Meltdowns, more contestants, Ross Kemp being ‘the daddy’: read on for our guide to the return of TV’s best reality gameshow

Prepare to become obsessed with famous people backstabbing and betraying one another in a Scottish castle. Yes, autumn is upon us, meaning the return of last year’s TV sensation, The Celebrity Traitors.

The inaugural VIP version of the BBC’s reality gameshow proved a runaway hit and broke ratings records as Alan Carr chaotically schemed and sobbed his way to victory. The second series promises to be bigger, better and more murderous with extra episodes, shock twists and an even starrier lineup.

Watch the official trailer for NAZA, an award-winning documentary produced by the Guardian that details the systems behind Israel’s mass killings in Gaza. The critically acclaimed film, produced with the team behind the Zone of Interest and directed by Oscar-winning film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, includes testimony from 24 Israeli military insiders, shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv. Abraham and Szor are the two Israeli directors of the four behind No Other Land, which won the Oscar for best documentary in 2025. It will be released in cinemas in more than 50 countries in the coming weeks, and then will stream on the Guardian’s website, for free, from late November

The PM returns to Liverpool, where he was mocked last year, with a promise that no one will be left wondering what he’s trying to do

• UK politics live – latest updates

Andy Burnham was not even in the audience for the prime minister’s speech at the Labour party conference this time last year. As Keir Starmer made the case for continuity to his restive party, Burnham was spotted slipping out over the bridge towards Liverpool’s Albert Dock.

The then Greater Manchester mayor had been vying for the spotlight throughout the party’s annual gathering, presenting the argument for change. But even he could not have envisaged the schism that would take place in the ensuing 12 months and would put him on the main stage as prime minister at this year’s conference, beginning in Merseyside on Sunday.

Award-winning novelist celebrates late partner’s love of birds with gift to establish the Graeme Gibson chair in avian biology

If she could be any bird, Margaret Atwood would transform into a raven. “They’re very smart. They’re social, playful and just a very successful bird,” she says while seated in a corner of a bird observatory in the Lake Erie Islands archipelago. “They’re quite an intelligent problem solver.”

The observatory, which she set up with her late partner, Graeme Gibson, is located on the west shore of Pelee Island – the southernmost community in Canada – and is so new that there are no lightbulbs in a handful of lamps.

The stars are no strangers to public scrutiny of their most intimate relationships – but they’ve never experienced anything like this. They talk about playing a famous divorcing couple, and how money makes things revolting

In a London hotel room, Dominic West is weighing up how much he would accept to strip to his socks. In the new series War, West plays a social media billionaire who is supposed to be fairly decent, though there’s one excruciating scene – goading someone to strip for money – that reveals he’s definitely also a bit of a git. “That, I suppose, is the kick billionaires must get: that people would do anything for money,” he says. He wonders what his price would be. His co-star Sienna Miller laughs and says he’d do it “for the lols”, and West grins and says: “No, I’d want three figures. A hundred quid.”

War is a juicy eight-part legal drama, where Miller and West are a divorcing couple – she a narcissistic film star, he said billionaire – so just about all their scenes together are suppurating with contempt, which is fun, but also a bit of a shame because they have such good chemistry. They first worked together 21 years ago in the West End production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. “So we had a history, which was great,” says Miller. There have been many times she’s gone into jobs where “on the first day you’re married to someone and you don’t know them. It’s helpful to have some sort of rapport.”

Israel and the US have used AI to kill in Gaza and Iran, while law enforcement uses it in surveillance and arrests. The future is here

In recent weeks, concerns about AI have forged unlikely alliances in the tech and policy worlds. Tech moguls such as Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis joined Dario Amodei, Satya Nadella and Bill Gates in sounding the alarm about the dangers of AI and called for a slowdown of the technology’s development despite years of racing for dominance. The senator Bernie Sanders teamed up with Steve Bannon to urge Congress to regulate AI, which has become one of the very few issues to unite Americans across the political spectrum.

The latest moves were sparked in part by the AI researcher Jacob Coxon’s warnings on Twitter/X that AI companies are “gambling with our lives” and believe that the technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade”.

• City face sanctions after more than 100 rule breaches

• Club insists it is innocent and is expected to appeal

Manchester City have been found guilty of the vast majority of more than a hundred charges related to breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules, throwing English football into turmoil.

The serial champions now face the possibility of being relegated from the Premier League, or expelled from the competition altogether, after a verdict in the biggest disciplinary case in the history of the sport was finally delivered.

Prime minister quashes speculation that Labour’s revival in the polls could prompt early contest

Andy Burnham has said he will not call a general election before 2029, after days of speculation that Labour’s revival in the polls could tempt him to call an early contest.

The prime minister was repeatedly questioned on the prospect during a round of broadcast interviews to regional media on Friday.

Three-year-old became separated from a relative in Suffolk and went in direction of pond where he was later found dead

A three-year-old boy who was found dead in a pond after going missing from a playground had left the play area “through a gap in the fence”, an inquest heard.

Noah Woods became separated from a relative after visiting the playground in Merriam Close, Brantham, on the afternoon of 15 September, Suffolk police said.

Far-right activist who was filmed appearing to slash boat with blade is refused bail as he denies charges

The far-right agitator Daniel Thomas has pleaded not guilty to causing criminal damage after he was filmed apparently slashing a boat in the Channel with a blade while an emergency responder was onboard.

Thomas, 37, appeared at Basingstoke magistrates court on Friday morning. He also pleaded not guilty to failing to disclose to police the pin number of his phone, under section 53 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

Age difference between former Democratic Unionist party leader and his victims an aggravating factor, say prosecutors

Jeffrey Donaldson, the former leader of the Democratic Unionist party in Northern Ireland, could be sent to prison for more than 10 years over the sexual assault of two women when they were children, a court heard on Friday.

The disgraced politician, who headed the DUP between 2021 and 2024, was found guilty of 18 counts of sexual abuse including one count of rape against the women in June.

Kenneth Newton and Melanie James filmed themselves mocking and abusing Rubin Blount, 28, who weighed 40kg when he died

A couple convicted of murder after inflicting “deliberate cruelty” on a vulnerable 28-year-old man in their care, who at the time of his death weighed just 40kg (6st 4lb), have been jailed for life.

Rubin Blount was made to stand for long periods of time, left to lie in his own urine and forced to eat out of bins by his stepbrother Kenneth Newton and Newton’s partner, Melanie James, at a property in Tamworth, Staffordshire, Stafford crown court heard.

Jim Mackey urges ‘zero tolerance approach’ in England amid growing concern over breaches of confidential data

NHS staff suspected of snooping on patients’ medical records should be suspended immediately and barred from using health service computers, the head of NHS England has said.

Jim Mackey urged NHS England’s 205 health trusts to pursue a “zero tolerance” approach to staff who are suspected of inappropriately accessing records.

Unnamed woman who filed and later dropped lawsuit against rap superstar states that she never met him, contrary to initial allegation of 2000 assault

A woman who accused Jay-Z of raping her when she was 13 years old has formally withdrawn her allegation, saying that she has never met the rap superstar.

The unnamed woman had originally made the allegation in a lawsuit filed in 2024, claiming that Jay-Z, real name Shawn Carter, had drugged and raped her with Sean Combs, known as P Diddy. The incident was alleged to have happened at a party after an MTV awards ceremony in 2000.

Tour Montparnasse modernisation project at a standstill after clashes over pricing and other issues

It has been called a carbuncle on the Paris skyline, a sombre skyscraper where visitors to its viewing platform often joke that the city looks better when you can’t see the building itself.

The much-maligned Tour Montparnasse, a lone, dark monolith with tinted windows rising above a historic neighbourhood in the south of the city, is once again at the centre of controversy after its long-awaited renovation was halted this week because of disagreements between its many private co-owners.

As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each tells the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the conflict. Rajab al-Reefi teaches children to skate to ‘bring some joy’, but finding boards and safe spaces is a daily challenge

Rajab al-Reefi remembers the day the club’s last skateboard broke. Those pastry-thin layers of maple, carefully pressed into a curve, had carried child after child up and down the homemade ramps of the skatepark. Having endured years beyond their typical lifespan, the board’s layers buckled, cracked and finally snapped.

At 30, Rajab is a leader of the Gaza skate club, a group that has spent the past decade teaching girls and boys to skate. But Israel’s siege of Gaza blocks a vast array of ordinary household goods from entering the territory, with the Israelis claiming they could be used by Hamas. One of the banned items is a skateboard.

More than 100 people were arrested at large protests against the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN general assembly. Susan Sarandon, Chelsea Manning and Caleb Hearon were among the famous faces arrested. Inside the assembly hall, Netanyahu faced a mass walkout as he took to the stage. Then, in an inflammatory address, he claimed Israel’s war in Gaza was the ‘opposite of a genocide’ and labelled the New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, antisemitic. Lucy Hough speaks to UK global editor Devika Bhat - Watch Thursday’s episode of Stateside with Kai and Carter on whether Netanyahu has lost America here

Iran’s seven-day timetable would restart nuclear talks, but will the US be willing to deliver on terms that include reining in Israel in Lebanon?

Iran’s seven-day timetable to reopen the strait of Hormuz and start talks on its nuclear programme has been pitched as a deal that could rapidly extricate Donald Trump from a political crisis but requires the US president to make difficult concessions.

In the five days left before the proposed reopening of the strait, which is expected to relieve pressure on global energy markets, Trump would need to lift Iranian asset freezes, permit Iran to export its oil and, probably most difficult of all, order Benjamin Netanyahu to end Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, thus achieving the “ceasefire on all fronts”.

About 1.5 million people have watched footage of foreign secretary that capitalises on social media’s love of a cringe moment

It sparked delight among the diehard Milifans and a begrudging smile from those less keen on the foreign secretary, but a viral video of Ed Miliband has – possibly – confirmed his status as the internet’s awkward dad.

About 1.5 million people have viewed an interaction between Miliband and the TikTok personality Feroz Khan on the streets of New York, during which the digital content creator asks Miliband a series of questions including his name, job and his top piece of advice.

Would you pay thousands to meet the love of your life? In an age of app fatigue, many singles are hiring coaches to help them find partners. But are they chancers preying on the lovelorn, or do they hold the key to true romance?

Modern dating is a hellscape. Just ask any single person, who will probably regale you with stories of endless swiping, ghosting, cringe Hinge dates and unfulfilling “situationships”. But what if there was a way to escape all this and put yourself on a fast track to finding The One?

That very aim is driving the rise of dating coaches – people who make money from helping their clients to find a partner. According to the New York Times, now is a better time than ever to be a relationship coach, with the widespread dissatisfaction with dating apps and a growing sense of “heteropessimism” fuelling their popularity. In 2023, Shirley Williams, a then 37‑year‑old from New York, went viral when she posted a video sharing that she spent $10,000 on a dating coach, and got engaged within a year. Her post sparked intense debate between people who thought it was a ridiculous expense, and others who wondered why this was so much more controversial than, say, investing in education, travel and work.

Despite attempts to legally filibuster the charges out of existence for the past three years, we’ve rightfully failed

It couldn’t have been more prophetic. In 2008, 15 years before Manchester City were charged with financial fraud, fans started singing “City’s going down with a billion in the bank” to the tune of Yellow Submarine. This was because the former Thailand president Thaksin Shinawatra’s 15-month ownership of City had come to an abrupt end when more than £1bn of his assets were frozen. And although Sheikh Mansour of the UAE had stepped in to save City, we were sinking fast.

Despite the UAE’s untold riches, by December we were in the relegation zone. It’s called Cityitis – shorthand for our tendency to self-destruct when things appear to be going well. In fact we won trophy after trophy. But we continued to sing the song about going down with a billion in the bank. When the financial fair play investigation was launched in 2018, the chant got louder. Then in 2023 we learned there were more than 100 charges. The chant became even louder and more cavalier. And now that our grubby, griftin’, cheatin’ chicken has come home to roost, you can bank on one thing (if banks still deal with us) – the chanting will be louder and more cavalier than ever.

(Republic)
This four-track addition to a critically maligned album works hard to remind fans what they love about Swift, with some sweet highs and galling lows

One downside of turning your release strategies into scavenger hunts and layering clues within your work is that it invites enormous amounts of scrutiny about your potential motive. When Taylor Swift announced an expanded edition of last year’s critically maligned The Life of a Showgirl this week, subtitled The Encore, many fans instantly suspected one of two things: that it was designed to remind Grammy members of Showgirl’s existence during their voting period to determine next year’s nominees, or to oust country ingenue Ella Langley from her record-breaking US No 1 run.

If that sounds cynical, it’s also worth remembering that when Swift announced Showgirl last year, she said that unlike her previous album, The Tortured Poets Department – a 16-track record immediately inflated to 31 songs on release day – the purposefully concise, 12-track Showgirl would not be expanded. (This didn’t stop her releasing 34 variants of the record, with various acoustic demos and so on, to juice sales.)

Collection by the designer, brought in to return the ailing fashion house to profit, is on the money

He’s the mononymic designer who has been charged with rescuing Gucci from plummeting sales. So where better for Demna to stage his third catwalk show than at the forefront of commerce – a purpose-built Gucci shop.

During Milan fashion week on Friday, the designer transformed a convention centre into a sprawling retail space that mirrored the design for the brand’s new boutiques.

The Guardian’s award-winning columnist talks to Nosheen Iqbal about Donald Trump's ballroom, going for a drink with Nigel Farage, Taylor Swift’s wedding, and why she's feeling relaxed about the AI apocalypse

The epic documentary series reveals much about the shifting social attitudes of the last 60 years – and much more about the quiet mystery of human life

For an hour or two this week, I’ve been in the company of people whose lives I’ve seen unfold, almost from the beginning, almost to the end. They are people whom, with one exception, I’ve never met. And yet I’ve shared in their triumphs and disappointments for decades.

They are the group who, in 1964, when they were seven years old, were the subjects of what was initially a single, 40-minute ITV documentary, but which flowered into a work that is quite magical. Returning to those same boys and girls every seven years, watching as they turned first into shy and awkward teenagers, then into husbands and wives, then into parents and grandparents, the 7 Up series has become a document of our times – but also something larger and far more revealing. This week the broadcaster aired what it says will be the final chapter: the seven-year-olds are now 70.

Nationalisation is not the ultimate answer for companies like Thames Water – but they could be run for the public benefit

• Will Hutton is a journalist and political economist. Andy Haldane is a former chief economist of the Bank of England

Ed Davey’s party are the obvious candidates to push for the deeper local democracy the public is crying out for

September is the cruellest month for political commentators because it is when something has to be said about the Liberal Democrats. They are a play without a plot, a chorus line of seemingly endless “don’t knows”. Their leader, Ed Davey, recently warned that “we’re in the fight of our lives” to defend the values of liberty and equality. Really? How can this be when Davey is becoming about as relevant as Count Binface?

The Lib Dems’ central predicament has remained unchanged for a century, ever since the decline of David Lloyd George and the rise of the Labour party. There is simply no space in Britain for a centrist party when so little divides the big parties and they broadly stick to the prevailing ecomomic orthodoxy.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Focusing on the right to drink at your seat is an odd place to start when discrimination in the game runs much deeper

Andy Burnham is right that football fans have historically been treated differently from other sports fans. But if we’re going to talk about discrimination in football, the ban on drinking at your seat feels like a strange place to start.

The rule may have its roots in a very different era of football, but for many fans today, being able to take a pint to your seat may not be top of their list of changes they’d like to see in the game. Especially at a time when discrimination is very much present elsewhere in football.

Marva Kreel is a broadcaster and football content creator

Plus, Prince Harry spreads his love of Marmite to his kids, and Dolly Parton’s nephew turns out to be fairly unusual

It was a big week at the UN, Buckingham Palace and the White House, but for all sentient people of Britain, the top story this week was that Bake Off is back and we need to talk about Nigella. (“Isn’t that the thing you use on cold sores?” said my gen Alpha child, as yet uninitiated into the lifestyle icons of our age. “That’s Bonjela,” I said.) I went into the opener of the show’s 17th season crankily resenting the departure of Prue Leith, who I love, and who offers, apart from anything else, a corrective to all the women on TV at the moment lecturing us about how to age from behind Maga-style glow-ups. (Youth on HBO anyone? No thanks!)

Alan Milburn is preparing to implement his report to bring young people back into work. Let’s hope the government will see it through

As certainly as the moon pulls on the tides, Labour governments improve the lives of the poorest children. Just as surely, Conservative governments pull back and reverse the good done. Here we go again: despite the social devastation caused by George Osborne’s cuts last time, Kemi Badenoch announces that she wants to impose cuts to universal credit for the poorest if she gets the chance.

She doesn’t do subtle, none of Iain Duncan Smith’s cruel-to-be-kind routine, but goes straight for populist rabble-rousing, stirring up fact-free contempt for anyone on benefits, with a proposed ban on buying cigarettes and alcohol, or gambling, with benefit money. Welfare, she says, must not be “a lifestyle choice for those who can’t be bothered”. As with all crude rightwing populism, the harm she does spreads hatred of the weak. In this most unequal country, it encourages bullies to kick downwards, stifling more generous human instincts.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

The Oscar-winner is voicing Narnia’s wise lion in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew, leading to roars of fury from US evangelical commentators

It is a confusing time to be alive, given how often these days Hollywood indulges in revisionism. Who knew that the Wicked Witch of the West was the heroine after all, that Cruella de Vil simply had a difficult childhood, or that Mufasa was adopted? Now it turns out that Aslan, CS Lewis’s messiah with a mane, is a lioness – or at least, may sound like one in Greta Gerwig’s upcoming adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew, because Meryl Streep is providing the voice.

News that the Oscar-winner might be portraying Narnia’s Christ-like big cat first surfaced in April last year, prompting a flurry of complaints from conservative Christians. This week, the naysayers were back after Empire published a first look at the film, along with an interview with Gerwig in which the director confirmed the casting and explained her choice of actor. Streep, it turns out, was hired not because the Barbie director desperately fancied stoking the flames of controversy, but because she needed someone over 70 who could convey both wisdom and childlike wonder.

People have become servants to social media. The ultimate flex is to walk back to real life

Think of your online life as a garden. At first it’s just a few seeds here or there – a Facebook profile where you created entire albums from a night at the pub, or maybe a Tumblr or a Myspace page listing your favourite bands. It is fun – something just for you and your friends to enjoy.

Then the garden grows. You get an Instagram account and document moments from each day on Stories, use LinkedIn for networking and sharing career triumphs, and check your X/Twitter hyper-vigilantly in case you wrote something that just got you cancelled.

The Chinese leader’s visit to Washington appears to have done nothing to shift the stalemate in bilateral relations

Within days, two high-profile Chinese visitors will arrive in the US – envoys of friendship, as Xi Jinping described them when he met Donald Trump at the White House this week. The giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, will be hosted at Atlanta zoo. Beijing dispatched the first panda pair to the US in 1972 following President Richard Nixon’s landmark visit to China. It uses the animals to indicate satisfaction or displeasure with other nations. But it also charges heftily for their lease: reportedly, around $1m a year per pair. Americans’ views of China have warmed from a pandemic nadir, but are unlikely to be shifted much by two animals, however charming. These days they are more of a token gesture than a striking symbol.

It is telling that the announcement was one of the main takeaways of Mr Xi’s visit to Washington. Expectations were low after May’s stalemate summit in Beijing, but this meeting still struggled to meet them. The US president gave Mr Xi a lavish welcome – unusually, travelling to meet the “strong, vibrant and fit” Chinese leader off the plane. He insisted that they had “never gotten along better”.

All the contenders for this year’s prize are a reflection of the crisis in masculinity

Jarvis Cocker, one of the judges for this year’s Booker prize, has expressed surprise that the shortlist, announced this week, contains four male authors and only two female writers, because, “generally speaking, the male-written books weren’t as good as the ones written by women”.

The Pulp frontman might be on to something. Over the past 10 years, however, seven Booker winners have been men; the number of women boosted to four by the controversial joint win between Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood in 2019. The 2024 Booker shortlist was the first to have five female authors in the prize’s history. Last year’s winner Flesh, by British-Hungarian author David Szalay, stripped what being a man means down to its bones.

Readers offer solutions to the thorny problem facing the government, in response to an article by Gaby Hinsliff

Gaby Hinsliff (Britain needs cash and everyone knows we should break the pensions triple lock. Where is the courage?, 22 September) is right that public policy should not subsidise wealth without limit, but breaking the triple lock is a poor way to target affluent pensioners. Most pensioners are not affluent. Indeed, a quarter of pensioners require benefits in addition to the state pension just to survive and keep a roof over their heads.

If the aim is to stop subsidising wealth, a more direct target is the generous tax treatment of private pension savings. A taxpayer contributing £100 to a pension can receive £40 or £45 in tax relief if they pay higher- or additional-rate tax, compared with £20 for the basic rate. Tax and national insurance contributions relief on private pensions costs the government a staggering £84bn a year.

Reader Chris Hodgkins proposes a dual‑pillar system that safeguards national institutions while establishing a dedicated body for grassroots arts and music

The interview with the new chair of Arts Council England (ACE), who says she wants the organisation to “get its swagger back”, misdiagnoses the crisis facing England’s cultural system (‘I want us to be loud’: Arts Council England’s new chair aims to reconnect young people with culture, 18 September). Swagger is not what is missing. What is required is contrition, honesty and structural reform.

Eighty years after its creation, Arts Council England remains built on a 1946 architecture that privileges opera and classical institutions while systematically marginalising jazz, folk, world, brass, choral and grassroots arts and music. This is not a matter of confidence or energy; it is a matter of structural imbalance. The Review of Jazz in England (2025), Margaret Hodge’s review (2025), and ACE/Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s 2026 responses all identify bureaucracy, mistrust and inconsistent decision‑making – yet none confront the deeper failures: lottery funding misuse, national portfolio organisation dominance, regional inequity, governance opacity, and the collapse of grassroots infrastructure. These problems are not recent. Every major review confirms the same pattern: ACE’s centralised model reproduces historical privilege and suppresses contemporary cultural practice.

The transverse Mercator projection was created for European sailors – and it worked for their world, writes Paul Harwood

The subject of projections is incredibly complicated and you did a good job of navigating the discussion (‘A map is never neutral’: meet the cartographers who took on centuries of western bias, 18 September).

However, suggesting that transverse Mercator is inherently biased is not fair (if it is possible to be unfair to an equation) to both the projection and the cartographers.

Bev Littlewood reminds us that mathematics has been the prime driver of the rise in AI, in response to an editorial

You report in your leader that some mathematicians feel discomfiture at the AI solution to a Navier-Stokes problem (The Guardian view on AI v mathematicians: humans are still vital to the field, but tech firms refuse to see that, 20 September). I fear that they have been hoist by their own petard: mathematics, after all, has been the prime mover of the AI revolution.

As a somewhat lowly mathematician, let me remind others of the famous quote of Augustine: “The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty promises. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.”

• Full story | Club expected to appeal against ruling

• Timeline: City trophies and charges | Mail John

One of the best players in the world right now is Raphinha and Sid Lowe sat down with him about life at Barca, read here:

The Premier League may be on an international break but there are some English domestic games happening this weekend in the Women’s Super League. There are some big matches too with two derbies.

Charlton Athletic v Manchester City, Saturday, 1.30pm

London City Lionesses v Brighton, Saturday, 5pm

Manchester United v West Ham, Sunday, 1pm

Birmingham City v Crystal Palace, Sunday, 2pm

Liverpool v Everton, Sunday, 2pm

Tottenham v Aston Villa, Sunday, 2pm

Chelsea v Arsenal, Sunday, 4.30pm

⚽ Updates from Friday evening’s Nations League games
⚽ Live scoreboard | Read Football Daily | Mail Michael

Turkey 3-4-2-1: Cakir; Celik, Demiral, Bardakci; Aydin, Salih Ozcan, Yuksek, Kadioglu; Güler, Uzun; Yilmaz
Subs: Akgun, Aktürkoglu, Bayindir, Elmali, Gül, Kabak, Kabasakal, Kahveci, Kocuk, Topcu, Simsir.

France 4-3-3: Maignan; Koundé, Upamecano, Lacroix, Truffert; Koné, Rabiot; Cherki; Olise, Mbappé, Dembélé.
Subs: Butz, Barcola, Akliouche, Camavinga, Diouf, Doué, Jacquet, Kalulu, Lepaul, Restes, Yoro, Da Cunha.

• Championship leader Antonelli crashes out in Q1

• Mercedes teammate takes pole by 0.837 from Leclerc

For all his youth, such has been Kimi Antonelli’s consummate control this season he has barely put a foot wrong. In qualifying for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix however he was given a salutary reminder that the full-on commitment that makes him so engrossing to watch can still bite.

The F1 championship leader was disconsolate at being eliminated after hitting the wall in the first session but with his Mercedes teammate George Russell on pole it has set up a potentially fascinating showdown for Saturday’s race.

Despite fierce opposition to the Nations League encounters across Irish society, a boycott has not materialised

The match is being played in a neutral country and the stands are likely to be empty but Sunday’s Nations League fixture between Israel and the Republic of Ireland will nonetheless have the eyes of the world upon it.

Since February’s draw paired the sides against each other, voices across Irish society have demanded a boycott of the match. The Republic of Ireland’s government says Israel is committing genocide through its military action in Gaza, and the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) wants Israel suspended from international competition. But unless Ireland’s players decide not to take the field in the Hungarian city of Debrecen, the match will go ahead.

A week after Canada ended their winning run, England’s World Cup winners face a New Zealand team aiming to inflict more pain at Twickenham

A wounded animal is the most dangerous. The Red Roses might not have lost to Canada last Saturday but they did not win either, for the first time since 2022. England’s 40-game unbeaten streak continues with a blemish and when things do not go to plan they usually respond with a dominant swing.

Despite adding defence specialist Shaun Edwards as a coaching consultant earlier this week, the Tests do not get easier. This Saturday they face the team who last made them taste defeat in the World Cup final four years ago, the Black Ferns.

All the latest on a crucial day of Championship action
Warks blow through Leics | The Spin | Mail James

Surrey are 378-8 in Taunton with the non bat owning Dan Worrall at the crease alongside Adam Thomas. Lofty heights.

Worrall does own a guitar though, I saw some clips of him strumming away on the boundary edge yesterday with just a hint of David Brent/gap year campfire energy...

• Dutchman’s second son died during pregnancy in June

• ‘If I have no control over the situation, I will not worry’

Cody Gakpo has reflected on a “very tough” summer that ended with the collapse of a transfer to Manchester City, revealing Liverpool changed their minds about letting him join their top-flight rivals.

The forward scored a superb stoppage-time equaliser to earn the Netherlands a 1-1 draw in Thursday’s Nations League game against Germany, who are coached by his former club manager Jürgen Klopp. It continues a bright start to the season for Gakpo, who was an £80m target for City in August before talks stalled. Earlier in the summer he was struck by tragedy, announcing with his partner, Noa van der Bij, that their second son had died during pregnancy.

The appointment of England white-ball teams’ specialist mentor has divided opinion but the man himself says he is loving being back in the dressing room

Kevin Pietersen insisted he is a “completely different” person these days as he sat down at Headingley – the ground where he declared “it’s tough being me in this dressing room” 14 years earlier – and spoke at length about his role as the new “specialist mentor” to England’s white-ball teams.

In the aftermath of a 16-run loss to Sri Lanka that sends this late summer one-day series into an Oval decider on Sunday, Pietersen also revealed that while not full-time – “I’ll be in and out” – his input may not be restricted to the challenge of winning the 50-over World Cup in South Africa next year. A home Ashes comes before that, the series that launched his career back in 2005, and discussions with Stephen Fleming, the incoming Test coach, and Joe Root have already taken place.

Scotland’s unproven head coach represents a gamble made by an organisation that could do without another embarrassing episode

If time is the commodity most cherished by a manager, Sébastien Pocognoli’s decision to lead Scotland is no surprise. Host nation status for Euro 2028 means it will be exceptionally difficult for them not to qualify for the tournament.

In the Nations League, starting on Saturday in Slovenia, Pocognoli can experiment without fear of serious consequence. The 39-year-old has taken over a national team that represents a country which had not only – and partly unfairly – grown weary of Steve Clarke but screamed for a brave new dawn. The public wants what the public gets. They are unlikely to turn on Pocognoli, even if the start to his international management career proves bumpy.

Xi is expected to depart DC after touring the nation’s vault of records, where the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are held

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Xi Jinping and his wife are back at the White House for the final day of the Chinese president’s pageantry-filled visit to Washington, where President Trump has given him an unexpectedly warm welcome.

The itinerary for the final day of Xi’s visit – which included a red carpet welcome on the tarmac on Wednesday, then a full day of talks followed by a lavish state dinner on Thursday – included an appointment for tea at the White House, followed by a tour of the National Archives, where the nation’s founding documents are on display.

Exclusive: Full government funding figures ‘tell sombre story about rise in hostility that British Muslims live with’, trust says

A record £66m of emergency security funding was issued by the Home Office for mosques and related community sites in the UK when violent disorder spread in the aftermath of the Southport attacks in 2024.

Exclusive figures obtained by the Guardian also reveal a record of about £41m in security funding was issued for mosques and related community sites for the year from April 2025-26 as part of the protective security scheme.

Trump’s media ban resulted in an effective TV blackout of coverage of the president during the UN general assembly

The primary White House television pool has resumed filming administration events after a court ruling temporarily overturned a Trump administration ban on CNN a day earlier.

In an unprecedented move, the pool – which also includes NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox News – ceased recording and transmitting White House footage on Monday, in solidarity with CNN, MS Now and Politico, which had been banned by Trump from the building over what he said was “their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS.”

Pontiff says artificial intelligence must remain at service of people in first official papal visit to country in 18 years

Pope Leo has warned against losing humanity in a “paradise of machines” as he addressed global concerns over the dangers of artificial intelligence at the start of a three-day visit to France.

“If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for people to be educated in ethical discernment, capable of seeing what is morally right,” he said in a speech at the Élysée.

Series of in-flight problems meant Link, a ‘commercial space robot’, could not salvage the Nasa observatory

A spacecraft that was launched in July on a mission to rescue a decaying Nasa space observatory plunged back to Earth on Friday, concluding a failed mission that will be followed by the telescope’s own demise in several weeks’ time.

Link, billed as “America’s first commercial space robot”, lifted off on 3 July from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific islands with the objective of lifting the orbit and prolonging the life of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a satellite that has studied gamma-ray bursts and other cosmic events for the last 22 years.

Hurricane Nolo is the latest storm to menace the islands as sees warming ocean temperatures fuel more severe weather

With Hurricane Nolo, the islands of Hawaii are grappling with the third major tropical storm in recent months.

Hurricanes Lala in August and Lowell in early September flooded homes and roads, downed trees and toppled electricity lines across the islands. Nolo, which strengthened to a hurricane on Thursday night, is expected to batter the islands with rain and high surf.

After years of illegal mass flytipping in Gospić, fed-up residents decided to take matters into their own hands

“Gospić is our home,” Željka Šikić shouted to a crowd of 40,000 people outside the Croatian parliament earlier this month. The slogan is the name of a campaign she helped to set up to protest against the illegal dumping of waste in Gospić, a town in the mountainous Lika region of central Croatia.

Between 2022 and 2024, waste was illegally abandoned at several sites in the town. At one of the biggest, just 50 metres from Šikić’s home, an estimated 35,000 tonnes of waste, some of it hazardous, was dumped and buried.

After the available money ran out after just six hours, some fear they will have to reverse efforts to boost nature

On Tuesday morning, farmer Peter Hatley logged on to his computer at 10am. England’s 2026 sustainable farming incentive (SFI) was opening for applicants and, after three bad harvests, the money would be a lifeline.

But Hatley, who runs a 240-hectare family farm in Cambridgeshire, was faced with repeated error messages. He called the government’s helpline, which he says acknowledged there were problems with the scheme, but says by the time the problem was fixed, the money had gone.

Warnings about the catastrophic effects of vital ecosystems collapsing were not published under previous PM

• UK shares findings of damning climate crisis national security report suppressed under Starmer

UK spy chiefs warned government ministers of the catastrophic impacts on national security from the collapse of vital ecosystems around the world, driven by the climate crisis and the overexploitation of nature. But their report, which was supposed to be published almost a year ago, was suppressed under Keir Starmer. Now the government is briefing foreign ministers from other countries on the findings, with a view to gathering global support for more concerted action on the risks.

Camden council leader’s message is clear: she’s ‘visible, committed and local’, and has been for a long time

Sagal Abdi-Wali does not want to be the prime minister. She doesn’t even want to lead her party. Labour’s candidate for Holborn and St Pancras laughs and shakes her head with unusual vigour when asked if she would like to follow in the footsteps of the last member of parliament for the constituency, Keir Starmer.

“No, no, no, no, that’s not at all, in any way, what I’m trying to do,” she says during a break in campaigning in the Primrose Hill cafe in Regent’s Park. “I’m literally trying to get through the next few weeks and trying to be the member of parliament for this constituency, and that’s all I care about.”

Some staff fear digital approach will pull BBC towards commercial model built around football, leaving minority sports and older TV viewers behind

Earlier this month, the BBC conducted a sit-down interview with England’s captain, Harry Kane. In years gone by, a chance to quiz Kane about England’s tournament chances or his Champions League hopes would have made a respectable package for TV news.

On this occasion, however, the corporation took a different approach.

Buses for London aims for ‘greener, safer and better-value’ service but private operators say move will not fix problems

• London buses in decline? Why public transport is slowing to a crawl – visualised

A publicly owned company, Buses for London, will start running services in the capital next year, Transport for London has announced.

TfL said the launch was a “major milestone” in its plans to improve buses for drivers and passengers.

Welsh force says incident disrupted ‘some non-emergency systems’ and public data was not affected

A police force in Wales has said staff information may have been “accessed or compromised” in a cyber-attack.

Dyfed-Powys police, which has more than 2,000 officers and civilian staff, said it was hacked on 14 September in an incident that disrupted “some non-emergency systems”.

Tens of thousands of police deployed and roads barricaded as PTI party demands release of jailed former PM

Leaders from Imran Khan’s party have vowed to go ahead with a nationwide demonstration in Pakistan to demand the former prime minister’s release, even as the government deployed tens of thousands of police to Islamabad, barricaded highways and issued arrest warrants to try to stop the march.

The state has taken extreme measures to prevent Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party from proceeding with the march. It was announced after mounting concerns of the treatment of Khan, who has been in jail since 2023 on corruption charges.

Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022 but has seen her sentenced reduced several times

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood testing startup Theranos, will reportedly be transferred from a minimum security prison to a halfway home next August.

In 2022, Holmes, 42, was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for defrauding Theranos investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and ordered to pay restitution. The company falsely promoted its technology as being capable of detecting diseases, including types of cancer, from drops of finger-pricked blood.

Critics say decree also banning burqa in schools shows Italian PM worried about losing far-right voters in next year’s elections

The Italian government has been accused of ramping up divisive rhetoric to try to court far-right voters ahead of next year’s general election after it passed a decree aimed at capping the number of newly arrived migrants in classrooms and banning the burqa and niqab in schools.

The prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, said her government had approved what she called “commonsense measures that do not divide but genuinely help to integrate”.

The ⁠Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said the missiles were ⁠aimed at Taif and the Yanbu area on the Red Sea, the main alternative route for Saudi oil

Saudi Arabia says it intercepted six ballistic missiles fired by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, with the latest attacks pushing oil prices ⁠to a one-week high over fears of spiralling supply disruptions.

The ⁠Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said the missiles were ⁠aimed at Taif in western Saudi ​Arabia and the Yanbu area on the Red Sea, with the Houthis claiming their attacks were aimed at “a sensitive target” in the capital Riyadh and on Saudi Aramco facilities in Yanbu.

Warning from union comes as corporation cuts local specialist correspondent roles as part of plan to save £500m

The BBC has been warned it risks entering a “doom spiral” of endless cuts and weaker public support for its services, as insiders anticipate the imminent closure of some TV and radio services.

Morale at the corporation is said to be extremely low as a series of cuts are slowly revealed to staff. In the latest announcement, the BBC said it would be reducing the number of local specialist correspondent roles.

UK watchdog fined video app in 2023 for failing to enforce minimum age limit and remove underage users

TikTok will pay a £12.7m fine to the UK’s data watchdog after dropping an appeal against a ruling that it did not do enough to keep children below the age of 13 off the platform.

The video app was punished by the Information Commissioner’s Office in 2023 for inadequate checks of who was using the platform, and failing to remove underage users.

Treasury sources concede ‘less room’ for manoeuvre as global bond selloff also hikes government’s borrowing costs

• International bodies warn of rising debt and borrowing risks

• Burnham stands by claim UK is ‘in hock’ to bond markets

Oil prices lurched upwards again on Thursday, creating a growing headache for UK policymakers ahead of John Healey’s budget next month.

While Healey has been keen to present an upbeat picture of the UK’s economic prospects, Treasury sources concede the sharp jump in oil and gas prices means they have “less room” than a month ago.

Firm unveils further cost-cutting plan including job losses, blaming poor summer sales of private homes

Vistry Group, one of Britain’s biggest housebuilders, has cut its annual profit expectations after half-year losses ballooned as it grappled with a £600m pile of unsold homes.

Adam Daniel, the new chief executive of the Bovis Homes and Countryside owner, insisted “the issues can be fixed” as he set out a detailed turnaround plan that involves pulling out of private sales in south-east England and slimming operations to turn Vistry into a more focused, 12,000-homes-a-year builder.

The artist has written for Beyoncé and been nominated for two Grammys, yet individual success has eluded him. Now he’s back with a new album that puts queer joy in the spotlight – and, he says, he’s finally ready to enjoy himself

In a south-east London warehouse, Uzoechi Osisioma Emenike, more commonly known as MNEK, is sitting on a bench in a makeshift locker room surrounded by semi-naked men. One particularly muscular individual suggestively adjusts a jockstrap, while another, taller and toned, removes his vest before eyeing MNEK with a loaded gaze. It’s a lot of sexual tension for a Tuesday morning. But such is the life of a pop star on the set of a music video.

“It is very gay, you’re not wrong there,” MNEK says, while getting his makeup done for the shoot. The video being filmed is for the fittingly titled Muscle Marys.., the third single from the 31-year-old south Londoner’s second album, Bulldozer!! In one corner of the warehouse, behind a large vanity curtain, a group of dancers are being hosed down while filming a shower scene. The water, a runner has assured me, is warm.

Catherine Corless’s exposure of almost 800 infant deaths at a home led by nuns prompted Neeson to bring the story to screen

Liam Neeson still remembers his shock and shame when he read a New York Times article about the mother and baby institution in Tuam, County Galway.

It was 2017 and the article chronicled the campaign by Catherine Corless, an amateur local historian, to expose abuse and neglect by Irish nuns that led to hundreds of children being buried in a mass, unmarked grave.

Experts and insiders explain how To Catch A Predator became the most controversial show on 2000s TV

A man from Long Beach, California, is here to have sex with someone he believes is a 13-year-old girl. When the journalist Chris Hansen walks in, the man’s stomach drops. He is caught, and it is the end of his life as he knew it. Hansen asks what his fate should be. “The electric chair?” he asks. No, replies Hansen. “Dateline NBC.”

This is the opening scene of Primetime, a film directed by Lance Oppenheim, released in the US this week (a UK release follows on 30 October). It explores how a network news show turned sting operations into must-see television, raising a host of ethical questions about justice, voyeurism and society’s willingness to dehumanise certain offenders for profit and entertainment.

Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder’s slasher spectacular, and Charli xcx’s mockumentary about her Brat summer. Plus, Sydney Sweeney’s immaculate conception

In her previous two movies, indie director Jane Schoenbrun explored the uncanny spaces we inhabit between the internet, TV and our daily lives. For her dark and delirious new drama, she delves into movies and their unsettling hold on us. Hacks’ Hannah Einbinder plays Kris, an up-and-coming queer film-maker hired to reboot Camp Miasma, a “problematic” Friday the 13th-style slasher horror franchise. For research, she visits the original’s reclusive star, Billy (Gillian Anderson), who, bizarrely, lives in the film’s abandoned summer camp location. As the women get closer, reality and Camp Miasma’s grisly fiction start to blur in a giddy, psychosexual blowout.
Friday 2 October, Mubi

The drama series continues with an ill-fated camping trip. Plus: Graham Norton’s chatshow returns with Tom Cruise. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Channel 5

Florence Pugh shines as the icy sociopath at the heart of the Steinbeck classic, plus Catherine Zeta-Jones plays an international cocaine dealer in a truly bananas thriller

“A girl like that doesn’t just fall out of the sky.” Charles Trask has a bad feeling about Cathy Ames, the woman who has arrived, beaten almost to death, on the doorstep of the farm he shares with his brother Adam. But it’s too late – Adam is smitten and therefore doomed. Zoe Kazan is behind this adaptation of John Steinbeck’s study of family, free will and arbitrary evil. Her new twist is a closer focus on Cathy (played with icy sweetness by Florence Pugh). She’s a more ambiguous figure here: not a purely sociopathic destroyer of lives but instead a ruthless survivor at all costs. The script doesn’t always do the ideas justice but there’s still plenty to like.
Netflix, from Thursday 1 October

The Mercury prize winner hasn’t been able to go home since falling ill last summer. In his only interview, he opens up about the ‘poignancy’ of finally releasing the new album his stroke shelved

At the end of July 2025, Michael Kiwanuka was back home in Southampton after a series of European gigs. His 2024 album Small Changes had been critically acclaimed and was kept off the UK No 1 slot only by Kendrick Lamar’s GNX. His fifth record, Fudge, was due that autumn. All was going perfectly for the virtuoso singer-songwriter, whose eccentric, genre-busting mix of psychedelic rock, prog soul, blues and gospel had marked him as a real one-off.

Kiwanuka had been expected to appear at the All Together Now festival in County Waterford, Ireland, in the coming days, when an announcement was posted to his Instagram story: “We are so sorry to announce that due to continued illness, and on the advice of doctors, Michael will sadly be unable to perform at the rest of his scheduled festival performances throughout the rest of the summer and the shows in North America in October.”

Every one of the Grammy-nominated Floridian’s songs reveal a different side of him. His latest album, Roadrunner, is all languid reggae basslines and come-hither lyricism

From Tampa, Florida
Recommended if you like Kwn, Tyla, Odeal
Up next Performing in Dallas, Texas, 1 November

Destin Conrad has had a busy couple of years: three albums, one Grammy nomination and a string of collaborations with fellow R&B up-and-comers such as Bellah and Nia Smith. Pick any record and you’ll hear a different side of the 26-year-old. His spring 2025 debut Love on Digital pays its dues to the genre that raised him while swerving derivative cliches with small production quirks – a vocal glitch here, a skittering Jersey beat there. Last summer’s Whimsy is a sprawling alt-jazz album that was written in two weeks, inspired by his time in a high-school jazz choir. A year later, Roadrunner arrived as a celebration of his Jamaican roots and queer identity – all languid reggae basslines, gyrating dancehall rhythms, drinks-in-the-air swagger and come-hither lyricism.

(Def Jam)
After five EPs in in seven years, the Dallas native with the big voice pours everything into this bonkers cauldron of maximalist R&B and hyperactive pop

There is so, so much happening on Jae Stephens’ debut album Audacity. Thankfully, it seems like mess is her medium. Although the 29-year-old Dallas native is often sold as a big voice – and she undoubtedly does have a big voice – her debut album has more in common with hyperactive, magnetic records such as PinkPantheress’s Fancy That or Salute’s True Magic: recent albums whose need for speed and sweetly toned maximalism fostered an irrepressible sense of personality.

Stephens is an apt case study of a career in the contemporary pop industry: she started writing, producing and performing alone in her room, and dropped a whopping five EPs in the seven years before Audacity’s release. She has written with a host of pop also-rans and, inexplicably, hosts a music interview podcast. But listening to Audacity forces me into that age-old cliche: why isn’t this artist a bigger star?

(Freedom to Spend)
Far from her conventional 60s and 70s hits, Tanega joined up with a friend for an endearingly eccentric ‘rap opera’ spanning swampy synths and sardonic showtunes

Perhaps you know Norma Tanega for her chirpy 60s folk pop, such as Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog, which charted in the US and Canada. Or perhaps you know her swooning ballads from the 70s, which have had a streaming-aided resurgence in popularity. Lesser known are her wonky, nocturnal keyboard and drum machine experiments, recorded between the late 80s and early 90s with friend and writer Aida Pavletich. Together, the pair produced a trio of tapes on a four-track in Tanega’s home studio, which are now being reissued.

The first of the three, Saturday Dancer, is billed as a “rap opera”, which gives a sense of the album’s theatrical tone, if not the genre. Over 19 scuzzy and shapeshifting vignettes, the duo narrate a noirish night out on the town, from stripteases and sticky tables to the dread that seeps in when the lights come on – with some frankly bizarre tangents. The lo-fi instrumentals are suitably delirious, with clattering, likely improvised percussion and eerie synths lurking somewhere between strange and seductive.

As her latest novel about Daphne du Maurier is published, the bestselling author reflects on age and creativity – and why at 83 she has no plans to stop

My generation of writers is dying. Of Granta’s fabled list of 20 Best of Young British Novelists, 1983, six are gone, including our most princely satirist, Martin Amis. We’re all approaching birthdays where the cake is too small for the candles. Some of us are wounded: Salman Rushdie by an attacker’s knife, Julian Barnes lives with blood cancer, others with the fatal hurt of being forgotten.

But what’s the likely fate of those of us who are surviving – for now? Do readers still love us? When Barnes announced that he was signing off because of illness, was he also intuiting that the younger generations had heard enough from us old birds and geezers who were young when Sean Connery had dimples, when David Hockney first coloured his hair yellow?

Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley; The Silent Appeal by Janice Hallett; Cold Sunset by William Boyd; The Occidental Book of the Dead by T Geronimo Johnson and The Last Tenant by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir

Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins, £22)
This, the first Miss Marple continuation novel, must have been a more difficult undertaking than a new Hercule Poirot; furnished by Christie with a cartoonist’s worth of exaggerated traits, the Belgian detective is surely easier to bring off the page than the unassuming but observant elderly spinster. Foley makes a commendable attempt, removing Miss Marple from the postwar austerity of St Mary Mead to the comparative luxury of the Swiss Alps. Although we are introduced to the unnamed body in the gondola cabin at the start, an immediate backward shift for a two-day lead-up means Miss Marple has little actual detecting to do until about halfway through the proceedings. Employing four narrators rather dilutes things, as well as necessitating a considerable amount of Murder of Roger Ackroyd-style withholding of information, but Foley’s Miss M shows her true colours when – of course – the hotel gets cut off from the outside world, and provides a solution worthy of the Queen of Crime herself.

The Silent Appeal by Janice Hallett (Viper, £20)
Bestseller Hallett’s latest novel reunites us with amateur dramatic group the Fairway Players, first encountered in her debut novel, The Appeal. This time the play is The Hollow, dramatised by Agatha Christie from her novel of the same name, and, as before, lawyers Charlotte and Femi are called upon to review the mountain of emails, online messages and police reports through which the story is told, in order to figure out exactly what happened. All we know at the start is that “a brutal murder was committed” and Hallett slowly but expertly ratchets up the tension as clashes over casting, power plays, marital suspicions and distrust of newcomers create an entire gallery of potential murderers and murderees. The epistolatory method may not be for everyone, but Hallett excels at the form – these missives are variously funny, sinister, heartfelt and thoroughly human in their relatable pettiness – and the plot is well up to her usual standard.

The pop star emerges as a great unifier in this in-depth yet heartfelt portrait of an Aussie icon

‘There’s an anxiety in declaring oneself a Kylie fan,” wrote the late San Francisco poet Kevin Killian (who nonetheless once published an entire collection devoted to the singer). Despite her remarkable longevity, with record-breaking chart success across five decades, Kylie’s place in the pop firmament has often felt more precarious than that of other artists, perhaps because of her past as a soap star, and the schmaltz of some of her early material with Stock Aitken Waterman.

But she has always displayed a canny self-awareness, alongside a willingness to push the envelope. It’s evident in her knowing rendition of I Should Be So Lucky as a bad poem at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996, and her many collaborations with experimental dance producers. Then there’s her instinct for giving fans what they want: inarguable bangers, like those of her 2000s imperial phase, that also possess an offbeat, idiosyncratic quality, true of Can’t Get You Out of My Head and of her 2023 viral hit, Padam Padam.

The earl on his globally lauded eulogy for Diana, King Charles’s sausage fingers and toxic Raine, topped off with a lavish sprinkling of adverbs

Cheers were heard up and down the land. Halley’s comet made an unscheduled appearance in the ethereal night sky. In very heaven, angelic choirs rang out. A saviour had been born. A light to lighten the world. But enough about me. For this paragraph at least.

In my universally acclaimed funeral address, I aimed to speak for my sister. The real Diana. For only I truly knew her. She had the heart of a lion. And I had a glut of cliches. Yet when Diana had swept so triumphantly into the arena of royal life, I was but a callow youth awash with hormones and gripped by the self-centredness of adolescence. Nothing much has changed. Yet I know, with all my heart, that Diana would have wanted me to tell our story.

PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC (version played); Bandai Namco
The game generates blood-pumping moments as you twist, turn and weave through the skies, while your locked-on missiles speed away to obliterate an enemy plane

The core appeal of any Ace Combat game lies in the moment when the beautiful clouds part, the sunlight glints off your perfectly rendered state-of-the-art fighter jet, and guitar-shredding music kicks into overdrive as your locked-on missiles speed away to obliterate an enemy plane. All of that is 100% present in Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. What’s new is the way it delivers its unexpectedly compelling story.

Set in the Earth-like alternative world of Strangereal, where every country is absolutely obsessed with fighter planes and giant superweapons, Ace Combat drafts you into the role of a fake ace pilot called the Wings of Theve – a propaganda invention to raise the morale of a besieged nation, similar to real-life rumours about Ukraine’s Ghosts of Kyiv. You rapidly find yourself becoming an actual legendary pilot, soaring through the skies with your buddies and raining hell upon your oppressors as everybody cheers on the radio. Speaking of ghosts, you have one in your ear – your predecessor, whom nobody else can hear, a gravelly voice waxing lyrical about flying, war and whatever else is on his mind as you flit about.

I’ve been holed up in an flat, affectionately dubbed the ‘brotel’, with my son for weeks – and we’ve revisited the first game we ever played together

I have spent the last three weeks living with my 22-year-old son in a two-bedroom flat he has dubbed the ”brotel”. We cook curries and watch Lanterns. We barbecue meat and analyse Tarantino movies. We get pizza and we play video games. Boy, do we play video games!

The first game I ever played in co-op with him was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in 2009, when he was five. He wasn’t the most accomplished sidekick, not so great at placing a mobile gun turret while under fire from what seems like a bazillion enemy soldiers, but we had a laugh. It started the video game bond between us before his sister introduced him to Banjo-Kazooie and Rayman, and he stopped being a preschool warmonger. Probably for the best. So how would it be tackling the same game nearly two decades later?

They offer advice, referee card games and manage players’ tantrums – we caught up with some of the volunteer profs who keep the competitive game going at this year’s world championships

Professors may be the most revered characters in the fictional world of Pokémon (apart from perhaps the Gym Leaders). In Pokémon Red and Blue, Professor Oak greets the player in a pixelated lab coat, and later provides trainers with their first battle partner; since then, each successive generation of games has introduced another professor to aid and guide trainers through their journeys. If you’ve ever played a Pokémon game, they are often the first people that you meet, apart from your in-game mom.

But you may not know that there are also real-world Pokémon professors – volunteers who help organise the game’s competitive communities around the world. Instead of lab coats, they can be seen at events wearing red Pikachu-mascot shirts labelled “staff”, paired with black trousers and shoes.

From highlighted ledges to characters telling you what to do, blockbuster games are increasingly taking the challenge out of playing – and players are pushing back

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Marvel’s Wolverine, the latest action game from Sony’s stable of expensive blockbuster-factory studios, has had an unfortunate launch. Reviews were decent, if not stellar, but a series of viral video clips from reviewers and streamers have made it the scapegoat for a patronising flavour of game design that gamers have hated for decades. This clip, from Skill Up’s review, shows the player entering a beautiful wintry landscape before being overwhelmed by visual cues telling them what they’re supposed to be doing there. Sonar pulses point you in the direction of objectives. Targets – which, it bears emphasising, are shaped like targets – get an extra reflective visual effect so you know you’re supposed to pay attention to them. A trail shows you not just where to go, but where the level’s sole hidden collectible is.

It is hand-holding to the point of parody. Indeed, it reminded me of the sniggersome Mario in Unreal Engine satirical videos that makes the social media rounds every few months (“A mushroom? I should take a look at this”). Skill Up’s clip has been followed by hundreds of others, gleefully ripping into Wolverine with ironic savagery. In one much-copied clip, a streamer simply lays down his controller during a motorbike chase sequence and watches as Wolverine speeds on regardless, bouncing off the scenery as the game plays itself.

Kiln theatre, London
Marisha Wallace and Jamael Westman play exes who reconvene over dinner in Douglas Lyons’ sparky old-school charmer

This incorrigibly likable romcom comes to the UK with a series of sold out runs in New York and Los Angeles in its wake. You can see why: it slips down as easily and pleasantly as an old-school, Saturday-night TV meet-cute. Except writer Douglas Lyons’ story is a meet-again-cute because the couple at its centre are exes.

It has been several years since air steward Jada (Marisha Wallace) and aspiring music producer Dallas (Jamael Westman) felt the sting of each other’s betrayals. Now they are sitting at table 17 to hash out unfinished business – and maybe relight the fire?

At Kiln theatre, London, until 24 October

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
James MacMillan’s sixth symphony proved an intricate, intriguing and forward-looking work. It was well paired with Stephen Hough’s exuberant ‘Emperor’ piano concerto and a Liszt rarity

We complain a lot about concert halls in the UK. The acoustics of the Barbican, Royal Festival Hall and Royal Albert Hall; the practicality of Usher Hall and St George’s Bristol; those seats at Snape Maltings, and that foyer at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall. But do we really have it so bad?

As Manchester’s Hallé opens its season with a celebration of 30 years of the Bridgewater Hall, it’s a good moment to remember what we’ve gained in the three decades since a car park became Britain’s best acoustic. A flagship London hall may still be a fantasy, but with Gateshead’s Foster-designed Glasshouse, Saffron Hall, Kings Place and Milton Court all opening their doors since 2000, it’s hard to feel despondent.

Soho Theatre Walthamstow, London
The standup delivers older and wiser musings and mockery, whether it’s about taches, a passion for Gail’s or a distaste for cyclists

Lots has changed in the world of Phil Wang since his last tour. He has mastered the art of growing a moustache, for one. He’s bought a house in a “cool” part of London, where he lives with his houseplants and, oh, the world has tipped considerably to the right. So what does this mean for the ever-even-tempered comedian, now officially in the territory of an ageing millennial?

Largely, more of the observational routines that have made his name. We get his classic riffs on what it means to be both British and Chinese, his thoughts on gentrification – you best believe he wants a Gail’s in Peckham – and his resentment at finding his views becoming progressively less progressive. All of it is gently mocking: mainly of himself, but of others, too, to varying degrees of effect. A bit about cyclists, who are apparently asking for a death wish by venturing out on a 2D vehicle, feels more snarky than he may have intended. But his David Bowie impression could use a stage all of its own.

On tour until 23 May

Korean art rewinds 2,000 years, Kentridge enters another dimension and Rodinesque ghosts make a bid for art’s most prestigious gong – all in your weekly dispatch

Turner prize
Kira Freije creates a waste land peopled by Rodinesque ghosts in the machine, Simeon Barclay meditates on masculinity, Tanoa Sasraku takes on big oil and Marguerite Humeau gets lost in wonderland in the most exciting Turner prize in years.
• MIMA, Middlesbrough, from26 September until 29 March

Thélyson Orélien had been in the running to win a top literary prize before the AI claim emerged on social media

The organisers of France’s most prestigious literary prize said they had removed a critically acclaimed novel by a Canadian-Haitian writer from the longlist after an anonymous online account claimed the book was “almost entirely” written by AI.

The Académie Goncourt, a Paris-based literary organisation, said on Friday its decision to withdraw Thélyson Orélien’s novel C’était ça ou mourir (It Was That or Die) was “driven by the desire to preserve the integrity of the Goncourt prize and the academy itself, whose central role is to promote and honour literature written by women and men”.

Across videos, standup and cartoons, humorists are skewering big tech’s attempt to make AI ubiquitous and inevitable

“Best case scenario, we never have to do any admin again,” says an AI CEO. “Worst case, we all die.”

A young man struggles to the top of a beautiful mountain, words echoing in his ears: “AI will most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there will be great companies created.” At the top of the mountain, he triumphantly holds up a sign: “Build a datacenter here.”

Ahead of a greatest hits tour, original members Spider Stacy and James Fearnley will join us to answer your questions

When Shane MacGowan died in 2023, you’d be forgiven for wondering whether the Pogues could carry on, given what a singular frontman he was – and given the band had been dormant since 2014. But grounded by original members James Fearnley, Jem Finer and Spider Stacy, the Pogues have been playing hugely acclaimed reunion gigs in recent years with various guests sitting in for MacGowan – and as they go on a greatest hits tour around the UK this autumn, Fearnley and Stacy will be joining us to answer your questions.

The Pogues’ history stretches back to the late 70s when MacGowan, Stacy and Finer played together in London; Fearnley, meanwhile, was a member of MacGowan’s punk band the Nips. The Pogues eventually formed in 1982, investing the traditional music of their Irish heritage with the energy of the city’s punk scene.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Students are too broke or busy having fun to eat well, right? Wrong: some find cash and time for creme brulee and duck eggs

This month marks 20 years since I arrived at university in London, with an Ikea saucepan set, a six-pack of Pot Noodle and a trusty jar of pesto to my name. I was a student now, and I intended to eat like one.

But what did that mean? Where to my parents “student food” had hippyish connotations – lentils and ancient grains, communal pots of unidentifiable greige – by 2006 the stereotype had evolved to mean convenience and speed. Frozen pizza, potato waffles, mountains of pesto pasta – if we were eating at all, that is. As a 2000s girl with a 2000s diet mentality, I’ll admit that part of me hoped university would mark a turning point where I started having so much fun that I forgot to think about food. No such luck. What followed instead were probably the most formative eating years of my life; I don’t remember a single line of Beowulf, but those early tastes of independence are seared into my memory for ever.

I was a healthy 34-year-old when a mass of blood vessels ruptured in my brain. It took three neurosurgeons and a risky 16-hour operation to fix me

On a Sunday in May 2017, I was at the gym and using a chest press when there was this pop. It wasn’t a sound – it was more like a sigh in my body. There was no pain, but I went limp. I shuffled along the wall to some mats. I thought I was having a stroke, but I wasn’t slurring and my eyes and arms seemed fine. But my left leg felt numb – it was the weirdest feeling. Lying on my back with my legs bent, both knees stayed upright when I looked at them. When I looked away, the left one fell to the side.

I ended up in A&E for hours at nearby St Thomas’ hospital in London. I was 34, healthy and had started regaining feeling in my leg, so they theorised it was a bruised spine and thought it was safe to discharge me. Overworked staff and shift changes meant that when MRI images of my brain went missing, nobody tracked them down.

Forget a head-to-toe overhaul. Whether it’s swapping loafers for lace-ups or mixing your metals, try these styling tweaks to give your look a fresh seasonal spin

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You know what I always think looks really chic? When someone is dressed timelessly, but with just one element that brings the outfit bang up to date. A look that is 90% personal style, 10% zeitgeist. That is such a good formula.

Being head-to-toe in new trends is not cool these days. It can look a little overeager, and your clothes end up wearing you rather than the other way around. But a look that plays it completely classic can feel a little safe.

Buying preloved always feels that bit cooler, says celebrity stylist Bay Garnett, but how do you find a gem in charity shops or online? She reveals her top tips

• Your favourite secondhand finds

I’ve been championing secondhand shopping for decades. For my debut shoot for British Vogue in 2003, I dressed Kate Moss entirely in pieces I’d found in New York charity shops – including a banana-print top that cost $5 and a gold sequin jacket I found in the Salvation Army for $7.

I think every shoot I have done has had secondhand in it – vintage jeans, blazers, coats, belts, boots – and they are always the pieces the people I am dressing exclaim over and want. So, often they just look and feel cooler.

Whether it’s streamlining shoes or being strict with toiletries, we asked the experts for the home organisation hacks they swear by

• How to get rid of household clutter – without sending it to landfill

Few things conjure a sense of achievement quite like a clearout or bringing order to that cupboard of doom you’ve been ignoring for months. But how best to tackle this beast of a job?

To help you make a start, we asked professional organisers and declutterers for their tips and tricks, as well as the products they recommend to help streamline the areas everyone struggles with. From never buying round storage containers to getting the kids to help tidy up, these are the solutions they swear by.

A new smartphone needn’t cost a fortune. From Samsung, Google, Apple and more, these are the lower-cost models we rate most – and how to buy a refurbished handset

• How to make your smartphone last longer

Buying a flagship phone in 2026 makes little sense unless you’re really going to use all the features at hand. By comparison, the budget smartphone market has come on leaps and bounds in the past few years, and you can now get most of the features you’d want, including a high-quality OLED screen and a well-performing chipset, all for a reasonable price.

There’s more choice than ever for shoppers who don’t want to spend too much on their next upgrade, but many models simply aren’t worth your time. That’s where this guide comes into play. I’ve tested the latest models and pinpointed the nine best budget phones available right now – all you have to do is pick the one that best suits your needs.

A classy autumnal aperitif with a pleasingly bitter zing

I adore calvados, and this highball was built off the back of a love for calvados and tonic. This refreshing aperitif expands on that idea andfeels really quite sophisticated in comparison.

Johanna Cole, general manager, Eleanore, Edinburgh

These old-school classic treats may struggle for attention among today’s more Instagram-worthy cardamon buns, but they’re simple to make and divine to devour

Belgian buns are among a dying breed of bakes, forgotten about in favour of pretty cinnamon and cardamom buns and creative laminated doughs. I’d love to see more of these old-school, classic treats in bakeries, not least because they’re really simple to make. There are no twists or extra frills, just soft, buttery dough swirled with lemon curd and juicy sultanas. The icing glaze and cherry on top are essential, though, for maximum eating pleasure.

In which a UK coffee lover, long devoted to her moka pot, tiptoes gingerly into the world of coffee-derived drink products

My family has benefited hugely from charities that support healthcare, so it is with extra zeal that I’ll be drinking coffee with a slice of cake tomorrow to mark this year’s Macmillan Coffee Morning. In anticipation, I’ve been tasting some coffee-flavoured drinks.

I should preface this by saying that, when it comes to coffee, I am a creature of habit and, almost 30 years into my relationship with the stuff, I know what I like: short-ish, strong, preferably made in a moka pot and only a tiny splash of milk. I’m less faithful to brands, though I do rate Union’s House Roast, which is bold, crowdpleasing, not too bitter and sold in most big supermarkets. Much as my partner has tried to seduce me to the trendy charms of filter coffee, this leopard can’t seem to change her spots.

Plush or pared back, flatteringly lit or full-on disco camp, a TikTokkable loo is now part of the hospitality experience

Anthony Bourdain was typically forthright when it came to his expectations for the toilet facilities in a food business. “I won’t eat in a restaurant with filthy bathrooms,” wrote the late chef and author, in his seminal, turn-of-the-millennium memoir Kitchen Confidential. “This isn’t a hard call. They let you see the bathrooms. If the restaurant can’t be bothered to replace the puck in the urinal or keep the toilets and floors clean, then just imagine what their refrigeration and work spaces look like.” Setting aside the fact that, in later life, Bourdain softened his stance (“Some of the best food experiences I’ve ever had [have been in] places where they really don’t give a shit [about bathroom cleanliness],” were his words in a 2018 interview) his initial take tells us plenty about what the average customer historically demanded of restaurant restrooms. They needed to be clean. They needed to be functional. They needed, at a push, half-decent hand soap and the faint, reassuring waft of pine-scented floor cleaner.

Today, things could hardly be more different. Where once restaurant toilets tended to be a boring, unglamorous afterthought, in recent years, they have emerged as arguably the most unexpectedly attention-grabbing room in the building: atmospherically distinct sites of creativity and muscle-flexing design, where lavish amenities, bespoke lighting, custom soundscapes, selfie mirrors and all manner of other eye-catching flourishes abound, and are documented by social media channels, such as @LoosOfLondon (TikTok followers: 78k).

Rhonda believes Ned ruins woks. He reckons he has famous chefs on his side. You decide whose argument is in flames

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

He whacks the heat right up, which stains our wok and makes it really hard to wash up

The person doing the cooking is in charge of the temperature – plus a wok is supposed to blacken

Financial pressures suspected to be behind figures showing failed marriages are lasting longer in England and Wales

Couples are putting off divorce because of the cost of living crisis, lawyers have said, after figures showed the average length of a marriage ending in divorce in England and Wales reached a record high last year.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) released figures on Wednesday showing that the average marriage ending in divorce in 2025 lasted for 13 years. This is the longest since records began in 1963 and up from a record low of 8.9 years in 1985.

At 51, I want many more years of a healthy, happy sex life. So I decided to compile my own guide

When I got divorced after 28 years of monogamy, I was excited to be having sex again, but had concerns. I was 48, and the last time I’d been single was in the 90s; terrified of pregnancy and hyperconscious of HIV/Aids, I hadn’t considered condomless intercourse an option back then.

Now, at 51, I’ve been wondering how important barrier protection is for me. Though I haven’t hit menopause, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says that “by 45 getting pregnant naturally is unlikely”, and HIV/Aids prevention and treatment have improved significantly in the last three decades.

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

Chris, 42, London

Occupation Electrical supervisor of the maintenance team at an NHS hospital

Increasing the rate of CGT is one of the levers available to the chancellor as he considers revenue-raising options

Capital gains tax (CGT) has been widely cited as a possible revenue-raiser as the chancellor, John Healey, prepares to deliver a tough budget next month. How does it work, and what are the pros and cons of raising it further?

From a thatched cottage with a green-topped sweeping extension to a lodge-style home in a town that is heaven for foodies

A First Saver account was set up by my mother when the children were born which we planned to use to fund them through university

My mother set up NatWest First Saver accounts for my children when they were born. The accounts are held in trust for when they turn 18 and my parents have paid into them monthly to help fund them through university.

My mother is now in the final stages of Alzheimer’s and I have registered financial power of attorney for her.

In her weekly column for the Guardian, Anna Tims solves readers consumer problems – ranging from the devastating to the ridiculous. She answered your questions on AI chat bots, consumer protection and how companies keep getting away with terrible customer service

TLouis1990 asks: What are your tips for getting the best out of customer service? Are there mistakes we all make that make issues worse?

Anna: I like your question; too often we focus on what customer service agents owe us rather than vice versa. Remain calm and polite is my top tip. That’s not always easy, especially when you feel you are being messed about, but it’s essential. Temper and rudeness is not only unfair on call centre staff, it can backfire on you. Companies may refuse to deal with abusive customers. Occasionally, when I’ve contacted a press office about a reader’s complaint, I’ve been so horrified by transcripts of their treatment of agents that I’ve dropped the case.

When you complain, include all relevant information such as booking references, your address, screenshots of relevant bills or letters to save to-ing and fro-ing. You basically want to ensure that they can identify you quickly on their system and that they have evidence of the problem. If you’re phoning, have all that information at your side. Make a note of who you spoke to and when in case you have to follow up. And be reasonable in terms of timescales and redress. Demands for £500 in compensation when you report a burned Deliveroo may stop you being taken seriously.

Anna: Thank you for your thank you! If you mean companies I’ve dealt with professionally, there was a now defunct utilities company who offered a reader a spa day to help her recover from the stress its blunderings had caused her. Bagcraft, a luggage store in Essex is a stand-out. A customer had ordered two suitcases for a New Year’s holiday. One of them arrived from the manufacturer with a fault. The store owner reordered it and, worried that it would not reach the customer in time, set off the day after Boxing Day on a 820 mile round trip to deliver the cases in person.

Readers often write in to praise Le Creuset for its no-quibble lifetime guarantee which has resurrected the most ancient of steelware. And speaking as a customer, I was amazed when the online plant supplier Primrose informed me that part of my order was unavailable, sent a generous voucher unbidden as an apology and answered my subsequent questions about suitable alternative plants with prompt, personalised responses. And no, they didn’t know I was a journalist!

Madeleine Finlay sits down with her co-host and Guardian science editor, Ian Sample, to discuss three science stories from the week, including a study that offers a clue in the age-old debate about whether sex differences are present from birth or a product of socialisation. Also on the agenda is the super El Niño, which is predicted to lead to 450,000 deaths in the next six months, and an answer to why the UK’s meningitis outbreak earlier this year was so big.

It’s natural to want to soothe eye irritation, but mishandling could lead to more problems, experts warn. We asked them for advice on how to deal with it properly

It may feel like a gritty, annoying sensation, or a sharp pain. Either way, you may have the same problem: something is stuck in your eye and needs to come out.

Addressing the situation incorrectly can lead to bigger issues such as infection, scarring, an ulcer or corneal scratches, which are abrasions on the clear covering of your eye. Ignoring the dilemma can lead to similar consequences.

A growing number of men, including singers Shaggy and Harry Styles, are taking up pilates. When I realised I could no longer touch my toes, I decided to try it out

I realised something needed to change when I nearly toppled over trying to tie my shoelaces. I was on a busy high street, with people rushing past holding shopping bags, when I saw my open shoelace spooled on the ground. I bent down to deal with it and felt gravity move against me. Only a quick flail of my arms stopped me from faceplanting. When I raised myself back upright, I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. This can’t be right, I thought.

Bracing my foot on a bin to finally fix my shoelace, it dawned on me. I’d become rusty. My core strength was nonexistent, as was my flexibility. Years behind a desk had taken a toll, not helped by an after-work routine of watching TV or playing video games on the sofa. But after getting home and doing some research (yes, from my sofa), I found a potential remedy: pilates.

Test using urine and vaginal fluid samples raises hopes thousands of lower-risk women could be spared internal ultrasounds and hysteroscopies

Doctors have developed a simple test that could help rule out womb cancer in women who experience bleeding after menopause.

The approach has the potential to transform care for thousands of women each year and spare them from invasive and uncomfortable tests that can also be costly for healthcare systems.

Medieval experts talk us through the fashion of the near-1,000-year-old embroidered work, and what it says about the people wearing it

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Blood, booze, arrows and boats; these are what you might typically imagine when you think of the Bayeux tapestry, which has become one of the hottest historical tickets since it went on display at the British Museum in London this month. But what about the hair?

“The Anglo-Saxons all have these little moustaches, which are brilliant. And then the Normans have these funny haircuts with the back of their heads shaved,” says Prof Laura Cleaver, an expert in medieval manuscripts at the Institute of English Studies.

From tartan to plaid, these styles come into their own during pumpkin-spice season

American fashion designer and costumier who clothed glamorous showbiz celebrities, especially Cher

Most costume designers are novelists, supplying character, back stories, social placement and history, done in cloth. Bob Mackie was also a genius cartoonist, assembling details into an image, memorable on sight, that could hold anything from a small 1960s television screen to a concert arena.

Mackie, who has died aged 87, was master of the showbiz sartorial aesthetic that evolved on stage and in films to entertain in itself as well as project performers.

Chore jackets and loose-fit trousers nod to ‘nonconformist glamour’ of Amelia Earhart and other pioneers

The Max Mara catwalk at Milan fashion week had well-cut coats, sturdy block-heeled boots, crisp white shirts and capacious suede handbags. What it quite deliberately did not have was shock value. “I hope everyone watching this show can recognise something of themselves in what they see,” said Ian Griffiths, the British designer who has been at this Italian house since 1987. “I think that’s really important. Without being critical of other brands or designers, so much of fashion alienates people and makes them feel that they aren’t good enough or thin enough or young enough to wear what’s being represented.”

Trousers were pleated and roomy, skirts long enough to be elegant but not long enough to trip you up. In shades of sand and chalk, grey and black, every piece was designed to work with everything else, and to blend into an existing wardrobe. The styling gestures – a popped collar here, a knotted belt there – stopped short of gimmick. The models could have walked off the runway and on to the Milan street – which, Griffiths said backstage, was the point. “The catwalk show is only the prelude to what to me is the real presentation, which is when I see women walking down the street in my clothes.”

With autumn officially here, our readers savour days of fruitful mellowness, from Cornwall to Loch Lomond

• Tell us about a great wellness experience – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

I love Loch Lomond in autumn. I’d start with a walk around Balmaha village and a stretch of the West Highland Way, pretending I’m there for the scenery rather than earning the right to eat something massive afterwards. Autumn is when it looks best: orange hills, cold air, dramatic clouds and the constant Scottish gamble of whether you’ll get sunshine, sideways rain, or both within 10 minutes. I finish, if I’m not driving, with a wee dram to properly round things off.
Pete

Under the Finnish capital lies a world of swimming pools, go-karting tracks, playgrounds – and even an art gallery

The moon is an impostor. Swimming backstroke beneath its surface, I look up at craggy hollows in close relief. White rock undulates in all directions, a forest of peaks rising next to a desert of craters. Every time I trick myself into thinking I’m somewhere celestial, the sound of children splashing brings me back to earth.

This is no lunar landscape but Helsinki’s underground swimming hall, excavated from granite bedrock and officially opened in 1993. These days, Itäkeskus uimahalli is one of the Finnish capital’s most visited leisure facilities, welcoming 400,000 people a year. Local people mingle with tourists, I will discover, during a week exploring Helsinki’s subterranean metropolis.

This once industrial area has been transformed into a vibrant artistic hub with a thriving food and drink scene

Located just north of the Centrale train station, Bolognina neighbourhood is more than just a Little Bologna. It is a completely different world from the medieval maze of palaces, churches and towers that define the city’s “Centro Storico”, which is increasingly filled with crowds of tourists as Bologna joins the big league of Italian getaway destinations.

A long-distance walking route in the south of France devised by the celebrated land artist offers intrepid hikers an opportunity to immerse themselves in nature and art

At 69, I had never hiked with a backpack and I had no idea what land art was. Nonetheless, when my friend Jackie, a nature documentary film-maker, invited me to join her and her friends Wendy and Sasha on a hiking trip to Refuges d’Art in the mountainous countryside of Haute-Provence, I said a resounding “yes”. We would be sleeping alongside sculptures by the renowned land artist Andy Goldsworthy.

First, I watch Rivers and Tides, a documentary on Goldsworthy’s work, and discover he has built exquisite ice sculptures and stone cairns in my own country, Canada. His work seems to speak to an older part of the soul. Then, I start walking up hills, gradually adding weights to my backpack until I can comfortably carry 9kg (20lb).

From kale to hostas, there are many vegetable patch options that are hardy, low-maintenance and delicious

You’d have to have been living under a rock (which would have been a cool and sensible place to dwell) to not have felt the intensity of the heatwaves this summer. I’ve yet to meet a plants person who isn’t concerned by the impact of the changing climate on the living things we share the planet with – as well as our fellow humans. If one had any doubts, the sight of parched grasslands and garden plants withering to a crisp should have set those aside.

As I’ve shared in previous columns, this summer I was sparing with what I watered. I emptied the water butts and only used mains water on plants that were likely to survive and provide a harvest. Any sign of floundering and the crops were for the chop – sorry, stunted courgettes! And if you’ve been reading my column for a while, you’ll also know that I turned over one of my annual beds to golden raspberries and tayberries this year in a bid to have more plants that are less needy. So you can imagine my joy when I saw that brilliant gardener Jack Wallington has written a book that delves deep into this low-impact, resilient approach to edible gardening. Perfect timing.

Low Catton, East Yorkshire: It was King Harold’s last taste of victory. How chilling it is to visit this unassuming spot and imagine the bloody scene back in 1066

The field with freshly sprouted winter wheat sloping down to the River Derwent looks ordinary; however, today feels anything but. Just standing here, strange chills are swarming through my body and converging in my chest.

It happened here.

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?

Last weekend the quiz master was taking in the sights, sounds and overwhelming history of Istanbul. Did that deter the writing of 15 questions on the week’s headlines, random pop culture and general knowledge? Absolutely not. However, you may detect a certain “Cats of Istanbul” flavour to today’s effort, which is in no way a transparent attempt to show off the quiz master’s holiday photos. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 266 – Cats of Istanbul special

A teenager struggling with climate anxiety searches for hope in an unexpected place – writing letters to imprisoned activists. Max, 14, is on a quest to understand the human stories behind direct action and why so many climate protesters are in prison​. As replies begin to arrive, a dialogue bridging generations unfolds and connection transforms despair into purpose. ​When Max writes to the judge presiding over a high-profile trial​, he is surprised to hear the letter referred to in the judge's closing remarks

Furnace Brook in East Sussex was home to carp, tench, bream, roach and trout – and 15 trailer-loads had to be buried. The mystery led to a neighbouring farm, and a story of waste, pollution and dirty rivers that reveals a lot about Britain today

When Alistair and Diane Gould bought Furnace Brook in 2013, they had big plans. It was an idyllic spot: a stream-fed fishing lake nestled in a secluded valley in the High Weald, East Sussex, surrounded by woodland and fields. “People loved to come fishing here because it’s so beautiful,” says Diane. “Some of them had been coming for so many years that they got to know the individual fish.”

Diane moved here from Kent in 2000, when Furnace Brook was owned by a distant relative. Her two younger sons, then 10 and 14, flourished. They would chat to the anglers about the fish they were catching and throwing back in, and sell them bacon sandwiches. Her elder son, Simon, moved from London to join them in 2006 and became a keen angler himself, and then the fishing manager, or bailiff, looking after the fish and the landscape around the lake.

As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each tells the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the conflict. Overcoming internet cuts and power outages, Mahmoud battles to provide his students an education

It is time for Mahmoud Seydam’s online lecture on museum architecture. He squats in front of the step he calls a table and opens his laptop.

“Is Mohammed the only one here?” He pulls out his phone and types into the students’ chat group that the lecture is about to start. There are two students now. Mahmoud decides to wait a little for the others to join.

As experts fear for future of UK capital’s bus network, some commuters are giving up entirely. London is not alone – with worrying implications for the poorest in society

Experts warn that slower buses risk driving passengers away: research cited by Transport for London (TfL) suggests a 10% fall in speed leads to a 6% drop in demand.

Passenger journeys in London have already fallen by more than 300m a year, or 16%, since 2013, despite the city’s population growing by almost a million people.

Are you taking fewer journeys by car? Or are you cutting back in other areas to pay your diesel bill?

Russia’s war-damaged refineries and the Middle East crisis have erased about a fifth of the world’s diesel supplies and are pushing up the price of diesel at forecourt pumps.

We would like to speak to people living in Shetland and the Outer Hebrides who are paying the highest average price for diesel per litre. How are you coping with the surge in cost? Are you taking fewer car journeys? Have you cut back in other areas to pay for your diesel bill?

There were 13,464 reported assaults against passengers and members of the public on the mainline railway in 2025-26

The number of reported assaults on Great Britain’s railways has risen to a record high of almost 25,000 incidents in a year, data published by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) shows.

There were 13,464 reported assaults against passengers and members of the public on the mainline railway in 2025-26, up 36% on the previous year and the highest number recorded by the ORR since it started tracking the figures in 2004.

How did you find them? Were they helpful in getting you to the next stage in your education or in securing a job?

Teenagers are to be offered new vocational GCSEs in England, marking the biggest changes to the qualification for more than a decade.

From 2029, pupils will be able to supplement compulsory GCSE subjects such as English, maths and sciences with courses including building and construction, creative media production and child development.

We would to hear about the changes in your life after taking GLP-1s

Around 100 million people globally are taking GLP-1s. The majority experience significant weight loss. Research has shown that women in particular experience greater success in dating and job-seeking as a result. We would like to explore the impacts of this: how do you go about processing this change? How hard is it to balance, or make peace with, such differing experiences of life before and after GLP-1s? Do you feel you have a “before” and “after” self?

If you have taken GLP-1s and lost weight as a result, and experienced changes in your workplace, your romantic life, or in how you feel about yourself before and after, we would love to hear from you for an article exploring the emotional adjustments involved in rapid and significant weight loss.

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