Everything you need to know (and more) about every squad member. Click on the player pictures for more information

As a nation we face a choice: either follow the far-right rhetoric of hate and division, or unite under our values of decency and determination

• Jeevun Sandher is Labour MP for Loughborough

Like you, I was horrified when I watched the video of Henry Nowak’s death. I cannot imagine what his family are going through.

He was 18 years old. I think of my family members about the same age as Henry, with their whole lives ahead of them. I know how devastated I would feel if they were murdered.

Jeevun Sandher is Labour MP for Loughborough

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

Want to spend less time on your phone? We asked psychotherapists, professors and specialists for practical (and achievable) ways to cut down

• The best screen-free activities

Everywhere you look, people are glued to their smartphones. If you haven’t noticed this phenomenon, it’s likely because you, too, are glued to the little dopamine-deliverer.

In March, Meta and YouTube had to pay a combined $6m after a US court found that the tech companies’ platforms were designed to be addictive. Put such tempting apps in a device that’s carried everywhere, and that’s a recipe for compulsive behaviour.

Plays about political extremes, religious sects, swimming the Channel and an 80th birthday party are among the highlights at this summer’s arts spectacular

Producer Francesca Moody has shown a sure touch for spotting fringe hits (Fleabag and Baby Reindeer among them). Her new offering, by Australia’s Hannah Reilly, is about a feminist podcaster who becomes an online “slutfluencer” to earn some easy money, but has a price to pay.
Summerhall, 6-31 August

Somerset House, London
Escher’s paradoxical geometries and impossible gravities may baffle the mind – yet even his wildest works were never just fanciful, as this fun and gripping show makes clear

We think we know the world of Maurits Cornelis Escher with its mind-bending staircases and buildings that impossibly twist upon themselves. Yet a shocking glimpse of reality intrudes in Somerset House’s gripping journey through his metaverse. In 1945, Escher designed a diploma for students at a temporary academy in Eindhoven, recently liberated from Nazi rule. Behind a wise old owl in the foreground, twisting columns of black smoke rise from a riverside town, their evil sinuousness reflected in the water. The message of this depiction of war is not only that Escher was a civilised individual surviving a brutal age but also that his visual delights were never just fanciful. Even his wildest speculations reveal the workings of the world itself, grounded as they are in what Galileo called “the language of mathematics” in which “the book of nature is written”.

You don’t have to be fluent in that language to lose yourself in Escher’s art. You just need to look, and this exhibition lets you look so much more closely and deeply than you can in books and reproductions and imitations of his work. At times you feel you are actually inside his paradoxical places. I chuckled for ages in front of his 1958 lithograph Belvedere in which a king and queen survey a mountainous landscape in different directions from two storeys of a Renaissance building, but wait, they don’t just face different ways, their separate floors are totally at odds, the king’s pointing sideways while the queen faces out of the picture in a 90-degree shift: the columns on the front of the king’s balustrade support the back of the queen’s floor and the whole building turns in two different dimensions inhabiting two truths at once. No wonder the builders are dressed as jesters while an architect sits studying geometry.

As recent conflicts expose vulnerability of fertiliser markets and its effect on food security, VunaNexus offers an alternative

When staff answer the call of nature at the European Space Agency’s headquarters in Paris, their urine is not simply flushed away – it is turned into something much more useful. While urine-diverting toilets are often associated with smelly festival loos, there is nothing bohemian about recycling nutrients from human pee, said David de Chambrier, the chief executive of VunaNexus.

The process isn’t so different from recovering minerals in used electronics.

Exclusive: Greater Manchester mayor sets out his priorities before Makerfield byelection – and what might happen after the vote

Andy Burnham has signalled he would begin transforming England’s broken social care system this year if he became prime minister, accusing Westminster of “flinching away” from tackling difficult policy problems.

The Greater Manchester mayor said politicians must be willing to take on “the weight of the system” that stood in the way of radical change, as he began to set out his prospectus for government if he won the Makerfield byelection.

Said Labour should be a broad church with more government ministers from the left of the party, but Jeremy Corbyn should not be allowed back in.

Signalled there would be no snap election if he replaced Keir Starmer, but defended himself from criticism over a shadow leadership campaign.

Defended his comments that politicians should not be “in hock” to the bond markets, and denied he was boxing himself in by sticking to Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules.

Argued it would be a mistake to rerun the Brexit referendum but that he wanted the UK to rejoin the EU in his lifetime.

Praised Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, for “facing up” to the big issues on immigration.

Exclusive: Greater Lincolnshire mayor walks out on cabinet minister after row over social media role in community tensions

Andrea Jenkyns walked out of a meeting with a cabinet minister and several other metropolitan mayors on Thursday after a heated discussion about the murder of Henry Nowak and the civil unrest that has followed.

The Reform mayor of Greater Lincolnshire walked out of the meeting with the communities secretary, Steve Reed, and other regional leaders after a row over the role social media has played in exacerbating community tensions.

Ukrainian president proposes meeting in neutral third country as Trump says both sides have to ‘make compromises’

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has called for face-to-face negotiations in a public letter addressed directly to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

The letter, the first Zelenskyy has publicly written directly to Putin since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, was a sweeping criticism of the Russian leader’s 26 years in power.

Zulkernain Ahmed was in pursuit of a group on bikes when he hit Abdullah Yaser Abdullah Taleb, who was walking on pavement

Two brothers have been jailed for killing a 16-year-old boy who was “in the wrong place at the wrong time” when he was hit while walking by a car being deliberately driven at a group on bikes.

Abdullah Yaser Abdullah Taleb, who had come to the UK “in search of safety and a better life”, was hit by the vehicle, driven by 21-year-old Zulkernain Ahmed in Sheffield in June 2025.

Group calls ceasefire a ‘roadmap to annihilate part of the Lebanese people’, throwing regional peace talks into doubt

Hezbollah has rejected a US-brokered ceasefire plan agreed by the Lebanese and Israeli governments, throwing the future of a truce in Lebanon and regional peace negotiations into question.

The group’s leader, Naim Qassem, called the plan a “roadmap to annihilate part of the Lebanese people” in a statement on Thursday.

Policy agreement means trans people will continue to have access to Kenwood Ladies’ and Highgate Men’s ponds in north-west London

The bathing ponds at Hampstead Heath in north-west London will remain trans-inclusive after a public consultation overwhelmingly favoured its existing rules.

There are gender-segregated ponds for men and women, with trans people able to swim in whichever they feel most appropriate, or use the heath’s mixed-gender pond instead.

Mother demands overhaul of maternity care after settling case over birth at Queen’s hospital in Romford in 2019

The family of a girl left brain-damaged at birth have agreed to accept £28m in damages after the NHS trust involved admitted that its mistakes led to the tragedy.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge university hospitals NHS trust failed to monitor the baby’s heart rate while her mother was in labour or ask an obstetrician to review the case, either of which might have led to the girl being born in a healthy condition.

Lt Lily-Mae Fisher, Lt Cmdr Chris Grayson and Petty Officer Owen Green died during Royal Navy training exercise

Britain’s only serving female naval commando has been named as one of the three people who died in a helicopter crash during a military training exercise in Devon on Wednesday.

The victims have been named by the Ministry of Defence as Lt Lily-Mae Fisher, 31, Lt Cmdr Chris Gayson, 42, and Petty Officer Owen Green, 24.

New York audiences were asked to put phones in sealed pouches, and producer says she hopes to do the same in UK

When a Pulitzer prize-winning play about a feminist activist opened in New York, audiences had to do something unusual.

They were asked to put their phones away – not in their pockets, but in specially designed pouches, which they could open only at the intermission or after the show.

Some will question its credibility – but the alternative future to the one imagined in the Global Justice Report is far more bleak

• ‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival

In our increasingly dystopian world, who wouldn’t want to at least be open to a utopian antidote? The Global Justice Report, published on Thursday, outlines how to build a prosperous, equitable world within safe planetary boundaries. It’s a push from the modern eco-socialist left in a global battle for ideas that will shape the future.

Based on past social achievements and future energy transformation, it indicates that the overwhelming majority of people on the planet could, by the end of the century, work less and earn more – while keeping temperatures down and avoiding much of the current destruction of nature. It is an ambitious, comprehensive and upbeat plan, and a stronger argument around which to build a political campaign than abstract goals of net zero or decarbonisation.

Israel and Lebanon have agreed to implement a ceasefire to end hostilities as the US attempts to overcome one of the largest barriers to reaching a broader deal to end the war with Iran. But the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire is dependent on a complete halt of fire from Hezbollah, and the evacuation of all its fighters in southern Lebanon. Lucy Hough speaks to Beirut-based reporter William Christou

Click your way through the group stage and the knockouts to crown champion

The star of The Fast Show and Father Brown – as well as the original Arthur Weasley – on friendly death eaters, famous Brummies and Chinese trains

What were the best and worst moments shooting the Harry Potter films? bumble1
The worst part was being away from home and the long hours. The best bit was the work and talking to the other actors. I look back with great fondness on that. I remember saying to Alan Rickman that the collective noun for actors is an anecdote.

Michael Gambon was the king of stories. He’d start a joke and you never knew where he was going. But he’d hone them; they were finely crafted – some of his best work was backstage. Richard Griffiths was also a great raconteur. His stories were brilliant, and completely unpublishable.

The Persepolis author understood us and translated us for the world. We have lost our most eloquent spokesperson

Marjane Satrapi has died and every Iranian woman I know is in shock and mourning, while none seems confused by reports of the cause. She died “of sadness”, according to those close to her. Of course she did. Iranians often do. And Satrapi felt everything so intensely.

For my cohort (girls who began their adolescence in 1980s Iran and ended it in the west) Marjane Satrapi was a spokesperson for our trauma, our upbringing and our particular flavour of shame, repression and outspokenness. She made us legible to our western peers in our 20s and 30s, and I was sure she would do it again in middle age.

​As World Cup fever begins, we go beyond terrace chants and team anthems to look at footy-mad songwriting, from Cardiff rap to Zimbabwean rumbira ... and Rod Stewart

Ah, fathers and sons and football. Here, Rod gets teary-eyed remembering how his dad used to cheer him from the touchline: an inessential but sweet and heartfelt song. Though Rod once told me that he tended to shout at his own son from the touchline, because he never tracked back.

When Dave Grimstead left the police after more than 30 years, he knew just what he wanted to do: solve some of its most intractable mysteries. The founder of Locate International explains why the country needs him and his volunteers

When it comes to cold cases, crime dramas get a lot wrong. “In reality, you’d never reach the end in nine neat episodes, all wrapped up, with a timeline that moved nicely along, building tension,” says Dave Grimstead, who spent more than 30 years in the police. Real cold cases are rollercoasters of false leads, rabbit holes and dead ends. “They’re never solved by one heroic detective, either,” Grimstead adds. “It requires a much bigger team than you see on TV.” But one cliche does ring true – the detective who can’t give up. Most will have at least one unsolved case that stays with them long after the spotlight has moved elsewhere. In a free moment, they will find themselves following a lead, putting in calls. Decades later, they might still wake up thinking about it.

One of these cases, for Grimstead, was the disappearance of Melanie Hall in June 1996. Hall was 25 and never came home from Cadillacs, a nightclub in Bath where she was last seen arguing with her boyfriend. Grimstead was a detective constable in Avon and Somerset’s major crime team at that time, and what began as a missing person investigation soon began to resemble a murder inquiry. Hundreds of hours of interviews and CCTV footage, searches, reconstructions and TV appeals failed to reveal what had happened to Hall. In 2009, one of Grimstead’s supervisors, Mike Britton, was still investigating it, fitting it round his caseload, when her body was found in a bin liner beside the M5. Although this happened just days before Britton’s retirement, he cancelled his plans so he could work on the case as a civilian investigator. It is still unsolved.

My friends and I wanted to tell the story of Cuban life, without interference. Before long, I was being isolated, monitored and interrogated

• A version of this essay was previously published in the Dial under the title The Sneeze. Translation by Lily Meyer

One day, in the middle of 2014, my friend Carlos Manuel Álvarez asked me to join him on the newsroom’s balcony. Wind gusted in our eyes. Elbows on the railing, we stared at the sea as we talked. We were killing time because neither of us had a computer to work on. All of them were in use. At OnCuba, the magazine in Havana where we worked, only editors got their own computers. The rest of us had to share, which sometimes meant waiting an hour. Several of my university friends and I had lucked into contributing roles at OnCuba, and even though we weren’t on staff, we were always in the newsroom. It was a way to keep our group together.

Sometimes, over beers, we dreamed aloud about a newsroom coup. We wanted to topple Hugo Cancio, the publisher, and turn his resources – a giant office with multiple rooms and a balcony with sea views; computers and internet; money; connections – into the media outlet we wanted. Something with our imprint.

The cancellation of Cenk Uygur’s and Hasan Piker’s visas tells us that the home secretary’s powers to police speech are too broad

In August 1967, the activist Stokely Carmichael was banned from entering Britain. An ally of Martin Luther King Jr and head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Carmichael was banned because that July he had visited London and given a rousing, militant speech about racism and black power at a leftwing festival in Camden alongside counterculture figures including the poet Allen Ginsberg and the philosopher Herbert Marcuse.

In the Commons, the Tory MP Patrick Wall – a member of the Monday Club, a pressure group that called for the “voluntary” repatriation of black people from Britain – claimed that Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) had been in Britain advocating racial violence. Wall asked Labour home secretary Roy Jenkins to rescind Carmichael’s visa. Jenkins agreed to do so. In retrospect, that decision – by a home secretary usually remembered as a liberal reformer – comes across as an act of petty authoritarianism, a more conservative generation trying to stop the circulation of subversive ideas associated with the 1960s left that it feared.

DK Renton is a barrister and the author of No Free Speech for Fascists: Exploring ‘No Platform’ in History, Law and Politics

The UK has banned Piker and Cenk Uygur from entry – but the objectionable things they’ve said are not more dangerous than Israel itself

This week, the British government banned Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur, two leftwing US commentators with millions of followers, from entering the country on the grounds that their presence would not be “conducive to the public good”. It did not spell out what it meant by this very broad phrase, but Piker and Uygur have accused the government of denying them entry because of their prolific criticism of Israel. Some critics have accused the pair of antisemitism, which they deny.

A lot has been written about the Piker-Uygur ban, and I don’t think I need to litigate everything they have ever uttered here. They have undeniably said some objectionable things (Piker, for example, said some Orthodox Jews are “inbred”, which he later apologized for). What sort of speech crosses a line that makes you detrimental to the public good, is not clear, however. Conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro, for example, has said that “Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage”. While he later apologized for this, he has repeatedly characterized Arabs as barbarians who “value murder”. The British government has never banned him from speaking in the UK.

Investors will buy into the market-leading tech and cult of Musk despite a price that is defying gravity

“Our mission,” says the opening sentence of SpaceX’s listing document with a straight face, “is to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multi-planetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”

The last bit has an echo of the laughable WeWork, which was going to “elevate the world’s consciousness” via the medium of shared office spaces. But, yes, if SpaceX could tick off all the items on Elon Musk’s to-do list, one could make a case that the company should be valued at $1.77tn (£1.32tn).

Our plan is radical – but by transforming how we live on a finite planet, nearly everyone gains

• ‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival

Imagine a future in which everyone enjoys high levels of wellbeing; where 90% of the world’s population doubles their income but works half the hours we work today. A world in which the bottom half of humanity sees its share of global wealth rise from just 2% today to 30%; a world where we consume enough, but nobody over-consumes. And imagine achieving this on a planet that can comfortably sustain human life without its climate breaking down.

Against the bleak techno-authoritarian futures now being sold to us, a radical new vision for global progress in the 21st century feels urgently needed. The most credible vision is one in which the habitability of the planet is a precondition for human development and equality.

Tony Blair’s departure as PM should have prompted a fresh start for Labour. But Starmer’s sad, backward-looking government remains in his thrall

Now half term is over, let’s have a quick quiz. Reading these lines, can you spot the common theme? Westminster has been mesmerised this week by the messages of a famous Blairite, Peter Mandelson, especially his damning exchanges with fellow carrier of the Blair torch, Pat McFadden. Last week’s big news was an essay written by Tony Blair himself. That was followed by a report on youth unemployment written by Blair’s former secretary of health, Alan Milburn. The story of this summer is shaping up to be a battle for the Labour leadership between Andy Burnham, whom Blair called “an outstanding member of my government”, and Wes Streeting, who is an outstanding member of his fanclub.

Catch it? That’s right: were little green men to visit Britain, they would think it under the control of some guy called Tony Blair. If not chief executive of these islands, he’s certainly the chair. If it’s not him in the spotlight, some other back number from the class of ’97 is hastily pressed into service. Just taken a massive tonking in the local elections? Better call Harriet Harman and Gordon Brown into No 10 for the photos. On it goes, through Jonathan Powell, Michael Barber, Liz Lloyd, Tim Allan. Need a walking contacts book to charm Donald Trump? Let’s call Peter … Oh dear.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

The ceasefire has held just enough to prevent a return to all-out war, but neither side is close to achieving peace

The US-Iran ceasefire is entering yet another round of escalation since it came into effect on 8 April. This week, there have been further strikes on Iran by the US, and Iranian retaliation on Kuwait and Bahrain, alongside Israeli escalation in Lebanon. Earlier flare-ups over the past two months were quickly contained. Both sides have tried to keep the balance between no war and no peace. But as this ceasefire drags on it risks becoming yet another Middle East stalemate, albeit one with international economic and political consequences.

Four obstacles are preventing progress. The first is trust. Iran does not believe Donald Trump can deliver a deal, much less stick to one. The fear is not only that Washington will walk away again but that the goalposts will keep moving, where first nuclear limits are imposed, followed by missiles, then regional policy and finally further political concessions dressed up as security guarantees.

Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House

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

We hear so much about Victoria Beckham being funny, but it’s Wagatha Christie villain Vardy who delivers the real quips and zingers

The first I knew of Rebekah Vardy was when she appeared after more dots than anybody has ever used before, in the whodunnit denouement of Wagatha Christie. “It’s .......... Rebekah Vardy’s account,” read Coleen Rooney’s bombshell statement, instantly transforming her frenemy into a household name.

Turns out no PR is bad PR though, because seven years and a long-running legal feud later, villain of the piece Vardy has a primetime TV show on ITV1. I probably wouldn’t hold your breath for flowers or chocolates though, Col, even if reviewers hadn’t given The Vardys such a kicking.

Ministers should end Palantir’s contract before medical confidentiality is sacrificed to Silicon Valley’s appetite for public data

Alarm bells ought to have rung when it emerged last month that Palantir engineers could gain “unlimited access” to identifiable NHS patient data. Such sensitive medical information was only supposed to be available either to someone involved in a patient’s care or with the patient’s informed consent. NHS England’s new position appears to have changed that, extending access to private companies because it may make data processing easier. Convenience is not a basis for undermining medical confidentiality.

Nicola Byrne, the government’s national data guardian, clearly thought the NHS had broken its promise that its £330m deal with Palantir would see “identifiable patient information … limited to NHS staff with a legitimate need”. Patients tell doctors things they may tell no one else. If they think that sensitive details can be disclosed to US tech corporations, trust will suffer – and patients will say less when the truth matters most.

The president’s image and name are proliferating in Washington and beyond, overturning well-advised democratic taboos on glorifying sitting leaders

One of the surest signs of an authoritarian regime is the ubiquity of its leader. Mussolini’s face was plastered across fascist Italy. In North Korea, pictures of Kim Jong-un have appeared alongside those of his father and grandfather, which are present in every home and public building. The golden statue of Turkmenistan’s leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, perching on a marble cliff in the capital is one of a multitude of portrayals.

Thriving democracies spurn such displays, rightly judging it safer to laud leaders once they are out of power. The first US president, George Washington, refused to appear on currency, believing that redolent of European monarchs. The 47th has no such concerns. The administration wants a $250 bill depicting Donald Trump to commemorate the 250th anniversary of independence, though federal law does not currently allow banknotes to depict living people. His signature will soon appear on $100 bills: a first for a US president.

Dr Deirdre Hughes says the issue of chronic underinvestment in high-quality, impartial careers guidance across schools, colleges and communities needs to be addressed

Alan Milburn’s interim review into young people not in education, employment or training lays bare what those of us working in careers support services have long observed: this is a system failure, not a failure of young people (‘A record of failure’: what’s in the first part of Alan Milburn’s Neet report?, 28 May).

Milburn rightly identifies the deep structural dysfunction that has left more than 1 million young people locked out of work and learning – and the stark imbalance between the £25 spent on benefits for every £1 directed at employment support. But the review’s framing of this primarily as a welfare and employment problem risks missing a deeper structural deficit: the chronic underinvestment in high-quality, impartial careers guidance across schools, colleges and communities.

Readers respond to an interview with Paul McCartney in which he reflects on memories of and inspiration found in Liverpool

The area around Dungeon Lane near Speke, Liverpool, which was such an inspiration for Paul McCartney (‘I can gauge John’s reaction: that’s good, stick that in’: Paul McCartney on how old bandmates – and Oasis – inspired his nostalgic new album, 29 May), provides a good example of what is happening to our green spaces and natural habitats. In 2019, in spite of local protests, Dungeon Lane was closed permanently, when the perimeter fence of Liverpool airport was extended.

Landowners are obstructing traditional rights of way. The use of pesticides has reduced the numbers of butterflies and bees. The coastal path has fallen into disrepair. Aircraft exhaust fumes pollute the air. Shamefully, it has been left to voluntary organisations – such as Save Oglet Shore – and academics to monitor this crisis. Research by Liverpool John Moores University has exposed the extraordinary build-up of Pfas (forever chemicals) on the shore.

Gail Cartmail offers a positive outlook to those facing life-changing bladder surgery, based on her own experience

The report of treatment being trialled that could potentially spare bladder cancer patients life-changing surgery is welcome news (Doctors hail drug that spares bladder cancer patients ‘life-changing’ surgery, 2 June). Yet readers currently facing surgery that includes removing their bladder are likely to be concerned about the here and now.

Like Tracey Emin, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2020. Life requires some planning. For example, the paucity of public toilets means mapping alternatives, as bladder bags have much less capacity than a natural bladder. I always carry a spare kit, however; following the advice and guidance of stoma nurse specialists, it is possible to avoid leaks. The Urostomy Association is a mine of useful information.

American foreign policy | Donald Trump’s self-reflection | Tony Blair’s Toryism | Keir Starmer on Whatsapp | Nine times table

Patrick Wintour’s analysis of the similarities between the Vietnam and Iran wars (Could Trump’s Iran ‘excursion’ be a bigger global turning point than Vietnam?, 31 May) states: “The predicted ‘domino effect’ of communism sweeping south-east Asia … did not materialise, save in Cambodia and Laos.” The changes in these two regimes would not have happened if the US had not carpet-bombed large parts of these countries, neither of which was at war with it.
David Rennie
Cardiff

• “I think going silent would be very good, and that could be for a long time,” says Donald Trump (Iran threatens to suspend peace talks after ‘violation of ceasefire’ in Lebanon, 1 June). Is this a rare moment of self-awareness?
Andrew Gore
Linton, Cambridgeshire

• First Test: England 140; New Zealand 61-6

• Paceman’s stunning return gives England the edge

It took two years for Ollie Robinson to force his way back into the England set-up and then about five minutes to win over their supporters. Steaming in from the Nursery End, Robinson produced a devastating triple-wicket maiden first up – and four overall – to cap an absurd opening day against New Zealand.

Some 16 wickets fell across only 60 overs of rain-affected play and, if this Test was being played in Australia, the groundsman might be feeling twitchy about having to give a press conference on Saturday. The pitch may ease up before then, even if the quicks on both sides will be hoping it stays just as fruity.

• Spaniard replaces Arne Slot and signs two-year deal

• Iraola worked with Richard Hughes at Bournemouth

Andoni Iraola has been appointed the new head coach of Liverpool on a two-year contract. The 43-year-old’s arrival was confirmed just six days after the sacking of Arne Slot.

Liverpool moved quickly to replace Slot with the former Bournemouth head coach after identifying him as the ideal candidate for their preferred playing style and with Milan, Bayer Leverkusen and Crystal Palace all vying for the Basque’s services. Other coaches were considered, including Stuttgart’s Sebastian Hoeness and Pierre Sage of Lens, but Iraola was always Liverpool’s favoured option and the only one spoken to about the vacancy.

• Russian teen reaches French Open final in 6-1, 6-3 win

• Kostyuk swerves pose with Andreeva in pre-match photo

Marta Kostyuk believes her breakthrough run at the French Open and her determination to speak out about Russia’s war in Ukraine ­successfully served as a reminder, to ­people who may have forgotten, about the ­horrors unfolding in her home ­country as she suffered a heavy loss to highest ranked Russian player, Mirra Andreeva, in the semi-finals.

“Yeah, for sure,” Kostyuk said. “I will never forget the ovations I received after my match [against fellow Ukrainian Elina Svitolina] in the quarter-finals. This is something I will carry with me forever. I will never believe anyone who is at the world stage of this sport saying they have zero influence or anything, because I experienced this myself.”

Spain will depart from Santiago de Compostela at 10am on Friday morning bound for Chattanooga, via Nashville, but seven of the eight men who made their debuts in the final preparation game before the World Cup will not be on board with them. Nor will the seleccion be flying west with a victory after they bid adios with a 1-1 draw against Iraq at Estadio Riazor. Which may not sound very good – and it really was not very good either, a 22-minute cameo from Mikel Merino about the best thing about it – but is no cause for alarm.

Luis de la Fuente’s side will still be among the favourites in the US, Canada and Mexico and rightly so; this was not really his side, at least not recognisably so.

• British driver ‘didn’t lose sleep’ over Canada setback

• Russell says he will not change approach in Monaco

George Russell remains confident in his world championship ambitions despite taking a serious blow with a mechanical failure at the last round in Canada. In Monaco the British driver insisted that he felt no pressure, with the Formula One title his rival and teammate Kimi Antonelli’s to lose.

Russell encountered a battery failure while leading in Montreal after taking pole position and having enjoyed a hard-fought contest for the race lead that ebbed and flowed with his teammate. With Antonelli going on to win he extended his lead in the world championship to 43 points. The 19-year-old Italian has now won four races in a row to establish a strong advantage, although 17 rounds remain including the meeting in Monaco this weekend.

All eyes will be on Team Melli amid the ongoing conflict with the US and Israel, making their campaign one of the most unusual and unpredictable of recent times

This article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June.

• Supporters groups condemn ‘immoral’ U-turn

• Fifa says policy a safety measure to prevent injury

Fifa has been accused of putting revenue ahead of fans’ health after banning reusable water bottles from being taken into World Cup stadiums.

In a late U-turn, the governing body rowed back on its advice that empty, transparent, reusable plastic bottles would be permitted inside venues, instead prohibiting them “to prevent risk and injury to players and attendees”.

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With every squad for the Geopolitics World Cup now finalised – Turkey, Jordan, Ghana and Uzbekistan were the last teams to confirm their 26-man rosters on Tuesday – we now know exactly who is making the trip to the tournament. But as a leading expert in rejection, constantly trying and failing to convince your inbox to let us out of the spam folder, Football Daily is just as interested in those who have been snubbed than those that will be subbed. The reactions to the omissions was also fascinating: sure, being selected to represent your country at the GWC is cool, but have you ever had to trawl through the Social Media Disgraces of Harry Maguire’s mum as she reacts to her son’s omission from the England squad with all the rage and injustice of Germany reacting to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles? And with that image seared into our collective brains, we humbly present our Omitted XI (4-3-3), the best non-knacked players (of qualified nations) that didn’t or won’t make it on to planes bound for the USA USA USA, Canada and Mexico.

Drawing on his own family’s experience, the Real Madrid and Germany defender is advocating for refugees and challenging stereotypes

As a child, Antonio Rüdiger would look out of his bedroom window to see whether anyone was playing on the field it overlooked. It was not a big pitch, but it had two goals, enough room for six-a-side and was where a young Rüdiger honed the skills that would take him to the top.

He grew up in Neukölln, Berlin, in a community largely made up of refugees, where his parents settled after fleeing civil war in Sierra Leone. It was, by his own account, a tough area, and football kept him out of trouble.

• Leeds 24-16 St Helens

• Rhinos recover from eight points behind at half-time

These are certainly not the nights where the silverware is handed out, but they are the ones where you tend to learn plenty about who are the contenders, and who perhaps are not.

It is hard to believe Leeds Rhinos are approaching 10 years since their last Super League title. Last champions in 2017, the Rhinos’ previous trophy of any kind was all the way back in 2020 – and that was behind closed doors, when they defeated Salford to win the Challenge Cup inside an empty Wembley at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

• Matthew Smith has privileges temporarily removed

• Rugby pundit Alphonsi ‘disappointed’ with outcome

A Rugby Football Union council member has had his privileges suspended for seven months after making a discriminatory comment about the England World Cup winner and pundit Maggie Alphonsi.

Matthew Smith, who represents Warwickshire, made the comment on Facebook about the 42-year-old during France’s 48-46 win against England in the Six Nations earlier this year. He posted: “Can someone please explain to me WTF does Maggie Alphonsi know about men’s rugby?”

England are upbeat going into the toughest fixture in international football but the hosts’ threat will be amplified by the returning Bonmatí

The equation sounds simple: avoid defeat on Friday and England will qualify automatically for the Women’s World Cup. The reality of the task ahead is far more complicated. Facing the world champions, Spain, like the Serra de Tramuntana mountain range that towers into the sky behind the Estadi Mallorca Son Moix, is an imposing barrier between the Lionesses and Brazil 2027.

A positive result in Mallorca would do more than guarantee England a shot at glory next summer. It would send a powerful statement that England remain a force to be reckoned with if they can tame the game’s greatest technical midfield, again.

• CEO praises ‘great leader’ who knows club’s values

• Captain’s mixed messages have raised doubts on future

Omar Berrada has not ruled out Bruno Fernandes leaving Manchester United in the summer, though the chief executive is adamant the club wants the captain to stay.

The 31-year-old Fernandes was voted the Football Writers’ Footballer of the Year after making a record-breaking 21 assists in the Premier League but has offered mixed messages about his future.

Republicans vote against amendment to kill fund after acting attorney general Todd Blanche told lawmakers earlier this week that DOJ was ‘not moving forward with the fund’

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Donald Trump’s former national security adviser-turned-foe John Bolton is expected to plead guilty over mishandling classified documents, multiple outlets are reporting.

According to CNN, which first reported the news citing three sources, Bolton intends to plead guilty to one count of illegal retention of sensitive national security documents, and has also agreed to pay a more than $2m fine. The New York Times hears the same, adding that he could face anywhere from no prison time to up to five years behind bars when he is sentenced.

Exclusive: New loopholes for developers will exacerbate extreme disparities across country, charity coalition warns

The poorest and most nature-deprived communities in England will be further left behind in their access to green spaces if proposed changes to planning laws go ahead, a report finds.

More than 7.4 million people in England live in areas completely devoid of immediate biodiversity, including 1.4 million children under 15, the report commissioned by a number of wildlife and environmental NGOs says.

Climbing support team rescue Hillary Dawa Sherpa almost a week on from when he was last seen

A Nepali guide who was believed to have died on Mount Everest has been found crawling to base camp a week after going missing – and after his funeral rites had begun.

Dawa Sherpa, also known as Hillary Dawa Sherpa after the famous climber Edmund Hillary, was last seen on 29 May but did not reach base camp with other climbing groups.

Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad appeared at performance of Abba Voyage for schoolchildren

Abba Voyage concerts can be deafening enough. But when the real-life Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad made an appearance in the hall, which was packed with hundreds of schoolchildren, even the security staff present were surprised by the din.

On Tuesday, at the custom-built Abba Arena in east London, the virtual concert residency launched its expanded education programme which aims to support young people across the area to get into the creative industries.

Saudi national, 21, held on suspicion of attempted murder over incident at Manor Park student village in Guildford

A former University of Surrey student has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a man was shot with a crossbow in Guildford.

The victim, who is in his 50s and a member of the university’s campus safety team, was seriously injured in the incident and is being treated at Royal Surrey County hospital close to the scene of the shooting.

Since 2015, fires have undone years of effort to reduce ozone levels, underscoring a growing public health crisis

The highly destructive wildfires that have battered the US and North America in recent years have significantly increased emissions and been linked to tens of thousands of premature deaths, but their impact on air quality is greater than previously known, according to new research.

A study published in Science on Thursday found that, since 2015, wildfires have reversed US progress toward ozone air quality standards, as the worsening pollution caused by wildfire smoke has undone years of efforts to reduce emissions. Ground-level ozone (O3) is created when pollutants from cars, refineries and industrial sources react with sunlight, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Insects join list of species capable of solving simple ‘box-and-banana’ problem that demonstrates basic intelligence

Bumblebees can use tools to solve a problem, according to experiments that demonstrate their remarkably advanced cognitive abilities.

The bees were given an adapted version of an experiment that, 100 years ago, first demonstrated chimpanzees could work out how to retrieve an out-of-reach banana by stacking boxes. Since then, various other primates, elephants and crows have joined an elite cohort of species known to be capable of this level of insight and spontaneous problem solving.

Electric shock is one of the biggest causes of death among wildlife in the country but a court ruling is a first step to making power lines safe

Peque, a small black howler monkey, scratches her head as she sits on a thick wooden branch in a wired enclosure with seven other orphaned baby howler monkeys at a rescue centre in Nosara, on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast.

Last year, Peque was one of more than 100 animals to arrive at International Animal Rescue Costa Rica (IARCR) as a result of electrocution on power lines, which primates such as monkeys frequently mistake for trees and vines.

Republican-led states growing renewable capabilities at faster rate as Texas emerges as clean-energy leader

Democratic-led states are eroding their climate policies, as red states are scaling up their clean energy deployment.

California on Friday scaled back its cap-and-invest program, offering more than $3bn in free pollution allowances to polluting companies. Earlier the same week, New York weakened its groundbreaking climate law, delaying a plan to regulate carbon from 2024 until 2028 and reducing emissions-slashing targets. Rhode Island’s governor, meanwhile, is attempting to roll back aggressive clean-energy programs.

Peter Kyle says British politics fails to reward political accomplishment and Labour risks aping Tory instability

The Labour party has not learned the right lessons from the Conservatives about changing leader, a senior cabinet minister has warned, saying in a swipe at potential challengers that “entitlement is not a qualification”.

Peter Kyle, the business secretary, said he was worried that British politics “rewards the wrong behaviour” and there was little credit for the work of his own department, including negotiating trade deals, rescue packages for companies and preserving British industry.

Despite Labour’s promises to increase recruitment, school census shows a fall of nearly 2,000 teachers since last year

The number of teachers working in England’s state schools has shrunk for the second year in a row, even as the government said it was meeting its promises to increase recruitment where needed.

The annual school workforce census shows there are 466,300 teachers in state schools this year, a fall of more than 1,900 since last year due to declining numbers in mainstream primary and secondary schools.

Popular head of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, who widened out the recruitment process

Sir Alex Younger, the former head of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, who has died from pancreatic cancer aged 62, was one of the most engaging and indeed open British spymasters in the service’s 116-year history.

As head of the service, which spies on and attempts to combat foreign subversion, from 2014 to 2020, he did not entirely keep to the omertà that characterised many of his predecessors, though he did not compromise security. His gift for colourful phrases was evident in his last BBC interview, at the start of the Iran war in February; speaking of the regime following the replacement of its leadership he said: “The threat of 88 mullahs on Zoom is one that is difficult to comprehend.”

Veteran broadcaster makes ‘one of hardest decisions of my entire life’ weeks after revealing spread of cancer to spine

The veteran broadcaster Bob Harris has announced he is stepping down from BBC Radio 2 after 30 years so he can focus on “getting well again”, six weeks after revealing his prostate cancer had spread into his upper spine.

The 80-year-old host of The Country Show and Sounds of the 70s, known as “Whispering” Bob Harris, said his health problems were forcing him to step down and that it had been “one of the hardest decisions of my entire life”.

Criticism comes from across political spectrum after blow to Friedrich Merz’s government

Germany’s unprecedented failure to win one of the rotating seats on the UN security council has prompted an intense round of soul searching in Berlin, and raised questions about its claims to international leadership under Friedrich Merz.

The council vote on Wednesday, which elected Austria and Portugal to a two-year term along with Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe, was a blow to Merz’s struggling government, which has sought to position itself as a leading European voice on the world stage.

Interior minister announces review into handling of the cases after body reportedly found in search for 11-year-old

Outrage has erupted in France after it emerged the main suspect in the case of an 11-year-old girl missing since last week had been repeatedly accused of sexually abusing children with no action taken.

A body was discovered on Thursday and formal identification was under way, an informed source said.

Within the last few days, a camera trap caught images of three mule deer using structure for the first time

A trio of mule deer have already scuttled across a not-quite-finished $20m wildlife bridge in Siskiyou county, marking a triumph for the California department of transportation (Caltrans).

The bridge and accompanying fencing over Route 97 in Siskiyou county is the first wildlife crossing constructed over a major highway in California. The project promises to both improve driver safety and reduce mortality for migrating mule deer, elk and other animal species.

Country is shaken by the brutal murders of two girls, aged 14 and 17, whose bodies were discovered just days apart

Argentina has reacted with fury after the bodies of two murdered teenage girls were found just two days apart. The latest killings underscore the South American country’s enduring femicide crisis despite years of feminist campaigning, and have prompted alarm over the decision to cut support for victims of gender-based violence under the far-right administration of Javier Milei.

Police found the remains of Agostina Vega, 14, on Saturday, in a field on the outskirts of the city of Córdoba. She had been fatally strangled and her body had been dismembered, according to local media reports.

Exclusive: Analysis shows resort has yet to recoup Disney’s investment despite record revenue and 16m annual visitors

Disney has still not recouped $4.2bn of its investment in Disneyland Paris after more than 30 years, even though the resort is now its best-performing international outpost, according to an analysis of recent filings.

The sprawling theme park complex swung open its ornate iron gates in 1992 and now attracts about 16 million visitors every year. It is wholly owned by Disney and is home to two theme parks – the fairytale-inspired Disneyland and Disney Adventure World, which launched its largest-ever expansion in late March. The lavish land, themed to the hit animated movie Frozen, is part of a $2.5bn (€2bn) investment by Disney, and its new chief executive, Josh D’Amaro, was on hand for the opening alongside Emmanuel Macron.

Deliveries in 30 minutes or less coming to Manchester and Birmingham and fresh groceries service to start in London

Amazon is expanding fast-track deliveries in the UK, including adding fresh fruit and vegetables to same-day services, after closing its standalone grocery stores.

The firm said it would expand Amazon Now, its ultra-fast delivery service that already delivers goods in less than 30 minutes to parts of London, to also serve Manchester and Birmingham this year.

After the dramatic termination of Scott Pelley, four of the show’s seven full-time correspondents are out under Bari Weiss’s leadership

For many years now, CBS News employees entering the network’s New York headquarters have walked by a poster showing the seven correspondents who have helped keep 60 Minutes the most-watched show in news for 52 straight television seasons: Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Bill Whitaker, Anderson Cooper, Sharyn Alfonsi, Jon Wertheim and Cecilia Vega.

Over the last tumultuous week, three of those correspondents – Pelley, Alfonsi and Vega – have been fired. Cooper – who is also a CNN primetime anchor – announced in February that he was leaving the show. Amid the most significant uproar in the show’s lengthy history, CBS News staffers and 60 Minutes veterans now have two central questions: who will be left to make the show’s 59th season, which begins in September? And will it still feel like 60 Minutes?

Registrations up 7% in the month, with battery EVs recording fastest growth and Tesla jumping 45% as motorists look to cut fuel bills

British car sales rose in May to their strongest level for the month since before the Covid pandemic, driven in part by strong growth from the Chinese manufacturers BYD and Chery.

Car registrations rose by 7% to 160,662 during the month, according to figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), a lobby group.

He’s pink, dotty and as British as a Boots meal deal. In recent months he’s duetted with pop stars, appeared on Saturday Night Live and been declared the UK’s equivalent of Mickey Mouse. What’s behind this strange comeback?

Margaret Thatcher wasn’t to blame for the closure of Britain’s coalmines. Mr Blobby was. A harrowing spoof documentary exposed this horrific truth during the finale of Saturday Night Live UK’s debut season. Back in 1992, drilling activity at Nottinghamshire’s Grumthorpe Colliery awoke an evil entity buried underground. Mr Blobby promptly went on an unstoppable murderous rampage, ripping off miners’ limbs and becoming “an atom bomb made flesh”.

Mr Blobby being disinterred is an apt metaphor. Recent months have seen the pink-and-yellow agent of chaos unearthed and on the comeback trail. He has appeared on primetime TV shows, duetted with popstars, and convinced nostalgic punters to part with a surprising amount of cash to get their hands on Blobby-themed merchandise. What has prompted the comeback of a character once considered irredeemably naff?

Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro is in the soprano’s DNA, but she’s never thought about directing it. Creating her own production has been daunting and fascinating – and her son’s building blocks even helped

I am not one of those performers who has spent their life on a theatre stage or film set thinking, “I wish I could direct this”. However, earlier this year, I found myself with an unexpected six-week gap. A scheduled project had been delayed for technical reasons, and it was at this time that Wild Arts’ producer Max Parfitt asked how well I knew The Marriage of Figaro.

I have lived with Mozart’s opera for as long as I can remember. Susanna’s “Deh, Vieni Non Tardar” was one of the first major arias I sang, aged 12 or 13, while studying in Los Angeles. Later, I wrote my final high school paper on Figaro, the adaptation from Beaumarchais’s play to Da Ponte’s libretto. I even translated the entire score word for word, which is probably why I still know it so deeply. My Metropolitan Opera debut at 19 was in Figaro, singing Barbarina. I performed my first Susanna on the same New York stage a few years later, and I’ve since sung the role many times all over the world.

Successful jokes are thin on the ground in the musty sixth installment of the once-popular parody franchise, taking aim at everything from Scream to Sinners

The Scary Movie series has always depended on timing. Not necessarily in its gagcraft, which has oscillated between occasional sharp jabs and many beyond-broad blows, but in its position on the release schedule. This was especially true of the first installment, which arrived in theaters just a few months after the 2000 release of Scream 3, capitalizing on the new wave of slashers while holding a spoofy Viking funeral for that just-concluded trilogy. A quarter of a century later, horror endures and there’s no reason to think spoofs can’t endure in parallel along with it as Backrooms and Obsession have ruled the early summer box office.

The sixth Scary Movie, repeating the first movie’s unnumbered title as a simultaneous nod to and act of reboot branding, is releasing too soon after those surprise smashes to incorporate them into its litany of gags (not even some last-minute ADR references, guys?). It’s stuck far further back, doing a composite of the fifth and sixth Scream movies from 2022 and 2023, respectively. On the other hand, with the recent Scream 7 largely abdicating its self-referentiality entirely, Scary Movie arrives as the last horror-comedy holding the torch for in-jokes that its self-serious cousin couldn’t bother with.

This look at the shocking 1992 murder of Rachel Nickell bravely gives you the unvarnished tale of her family’s struggles to deal with the tragedy – and the impossibility of coping with a living hell

All murders are shocking, but few unsettle a nation in the way that of Rachel Nickell did in 1992. She was stabbed 49 times while walking on Wimbledon Common during the day with her two-year-old son, Alex. The viciousness of the attack, in a public place and in front of a child, lingered darkly in the minds of the public, especially since Alex being the only witness enabled the killer to remain at large for years.

It is a crime that has been discussed, analysed and dramatised, but never quite in the way The Witness does. Across its three episodes, narrative emphasis rarely falls where we expect it to, because the main characters are not the police or the killer but the family Rachel left behind: Alex (Jahsaiah Williams, then Max Fincham as the older boy) and his devastated father André (Jordan Bolger). This harrowing new perspective proves to be rewarding.

Sarongs and Spice Girls feature in the footballer’s photo album. Plus: more from Sam Campbell’s oddball comedy. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Two
“He knows he’s going to be photographed; he knows he’s going to cause a sensation.” A clever concept to profile people in new ways, this time focusing on Becks. It starts in 1986 with a photographer who, after hearing that his teenage nephew’s mate has just won a national football skills competition, goes to capture his triumph. From there, the photo album includes a sarong, a Spice Girl and a gay magazine cover. Hollie Richardson

Bardem has the absolute time of his life terrifying everyone in this remake of the classic thriller. It’s a masterclass in tension, sublime directing – and never forgets the power of a jump scare

“Ever look around and wonder if we deserve all this?” a woman asks, standing by their sprawling mansion’s swimming pool with her handsome, ripped, fellow lawyer husband.

“No,” he replies.

Cape Fear is on Apple TV on 5 June

Ibragimova/Tiberghien
(BIS)
Violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cédric Tiberghien, on period instruments, offer zest-filled and elegant readings of four Beethoven sonatas

Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien get their Beethoven cycle off to a flying start with zesty accounts of the Op 12 set alongside the evergreen Spring Sonata. They perform on period instruments – she, a 1570 Amati violin; he, a replica 1794 Walter fortepiano – but there’s nothing academic about these fresh-as-a-daisy interpretations.

Among the Op 12, the D major sonata crackles with an almost capricious theatricality. One moment they are teasing, the next goading each other into greater feats of athleticism. Ibragimova explores the widest of dynamic ranges, accompanied by Tiberghien, whose quicksilver right hand is matched by a percussive left that would give a timpanist a run for his money.

This memoir of a man who moved around China chasing low-paid work for 20 years is an indictment of a shocking system, read in a suitably austere way

Hu Anyan’s memoir about working in the Chinese gig economy began life as a blog before being turned into a wildly successful book that has sold nearly 2m copies in China. It chronicles the daily grind that is working a series of unskilled jobs for insultingly low wages and where there is no such thing as career progression.

Hu is one of 300 million so-called internal migrants in China, people who move around the country chasing work. Over 20 years, he does 19 jobs in six cities, many of them in terrible conditions. He works as a security guard, hotel waiter, delivery driver, bicycle salesman, bike courier, gas station attendant and at a logistics warehouse where he is given only four days off a month. There is a reason, he notes, why so many new recruits fail to make it through the three-day trial, which, of course, is unpaid.

Born on a tiny, impoverished South Pacific island, Pene Pati remembers going to school without food. Now he is performing in operas at La Scala and the Met

Along roads of scarlet hibiscus and exuberant tropical foliage are the white churches of Samoa. On Sundays the choir, singing in pure harmony, rises up to the cathedral ceilings in one soaring voice of divinity.

Pene Pati, once a child in those churches, is now a commanding, magnetic presence on the world’s greatest gilded stages – a universe away from the tiny, impoverished South Pacific island of Upolu, where he was born. A tenor specialising in the lyrical repertoire and bel canto, he is booked out until 2029, from the Metropolitan Opera to La Scala to Royal Albert Hall. Last month he received the pinnacle of arts awards in France, the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres – a medal, he joked in a subsequent interview, that he’d been wearing around the house, much to his wife’s disdain.

A Sydney screening of La La Land with live orchestra was rescued by a brave (and skilled) amateur pianist. What happens when classical performers, or their instruments, suddenly collapse? Plus, Tavener’s mystic pantomime finally gets to the stage

Music’s equivalent of catching a home run at a baseball game happened on Saturday in Sydney, when a 21-year-old university student jumped in to save a performance of the movie La La Land with live orchestra. The band’s keyboardist had fallen ill and couldn’t perform in the second half. Unable to find a replacement at such short notice, the conductor Justin Hurwitz (winner of two Oscars for the film’s music) asked the audience if there was a pianist in the house. Sterling Nasa answered the call, and performed in the second half, improvising a solo, and not getting a tempo change or key signature wrong.

It’s a great story – and incredible that an audience member had the requisite sight-reading and technical skills to carry it off. Could it happen in a classical concert? There have certainly been moments here too when an audience member has saved the day. The best of those stories comes from the summer of 1974, when the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus brought Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana to the Proms, conducted by André Previn, with the baritone Thomas Allen among the soloists. You can actually hear the shocking moment from the live radio broadcast when Allen collapses into the cello section in an episode of the BBC World Service’s Witness History. He had fainted and was carried off the stage. After a brief pause, Previn chose to keep going rather than stop the performance.

In her sharp and intellectual first novel, the author finds tragic comedy in socialism, inequality and the flawed ways we connect as the world burns

In her fiction debut, The Ruiners, Ellena Savage probes the awkward realities of white privilege, social mobility and a lack of ancestral connection. At first it seems that Savage has turned away from the experimental ambition of her successful memoir, Blueberries, but the novel gradually reveals itself to be craftier and more subversive than it appears. This anti-inheritance novel is in direct, playful conversation with one of its inspirations – Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – and, while knowledge of the coming-of-age novel isn’t essential, it’s delightful to see Savage tease the themes of the original in her surreal contemporary take.

Having failed to fulfil or even define her own ambition, 29-year-old Pip drifts aimlessly through her life. She is smart, funny and vaguely unhappy. In quick succession, her estranged father dies and leaves her an inheritance of $50,000 and she falls quickly, recklessly in love with Sasha, a brooding young writer who narrates the third part of the novel. With the inheritance Pip sees the opportunity to change her situation. She quits her job – “I’ve developed a rare blood disorder, I wrote. As such, I must cut my hospitality management career short. I hereby tender my resignation, effective immediately” – and marries Sasha, and together they spend the entirety of her small fortune on a rotting house on the remote (fictional) Greek island of Fokos. In the background, a trash volcano burns relentlessly and waste pirates fight to offload their illegal garbage on to the shores. But the move does little to improve their circumstances or resolve their unhappiness.

The Ruiners by Ellena Savage is out now (Summit Books, $34.99)

Family members said the author of the landmark comic book memoir ‘died of sadness’ after the death of her husband last year

Marjane Satrapi, the French-Iranian artist, film-maker and graphic novelist whose acclaimed memoir Persepolis helped reshape international perceptions of Iran, has died at the age of 56.

In a statement provided to French news agency AFP, relatives said she had “died of sadness” after the death of her husband, the Swedish producer Mattias Ripa.

The violence of male entitlement is embodied in the charismatic son of a Mississippi pastor, in a sharp portrait of cruelty and inheritance

‘To woman he gave a womb, and to man he gave dominion’, that’s what I teach my boys,” the Rev Sabre Winfrey Jr tells his wife, Priscilla, midway through Addie E Citchens’s formidable Women’s prize-shortlisted debut novel, Dominion. In Citchens’s hands, that dominion is exercised not only through violence, but through charisma, piety and the banality of male entitlement.

Set in the fictional town of Dominion, Mississippi, at the turn of the millennium, the novel follows the Winfreys, a prominent Black church family whose putative grandeur conceals a deep and hereditary decay. Sabre leads the largest congregation in the state from the pulpit of Seven Seals Baptist church, dispensing wisdom through sermons and local radio broadcasts, exuding the oily confidence of a man convinced that God speaks exclusively in his register. The longsuffering Priscilla writes those sermons, raises their five sons and silently maintains the machinery of his authority without ever receiving credit for it.

A revelatory account of the life of George Forster, whose rejection of racial hierarchies stood out amongst his peers

George Forster was 10 when he left his home in present-day Poland and travelled to Russia with his naturalist father. During the expedition, which began in 1765, Forster collected plant specimens and helped with botanical research. Wide-eyed, he journeyed along the Volga river, encountering Muslim Tartar traders and Cossack warriors. There were also the emaciated figures of German settlers, who lived in poverty under the territory’s despotic governor, their campsites little more than holes burrowed into the riverbanks. The experience of cultures so distinct from his own stirred a lifelong enthusiasm for travel and exploration in Forster. It also awakened his compassion for others – irrespective of culture and, especially, race.

At a time when racism pervaded public opinion as well as the philosophical texts of luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, Forster moved brazenly to critique and correct them. How he was able to transcend the conventional beliefs of his day is the central question of Andrea Wulf’s new book – and the answer is in its title.

PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox; Yacht Club Games
This brilliant adventure creates a whole world from one character with a unique ability

You could mistake Mina the Hollower for something found on the liquid-crystal display of a Game Boy Color around the turn of the millennium. Like the pocketable Zelda and Pokémon games of the time, it presents a kind of snow-globe reality that you peer into from above, relying on imagination to decipher each two-colour clump of pixels into a tree, or a skeleton, or a cloaked mouse wielding a hammer twice her size.

This is Mina, our hero: she jumps, she moves at a clip, and she can delve downward into the soil or floorboards, tunnelling underfoot for a moment or two before popping back up, like an inflatable forcibly submerged in a swimming pool. This is her signature move, perfectly elastic in sensation – the way the released button springs back against your thumb! – and in application. The burrow-jump is an excavation tool, unearthing any treasure you happen to dig through, and a navigational one, used to hop over gaps, reach high-up spots and nose into tiny hidden spaces, where more treasure almost invariably awaits.

The PS5 era has been in some ways disappointing for Sony – on Tuesday, the company revealed a slate of games they hope will change that

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PlayStation’s future has looked a little uncertain these past few years. Although the PS5 has sold well and been very profitable, the brand is far from the runaway market leader it was in the PS2 days. Earlier this week, Game File dug into Sony’s most recent earnings reports to illustrate how PlayStation has been selling fewer and fewer of its own flagship games since a peak during the pandemic. About 54.1m copies of games either developed or published by Sony were sold in the 2018 financial year; in 2025, it sold 32.1m.

Sony has put out some great homegrown games since the PS5 was released in 2020, from Astro Bot to Ghost of Yōtei, but it has also had some expensive and very public failures and cancellations; PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, who retired in 2024, placed big bets on live-service games and only a few panned out (hello, Helldivers). Sony also seems to have rolled back on releasing its single-player PS5 games on PC after a polite interval of time, suggesting it wants to preserve what advantage and exclusivity it has.

Launching in the UK this month, this new pint-sized console revives the motion-controlled video game boom of the 00s – with better, safer tech

For a wonderful moment in the noughties, video games became a truly universal pursuit. As I witnessed my controller-phobic aunt swing a Wii remote and nail a tennis serve, while my great-grandmother furrowed her brow over sudoku puzzles on her Nintendo DS, it seemed my long-derided hobby had finally gone mainstream. The Nintendo Wii flew off the shelves, inspiring a wave of competitors such as the Xbox Kinect camera that encouraged people to play games by moving their bodies. But the tide turned: outside of still-niche VR gaming and the odd controller-waggler on the Switch, motion-controlled gaming has barely been seen for more than a decade.

Now, 20 years later, a new console is aiming to get the whole family flailing in front of the TV once again: the Nex Playground. Launching in the UK later this month, the first thing that struck me about this family-friendly device is just how tiny it is. The size of two and a half Rubik’s Cubes taped together, this impressively unintrusive device swaps cumbersome controllers for camera-controlled minigames, putting you and your family directly in the game. Using a wide-angle lens and AI-powered tracking tech, the Nex Playground offers over 50 games that track players’ bodies as they leap, flail and dance about the living room. It’s not hard to see the appeal.

When Ben Elton didn’t distract from the pain of moving my body, I found the perfect solution – the interactive smartphone game Zombies, Run!

At 56, I am running my first marathon, an old, fat, bald dad surrounded by millennials in body-hugging Lycra and smiles that look AI-generated. But I am ahead of them. For they are only competing for positions and personal bests, and I am being chased by zombies.

The black dog of depression hit me around the time of my last birthday. I didn’t feel I had achieved anything of note for an eternity. I used to work out but, for years, work kept getting in the way. I decided to kill two circling, carcass-sniffing vultures with one stone and run my first marathon.

Barbican theatre, London
Impeccable vocals and slick staging make for dazzling set pieces in a tame production that’s missing the emotional centre of the 1956 film

Five years ago, the Barbican staged the first of three Cole Porter musicals in quick succession. A sublime revival of Anything Goes was fun, frothy and polished to perfection. Kiss Me, Kate followed, and now this show, about the romantic shenanigans of the American east coast gentry.

Immaculate in its song and dance, it is smoothly staged from the minute the (doomed) multitiered cake is wheeled on for the upcoming wedding in Long Island. But something is missing from the love triangle between socialite Tracy Lord (Helen George), her pining ex-husband Dexter (Julian Ovenden) and square fiance George (David Seadon-Young) – with undercover journalist Mike (Freddie Fox) thrown into the romantic pot for good measure.

King Street Social Club, North Shields
Teeing up a forthcoming solo album, the rapper doesn’t reheat his old Beastie Boys sound, instead throwing down everything from ballads to Kraftwerk references

Adam Yauch AKA MCA’s death in 2012 from cancer aged 47 effectively ended the stellar recording and performing career of hip-hop trio Beastie Boys. Since then, bandmates Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond have made few public appearances but the latter is now back in the fray. His first appearance on a British stage in almost 20 years is in, of all places, a bingo hall in the north east, where he surely becomes the first legendary rapper to yell: “Wassup, North Shields?!”

With turntables on stage, hip-hop clobber in the audience, a six-piece band in matching outfits and bingo tables at the back, this unlikely show feels simultaneously low-key and an event. Mike D is backed by 5D – who include his sons and are more than half his 60 years – whose slamming grooves and crunching guitars aren’t Beastie Boys reheated, but certainly have the same inimitable joie de vivre.

The Glaswegian standup on joining the ego-less Saturday Night Live, smiling at himself in the mirror and why he’s not slept in his new house

Behind the scenes, is SNL UK a tightly controlled machine or complete chaos?
It’s genuinely a combination of both: mayhem that is very well organised. Making a show from scratch from Monday to Saturday is going to be chaotic but they’ve got the best of the best in the crew. All the wardrobe people, the camera crew, the set designers … they’re just incredible. There have been moments I’ve thought: are we going to pull this off? But every single time, we manage brilliantly.

Where were you when you got the call saying you were going to be a cast member?
In Daniel Sloss’s bedroom. He woke me up … To be honest, I have no idea. I just make up a different story every time.

From modern art giants such as Helen Marten to the most exciting up-and-comers, this weekend’s art party showcases the best and brightest the capital has to offer – free of charge

With hundreds of world-class galleries, thousands of stunning exhibitions and countless talented artists, London has a serious claim to being the art capital of the world. Sure, it’s also got sky-high rents that make surviving as an artist nigh on impossible; and yes, perilous economic conditions mean that galleries are closing at an unprecedented rate (the brilliant Tiwani Contemporary announced last week that it would soon be shutting for good). But there’s still plenty to celebrate. And that’s where London Gallery Weekend comes in.

Now entering its sixth year, the event brings together London’s biggest, brightest and best galleries for a weekend-long art party. There are talks, walk-throughs, performances, poetry readings and gigs taking place across the weekend, with galleries open late throughout – and admission to everything is free.

As the largest display of Native North American art ever seen in Britain arrives in Yorkshire, its artists are asking timely questions about their history, our planet, and humanity’s place within it

Hold to This Earth, the largest exhibition of contemporary Native North American art to be shown in Britain, arrives as the United States gears up to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Selected from Santa Fe’s Tia Collection, its artists represent more than 35 tribal nations, offering a counterpoint to that colonialist history. Their work explores a continent whose beliefs and traditions date back not centuries but millennia, and whose more recent past is marked by its original people’s exploitation, their experiences too often buried or ignored. Perhaps above all, though, “the work is incredibly timely”, as the show’s curator, Sarah Coulson, points out. “These artists are dealing with pertinent issues now.”

Many artists tackle present-day concerns head-on. Yatika Starr Fields’s sculptures, for instance, use tents salvaged from an encampment of thousands of demonstrators fighting the Dakota access pipeline that threatened the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux. Politics mixes with pop culture and global tradition in another new commission, a huge vessel by the ceramicist Diego Romero. It has a palette that recalls ancient Greek pottery, but its celebratory comic book-style characters are drawn from an old sci-fi movie about Mayans going to space.

Pulp Fiction director writes in Sight and Sound that ‘since the pandemic … it seems almost impossible for a new movie to come out that I don’t pick to death’

Quentin Tarantino has criticised contemporary Hollywood, calling it “a flavourless sausage factory”.

Writing in Sight and Sound magazine, Tarantino said that “since the pandemic … it seems almost impossible for a new movie to come out that I don’t pick to death”. He added: “Flaws, implausibilities, audience pandering, miscast performers or just plain stupid shit usually torpedoes every new movie coming out of the flavourless sausage factory that used to call itself Hollywood.”

Robert dos Santos decided to make his first film after being held at gunpoint once too often. The resulting drama, only available on VHS, is a broadside against AI: ‘Someone once said that if your mum can do it, it doesn’t have value’

The new film This Is How the World Ends is a fine piece of work; the story of two siblings finding each other at a party held at humanity’s end, it is basically On the Beach set at Burning Man. However, what is really remarkable about it is its method of release, as the first straight to VHS film in 20 years.

In the early 2000s it was estimated 90% of British households owned a VCR – the last halcyon days of the format, before it was replaced by DVDs, and then Blu-ray, then streaming. In 2016, the world’s last VCR manufacturer Funai Electric ceased production. To release a film straight to video, in other words, is to make watching your film as difficult as possible.

New four-part documentary reignites criticism of Operation Peyzac, in which officers posed as music industry figures to gather intelligence

It was the undercover police operation that led to 37 people being jailed after officers set up a fake recording studio and record shop on a north London housing estate.

Now, a four-part television documentary has brought Operation Peyzac back under the spotlight, prompting renewed scrutiny of the tactics used by undercover officers and calls for the operation to be examined by the UK’s ongoing spycops inquiry.

Hundreds of people applied to adopt beagles from a breeding facility – but ‘these are not ordinary dogs’, says one rescue worker

In May, 1,500 beagles were released from Ridglan Farms, a breeding and bioresearch facility near Madison, Wisconsin.

The event made headlines. Soon, a deluge of tear-jerking videos followed, showing the lab beagles experiencing the outside world for the first time. Millions of people watched the dogs touching grass and instinctively paddling their paws at the sight of water.

Restaurant dining is a terrific and expensive treat, so how can you be sure to get the best from every menu? Experts give their advice, from looking for the strangest dish to going easy on the booze

For many of us, going to a restaurant is a real treat, so you want to make the most of every mouthful. From starters to small plates, how can you ensure that you have the best possible dining experience? Restaurant critics share the insider secrets to ordering well when eating out.

Summer is here, and your May favourites show you’re feeling the heat

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Our on-again, off-again relationship with summer finally went official in May, with temperatures soaring across much of the UK. Many of us sweltered in the heat, ordering fans to try to get a good night’s sleep during the unprecedented heatwave, and shade shelters to keep us out of the sun’s glare.

But we also couldn’t help embracing that summer feeling, with many of your May favourites reflecting a little more time spent outside. Many of you got back to nature and went camping, with some of your fellow readers’ top camping products making the list, such as an ingenious washing line and a flying disc. From comfy holiday sandals to a cult favourite K-beauty SPF, these were your favourite things in May.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food and the basics they scrimp on? The former footballer talks Lego, Rich Tea biscuits and spending money on experiences with the Filter

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Karen Carney is England’s fourth most-capped football player, competing at four World Cups, four European Championships and the London Olympics before retiring in 2019. In 2022, she began leading a landmark government review into the Future of Women’s Football in the UK, the recommendations of which were successfully backed by the government in 2023.

She was part of the first all-female punditry team for ITV at the men’s World Cup 2022, led ITV’s coverage of the men’s Euros in 2024 and contributed analysis to the women’s Euros in 2025.

Need a pair of grown-up shorts? A summer sandal that works with everything? Or perhaps just a really cute bag? Our expert’s monthly edit is here to help

• 52 women’s summer wardrobe updates for under £100

Weddings! Wimbledon! It’s June, which means that summer has well and truly arrived. The May heatwave may have flagged some gaps in your warm-weather wardrobe, so here are some of this month’s juiciest style updates.

Read on for everything from the season’s most chic capri pants to bikini bottoms for under £10, plus some tips on under-the-radar brands to keep an eye on. Keep cool out there, comrades.

Whether you want a stick, a spray or a tinted cream, our expert’s favourite formulas can provide year-round sun protection

• The best face moisturisers for every budget

There’s nothing quite like the warmth of the sun on your face after a long, dreary winter. But before you bask in it, you should always apply an SPF. That’s especially true if you use retinol serums, which can increase your vulnerability to sun damage. If you’re not wearing an SPF every day, you might as well toss the rest of your skincare out of the window.

As well as the risk of sunburn, UV rays cause longer-lasting, deeper skin damage, resulting in age spots, pigmentation and premature ageing. But if the thought of slathering sticky sunscreens on your face every day makes you want to spend your life in perpetual shade, you’ve come to the right place.

Best face SPF overall:
Beauty of Joseon relief sun rice + probiotics

Best budget face SPF:
E45 Sensitive Sun face cream

We pop open a selection of fun but healthy fizzy flavoured waters that should satisfy even the fussiest princess

I am not a princess about many things, but there has to be sparkling water in the house. Refreshing, enlivening and occasionally hangover-clearing, it is an essential. Thankfully, my husband is aligned with me (it would never have worked with someone who answered: “Tap’s fine”, when offered water in a restaurant).

I’m not fussy about my fizzy, though – SodaStreamed tap is fine – but I am increasingly seduced by the rainbow of new flavoured, unsweetened sparkling waters such as Dash Water and Aqua Libra that have turned up of late. Depending on how you look at them, they offer a healthy take on fizzy drinks and/or bring a bit of bling to an otherwise neutral beverage. “They make water a fun drink,” says the chef and author Jesse Jenkins, who co-founded sparkling water brand Yew.

Layers of oregano bring a pungent earthiness to this simple supper of baked white fish and spuds

In her enthusiasm, my dog pulled me over in front of a group of teenagers the other day, so I have been using an antiseptic called Citrosil on my elbow, hip and ear. So much so that clothes I wear often, tea towels that have been hung on my shoulder and my bag all seem to have Citrosil hanging about them, like the teenagers around the bench (two of whom came to my aid). I put this down to the smell having got into my sinuses, or personal paranoia, until a woman in the supermarket commented, also saying how reassuring she found it. Separately, I keep having thoughts about chips fried in olive oil with oregano sprinkled on top, which I put down to a comment by a friend a few weeks ago, until I realised that thoughts of chips were also due to the Citrosil on my elbow and in my sinuses, because it doesn’t smell only like hospital corridors, my grandma, lemon and turpentine, but also oregano.

Looking at the ingredients on the Citrosil bottle, the herbal element is actually thyme essence, although thyme and oregano are in the same family and both contain molecular compounds called thymol and cymene, whose decisive component smells – medicinal, tarry, woody, floral – are combined so intoxicatingly in thyme, oregano and marjoram. Smells that bring to mind chips, braised vegetables, köfte and flatbreads.

From station‑side markets to late‑night hotel rooms, ​you can take pleasure in the smallest everyday eating rituals

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June has arrived in a blur of train tickets, suitcases, book signings and half-finished cups of coffee. The publication of our fifth cookbook, Honey & Co Daily, has brought with it the strangest combination of feelings: delight, gratitude, nerves, excitement, exhaustion and, on occasion, mild panic. When you imagine it from afar, a book tour sounds wonderfully glamorous, but in reality it involves early alarms, missed trains, unfamiliar hotel rooms and the constant worry that you have forgotten something important – and that no one will show up.

Even so, this has also been one of the most rewarding experiences. We spend so much time writing recipes and stories, and hoping they will find their way into people’s homes, lives and kitchens. Getting to meet the people who let this book in, to learn which recipes have become family favourites, and to chat with them about a new way with quince or aubergines (there is always one) feels like an incredible gift every single time.

Drink brands such as Yahweh and Praise Energy say they’re raising awareness for Christianity – but are they just treating Jesus like an uncopyrighted Mickey Mouse?

By now, you’ve probably noticed the trend: every celebrity and influencer appears to be chasing the same prize. We’re deep in the era of the celebrity beverage.

Kim Kardashian has Update energy drinks. John and Hank Green have the Awesome Coffee Club. Blake Lively sells sparkling grapefruit juice. Even Danny DeVito, somehow perfectly cast for the role, is the face of a limoncello.

It sounds like you both see sex the same way, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith – and perhaps that’s part of the problem

• Read more Leading questions

My husband and I have been married for five years and are having trouble with our sex life. From the beginning of our marriage (we only started having sex after marriage) I wanted sex more frequently than him. In the first year or so of marriage we’d have sex two to three times a week which I enjoyed, although sometimes hoped for more.

A few years into our marriage my husband had a very stressful time at work. Sex dropped to roughly once a week, typically on the weekends. He picked up running to help deal with the stress and really enjoyed it.

Charles and Alice have reconnected in their 60s, but he finds her soggy sponges foul, while she says his ashtrays are worse. You tell us who is giving you that sinking feeling
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Whenever I see Alice’s cloths, I imagine all the bacteria that must be crawling over them

Charles would prefer to throw all dishcloths away immediately after using them

My ‘niblings’ gave me a positive reason to return to the home town where I’d experienced homophobia as a boy. Over time, they transformed my sense of family and self

When I found out I had become an uncle, I was 22 and on a year abroad as part of a languages degree, living in Madrid. I’d spent much of my time there having raucous fun on the city’s gay scene, dancing till the early hours then sloping off with Spanish men. It felt a long way from my family life back home in Bolton.

As this was 1997 – a time before mobile phones – calls from landlines had to be rationed to once a week. But my mum phoned to tell me my sister had gone into labour and then, two days later, the phone rang again with the news that I had a nephew. It felt like an abstract concept, not quite real.

As the far right fulminates about who ‘belongs’ in Britain, let’s remember Fritz Lustig, who arrived here in 1939, just months before war broke out. Initially jailed as an ‘enemy alien’, he played a vital role in a top-secret military intelligence unit

When the Nazis came to power in Germany in January 1933, Fritz Lustig, my father, was a 13-year-old schoolboy growing up in Berlin. He was a budding musician with dreams of becoming a professional cellist but, by the time he left school four years later, it was clear that under the Nazis, even though his family had largely cast aside their Jewish heritage, his options were going to be extremely limited.

Neither he, nor any of his anxious relatives, could possibly imagine the scale of the horrors that lay in store – but after the anti-Jewish pogrom of Kristallnacht in 1938, it was impossible to ignore the gathering storm clouds.

Experts explain how small, regular sums can build wealth over time, from your 20s through to retirement

Thinking about investing? There are compelling reasons for moving at least some of your money away from standard savings accounts and into the stock market. There are also risks, but over the long term the rewards can be better.

Many people are put off by the idea that you need to be wealthy to start investing, or over a certain age. But even if you can only afford to set aside £50 a month, it is worth considering. And while there are important factors to consider before you start, it is rarely too early, or too late, to take the first step.

ScottishPower apologises for charging error, as millions face higher costs under revised energy price cap

The energy bill from ScottishPower sent Richard Palmer into an immediate panic. It said he had to pay more than £8,400 straight away or risk his credit history being impaired for years.

The 76-year-old felt he had no option so he paid the bill, using half of his savings to do so, even though it amounted to nine times what his annual payment would normally be.

Although I voluntarily handed in the licence, the agency’s action has made it far harder for me to get it back

I suffered a spinal cord injury in August 2024. I voluntarily surrendered my driving licence to the DVLA, only for it to revoke it instead. This makes it much, much harder to get it back later on.

I’ve since been told that I need to take a medical driving assessment to get the licence back, but I am unable to take one because I do not have a licence. I am now on my third application, with evidence from my spinal consultant and an off-road driving assessment confirming that I can drive with hand controls. This was submitted two months ago, and the DVLA still can’t update me.

Urgent renewal emails and huge discounts figures are used to pressure people to hand over their data

You have had McAfee antivirus software installed on your laptop for years after becoming fearful that your computer would be infected. So when an email arrives to say your protection is about to expire, you are not surprised. Better still, there is a “renewal discount” of 89% if you pay on the same day.

“Once the expiration date has passed, your computer becomes susceptible to many different virus threats,” the email warns.

A new survey reveals the average person in Britain will spend 41,000 hours flicking idly between news apps and social media – and, in all likelihood, getting increasingly miserable

Name: Doomscrolling.

Age: The term first emerged in 2018, but took off in 2020 (when the doom got especially heavy).

The neurologist Orlando Swayne doesn’t suggest everyone can recover. But he does argue that early, targeted and intense therapy can sometimes bring about life-changing improvements – and we have a moral obligation to provide it

Claire was in bad shape. She had been brought to the ward on a stretcher and hoisted on to a bed where she lay curled up in a ball. She was unable to speak, her eyes flat and face expressionless. While she could move her right arm a little, her left arm and both legs were immobile.

Life had changed dramatically for Claire, a mother of three in her late 30s, many months earlier, when she collapsed while on a night out with friends. A weakness in an artery at the base of her brain had ruptured, spilling blood around her frontal lobe. She was taken to hospital, where surgeons removed two side plate-sized pieces of bone from her skull to relieve the pressure on her brain. She spent months in intensive care.

New issue of the American Journal of Public Health focuses on parallels between marketing for cigarettes and UPFs

The new issue of the American Journal of Public Health focuses on ultra-processed foods, and reveals that big tobacco companies used strategies that helped them sell cigarettes to sell ultra-processed food products, including Lunchables, geared toward children.

The parallels between ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and cigarettes include not only how UPF products were formulated and marketed to drive excess consumption, but also the growing body of evidence linking UPFs to a variety of health risks. For UPFs, these include cardiovascular diseases, certain cancers and cognitive health decline.

A few lucky runners can look forward to ‘an orchestra of neurochemical changes’ when they lace up their trainers. Why do the rest of us just get sweaty? And do other forms of exercise have the same effect?

The runner’s high, where pavement-pounding drudgery turns into something like a chemically enhanced experience, is an elusive state to pin down. Some people seem to get it during most of their runs; others rarely, or barely at all. A few lucky Couch to 5kers claim to experience it within their first few sessions, while some professional athletes doubt that it even exists. This is partly due to individual differences in brain chemistry, and partly because the way you train has a significant effect on how likely you are to experience it.

If you’re on the verge of throwing away your trainers, though, there’s good news: runner’s high is real, and there are ways to maximise your chances of experiencing it, even if you’d rather hit the pool or the river than the trail. On your marks, then …

A higher price does not necessarily mean better fabric, fairer pay for workers or greater sustainability. To guarantee you’re buying ethically, experts say, you need to dig a little deeper

Does paying more for a T-shirt mean that it’s more likely to be ethically made?

In short (sleeves): no. People who spend their time investigating fashion companies’ supply chains and employment practices seem united in the conclusion that money cannot necessarily buy us a clear conscience.

The sundress is back – here’s how to make it short but not (too) sweet

One sunny day recently, I looked around and realised that every woman in my vicinity was wearing the same dress. Not the same dress, exactly. But the same dress. A maxidress, colourful but in a tasteful sort of way. Floaty, probably with a tiered skirt. Wholesome and vaguely rustic, but also a bit fancy. You know the dress I mean, because if you have been at any outdoor event between 2019 and about last Thursday, you have had the same experience. The maxidress has colonised summer dressing, and it’s out of control.

So I am here to tell you that the maxidress must die. Ha! Not really, but also sort of yes, really. It started so well. When the maxi first landed, it beguiled us all. Floor-length, after all, was new fashion territory for anyone born after about 1965, so it felt fresh and exciting, plus you could go to a party in flat shoes and not have to shave your legs. Result! But somewhere down the line the maxidress has got a bit Motherland. It has become a garment that somehow represents the tense negotiation between prettiness and exhaustion that defines modern womanhood. A dress you wear for a holiday selfie that you retake 14 times before posting on Instagram with a joie-de-vivre caption.

Think self-tan is too much effort – or too risky? Not any more. The latest products are so simple to use you can just go with the glow

I can’t be without a facial self-tan in spring/summer. Keen to offload heavier coverage foundations that can slip, slide and suffocate in the sunshine, I reach for a subtle tanner as a warmer, lighter and, truly, easier base layer for makeup.

People wrongly imagine self-tan to be too effortful, fiddly and risky, and understandably wonder where to slot it into their skincare routine, but a new crop of facial self-tanners simplifies both these issues.

Hundreds of thousands of supporters travelled to north London to celebrate their team winning the Premier League. Here’s what they wore …

‘The only thing I haven’t got are the underpants. Everything else is Arsenal,” says Shane, a memorabilia and kit collector perched outside north London’s Clissold park with his daughter, Erin. Known online as Highbury Gunner JVC, the 47-year-old wore an Arsenal-buckled belt, a club tie in a player pattern and a club shirt with a red and white vintage-style duffel bag. The showstopper, though, was his bespoke jacket made from curtains by the designer Joe Brim, finished with an Arsenal medallion and watch, and yellow customised Dr Martens. A collector since the 1970s, he says: “I could complete a catalogue from the 90s; my house is like a museum.”

Favourite shirt … Liv Samuels in his Arsenal badge Hawaiian top

Over one weekend, we hiked, swam, slept in a woodland cabin and camped on a hillside – while also supporting community-run projects

The children were asleep in the little tent behind us, wrapped in two sleeping bags, each with an extra helping of wool blankets. Earlier, all I could see were their little faces half-lit by torchlight as I read them a book about rivers to the sound of rain on canvas. They fell asleep as fast and thick as the fog pooling in the valley below.

My partner and I sat outside, huddled together under a waterproof coat, cheek to cheek, perched on our daughters’ foam swim vests because the ground was saturated. We were laughing. As parents, absurdity and beauty make for familiar bedfellows.

The Cambrian Line hugs the shore, offering easy access to the Wales Coast Path, the Cadfan Way pilgrimage route and glorious Cardigan Bay

From the graveyard of St Michael’s in Ynys, Wales, the view was ravishing: the Italianate oddity of Portmeirion sparkled on the opposite shore; the peaks of Eryri (Snowdonia) rippled in the distance; and, within the River Dwyryd’s broad swirl, sat the tidal island of Ynys Gifftan. “No one’s lived there for years,” said a passerby pointing to the isle, “but it’s just been put up for sale – £350,000, if you fancy it.”

I rather did, but sadly my modest savings don’t stretch that far. Wales’s “armpit”, geographically speaking – which is how some people refer to that chunk of Gwynedd where estuaries perspire into Cardigan Bay before it curves round the outstretched Llŷn peninsula – looked like a spectacular place to be marooned.

I love exploring Poland by rail. When I heard about a new back-to-the-80s service, I booked a retro seat …

Trainspotters jostled on platform 2 as sunshine lit up the polished olive-green carriages of the 11:07 from Warszawa Główna (Warsaw main station) to Poznań. As I was readying to board, a man, sporting bow tie and braces, zipped past me, making it to the steps first. Excitement was palpable. But then this was no ordinary train, but rather an event. A throwback in time.

The Polish parliament had declared 2026 as the Year of Polish Railways, and there is a double jubilee under way: the 25th anniversary of the long-distance operator PKP Intercity and the centenary of Polish state railways. To celebrate, a series of retro rail journeys called Nieśpieszny (“Unhurried”) has been launched.

Piòle are the Italian city’s working-class neighbourhood taverns. Of the few that survive, many have gone upmarket – but I was looking for the real deal and affordable home cooking

Turin is one of Italy’s most serious food cities, shaped by the culinary legacy of the House of Savoy and, more recently, the slow food movement – a reputation reflected in its historic cafes and restaurants, where meals can feel refined. But that’s only part of the picture. As a local, I’m drawn to something far less formal: the piòla.

Piòle were never quite restaurants. They were places for a glass of barbera (poured at the counter from a cylindrical, quarter-litre carafe, the tubo) in rooms worn smooth by decades of use. Regulars played cards, argued about football or politics, and lingered without ceremony. Food, if it appeared, was simple and to the point: anchovies in green sauce, hard-boiled eggs, cold cuts, perhaps a plate of agnolotti (stuffed pasta).

Around 5,000 hopefuls logged on for the chance to sleep over in the furniture store’s Sydney pop up. Caitlin Cassidy scored a coveted stay, but could she keep her sanity?

If you came of age in the early 2000s, you have probably seen 500 Days of Summer, an indie romcom that romanticised Ikea showrooms as the perfect place for a date.

It was thanks to this film that I jumped at the chance to sleep over in what is effectively an Ikea showroom. The caveat being, I would do so alone and, instead of kookily standing in a waterless shower and pretending to cook in a fake kitchen, the taps would work.

GLP-1 drugs such as Mounjaro are helping millions of people rapidly lose weight. But the changes happening inside the body go far beyond the number on the scale.

Neelam Tailor investigates the growing debate around the possible risks of rapid weight loss from jabs and yo-yo dieting, which include loss of lean mass and consequences in older age. Experts say the debate isn’t just about weight-loss drugs, but about how modern dieting culture has shaped our bodies for decades

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

Pop the champagne, fire the glitter cannons, let off some sky lanterns and then get castigated for the fire hazard and risk to wildlife they cause. Lo and behold it is the 250th Guardian Thursday news quiz, and a special bumper edition at that. Twenty-two questions await you on topical news, general knowledge, pop culture, and the re-appearance of every regular round we’ve previously had, and could remember, and which didn’t cause us legal problems. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 250

Tebay, Cumbria: Some of my ancestors were fell pony hauliers and our farmhouse used to be a coaching inn. Might they have called in for a drink?

There is always some waiting around at lambing and calving time, so I like to have a project ongoing. Some years I have written books; this year I’m researching my family tree, in particular whether any of my ancestors may have visited Low Borrowdale farm when it was a coaching inn in the 18th century. I knew they had been involved in fell pony haulage around the north of England, but could they have called in here for a drink?

I’m mainly investigating the Binks family – my maiden name. Almost within living memory, there is my grandad’s grandad, George Binks, a fell pony haulier who lived in Great Asby from 1862 to 1934. My grandad told me which house he lived in, eight miles from our farm. Two more generations of George Binkses take us to 1785, when one was born in Middleton-in-Teesdale and died in 1840 at Kirkby Stephen, 11 miles away.

In 2025, the tech journalist invited artificial intelligence to do nearly everything for her, including editing the book she was writing about the experiment. Some of it was useful, some not – but it was her time with a chatbot companion that really shook her

For a year, Joanna Stern decided to turn herself into a “lab rat” – the object of her own experiment. Throughout 2025, she invited artificial intelligence into “every corner” of her life. She let AI answer her texts, decide what she ate and cooked, mow her lawn, fold her washing, drive her places, parse her mammograms and even, in the darkness of a burner phone, be her lover. The resulting book, I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything, asks all the big questions, including: what happens when AI can do everything humans can do? And what comes after that?

If anyone can produce answers, surely it’s Stern. Last February, she ended a 12-year stint as a personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal. During her tenure, she won an Emmy for her short documentary E-Ternal: A Tech Quest to “Live” Forever, which explored digital legacies, and built a reputation for product reviews that were outlandishly creative and fiendishly stringent. She once took an Apple watch jetskiing on the Hudson river to evaluate its connectivity.

Team is working to digitise archive of correspondence donated by public, charting relationships, social history and evolution of language

After four decades together, Tatiana and Steffen Missbach still write each other love letters. “A good love letter is specific – not only declaring your feelings but also, you know, ‘good luck at music practice, I’ll be thinking of you’,” said Tatiana, 66, a retired personnel manager. “If he’s leaving early on a work trip, I like waking up and finding one at the breakfast table waiting for me.”

Steffen, 68, a car appraiser, said it was his way of giving Tatiana “something to hold in her hands for the time that I’m not there, when I can’t be here to speak the words”.

He stood down as boss of the NT – and threw himself into kayaking, writing and DIY. The veteran director talks about his new start aged 60, mourning his mother – and directing Death of a Salesman in Turkish

There were several big endings for Rufus Norris in 2025, all crammed into the same few seismic months. Firstly, the close of his tenure as director of the National Theatre after a decade at the helm. That planned ending collided with the loss of his mother, who died three weeks before he left the NT. On top of that, a significant birthday concluding his 50s.

So what did Norris do after turning 60, on the other side of the Big Job, alongside the grief of losing a parent? DIY, plenty of kayaking and a house move, it turns out: “It felt important to have a complete break,” he says. “I’m a bit of a workaholic, but I’m also a bird of simple brain so I can as easily lose myself in how to build a shed or do up a place.”

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

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

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

How has the search for work been for you? How many job applications have you made?

The number of young people not in work or education in Britain could rise to 1.25 million by the early 2030s without urgent government action, a landmark report has warned.

Alan Milburn, the leader of the review into why so many young people are economically inactive, said the UK risked opening up a “generational fault line” between young and old without urgent steps to overhaul schools, the health service, the welfare system and the jobs market.

We would like to hear from recent graduates and current students aged 18 or over about their views on studying for a degree

According to the latest British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey, the proportion of people who believe a university degree is not worth the time and money has jumped from 14% in 2005 to 34% in 2025.

The survey found that younger graduates, with experience of the fee system, are more disillusioned than those who did not pay fees.

We would like to hear your stories of nightmare holidays that wouldn’t be out of place on screen

With the release of Two Weeks in August, along with new series of Four Seasons and White Lotus, it seems we can’t get enough TV about holidays from hell.

With this in mind, we would like to hear your own stories of holiday mishaps. Do you have a nightmare holiday story that could have inspired a TV show? Tell us all about it below.

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