun keyring – to make the father figure in your life feel special

• Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Whoever you’re celebrating this Father’s Day – your own dad or a father figure in your life – our bumper list of gift ideas should help you think beyond the norm (though we have included some sock options, because sometimes it’s OK to go classic).

Whatever their age or your budget, we’ve focused on sustainable products that stand the test of time. All of the products have either been tested by me or by our own brilliant testers on the Filter and should still be going strong on Father’s Day 2027 and beyond.

Whether it’s fancy sauces or lesser-known cuts, skip the obvious with these creative garden party gifts (and not a pasta salad in sight)

• The best (and worst) chef’s knives – tested

Summer’s here, so you’ve probably got an invitation to a barbecue. If someone’s gone to the effort of hosting one, they deserve better than supermarket sausages and a bottle of wine grabbed from the corner shop on the way.

But what to bring that’s thoughtful and a little bit different? Whether it’s olive oil or ice lollies, green harissa or Lambrusco (yes, really), here are some suggestions from those in the know.

Our writer grilled halloumi, veggies and spatchcock chicken to find the best barbecues, from crowd-pleasing all-rounders to models that can smoke, roast and more

• The best (and worst) chef’s knives – tested

Salmon don’t know that they swim upstream. Some ancient instinct impels them; they don’t think about it any more than trees think about growing. You are a British person of a certain age and bearing. You are buying a barbecue.

But this half-century-old compulsion often ends before it starts. Few products are marketed with as much machismo as BBQs, and the jargon makes them surprisingly tricky to buy. While we all enjoy the unintended high camp of a snap-jet ignition, it’s unclear if such features are essentials or optional extras. Add in the tedious difference between planchas and kamados, and you can easily spend hundreds of pounds on what is essentially a hot metal box.

Best BBQ overall:
Weber Bar-B-Kettle charcoal barbecue

Best budget BBQ:
Argos Home drum charcoal BBQ with cover and utensils

It may be obviously Michelin-chasing, but it’s also resolutely midriff-expanding

Oudh 1722 is chef Aktar Islam’s first foray into London, following his barnstorming ascent in Birmingham with the likes of Opheem. Brum’s love for Islam is resolutely misty-eyed, while Opheem’s 10-course tasting menu has garnered two Michelin stars. It is the ultimate special-occasion spot within a 100-mile radius, more akin to L’Enclume in vibe than its fellow two Michelin-starred Indian Gymkhana in Mayfair. Islam, however, is not taking this snoozily. Instead, he has taken on a listed Victorian townhouse near Borough Market in south-east London and opened a restaurant that’s pretty solemn in its approach to Awadhi cooking.

A laughably brief catch-up on the tradition: the Nawabi era began in 1722, thus the restaurant’s name. The cuisine was luxurious, and defined by slow, thoughtful cooking, sealed pots, aromatic spice blends and subtle notes. Dead posh, basically. The polar opposite of fast, very spicy, grab-and-go food. 1722’s à la carte menu opens with a lamb shorba, a traditional welcome broth poured over finely chopped lamb tartare. Then spherical servings of gol guppa (you might know them by another moniker, pani puri), filled with sprouting moong shoots and tiny edible flowers, and flooded with jaljeera-spiced cumin water. It feels unregal to shove the entire thing in your mouth, but needs must.

It’s so full of nutrients that it tops the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s list of powerhouse vegetables. But this superfood is also surprisingly versatile

Watercress is among the oldest known plants consumed by humans, and claims for its medicinal powers are almost as ancient. Hippocrates grew it near his hospital for medicinal purposes; Pliny the Elder favoured it as a remedy for anxiety and coughs. At one time or another its peppery leaves have been used as old folk remedies to treat fever, scurvy, intestinal worms and baldness.

Even now, watercress maintains a reputation as a nutrient-rich superfood – the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has ranked it number 1 (with a perfect score of 100) on a list of “powerhouse” fruits and vegetables, and with good reason: it’s rich in vitamins C, K and A and antioxidants.

Ever since Stanley Tucci got me into fried courgettes, I’ve been obsessed. And, of all the ways I’ve used them since, this is by far my favourite

I had my head turned by fried courgettes while watching Stanley Tucci eat spaghetti alla Nerano (on Searching for Italy). So much so, in fact, that I went so far as to book a table at Lo Scoglio da Tommaso in Nerano while I was in Italy last year, only to be thwarted by a broken-down car. Still in search of the pleasure, my husband, Hugh, made that pasta when we got back home, and we slapped our thighs in amazement that so much flavour and pleasure could be achieved by frying courgettes until bronzed. I’ve been using them in all sorts of ways ever since and this is hands down my favourite.

Bloody mary, but not as you know it …

This sour-spicy twist on the classic brunch drink is very easy to recreate at home.

Heath Ball, owner, The Red Lion & Sun, London N6

Edward thinks of sex as playtime and has a vivid imagination, which Jane is happy to go along with despite being quite ‘vanilla’ herself

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

When I dreamed about Jane in a latex catsuit, we had one made

Brendan Maclean had never spoken with drag queen Karen from Finance in person, nor laid eyes on the man behind the makeup. Then came a chance encounter in Melbourne

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

I’d had a big, sparkly pop career in my 20s but by 2024 I was beyond my twink era, and getting by hopping from one weird gig to the next. Covid had really done a number on the music industry and, while my friend Paul Mac had kept me making music, I found myself drifting through a strange, boozy few years in Sydney. I’d been single since 2020 and my best friend was my cat.

Throughout that hazy time, I was as terminally online as ever. At 38 I was posting like a 20-year-old. One day, for no particular reason, I posted a track from the Dissociatives’ self-titled album from the mid-noughties. Paul, who I call my gay uncle, and Daniel Johns of Silverchair fame, had made just one LP together, and the obscure track, Thinking in Reverse, was one of my favourites.

Yusuf, 25, who works in finance, meets Hannah, 26, a PhD student

What were you hoping for?
Someone interesting, good chat is more important than anything. And a fun story. I like a random side quest.

Jordan wants one catch-all digital resource for him and Charlene, so their social lives don’t clash, but she prefers to communicate in person. You decide whose time is up

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

I’m not trying to control her but having one shared calendar helps us plan our lives together

After falling for a scam call, ‘The Tech Chap’ host Tom Honeyands realised he’d given away vital details in social media posts

When Tom Honeyands realised he had been defrauded out of £70,000 he was furious and embarrassed – and left wondering if he had given away too many details on his social media videos.

Honeyands was on a work trip to Tokyo when he got a call from someone claiming to be from Lloyds bank. The caller asked if he had made a recent transaction in Singapore and when he said no, the scammer said his account had been compromised and that security details needed to be reset.

A medical issue can send quotes for cover soaring but it is not worth risking going abroad without a policy

‘I nearly fell over when I saw the travel insurance quote,” says the retiree Bernie Lawrence. The 77-year-old from Fleet, Hampshire, says that after he developed heart problems, the cost of buying cover became “astronomical”.

Lawrence, who usually travels with his wife, Barbara, 79, says he had always been active and fit before suffering chest pains while out running in 2018. Nine days later, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery.

Change in viewing habits offered by match times at 2026 tournament could mean using cheaper off-peak power

Watching late-night or early hours football could provide UK households with a practical opportunity to cut their energy bills, as even just doing the washing when cheaper electricity rates apply can net a decent saving.

At a time when energy costs are back at worrying highs, research by E.ON Next shows the potential to save money on a time-of-use tariff – in this case, its Next Smart Saver deal, which has three rates: peak, off-peak and super off-peak.

People with careers in the UK and beyond offer practical advice for those struggling to secure work

About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK are not in employment, education or training, and a recent report said this could rise to 1.25 million by the early 2030s without urgent government action.

With the obstacles young people face in securing employment now greater than ever, we asked readers if they had any advice for those seeking work. Here are some of their responses.

Footy Addicts helps amateur players find a game at short notice – and tackles the problem of loneliness

Cries of “Boss! Boss! Boss!” emerge from the pitch during a hard-fought game of football in a London park. There aren’t a lot of names used in this game, because most players only met just before kick-off. They were brought together by an app that’s injecting life into grassroots football.

Footy Addicts was invented to solve an infuriating problem for amateur players – the late dropout, which can lead to unbalanced teams and ruined games. The app brings together strangers who are desperate to play football, and who can step in after a cancellation to make up the numbers at short notice.

Other projects include developing tools to help visually impaired people navigate video games

Parents are constantly being told to limit their children’s screen time. But when it comes to deciphering which films or TV shows are best suited to developing minds, the guidance remains largely one-size-fits-all. A relatively slow-paced programme such as Bluey offers a very different viewing experience to a fast-moving action series such as PAW Patrol, yet both are broadly considered suitable for young children.

This challenge is growing as the type of content children are exposed to evolves. “Today’s young viewers are increasingly engaging with short-form, fast-paced, highly captivating content, often created by splicing and rearranging existing episodic content into quickly digestible snippets or compilations,” said Prof Tim Smith, director of University of the Arts London’s Nerve Lab. “This evolution is not only changing how content is produced and distributed, but may also affect children’s attention, comprehension and emotional response.”

Is my metabolism slowing with age? What’s the secret to good skin? And is there anything I can do about my crows feet? Medical, health and diet experts offer a midlife MOT

According to the dietician Rick Miller: “By the time a man hits his mid-40s, several physiological changes are already under way. Testosterone drops at around 1-2% annually from the mid-30s, insulin sensitivity decreases and the liver’s capacity to process certain nutrients changes. The diet that kept a man lean and energetic in his 30s simply stops working.”

Influencers often brand sugar as inherently harmful – but not all sweet foods are created equal

‘It’s a common myth,” says Dr Emily Leeming, a dietitian at King’s College London – and one that thrives on social media. The confusion, she says, often comes from people cutting out sugary foods and feeling better. But that can be because removing ultra-processed sweet treats improves the overall quality of a diet (making more room for wholefoods).

Leeming says influencers who call sugar “toxic” often see it as inherently harmful – solely responsible for weight gain, poor blood sugar control and heart problems. But in controlled studies where calorie intake is kept the same, diets high in sugar don’t appear to worsen weight loss, metabolism or key health markers. “It’s not ideal nutritionally if you’re missing out on fruits, vegetables and whole grains,” Leeming says, “but sugar isn’t in itself directly harmful in that context.”

Taylor Swift and Timothée Chalamet lead the charge in blue and orange, as courtside style hits a ‘memeable’ peak

The World Cup may have kicked off in the US this week, but America’s attention is focused on a different sport: basketball. The NBA finals could end this weekend, with the New York Knicks potentially becoming champions for the first time since 1973. And with Knicks fever comes fan style, especially courtside, where celebrities have been showing their support in different ways.

For Wednesday’s Game 4, won by the Knicks, Taylor Swift and Este and Alana Haim all wore T-shirts in the blue and orange of the Knicks with their own Knicks-related pop culture pun: Swift’s read “Stevie Knicks”, while Este’s said “Knickeback” and Alana’s read “Knickole Kidman”. This was not shop merch. Vogue reported that Alana had made the T-shirts herself.

‘Late life’ male celebrities are turning the need for spectacles into a style statement as they refuse to disappear into fashion invisibility

A heart-throb for more than 40 years, Brad Pitt is no doubt used to people looking at him. But this week, that gaze was distracted by an addition to his face – aviator-style glasses.

Worn to watch the tennis at Roland Garros and with a pink trenchcoat when out for dinner in Paris, these retro glassesare more typically worn by younger men. That’s changed recently – they’re now becoming central to a makeover for men entering their “late life” era, but who aren’t willing to submit to the fashion invisibility associated with ageing.

Dear Frances offers the latest take on ballet flats, offering ‘a glove-like fit wearability’ – which is fine if you have nice feet

When is a shoe not a shoe? On sale this month is a pair that seems to pose the question – the no shoe-shoe is the work of the cult brand Dear Frances and the latest in a steady march of shoes that are barely there; a take on naked dressing but for the foot.

The Balla shoe, which the brand calls a “sock shoe”, covers almost the entire foot, but also leaves it – encased but on display – in a kind of flimsy foot-cage. According to Jane Frances, the creative director and founder of the brand, it “offers a unique, glove-like fit wearability” and “takes inspiration from the delicate strength of a woman”.

With his trademark glasses, his bleached hair and a thrillingly haphazard approach to colour, the artist’s signature style evolved and captivated decade after decade

If artist style is now a well-trodden path in fashion, there are some examples that stand out. David Hockney – with his trademark glasses, rugby shirts, trenchcoats and quirks like wearing a pair of yellow Crocs to meet King Charles in 2022 – might have been top of that list.

His flair for style was there from the start: a self-portrait of Hockney at 16 shows him dressed in a blue coat, red scarf and yellow tie, already with strong statement specs. As time went on, he developed his trademark look. The peroxide mop came in the early 60s, after he saw an advert for Clairol proclaiming “blondes have more fun” and his signature round spectacles replaced his NHS specs by the the middle of the decade.

A 1,600-mile journey to the wild peaks of Scotland, via Llandudno’s Victorian promenade and the bright lights of Blackpool proved an eye-opener in more ways than one

One of my favourite recent photographs is of me (unusually), perched on the bonnet of our car, about to set off on a solo, two-week road trip from our Sussex home to the wilds of Scotland, taking in Eryri (Snowdonia), Lancashire, the Lake District and Yorkshire. I had no idea that the research trip I was about to embark on – for my book, which traces the story of British holidays over 400 years – was going to reveal my homeland as somewhere I barely knew.

As a southerner, it was the northern half of Britain that I needed to discover. I’d stitched together my route with visits to museums, archives and classic seaside resorts that had once blazed so brightly. I’d visited Cumbria before, but the Conwy coast, the Lancashire countryside, Blackpool, Morecambe, Scarborough? All these were unknowns.

I found cinematic landscapes, wild freedom and thousands of miles of perfect solitude on my campervan adventure through the Nordic countries

It’s midnight, in June. Powder pink and dark grey clouds drift across a pallid sky, the palette reflecting in the motionless water of Lake Inari. Islets of pine and just-budding birch create pools of distorted shade close to the horizon of this 420 sq mile (1,080 sq km) lake in Lapland, northern Finland. There is not a sound. It’s so silent, I barely breathe to avoid disturbance. Only me, the lake and a moonbeam-coloured moth, whose wingbeat is inaudible.

I am sat beside my car-sized campervan, with mesmerised reverence for the rose-tinged panorama. I do not wish to go to bed and miss this moment. And I am loving the wild freedom and deliciousness of being entirely alone, with nobody in the world knowing my exact whereabouts. Ordinarily, I would be long asleep by midnight, exhausted after a day of work and family life. But I have left my husband and (adult) children at home in England for an eight-week solo camping adventure through Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway, with the singular aim of reaching Nordkapp (North Cape) and Knivskjellodden, Europe’s northernmost point at the top of Norway, in time for midsummer.

From Iceland to Italy, you share your best adventures behind the wheel
• Tell us about your favourite European hike – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Jeremy Clarkson described Romania’s Transfăgărășan Highway as “one unbroken grey ribbon of motoring perfection”. The route (the second highest in Romania after the Transalpina) with its hairpin bends and climbs over the mountain was thrilling. Although we’d been told bear sightings were possible, we didn’t anticipate spotting them literally on the roadside, with one hanging over a stone wall posing for photographs, taken through the car window. Because of the harsh winters in the southern Carpathian Mountains, the section of the road to Bâlea Lake is open only for a few summer months – it proved particularly beautiful.
Helen Jackson

Follow the folklore and you will discover a landscape full of wonder and powerful women – from a fearsome Scottish warrioress to the first queen of a united England

It’s just past midday and I appear to be inside a rain cloud. Soaked to the skin, my walking boots squelching through tufts of grass and black bog mud, I can hear hundreds of streams rolling off this wide mid-Wales peak, each vying to be the fastest. I’ve hiked around more than 8 miles (13km) of Hafren Forest trails to the top of Pumlumon Fawr (Plynlimon), to reach a wooden post carved with the words Source of the Severn. And I’m here, alone, because I’m hoping to meet a river goddess.

It’s perhaps not as strange as it first sounds. Starting about 150 years ago, the folklorist John Rhys travelled across Wales to archive as many local myths as possible, and among them was the very tale that brought me to this peak: the story of the birth of the River Severn, in which three sisters – Hafren (Severn), Rheidolyn (Rheidol) and Gwy (Wye) – each choose their own route to the sea. My trip to the river’s source was itself a moment of mythically inspired travel, something that has been common practice in the British Isles for as long as we’ve told stories, not least as a means of passing them on.

From underfloor heating to big screen TVs, there seems to be nothing in the average house that isn’t available in one of these uber-vans

Our maiden campervan trip, 2021, and my wife and I return from Kata Tjuta to Yulara’s “Ayers Rock” campground to find new neighbours. Towering beside our humble rental is a fully optioned monster ute with a spanking new off-road caravan. And a playpen.

We’re enjoying a sunset dinner outside when a woman lurches down the steps next door cradling a chihuahua. Scowling at us, she drops the dog in the playpen and hauls herself back inside. The dog snarls and yaps until we hastily finish eating and retreat into our tiny van.

From Brinsworth House and Denville Hall to Goliath, Timperley Early and Valentine, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which African capital city and its river are anagrams of each other?
2 In the UK, which bird of prey has gone from near extinction to about 4,500 breeding pairs?
3 Which 1956 play was written on a deckchair on Morecambe Pier?
4 Which song features nine times in the film Groundhog Day?
5 Who was the only crowned heir apparent to the English throne?
6 Denville Hall and Brinsworth House are retirement homes for whom?
7 What is England’s largest forest?
8 What volcanic glass is named after a Roman traveller?
What links:
9 CND chair; 9-57 v South Africa; Happy Valley star; RAF philanthropist?
10 Benfica, 2026 and 1978; Galatasaray, 1986; Perugia, 1979; Red Star, 2008?
11 Coal Miner’s Daughter; I Saw the Light; Sweet Dreams; Walk the Line?
12 Champagne; Fulton’s Strawberry Surprise; Goliath; Timperley Early; Valentine?
13 Isabella Bird; Nellie Bly; Ida Pfeiffer; Freya Stark?
14 Sunshine Desserts (Barron); LA beaches (Anderson); White House (Janney)?
15 Eddy; Falstaff; Junior; Lily; Lin; Lucy; Oscar?

Five multiple-choice questions – set by children – to test your knowledge, and a chance to submit your own junior brainteasers for future quizzes

• ​Submit a question

Molly Oldfield hosts Everything Under the Sun, a podcast answering children’s questions. Do check out her books, Everything Under the Sun and Everything Under the Sun: Quiz Book, as well as her new title, Everything Under the Sun: All Around the World.

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

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

In her work as an online safety campaigner, the baroness and Bridget Jones director has seen things she can never unsee – and she’s furious at the tech overlords doing nothing to stop the abuse

Through the open windows behind Beeban Kidron drifts the unmistakable sound of children playing. Her north ­London office is sandwiched between a school and a nursery, and the occasional playground shriek functions as an aural reminder of what we’re here to discuss: the safety and happiness of young people, growing up in an age of screens.

Though our conversation takes some dark turns, only once does the film director turned crossbench peer and online safety campaigner for children lose her composure. “I have seen a lot of things I’d rather not see,” she says, slowly. “But the worst thing was not the most extreme. It was watching a child’s face as she realised that the person who she thought was her friend wasn’t her friend; that the sex acts she’d been doing weren’t for her friend; and that there may have been other people in the room.

The philanthropist always saw Epstein for who he really was – despite his meetings with her then husband Bill Gates. Now carving out a life on her own terms, she explains why she’s focused on the fight for women’s health

Melinda French Gates has entered a new phase of life, and it is “beautiful”, she says. It is five years since her painful, public divorce from the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and two years since she stepped down from their charity, the Gates Foundation, to focus her full attention on Pivotal, the philanthropic organisation she founded in 2015 to promote women’s empowerment. Her three children have all left home, she goes by “Nonna” to her two granddaughters, and as an empty nester she finds herself in the strange position of having time on her hands.

She has started visiting her local independent bookshop more often, chatting to the staff about what she should read next; when she finishes work at five, she often texts a friend to meet for a walk, and they go exploring new neighbourhoods of Seattle, decaf coffees in hand. She no longer runs daily but insists on a morning stroll to enjoy the natural beauty of her adoptive home town, Lake Washington glittering in late-spring light. This morning, she saw a blue heron, she says, sounding almost boastful.

Other western acts have attempted to crack country’s music scene since singer’s breakout success in 2018

One week after announcing she was “cancer free”, the British pop star Jessie J did what any recovering patient would do and travelled thousands of miles around the world to perform for an audience of more than a billion people.

On 29 May, the singer-songwriter, whose real name is Jessica Cornish, belted out a stage-rattling rendition of Frank Sinatra’s My Way on the stage of Singer, a hugely popular Chinese singing competition similar to The Voice. She also performed her new song, California, briefly adapting the lyrics to change California to Changsha, the Chinese city where Singer is hosted.

We would like to hear from people who regret turning to AI chatbots for advice on their personal or social lives

People are increasingly turning to AI chatbots for advice on their personal and social lives. But researchers and even some AI companies are beginning to worry that some users are becoming overly dependent on their chatbots.

Have you taken the advice of an AI chatbot to make a significant decision - and regretted it?

We’d like to hear from UK adult adoptees about they navigated their reunion with a birth parent

Guardian journalist David Batty has described the complex family trauma many adult adoptees have to navigate during reunion with their birth parents, often without professional support.

We would like other UK adult adoptees to share their experiences of adoption reunion. How challenging was it to forge relationships with birth relatives and to maintain them? What, if any, support did you receive? How did it impact your relationship with your adoptive family?

We would like to hear about the holidays reads you’d recommend

Summer is here, which means lazy days at the beach or the pool with a great book by your side.

We would love to hear from people about their favourite beach reads. What books have you loved reading on holiday? What are the page turners that you keep returning to every summer and always recommend to friends? We would love to hear what books these are and why they make a great beach read.

From rising fuel, fertiliser and feed costs linked to the conflict in Iran to the impact of climate change, farmers around the world are facing a range of pressures. We want to hear how these challenges are affecting you

Farmers are facing rising costs for fuel, fertiliser and animal feed as a result of the conflict in Iran, adding to existing pressures on the industry.

The sector is also grappling with extreme weather after the UK’s hottest May day on record, alongside wider concerns about the impact of climate change. Europe also experienced record-breaking temperatures in late May and the UN has warned about the imminent return of El Niño – a powerful weather pattern that raises global temperatures and worsens some rainfall.

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