In triggering an entirely optional byelection, Nigel Farage has given opponents weeks to repeat the claims about his finances

To some, Nigel Farage appears to be in a trap of his own making, fighting for re-election in single combat with a giant bin before potentially having to do it all again against the other political parties. But inside Reform UK, the mood is upbeat. As one insider said of the prospect of a double byelection: “Bring it on.”

This is not just braggadocio. Farage is an enthusiastic and highly skilled campaigner, and is clearly relishing the idea of going to his electorate with a “Clacton versus the establishment” message, although doing so twice within weeks might test even his commitment – especially when the Reform leader is forced to argue that the establishment is embodied by an anthropomorphised bin.

From thermal blinds to putting your knickers in the fridge, here are the clever – and surprising – ways Filter readers are keeping cool as the UK swelters

• How to sleep in a heatwave

After record-breaking June temperatures, parts of the UK are in the throes of another heatwave. So with more uncomfortably hot days and sweaty, sleepless nights in store, we asked how you keep cool when the temperatures soar.

Some of you shared tips for keeping your homes cool, others on avoiding overheating on the go, and some on ways to exercise safely. From thermal blinds and fans to sunscreens and UV-protective hats, here are your, and our, favourite hacks to beat the heat – and some of them are free. (And no, none of you has any commercial links to these companies or products – we always check.)

Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
While Britain boils in a heatwave, a new exhibition built around the much-reproduced canvas reminds us of the beauty of the natural world – and what we could lose

I first saw John Constable’s 1821 painting The Hay Wain as a postcard with cruise missiles brutally stacked in the wooden cart and pointing at the sky. Peter Kennard’s anti-nuke photomontage is just one of the many parodies and travesties this image of a seemingly eternal rustic Britain keeps provoking. A few months ago, a newspaper cartoon depicted a ballistic missile from Iran speeding through Constable’s painting. But when I visited Ipswich to see its Hay Wain exhibition at the start of the latest heatwave it was the climate making a scorching, ironic comment on this temperate scene.

Inside this Tudor house, grey, blue and brown masses of rain-promising cloud hung above Constable’s painted Suffolk fields, dappling them with shade. But outside the grass was straw yellow and the landscape around Dedham Vale and the River Stour, where Constable was born and in which The Hay Wain and many more of his works lovingly linger, appeared to have been blowtorched into oblivion.

From disciple-in-chief Dicky Tice to Honest Bob Jenrick, Farage really does know how to pick ’em

We need to talk about Nigel. Again. Not so much about the £5m gift from a Thailand-based crypto billionaire, or the freebies he accepted from a convicted fraudster who called him Daddy. Nor the fact that he never thought to declare his good fortune on parliament’s register of members’ interests.

There again, he was only a professional politician and the principal shareholder in Reform UK at the time. And why would anyone feel the need to account for a gift from someone who identified as his son? After all, it’s not as if Nige also tried to lobby the Bank of England to change its rules on crypto. Oh, scrub that. He did.

After hopping between country, disco and soft rock, Tyler found her groove with Jim Steinman-penned epics, shining through even the most overblown backing tracks

• News: Bonnie Tyler, 80s pop legend known for Total Eclipse of the Heart and more, dies aged 75
• From Swansea clubs to worldwide fame: Bonnie Tyler – a life in pictures

Bonnie Tyler had a peculiar career: two bursts of global success that seemed to have almost nothing to do with each other beyond the name that appeared on the records. Her first big British hits, 1976’s Lost in France and 1977’s It’s a Heartache, were superior examples of what writer Pete Paphides subsequently dubbed “medium wave pop”, the largely forgotten stuff that actually filled the charts and Radio One’s playlists at a time when reductive rock histories would have you believe the entire nation was gripped by punk. They were a little bit soft rock, a little bit country, a little reminiscent of reliable mid-70s hitmakers Smokie, and so catchy that no one seemed to notice that somewhere between their respective releases, Tyler’s voice had changed dramatically: possessed of a rather sweet tone on Lost in France, an operation to remove nodules on her vocal cords had caused her to develop a striking Rod Stewart-like huskiness by the time of It’s a Heartache.

It looked like It’s a Heartache would turn Tyler into a huge star: it sold 6m copies, and the accompanying album made the Top 3 on the US country chart. But said success proved difficult to sustain, compounded by the fact that her record label seemed bizarrely unsure what to do with her. Get her to cover Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, as on Louisiana Rain? Aim her squarely at the easy listening market via a version of Sometimes When We Touch? Encourage her to go disco, as on the fabulously camp (The World is Full of) Married Men?

On the back of our editors’ choices of the year’s finest, we asked you to share your magical movie moments from the first half of 2026

The film that had me gripped right from its ridiculous and bizarre first scene at a Brazilian country road petrol station was The Secret Agent by Kleber Mendonça Filho. The gorgeous Armando is on the run from a corrupt private company official, who wants to steal his academic expertise for his own financial gain. It’s a deal that Armando knows will sully his academic reputation but by refusing to do so, he ends up with a target on his back from the resentful Ghirotti, who sent chills up my spine. This is a stunning movie. Liz, London

George Cottrell’s mother, Fiona, at centre of criminal inquiry over potential evasion of restrictions on donations

Police are investigating donations worth £500,000 made to Reform UK by the mother of a convicted fraudster and ally of Nigel Farage.

The investigation concerns two donations of £250,000 made by Fiona Cottrell, whose son George has often accompanied Farage to Reform events and media appearances. The May 2024 donations are under investigation over whether they were intended to conceal a donation by an impermissible donor.

Exclusive: PM-in-waiting says party must ‘do better’ in approach to Middle East and he will put more pressure on Israel

Andy Burnham has apologised for Labour’s initial response to Israel’s military action in Gaza, saying the party “didn’t get it right” and needs to “do better” under his leadership signalling a significant shift in the UK’s approach to the Middle East.

The prime minister-in-waiting told the Guardian he would put more pressure on the Israeli government, including through further sanctions on individuals and entities, as well as a potential ban on the trade of goods with illegal settlements.

There is a relentlessness to this France that might make them irresistible. Morocco no doubt had the best of intentions, ideas of how they could hurt the side that had beaten them in the semi-final in Qatar, but France press so well that they soon accepted they had no option but to retreat and endure. France have such attacking quality that simply surviving isn’t really a viable option.

Kylian Mbappé, once again, was the key figure, missing a penalty, scoring a stunning opener and then teeing up Ousmane Dembélé for the second. He went off with 13 minutes remaining to a deserved ovation: the game had seemed to be drifting, and there had just been a sense that Morocco might conceivably pull off an implausible rearguard action, when he produced a goal from nowhere.

Outgoing PM has not ruled out drawing up honours list when he stands down, despite previously opposing it

Keir Starmer has signalled he could hand out resignation honours when he leaves Downing Street, despite pledging three years ago he would not do so when he eventually stood down.

The prime minister twice declined to rule out drawing up a list of honours when he stands down in just over 10 days’ time, to be succeeded by Andy Burnham.

Local truckers’ association says it may suspend operations, after several eyewitnesses decried Ahmad Esleem’s murder

A Palestinian driver bringing food aid from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) into Gaza has been killed by an Israeli soldier “in a field execution”, according to witnesses and the local truckers’ association, which said it may suspend operations in protest.

Ahmad Esleem was shot in the head on Wednesday when an aid convoy stopped because of a breakdown to one truck soon after entering Gaza, according to three accounts. Israeli soldiers ordered the drivers to dismount and one of them shot Esleem in the head when his hands were raised.

Ministers consider bringing e-cigarette laws in line with tobacco as data shows 20% of teenagers have tried vaping

Vapes could be sold in plain packaging as part of a range of proposals to stop them being marketed to children.

The UK-wide plans also include limiting device colours to white, black or grey, and keeping vapes out of sight in shops, according to the Department of Health and Social Care.

Businessman stands trial over death of Maltese journalist killed by bomb in her car after she reported on corruption

Moments before the explosion that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia, the journalist screamed in panic, a witness has told the trial of the man accused of ordering her murder.

Caruana Galizia was killed in 2017 by a remotely detonated bomb placed under the driver’s seat of her car, after writing a series of reports on political and financial corruption in Malta. The government’s handling of the investigation led to mass protests and ultimately to the resignation of the Maltese prime minister, Joseph Muscat.

Presenter, 77, says ‘for now life goes on as normal and I continue to broadcast’ as he shares diagnosis received in 2025

The longtime radio and TV broadcaster Paul Gambaccini has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

The 77-year-old presenter, who has been a regular on the BBC since the 1970s and has one of the most recognisable voices on British radio, shared a statement revealing the diagnosis he received in 2025.

Hollywood actor signs recording deal with Decca after decades of composing pieces inspired by his Welsh childhood

Anthony Hopkins says he has achieved his “first desire” of signing a record deal, with his debut single being released on Friday.

The 88-year-old Hollywood actor’s first album, Life Is a Dream, will be released next month by Decca Classics . It is a collection of pieces he has composed over six decades.

Life Is a Dream will be released on 21 August

Residents in Bandar Abbas and Sirik regions describe communities in fear and ‘feeling abandoned’ after US strikes

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Residents in southern Iran have described two nights of fear this week after explosions shook coastal communities as the US launched fresh strikes on targets including the port cities of Bandar Abbas and Sirik.

US Central Command confirmed the attacks, saying they were carried out to “further degrade their ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the strait of Hormuz”.

Crude jokes about the Maga luminary are exploding online – less than a year after conservatives were suppressing any slander against him

Ten months since his assassination, Charlie Kirk’s name and likeness are still proliferating online. Just not the way the far-right activist would have wanted.

Audio of the gunshot that killed him has become a TikTok meme, as have ironic reposts of the apparent AI-slop song We Are Charlie Kirk, which was originally created as a posthumous tribute. He was the butt of a crude joke during the Netflix roast of the Hollywood star Kevin Hart in May. The next month, a viral tweet encouraged people to take “a shot” in his honor on Juneteenth. And a trend known as “Kirkification” has emerged, in which internet pranksters superimpose his face on to unlikely images, such as the Mona Lisa, a woman in a bikini, or Jeffrey Epstein.

Not everyone experiences heat the same way, and studies show aggression, violence and road rage increase on hotter days

Recently, my husband and I embarked on what should have been a pleasant spring errand: a stroll to the local farmer’s market. But a passing heatwave had made it unseasonably hot outside. I cut him off on the sidewalk and he snapped at me, so I snapped at him for snapping at me. We spent the rest of the excursion in sweaty, stony silence. When we were almost home, he said, miserably: “I’m sorry! It’s just so hot.”

Our grouchiness was not simply a weakness of spirit. “Heat doesn’t just affect your body,” said Dr Susan Albers, clinical psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic. “It affects your mood too.”

Researchers on Beaver Island, in Lake Michigan, are trying to find a more reliable form of power using local resources

Beaver Island sits in the middle of the northernmost end of Lake Michigan, about 70 miles from the maritime border with Canada. The forested island, just a little bigger than San Francisco in size, is a popular summer destination for tourists and home to about 600 permanent residents. Getting there requires a boat or plane ride.

Getting electricity to the island is not as easy. Power comes from mainland Michigan through cables that cross roughly 30 miles of lake bed. Outages are common during extreme weather, or when there are problems with the sensitive wires. The devastating ice storm that walloped the state last year knocked out power to the island for weeks.

Ahead of the release of Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, we rate the top films based on myths, legends and fables

Featuring the young Henry Cavill as a Theseus who barely gets near a labyrinth, this Hellenic “reimagination” bags precious little deep mythological significance. But visuals ace Tarsem Singh at least gives it a strikingly theatrical and oppressive look. Unforgettable images include the Titans locked into their magical prison like ranks of table-football players, the sotto in su vision of the warring gods at the end and the campest Mount Olympus in cinema – like a gleaming Siegfried and Roy Vegas set.

Bjørge Lillelien’s famous rant after 1981 clash stemmed from Norwegian obsession with English football

What do Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper and Lady Diana have in common? On 9 September 1981 they were all beaten by Norway.

At least that is according to the iconic Norwegian radio commentator Bjørge Lillelien. His triumphant, giddy and slightly unhinged rant after Norway beat England 2-1 in a World Cup qualifier has gone down in Norwegian folklore. It has also attained something of a cult status abroad, with the Observer declaring it in 2002 the greatest bit of commentary ever.

Intensive farming has all but destroyed England’s ancient woodlands and freshwater wetlands. On a farm in Lincolnshire a radical aristocrat hopes to show there’s money in protecting nature

• The summer issue of the Long Read magazine is out now. Click here to order

In the silent countryside south of Grantham, three vast steel barns rattled in the breeze. Gathered in a loose circle beside them were 15 landowners, land agents and a couple of young investors; all expensively dressed men, many with a sceptical mien. It was June 2022, and Sir Charles Raymond Burrell, 10th Baronet, was explaining how the purchase of 1,525 bleak acres (617 hectares) of prairie fields of wheat and beans could revolutionise farming and nature conservation, not just in South Lincolnshire but across Britain and beyond.

Burrell, known by everyone as Charlie, led the group on a walk from the barns beside the unlovable modern farmhouse, a red-brick behemoth with small windows like piggy eyes. We began by crossing a field of broad beans. Less than a century ago, it had been a patchwork of 10 fields. As we walked over the hard, cracked ground, we encountered not a single insect. Later, by a verge, a couple of butterflies flew. As for humans, we didn’t meet a single other person in our two-and-a-half-hour stroll across a range of footpaths and field edges. “This is a ruined landscape,” said one of the guests, the architectural historian Matthew Rice. “Not because of the soils. Because there are no people here. I’m sorry there are not enough stoats but I’d like there to be some children here, too.”

Two architects of Arsenal’s title triumph are likely to have starring roles for their country in pursuit of a place in the World Cup semi-finals

It is one of those times when WhatsApp group chats quieten down. Friendships tend to be suspended when a World Cup quarter-final comes around and club mates, flung against one another for their countries, turn their eyes towards the biggest prize. Declan Rice and Martin Ødegaard will not be exchanging breezy pleasantries in the hours before England face Norway but the levels of respect are off the scale. The clash between two architects of Arsenal’s modern success should be decisive in determining who goes through. They have walked out together 117 times but the 118th, in the stifling heat of Miami, may leave the most lasting mark.

These are two players in their prime who may never receive another opportunity this golden. Rice and Ødegaard were born 28 days apart and, partly because of the latter’s fast-tracking into the Norway senior team, did not play against each other at age-group level. Their face-offs have been limited to Mikel Arteta’s intense training sessions at London Colney, where they are depended upon to set standards. They are leaders of differing style and status who will be expected to galvanise their national teams on Saturday.

England winger on his thirst for self-improvement, triumph at the Azteca and the ‘spiritual’ Thomas Tuchel

It was a lighthearted moment – despite the language used – and Anthony Gordon saw the funny side. But trust the England winger to find a way to use it as fuel. It is what he does, what he has always done, since his childhood in Liverpool. It has helped him to reach the point where he completed a £60.7m transfer to Barcelona from Newcastle at the end of May. And it is driving him before Saturday’s World Cup quarter-final against Norway in Miami.

Most people have seen the clip. There were 26 minutes on the clock at the Azteca Stadium on Sunday; England goalless against Mexico in the last 16. The Mexico manager, Javier Aguirre, who admits that swearing is second nature to him during matches, was in the mood to show off his English. He called out Gordon’s name and when the player turned around, he had a piece of advice. “Fuck you,” Aguirre shouted, before creasing up with laughter. Gordon did the same.

• Striker says England one of the ‘clear favourites’ to win World Cup

• Also makes knowing reference to famous ‘Stay humble’ remark

Erling Haaland has ramped up the World Cup mind games by saying England are the team under ­pressure when they face Norway in their ­quarter-final tie on Saturday.

Haaland has enjoyed a ­sensational tournament, scoring seven times in four games, including twice in ­Sunday’s last-16 win over ­Brazil. ­Norway are flying in their first appearance on this stage since 1998 but, in characteristically mischievous fashion, Haaland insisted expectations should only be directed one way.

The Spain goalkeeper Unai Simón has not conceded a goal at the World Cup and, worryingly for Belgium, he has not had to face that many shots

“We’re the villains, there to stop the goals that football lives off,” Unai Simón says. If so, there has never been a bad guy as bad as him, the keeper who could do with an introduction from Don LaFontaine: In a World Cup dominated by forwards, one man resists … There were five minutes to go until half-time during Spain’s battle with Portugal in the last 16 when something historic happened, or there would have been if anything had actually happened. Instead, nothing did, which is the way Simón likes it.

As the clock rolled into the 40th minute, Spain’s goalkeeper silently moved on to 560 World Cup minutes without conceding, taking in seven games and going all the way back to Ao Tanaka’s strike for Japan in Qatar. Against Austria in the last 32, he had already left Walter Zenga behind on 517, now he and Spain overtook Switzerland’s record: 559 minutes spread across 14 years and three tournaments in 1994, 2006 and 2010. The next minute, Nuno Mendes hit the bar, but still Simón would not be beaten, Mikel Merino’s 90th minute winner the only goal of the game.

• Milan forward was subbed out in a 4-1 loss

• Pulisic had been criticized for his lack of availability

Christian Pulisic suffered a microfracture and bone bruise in his leg in the United States’ 4-1 loss to Belgium in the World Cup last 16 on Monday, US Soccer announced.

Pulisic suffered the injury in the second half in Seattle and was removed shortly afterward. He underwent X-ray and MRI scans on Tuesday to determine the extent of the injury, which is expected to keep Pulisic out for several weeks. US Soccer said the federation and Milan are working collaboratively on his rehab plan.

When Ellis was condemned to death in 1955, the horrific violence she had suffered was ignored. Today, vulnerable women are still fighting to be heard

It has taken more than seven decades, but the grievous wrong done to Ruth Ellis has finally been recognised. Ellis was the last woman to be hanged for murder in the UK, the victim of a pitiless justice system that was uninterested in her history of horrific domestic abuse. The announcement of a posthumous conditional pardon is a tribute to the tireless campaigning of her family, including her granddaughter, Laura Enston. But it also highlights continuing shortcomings in how the criminal justice system deals with women who commit crimes after being treated horrendously by their partners.

In April 1955, Ellis shot and killed her lover, David Blakely, outside a pub in north London. The shock of a woman using a gun was so immense that she was portrayed as a cold-blooded killer, even though she had suffered a miscarriage – caused by a punch in the stomach from Blakely – only three months earlier. Her appearance worked against her, with her own lawyer worrying that her dyed blond hair and heavy makeup would prejudice the jury.

Whenever major reform is proposed the media, big business and Westminster quickly conclude it’s too expensive and disruptive. This doesn’t bode well for Andy Burnham

In an old, often anxious and conservative country, the perception of risk is a potent political weapon. If a policy or a project for reforming the UK seems too risky, or can be made to seem so by its opponents, then it can usually be quickly killed off. It can be added to the pile of possible futures that never occurred.

In politics as in life, riskiness is sometimes real. To see that Brexit or Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq might not end well did not require huge foresight. Yet often the perception of risk is politically constructed: a reflection of powerful forces, their self-interest, and what they do or don’t want to happen.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

The president is behaving as if the battleground is the same, but it isn’t. Iran has leverage and knows it

And so to war. Again. After a ceasefire and a hiatus, Donald Trump is now into the second day of a new phase of bombing Iran, with the US military claiming to have struck 170 Iranian targets in the past 48 hours.

This is no surprise. Speaking at the Nato summit in Ankara this week, Donald Trump said he believed the US-Iran memorandum of understanding was “over”. He described Iran’s leaders as “evil, sick people” and threatened renewed military action and even a new blockade of Iranian ports, while also leaving the door open to further negotiations.

Marine Le Pen is a convicted criminal. But now she’s running for office and there is still no credible candidate to oppose her

As the judge read out the verdict in Marine Le Pen’s appeal trial for embezzlement, the same conversation was playing out in living rooms and WhatsApp groups across France. What? Does this mean she can run for the Élysée after all? But what about the prison sentence? And the electronic tag (which Le Pen had promised she would not campaign wearing)? And what about her protege Jordan Bardella?

For a few hours, it looked as though the court of appeal had unexpectedly played a masterful hand by unequivocally upholdingthe far-right National Rally (RN) figurehead’s conviction for misappropriation of public funds. It handed her a fine of €100,000 (£85,000) and a commuted prison sentence, the remaining year of which would be served by Le Pen being electronically tagged.

Catherine Fieschi is a visiting scholar with Carnegie Europe and the author of Populocracy: The Tyranny of Authenticity and the Rise of Populism

As the all-inclusive holiday has a revival, I recall honing my buffet talents at the Pizza Hut salad bar in the 1980s. It's skill and science: exhilarating

School’s almost out and the holidays are here, which means for millions of Britons we have arrived at the start line for what might be called our biggest annual event: Wimbledon and the World Cup are one thing, but the all-inclusive and all-you-can-eat buffet olympics remains, I would argue, this country’s strongest competitive sport. Arriving at Luton airport before dawn last year, my children walked past the bars and with the innocence of the American-born said, owl-eyed, “Are they drinking … alcohol?” They are, my darlings, and will continue to do so from first light in the terminal until the last coach leaves the resort.

This is how it is now. Since Covid, vacation trends in Britain have skewed increasingly towards formalising this country’s latent maximalist instincts when it comes to enjoying our holidays. Between 2023 and 2024, bookings for European all-inclusive resorts rose by 30%, and the latest figures from Abta suggest that a quarter of British holidaymakers will now opt for the all-inclusive – meaning bottomless canteen-style food and drink, which, no matter how much we paid for it up front, I defy any of us not to experience as “free”.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

The supermarket’s central Europe stores may be sold as it doubles down on domestic dominance

A couple of decades ago, Tesco was going to bestride the globe. Little ol’ UK, plus Ireland, didn’t offer enough room for the country’s biggest supermarket chain to expand, ran a theory that was encouraged from outside by complaints about a “Tescopoly”.

“We are on the threshold of becoming one of the few successful international retailers,” declared Sir Terry Leahy, then the chief executive, in 2007, confidently predicting that half the group’s revenues would come from overseas within a decade.

As the family travails worsen, it’s a wretched time to lose face and maybe millions of pounds to his tabloid tormentor. Epic battle, epic fail

It really hasn’t been a very good week for Harry. The fifth in line to the throne will retire to Montecito, his gated California fastness – not, as seemed at least possible a week ago, having visited his mother country to public sympathy and applause, mending a few broken fences and seeing his old dad again. Now instead it will be a retreat in confusion, not having stayed in a palace, or seeing his busy pater, and worst of all, bested at huge cost by the Daily Mail, the bete noire of all bete noires.

The prince might reflect that he has brought many of his troubles on himself. He will leave with the rightwing press chortling that, for a crusader for personal privacy, he has outed himself much more comprehensively than they ever managed with his rancorous TV interviews about how horrible his family has been to him, his glutinous Netflix series and, most of all, his memoir Spare, with its revelation, among much else, about his frostbitten penis.

Reform UK presents itself as the people’s voice while opaque digital wealth flows around it. That makes transparency a democratic necessity

Twice now, the Guardian’s questions about Reform UK’s finances appear to have been pre-empted by stories friendly to the party. This paper revealed in April that Nigel Farage received £5m from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne – but an interview with Reform UK’s leader, claiming he needed the cash “for security”, was published hours earlier in the Telegraph. Then, Richard Tice’s suggestion that the National Crime Agency (NCA) had leaked the MP’s bank statements landed on the Telegraph site on Tuesday, just before the Guardian said bankers had reported the £5m donation to law enforcement over money-laundering concerns.

A party serious about probity would have no issue answering questions about such cash. Instead, Reform uses a pliant media outlet to frame scrutiny as persecution. In Mr Farage’s world, the questions become the scandal, not the large undisclosed sums. That is a warning about how an authoritarian nationalist party that aspires to govern treats accountability: not as a democratic obligation, but as an attack.

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

As in the Gareth Southgate era, a diverse and passionately committed national team is offering a counter-narrative to the forces of social division

The identity of the worst performers at the men’s World Cup has come as no surprise. In the lead-up to the tournament, the world had seen more than enough of Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino in action to fear the worst once the games actually began. Mr Trump’s lobbying of Fifa to lift a one-match ban on the United States’ star striker confirmed that his bullying will-to-power extends to spheres that he neither cares about nor understands. Mr Infantino’s craven willingness to accommodate it has been an affront to sporting integrity.

From prohibitive ticket prices to the introduction of advertiser-friendly hydration breaks – conveniently replicating the lucrative four-quarter format common in US sports – there have been plenty of other reasons to question Fifa’s overly commercialised stewardship of the beautiful game. But the World Cup still delivers a unique spectacle, as anyone who marvelled at the heroic exploits of Cape Verde, or witnessed Scottish fans’ good‑humoured invasion of Boston, can testify.

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

Being an MP should not provide a backdoor for accumulating personal wealth, says Hugh Clarke

Several years ago, when I worked in a university, gifts from students or their families had to be declared, regardless of their size (Ministers to crack down on political donations as Farage faces calls for second inquiry, 6 July). To safeguard against students buying special privileges, staff were not permitted to accept “large” gifts.

On one occasion, a member of staff was given a tablet (value £200) and the university required it to be given back, or given to the department in which she worked, with the donor’s agreement, so that other students could benefit.

Philip Collier on one such scheme that was a lifesaver for his family

As the parent of a severely disabled child, I have direct experience of the difficulties faced in attempting to secure out-of-school care not only in the holidays but also during term time (More than half of English parents struggle to find accessible holiday clubs for disabled children, 7 July). What did work for me was a scheme run in Bolton in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when play providers were offered support from the local authority to accept children with disabilities.

This was the inclusive play scheme, which sought to provide the service that your article reports is often missing. Under the scheme, a request for a place led to a meeting to explore the child’s difficulties and associated needs in advance, so that the provider received adequate support to not only enable the disabled child to access premises, but also to structure some play activities in which the disabled child could join in and feel included, not just be present.

Simon Steyne says the MP who is expected to be the next prime minister has a chance to appeal to anti-racist former supporters who reject xenophobic policies

Your thoughtful editorial about the immigration bill stresses that, despite demonstrable facts, “Each turn of the dial in a draconian direction reinforces voters’ conviction that the system is out of control, encouraging support for opposition parties that pledge increasingly extreme measures” (The Guardian view on yet another immigration bill: law as performance is a failing model, 1 July).

Indeed, besides diehard racists there are those who have been convinced that migration and asylum present existential threats to Britain. The government refuses to present the contrary evidence, and most mainstream media persistent in conflating migration and asylum, undocumented entry, smuggling and trafficking, and devote much coverage to small boats but little to the absence of safe routes. They also ignore the absence, in the 1951 UN convention, of a “first safe country” provision (if it existed, hardly any refugees would be here).

Readers respond to the Reform UK leader’s move to resign and stand again in a byelection in Clacton

Nigel Farage’s behaviour increasingly resembles that of Schrödinger’s MP: simultaneously present and absent, committed and uncommitted, depending entirely on the demands of his personal political theatre. His latest trick – resigning his seat only to stand again in a byelection of his own making – is a striking example of this paradox. It allows him to claim the mantle of democratic renewal while sidestepping the basic expectation that an MP should simply get on with the job they were elected to do.

Constituents deserve stability, not a revolving door of self‑generated electoral drama. Parliament is not supposed to be a pantomime; nor should it be treated as a backdrop for perpetual campaigning. When an MP prioritises spectacle over service, the public is left with representation that exists in name only.

• British player faces Zverev in semi-final on Friday

• Nosebleeds have stopped since procedure

Arthur Fery has revealed that his spectacular second week at Wimbledon has been aided by a secret procedure on his nose and the Godfather trilogy as he prepares for the biggest match of his career on Friday, against Alexander Zverev in the semi-finals.

Fery’s run through the draw to meet the French Open champion has included consecutive five-set comebacks against Zizou Bergs and Grigor Dimitrov, winning both matches in final set tie-breaks after trailing, but his earlier matches repeatedly had to be paused after he suffered from nosebleeds.

• Czech 10th seed clinches a 6-2, 1-6, 7-6 (10) victory

• Muchova faces compatriot Noskova in Saturday’s final

She finds a first serve on match point and the contact is perfect: 117mph, punched hard down the centre line, and from the moment her hand receives the message from her strings, she must know this is it. Of course the ball may come back, and indeed the ball does come back, but only barely. And in those few seconds as it arcs over the net, springs back up off the grass and hangs there like a beautiful sweet fruit, Coco Gauff has a Wimbledon final in her grasp.

The afternoon has been hot: viciously hot, sadistically hot, the sort of heat that seems to take years from you. In the crowd, paper fans wave and flutter like butterflies, and this has been a match full of natural beauty, of clean swings and satisfying timing and brilliant shapes set against pale green. And still the return from Karolina Muchova hangs there, high and slow, a sentence demanding a punctuation mark, a piece of Centre Court cinema about to roll the credits.

• Four-time champion dominates 17km climb to win stage six

• French president Emmanuel Macron in attendance

Tadej Pogacar powered alone to the summit of the mighty Col du Tourmalet, deep in the Hautes-Pyrénées, and rode on to victory on stage six to Gavarnie-Gèdre, taking an emphatic overall lead in the 2026 Tour de France.

In the shadow of the towering cliffs of the Cirque de Gavarnie, and under the gaze of the president, Emmanuel Macron, Pogacar was imperious. Only his perennial rival, Jonas Vingegaard, was able to give chase and by the end of the stage even his resistance seemed futile.

• Fourth T20i: England, 159-1 beat India, 158-7, by 9 wickets

• Brook scores 79, Salt 59 to win with six overs remaining

This England team’s recent heatwave continued in Bristol, India wilting to lose their cool, the game and the series in what turned into another bizarrely one-sided encounter. Timid with the bat, poor in the field, error-prone with the ball and swift to accept the inevitably of defeat, this was a complete horror show from the world champions and a performance of complete dominance from Harry Brook’s burgeoning side, who won by nine wickets and will overtake their opponents as world No 1 if they win the final game of the series in Southampton on Saturday.

Brook says this team “can go to some special places”, and top of the rankings would certainly count as one. He talks often about adapting to conditions, as England have done impressively this year in a series in Sri Lanka, in the World Cup in that country and in India, and now also at home.

• Janse van Rensburg, Caluori and Kloska to make debuts

• Head coach: ‘My conversations with the RFU are private’

Steve Borthwick says he and his players are also feeling “the hurt and pain” caused by England’s ­losing streak but has sidestepped ­questions about his job ­security if his team are beaten by Fiji on Saturday. The head coach has not tasted victory since early ­February and will come under significant external pressure should his side slip to a sixth successive Test defeat at Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium.

Many England supporters were disappointed with the way ­Borthwick’s team started and ­finished last Saturday’s 45-21 defeat to South Africa in Johannesburg, with the Springboks racing away to an early 17-0 lead before piling on the misery late on after England lost two players to avoidable yellow cards. If they were to suffer a similar fate to a Fiji side beaten 39-24 by Wales last Saturday the howls of frustration would become deafening.

• Former Crystal Palace academy player gives evidence

• ‘There is much more to be done’, says Moses Swaibu

Match-fixing has increased at an “extraordinary” rate across the world, a select committee of the House of Lords has been told, with organised crime networks even infiltrating chess as they look to launder proceeds from drug and human trafficking.

The International Agreements Committee heard startling testimony on Thursday about the rise of match-fixing as part of its scrutiny of the Macolin Convention, the first and only international treaty on the manipulation of sports competitions. The UK signed the convention in 2018 but has only recently brought it forward for ratification by parliament.

From San Diego to Hong Kong, via Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Germany and Qatar the gelding keeps on winning

One of the sport’s great warriors returned to the front line for the 32nd time in a remarkable career on Thursday, with £12.12m in prize money already banked and the all-time record for a European-trained horse of £12.7m now within reach. Jumping fans often complain that Flat horses are rarely around long enough to become heroes, but Rebel’s Romance is a cast-iron case for the defence.

From San Diego to Hong Kong, via Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Germany and Qatar, Charlie Appleby’s eight-year-old has taken on many of the world’s best middle-distance horses since first setting foot on a track in October 2020.

Two women who alleged they were raped by Tyrion Davis in Suffolk had to testify at an invasive court martial on a US base

Minutes after fleeing the home of an American airman, Rebecca called 999 in tears to report that he had raped her. She recalls vomiting at a police station in Suffolk as she described being repeatedly and violently attacked.

Officers took her to a sexual assault referral centre for an intimate examination. There, a nurse measured and photographed her injuries, including bruises and bite marks on her neck.

Instagram users should check privacy settings after rollout of new Meta AI image generator, advocates warn

Meta has sparked blowback from privacy advocates for allowing its new AI image maker to generate photos of users with public profiles by default.

Users of Meta’s Muse Image AI tool, released Tuesday, can tag public Instagram profiles and generate pictures that pull from faces of people featured in these social media posts. Instagram users are not notified when their posts are integrated into what the company describes as its “most advanced image generation model yet”.

Father Ted co-creator detained by armed officers at Heathrow airport last year over gender-critical posts on X

The Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has been paid £25,000 in compensation by the Metropolitan police and received an apology after his arrest over his gender-critical social media posts.

Linehan, 57, was detained by armed officers at Heathrow airport last September after a 10-hour flight from Arizona.

Teens feel ‘devalued, dismissed or unimportant’ when parents snub them in favor of phones, new research finds

The term “phubbing” was conceived several years ago to describe the modern-day phenomenon of a person ignoring the social setting in front of them in favor of their phone. That act has long-term negative effects when parents do it around their children, according to new research.

A study titled, “Mommy, do you love your phone more than me?”, published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Psychology in June, found that parents and caregivers’ attachment to screens can exacerbate anxiety and insecurity in children and teens.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan presented engraved revolvers – with bullets – to his guests in Ankara, causing security concerns

What does a world leader do with a gun and six bullets? That was the conundrum Nato leaders faced after the Turkish president offered them each a revolver after the Ankara summit.

Keir Starmer was the first to mention the highly unusual gift presented by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to his guests. On the flight back from Ankara, where Nato leaders had gathered for two days, the British prime minister said he and others had received a revolver engraved with their names.

Newly minted rich and those anticipating huge IPOs are fueling buying and charter spree in the private jet sector

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Aviation lawyer Amanda Applegate skipped her annual vacation last month as a surge of wealth from AI startups and SpaceX sent a wave of tech investors shopping for private jets, ⁠burying her in paperwork for aircraft-purchase agreements.

The ⁠attorney, based in Cleveland, Ohio, attributed the rush to a handful ​of major “liquidity events” in the tech industry. The initial public offering (IPO) of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose holdings include artificial-intelligence firm xAI, raised a record $85.7bn for the company and generated unprecedented employee and founder wealth.

Models show overwhelming chance that this year’s El Niño to rank among largest going back to 1950

El Niño is strengthening and the risks of a historic event with the power to supercharge extreme weather around the world are rising, according to the latest analysis from the US National Weather Service.

Models show there is now an 81% chance that a very strong El Niño “that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950” will develop before the end of this year, forecasters said in an advisory released Thursday. There is almost near certainty – a 97% probability – that the conditions will persist through spring 2027.

A brown huntsman is the quickest of more than 250 species analysed by scientists in the UK and Germany

If arachnophobes were not frightened enough by the horrific ability of Australia’s huntsman spiders to drag dead mice up the sides of fridges, they now have another reason.

They might be the fastest spiders on the planet.

Newly endangered animals include desert frogs and snails in extreme ocean depths, both threatened by mining

Life has colonised every corner of the planet by evolving ingenious survival strategies but these are increasingly being overwhelmed by destructive human activities, this year’s red list of endangered species has revealed.

Many snails, limpets and clams have adapted to life at crushing depths in the oceans on hydrothermal vents where water temperatures can reach 450C (842F). But an assessment for the red list found that two-thirds of the hundreds of mollusc species found only on deep sea vents were at risk of extinction because of deep-sea mining.

Amnesty says pyre to be burned on Friday in Moygashel is ‘blatant attempt to stir up anti-Muslim hatred’

A loyalist bonfire in Northern Ireland featuring an effigy of a mosque has been condemned as an incitement to hatred.

The effigy sits atop a tower of pallets that is to be burned on Friday night in the County Tyrone village of Moygashel as part of wider loyalist commemorations. Placards beneath the display read “secure our borders” and “end the threat of radical Islam”.

Exclusive: Source close to co-claimant Prince Harry says he is protective of social campaigner and will not ‘see her out of pocket’

Doreen Lawrence, the social justice campaigner, will not foot any of a multimillion-pound bill for the failed attempt to sue the publisher of the Daily Mail, the Guardian understands.

Lawrence, the mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, whose case was the subject of a long-running Daily Mail campaign from the late 1990s, was one of seven claimants defeated in court over claims the Mail titles used unlawful methods to source stories.

Refuge reports ‘staggering’ 78% annual increase in referrals for cases of technology-facilitated or economic abuse

Domestic abuse charities have reported a “staggering” increase in perpetrators using technology and finances to control their victims, with a “concerning” rise in people being coerced into car finance agreements.

Data from Refuge, the UK’s largest specialist domestic abuse charity, reveals a 78% rise in referrals for cases of technology-facilitated or economic abuse in the past year.

Relatives describe ‘unimaginable loss’ as police seek father who is suspected of killing them before fleeing to Zimbabwe

Tributes have been paid to three members of the same family who were found dead in their home in Bedfordshire on Monday. Nothabo Zandile Tshuma and her daughters Natalie, 15, and Nala, five, were described as much-loved members of their community who brought joy to those around them.

An international manhunt is under way for their husband and father, 45-year-old Ndodana Mkhanyisi Tshuma, who is suspected of killing them before leaving the UK for Zimbabwe.

David Hearn is accused of destroying ‘American flag blue’ lining material on the bottom of the reflecting pool

David Hearn, a former Olympic canoe racer, pleaded not guilty on Thursday to damaging Washington’s reflecting pool after a $14.7m renovation project.

Hearn, a three-time US Olympian, was indicted last week on a single felony count of property destruction. He appeared in local superior court in Washington DC to enter the plea after he was criminally charged over the incident in mid-June.

Trailblazing pilot was denied opportunity to become Nasa astronaut but made history on Blue Origin flight in 2021

Wally Funk, a trailblazing aviation pioneer who was denied the opportunity to become a Nasa astronaut and half a century later became the oldest woman to travel into space, has died aged 87.

Funk died peacefully on Wednesday evening at her apartment in an assisted living facility in Grapevine, Texas, city councilwoman and close friend Duff O’Dell said on Thursday. O’Dell, who described herself as Funk’s caregiver, said she was by Funk’s side. Funk had fallen a couple of times recently and had an infection in her leg. “It took its toll,” O’Dell told the Associated Press.

Reporting suggests FBI involved in seizure of Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada García from Mexican territory in 2024

Mexico has launched an investigation into whether the US lied about its involvement in the capture and secretive transfer of a top Sinaloa cartel member in 2024, in what would be a potential violation of the country’s sovereignty.

The US has long denied it played any role in the operation to detain the drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, a founder of the Sinaloa cartel, inside Mexico. Recent reporting by the local media outlet Pie de Nota, however, suggested that the FBI was involved in his capture.

President orders investigation after fictitious body given funding, triggering renewed scrutiny of alleged corruption

A fictitious federal entity that was allocated 1.3bn naira (£700,000) in Nigeria’s 2026 budget has precipitated a political storm in Africa’s largest democracy in the run-up to a general election set for January.

The fake agency came to light last October when Femi Gbajabiamila, the president’s chief of staff, wrote to the police alleging that his signature, along with official seals and reference numbers, had been forged by Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, who was claiming to have been appointed by the presidency to head the presidential foreign intervention promotion council (PFIPC).

Staggered release of ChatGPT 5.6 follows similar restrictions on rival firm Anthropic’s latest AI models

OpenAI released its latest advanced AI model, called ChatGPT 5.6, on Thursday after earlier delaying the public rollout over US government concerns about cybersecurity. The Trump administration had requested last month that OpenAI limit the release to a small group of government-approved users.

OpenAI complied with the White House’s request last month. The company stated in a blogpost that it had briefed government officials on ChatGPT 5.6’s capabilities and restricted the model to trusted partners at their behest. The product’s wider release came after additional testing by the government’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation agency, according to Axios.

Outsourcing firm counts cost of failures that left retired UK civil servants without an income for months

Capita has revealed that the bill for cleaning up its mess at the crisis-hit civil service pension scheme could wipe up to £40m off annual profits – a day after its chief executive apologised to MPs for a “very poor service”.

The company had faced a grilling at a Commons committee hearing on Wednesday, with its chief executive, Adolfo Hernandez, repeatedly apologising for failures that have kept thousands of civil servants waiting for payments and retirement quotes.

Demonstrations at 18 sites set up as radical transformation plan put to board of Europe’s biggest carmaker

Volkswagen’s proposal to slash up to 100,000 jobs and close factories faced a major test on Thursday as it was formally put to its supervisory board, with protests at the company’s plants in Germany.

IG Metall organised demonstrations involving shop stewards and union council members at 18 sites at Europe’s biggest carmaker, including at its headquarters. The influential staff union told the chief executive, Oliver Blume, that he could not “pass the buck for failures of recent years on to the workforce”.

Dow down 1.09%, or 500 points, as S&P 500 sees a small loss and tech-heavy Nasdaq rises slightly

• Middle East crisis live

US stock markets fell on Wednesday as the US continued strikes on Iran and the Federal Reserve flagged concerns that would warrant higher interest rates.

Donald Trump’s declaration at the Nato summit in Ankara that the Iran-US ceasefire is over sent oil prices sharply higher on Wednesday. Brent crude, the global benchmark, jumped more than 5% to crest $80 a barrel. US stocks fell in step, with the Dow down 1.09%, or 500 points, at closing Wednesday afternoon. The S&P 500 saw a small loss while the tech-heavy Nasdaq rose slightly. Global stocks had fallen earlier in the day, with the UK’s FTSE 100 down 1% as Japan’s Nikkei fell 2.1%.

Game of Thrones actor Anton Lesser brings poise and depth to this classic adaptation, conjuring monsters, heroes and Gods

With its gods, monsters and dizzying scale, Homer’s the Odyssey is deemed by many to be unfilmable, though it hasn’t stopped directors from having a go, including Christopher Nolan, whose blockbuster adaptation comes to cinemas next week. An audiobook would seem a smart choice, allowing listeners to deploy their imaginations to conjure dark sorcery, supernatural beasts and epic storms rather than leaning on CGI.

This classic recording, first published in 2006, is based on Ian Johnston’s much-admired translation. It is narrated by the Game of Thrones actor Anton Lesser, who brings gravitas and texture to this tale of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his efforts to get home after the 10-year Trojan War. Odysseus’s journey is fraught as he encounters the wrath of the sea god Poseidon in the form of a man-eating monster and a whirlpool that swallows ships. Then comes Calypso, the beautiful goddess-nymph and daughter of Atlas who keeps him on an island for seven years in the hope that he will stay as her husband.

As his American Utopia tour film hits cinemas, the musician answers your questions about his Scottish sense of humour, working with Brian Eno and his desire to direct another film

In May 1977, Talking Heads along with Ramones toured the UK starting at Eric’s Club in Liverpool. Did touring as punk exploded have an impact on you? SpiritofWacker
There was something really great about that tour because other than maybe a few singles the audience had never seen us, so there was a lot of curiosity and openness to us and Ramones, as different as we were. Later on, fans kind of decided they liked this band or didn’t like this band, but everything happened very quickly. I remember we did a show at the Roundhouse [in London] where somebody in the audience was gobbing on the bands and, of course, Ramones really didn’t like this. Understandably enough, they didn’t see it as a sign of – ha! – respect: “We’re with you so we’re gonna spit on you.” Ramones got more of that than we did, but at least they had leather jackets. We didn’t.

Ever since the Stop Making Sense tour, it seems to me that your live shows have been a quest to unchain the band from the physical restrictions of the typical rock concert. If that is so, where do you go from here? Lucifer_Sam
From various tours I’d realised that my guitar could be wireless. Then I did a tour with St Vincent where the brass players had started in marching bands, so were used to being mobile. I thought: “OK, what about drums?” I looked at drumline in American football and samba schools in Rio. I asked my longtime percussionist Mauro [Refosco] how many players we’d need to break down the drum kit into components and he said six. I took a big gulp and said: “I think we can afford it.” Then I discovered a Hungarian company which had invented a Midi keyboard on a self-powered rack. Suddenly, the whole band were liberated to move about, which democratised the concert experience for the musicians and the audience, who get to understand what each one does.

Like tradwifery for children, this revamp of the 19th-century settlers show is a precision-tooled and well-oiled machine. It’s a cosy world full of faith, hope and the American way

I never actually watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie, though it bestrode my late 70s-early 80s’ childhood like a ginghamed colossus. This is for the simple reason that Michael Landon’s bouffant hair frightened me. Bouffant hair is such a bad thing. But so great is the power of both the cultural cringe and osmosis that even the most militant Britisher of a certain age has absorbed to some degree the story of the pioneering Ingalls family and its on-screen aesthetic. For the younger folk – it’s tradwifery for children.

The series was of course based on the books (and named after the third in the series, which was published in 1935 and hasn’t been out of print since) by Laura Ingalls Wilder. They in turn were an account, shaped for a young readership, of her childhood spent moving across the American West in the 1870s and 80s, settling and resettling in different states as her parents sought their manifest destiny.

The one-woman phenomenon is typically outspoken in her new documentary series. But don’t expect much in the way of insight from this carefully manufactured show

‘In 10 years’ time,” muses 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy as he watches his employee Kenneth the page walk back to his desk, “we’ll either all be working for him or dead by his hand.” I have always felt much the same way about Katie Price, AKA Jordan, née Katrina Infield, the 90s glamour model turned celebrity turned businesswoman turned cultural behemoth who has dominated headlines, airwaves and, increasingly, television documentary slots over the last 30 years. Her ruthless commodification of herself and others around her, the vaulting ambition, the fortunes earned and spent, the battles fought, the sloughing off of abuse that would have broken any lesser being, the belligerence, the keen intelligence, the dead-eyed stare down any camera lens presented to her, the bizarre vulnerability when it comes to men, the flat monotone voice daring you to poke the basilisk … all of it together is as terrifying as it is fascinating. If she ever chooses to slip her tabloid bonds and turn her attention to wider world domination – well, I for one shall be the first to swear fealty and avoid a much more fatal kind of fate.

The latest documentary about the Price phenomenon is called Katie Price: Nothing to Hide. The Beckhams have done one each since Price’s last major outing, the Vardys have a reality show, Coleen Rooney is on the up and up – the correct pecking order must be restored. So here is Price again, on a giant sofa, vaping or chomping through snacks with her luminous giant veneers, swathed in a giant sweatshirt and pants, 10 days after her latest facial surgery and avowing honesty. “You can talk to whoever you like,” she tells the film-maker Paddy Wivell, who generally focuses on non-celebrity subjects (most recently, in Hell Jumper, on volunteers in the war in Ukraine).

This evangelising of a wealth tax should have made for a truly amazing documentary. But it allows its host to be totally out-argued by all his interviewees. Why?

What do we do about a country in which the richest 56 people in the UK have as much wealth as the poorest 27 million? What do we do about a world that has just witnessed the birth of its first trillionaire? What do we do about an era in which you can interview the owner of a telecoms company in his multi-million-pound Hyde Park apartment and a frontline ambulance worker who is having to live in his van, parked on a suburban Bristol street?

Gary Stevenson knows what to do. He is evangelical about what to do. Gary was vouchsafed knowledge of exactly what to do after making a fortune in the city betting against an early economic recovery for the country after the 2011 financial and ongoing Eurozone crises. The UK needs a wealth tax – he recommends 2% on everything anyone owns above £10m. This would bring in around £24bn a year that could be spent on the NHS, affordable housing or (Gary’s preferred option because it would represent a more direct redistribution of the wealth those 56 and their wannabes have hoarded) tax cuts for “ordinary people”.

Alan Cumming oversees a murderous, OTT climax. Plus: proud Mancunian actor Ruth Madeley discovers her roots lie to the south. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Three
The American version – with its OTT celebrities and host Alan Cumming in some outlandish wardrobe choices – has proved a fun watch. As we reach the climax, “Housewife Slayer” Rob is hoping to introduce singer Eric to his murderous ways, while former figure skaters Tara and Johnny reveal the friendship they have kept hidden. And can ex-Love Islander and pride of Ireland Maura Higgins wise up about the identity of the Traitors before she becomes one of their last victims? Hannah J Davies

(Third Man)
Following the superb No Name, White continues his fan service with stripped back songs and nasty, anarchic riffs – though it all ends up feeling a little samey

It’s a strange thing to say about one of the most prolific artists of his – or any – generation, but: Jack White has been undergoing something of a career renaissance of late. After firmly establishing himself as one of the most beloved and defining figures of 21st-century rock with his early-00s blues duo the White Stripes, White seemed to get bigger and bigger over the next decade-plus, releasing albums with well-liked side projects the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather, dropping a couple of fine solo albums, and helping spark the music industry’s vinyl revival with his label and pressing plant Third Man Records.

But, at some point in the mid-2010s – around the release of his third solo album, 2018’s Boarding House Reach, let’s say – White’s influence and celebrity seemed to be outweighing his actual output, with rising pop stars like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo naming him a prime influence. Record plants the world over became backed-up, thanks to pop stars releasing dozens of gimmicky vinyl variants of their own albums, resulting in months-long delays for indie artists – hardly a problem White was responsible for (and likely one he himself was annoyed by), but certainly the result of a craze he had helped spark. At the same time, all the quirks and codes of White’s output – the specific colour schemes and sometimes arcane guiding opinions – threatened to overwhelm the immediacy and sharpness that had once been the core of White’s actual music.

Armed with a new album inspired by ‘dead English blokes’, the revered musician discusses writing nasty songs about his neighbours and how he’s finally made it in Nashville aged 73

‘I owe a lot to a dead man’s cock.” So begins the first song, a propulsive piece of Lennonesque powerpop called I Am This Thing, on The Confuser, the latest album by the 73-year-old English gentleman survivor of the 60s/70s frontline, Robyn Hitchcock. The album has been recorded by a crack team of session guys in Nashville, where Hitchcock lives and runs a boutique record label with his second wife, the Australian singer-songwriter Emma Swift.

“I’m not just some sort of old public school dilettante floating around the South Bank or whatever,” Hitchcock protests, unbidden. “Making it work in Nashville means I actually am a real musician songwriter in the real musician songwriter town. And I think, ‘OK, I actually did do this!’ I wanted to go to Nashville when I, as a 13-year-old boarding school boy, heard those Dylan records he made here. And a mere 60 years later, here I am!”

As the Bayreuth festival turns 150, we look at the composer’s huge and enduring influence, and wonder what might have happened to classical music in his absence?

One hundred and fifty years ago this summer, Richard Wagner wanted to change the world. Not only the musical world, but nationhood, political thought, even the idea of what it means to be human. The inaugural Bayreuth festival opened on 13 August 1876, with the first complete cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen staged in Wagner’s custom-built Bayreuth Festspielhaus in Bavaria. The first audience included kings, emperors, aristocracy and politicians as well as Europe’s musical and creative elites (Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Bruckner and Liszt among them). Wagner, who had been a revolutionary on the streets of Dresden in the 1840s, intended the Ring’s four operas to usher in a new world, one redeemed and made wise by this epic story of power, love, redemption, betrayal and renewal.

The titanic impact of Wagner is almost impossible to grasp today. Stage design aside (having the orchestra entirely hidden in the pit and darkening the auditorium were two of his innovations at Bayreuth) his legacies are felt across the arts from the way Wagnerism gripped German philosophers and Paris’s painters and poets in the 19th century, to the seismic changes he wreaked in cultural politics, and the toxicity of the antisemitic bearers of the Wagnerian flame after his death in 1883.

She was a member of the influential rap collective, then the alt-R&B hitmakers – but struggled to find her own voice. Now, after realising she ‘didn’t like anybody else’s beats’, she’s made a solo album that is truly hers

There was a time when Sydney Bennett really wanted “something to show for all of my hard work”. The 34-year-old singer-rapper-producer-engineer was a member of Odd Future, the anarchic Los Angeles rap collective that also included Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean and Earl Sweatshirt. In 2011, that group birthed the Internet, the indie-R&B band Bennett formed with her best friend, Matt Martians. Since then, Bennett has released two acclaimed solo records, collaborated with Beyoncé and Kehlani, and been nominated for a Grammy, alongside the Internet.

Still, around the time of her last album, 2022’s Broken Hearts Club, she started hoping for an award or public recognition. But then she bought a house – a nice spot on the same street she grew up on in Mid-City, LA – “and now I’m happy”. I look at her quizzically, sitting across from me in a private room in a hotel in east London, as she takes a sip of pineapple juice. It was as simple as that, I ask? She lets out a guffaw, flashing a set of perfect teeth. “I’m afraid it was,” she says, grinning conspiratorially.

Riwoe’s commanding new book traces a Chinese Australian family across four generations – all connected by one old longan tree

It’s the year 2049 and Daniel Connelly is 75 years old. Eccentric and lonely after decades of self-imposed isolation, his existence is “spartan”, a “relentless searching, a yearning for pieces that fit together to make a new whole”. He spends his days making sculptures from broken pottery; the shards of his life.

During a warm winter’s day, Daniel steps outside to find that the longan tree in his garden has fallen during a storm. The tree was an heirloom of sorts – a family emblem of home and belonging for generations before him.

Park/Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/Egel
(BIS)
The young violinist pairs contrasting works by Goldmark and Sibelius in engaging and fluid performances

A relative rarity in the concert hall, Karl Goldmark’s 1877 Violin Concerto has nevertheless fared reasonably well on disc. South Korean violinist Sueye Park pairs it here not with another 19th-century staple but with miniatures by Sibelius: the bucolic Suite from 1929, the Two Serious Melodies, written at the outbreak of the first world war, and two of his six Humoresques.

The composers crossed paths when the Finn studied briefly under Goldmark in 1890s Vienna, but despite the polite whiff of folk music that hangs about the Hungarian’s concerto, it has little in common with Sibelius’s unvarnished Nordic nationalism. It makes the album something of a game of two halves, though there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

As a series of star-studded events celebrates Ginsberg’s centennial, the keeper of his estate weighs the genius poetry – and provocative views – of the iconic writer

In 1985 Allen Ginsberg sat his friend, an out gay 17-year-old named Peter Hale, down and gave some advice: “Get a wife, settle down, and have kids.” At the time, Hale was enrolled in a summer program at Naropa University, a Buddhism-inspired college where Ginsberg, 59, ran the writing program.

“He told me not to live the life of the itinerant poet going around heartbroken, forever unfulfilled,” Hale tells me via video call. Ginsberg was, in Hale’s words, “very much a traditionalist”.

A young boy and his two siblings stay with their aunt in the West Country, in this haunting debut set over the long, hot summer of 1976

The summer of 1976 calls to my generation of novelists. We don’t remember it, but we remember the textures of daily life in that era, and a heatwave puts daily life under the kind of pressure that fuels fiction. In Guardian journalist Charlotte Edwardes’s first novel, Trouble Was, the scene is set by that heatwave with its attendant, escalating water shortage; the escalating marital and mental health crisis of the mother of three young children; a remote farm in the West Country. Though in some ways the pace is slow– not a criticism, the pace of school holidays with nowhere to go and nothing to do is also slow – the novel’s engines thrum from the first page.

Edwardes has taken the risk of a first-person child narrator, primary-aged Frank. Such figures are necessarily precocious – there’s a reason full-length novels by nine-year-olds are rarely written and never published – and tend to make demands on our suspension of disbelief, but in this case it’s convincing and compelling from the outset. The use of past tense helps, allowing both strikingly immediate observation and the feeling that the prose is in the steady hands of a remembering adult. Through the gap between Frank and the reader’s comprehension, the book conveys what the reader needs to understand about the adults’ lives. We know that most of the adults are also adulterers, that his mother’s mental illness is hereditary as well as situational, and that her efforts to fob off social services are just about adequate.

PS5, PC, Xbox Series X/S; Ubisoft Singapore/Ubisoft
Ubisoft has removed all the boring parts of pirate life from its fantasy RPG, creating something more focused and fun

Edward Kenway isn’t your dad’s Assassin’s Creed protagonist. Neither sworn to ancient oaths nor given a noble destiny, he’s just a guy who likes coin, dislikes rules, and whose gold-chasing, rule-dodging lifestyle sees him embroiled in an ancient war between Templars and assassins quite by accident. After he’s shipwrecked with a man named Walpole who turns out to be a Templar, Edward assumes Walpole’s identity in the hopes of securing the bounty he mentioned.

Edward wears life lightly. The world around him is violent and chaotic, and those in his vicinity are more obsessed with double-crossings than a Mission:Impossible movie writers’ room. Ed just smiles, undeterred by it all, and gets on with plundering. It’s all just fun and games to him, and he is set on conquering the Caribbean on his own terms. He is a brilliant extension of the player, in that way, and that’s what this remake of the 2013 pirate-themed Assassin’s Creed does so well: the sense of freedom.

Sony’s announcement spells the end of a whole ecosystem built by superfan collectors – and signals a troubling shift in the industry

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Sony’s decision last week to quietly announce the end of physical games production for the PlayStation in 2028 is one of the most perfect PR disasters in recent gaming history – and considering what has been happening with Xbox, that’s saying something.

First, there was the timing. Sony posted the news of its decision on the PlayStation blog, less than a week after admitting that it would be deleting 550 movies from the digital libraries of PlayStation owners due to the end of a licensing deal – thereby perfectly illustrating the dangers of purchasing digital products. (Surprise! You never actually owned them!) The move is in stark contrast with the company’s stance on this very issue back in 2013. When Microsoft was attempting to push Xbox One as a digital-first console with strict controls on the sharing and reselling of its games, Sony brilliantly mocked its rival with a short video on how easy it was to lend physical games to pals on the PS4. Oh dear.

The massively multiplayer online role-playing game has grown into a virtual social space and part of daily life for thousands of players

In a small stone chapel, on the edgelands of a medieval wilderness, two women are getting married. The attenders are draped in rainbow capes, glowing armour and top hats. A scantily clad, muscular man with angel wings officiates the ceremony. Over the heads of the two brides hover the words “I do” in bright yellow text. This is RuneScape, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (or MMO) set in the Tolkienesque realm of Gielinor. Turning 25 this year, it has, over its lifetime, become a crucial virtual social space and part of daily life for thousands of players.

Lancashire-born Amelia, one of the pixelated newlyweds, met her wife on a dating app but first bonded through their love of the game. “Our first and second date was pretty much exclusively talking about RuneScape,” she recalls. Four years later they were married, shortly followed by their in-game ceremony. Morgan – a 26-year-old from the Midlands – is one of Amelia’s closest friends. They met through the game and run UWU Girls together, a RuneScape clan that Morgan founded in a bid to cater to players across the gender spectrum. “We do IRL meetups, and for a lot of these women, it’s been their first meetings with strangers online – and that’s the same for me.”

With players leaving EA’s series once life there felt like a grind beset by ethical concerns, this quirky new sim promises a better life elsewhere

For 26 years, the life-sims genre has been dominated by one series: The Sims. Originally designed by Will Wright, creator of Sim City, EA’s virtual dollhouse series has grown into a $5bn [£3.8bn] empire with the constant release of new games, expansion packs, and collaborations cementing its place among the bestselling video game franchises of all time. But things are beginning to change. New contenders are emerging and turning the heads of even loyal players in The Sims community.

The most recent, and promising, of these is Paralives, once the solo project of indie designer Alex Massé, who is now employing a small team of developers. Released on the PC games platform Steam in May 2026 as an early access title (meaning it’s technically unfinished and looking for user feedback), it sold 250,000 copies in just eight hours. On that first day, the concurrent player count hit 78,603 – not far off The Sims 4’s all-time peak of 96,328 in 2022. While Paralives is a small project, this success is understandable. Following the news of EA’s controversial acquisition by a Saudi-backed business consortium, some simmers are looking for what they see as a more ethical alternative. But this is only part of the game’s appeal. The real draw is the game’s focus on creativity over realism: the quirky details that made many fans fall in love with The Sims in the first place.

The horny TV series has inspired a whopping four comedy shows this summer. Their makers explain why musical theatre and steamy action are such good bedfellows – and why there’s no rivalry between them

Five minutes was all it took. The stars of Heated Rivalry barely had a chance to shed each other’s clothes before writer and composer Dylan MarcAurele started taking notes, knowing that the horny hockey TV series was going to be his next parody project. “I had this idea that it would be a one-night-only concert for friends,” says the New York-based writer of fringe hit Pop Off, Michelangelo! But then he got producer Alan Kliffer on board, and performances sold out before the script had even been written. “It was a no-brainer,” Kliffer says. “I trusted it would be good, and I was right.”

After a successful off-Broadway run, Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody is now heading for the Edinburgh fringe – and it’s not alone. Three musical spoofs of the series are hotting up at this year’s festival. With the show’s success – all perky keisters, swanky hotel shags, a secret sex cottage and just a smidgeon of hockey – Kliffer reckons it was inevitable. “You just know, at the end of the TV show,” he says, “that gay men everywhere will race to write musicals about it.”

London Palladium
The Eurovision star leads a glittery production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s blockbuster but this booming show lacks context and clarity

This amped-up version of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s rock opera is presented by the same triumvirate who near enough blew the critics – and crowds – to heaven with their 2016 revival. Tim Sheader is again director, designer Tom Scutt’s set has a similar scaffold structure (but with some audience members standing around it this time) and Drew McOnie is once more the choreographer.

The production, in spirit, goes back not just to the first century when Jesus of Nazareth rises to become an inspiring preacher, radical tearaway and thorn in the side of the temple clerics, but also to the 1970s era of hippy-dom and flower power from which the original show arose.

Theatre503, London
Mixing naturalism and fantasy, Katie Đỗ’s debut is conceptually inventive but flawed by over-short scenes and scant emotive appeal

This debut by Vietnamese-American playwright Katie Đỗ travels across realms. It begins in the afterlife, with a whimsical scene of heaven as a place that is built out of a character’s happiest moments on earth.

The play spans several decades in the life of one family, and mixes naturalism with dreams, fantasy and interior life. That makes it formally inventive but the switches render the drama diffuse, leaching its emotive power rather than adding layers.

Swansea Grand theatre
School locker room banter has a sinister edge in Jonathan Houlston’s shrewd debut, which pairs the toxic tropes of Adolescence with the group dynamics of Laura Wade’s Posh

In Jonathan Houlston’s strikingly astute and utterly gripping debut play, a school’s locker room is a retreat for its pupils. Here, hypermasculinity is performed en masse, first dates are held in secret and reputation-threatening confessions are whispered cautiously.

We first meet the boys as a pack, and collectively they play up to the tropes we’ve been on high alert about since the TV drama Adolescence. Banter sprinkled with “your mum” jokes flows, chat about sex reduces their female classmates to goals, and nude pictures are shared around like trophies.

Speaking at a Guardian Live event at Love Supreme festival, the band tell us about lessons with Tony Allen, mayhem in Lagos and why musicians should be ‘pillars of the community’

At Sussex’s Love Supreme festival last weekend, Femi Koleoso and James Mollison of British jazz figureheads Ezra Collective joined me for a wide-ranging conversation on their artistry, the power of the dancefloor and hopes for the future of British music.

With Koleoso noting that “dancefloors are dancefloors, whether it’s people with instruments or people with turntables, there’s a synergy between all those spaces”, the pair reminisced about some of their own favourite dancefloor memories. Mollison mentioned east London’s now-shuttered Passing Clouds, while Koleoso remembered north London’s University of Dub night at the Scala, as well as Sunday sessions at the Haggerston pub, where a jazz jam would take place at the same time as a disco night: “I was so conflicted on which room to go to!”

The South African photographer, whose images arise from being embedded in queer and rural communities, has been named the winner of the James Barnor prize

As his bold yet delicate sculptures fill the glass buildings of Brussels for Ireland’s turn at the EU presidency, the Wexford artist discusses working with Björk, his decorator father – and one noisy horse

‘Just so you know,” says Richard Malone before we begin talking, “if you hear any neighing, it’s not me!” The Irish artist is speaking to me from an unusual studio space: a farm in Stradbally, County Laois. It may have the odd equine intruder, hungry for press coverage, but it also boasts huge lambing sheds – the perfect location for Malone to construct his latest five-metre sculptures.

“There’s lovely lambs everywhere and about 20 dogs running around,” he smiles. “Exactly what I’d choose to have around me.”

The advocacy group’s study finds a decrease in queer people of color and zero trans characters in 2025 films

LGBTQ+ characters are slowly disappearing from film in a trend that disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ characters of color, according to a report published today.

An annual study of films by the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Glaad has found that just 46 of 225 films released in 2025 contained LGBTQ+ characters, making only 20.4% of last year’s movies inclusive of the queer community.

I didn’t see being a couple of years away from technically qualifying for an 18-30s jaunt to be a problem. But the booze, humiliation and a ‘mystery pooer’ made me rethink my entire life

‘First the bad news,” yelled our lairy Irish club rep as the coach drove us from Ibiza airport to our hotel. “All the great clubs: Amnesia, Space, Pacha … they’re CLOSED!”

A confused silence descended. “But the good news?” he yelled. “We’re gonna have a fucking amazing time anyway!!!”

Gary got a free festival ticket and agreed to go halves on a full-price one for Rita, but now he won’t stop going on about it. He says calling it a favour is simply a fact. You decide who the party pooper is

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

The way he presents it makes me feel as though I’m being a burden or that I now owe him something

No more warm beer or sweaty cheese: these are the cool boxes that keep their chill when it matters

• The best (and worst) wine coolers

Whether you’re heading to a festival or pitching up at a campsite with the whole family, nothing spoils a trip faster than a bottle of sour milk and a warm can of beer. A reliable cool box is your best defence against such disappointments, and today’s models are designed to keep your provisions frosty, long after you’ve lost your phone signal. But which ones are actually up to muster?

From insulated picnic bags to heavy-duty ice chests, I’ve tested 18 of the best coolers and rounded up the ones that should keep you (and your hummus) fresh. Because no one should have to settle for tepid wine after the effort of pitching a tent.

Best cool box overall:
Coleman Pro cooler box

Best budget cool box:
Campingaz Icetime Plus

You don’t need to be a super athlete to take part in parkrun. Whether it’s pacing yourself or picking the perfect shoes, here’s how to find your feet at the UK’s favourite 5k

• The best running shoes for every runner

I have a gym membership and walk everywhere, but I’m not what you’d typically picture when you think of a fitness writer. Compared with the Guardian’s running experts, I’m a not-particularly-enthusiastic amateur.

But what I lack in speed, stamina, and gazelle-like grace, I make up for with dogged persistence. Since 2014, I’ve run 355 parkruns in 63 locations. That’s a lot of hours – especially given my finishing times.

Too hot to sleep? From temperature-regulating mattress toppers to a fan quiet enough for the bedroom, here are our best buys for sweaty nights – and what to avoid

• The best fans, tested

If there’s anything more uncomfortable than enduring a heatwave in Britain, it’s sleeping through one.

But hot nights are only going to get more common if the climate crisis continues its long march. While Britons are already accustomed to poor sleep – with the average adult getting just three days a week of good kip, according to the Mental Health Foundation – heat doesn’t help. Dr Allie Hare, consultant in sleep medicine and co-president of the British Sleep Society, says: “Being too hot during sleep can significantly reduce sleep quality and duration. In particular, it can reduce slow wave (deep) sleep, the stage of sleep that helps us awaken feeling rested.”

Snack packs, swim fins, and a foundation brush for applying sun cream … we asked you for the one thing worth making suitcase space for

• The best suitcases – tested

Counting down until your next getaway? We thought so. It’s peak holiday season, so to help you get in the mood (and get a head start on packing), we asked you for the essentials that always make it into your suitcase.

From tried-and-tested luggage and day-to-night sandals to long-journey entertainment for kids, our reader recommendations and Filter favourites will provide lots of inspiration for your next trip.

As sales of sparkling wine continue to soar, one aromatic French fizz is worthy of particular appreciation

It was in the middle of the pandemic that I ceased stashing sparkling wine. There were no special occasions, or occasions at all, really, save for daily episodes of the BBC’s Baby Club with two cabin-fevered infants and the weekly thrill of a veg box. I might have been stockpiling chickpeas, but I was cracking bubbles open willy-nilly because, well, why not?

And I never stopped. The unrelentingly grim news agenda seems as good a reason as any to pop a cork these days, because sparkling wine invariably lifts my spirits. And I’m not alone in drinking more of it: according to a study by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine, sparkling wine sales have grown faster than any other style in recent years, rising in value from €2.3bn to €8.5bn over the past quarter-century. (That said, I might be an outlier on the timing front, because 2020 figures also point to a dip in sales)

You don’t need any complicated kit to eat well while sleeping under the stars. Just take a stove, a spork – and these recipes

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Much as I love camping, I understand why so many recoil at the idea of spending their holidays sleeping in a field and sharing bathroom facilities with several hundred other people, plus the local spider population. But, having just enjoyed a week in Devon in a one-person tent, with an elderly terrier, I have to come out in praise of campsite cookery. Though we ate in some superb pubs, the meals that brought the most joy were the ones we threw together from the small village shops we passed. (Shout out to the Holne Community Shop and Tearoom for being so well stocked – and to the kind fellow shopper who gave me and the dog a lift back to the campsite with our loot.) It gave me pause for thought about the kind of meals you actually cook when camping … and by camping, I don’t mean sleeping in a van kitted out with a fridge and a cooker, nice as that looked while struggling with guy ropes. I mean when your only equipment is what you can carry on your back: ie a small gas stove or a disposable barbecue, a knife and a spork.

Joe Woodhouse has some lovely ideas here, and there’s plenty of advice in this collection of recipes from the likes of Ben Tish and Melissa Hemsley. But, for me, the trick is always to focus on one key ingredient that doesn’t need to be kept too cool (this will, of course, vary depending on where you’re camping), and base all your meals around it until it runs out, at which point you’ll need to track down a new one. Ours, on this trip, were chorizo – the cured, rather than the cooking kind – and feta. With those two flavour bombs, and the olive oil, chilli sauce and salt that should be on everyone’s packing list anyway, you can make a feast from almost anything you find en route. Claudia Roden’s spicy potatoes from Rioja would have been ideal, as would Thomasina Miers’ piperade with baked eggs and crispy chorizo, though we might have had to lose a couple of the spices in favour of Tabasco.

This Napoleonic classic is all too often overcomplicated, but this ode to the French-British author’s version is both simple and stunning

A few weeks ago, as part of the British Library’s food season, the novelist Michèle Roberts, biographer Francesca Wade, writer Eli Davies and food writer Rebecca May Johnson were brought together for a discussion on women’s culinary lives, and on the kitchen as a space of creativity, resistance and intellectual life. I couldn’t be there, but by all accounts it was a brilliant discussion, which I hope was recorded.

I have, though, read all four authors’ recent books. Davies’ perceptive and funny The Spinster Cookbook, which explores what it means to shop, cook (or not) for one in a society designed for couples and families; Wade’s tremendous and deeply researched exploration of the making and remaking of Gertrude Stein in Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife (was Stein a genius or the high priestess of the cult of unintelligibility? We are left to decide); May Johnson’s welcoming, challenging and tomato sauce-filled Small Fires; and Roberts’ slim, second cookbook, French Cooking for Two.

Reboot your surplus zucchini as a condiment to complement just about any savoury plate

Mountain Feed is a super-cute garden nursery and store in Ben Lomond, California, with a blog I’ve followed for years (it teaches everything from bee-keeping to cheese-making) and which answers that age-old question, “What should I do with all this zucchini?!” in my favourite way – namely, through lacto-fermentation. Lacto-fermented courgettes are a great alternative to fermented or pickled gherkins, and perfect as a condiment alongside just about any plate of savoury food, especially when they’re spiced with lots of chilli.

You might hurt him terribly in the short term, Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes. But sometimes sparing people pain isn’t what’s good for them

• Read more Leading questions

I am deeply conflicted about whether to separate from my husband of 20 years, yet I am deeply burnt out from supporting him. He arrived as a refugee, spoke little English at the time, is from a very different culture to mine and has, as yet, untreated ADHD and PTSD. After much coaxing he agreed to couples counselling but we have now exhausted two therapists to no avail.

If I decide to separate I know that I will be far more supported by friends and family than he will be.

As a child, enduring break after break, I thought of myself as simply unlucky. Truth was, I needed to tune in to my aches, pains and well-founded fears

It was the first day of spring this year. I was topless, face-down on a foldaway travel table, as the masseuse uttered six words that brought my attempt at relaxation to an abrupt end: “I think your arm is haunted.”

I have broken my right arm seven times: seven breaks on seven separate occasions. Some years, my arm was in a sling more than it was out of one. The novelty of getting your mates to cover your cast in that 00s graffiti “S” and the relief of missing the bleep test at school quickly wore off.

My daughter’s scruffy little pet would fall asleep with me on the sofa, stilling my racing mind. And then he changed my life in an even more significant way …

I never wanted a hamster. My eight-year-old daughter, Lily, on the other hand, had folders. Habitat drawings and wheel specifications – a case for ownership of such rigour it bowled me over. As a boy I’d had a hamster, Jerry, and remembered him as fine – but nothing more than that. So I went to a Cardiff pet shop on a cold January morning in 2021 with no plan whatsoever to fall in love.

At the back of the enclosure was a scruffy one nobody else wanted. Skinny. A bit unkempt. When the staff member lifted him out, he yawned and looked at Lily as if he’d been expecting her. She named him Popcorn Sushi and took him home in a pink carrier.

An English Democrats voter and a retired university tutor had different ideas about whether it’s OK to fly flags, but could they find something to agree on?

• Want to meet someone from across the divide? Click here to find out how

David, 70, York

Occupation Retired modern foreign languages tutor at a university

Nearly a quarter of market traders now hold master’s degree, PhD or medical doctorate, research shows

One in five young market traders now holds a master’s degree, PhD or medical doctorate, according to exclusive figures shared with the Guardian, in a sign of how Britain’s markets are attracting an unexpected new generation of highly educated entrepreneurs.

Separate data from Kerb, the street food collective behind some of London’s best-known food markets, points in the same direction. Almost three-quarters of its founders have university degrees, including one in four with postgraduate qualifications. About 95% work in their businesses full-time rather than treating them as weekend side hustles.

You can keep temperatures down without the cost – or environmental price – of air conditioning. Here’s some tips and tricks

• The best fans to keep you cool in 2026 – tried and tested

In the UK we are used to worrying about our homes being warm enough, but after struggling to cope with high temperatures in May and June the race is on to cool them down before the next heatwave hits.

And while it might be tempting to swap your desktop fan for a portable air conditioner, there are lots of low-cost, more sustainable ways to stop rooms overheating.

My elderly parents’ home was left uninhabitable, and they are owed £3,300 for repairs they had to fund themselves

My elderly parents spent much of last year dealing with what should have been a straightforward insurance claim after a dishwasher installation by John Lewis caused a leak.

Instead, it became a year-long ordeal, marked by repeated failures and an almost total absence of accountability.

‘Home fee’ qualification ends in 2028, leaving those hoping to study in UK not now eligible for British loans

British teenagers living in the EU could be priced out of UK universities in two years’ time as a Brexit rule change means they face the double whammy of paying costlier international fees, while losing access to student finance.

British passport holders living in the EU still qualify for “home fee” status at UK universities. But this will no longer be the case when the grace period ends in 2028, meaning the first wave to be affected are starting their A-levels, or equivalent, this autumn.

For young people, flaunting eye bags and bed rotting has become a cheeky rebuttal of body optimization culture

Picture a typical hangover: a morning spent curled under a comforter, chugging Gatorade and shame spiraling about what you might have said at the bar the night before.

Not so for the young people who are “romanticizing” their hangovers on TikTok and Instagram. Instead, they are flaunting their dark eye circles and raging headaches as the aftereffects of a good time, broadcasting their bad decisions to the world with a glowy sheen.

There are more than 3,000 conditions in dermatology, experts warn – and chatbots’ recommendations can be flaky

• Read more in the Antiviral series

Who among us has not, in a moment of panic or curiosity, consulted the internet in search of solutions to a medical ailment?

Increasingly, people are turning to AI for health advice, and skincare is no exception. Purpose-built apps promise to identify that rash, while people are sending selfies to AI chatbots seeking “full skincare analysis” and personalised regimens of treatments. On Reddit forums, people post before and after shots of the results from their AI-recommended skin routines.

Yes, digesting food requires energy, but you need to do more than snack for a meaningful impact

It helps to understand what people mean when they talk about “metabolism”, says James Betts, professor of metabolic physiology at the University of Bath. Usually, they’re referring to metabolic rate; the amount of energy your body burns in a given time. This is largely determined by factors such as your size, age, sex and body composition.

Your daily energy expenditure comes from three main sources: your resting metabolism (the energy needed to keep your organs and tissues functioning), the calories burned processing food, and physical activity. Of those, exercise and movement are by far the most variable.

Study finds those who speak two languages have brains that appear around six years younger than those who speak one

Learning another language could slow ageing in the brain by up to 13 years, according to research.

People who speak more than one language seem to have younger brains and the more languages you speak and the earlier you speak them, the better, according to findings from a study being presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies conference in Barcelona.

Reputation for frumpiness is over as M&S wins over younger audience with shows at Silverstone, Ibiza and now LFW

This autumn’s London fashion week boasts plenty of familiar labels, from Burberry to Alexander McQueen, ready to show off their wares. But on Wednesday there was an unexpected addition: Marks & Spencer is joining the luxury lineup.

The British high-street retailer will celebrate its 100th anniversary in the fashion industry by staging a catwalk show in September highlighting its latest women’s and menswear collections.

It’s my job to unpack beauty culture – but I’m still not immune to it. Plus, it’s a particularly strange time to be a bride, beauty-wise

My 91-year-old grandmother had her 1954 wedding album out on her lap when I visited the other day. “I wanted to remember how beautiful I used to be,” she sighed.

Every time my mom comes across a photo of her own 1984 nuptials, she says the same thing: “Look at how skinny I was!” (Or, sometimes, “Can you believe Daddy wore a white tuxedo with tails?” Which I cannot.)

Love them or hate them, the versatile sandal is back – just choose the right ones and wear them the Copenhagen way

The flip-flop is an essential text of summer style. The Dalai Lama wears flip-flops. Surfers wear flip-flops. They are a beach classic, a staple of campsite shower blocks, non-negotiable after a pedicure. Like a pair of blue jeans or a cloth tote bag, they have a utility that transcends fashion.

But when flip-flops step out of their lane – when they become a fashion shoe, a public-facing shoe – rather than a shoe you leave by the back door – they raise hackles. Every single time we get a heatwave, a lively debate about whether flip-flops are acceptable in the office follows, without ever being resolved. When Jennifer Lawrence wore flip-flops under her Dior gown on the Cannes red carpet in 2023, there was an outcry over the perceived flouting of the film festival’s “elegant footwear” policy.

Italian designer brings sculptural silhouettes and playful palettes to storied house, while it is hats off to Giorgio’s niece at her second Armani Privé show

The house of Balenciaga takes haute couture very seriously indeed. Cristóbal Balenciaga was so horrified by the rise of mass-produced clothes that in 1968 he abruptly shuttered his brand and retired to his native Spain, announcing that “high fashion is mortally wounded”.

So Pierpaolo Piccioli, who now helms the house, approached the brief of his first Balenciaga couture collection conscientiously, despite having 25 years of experience at Valentino. At a preview, the haute couture war room where he worked on the show for nine months was plastered with images that ranged from a 1961 Balenciaga dress to Spanish golden age art – Zurbarán’s chic saints, Velázquez’s doll-like infantas – and a monumental Hepworth pierced megalith.

Bishop Auckland is abuzz with culture and family fun, thanks to the vision of Auckland Palace’s owners – and the new Kynren show featuring birds of prey, Viking raids and mythical beasts, which opens next week

Booming Hans Zimmer-style cinematic music reaches a crescendo, shaking my bones. Two turquoise macaws swoop within an inch of my hair and join a sky filled with nearly 250 birds. Hawks, kites, pelicans, and an owl soar and swoop around a pagan-looking wooden circle. Peacocks fuss at the makeshift river below, coaxed by two actors telling the story of humans’ relationship with nature. Grey clouds roll in, dark with rain. After all, we are risking an open-air performance in north-east England. I’m at a preview of Kynren: the Storied Lands, the latest gloriously unrestrained project in the market town of Bishop Auckland, 12 miles south of Durham.

I grew up near Bishop Auckland, which was once an important coal-mining and railway town. Last time I was here, its centre was dominated by discount stores. If, in 2003, you’d told teenage me that the high street would become an ode to art, history and culture, I would have laughed. Well, I would have grunted and turned up the Nu metal on my MP3 player.

The owners of Teffont House are aiming for modern rural hospitality that puts guests at the heart of village life

Walking into the Orangery at Teffont House during the golden hour, the restaurant is glowing. Sunlight falls across cocktails the colour of spun sugar, spills on to a terrace trailing constellations of fleabane, and bounces off spoons sinking into raspberry trifles. What really gives the room its sparkle is none of these things, however, but the fact it’s packed with local people. On a warm June evening this new hotel, 10 minutes’ drive from the Wiltshire village of Tisbury, already feels embedded in village life.

It’s the latest venture of the Beckford Group, which runs a small clutch of West Country inns and restaurants, including the Talbot Inn in Mells and the Beckford Canteen in Bath. The company has carved a niche in modern rural hospitality, teaming unflashy furnishings (all chalky pink and moss green paintwork framed by antiques and contemporary art) with menus designed for greedy locavores and pricing that delivers an unstuffy demographic. Underpinning all of this is an ability to tap into local communities to create soul. With this, the Beckford Group’s first hotel, it is making that connection more explicit by labelling it as a village, rather than a country house, hotel.

The island has a culinary tradition as old as its ancient olive trees. Our writer savours its family-run tavernas, village bakeries and local produce

As someone with Cypriot roots and distant Greek heritage, I’m often asked the question: which is the best island? People lean in, expecting a secret – some tiny, untouched haven, known only to locals. My answer is always the same: Crete. With its fiercely proud identity, warm communities and exceptional food, it feels both deeply Greek and entirely itself.

For our anniversary weekend, my husband and I head to Lassithi, in the island’s far eastern corner. As a chef and food writer, I’m drawn to the area’s reputation for exceptional produce: Sitia extra virgin olive oil, creamy xigalo cheese, mountain honey and an abundance of excellent tavernas.

In his new book, Jack Thurston cycles the quieter roads and forgotten hill tracks of Scotland, exploring Britain’s most remote and rugged terrain

There aren’t many roads in Britain where you can pull over to cook breakfast and finish it without seeing a single car. While my friend Ben got the stove going, I wandered around the ruins of Dun Dornaigil, an iron age broch (stone roundhouse) more than 2,000 years old. Above us, low cloud drifted across the dark cliffs of Ben Hope. This was exactly the kind of lost lane we’d come to Sutherland to ride.

Our journey had begun the day before, in Lairg – the traditional “crossroads of the north”. With its Spar shop, hotel, train station and a population of about 800, Lairg is the largest inland settlement in one of the most sparsely populated regions of Europe. Sutherland – literally, the “southern land” of the Vikings, who held sway over the far north of Scotland from their stronghold on Orkney – tests life to its limits: bare mountains, impassable peat bogs and one of Britain’s wildest coastlines.

Ynys Enlli, Gwynedd: A stroll down this island’s one road provides clues to its past – and it has nothing to do with the 20,000 saints apparently buried here

In 1938, the Welsh naturalist Ronald Lockley described Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island) as a mountain “crudely cemented to a lowland valley, and the whole thing thrown into the middle of a violent tide-race”. Much has changed since then, but that vivid picture holds true, as I wander it today.

Certainly there’s a lovely simplicity to Enlli being a sort of linear settlement arranged along the length of a single road. Having only two directions of travel – north or south – makes the lane a movable town square, where those travelling in opposite directions or at different speeds are bound to meet, greet, make dinner invitations or trade sightings and finds.

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

Brenda from Bristol entered the history books when she uttered the immortal words “You’re joking! Not another one” about the prospect of a general election. The Thursday quiz feels much the same when it looks at the calendar and notes that yet another week features a Thursday, and it needs to rouse itself to write something. Fifteen questions on topical news, general knowledge and popular culture await. There are no prizes, but let us know how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 255

This pretty little plant is carnivorous, so when placed next to plants affected by the insect pest it can be an effective living flypaper

The problem
The fungus gnat is the pest that just keeps coming. You dry out the soil, set up sticky traps, maybe even reach for the hydrogen peroxide, and just when you think you’ve have won, they’re back. The adults are harmless but maddening, drifting around your face and laying the next generation in any damp compost they can find. And most controls only deal with one stage of the cycle and leave the rest to carry on.

The hack
Butterworts are small carnivorous plants whose leaves are coated in a sticky mucilage that traps tiny flying insects, including fungus gnats. Keep one or two among your collection as living flypaper, catching adult gnats before they can breed.

Common misconceptions are that you don’t have the right skills, or you need to make a huge time commitment

Many people want to do good in the world. They want to connect and give back to their communities. But volunteering, much like Sunday meal prep or morning meditations, often ends up at the bottom of the to-do list – a nice idea we’ll get to when we have more time.

“For many people, volunteering is something they feel positively about, but don’t always prioritize or think they have time for,” says Matt Bertram, vice-president of volunteer services for the American Red Cross.

How to start meditating

How to start weightlifting

How to start budgeting

How to start running

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

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

‘Perhaps it’s all a fever dream,’ suggests parody candidate, expected to be Reform leader’s only challenger for seat

Count Binface had been looking forward to a relaxing journey back to his home planet of Sigma IX when Nigel Farage dropped a political bombshell on Tuesday.

Instead, Britain’s hottest new political property said he was left with no choice but to perform a swift intergalactic handbrake turn when news broke that Farage had resigned as MP for Clacton, triggering the possibility of a byelection in the English coastal constituency he has represented since 2024.

Last summer, a 14-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by an asylum seeker in Epping and this small community was engulfed in protest. Can it recover?

When Sherzod* moved to Epping in 2025, he was dreaming of a little garden, long dog walks in the forest and more space to breathe. At 20, he had moved from Uzbekistan to the UK to study law, then lived in north London for decades. In his mid-40s, after establishing himself in a media job, he began visiting the forest – 5,900 acres of green lung saved by the Epping Forest Act 1878. The pretty shops of the old south-west Essex town delighted him. “I just liked the high street, I liked the people,” he says. “The people were really friendly.”

Epping was created by the canons of Waltham Abbey in the 13th century as a market town on the road from London to Cambridge. Its high street is still thriving. There is a Gail’s bakery and an M&S Food shop; the four-bed semis in the estate agents’ windows are listed at just shy of £1m.

Some of its amateur matches pull in bigger crowds than European leagues but are more of a spectacle than a pathway to the professional game, say experts

Michael Owen, a man who once quipped he had never drunk tea or coffee, isn’t known for his adventurous palate. Safe to assume, then, that the former England striker was out of his comfort zone sipping Roxburgh rose juice and eating chilli-wrapped rice noodle rolls during his recent visit to south-west China’s Guizhou province.

The 2001 Ballon d’Or winner dusted off his boots for a match in Rongjiang county, the birthplace of viral amateur football league Cun Chao, also known as the Village Super League. Scoring twice in a 4-3 loss for local side Rongjiang Niubi, Owen endeared himself to the thousands in attendance, even if some weren’t familiar with the former Liverpool and Real Madrid player.

Prediction markets have grown rapidly in popularity in recent years, particularly in the US. We’d like to hear confidentially from people in the UK who have used them

We’d like to find out more about how people in the UK are using prediction markets and what has attracted them to these platforms.

Prediction markets allow people to buy and sell contracts based on the outcome of future events, such as sporting tournaments, elections and financial markets. They have become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly in the US.

We would like to hear from people who have struggled to cancel their contracts or subscriptions with Virgin Media - or any other company

The UK telecoms watchdog has discovered that Virgin Media “likely mishandled” millions of phone calls between the start of 2022 and autumn 2024, which prevented broadband, landline and pay TV customers from cancelling their contracts.

The company has been fined £28m by Ofcom after it discovered evidence of call-dropping tactics, unnecessary call transfers and putting customers on hold for “no reason”.

We would like to hear from young people in the north of England about their experiences of looking for work

About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK are not in employment, education or training (Neet), according to a report published in May, which warned that the figure could rise to 1.25 million by the early 2030s without urgent government action.

We are particularly keen to hear from young people living in northern England who are not currently in work or education, or who have been struggling to find a job.

Has the pill format prompted you to consider GLP-1 medication for the first time? Have you already started taking it? Or has weight loss medication changed your lifestyle in other ways?

A once-daily Wegovy weight-loss pill has gone on sale at high street and online pharmacies in the UK, offering an alternative to injectable GLP-1 medications.

We’d like to hear from people who are considering taking a weight-loss pill, have recently started one, or are planning to switch from injections.

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