Conquering of Beaufort Castle for first time in 26 years brings back memories of occupation of south

• Middle East crisis – live updates

When Hussain Alawieh used to take tourists to Beaufort Castle, they would marvel at the view. The ancient hilltop fort, captured nearly 1,000 years earlier by Crusaders, still offered the same sweeping panoramic views of south Lebanon and the Litani River that empires fought over for a millennia.

On Sunday, the view from the castle was obscured by white phosphorus smoke, the toxic incendiary munition providing a smoke screen for advancing Israeli soldiers. Out of the fog rose an Israeli flag, and the castle, for the first time in 26 years, was once again conquered.

Casting shifts to EU talent as paperwork delays and visa limits make hiring British crews less viable

From blacklists for UK passport holders to being asked to work illegally while on holiday, the plethora of extra costs and red tape thrown up post-Brexit are restricting opportunities for British actors seeking work in the EU.

Mainland Europe has always been a springboard for those in the creative industries, from gaining crucial first credits on a TV, film or theatre production to building a marketable resume and paying the bills while attempting to make it big in the UK or US.

The Prince of Darkness appears in his element bad-mouthing colleagues and allies behind their back

Peter Mandelson *** Red Dispatch Box *** Please contact *** and ask her to talk to *** about ***. It is ridiculous that *** cannot do *** in time for the ***. In the meantime, please also get *** to vote for me as Oxford Chancellor. It’s the least I deserve. My bank account details are ***. Feel free to send to ***. Probably best to discreetly delete all correspondence on these matters. This message will self-destruct in *** seconds.

Thousands of documents released. Many of them rendered almost meaningless with redactions. Almost poetic the level of chaos that has always followed Mandy wherever he goes. The man who believed he was entitled to get away with almost anything.

It’s natural to focus on breakthroughs, but there are many challenges in Britain and around the world. There is no magic bullet, but there’s room for optimism

Cancer causes nearly one in six deaths worldwide every year, some 10 million all told. That is a stunning number, but it also masks the reality that some cancers are more deadly than others. We have become remarkably good at detecting and treating melanoma and prostate cancer, for example, and today five-year survival rates for those cancers are well over 90% in most rich countries. Others, such as pancreatic cancer, are more difficult. In the UK, just over one in 20 people with pancreatic cancer are still alive five years after diagnosis.

That is why a new drug for pancreatic cancer, called daraxonrasib and announced at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (Asco) annual meeting in Chicago at the weekend, has been met with such jubilation. The drug – taken as a pill once a day – doubled the survival time of those enrolled in a 500-person trial, with fewer side effects compared to traditional chemotherapy. The drug works by shutting down a protein, Kras, that causes cancer cells to grow and divide. One longtime cancer researcher reported that she cried reading the results. With so few effective treatments for this cancer available, the drug is likely to be a real game-changer.

For the star’s 100th anniversary, Lawrence Schiller relives the nude photoshoot that showed, far from being a ‘messy’ blond bombshell, Monroe was a shrewd controller of her image

A few days after doing a nude swimming pool shoot on the set of the 1962 comedy Something’s Got to Give, Marilyn Monroe jumped into her raven black T-Bird and drove her photographer, Lawrence Schiller, to Schwab’s Pharmacy on Sunset Boulevard. Schiller had brought his negatives, now ready to be turned into prints. And in her purse Monroe had brought her scissors, which she now reached for – and, under the glow of the now legendary Hollywood hangout’s streetlights, began to cut the colour film into pieces.

“Ziiiiiip – the ones she didn’t like,” says Schiller, animating the sound. “Ziiiiiip.” She destroyed them? “Oh yeah, but that came with the territory,” laughs the now 89-year-old, the last living photographer of Monroe, as he recalls his 25-year-old self bending down to pick up the debris and thinking: “Well, I would’ve killed that one, too.” In fact, he speaks of her editing with nothing but admiration: “There wasn’t a picture she destroyed that I would’ve published.”

The acronym ‘FOH’ for ‘Fuck off home’ was used beside the names of expectant mothers. Senior midwives advised others not to be ‘too kind’. But as this and other shocking evidence is brought to light, sexism is only one part of the story

It’s said to be mother nature’s stunning con trick, the single most helpful move in the propagation of the species – that childbirth might be the worst thing ever to happen to anyone, but once you are through it, you instantly forget how painful it was. And that is true, up to a point, although you can often remember enough of the surrounding detail – swearing at strangers, wishing you were dead – that you can infer the rest.

What you don’t forget, however, is what the midwives were like, and nor, even in moments of extremis, do you fail to notice if they’re treating you scornfully. Panorama tonight is about the maternity unit run by Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust, the subject of the largest maternity inquiry in NHS history, spanning 13 years from 2012, and covering 2,500 families. The details are hair-raising: “FOH” written next to women’s names on a whiteboard, which stood for “fuck off home”; accounts of senior midwives advising others not to be “too kind”; gut-wrenching individual cases of women being warned off coming in to hospital for so long that, when one finally arrived, her baby was dead and her perineum and vaginal wall had collapsed. And every one of those women will have known, on some level, even if she was in no state to ask for her notes or read them, that someone wanted her to “fuck off”. You get a superpower in a life-and-death situation, though it’s unclear how helpful it is: you can tell pretty fast who’s on your side and who isn’t.

Documents also reveal internal Labour criticism of Keir Starmer in embarrassing detail

Peter Mandelson was receiving sensitive security briefings about the Foreign Office’s work, and was in discussions with the head of MI6, before he had completed the developed vetting process, newly released documents reveal.

Declassified emails show the ambassador designate and Richard Moore, the former chief of MI6 – a role known as “C” – had agreed to meet in early January 2025 before Mandelson went to Washington.

Documents were published to reveal what ministers knew about his links to Epstein, but instead exposed government rifts

• What is new in the latest release of Peter Mandelson documents?

Peter Mandelson wrote to David Lammy on 18 November 2024, making a simple promise to the foreign secretary: “If you were minded to appoint me [as ambassador to Washington],” he said, “I would make sure you never regret it.”

Since then, senior government figures, including Lammy and the prime minister, Keir Starmer, have had reason to look back at that appointment with almost nothing but regret.

Emails and WhatsApp messages reveal string of exchanges with ministers when he was president of Global Counsel

Peter Mandelson, as president of his then advisory firm Global Counsel, lobbied hard for ministers to attend his events and to meet his firm’s staff in the months after Labour’s general election win, newly released documents reveal.

Emails and WhatsApp exchanges show how active the Labour peer was after the election to work his contacts within government to the potential advantage of both his company and his then campaign to be chancellor of Oxford University.

The US president said Benjamin Netanyahu had promised not to send troops to Beirut, while Hezbollah had agreed that ‘all shooting will stop’

The exchange of strikes between the US and Iran reflects the fragility of the current ceasefire, which has seen repeated violations even as American and Iranian officials try to negotiate a deal to extend it.

Iran has maintained its chokehold on the strait of Hormuz, disrupting global energy supplies as a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded once passed through the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf. The US continues to enforce its own blockade on the strait, as it pressures Tehran to reach an agreement.

Party could struggle to push ratings as strategy increasingly focuses on views held by minority of voters, research finds

Reform UK is becoming increasingly reliant on socially conservative views for political support, and therefore could struggle to push its poll ratings much higher, a large-scale research project led by the leading psephologist John Curtice has found.

A study of Nigel Farage’s party carried out as part of the British Social Attitudes report found that while Reform supporters were disproportionately more likely to be unhappy with politicians and public services, recent recruits had seemingly more robust attitudes in areas such as diversity and welfare.

Net zero industry accounts for more than a million jobs and benefits whole country, according to CBI Economics

More than a million jobs, higher wages, nearly half a trillion pounds in investment in the pipeline – the UK’s green economy is powering ahead, according to research by the country’s leading business organisation.

The net zero economy, which is worth more than £100bn a year, benefits all of the UK, according to the CBI Economics analysis commissioned by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, despite critics who want to abolish the UK’s net zero targets.

Met says non-fatal stabbings took place after most of the crowds had dispersed on Sunday evening

Six people were stabbed after Arsenal’s Premier League victory parade in north London on Sunday, police have said.

The Metropolitan police said the stabbings took place in the evening after most of the crowds had dispersed. Twenty-four people were arrested.

About 20 students report anonymous late-night phone calls from men who ‘intimidated, demeaned and belittled’ them

The University of Manchester has launched an investigation after about 20 female medical students complained of receiving anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night from male callers who intimidated and sexually harassed them.

The calls have been going on for at least three years, according to Charlotte Buttercase, a final-year medical student and one of those targeted.

London mayor says Soho Society’s decision to challenge all new licensing applications is ‘bad’ for city

Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, has suggested he will overrule a residents’ society that has vowed to challenge all new applications for pubs and restaurants in Soho.

The Guardian revealed last week that the Soho Society, a residents’ group established in 1972 aimed at “preserving the character of Soho”, voted for a new licensing mandate, meaning it will challenge all new applications for bars and restaurants in the area, including renewals of existing licences.

About half of drivers will take action on Tuesday as RMT blames TfL’s ‘refusal to engage meaningfully’

The strike on the London Underground will go ahead on Tuesday after a day of talks failed to avert industrial action.

About half of London’s tube drivers will take action, bringing widespread transport disruption to the capital. A second strike is planned for Thursday.

Government should not be involved in providing redress to victims of Horizon IT scandal, campaigner tells MPs

Sir Alan Bates has said that the schemes set up to compensate post office operators over the Horizon IT scandal have been an “utter disaster” and that the government should not be involved in running them.

Bates, who led a two-decade fight for justice for thousands of post office operators falsely accused and wrongfully convicted for theft and false accounting, has previously accused the government of presiding over a “quasi-kangaroo court” system for compensation.

Experimental tablet produces encouraging results in patients with world’s most common forms of disease

• ‘I was getting ready to say goodbye’: patient’s hope after smart drug success

A smart drug that stops cancer cells “hiding” from treatment can shrink tumours by at least 30% in six of the world’s most common forms of the disease, early trial results show.

While immunotherapy treatments have improved survival rates for many patients, their effectiveness can stall or fail when tumour cells hide and then spread.

Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker were supposed to address events at SXSW London before their ETAs were cancelled

• Free speech activists condemn UK entry ban for Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur

Cenk Uygur, the host of the Young Turks online political talkshow, and Hasan Piker, who runs his own hours-long stream each day, have been banned from entering the UK by the British home secretary, Shabana Mahmood. They were supposed to address events at SXSW London, a creatives-led festival. Uygur was also planning to speak at the Oxford Union on Friday.

The move has sparked a political row and concerns that Keir Starmer’s government is censoring public debate.

As Israel threatens to bomb Beirut and the US and Iran trade missile strikes, Donald Trump insists it will ‘all work out well in the end’ and urges his critics to ‘sit back and relax’. So are we any closer to a deal? Lucy Hough speaks to diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour.

Letting nature take over at a former dairy farm has resulted in a surge of species in just three years

Three years of rewilding on a former dairy farm in east Somerset have led to the number of recorded bird species soaring from 67 to 94, butterfly species rising from 11 to 24 and small mammals growing in number.

Heal Somerset, the first site acquired by the charity Heal Rewilding, has produced a state of nature report mirroring a national survey by environmental charities that has tracked the decline in nature.

The BBC presenter has a horrific illness which leaves her and so many other women in a lifelong hell with no cure in sight. Barnett is at the absolute end of her tether … can she change millions of lives?

Endometriosis is like someone taking a drill to your organs. The pain resembles a tsunami in every one of your cells – or the movement of tectonic plates inside your body. Years spent contending with the condition is “not life”. Endometriosis may not literally kill you, but suffering from it can feel like a living death.

In Emma Barnett: Fighting Endometriosis, the Today presenter provides all these unflinching insights and many more into the condition, which involves cells resembling those that line the uterus growing elsewhere in the body. There is no cure, the only available treatment is hormones (predominantly the contraceptive pill), to mask symptoms, or surgery – including a total hysterectomy, although that won’t necessarily provide relief on a permanent basis. Endometriosis is extremely painful and little understood. It’s also incredibly common: one in 10 women of reproductive age in the UK have it.

Adult beginners are charming when the stakes are low. Learning the piano at 50 is cute – but nobody ever needed to be airlifted out of a piano recital

I was 43, unfit and burnt out at the end of 2025, when my phone pinged from an old friend:

I know this is unlikely but I’m thinking of doing this four-day hike and there are two places available. You stay in huts so there is less gear to carry. Would you like to come?

Sam Levinson’s HBO show went to garish new extremes to show the hollowness of the American Dream

This article contains spoilers

Ahead of the series finale, I didn’t think there was much more that Euphoria could do to shock me. Since season three of the HBO drama picked up its story five years after the group of teens graduated high school, Sam Levinson’s brainchild has made jaw-dropping scenes its raison d’etre. From Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) cosplaying as a dog and making mega bucks on OnlyFans, to Nate (Jacob Elordi) getting his fingers and toes chopped off before being buried alive, and Jules (Hunter Schafer) being mummified in plastic by her sugar daddy, the last eight episodes have demanded our attention in a media landscape where that very thing is valued above all else.

But as I watched the final episode, it once again delivered something unexpected. The 88-minute finale felt like a standalone feature film, with no shortage of biblical references. It even ended with the final words: “May God bless us all.” The sudden pivot into a nostalgic, star-spangled morality is indicative of a confused show that, right up until the last moment, hasn’t been sure what it’s trying to tell us. As a lesson in ethics, it falls flat. Yet looking more deeply, there is something more complicated going on.

More than 1,000 pages of emails and WhatsApp messages have been released relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment as the UK’s ambassador to the US. The documents show Mandelson’s criticism of Keir Starmer, and his desperation to become the Oxford University chancellor – but the controversial vetting file from when he was appointed ambassador is missing. Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey explain what these files show us

My husband, Craig, didn’t want to spend his last days in the hospital. His fight with bladder cancer then became a battle to get him hospice care at home

“This isn’t where I want to die,” my husband, Craig, whispered to me.

We were in a shared room on the top floor of NYU Langone hospital in Manhattan, the window obscured by a long privacy curtain. I barely had space to stand next to his hospital bed under the bright fluorescent lights, our thoughts interrupted by the constant beeping of machines.

‘Brash, disingenuous, lethal’: that’s how the 67-year-old actor describes his younger self. He lied to his partners, disrespected his audiences, betrayed his friends. Has this indiscreet, unreliable heartbreaker finally grown up and settled down?

Rupert Everett is struggling with the heatwave. It reminds him of the summer of 1976, when he was 17, basking in the sun, serene as a sloth, his future spread out ahead of him. It’s so different now. “When you were young, hot weather was nice. But when you’re chubby like me now, it’s not so nice,” he says.

“You’re not chubby,” says his publicist, with reassuring brio.

The US president’s war of choice has accomplished nothing and cost the world greatly

Donald Trump claims to have mastered the Art of the Deal, but he has just given us a master class in negotiating incompetence. I would love to see an Iranian government that no longer represses its people, menaces its neighbors, or can build a nuclear weapon. Trump has set back all of these efforts. His cabinet of sycophants offered little resistance as he naively bombed first and faced reality later.

Trump is reviewing and tinkering with a proposed memorandum of understanding (MOU) drafted by American and Iranian diplomats with the aid of Pakistan and Qatar. It would continue the current ceasefire for 60 days while a more permanent peace accord is negotiated. The precise contours of this preliminary agreement are not known, but its gist seems clear – and is a profound embarrassment for Trump. His unprovoked war of choice has accomplished all of nothing. A new approach is urgently needed.

For ease and speed, we are degrading our ability to connect and to organise our societies. We must assert our trust in humans over machines

Here is a nightmare scenario for you. You are writing a book about how AI reshapes reality. You start using it as a research partner, confident that you are applying the right hygiene by not letting it actually write a sentence of the book. You think you’ll be careful, you will double check everything. And then your book comes out and it appears that it includes more than a half dozen misattributed or fake quotes. Steven Rosenbaum, the unfortunate writer, acknowledged that sometimes the output of AI was “staggeringly wrong”, but still, errors crept in.

There are others. A Commonwealth prize-winning short story became engulfed in claims that it carried the hallmarks of AI. And every time I see a story of a journalist caught out by fake AI quotes during research, I cross myself – there but for the grace of God go I. But to make sure it is not left up to grace alone, I never touch the thing. When AI results pop up as the default in a search engine, I reject them, rebuke them, as if they contained a dark sorcery that would through mere engagement creep into my synapses and take control.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

Physical and mental health aren’t easily separated, especially at our age. And the president is showing many concerning signs

I do not wish Trump ill. While he hasn’t shown a shred of compassion for anyone other than himself, this doesn’t justify any of us lacking compassion for him.

It’s also in the interest of the US and the world that he be physically and mentally able to discharge the duties of his office.

Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. … I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn’t! … Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church!

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK

Castlelake’s move raises questions over valuation and ownership rules as well as whether Stelios Haji-Ioannou could throw a spanner in the works

• EasyJet says US takeover bid would be ‘highly opportunistic’

A share price gain of only 10% on a possible takeover approach is a meek reaction. If the stock market truly believed that Castlelake, a US investment fund, stood a decent chance of buying easyJet, you would expect the target’s stock to fly significantly higher. Scepticism is the right stance until at least three factors become clearer.

First, would the two sides even be vaguely in the same landing zone on valuation? EasyJet’s description of Castlelake’s timing as “highly opportunistic” was boilerplate rhetoric (all bids are opportunistic to a degree) but in this case it is clearly possible that all European airlines’ prospects could be brighter within a couple of months.

Underfunding, systemic failure and awful Tory policies bequeathed us a public and private sector housing crisis. As a priority, we will now fix that

Growing up, I remember how important our home was to my family. I know I get raised eyebrows now when I mention that pebble-dashed semi, but that doesn’t negate the point. Our house was not just a roof over our heads – it was our home. A place of security and a focal point for our family. A place to build out from and hope for a better future.

So it is simply shocking that under the long years of Tory rule, so many people across our country were left without a stable place to call their own. Children were left languishing in temporary accommodation, too often without proper places to play, eat and sleep. Families were left in limbo on waiting lists for years. Young care leavers were denied a permanent place to live. And, incredibly, domestic abuse survivors found themselves forced out of their homes because landlords lacked the powers to make their abuser the one who must leave.

Keir Starmer is the UK prime minister

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A data dump exposes Labour’s courtier politics. But it still does not explain why the peer was cleared to be US ambassador

The Epstein files fatally damaged Peter Mandelson. Gone was his reputation as Westminster’s great survivor: the politician who could weather any scandal and return to the centre of power. Allegations that he leaked market-sensitive information to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after the financial crash led to a criminal investigation. The peer was sacked as Britain’s US ambassador. He denies any wrongdoing.

Yet the “humble address” files also damage the government. The hundreds of emails, notes and social media conversations, released on Monday, mostly show an unsurprising version of Lord Mandelson – wheedling, criticising and positioning himself as the man who knows the court. Parliament asked to see why he was allowed into one of the most sensitive jobs in the British state. The government has shown us what he said once he got there. That is not the same thing.

England and Scotland will both compete in a men’s World Cup this month for the first time this century. For both nations there are reasons to believe

The agonising climax to Saturday’s men’s Champions League final in Budapest will haunt the imaginations of Arsenal supporters for years to come. Penalty shootouts – a sporting version of Russian roulette – are a brutal way to lose a football match, with hope turning to despair in the time that it takes to fire a ball over a crossbar. The England men’s team, of course, used to know this only too well, famously leading Gareth Southgate to use a psychologist to address players’ nerves.

A triumphant Sunday parade allowed the Premier League champions to reflect on what they did achieve, rather than what they didn’t. There was further consolation in the presence of the Arsenal women’s team bus, as the massed hordes acclaimed their achievement in winning the inaugural Fifa Women’s Champions Cup and reaching the Uefa Champions League semi-final. They remain the only English women’s team to have won the latter.

Comments such as ‘their lives are ruined’ or ‘they’ll never heal’ aren’t necessarily helpful, says one reader

I write about the recent coverage of the Fordingbridge case (Court of appeal to review rape sentences of three teenage boys, 26 May). I experienced a remarkably similar crime over 20 years ago: same number and age of perpetrators, same incident, same court outcome. The differences were that I was younger, and that, mercifully, being before the days of social media, it wasn’t filmed (though word of mouth in the community resulted in similar name-calling). There also wasn’t public outcry at the outcome; it’s nice to see progress, if too slow, in our understanding of the impact of these crimes.

Still, I’m worried by some of the discourse for the girls in question and others who have experienced similar. There have been comments in print and social media which, in attempting to emphasise the severity of the crime, have said things like “their lives are ruined” or “they’ll never heal”.

Luke McCullough, the corporate affairs director at BBC Scotland, responds to an article reporting ‘deep unease’ about female presenters being axed

Your report on staff concerns about the number of female presenters on BBC Radio Scotland’s new schedule is mystifying (‘Deep unease’ at BBC Radio Scotland as majority of axed presenters are women, 28 May). When the new schedule starts, of the 25 daytime programmes across the week Monday to Friday, six will routinely be presented solely by men, and the other 19 will be routinely presented either solely by women, or jointly by women and men.

More than half of the programmes will be routinely presented solely by women. To somehow raise questions about female diversity in that presenting lineup is surely ignoring the actual evidence of the BBC schedule here in Scotland.

Yvonne Singh says the government needs to hold South East Water to account after elderly and vulnerable residents had to queue at water stations in the hottest week of the year

The story is a depressingly familiar one: from bank holiday Monday, thousands of homes in Kent had no water all last week (‘They’re a private company, run for profit!’: fury in Kent at South East Water’s outages, 28 May). This on the hottest week of the year so far. No water for drinking, flushing toilets, washing hands, bathing or cleaning, let alone sprinklers in the garden.

Vulnerable and elderly people and families were forced to queue in the searing heat for bottled water at water stations. Those on priority lists did not received promised deliveries and had to rely on the kindness of friends and families. In Whitstable, the first hot week of the summer promised profit. Instead, cafes, pubs, famed oyster bars and leisure centres were forced to close, resulting in thousands of pounds being lost from the local economy.

Time is a resource that reflects power, raising the question of who gets to decide how it is spent, says Dr Louise Lawson

Writing this letter has been a productivity gain for me as a full-time academic, parent and unpaid carer for my disabled partner. While Tania Roettger’s reflection on parenthood and productivity was refreshing and resonated, it risks reinforcing a narrow narrative about time, work and care, shaped by persistent gender inequalities in paid and unpaid labour (Whisper it: becoming a mum can make you a more productive writer, 28 May). For many women, productivity gains are less about drafting a paragraph for a novel and more about contending with chores that remain gendered.

Policy debates from the four-day week to Living Hours increasingly recognise problems of too much versus too little paid work. Yet framing time solely in terms of the number of hours worked misses a crucial issue. The rhythms, scheduling, predictability and control of working time are fundamental to wellbeing, especially given women’s disproportionate responsibility for unpaid labour, which continues to structure and constrain how time is experienced.

• World No 1 wins 7-5, 6-3 to reach quarter-finals

• ‘Really important they put match as night session’

Three years after the Roland Garros organisers last declared a women’s match worthy of being called the best of the day in Paris, the total collapse of one half of the men’s draw and a fourth round between two of the three most successful active women’s players not named Williams finally allowed women to return to centre stage.

Finally ushered into the marquee night match on Monday evening, Aryna Sabalenka and Naomi Osaka traded nuclear ground strokes in an intense, high-quality slugfest before Sabalenka showed why she remains the best player in the world by elevating her level in the most important moments and marching into the quarter-finals with a hard-fought 7-5, 6-3 win.

The origin of PSG’s largesse and the effect it’s had on their domestic game can’t be ignored, even as we appreciate the team’s stunning quality

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Since 1990, only one side had ever successfully defended the Champions League – Real Madrid, who won three in a row between 2016 and 2018. Paris Saint-Germain’s victory in the final on Saturday elevates them to a new tier of the pantheon. No bad side has ever won the European Cup or Champions League, but only great sides have ever retained it.

Arsenal pushed them much closer than Inter had in losing in the final the previous year, and there is always something slightly unsatisfying about a victory on penalties, but the quality of this PSG cannot be denied. They put six past Bayern in the semi-final – their superiority far greater than the one-goal aggregate margin would suggest. It was a similar story in the quarter-final, in which a 4-0 aggregate victory didn’t really reflect how much better they were than Liverpool. And while Chelsea may think they were slightly unlucky to lose the first leg of their last-16 tie away to PSG 5-2, the 3-0 result in the second leg was a devastating assertion of authority: three goals scored by an almost bored opponent apparently just as they felt like it.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

West Ham’s record Premier League goalscorer on the club’s decline, the benefits of therapy and always being asked about his car crash

“I never thought I needed therapy,” says Michail Antonio during a long conversation about the darker side of football, trauma and where it went wrong for West Ham. “I was always a happy person. But I had so many demons.”

This is not just about the moment that almost cost the 36-year-old his life. Antonio knows how lucky he was to emerge from the wreckage with only a broken leg after crashing his Ferrari while driving home from training in December 2024, but it is one part of the story and there are plenty more chapters to write.

• Addresses media for first time since losing friends in car accident

• Former world champion to return to ring in tune-up for Tyson Fury bout

Anthony Joshua has stressed that rather than coming to terms with his own grief after the car accident in which two of his closest friends died last December, his primary focus has been on helping their parents. As he prepares to resume his career next month, Joshua said: “I’m just there for their parents. Number one is being a good soldier for them. Gotta look after the boys’ parents.”

Asked if he had felt compelled to bury his pain since he was injured in the accident in Nigeria which took the lives of Sina Ghami and Latif Ayodele, Joshua said: “Everyone’s different. Me, I have to put my emotions to the side because I focus on the parents. My emotions can come at a later stage. I really look at the parents and I understand it must be most difficult for them. So I don’t make it about me, I make it about them. I make it about the mums and the dads of the two boys.”

Series against New Zealand will be a litmus test to see if the leadership team’s failed approach has really changed

There’s a quote from Legacy, James Kerr’s book about the All Blacks, that I have always liked: “Our values decide our character, our character decides our value.” As England’s Test side sets about its great post-Ashes reset, I think it is applicable.

Culture is a work in progress and always will be, and the positive that has emerged from their winter in Australia – when, on and off the field, their culture was found wanting – is that they now have an opportunity and an appetite to reset it.

Sebastián Beccacece has established a miserly defence and Moisés Caicedo’s ability in midfield could help team take the next step

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.

• Spain star’s Manchester City contract expires next year

• France fear William Saliba could miss entire World Cup

The Manchester City midfielder Rodri has said he will wait until after the World Cup to address his future, amid reports linking him with a move to Real Madrid.

The Ballon d’Or-winning midfielder is out of contract at the Etihad Stadium in 2027, and has indicated he would like to return to play in his native Spain at some stage in his career. Rodri joined City from Atlético Madrid in 2019.

• ‘The heat is a challenge but we are prepared already’

• Head coach believes team can go far at tournament

Heat and humidity will be obstacles to overcome but England have full belief in their ability and can go far at the World Cup, Thomas Tuchel has said. The head coach has received help from Team GB, drawing on their Olympic experiences, and other specialists to find solutions for the weather conditions.

Some of Tuchel’s 26-player squad flew from Birmingham to Miami on Monday for a 10-day hot-weather acclimatisation camp. Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, Noni Madueke and Eberechi Eze have been given more time to recover after Saturday’s Champions League final and Crystal Palace’s Dean Henderson, who played the Conference League final last week, is also expected to be a later arrival.

All you need to know about the 16 host stadiums in the US, Mexico and Canada

The 2026 World Cup is the largest tournament ever. A total of 16 venues will play host to this summer’s big games, and each has a story to tell about the past, present and future of sports in its city. Stadium names may look unfamiliar, as we are using the Fifa-approved names instead of the sponsored names that run afoul of the governing body’s clean venue rules.

Australia v Turkey, 13 June

Canada v Qatar, 18 June

New Zealand v Egypt, 21 June

Switzerland v Canada, 24 June

New Zealand v Belgium, 26 June

Round of 32, 2 July (1B v 3EFGIJ)

Round of 16, 7 July (W85 v W87)

• Club slashed team budget despite near-promotion

• Head coach quit after decision players called ‘cold’

Plymouth Argyle have said they “did not take lightly” their decision to significantly reduce their women’s team’s budget and tell the squad via email that their contracts were not being renewed.

The Guardian reported on Sunday evening that the vast majority of the squad had received a letter, via email, which began abruptly with: “Hi all. Following our end-of-season review and planning for 2026-27, we wanted to let you know that we won’t be renewing contracts for the players included in this message.”

Fans and professionals alike are desperate for positivity after last year’s damp squib, but there is reason for hope

One of the major benefits of announcing a “five-year plan” is that it should buy you some time but Epsom’s ambitious scheme to revive the status and popularity of the Derby, which was unveiled in December, may be an exception. There were just 22,312 paying spectators at last year’s race, and the need for an upturn in attendance for the 247th running of the Classic on Saturday is immediate.

In part, this is because the Derby still retains a special place in the hearts and memories of many of the sport’s most committed fans, and its steady decline over the last couple of decades has been painfully obvious to all of us who still cherish the annual pilgrimage to Epsom in the first week of June. There is a collective need for signs of a revival.

• Left-back signs deal to 2029 with option for further year

• Ireland international grew up as a Chelsea fan

Chelsea have announced the signing of the left-back Katie McCabe, whose Arsenal contract expires on 1 July. The 30-year-old Republic of Ireland captain last month announced her Arsenal exit after 11 years and has signed a three-year deal with their London rivals, with the option for an additional 12 months.

McCabe was recently named in the Women’s Super League team of the season and in February added the Fifa Champions Cup to her collection of trophies at Arsenal, having also won the Champions League, FA Cup, WSL and three League Cup titles. She made 305 appearances and scored 36 goals for the club.

• 75-year-old says he has ‘top doctor’ working on his case

• Newcastle send ‘heartfelt support and warmest wishes’

The former England and Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan has revealed he has stage four cancer. His family had said in January the former England, Liverpool and Newcastle player had been diagnosed with cancer and the 75-year-old provided an update on his health during a weekend appearance at the Tyne Theatre and Opera House.

“They said we have a top doctor with this new way of fighting what you have got, which is stage four cancer,” Keegan said, in quotes reported by the Daily Mail. “He was a Liverpool supporter so I went to meet him. I knew I wouldn’t be walking alone, if you know what I mean.”

Teachers associated with CNTE union were marching toward Zócalo for salary raises and reversal of pension laws

Riot police fired teargas at teachers who were marching toward Mexico City’s historic Zócalo plaza, just days before the square is expected to host the 2026 World Cup “Fan Fest”. The incident is the second time police have clashed with teachers in the past week, and more conflict is likely as Mexico City prepares to hold the opening game of the Fifa World Cup on 11 June.

“This event will have to be suspended,” Filiberto Frausto, a union leader, told AFP, which witnessed police firing teargas on 1 June. “A cause like ours should be far above – it’s far more important than a little bit of distraction and fun.”

Nicholas Cullinan says cultural institutions ‘caught between opposing political pressures’ after row over event

The director of the British Museum has said that cultural institutions are “caught between opposing political pressures”, after a row over the museum’s decision to postpone a Jewish culture month lecture over fears it would be disrupted by protesters.

Nicholas Cullinan defended the decision, saying “freedom of expression does not require institutions to provide a platform for disruption”, in a lengthy statement shared on the British Museum website.

Split decision deals blow to Trump administration’s anti-diversity agenda, calling the ban ‘arbitrary, and based on animus’

Transgender troops can remain in the US military, but the armed services can continue to block their enlistment, an appeals court ruled on Monday in a split decision with potentially significant consequences for the Trump administration’s anti-diversity agenda.

The divided, majority opinion by a three-judge panel of the US court of appeals for Washington DC is expected to be challenged by the government. And the case is ultimately likely to reach the US supreme court.

Late physicist turned issue of when to stop searching for a better place to eat into mathematical problem

When it comes to exploring a new city, it can be tricky to know when to stop searching for a different restaurant to try every night, or to visit the first place you love on repeat.

Now researchers have found that the late physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman devised a mathematical equation that can tackle the conundrum – at least when the range of options is known – and they believe the approach is similar to tactics people use intuitively.

Michael Grade dismisses impartiality concerns, saying rightwing channel faces same rules as BBC, Sky and ITN

Michael Grade, the recently departed chair of Britain’s media watchdog, has accused broadcasters of being “embarrassed” by GB News because it covers the “agenda of the majority”.

Grade, who has recently retaken the Conservative whip in the House of Lords after stepping down from Ofcom, said he was now able to give his real view on the rightwing broadcaster, which has faced repeated accusations of partial and misleading coverage.

Girl, 13, pulled from River Wharfe on Sunday and boy, 11, remains missing from River Don as hot spell comes to an end

A 13-year-old girl has died after getting into difficulty in a river as the water-related death toll reached at least 15 in the recent UK heatwave. Emergency services continue to search for a boy who went missing in a river two days ago.

The girl was pulled from the River Wharfe in Burnsall, near Skipton, North Yorkshire, on Sunday evening. She was airlifted to hospital where she was pronounced dead, North Yorkshire police said.

Seasonal wardens and netted fences are helping protect the rare ground-nesting birds that arrive each spring on the UK’s shores

On Ross Sands in Northumberland, a little tern has caught sight of a group of people and is sprinting across the beach. “It wants us to follow it,” says Andrew Craggs, senior manager at Lindisfarne national nature reserve. “It’s a diversionary thing – it’s got a scrape and it wants to take us away because it thinks we’re predators.”

Craggs is no predator, and he’s not after the scrape – a small pit the ground-nesting bird has dug into the sand to lay its eggs. He is a guardian of these little birds, as well as more than 3,500 hectares (8,600 acres) of sand dunes, saltmarsh and mudflats that make up this tranquil nature reserve perched on the tip of England’s north-east coast.

Study finds activity is not harmful or caused by stress of captivity – and is in fact more common in wild birds

An investigation into acts of self-pleasure among parrots and other birds has reached a climax, with the results providing welcome relief for vets and researchers, not to mention the birds themselves.

Bird keepers are often advised to discourage and even punish birds for masturbating, but the study found the activity was more common in the wild than in captivity, with researchers concluding it is part of a bird’s natural behaviour.

Powerful winds and rain expected in parts of Japan and Australia, while temperatures in Spain could hit 40C

A powerful tropical storm is forecast to track near Okinawa, Japan, on Monday before moving towards the south-east of the country. Typhoon Jangmi (also known as Typhoon No 6) has formed within the monsoonal gyre over the Philippine Sea.

A monsoonal gyre is a large, slow-rotating weather system that spawns typhoons through smaller vortices formed within it. This flow can intensify storms. Such typhoons are typically characterised by broad areas of low pressure and extensive wind fields, often without a distinct eye.

Exclusive: Mukund Krisha says he will fight allegations and is proud of his record at the staff association

The former head of the Police Federation of England and Wales who was arrested on suspicion of corruption has told the Guardian he is confident he will be “entirely exonerated” and is “proud” of his record at the organisation.

Mukund Krishna, who was the chief executive of the staff association, is facing claims of financial wrongdoing and had his contract terminated on Sunday.

Michaela Hall’s family bring claim against Devon and Cornwall police and Probation Service

The family of Michaela Hall, who was murdered by her partner five years ago, has launched a legal challenge over failings by the police and probation service that could have prevented her death.

Lee Kendall, a serial violent offender, is serving a 21-year minimum sentence for stabbing Hall through the eye at her home in Truro, Cornwall on 1 June 2021. An inquest and a police watchdog investigation into the handling of the murder revealed a string of errors by public agencies that contributed to her death.

Vickrum Digwa, 23, who fatally stabbed Henry Nowak, 18, to serve at least 20 years before being eligible for parole

A man with a “weapon obsession” has been jailed for life for murdering a university student with a “large Sikh dagger” that he claimed to be carrying for religious reasons.

Vickrum Digwa, 23, who stabbed 18-year-old Henry Nowak five times, will serve at least 20 years before being eligible for parole.

Children of those on care worker visas, who came legally before rule change, told to leave even if parents can stay

Children as young as five who are living legally in the UK are being told by the Home Office they must leave the country even if their parents have been given permission to remain.

The Guardian has seen five letters sent to children by the Home Office telling them they must leave the UK. A sixth letter has been sent to a woman who is six months pregnant and lives in the UK with her husband, telling her she must leave him and return to her country. The children have parents on care worker visas, which until March 2024 had allowed them to bring partners or children with them to the UK.

President Macron says ship subject to sanctions and posts video of operation that took place with UK support

A suspected Russian oil tanker has been detained in the Atlantic, France has announced, in the latest seizure aimed at combatting Moscow’s “shadow fleet” of vessels contravening international sanctions.

The Tagor was detained on Sunday morning in international waters more than 400 nautical miles (740km) west of Brittany with the help of the UK and other partners, said the French president, Emmanuel Macron.

Rampant Bull needed a makeover after wear and tear from tourists, but refurbishment ‘castrated’ it, critics say

The restoration of a floor mosaic in Milan called the Rampant Bull has been mocked after the works appear to have erased a crucial anatomical detail – its testicles.

The 19th-century mosaic in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping arcade needed a makeover because a small crater had formed in the tiny pink tiles featuring the bull’s testicles, due to the constant stream of tourists performing a heel-spinning gesture.

Financial stakes of AI race rise as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are slated to go public this year

Anthropic has filed confidentially for an initial public offering on the US stock market, the company announced on Monday. The AI firm makes the Claude chatbot, popular with software engineers and other business clients, and has seen a meteoric rise this year.

The company did not disclose the valuation it will target on the stock market, nor did it make public other terms of the offering. The startup announced on Thursday that it had raised $65bn in funding to value the company at $965bn post-money. Anthropic was valued at $380bn in February.

I Knew It, I Knew You is written with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff and marks a return to Swift’s country roots

After days of speculation online, Taylor Swift has announced the release of a new original song for Toy Story 5.

Titled I Knew It, I Knew You, the single will be released on 5 June, with CD singles available for preorder on Swift’s website. Three variants will be available, each containing different versions of the song: a piano version, an acoustic version and the original.

Ravi Naik says legal ruling that forced Sarah Wynn-Williams to make silent appearance at Hay festival also applies to him

The lawyer representing the Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams has said he too has been prevented from promoting her memoir under a legal ruling, after her silent appearance at the Hay festival.

Ravi Naik said the terms of an arbitration proceeding meant neither Wynn-Williams nor her “agents” could promote her bestselling book Careless People or say anything disparaging about the company.

Company asks US government to release army of sterile male mosquitoes to lower number of illness-spreading bugs

Google wants to “stop bad bugs with good bugs”, and it’s not talking about coding. The tech company has asked the US government for permission to release up to 32 million sterilized mosquitoes in California and Florida.

As part of its successful “Debug” program, Google is tapping into its tech expertise to raise an army of sterile male mosquitoes to lower the number of illness-spreading bugs. Mosquitoes – the world’s deadliest animal – kill more people than any other creature in the world every year by spreading lethal diseases such as dengue, West Nile virus, Zika, chikungunya and malaria.

International money transfer service’s shares tumble as it confirms discussions with prosecutor’s office

• Business live – latest updates

Wise, the UK-based international money transfer service and darling of the London fintech scene, has confirmed it is answering questions from Belgian prosecutors investigating money laundering, sending its shares tumbling.

In a statement to the stock market, Wise said it was “currently working with the Brussels prosecutor to respond to queries about our business, as we routinely do with regulators and law-enforcement authorities.

Firm says its RTX Spark PC chip for Microsoft Windows will let AI agents replace the mouse and keyboard

• Business live – latest updates

A new front has opened up in the battle for dominance in AI chips, as Nvidia said its latest development could replace the mouse and keyboard in how people use computers.

The $5tn (£3.7tn) US semiconductor company has launched a “superchip” that puts AI capabilities into laptops and desktop computers, a move that will pit it against Intel, Apple, Qualcomm and AMD.

Record-breaking box office for Backrooms and Obsession has opened the door for twentysomething YouTube creators as the industry rethinks what audiences want

At this time last year, the idea of a wide-release feature film-maker cutting their teeth on YouTube was, if not unheard of, certainly still a niche origin story. Siblings Michael and Danny Philippou had just released Bring Her Back, the follow-up to their surprise horror hit Talk to Me, to pretty-good reviews and OK box office; clearly they would continue to work, but the slightly diminished returns didn’t predict a YouTube explosion. Nor did the outright lousiness of Shelby Oaks, from longtime YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann, when it premiered in theaters later in 2025. Generous horror-festival buzz died down as more people actually laid eyes on the movie; Stuckmann was an obvious enthusiast, and some saw promise in his first effort, but a clumsy found-footage pastiche without much emotional sense didn’t seem like the next big thing, either.

But in 2026, something has shifted. In January, YouTuber Markiplier self-released his adaptation of the video game Iron Lung to theaters, and it outgrossed any number of big-studio titles. Then Curry Barker, whose comedy sketches have been a YouTube fixture, unveiled his feature debut Obsession. The film, made for under a million dollars, has become the box office phenomenon of the summer so far, managing a virtually unheard-of feat when its second and third weekends actually outgrossed its first. Obsession is sharing multiplex space with Backrooms, directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, who previously brought the spooky internet meme to life in a series of YouTube shorts. Despite being set in a series of purgatorial, sparsely furnished, fluorescent-lit “liminal spaces”, it was the top movie at the North American box office this weekend, poised to become the biggest-grossing movie from distributor A24 in a matter of days. Backrooms also opened to bigger numbers than any number of starrier or bigger-brand 2026 titles like Wuthering Heights, Scream 7, The Devil Wears Prada 2 or the last Pixar movie. That makes three YouTube-trained film-makers who have presided over some of this year’s biggest and/or most surprising hits. With them have come countless social media posts about how YouTube, not film school, provides the real training tomorrow’s directors need.

2026 marks the 90th anniversary of the Francoist uprising and the beginning of the Spanish civil war. An estimated 120,000-150,000 people disappeared during Franco’s repression, their remains scattered across 2,567 mass graves. The far right’s entry into regional governments, as in Extremadura, is dismantling the historical memory laws that allow for reparations for victims of the disappearances. The photojournalist Roberto Palomo researched the life of his great-grandfather, the recovery of his remains and the effects of traumatic memory on the descendants

They took everything from my great-grandfather Silvestre Indias Carvajal and left us with nothing but his story, which was buried at the bottom of a 30-metre-deep well in south-west Spain for 87 years.

Silvestre worked as a municipal clerk in his small home town of Feria in Extremadura. He was given the job in recognition for his service in the war in Morocco, a conflict to which he was dispatched by lottery.

Feria is a small town in the southwestern Spanish region of Extremadura, which sits atop a mountain range. It had barely 4,000 inhabitants in 1936 when it was occupied by Gen Franco’s rebel troops.

In HBO docuseries Bring Me the Beauties, a lesser-known, image-obsessed cult from the 80s is put under the spotlight

Documentary film-maker Chris Smith made the seminal 1999 film American Movie, about an indie director’s struggle to complete a horror film, which he hopes will then finance the completion of his dream project. More recently, he’s profiled well-known subjects in projects for Netflix about Jim Carrey and Andy Kaufman, the bands Devo and Wham!, and the disastrous Fyre festival, among others. His new HBO miniseries Bring Me the Beauties is similarly connected to popular culture, but through a story with far less immediately available background material: the rise and fall of Eternal Values, a cult started in the 80s by the eccentric Frederick von Mierers, consisting largely of models.

“What was odd about this story,” Smith said, “is that there was very little about it online.” He met Hoyt Richards, sometimes referred to as the first male supermodel and a former Eternal Values member, on another project, “and as we started talking, hours went by”, Smith said. “It was one of those situations where I just became more and more curious about his life.” Richards became the backbone of the series, sitting for many hours of interviews, but wasn’t sure if Smith and his collaborators would be able to coax anyone else into participation. As seen in the series, not everyone’s account of their experience with Von Mierers is the same; not everyone is even convinced they were involved with a cult in the first place.

The roots of AI in rightwing ideology is examined in Valerie Veatch’s enjoyable doc, including an array of colourful, often crazed, figures

Director Valerie Veatch made her name with documentaries such as Love Child (about an online gaming-addicted couple whose child died of malnutrition) and Me at the Zoo (about American vlogger Cara Cunningham), films that explore the intersection of real-world subcultures and internet communities. Her latest continues in this vein, although its self-set remit is a bit broader, more urgent and germane to everyone right now: the pursuit of artificial intelligence, its dark history in eugenics and highly debatable utility today (despite the stock-market bubble pushing the value of a half-dozen companies towards the stratosphere).

The thrust of the film is largely polemic, guiding the viewer towards AI-sceptical conclusions one persuasive soundbite at a time. Nevertheless, it also serves as a very useful, straightforward primer on AI history, touching on a dazzling array of colourful, often crazed figures, including Victorian British eugenicist Francis Galton, Silicon Valley founding father and overt racist William Shockley and current-day jillionaire jerk Elon Musk. Sadly, the film is not so up-to-date that it covers Musk and former friend-turned-foe Sam Altman’s recent courtroom brawl, but that doesn’t detract from the thrust of Veatch and her interviewees’ arguments.

The latest in our series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort films is a personal tribute to the inspirational British drama

For me, feeling good isn’t about escape, it’s about confrontation. Staring the thing you truly care about in the eye and giving in to it. It’s about empowerment, courage, optimism. I’m a sucker for coming-of-age films, the idea of striving to be the person you want to be despite the circumstances around you, and no film hits home for me like Billy Elliot.

The low-budget drama danced its way through cinema projectors and on to the screen in September 2000, a few weeks after my fourth birthday. The film, set in County Durham in 1984, focuses on Billy (played by Jamie Bell), the younger brother of Tony, who is part of the miners’ strike, alongside his father, Jackie, who is a widower. Billy is 11 and a reluctant boxer who finds himself drawn toward Sandra (Julie Walters) and her ballet classes, which are taking place in the boxing gym as their studio is being used to feed the striking miners. He knows these dreams are not for young men like him, and is petrified of how his older brother and father will respond to his newfound passion, but the chain-smoking Sandra sees a natural aptitude (and above all determination) in Billy and helps him to audition for the Royal Ballet School in London.

This film may be making a point about the classical vis a vis the contemporary, but its visual collages and dense poetic texts render it inert

The title of this lyrical but frustrating docu-essay about director Rita Azevedo Gomes’s travels in Greece cuts both ways. Is it expressing impatience with the classical ideals she hopes to discover there; or, borrowed from street graffiti, is it actually critiquing the modern society that has betrayed ancient standards of beauty and harmony and, in the words of Albert Camus cited here, “has fed its despair on ugliness and convulsions”?

Nostalgic aspirations and the sobering here-and-now vie for supremacy in the texts recited by Gomes and others over travelogue images from Athens and the Cyclades beyond. As if echoing heroic voyagers past, she adds a layer of fictionalisation to her exploits, reading a poem written by João Miguel Fernandes Jorge based on a journey there in 2007; it becomes the story of Irma, who romances a young man, Ion, on the island of Delos, birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. But the affair founders – and there are other reality-checks, such as the incongruous Chinese cargo ships that now traverse the 21st-century Aegean.

‘We didn’t have a washing machine, so I was in the launderette when our manager rang and said: “You’ve gone in at No 2”’

We were still a three-piece: Adam Devlin, my brother Scott and myself. We hadn’t met Eds Chesters yet, so we didn’t have a drummer. We were spending a lot of time writing songs, trying to hone this west coast, mid-60s, Crosby, Stills & Nash sound – even though it was the 90s and we were from Hounslow in London.

The Leeds group arrived in a frenzy of post-punk energy, picking at the scabs of society – then started questioning their instant success. They talk about dodging ‘the megaband treadmill’ to make their surreal new album

It’s certainly a novel way to announce your comeback. On the opening song of Yard Act’s new album, over a cacophony of doomy piano chords and crashing drums, singer James Smith announces: “I’ve got absolutely nothing – absolutely nothing new to say!” And he’s not finished there. Later in the same track, Empty Pledges, Smith whips himself up into unhinged preacher mode only to declare: “Do you feel like an impostor for every new level you ascend to too? Do you have to bluff as much as I do?”

Is it refreshingly honest to begin a record by saying you haven’t got a clue what you’re doing – or an act of ludicrous self-sabotage? “Well, I don’t know if anyone has anything new to say really,” says Smith with a grin when I meet him and bassist Ryan Needham in a London bar to discuss You’re Gonna Need a Little Music, the band’s forthcoming third LP. “We’re in this age where everything has to be a manifesto and a statement, but it’s mainly just a one-way conversation. Nobody wants to explore the grey areas any more.”

The judgey pair swap views on everything from pop culture to fashion choices and workplace strife. Plus, what toxic masculinity looks like around the world

The freshly announced Strictly Come Dancing hosts have been generating huge online chatter, but this podcast will ensure that (half of) the judging panel isn’t totally overshadowed. Judgemental sees Anton Du Beke and Craig Revel Horwood prove they have strong opinions on more than just an ex-soap star’s pasodoble by trading verdicts on everything from pop culture to sartorial dilemmas to listeners’ workplace dramas. Rachel Aroesti
Widely available, episodes weekly from Tuesday 9 June

The Radiohead guitarist once serenaded a girl with the Smiths and thinks George Michael was a genius. But what is his favourite football song?

The first single I bought
Ally’s Tartan Army, the 1978 Scottish World Cup song, because England hadn’t qualified. I loved that Scottish team – Alan Rough, Martin Buchan, Gordon McQueen, Kenny Dalglish – and the 10-year-old me got completely swept up in World Cup fever.

The first song I fell in love with
When I was 17, I fell in love with a girl called Mary, who was this huge Smiths fan. I bought Hatful of Hollow so I could serenade her with William, It Was Really Nothing. I don’t think she adored me quite as much as she adored the Smiths.

Set in the aftermath of the famine, the Hamnet author’s family saga folds in myth and folklore

‘His father was ever a man of few words,” begins Maggie O’Farrell’s 10th novel, a lengthy and ambitious story set in the aftermath of the Irish famine. Land opens in 1865 on a rainswept Irish peninsula and takes us to Dublin, Rome, Quebec and Kerala as it tells the story of two generations and gestures backwards and forwards at two more. The opening line came to O’Farrell on a train journey from Belfast to Dublin, and became the way in to a story based in part on that of her great-great-grandfather, who worked for the Ordnance Survey in Ireland not long after the great hunger. “What, I wondered, would it have been like to be revising the maps at that time,” she writes in a short introductory note; “to be recording and setting down the devastation that had occurred?”

In bitter weather, Tomás and his 10-year-old son Liam are mapping a peninsula – perhaps Dunmore Head in County Kerry, though O’Farrell doesn’t specify – using surveying poles and measuring chains. Tomás is in the pay of the English, who need him not only for his surveying ability and draughtsmanship, but for his language skills: they cannot easily find out from Irish speakers the names of places, or determine who owns what. It is Tomás’s job to untangle complex local legends and obscure toponyms to create a usable map, and he wants to ensure that the marks left by the famine – the empty houses and graveyards – are recorded on it, though the “redcoats” sign their names to his work. A famine survivor himself, scarred by unspeakable trauma, he tolerates this: as we later discover, assisting the surveyors and learning their trade was his route out of the workhouse. He might not have survived otherwise.

It’s not enough to wish for growth; economic success requires a sense of purpose, according to this academic

When Keir Starmer won a landslide Labour majority promising to pursue five governing “missions”, the high-profile leftwing economist Mariana Mazzucato was credited as an inspiration. Two years on, her bracing new book helps shed light on why Labour in power has struggled to project the sense of direction that “mission-led government”, as Mazzucato calls it, requires. Synthesising and extending her earlier work, here she proposes “a new economics of collective action around the common good”.

From this perspective, the economy is not a concatenation of rapacious independent forces, to be contained and offset by public policy, but a project – or rather a series of projects – with direction and purpose. Finance should be turned to the benefit of these collective goals instead of chasing short-term returns, she argues, and the creativity of corporations channelled to the public good.

Usually, individuals don’t want to be angry. In a group, however, negative emotions can rile the tribe. On the streets of London, Ed Coper felt it first hand

Back before 9/11 and the wars it precipitated, the big global focus for protest was globalisation itself. Things came to a head in Seattle in November 1999 when 50,000 protesters crashed the World Trade Organization’s party. The ensuing “Battle of Seattle”, as it came to be known, brought unprecedented attention to the growing disquiet over the inequalities of unregulated free market excesses. That’s how, a few months later, I found myself smack bang in the middle of the next big anti-neoliberal flashpoint, the “MayDay 2K” protests in London.

My experience of protest throughout high school had been pretty tame, more likely to take the form of defiance than demonstration. Socks down, shirt untucked – take that, sir! But then again times were good, even for a ratbag. I didn’t have many grievances. At least, none that could be solved by collective protest against powerful institutions that weren’t my parents.

From The Twits to The Gruffalo and an angry bear in search of his hat… Quentin Blake, Cressida Cowell, Axel Sheffler, Lauren Child and more reveal how they bring children’s books to life

Spread across a sprawling 17th-century industrial complex in London’s Clerkenwell, the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, which opens next month, is being billed as the largest institution of its kind anywhere in the world: a permanent national home for an art form that shapes everything from children’s books and political cartoons to animation, fashion, advertising and digital culture. Part museum, part gallery and part creative laboratory, the centre represents an extraordinary attempt to drag illustration out of the margins and finally place it at the heart of British cultural life.

Eventually the centre will become home to Blake’s own enormous archive: 40,000 drawings created by one of the UK’s best-known and most immediately recognisable artists. Now 93, Blake has spent three-quarters of a century bringing the words of some of our most beloved authors to life. Roald Dahl is the big one, of course – it’s impossible to think of Dahl without seeing Blake’s energetic, dip-pen pictures – but the list also includes Michael Rosen, John Yeoman, Sylvia Plath and Voltaire, as well as Blake’s own books. In other words, it’s difficult to find anyone with the same authority.

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.

Infinity Ward’s new game in the storied shooter genre embraces change with a potentially controversial real-world setting

There was a time when Call of Duty (CoD) regularly courted controversy. In 2009, Modern Warfare 2’s infamous “No Russian” mission saw players (optionally) shooting screaming civilians in a Moscow airport. In 2022’s entry, a drone strike mission that drew chilling parallels to the real-world US assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani two years earlier was featured. The series has not always been straightforwardly palatable.

In recent years, however, the world’s most popular shooter game has largely swapped grit for melodrama, following the misadventures of a troop of larger than life elite soldiers. For 2026’s Modern Warfare 4, however, Activision’s shooter series and its developer Infinity Ward are back in tabloid-baiting territory.

A gentle daily puzzle is quietly becoming the most joyful part of my morning routine​ and reminds me that not every win needs to be epic

There’s been some pretty big news in the last couple of weeks in video game world: the long-running space shooter Destiny 2 is winding up after almost nine years, PlayStation appears to have decided to stop releasing its flagship single-player games on PC, and Microsoft wants us to look like we’re shouting every time we type XBOX. But the biggest news for me is that I have found my new favourite word game. I am going to be so bold as to call it the new Wordle.

Ribbit is one of the varied suite of daily games on Puzzmo, an online puzzle platform. It launched at the beginning of January, but I only recently discovered it because I have been unwell, bored, and spending too much time on my phone. Puzzmo’s daily hits include a satisfying shape-arranging game, variations on chess that make me feel extremely stupid, and pleasing word games, which are my favourites. Circuits has you making connections between the beginnings and ends of phrases (eg “stone cold > cold medicine > medicine cabinet”) as fast as you can. Bongo gives you a bunch of letter tiles and asks you to arrange them for a maximum score.

Wigmore Hall, London
The Norwegian singer’s remarkable ability to inhabit a character, her warmth on stage and the control and tenderness she brought to the more intimate songs made this a very special recital

Wigmore Hall is turning 125, its director John Gilhooly was being granted honorary membership of the Royal Philharmonic Society, and everyone in the audience was shouted a free drink, but there was another cause for celebration on Sunday night. With Lise Davidsen, the world’s most in-demand opera singer, giving an all-Schubert recital it was a case of standing room only.

The Norwegian soprano has a Rolls-Royce instrument, more than capable of filling a house the size of the Metropolitan Opera, but up close she brought other qualities to the table. Her disarming warmth in seemingly off-the-cuff spoken introductions put the audience entirely at ease. Her ability to inhabit a character, as she does on stage, ensured songs such as Gretchen am Spinnrade and Die Junge Nonne were dramatic highlights. The former opened with a throbbing intensity and built to an eruption of volcanic proportions. Her fledgling nun seethed with a scared rapture that verged on the dangerously corporeal.

Early works show a less familiar side to the Scottish artist celebrated for her flower and cat paintings

She may be best known for accessible paintings of flowers and cats but a new exhibition of Elizabeth Blackadder’s work focuses instead on chilly landscapes and pared-back still life compositions.

The show in Hampshire, far from Blackadder’s Scottish home, presents a less familiar side of the artist, with most of the pieces exhibited for the first time.

Longborough Festival Opera, Moreton-in-Marsh
Sinéad O’Neill’s production is persuasive and Beth Taylor’s performace as Orlando is extraordinary in this tale of unrequited love, madness and magic

The woodland outside Longborough’s theatre, deep in the Cotswolds, sneaks inside and on to the stage for its season-opening production of Orlando. With a story that sometimes seems little more than an excuse for a series of showpiece arias, it’s not an obvious choice for the festival’s first Handel opera in a decade, but Sinéad O’Neill’s production has confidence in the work and is persuasive enough to lead us through.

The flimsy plot comes from Ariosto’s poem Orlando Furioso. High-ranking warrior Orlando loves princess Angelica, but she’s not interested; she loves Medoro. Low-ranking shepherdess Dorinda loves Medoro – but he loves Angelica, see above. The usual baroque-opera love triangles and noble self-sacrifice are absent, and what we have instead is the stuff of school lunch-queue gossip. Someone hears words that weren’t meant for them and jumps to conclusions; someone else has unwisely given away a special bracelet. Then Orlando cracks: he has an extended, musically arresting mad scene and then goes on a murderous rampage that’s cleared up by the presiding magician, Zoroastro, thus allowing for a happy ending.

Kings Place, London
The US singer Thomas Hampson paired with accordionist Ksenija Sidorova to perform highlights from Schubert’s Winterreise alongside Weill and Piazzolla. Alas much of this disappointing evening felt like a vanity project

Schubert’s Winterreise – the composer’s great psychodrama in song – ends devastatingly. Der Leiermann conjures a chilling vision of a hurdy-gurdy man. Alone beyond the village he plays his melancholy tune, luring the narrator to him – perhaps also to his death? The haunting song, with its anchoring drone, begs for colours the piano can only suggest. Presumably that was the seed for this unusual collaboration between veteran US baritone Thomas Hampson and Latvian accordionist Ksenija Sidorova.

You can see the logic that swaps piano for accordion and frames the Schubert with songs by Kurt Weill and a tango by Piazzolla: this is street music with its face washed and hair brushed, invited into the salon, the cabaret, the opera house.

At Pixelate, the music is as garish as the meme-referencing costumes. Is it internet ‘brainrot’ come to life – or a much-needed offline community?

‘It’s time to get … crazy!” DJ Compulsive Leia is yelling at us from the stage. Around me, clubbers in cat ears wave LED glow sticks and squeal in anticipation. Suddenly, an all too familiar sound: Crazy Frog’s much maligned version of Axel F, albeit remixed at an even giddier pitch and speed. “Ding, ding!”

Tonight, Vauxhall Arches in London is a hyperactive fever dream for Pixelate, a rave currently touring the UK and celebrating the 00s era of “internet cringe”. This edition is cat-themed, and a person in a giant bobble-headed Hello Kitty costume is dancing frantically on stage, soundtracked by high-octane versions of 00s memes, video games, cartoons and dancefloor hits.

Artist said Man in a Black Scarf was not his but evidence has emerged to show he painted it when a student in Suffolk

An early portrait by Lucian Freud, which the artist denied was his for years, is to be exhibited for the first time after experts proved it was painted by him.

Man in a Black Scarf was created in 1939 by the British artist when he was still a student at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Hadleigh, Suffolk. The sitter is thought to be John Jameson, a friend of Freud’s and scion of the whiskey family.

Actor tells theatregoers she hoped message was ‘very important’ after final bows of Inter Alia performance

Rosamund Pike has criticised an audience member for texting during the climax of her West End performance, saying she hoped the message was “very important”.

After a performance of Inter Alia on Saturday, Pike returned to the stage after the final bows. She told the audience at Wyndham’s theatre in London: “I just wanted to say for anyone going to the theatre, it’s a huge thing that we’re trying to give you. I am trying to tell you a story, and I’m feeling you, and I hope you’re feeling me too.”

She had a passion for butterflies and would seek out rare ones, yet this was used against her by violent, money-grabbing husband. Now this pioneering naturalist’s story has been translated to today’s manosphere

‘There’s nothing wrong with having a hobby, or even what you might call in this case a hyperfocus,” psychiatrist Dr Godrick tells Eleanor Glanville in a claustrophobic therapy room.

Outside the Phoenix theatre in Hampshire, a summer heatwave is delivering perfect conditions for butterflies. Inside, a rather darker story is being rehearsed in air-conditioned gloom. Butterfly, a new play, shines a light on one woman’s passion for butterflies and how it is turned against her when she became trapped in an abusive relationship.

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.

More and more people are looking for love when they’re abroad, and consider themselves better placed to do so. But there are potential pitfalls ...

Name: Wanderlove.

Age: Originally coined by the dating app Bumble in 2022 to describe a trend predicted for 2023.

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

Crisp 27in 5K Mac monitor is packed with features and some of the best HDR performance you can get for work or play

Apple’s new 27in Studio Display XDR is its best monitor yet, with an exceptionally bright and gorgeous 5K screen that wants to be the pro display for Mac-wielding content creators everywhere, with a price tag to match.

Built to be paired with the latest or high-end Macs, the Studio Display XDR costs from £2,599 (€3,099/$2,899/A$4,799), although it is a cool £3,000 if you want it with a stand. It sits above the standard £1,499 Studio Display and is £2,000 cheaper than the 2019 Apple Pro Display XDR it replaces.

Whether it’s giving florals a twist or wearing a rented number, here are our top tips for decoding the dress code

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The invitation thumps on to your doormat – or, as likely, into your inbox – and rather than feel excitement for the ensuing nuptials, you feel dread. What on earth to wear?

Weddings are full of sartorial pitfalls. If there’s no dress code, the limitless options can feel daunting; if there is, it can feel a different kind of daunting, but with a useful guide to prevent you from feeling overwhelmed.

As temperatures soar across the UK, chill your space – and avoid energy-guzzling aircon – with our pick of the best fans, from tower to desk to bladeless

• The best portable neck and handheld fans

Our world is getting hotter. Summer heatwaves are so frequent, they’re stretching the bounds of what we think of as summer. Hot-and-bothered home working and sweaty, sleepless nights are now alarmingly common.

Get a good fan and you can dodge the temptation of air conditioning. Aircon is incredibly effective, but it uses a lot of electricity … and burning fossil fuels is how we got into this mess in the first place. Save money and carbon by opting for a great fan instead.

Best quiet fan for the bedroom and best overall:
AirCraft Lume

Best fan for cooling:
Dreo TurboCool misting fan 765S

This yoghurty-crunchy sharing dish brings classic street food vibes with no need to fire up the barbecue

While souvlaki and other Greek meat grills are staples in our house, their appearance definitely increases in the warmer months. And if I’m going to the effort of lighting the barbecue, I will always cook more meat than I need, so I can enjoy it on subsequent days. As a result, I have a new appreciation for turning this much-loved street food into more of a sharing plate. You can, of course, barbecue the chicken, if that is how your day is going, but this is just as delicious made in a pan, quickly and simply, with all that charred flavour. Throw in a little sunshine and a glass of cold wine, and you’ll find yourself instantly transported to a waterside taverna, paper tablecloth and all.

Fresh, light, vibrant vegetable dishes that capture the changing of the season and Scandinavia’s long summer days

Summer is a beautiful season in Scandinavia, and the word that embodies it is “abundance”. The midsummer night doesn’t really get dark, the light is beautiful and it is only the sound of the blackbirds singing that indicates the day is ending. In stark contrast to the dark winter months, summer is all about the light, so your temperament is different and you long for different things: to be outside, to eat lighter meals and to enjoy as many fresh vegetables as possible. These two recipes would make a perfect summer’s evening meal (beach house optional but recommended): cold cucumber soup followed by a fresh and tasty tart with raw tomatoes on top of a smooth cream and crusty pastry. Velbekomme!

These compulsively snacky salt-crusted spuds are a Canary Islands favourite – and an unusual but excellent way to cook our own early-summer crop

If you’ve ever visited the Canary Islands, you’ll be familiar with papas arrugadas – often translated, somewhat unappetisingly, as “wrinkly potatoes” – which pop up on every menu there. And not, generally, as a side dish, but as a standalone snack to be enjoyed with drinks. I do love a place that takes the spud seriously, and perhaps it’s not that much of a surprise, given that the first potatoes to reach Europe passed through the Canaries on their way from Peru, which, along with the similarity between the rocky soils of the Andes and the islands, probably accounts for the long history of cultivation.

Though many unusual early varieties are still grown for local sale, the Canaries imports both seed and fresh potatoes from the UK (king edward and arran banner have become quinegua and arambana). Once upon a time, ships would leave the islands laden with winter tomatoes for the British market, and return full of tubers. For this recipe, however, you’ll need new season potatoes with thin, delicate skins, and small enough to cook whole. Cooked in salty water until the salt crystals cling to them like frost, they’re served with a fiery dipping sauce that reflects the strong Portuguese and African influences on Canarian cuisine: an unusual but excellent way to celebrate our own early-summer crop.

The cuisine is booming in the UK, with more places than ever to try bibimbap, bulgogi or tteokbokki. Here’s what to eat – and where to find it

From sizzling bowls of comforting bibimbap to crispy, hot, sweet pancakes, Korean food is exploding in popularity in the UK. Demand is rising for the country’s bold and punchy flavours, which feature soy sauce, sesame oil, the tangy, fermented kick of kimchi, raw napa cabbage and gochujang, a sweet and spicy chilli paste that elevates dips and gives an umami boost to sauces.

Last year, Waitrose reported that sales of gochujang had increased by 71% since 2024. Jamie Oliver uses it to flavour his chicken burgers while Nigella Lawson adds it to her pasta sauce. In March, Korean fried chicken was named one of Just Eat’s top 10 takeaways of 2026, while there were long queues this month at Jung, a Korean food festival in London.

Like many first-time pet owners, I was overprotective when we adopted her during the pandemic. But this affectionate creature showed me that love can mean letting go

In July 2021, after a few beers on a summer evening, my flatmate, Lew, answered an internet ad. By 5pm the next day, we had a kitten. She was a swirl of tortie-and-white fluff, with a small pink snoot, and huge ears that made her look more bat than cat. We called her Mush, pronounced like “smush”. From the moment the result of our drunken decision arrived and hid behind the sofa in our south London flat, we were in love.

Like many first-time parents in their 20s, Lew and I were fussy and overprotective. Neither of us had ever been responsible for a living creature before. When I held her tiny body against my chest, I felt anxious. Any little thing sent us running to the vet. A crusty eye. A single flea. Was she too small? Was she eating enough? “She’s in perfect physical condition,” the vet assured us during one of her many checkups.

It started as a hook-up, but before long they were parents. Now Sofia and León are finding new ways to be intimate

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

It just felt easy, like I’d already known him for a long time. I told León I loved him after two weeks

Would you want this to become sexual? If the answer is yes, then think about what might be holding you back

I don’t know whether I am in love with my friend or not. We hang out a lot, because we work together in the same university. My feelings developed over many months and it took us a long time to fit with each other as we do now. I don’t find him perfect; I sometimes don’t like his behaviour, especially when we are with other people. However, I want to be with him a lot: I imagine going on holiday with him and doing things together.

We do have physical contact sometimes – just things like touching arms. I appreciate that and have deep affection for him. So I wonder if this could be love or if I am mistaking great friendship with love just because he is a guy. I do not know whether he is a friend, almost like a brother, or more than that.

Ailsa, 31, a systems engineer, meets Mike, 35, a paralegal

What were you hoping for?
Good conversation with someone interesting.

We left our car at the short-stay car park after paying £66 for a one-week ‘meet and greet’ service

I have ended up hundreds of pounds out of pocket after paying £66 for a week’s parking at Stansted airport.

I booked through the website compareairportparkings.co.uk for our car to be collected at the short-stay car park, parked off-site while we were away, and then returned to us at the short stay.

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.

Whether first-time buyers, in between homes or refixing, people tell of impact of higher mortgage rates on housing

Prospects of cuts in UK interest rates in 2026, which were widely expected at the start of the year, were rapidly extinguished when the Iran war started at the end of February. The renewed threat of inflation means the Bank of England is now expected to raise rates at least once this year, with mortgage costs staying higher for longer.

The boss of Britain’s largest housebuilder said on Thursday it was the most challenging time to be a first-time buyer since the 2008 financial crisis.

Barratt Redrow boss says rising interest rates, higher student debt and squeeze on wages hitting property dream

• Business live – latest updates

The boss of Britain’s largest housebuilder has said it is the most challenging time to be a first-time buyer since the financial crisis, as the dream of home ownership moves increasingly out of reach for many young people.

A combination of rising interest rates, higher levels of student debt and the squeeze on wages is making it “challenging, very, very difficult” for young people to get on the housing ladder, according to David Thomas, the departing chief executive of Barratt Redrow.

There is no evidence that ovulation affects muscle-building, but you may feel stronger at certain times

It’s an idea that’s been enthusiastically embraced on social media: women should sync their training to their menstrual cycle. That means lifting heavier weights around ovulation, then switching to gentler movement such as yoga in the second half of the cycle – because as their hormones fluctuate so does their strength.

But there’s not much proof that this is useful, says Dr Marianna Apicella, a researcher at the University of Leicester specialising in female physiology. “High-quality evidence supporting that is seriously lacking,” she says. “There’s not really much concrete evidence for it.”

Experts hail daraxonrasib as ‘gamechanger’ for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer

A daily pill can double survival time in patients with the world’s deadliest cancer, according to the results of a clinical trial that experts are saying is a “gamechanger” and one of the biggest breakthroughs in decades.

Currently, there are few treatments for pancreatic cancer, and most do little or nothing to help. For decades, scientists have worked relentlessly trying to find clever solutions for a form of cancer that is often found late. More than half of patients are only diagnosed after it has spread.

Whether it’s Hyrox or CrossFit, some of this century’s biggest exercise trends have one thing in common: combining cardio with strength training. Here’s how to do it

Tough Mudder. CrossFit. Hyrox. Some of this century’s biggest fitness trends have one thing in common: they require feats of both strength and endurance. People used to pick a side: either you used weights and resistance machines to build your muscles or you did cardio for the sake of your heart and lungs. Now everyone wants to be a “hybrid athlete”. So is this the best way to get fit – and where do you start if you’re a complete beginner?

A lack of confidence can prevent us from trying new things or going after what we want – but it’s never too late to change our beliefs

When I was in middle school, my father told me 80% of how people see you is how you see yourself. This was terrible news at the time, because I was deep in the depths of puberty, self-loathing and figuring out how to part my hair.

Though he pulled that number out of thin air, in the intervening years I’ve found he was on to something – projecting confidence can sometimes be the key to success, professionally and personally. But how does one actually cultivate confidence? And what if our understanding of what confidence is skewed?

Sorting, wearing and even reworking some of Mum’s wardrobe has given me a way to keep her close

Only my mum would insist on buying a designer swimsuit on her deathbed. She had always found emotional solace in clothes, but shopping for herself had become futile by that point. She was, after all, lying in a cancer hospital having been told there was no further treatment available for her relentless myeloma; she had exhausted all available options in the 11 years since her diagnosis. But my 37th birthday was coming up and there was no way terminal blood cancer was going to stop Rhona from buying me a present. She loved showering her family with gifts. I would reprimand her for spoiling us. “I can’t spend it when I’m dead, can I?” she used to respond.

Of course, there was only one thing I truly wanted that birthday, but I was being forced to come to terms with that being a deluded fantasy. Despite my protestations that I needed nothing, my mum insisted: “Something nice for your holidays, perhaps?”

Once associated with wealth and celebrity, cosmetic treatments to defy ageing have become more commonplace. What is it doing to beauty standards?

Mary Munson’s first non-surgical cosmetic treatment wasn’t the result of a plan, or a concrete decision. She describes it in terms of sating her curiosity. Munson, 41, was visiting a clinic to extend her lashes when a woman working there spoke to her about a procedure that she referred to as “baby Botox” – which was, in fact, Botox. Since deciding to try it, she hasn’t looked back.

“It was just a starter to see what it was like, and I realised that I enjoyed it. And to be honest I don’t feel like I see a huge change,” says Munson, who was 37 when she started treatments. While she thinks her Filipino and Scottish genes “give me good skin”, Munson started getting other treatments alongside regular Botox injections, including platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy (sometimes referred to as a vampire facial, in which platelets are drawn from a patient’s own blood), as well as platelet-rich fibrin (PRF), a similar treatment that stimulates collagen.

The New York mayor scored a range of responses attending Eid prayers in an outfit combining football and faith

Since Arsenal won the Premier League for the first time in 22 years this month, the visibility of the club’s shirts has soared, with celebrities including Romeo Beckham and the singer Mahalia wearing them.

One particularly notable fan moment occurred when Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, wore a kurta made out of the team’s 2025-26 away kit to attend Eid al-Adha prayers in the Bronx.

From sardines and sprats to crabs, marine life-themed fashion and homewares are making a splash

Three years after declaring the death of florals, John Lewis has discovered a new print that is making a splash among shoppers. At the launch of its new high summer collection, the retailer said fish were quickly becoming its customers’ catch of the day.

From sardines and sprats to crustaceans including crabs, its latest haul across fashion and homeware is rich in fish prints and shapes. Sales of starfish-shaped earrings are up 300% month on month, while high demand for a silky blue skirt smothered in shoals of fish has resulted in a waiting list. In homeware, sales of a set of glass tumblers that stack together to form the shape of a fish are up 400%, while a “gluggle jug” – a ceramic pitcher shaped like a fish that makes a gurgling sound as the water is poured – is becoming an outdoor dining essential. Sales of versions from Wade Pottery are up 129% month on month.

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).

The 2,700-mile route covering the entire English coastline is almost complete. We walked less trodden sections big on scenery and history

Day one Circular walk of Lindisfarne (4 miles)
Day two Budle Bay to Bamburgh to (5 miles)

From a vinyl-focused music exhibition to beloved record stores, ‘listening bars’ and clubs, the Victorian capital’s fondness for wax reverberates in every corner of the city

When the needle drops, Elias Rahbani’s 1972 album Mosaic of the Orient (Näi, Buzuk & Guitar) cascades out from a Technics SL-1300GE-K turntable and a colossal pair of Tasmanian-made Pitt & Giblin Superwax speakers. I’m in the Listening Room – a temple for audiophiles, and to the vinyl record – in Melbourne’s Acmi, as part of Rising festival’s new exhibition The Vinyl Factory: Reverb. The gear sounds extraordinary – and it is only one story in a room filled with countless more.

Rising music curator and Triple R host Yasmine Sharaf remembers the moment she spotted that rare Rahbani record, on a 47C day at a Cairo market. “Record shopping is really hard in Egypt. Everything usually has no cover and is covered in dust. It was sitting on the very top in complete sun. Somehow in perfect condition, not warped or melted. You’d think it would just be a puddle. I feel I was supposed to find it and save it.”

From the wilds of Galloway and spectacular Pembrokeshire to the cockle sheds of Southend, you share your favourite seaside walks
• Tell us about a European road trip – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

With an impressive mix of mountain and sea views, the 130-mile Anglesey Coastal Path is a must-do for those who love a good walk. But like most locals, my perennial favourite is the offshoot trail out to the tidal island Ynys Llanddwyn. Having grown up on Ynys Môn but now living in London, for me it has become something of an annual pilgrimage in the summer months. The mile-long walk along the main beach to the island is manageable and fun for grandparents and grandkids alike – with the white-washed lighthouses offering a rewarding end viewpoint. Pack a picnic, swim in the clear waters and relax – just make sure you’ve checked the tide times!
Lavinia Brydon

Many of those who love spending time in Britain’s green places say it is awe-inspiring, calming and therapeutic

As a recent study revealed almost half of UK adults now spend less than three hours a week in natural settings such as gardens, parks, fields or woods, we asked readers to tell us about what being outside means to them.

The replies – heartfelt and passionate – came flooding in, with some admitting they just did not have the words to say how important it is.

The comedian on coming out at 20, discovering she was funny, and the special moment she marked with a tattoo

Born in Portsmouth in 1986, comedian Suzi Ruffell trained at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in London and began her standup career in 2008. As well as touring and appearing on Live at the Apollo, she hosts a podcast, Out With Suzi Ruffell, and co-hosts another, Like Minded Friends, with Tom Allen. She has also written a bestselling memoir, Am I Having Fun Now? Anxiety, Applause and Life’s Big Questions, Answered. She tours her show The Juggle until September.

This was taken in the living room of the house I grew up in, in Portsmouth. All the curtains were heavily patterned, as were the carpets. I was 10 years old and deep in my Spice Girls era – especially Mel C, who was on the roster of my early crushes, along with Kate Winslet and Jennifer Aniston.

I heard the ambulance siren getting closer. And then a voice: ‘Where do you live? We’ll take your bike home for you’

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I was coming down a mountain bike trail when I became aware of an odd ache in the middle of my chest. At the time I was working as a specialist anaesthetist, and also had a history of working in intensive care medicine, so I immediately knew the significance of such a sensation. Which is: I was having a heart attack halfway down a mountain, somewhere an ambulance wouldn’t be able to reach me.

I knew that to have any shot of making it out alive I had to get myself down to the car park, so I coasted on my bike to the bottom of the trail, all while gripped by central chest pain. I made it to my car, got my phone and called an ambulance.

The broadcaster documents living with this debilitating, lifelong disease in a bid to help other sufferers. Plus: the soothing return of Springwatch. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Two
“It’s like having a drill inside my stomach that is going down into my organs.” Broadcaster Emma Barnett lives with this extremely painful lifelong disease that affects one in 10 women – but about which medical experts still don’t know enough, largely because of the gender health gap. In this vital documentary, she is candid about her own story and hears from other women with the condition, as they demand more help. Hollie Richardson

A project to measure how reflective paint reduces indoor temperatures is delivering tangible benefits across Africa

The brick house Sylvia shares in a Western Cape township on the outskirts of Cape Town with her three children gets unbearably hot every summer, causing the youngest to cry and her two older children to struggle to concentrate on their homework. Sylvia is not alone, according to a recent report in the Lancet: “In 2024, people in South Africa were exposed to 13 heatwave days, on average. Of these, 10.5 (80%) would not have been expected to occur without climate change.”

But summer is more bearable for the family now that her asbestos roof has been painted with reflective paint.

Conflicts over land and resources have deepened owing to climate breakdown, deforestation and population growth

Beneath the shade of the wide-spreading branches of a neem tree, five young gang members wearing camouflage and beanies and cradling AK47 rifles took refuge from the harsh midday sun. They passed around cold bottles of water and a popular energy drink called Fearless.

To their left, a dreadlocked teenager with his own rifle rested on one of three motorcycles parked on the sparse grass. To their right, another teenager sat with his back to the others, rolling a spliff.

Abu ‘Abu Radde’ Bello, the leader of a gang in Katsina state

We would like to hear from people who are facing water supply disruptions due to warm weather in the south east of England

Thousands of properties in the south east have been affected by water supply issues caused by the warm weather, according to South East Water (SEW).

After water outages for hundreds of homes across Kent and Sussex over the last three days during record temperatures, the firm has asked customers to only use water for essential purposes like drinking, washing and cooking.

Dua Lipa got married this weekend in an outfit that appeared to pay homage to Bianca Jagger’s wedding to Mick Jagger. We’d like to hear whether you made a similar style choice at your wedding?

Dua Lipa got married this weekend in a beautiful outfit that appeared to pay homage to Bianca Jagger’s wedding to Mick Jagger.

The singer wore a Schiaparelli couture white skirt suit paired with a Stephen Jones hat as she tied the knot with actor Callum Turner at Old Marylebone Town Hall in London on Sunday. In 1971, Jagger married the Rolling Stones frontman in a Yves Saint Laurent Le Smoking jacket and bias-cut skirt, finishing off the look with a floppy hat and veil.

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.

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.

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