For the first digital natives, there are two places to express yourself: in the comfort of your own room and online. Photographer Niccolò Rastrelli set out to find out how the identities compare

Social media arrived just as I, a younger millennial, was on the brink of teenhood. My friends and I signed up for accounts on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, as well as less remembered sites such as the now defunct Bebo. We didn’t know what we were doing; no one did. We posted indiscreet messages and photos on public feeds that we wouldn’t want any future employer – or really anyone, for that matter – to see. Then gradually we, and our parents and their parents, too, learned what it means to live with that world-changing phenomenon that we term social media. We started to find different ways to adapt, a process that is ongoing.

But what is the experience like for gen Z, the first generation of “digital natives”, for whom the language of the internet is a mother tongue? That is the question that led the Italian photographer Niccolò Rastrelli to embark on the project IRL (the online acronym, of course, for a phrase denoting our offline existences: in real life).

The Sussexes are returning to the UK with significantly reduced media deals in an industry where fame alone can no longer guarantee success

Having settled in California in the aftermath of their dramatic decoupling from the royal family in 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced a partnership that appeared to set a clear destination for their new lives outside the House of Windsor.

With every global media stable clamouring for their signature, the couple revealed a deal with Netflix reportedly worth $100m. The ambitions were lofty and broad, including scripted and unscripted projects, shows for all ages and documentaries.

Britons will be able to buy ‘balcony’ systems they can install themselves from 27 August thanks to rule change

Despite this summer bringing hours of sunshine, many Britons have been unable to cash in on free electricity generated by the sun. Rooftop solar panels are usually out of the question if you live in a flat or rent your home, and the cost has made them prohibitive to many more households.

However, this could be about to change because next week the first wave of low-cost “plug-in” solar panels will go on sale in Great Britain.

Much-copied and parodied picture captures dynamic between the individuals and the band with eerie perfection

It’s not really the four blokes on the zebra crossing who make the cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road memorable, but the street behind them. Vanishing towards a perfect blue sky, with summer trees veiling in bright green what might otherwise be dour brick houses, it could be a hyperreal vista painted by David Hockney. The black and white stripes of the crossing and the white line down the middle of the receding north London road are fresh and crisp, enhancing the clarity of this psychedelic daydream.

Of course the four blokes do play a part. The Beatles were so transcendently famous by the time Iain Macmillan took this picture on 8 August 1969 that seeing them do something as ordinary as cross the road becomes a magical mystery.

Running a farm is tough – TV’s Clarkson’s Farm shows that – but I know many minorities would love the chance. And we would all benefit

Who’d be a farmer? Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon is great entertainment but it also gives some indication of the stresses and challenges behind the farm gate. Would anyone who lacked the significant alternative income that Clarkson is lucky to have want that? Well, actually, yes.

I’m an entrepreneur who owns a farm, as opposed to hands-on running the small one I bought 25 years ago, but as I look around the industry, I’m struck by a significant fact: the very reason I can be known as the Black Farmer is because I am such a rarity that it makes me readily identifiable.

As fitness-conscious consumers turn away from processed foods, the industry is scrambling for new ideas, including nutrient-rich lollies and protein-packed tubs. Will they take the fun out of this summer treat?

Last month, I stood in the biggest ice-cream factory in Britain and watched a 5-metre Viennetta mint-flavoured ice-cream cake get made. The factory – which is owned by the Magnum Ice Cream Company and produces nine different brands of ice-cream – is based in an enormous building in Gloucester, where the air is thick with the scent of custard. I walked past the Twister and Solero sections on my way in, through clouds of tangy fruit, before arriving at the Viennetta assembly line, where everything smelled minty fresh. A Viennetta is built on a conveyor belt by a fully automated system, and watching it take shape was oddly hypnotic. Every few inches a nozzle attached to the belt squirted out a frilly layer of mint ice-cream, then another nozzle smoothed a flat layer of vanilla on top of that, then came a squirt of chocolate sauce, and it was back to frilly mint again. On and on it went, layer upon layer, popping out finished Viennettas at the end of the line at a rate of 200 cakes every 60 seconds.

A slop bucket full of Viennetta overrun stood at the side of the conveyor belt and I fought a strong urge to squelch my fingers into it. Later, the factory operations manager allowed me to push my whole hand into the slop bucket up to the wrist and then lick my hand at a sink, before washing it and resuming the tour.

PM tells regional mayors during informal discussions he is keen for tournament to return to British Isles

Andy Burnham has said he wants to bring the men’s World Cup to the UK in 2042, returning the tournament to Britain for the first time in almost eight decades.

During informal discussions at No 10 North in Manchester on Friday, the prime minister told regional mayors he was keen for the tournament to be played in the British Isles.

Watchdog launches inquiry into collision involving police car and another vehicle on A66 in early hours of Saturday

Seven people, including two police officers, died in a crash near Middlesbrough in the early hours of Saturday, Cleveland police have said.

The police regulator has launched an investigation after the collision, it has been confirmed.

Separate criminal convictions come as domestic violence charities warn of tech-facilitated abuse and coercion

Two men have been convicted this week in separate criminal cases that revealed they had posted explicit content on OnlyFans without the full consent of the women whose images were uploaded.

In the first case, Alexander Tang, 37, took and uploaded 47 intimate images and four videos of a woman to OnlyFans without her consent, and was paid money for the material he posted to the website.

Experts say fires caused by wrongly discarded lithium batteries, such as those in vapes, are putting lives at risk

Fires at recycling centres caused by wrongly discarded lithium batteries such as those found in vapes are occurring at the rate of more than 10 a week, according to new figures.

Experts say the sheer volume of battery fires now occurring at waste facilities has reached a crisis that is putting lives at risk, costing £1bn a year and frustrating fire chiefs.

Boy, seven, had complained of feeling tired so father left him with snacks and a soft drink and continued his climb

A man who abandoned his seven-year-old son on Mount Fuji in Japan after the boy complained of feeling tired while on a family hike has been reprimanded by local police.

A worker on Japan’s highest mountain discovered the child sitting alone on a bench near the sixth station of the Fujinomiya trail at an altitude of more than 2,000 metres (6,500 feet) on Thursday.

Ever since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement 13 years ago, Manchester United have been stuck in football’s equivalent of purgatory and a chastening experience in Hull suggests they could be there a while longer. Michael Carrick’s permanent appointment was supposed to hail a new era at Old Trafford but very little has changed based on this defeat.

United were sluggish from start to finish and rightly punished for failing to defend set pieces with any degree of competence. Centre-backs Semi Ajayi and Nobel Mendy earned Hull the prized scalp upon their return to the Premier League, while United are left to ponder if the squad requires more invasive surgery before the transfer window closes.

In letter to Macron and Burnham, more than 100 senior figures accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing and call for measures including trade ban

More than 100 French and British former diplomats have said Palestine is being erased in front of the world’s eyes and called for urgent action including trade and arms sales bans to press Israel to accept a Palestinian state.

An unprecedented joint letter dispenses with diplomatic language by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and warning that the world no longer sees Israel as a genuine democracy.

Uphold the decisions of the international court of justice and the international criminal court.

Suspend the EU-Israel association agreement and the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement for breach of human rights provisions.

Suspend arms transfers to and from Israel and all bilateral military cooperation.

Insist on unrestricted aid access to Gaza, led by the UN Relief and Works Agency, other UN agencies and international NGOs, with consequences for non-compliance, and access too for journalists, diplomats and parliamentarians.

Ban all trade with settlements, including goods, investment, insurance and other financial services.

Warn potential bidders for the “red line” E1 settlement or other settlement financing/construction that their interests in and with the UK and France will suffer.

Make it an offence for British and French citizens to buy property on stolen Palestinian land and remove charitable status from “charities” funding settlements.

Social media platforms face public ire after fatal crash involving teenagers filming themselves driving on wrong side

Videos often begin with the camera panning across a glowing dashboard as a gloved hand starts the ignition. The camera turns to show figures with masked faces in the rear seat, who are also filming, and swivels back to show the windscreen. Beyond it, a dark cityscape.

The engine throbs, headlights puncture the night and the journey begins, first down a suburban road, then a motorway. The speedometer shows acceleration, the needle juddering as the car gathers velocity.

• Lightning the humanoid ⁠robot clocks 9.32sec in Beijing

• Quicker than ​9.58sec men’s world record set 17 years ago

A ⁠robot named Lightning ⁠has run ​the 100m in 9.32 seconds, ⁠beating the human world ⁠record, China’s ​state broadcaster ‌has reported.

The humanoid, developed by Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor, ‌reached a peak speed of 14.5 metres per second during ‌a test event for ​the second World Humanoid Robot Games, which ⁠begin on Saturday. The ​performance surpassed ​the ​9.58sec men’s ​100m world record ​set ​by Usain Bolt 17 years ago at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin.

Content creators are fighting proposal to boost traditional broadcasters in video platforms’ all-powerful algorithms

The millions who subscribe to the content creator Simon Squibb’s social media channels are usually delivered tips and hacks on how to turn their dream business idea into reality. But they were recently presented with something completely different.

In an Instagram post entitled “the government wants to control YOU”, Squibb issued an urgent call to arms. He asked his followers to fight against a proposal that he said could force content from the BBC and other traditional broadcasters into their social media feeds and recommendations whether they liked it or not.

Athletes faced last-minute cancelling of 2.4-mile swim, as experts say pollution and extreme heat are causing blooms

As far as athletic accomplishments go, few are held in higher regard than completing an Ironman triathlon.

The amount of training required to tackle the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26-mile run that make up the course, as well as the expensive equipment required to train in the first place, means that only about 50,000 people in the world complete a full race and earn the title of Ironman every year.

Frasers billionaire bought Harvey Nichols and increased Hugo Boss stake despite tough times for high-end stores

What billionaire doesn’t love to splash the cash on a luxury item? Some may buy watches or yachts, but Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley has been snapping up entire brands.

Harvey Nichols is the latest bauble to drop into his shopping basket after his company bought the Knightsbridge department store out of administration earlier this month. It sits beside a large slice of Hugo Boss, a chunk of Mulberry, a snippet of Burberry, the remains of Agent Provocateur and the entire Flannels and House of Fraser chains.

The late director’s sensitive and detailed adaptation of Stephen King’s novella has an authenticity that so many imitators could never replicate

Coming-of-age metaphors don’t get any blunter than a group of preteen boys following a set of railroad tracks to a classmate’s dead body, a sobering testament to the fragility of life and a sign that their own futures are not guaranteed. The Stephen King novella that would become Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me is simply called The Body, and there’s no doubt that commercial considerations factored into naming the film after the song that blankets the soundtrack. Yet the enduring magic of Reiner’s film lies in the tension between this bleak journey and the nostalgia and warmth that keeps complicating our feelings about it. Between those two poles is a bittersweet tone that perfectly suits the material, the rare example of an adaptation that benefits from softened edges.

Though Reiner kicked off his career on a legendary heater that opened with This is Spinal Tap and would go on to include The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally … and A Few Good Men, Stand By Me was just his third feature and an early showcase of his versatility. His deft comic touch is not only essential in maintaining tonal balance, but important in suggesting what these four wayward boys mean to each other. Between the loose talk about Annette Funicello’s expanding bust on The Mickey Mouse Club and a Wurlitzer soundtrack of novelty singles like Lollipop and Yakety Yak, it can be easy to forget the anger, pain and dread that’s always simmering close to the surface. They laugh to keep from crying and occasionally don’t succeed.

It’s a saviour at family mealtimes, but which bottle of red sauce does our reviewer relish the most? (Spoiler: it’s not Heinz)

• The best supermarket mayonnaise

I was that kid who put ketchup on everything, from fries to french toast, and if my parents wanted me to eat vegetables, they’d have to cover them in the stuff (the sugar cravings of my youth have subsided, but I still love ketchup mixed into peas). So I was pleasantly surprised by this test group, because even the most economical sauces performed well.

Tomato content varied greatly (though not always in line with price), with the most tomato-heavy products containing almost twice as much fruit as the least. This information is presented in two ways: the first is the amount of raw tomato used before the sauce is cooked down into puree (more than 200g per 100g of finished product is high, less than 150g is low); the second is a straight percentage of tomato puree used, which is a more transparent measure (above 50% is high, while less than that I’d consider low, so check the label if you want more fruit in your sauce). Products made with fewer tomatoes are sometimes thickened with modified maize starch. I’ve also listed the total sugar content.

Compact discs are back, with searches for players up 96% at John Lewis and popular models sold out online

With more than 800 million people subscribing to a music streaming service, wireless speakers have become a familiar sight in homes. But expect to get reacquainted with a different object to play music soon: the CD player, once consigned to obsolescence, is back.

John Lewis report that searches for CD players are up 96% since July, possibly owing to students heading to university and buying the systems for their rooms. The £79 Crosley Voyager, and the £129 Pure Classic C-D6 are both sold out online, with the Voyager scheduled to return in October. Portable CD players are also popular.

A meaty, Middle Eastern style stuffed vegetable feast finished off with an ice-cold berry dessert

There’s something delightfully retro about stuffed vegetables. They take me back to Delia Smith’s iconic Summer Collection cookbook, which blew my tiny mind when it came out in my early teens. Too sheltered to know about the e rage that had inspired Delia, I delved into my mother’s vegetable crisper with reverence, stuffing courgettes, tomatoes and aubergines with a zeal that had escaped me at school. How could the roasting, reducing and condensing of ingredients create such explosions of flavour? I was hooked. I have recently been returning to this technique with glee, a simple solution for turning seasonal vegetables into feasts.

Guardian Australia’s weekend wrap of essential reads from the past seven days, selected by Jacqui Housden

• Get this in your inbox every weekend. Sign up for Five Great Reads here

Hello and welcome to the weekend. You’re looking well, some might say “refreshed”. Is it the diet, the exercise, a relaxing holiday? You’d tell me if you’d had something “done”, right? According to the experts, and some thrilling anecdotes, cosmetic procedures are more popular than ever, but admitting to them certainly isn’t. And secrets – from those kept by the Botox brigade to the mysteries revealed by devastating drought – appear to play a theme this week.

A film-maker’s attempt to reboot a horror movie franchise is derailed by her wild relationship with its former star, and the Killers frontman gets rustic

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
Out now
Jane Schoenbrun’s third feature builds on their interest in queer horror, with a story about the fictional Camp Miasma slasher franchise, set to be resurrected by an up-and-coming director (Hannah Einbinder), who enters into a wild relationship with the star of the originals (Gillian Anderson).

David Mitchell’s quirky puzzle-maker is back with the low-stakes murder mystery, while the US pop superstar’s Eternal Sunshine tour continues its London residency

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

⚽ Updates on the best of the Saturday afternoon action
⚽ Live scores | Football Daily | Email Barry

Championship: Millwall have doubled their lead against Norwich, with Tairyk Arconte scoring his second goal of the game from a Jake Cooper knockdown at a set-piece. It’s 2-0 at the Den and hapless Norwich are staring down the barrel of their second league defeat of the season in two games.

Manchester United: The club has agreed a deal worth an initial £65m for Carlos Baleba and the 22-year-old Brighton midfielder will have his medical this weekend, writes Jamie Jackson.

️ F1 qualifying updates from 11am BST
️ Preview: the chase for Antonelli | Mail Philip

Looks like the senior Sky boys believe in having the whole of August off: no Croft, Lazenby or Brundle in the Netherlands this weekend.

Gabriel Bortoleto, who is just outside a points place on the sprint grid, is under investigation for an unsafe release, which could be costly.

The All Blacks begin their four-test tour at Ellis Park. 7.10pm KO
Sign up for The Breakdown | Mail Daniel

Richie Mo’unga is back in the wider squad but not yet in the matchday 23, which puts plenty of attention on Ruben Love.

The 25-year-old has been Dave Rennie’s first-choice flyhalf through the Nations Championship and keeps the shirt for the biggest test of his fledgling international career. He’ll have the returning Cam Roigard inside him and Damian McKenzie behind him, giving New Zealand three genuine playmakers.

• Former Test batter has interim coach post for Pakistan series

• Australian Mike Hussey confirms ‘casual approach’

Marcus Trescothick would like to remain part of Stephen Fleming’s backroom staff when the incoming head coach takes charge of England’s Test side after their series against Pakistan.

Trescothick, an assistant during Brendon McCullum’s tenure, has the head coach role for the three Tests against Pakistan and got off to a winning start on Friday, with Joe Root’s side thumping the tourists by an innings and 103 runs at Headingley.

The shirts, the songs, the supporters, the rivalries. Somebody created the whole thing and it’s all disconnected from county cricket’s culture and history

I went to Old Trafford expecting to watch a game of cricket. Instead, I left thinking about history, identity and whether you can manufacture belonging. Walking through the concourses, I found myself surrounded by the faces of Lancashire’s greats. Farokh Engineer. Sir Clive Lloyd. Players whose stories are woven into the fabric of the ground. The Sir Clive Lloyd Stand is a reminder that this place has accumulated meaning over generations.

And then, almost everywhere else, Manchester Super Giants.

• Fifa president tells Sky man: ‘You have a nice haircut’

• Defies Concacaf president plea to stay away ​from youth event

Gianni Infantino told a reporter “I’ll see you at the hairdressers” after he was asked whether he had betrayed football over his aborted World Cup sell-off plan.

The Fifa president was stopped outside a hotel in the Dominican Republic by the Sky News US correspondent, James Matthews, who challenged the under-fire leader of football’s governing body over why he had not resigned, despite calls from across the game for him to step down.

• Live updates as festival concludes on Saturday

• Love Me Tender can give Mullins fourth Ebor win

• Drop Greg an email with your thoughts

Hamad Al Jehani had two big handicap winners at Glorious Goodwood. Archivist has just followed up in the Group Three Strensall Stakes and Evening Saigon, the Stewards’ Cup winner, will attempt to do the same in the Constantine Handicap at 4.10.

1. ARCHIVIST 9-1, 2. Saber Strike 8-1, 3. Persica 11-2. 11 ran.

Updates from around the grounds
Day two roundup | Sign up for the Spin | Mail Tanya

Iced with panache by plucking out Shoaib Bashir’s middle stump. Derbyshire 156 all out, trail Durham by 127. Potts 5-45 leads Durham off, after taking 8-66 against Derbyshire up at CLS in June.

Carse looks sensational, 100 per cent pure thoroughbred. Way too good for Derbyshire yesterday, even if the wickets column doesn’t show it. But the press box have been mulling that if he pitched it up and hit the stumps more he’d be unplayable. And boom, he does, and bowls Nick Potts for 2. Derbyshire 153-9.

• Incident happened when Inter Miami met Philadelphia Union

• Argentinian lashed out at Quinn Sullivan in 2-2 draw

Lionel Messi has been fined for slapping an opponent during a Major League Soccer game. The 39-year-old Inter Miami forward lashed out at Quinn Sullivan of Philadelphia Union during their match on Wednesday, catching the midfielder around the back of the head.

The Argentinian appeared to be angry Sullivan had elbowed him after he had played the ball, with the referee intervening before the situation could escalate. The match at Subaru Park finished 2-2.

• Several young men arrested over incidents at games

• Trend emerged last season during games

• Cryptocurrency group has claimed responsibility

Chicago Sky guard Natasha Cloud has spoken out after the return of a trend that involves sex toys being thrown on to the court during WNBA games.

Arena staff removed the objects from the court during the Sky’s win over the Golden State Valkyries on Friday night. Players stayed on court during the incident. A suspect was detained during a similar incident on Thursday during the Atlanta Dream’s win over the Los Angeles Sparks.

Europe’s biggest amateur sports event for children – that has drawn celebrity ambassadors ranging from Sean Dyche to Alastair Campbell – has marked its 30th birthday in Split

On a dais overlooking the Adriatic, 20 children are playing chess. Arranged in a circle, they are competing not against each other but against the grandmaster Nigel Short, who passes awkwardly around the group playing one move each time. The children are no slouches, the best young chess players from the Balkans. But, in a twist, they can also call on the support of celebrity coaches. And so we have the unusual sight of precocious chess talents being coached through their games not just by the former French Open champion Ana Ivanovic, but by the former Burnley manager Sean Dyche and, in quite the eyebrow-raiser, the rightwing tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

This is just one event at the Plazma Youth Sport Games (YSG), which is celebrating its 30th anniversary in the Croatian city of Split this month. Described by some of its more esteemed visitors as “the Davos of sport”, it brings eminent figures from the world of sport and politics to the Dalmatian coast each summer. More important, it is also the biggest amateur sports event for children in Europe. Just under half a million young people from across Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia and North Macedonia took part in qualifying for this year’s event. The finals in 10 sports – from chess to 3v3 basketball – are then held over the course of a week in Split. Alongside the competition, children are encouraged to learn lessons in teamwork, collaboration and putting phones away. The organisers describe Plazma as both a sporting event and a “social project”.

It’s clear here in Silicon Valley that AI is advancing faster than humans’ ability to control it. That means even sober prophecies seem optimistic

Here in Silicon Valley, the experts think that within the next couple of years we’ll see an extraordinary takeoff for artificial intelligence. “Welcome to the foothills of the singularity,” as a Stanford University friend greeted me. More prosaically, the imminent breakthrough is described as “recursive self-improvement” – the point at which AI itself trains each successive model of AI, resulting in an exponential development to something which, in many significant respects, is more intelligent than us humans.

As Robert Wright puts it in his book The God Test: “Never before has the near-term future … held such a wide array of not-implausible paths for humankind that would be so wildly transformative.” But will this be heaven or hell? Heaven, says Elon Musk, who predicts “an age of amazing abundance” – although he also sees a 10-20% chance of killer robots murdering us all. Hell is more likely according to Geoffrey Hinton, one of the intellectual founding fathers of AI. “My intuition is, we’re toast,” he told an interviewer in 2023. And talking to Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Infinity Machine, a book about the quest for superintelligence, Hinton estimates p(doom) – the probability of human extinction – at 50%, “because I haven’t got a clue how to estimate the real number”. “As soon as evolution [of AI] kicks in, we’re fucked,” he adds cheerfully. But whether it’s God or Godzilla, artificial superintelligence is just around the corner.

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

A Democrat’s remarks have resulted in impassioned defenses of the Trump aide. The right has discovered misogyny

Jon Ossoff is quite the miracle worker. Perhaps the Democratic senator can’t turn water into wine, but he has managed to turn whining conservatives into impassioned feminists.

During a rally last Sunday, the Georgia senator delivered a takedown of Donald Trump, which included a reference to his aide Natalie Harp. “He doesn’t want to do the job,” Ossoff said of the president. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

A call revealing Todd Blanche’s plans to crack down on mifepristone lays bare the danger

The abortion pill is a miracle. Mifepristone, then called RU-486, was synthesized by a French lab in the 1980s; in combination with misoprostol, commonly used as ulcer medication, it cuts off the body’s supply of progesterone, halts the development of a pregnancy, and incites contractions, which empty the uterus. The drug allows pregnancies to be terminated with a shocking degree of reliability and ease. Gone are the concoctions of ergot and Spanish Fly dispensed by 19th century midwives, which only sometimes worked to induce a miscarriage; gone are the backroom procedures of the pre-Roe US, when drunk, lascivious, incompetent or cruel providers wielded bent coat hangers in dirty rooms. The abortion pill is safe, effective and cheaper than ever. And since Dobbs, it’s everywhere: even if you live in a state with an abortion ban, you can get the pills shipped to your house in the mail. Since Roe was overturned, there has not been a return to the terror of mass death that marked the pre-Roe era of septic abortion wards, where women routinely found themselves maimed, sickened or killed. There’s exactly one reason why: because illegal abortions were largely unsafe without the pill, and they are extremely safe with it.

So of course, the Trump administration and their allies on the American right are trying to get rid of it. And this month, they gained a powerful new ally when Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and an anti-abortion zealot, was confirmed as attorney general.

Hard to fathom exactly why Megxit is over and the self-exiled wonder generators are leaving California. Luckily, the internet sleuths are on the case

Wednesday night brought an absolute cloudburst of psychic rain for our parched land, as it emerged that Prince Harry and Meghan were reversing their self-styled “freedom flight” to California and returning to live in the UK. Nature is healing! Is that … is that how the expression goes? Either way, all humans in Britain have taken the announcement brilliantly, while fatted calf prices climbed steeply at the news that the reverse Megxit is imminent, with only an adequate headline soubriquet yet to be found. Megain? Megraine?

Inevitably, thoughts turned swiftly to what it all meant. One of the funniest aspects of Meghan and Harry coverage is how their decisions are always analysed as though we were parsing the 4D chess moves of 19th-century master strategists. We are forever imagining we are dealing with a couple of Bismarcks or Clausewitzes, as opposed to a resting actor and the “chief impact officer” of a firm designed to offer tech-based solutions to men crying in their cars or something.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

What a Time to be Alive! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20) is released in September. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

The essence of cycling is to keep moving, but London’s chaotic roads often make this difficult. My solution: fewer, not more rules

I plead guilty. I have loved and used the streets of London all my life, as a cyclist, driver and pedestrian. Touch wood, I have done so without accident, blemish or insurance claim. Yet now I find myself perpetually on the wrong side of the law. Regulation has become bureaucratic and chaotic.

When I try to drive at the authorised speed of 20mph on many through roads, I am hooted at and overtaken by vans, cars, coaches and buses. And when I sit dutifully on my bike at a traffic light, I am jostled by swarms of cyclists riding through on red, furious at being treated as if they were car drivers.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

And as Diana’s brother announces a new book, what can possibly be left to say about the princess? Plus, the joys of car rental and Reform’s Whitehall farce

There are some days you never forget. It was about 6.30 in the morning the day after we had done a long drive back from hospital. Anna was five years old, Robbie just two and both were wide awake and had got me out of bed. I took them downstairs to plonk them in front of the TV to try and buy myself some time. I switched the TV on and didn’t turn it off for the rest of the day. Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash. I just stared and stared, not quite taking it in. Hard to believe that it all took place nearly 30 years ago, but Penguin has just announced that next month it will be publishing a biography of Diana written by her brother, Charles Spencer. “I want to speak on Diana’s behalf and do so in an openly positive way,” he has said, adding that she was “A one-off, dynamic character, full of love, charisma and self-doubt, who gave life a hell of a go, and left the world a far better place, despite exiting the stage while still so young.” Yup. Well it was hardly ever going to be a hatchet job, was it.

Five years on, the regime’s chokehold has left Afghan women with almost nothing, but many are still bravely fighting for their freedom

The Taliban did not just ban women from schools, impose the burqa and outlaw smartphones. The Taliban built a system that enslaves nearly half the country’s population, or according to outdated statistics: 21,701,532 women and girls.

In general, the Taliban’s system runs on laws that get changed, forgotten or scrapped as needed to oppress women, such as the abolition of the minimum marriage-age law, which made the only “legitimate” criterion for a girl’s marriage that she has reached puberty or in other words, that she is “fit for consummation”.

The prime minister is right to think that taking Manchester’s model national could widen opportunity, clean the air and rebuild state capacity. Other public services could be next

Barely a month into his premiership, Andy Burnham is already taking the lessons of Manchester’s buses national. This week his government backed the West Midlands mayor Richard Parker’s move to bring the region’s main bus operation into public control. In July, he announced that he would reinstate a £2 national bus fare cap from January 2027. He’s also expanding free bus travel for disabled people to all hours. Transport affordability is clearly part of Mr Burnham’s cost of living programme. That is to be applauded, as is the emphasis on public transport, which – importantly for Labour – reduces social exclusion, boosts local economies, and is better for the environment. Yet buses may matter to Mr Burnham for another reason: they offer a blueprint for how he wants to govern.

This is because Mr Burnham seems to have a worked-out model. He told the Times this week that the prescription for services such as water, housing and energy isn’t yet clear, “with the exception of buses”. Public control, Mr Burnham reasons, gives government the power to make provision cheaper and more reliable – and to shape it around the public interest. For buses, that means the government determining the shape of the network even where private companies run the services. Municipal ownership this is not.

Scientific specimens are being sold to foreign museums or snapped up by the super-rich. They should have the same legal protections as works of art

As Sir David Attenborough has observed, “there’s nothing more magical than finding a shiny shell and knowing you’re the first person to have seen it for 150 million years”. Senior museum figures are campaigning for fossils to be classed as national treasures, according to the Waverley criteria, which control the export of objects considered culturally important to the nation. But the rules only cover natural treasures that are “made”, excluding fossils.

These calls come after a private collection from the Jurassic Coast was sold to the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi for a reported eight-figure sum. Both the Natural History Museum in London and Amgueddfa Cymru (Museum Wales) were offered the 318 fossils, but they didn’t have the funds. Unlike countries such as Brazil and Mongolia, where fossils belong to the state, Britain relies largely on a voluntary code of conduct.

Readers respond to Guardian reports and commentary about the academic, who was found dead at his home last weekend

Hugh Muir is right to muse on the tragic nature of the Jason Arday case (A rightwing witch-hunt focused on Jason Arday – but so did legitimate journalism, 19 August). For it’s a tragedy in so many, many ways. It’s a tragedy that a man has died, leaving a grieving family and friends behind. And it’s a tragedy that the real and necessary objectives of diversity, equity and inclusion have been done a gross disservice by Cambridge University’s cynical tokenism.

It’s a tragedy that this lamentable affair may set back the vital pursuit of equality of opportunity. And it’s a tragedy that in place of moderate voices who understand the need for better representation but with caveats, we have bad actors who see things only through the heated lens of ideology, be that from left or right.

Readers respond to letters from the Guardian writers Stephen Moss and Stephen Moss about being confused with each other

The two Stephen Mosses who both write for the Guardian (Letters, 14 August) and seem to have an amicable enough relationship have no idea what it was like being one of two Ian Andersons signed to Island Records in early 1969. Let’s just say it didn’t end well. I found having an extra initial to be the only long-term solution to the confusion.

And then there was the matter of the Ian Anderson who was a leader of the National Front, or the Scottish footballer, who mercifully both seem to have long since faded from most people’s memories. The only thing that still rankles is that the mono-limbed flute-botherer of Jethro Tull, two weeks my junior, gets in the Guardian birthdays list and I don’t!
Ian A Anderson
Cambridge

Jon Silverman says that the often misattributed line was probably written by the civil servant David Faulker, but with one crucial difference

In his letter about ever-lengthier prison sentences (18 August), Nik Wood makes two familiar mistakes in attributing the quote “prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse” to Douglas Hurd.

In fact, the line appeared in a white paper published in 1990 by Hurd’s successor, David Waddington. And there is no declaratory “is”. Instead, it warns that “prison can be an expensive way of making bad people worse” unless other rehabilitative measures are taken.

Doug Kessler says parenting is a form of continuous grieving from the time your kids are born. Plus a letter from Mark de Brunner

As a father who has seen both daughters fledge, I felt Zoe Williams’ pain and bafflement as her first son prepares to leave for university (My son is leaving home for university – and my severe denial has surprised me, 17 August).

No one talks about it but, from the moment of birth, parenting is continuous grieving. We mourn the loss of our one-year-old when they turn two. The fun of the early teen years are only partial compensation for never again watching our toddler invent walking. The move away from home is a big one. When it happened to us, I was grateful for all the practice I’d been gifted. But it still hit hard. Bafflingly hard.
Doug Kessler
London

Collapse of trade talks could lead to job losses, but biggest impact on traditional allies is expected to be political

The US has imposed 50% tariffs on some goods from Canada, and the country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has vowed to match them “dollar for dollar” after the collapse of trade talks.

The tariffs came into force on around $20bn (£14.6bn) of goods – ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors – at 04.00 GMT . Trade experts said the tariffs could result in some job losses, but the largest impact is expected to be political, driving a further wedge between the traditional allies.

Couple considering suing for wrongful death after coroner found disciplinary process materially contributed to suicide

When a coroner ruled this month that the Treasury “materially contributed” to Chloe Moffat’s death, her parents breathed out in bittersweet relief. For a year, David and Anne Moffat had been forced to become detectives in the worst case any parent could have to solve: why their daughter took her own life.

Chloe, 26, went to her job as a personal assistant at the Treasury on a Monday last May “happy as Larry” after a weekend she’d told her friends was a “10 out of 10”. She was planning a holiday with her sister, Alice, and arranging for friends to come for a dinner party the next weekend. She was, according to her father, living “the best life”.

Ukraine’s military has run out of US Patriot interceptors to repel ballistic attacks, which have one aim, the capital’s mayor says: to destroy morale

Viktor, 23, Sofiia, 18, and their dog, Teddy, were bedding down for the night on Thursday at the Dorohozhychi metro station three stops from Kyiv’s city centre. The couple have sheltered here “every night for the past three weeks”, Viktor said, as the missile threat to the city worsened; the dog, only three months old, has been with them a fortnight. Teddy lies quietly, knowing no different a life.

People sleeping at Dorohozhychi metro station for safety.

Saja El-Khawas had been in critical condition after being pulled from sea in West Sussex

A six-year-old girl has died in hospital three days after being pulled from the sea off Shoreham in West Sussex, in an incident that also killed her mother, father and sister.

Saja El-Khawas died on Friday after the deaths of her sister Sara El-Khawas, 14, and her parents Hassan El-Khawas, 55, and Zeina Alayn, 37, on Tuesday.

In trial that opened on Tuesday, California and 28 other states accused the company of designing addictive sites and violating laws protecting children’s privacy

Meta’s business can be boiled down to four words that begin with the letter H: hook, hold, harvest, hide, according to a lawyer who is prosecuting the world’s largest social media company.

The owner of Facebook and Instagram “hooks” in users, “holds” them on its platforms for as long as possible, “harvests” their data and then “hides” the truth from the public, she argued.

Researchers in North Yorkshire feel the clock ticking as they aim to transform British food production

It has the vibe of a Bond villain’s underground lair but the workers in hi-vis and helmets aren’t weighing and packing hard drugs or parts for a death laser. It’s pak choi and lettuce.

More than 1,000 metres down, researchers in North Yorkshire have created the world’s deepest underground farm and are running trials for a project that could transform UK food production.

Leeds, West Yorkshire: I missed it first time as my dad couldn’t wake me up. The second time round, he pulled my toe

Dad and I were boiling in the house because of the UK heatwave. So we decided to camp out and sleep in our garden instead. Before we went to bed, while playing catch, we could hear the swifts swoop around our house in the orange evening light.

Once it had cooled down, Dad said it was time for bed and tucked me up. At some point in the night, Dad heard something and he tried to wake me up. There was a vixen – a female fox – drinking from the pond, but I missed it. The next morning, Dad told me about the fox and I said, if it comes again, pull my toe.

Experts say more must be done to adapt to changing climate, after two trains derailed within 24 hours during a recent heatwave

Railway companies are racing to prepare for another brutal summer next year, as a developing El Niño could see 2027 break more heat-related records.

Britain’s railway system has already been under stress from extreme heat this summer, with several operators reducing timetables and train speeds.

‘Unprecedented’ weather pattern over Pacific Ocean to be felt worldwide, with severe droughts expected in some areas

The El Niño event developing over the Pacific Ocean is likely to be the strongest for more than a century and make 2027 another record-breaking year for heat, the UK’s Met Office has said.

Increased rainfall and storms are forecast to hit the UK this autumn as a result of the “unprecedented” weather pattern, while the pulse in heat it generates means the global temperature will temporarily exceed 1.5C above the preindustrial average, according to the national weather service.

Judge orders payment within seven days towards legal costs in failed case over alleged unlawful information gathering

The Duke of Sussex and six other high-profile claimants must make a £9.54m interim payment within seven days towards the Daily Mail publisher’s legal costs after losing their high court case over allegations of unlawful information gathering, a judge has ruled.

Associated Newspapers Ltd strongly denied the claims made by Prince Harry and co-claimants including Doreen Lawrence and Elton John.

The Duchess of Sussex is said to be discussing a return to acting in the third season of Netflix’s hit crime series

The Duchess of Sussex is in talks to make her acting return in Netflix’s hit series The Gentlemen.

According to Variety, Meghan is in discussions to join the third season, which has yet to receive an official greenlight. The Gentlemen is a spin-off from the 2019 crime comedy of the same name with Guy Ritchie acting as creator of both.

David Campanale seeks damages after what he says was organised campaign against his faith in Sutton and Cheam

How much is a career in politics worth? The Liberal Democrats, despite admitting claims of religious discrimination, say about £22,800. A former Lib Dem candidate claims £790,000.

It is a question before the Central London county court after David Campanale argued that discrimination against his Christianity cost him his political career in a civil case against the party.

Zolani Tete was arriving at his house in Eastern Cape when two men in balaclavas got out of a car and shot him

The former boxing world champion Zolani “Last Born” Tete was shot dead outside his home in South Africa on Friday amid rampant violence in the country, which has one of the world’s highest murder rates.

The 38-year-old athlete was arriving at his house in the Mdantsane township, Eastern Cape province, when two men in balaclavas got out of a car and shot him. He was declared dead at the scene. A 27-year-old woman with Tete was also shot multiple times and taken to hospital.

Omaha police agreed to stop carrying electric shock gloves in the halls of state’s largest public school district

Omaha police recently agreed to stop carrying gloves that can deliver electric shocks to students in the halls of Nebraska’s largest public school district.

The decision affecting most Omaha middle and high schools came after the Associated Press first revealed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s plan to give officers the “Gloves” – or “generated low output voltage emitters”. The devices have also been used in recent years by some jails.

People fighting to contain rapidly growing outbreak in Democratic Republic of the Congo describe the obstacles and dangers they face

Every day, Sophie Mwadawa Kabundo goes to her job as a nurse at an Ebola treatment centre in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, afraid she will contract the virus and pass it to her family and friends.

“More and more confirmed cases are being admitted here … Some of our colleagues have died,” said Kabundo. “We fear that, despite our vigilance, workplace accidents may occur and put us in ever greater danger … We go to sleep already worrying about the days ahead, as patients continue to pour in.”

Outcome of trial of a Massachusetts mother accused of killing her three children may come down to witness testimony

The trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of killing her three children in January 2023, will likely head to the jury next week to decide if she is guilty of murder or was suffering from postpartum psychosis and should not be held criminally responsible.

The outcome may come down to expert witness testimony – and there have been many – but the trial will be remembered for the spotlight it put on maternal health care in the United States. Defense lawyer Kevin Reddington has said that, in addition to postpartum psychosis, Clancy also had bipolar disorder and was overmedicated.

In the week that Years recalled all of its fresh meals, concerns grow about a potential link to dogs’ health conditions

“It’s been horrible – Chester developed sudden red and gunky eyes in May,” said Elizabeth, whose six-year-old cavachon “can’t open his eyes” on many days.

The 29-year-old civil servant is one of a number of people who contacted the Guardian because they are concerned about a potential link between a recalled dog food and their pet’s eye condition.

Savings bank estimates there will be 308,000 more prizes available in September draw than the month before

Premium bond holders will have more chances of winning prizes after changes announced this week.

From September there will be more prizes up for grabs for the 22 million people who hold the government-backed savings bonds.

Pre-tax earnings slump at chef’s food and media group after one-off costs including for a new cookery school

Jamie and Jools Oliver have paid themselves a £1.5m dividend – more than 40% down on last year – after profits at their cookery and media empire almost halved.

Sales at Jamie Oliver Holdings remained broadly steady at £28.4m in 2025, £160,000 less than in the previous year, as a strong performance at the group’s own restaurants, franchise business, cookery schools and TV productions offset a decline in royalties, licensing and endorsements.

Volume of goods sold in stores and online dropped 0.5% in July, ONS says

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Retail sales across Great Britain weakened last month despite the men’s football World Cup and record temperatures boosting the demand for food and drink.

The Office for National Statistics said the volume of goods sold in stores and online fell 0.5% in July. That is down from 0.7% rise in June – revised down from initial estimates of 1% – and a 1.3% rise in May.

After my engagement ended, I found myself repeatedly watching a movie about three astronauts trapped in a damaged spacecraft. It helped me see that sometimes the mere act of getting home is the success

‘Failure is not an option” has always been my family’s catchphrase; it’s flight director Gene Kranz’s famous line in the film Apollo 13. When I tell people it’s our family motto, they often joke, “That’s healthy.” But it isn’t about being the best. It’s about refusing to stop being.

I’ve loved Apollo 13 since I was a child. To me, Ron Howard’s 1995 adaptation of one of humanity’s greatest rescue missions is the perfect film to watch when you feel you might implode – because they got home. It is a film about a successful failure. When the Nasa director warns: “This could be the worst disaster Nasa’s ever experienced,” Kranz replies: “I believe this is going to be our finest hour.” Every time I watch that scene, I start crying.

This snort-aloud Australian comedy is sweet, hilarious – and a surprising examination of male loneliness and mid-life crisis. Who’s a good show then?!

Whenever I’m watching a programme that features an animal and I realise I’m expected to have a specific reaction to that animal, I run into a problem. I call it the Cuteness Assumptive Theory: Subjectivity in Television issue (CATSIT for short). It boils down to this: if the success of your show relies on my finding your lead actor scrumptious-wumptious, you’ve already failed. We all like different things.

The theory applies equally to humans. We all know that moment when some interchangeable heartthrob walks into the scene on a US sitcom. All the characters lose their minds, this being apparently the hottest person on Earth, while you’re sitting thinking, ‘Huh?’ It happens with child stars too. Casting directors have a narrow spectrum of children they think will elicit an “awww” response from audiences. The response usually elicited in me is “Couldn’t they find a better actor?” I’m not trying to be liked here! Anyway, it’s the animal version that came to mind this week, watching Dog Park.

I desperately wanted this show to be Gilmore Girls meets Murder, She Wrote – but the story of a novelist turned amateur sleuth is just so lazy. And yet, I still have high hopes for the confirmed second season

Look, we all want Brooke Shields to be in gainful employment. We all want her to have a fabulous third act to her career. God knows, the child model turned star of prurient fever dreams Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon (and the “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins” jeans ad campaign when she was 15) has earned it. Plus, she did a fine turn in Friends and a number of us remember Suddenly Susan very fondly.

But she’s terrible in the terrible new thing she’s in, which is a six-part comedy drama called You’re Killing Me. Shields plays successful cosy mystery novelist Allison Chandler, who lives in the picturesque town of Founder’s Cove, Maine. It’s Murder, She Wrote vibes all right, but please lower your expectations.

The Destiny’s Child star joins the hit singing contest. Plus: the essential BBC Four drama about America’s exit from Kabul. Here’s what to watch this evening

7pm, ITV1

They were once the hottest shows on television – gripping, sexy, hilarious, zeitgeisty. But for our writers, the likes of America’s Next Top Model, House of Cards and The Office are now part of their viewing history they feel tainted by

When I think of the summer holidays when I was a teenager, I think of watching America’s Next Top Model for hours on end, critiquing each contestant with my sister. The makeover episode was always my favourite: girls sobbing as their hair was cropped short, or even shaved off. At the time, Tyra Banks seemed like a big sister, giving the contestants the tough love they’d need to succeed in a ferociously competitive industry. Now I feel differently. I hadn’t watched America’s Next Top Model since I was young, but like many, I recently watched Netflix’s excellent series, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. It was the strangest sensation, rewatching episodes I hadn’t seen in more than two decades. At times I felt almost teleported back. How could I not find these scenes of models collapsing with hunger utterly abhorrent? I wondered what influence watching a show that celebrated eating disorders had on my own brain. I think it had an impact. I think the residual taint of it is still there. I can’t watch America’s Next Top Model any more, nor do I want to. Ironically, it’s all too ugly. Sirin Kale

Despite stars Leslie Mann, Anna Faris and Isla Fisher and the writers behind The Hangover, this tale of friends at a luxury hotel is a dud

Jon Lucas and Scott Moore are the screenwriters who struck gold nearly 20 years ago with The Hangover, a brilliant stag-weekend nightmare comedy about what happens in Vegas, which sadly spawned a terrible (though lucrative) franchise. Now, as writers and directors, they have tried turning it around and making a movie about how middle-aged women behave on a longed-for spa weekend at a luxury-porn hotel. The result is a comedy without gags, a comedy which, for all the strenuous high-jinks, is afraid to be flippant or mean or, indeed, funny in any way.

Leslie Mann plays a hotshot lawyer called Jane who can’t make room in her life for romance; Anna Faris is goofy Sophie, PA to a rich asshole; Michelle Buteau is outspoken badass Coco, angry at her ex-husband dating again; and Isla Fisher is landed with the stridently unfunny role of Mel, a wild child who makes the other three nervous, but whose life-affirming no-filter honesty is going to break everyone’s emotional logjam and sort out their lives. As for Jane, it looks as if the hotel’s super-hot super-sensitive yoga teacher, Kai (Adam Demos), is going to hook up with her.

As part of the Beastie Boys, the rapper shot to fame and notoriety in the 80s, before bandmate Adam Yauch’s death saw him withdraw from the spotlight. He returns with a solo album that sees him reckon with greed, mortality – and his past

‘It’s funny how far a joke will get you,” Michael Diamond grins. This time 40 years ago, the New York rapper known as Mike D was working with schoolfriends Adam “MCA” Yauch and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz on Licensed to Ill, their 1986 debut album as the Beastie Boys.

The “joke” in question is that record’s cartoonish send-up of frat-bro culture, set to fusions of hard rock riffs and hip-hop beats. As for how far it got them: destinations included global stardom, a page in the history books with rap’s first US chart-topping album, and the crosshairs of British tabloids as they roused a generation to “fight for your right to party”.

Kurdish New Zealander Baban Hussain has gained global fame with online hit he created with Australian producer

Two months ago, Baban Hussain, a 22-year-old Kurdish New Zealander, was working from a self-run studio in Auckland, putting out music to a few thousand followers as little-known rapper Fat Papi.

Then, as modern fairytales go, he made a viral hit that has amassed over 7.5bn views across YouTube, gained him nearly 10m new monthly listeners on Spotify, and catapulted him on to global charts – including the US Billboard Hot 100.

Philharmonia Orchestra/Dudamel
(Decca)
There’s a cinematic flourish to many of Hopkins’ compositions, together with fine arrangements of Welsh tunes and pieces dedicated to family

Anthony Hopkins, it turns out, has been composing music all his life. Now, at the age of 88, the Welsh-born Hollywood actor makes his Decca debut, securing the services of LA Philharmonic’s outgoing music director Gustavo Dudamel to bring his music to life.

So, what does an Oscar winner sound like? Not surprisingly, there’s a significant cinematic influence, inspired by the music that caught the attention of a lad growing up in Margam, a suburb of Port Talbot. The opening Fanfare and March is a catchy, Technicolor splash, like everything here harmonious and written from the heart. Ditto the Khachaturian-flavoured Two Pieces for Orchestra. Welsh roots are honoured too: My Fatherland, featuring six traditional tunes, four sung in Welsh, would not seem out of place at the Last Night of the Proms.

The LA-based powerpop project’s triumphant debut is a celebration of low-stakes creativity in the slacker-skater tradition

From Los Angeles
Recommended if you like the Lemonheads, Sugar, the Muffs
Up next Secret to Spare released 18 September

Maybe it’s to do with getting older, maybe it’s to do with the broad-spectrum grimness of it all, but the thrill of low-stakes creativity, of making something for the joy of making it rather than in the hope of making it, feels particularly vital at the moment. And, if the sun-bleached cool of Jawdropped’s music is anything to go by, starting a powerpop project in your 30s will light up this pleasure centre like a dive bar pinball machine.

Midlife meditations from Barbara Kingsolver; musical portraits by Jonathan Coe and Yiyun Li; plus memoirs from Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench – all among the coming season’s highlights

The Disappearers by Marlon James
Hamish Hamilton, 3 September
After a detour into mythic fantasy, the author of the Booker-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings returns to Jamaica. This account of a brutal homophobic attack on a group of gay actors in 1980s Kingston has already been longlisted for this year’s prize.

The TV presenter and author on the evolutionary biologists who inspired her, the genius of George Eliot – and fun with Frog and Toad

My earliest reading memory
The first books I remember were from The Village with Three Corners series Sheila K McCullagh. I loved the – literally – colourful characters, like Johnny Yellow Hat. I was reading with my Grandma, in her garden perhaps, sitting on a small patio, surrounded by bright begonias and busy lizzies.

My favourite book growing up
Arnold Lobel’s wonderful Frog and Toad stories. Toad would get himself tied up in knots, trying to find a button or fly a kite, but Frog was always there – a constant, caring and funny friend. I enjoyed reading these stories to my own children when they were young, and we still sometimes go back and revisit them. They’re so full of humour, heart and simple humanism.

My friend Marc Dubin, who has died aged 70, was one of the leading English-language travel writers on Greece, Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean. For more than four decades he wrote and edited guidebooks for Rough Guides, Insight Guides, Berlitz, DK Eyewitness and Lonely Planet, combining meticulous scholarship with an infectious enthusiasm for the places he loved.

In the late 1970s, Marc left his home in California to travel through Central America before settling in Europe. To finance his travels he worked as a photographer, producing many of the postcard images that introduced holidaymakers to the Mediterranean long before the digital age.

The Red Book of Farewells by Pirkko Saisio; Short Circuit by Wolf Haas; Cosmos by Lucia Odoom; The Fallen Trees Are Also the Forest by Alejandra Kamiya

The Red Book of Farewells by Pirkko Saisio, translated by Mia Spangenberg, Penguin Classics (£14.99)
Following Lowest Common Denominator and Backlight, this book completes Finnish author Saisio’s autofictional trilogy. It covers her young adulthood in the 1970s, where she comes out as lesbian (“The electricity doesn’t go out. The Richter scale remains still”) and falls in love. One of her lovers, Havva, is a communist who’s engaged to a man; she relies on his rich parents for funding, but pees in their private pool as a protest. Later, Saisio is voted vice-president of a political drama company, as “she has the skills to bring about the revolution, specifically via theatre” – despite half-baked productions such as the “napalm opera” Vietnam-a-Go-Go. As that suggests, this is a story with a sense of both the ridiculous and the serious. Told in clear prose, it playfully shifts between third and first person as Saisio recounts her memories then analyses them. This enchanting series deserves to become a modern classic.

Short Circuit by Wolf Haas, translated by Jamie Bulloch (HarperVia, £20)
“We think [time] goes in one direction. But really you need to think of it as a loop”. This, well, loopy novel opens with jigsaw aficionado and “merciless hair-splitter” Franz Escher getting an electrician in to fix his power – then accidentally killing him. As Franz waits for the ambulance, he reads a novel about Elio, a man who helped put his own mafia family behind bars. Elio, who’s now on witness protection, kills time by reading a novel about … Franz Escher. The two stories pursue one another, accelerating until they collide, incorporating courtship by car alarm, rival funeral orators and multiple identities for many characters. Oh, and what if the electrician Franz killed turns out to be Elio? Short Circuit, recalling the slipstream fiction of Christopher Priest and the light-touch experimentations of David Mitchell, is an entertaining literary hall-of-mirrors.

PC, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X/S; Konami
This second collection remasters another three titles from the illustrious stealth espionage series, but their world has changed little since the original releases

‘War has changed,” claims Old Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Back in 2008, the team at Kojima Productions waxed poetic about people recruited to fight in proxy wars they have no political or ideological stake in. As these mercenaries follow their orders, traders get rich out of the so-called war economy. The more disastrous the conflict in a specific area, the higher the bidding price.

I expected my time with Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol 2 to be nostalgic and, in good old MGS fashion, abundant with fictional events that sound eerily familiar to our current reality. Twenty minutes in, I was having an existential crisis.

Free from a big brand’s audience expectations, new studio GPTrack50 has created a wacky action-packed romp through a monster-filled world for its first game

Love is blind. In Stupid Never Dies, it is also frozen solid and technically dead as Davy, the weakest zombie in monster society, discovers Julia’s body in a shopping centre and falls in love at first sight. He wants to bring her back to life and take her on a date. Unfortunately, that means defeating the King of Monsters (KOM) and accidentally saving humanity along the way.

This is the gloriously ridiculous setup for this forthcoming action RPG from GPTrack50, a new studio founded by former Capcom producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi. Its world looks much like ours, except that monsters have always been part of everyday life: whereas we might find a bear in the mountains or a stray dog in the woods, residents here encounter werewolves and zombies.

Even film-makers have been inspired by Insomniac’s take on Spidey. But the studio’s tried and tested format might not fit a superhero with such sharp claws

The recent Marvel’s Spider-Man games have become so tightly interwoven with the character’s core that they’ve been cited, by both actor Tom Holland and director Destin Daniel Cretton, as an influence on this year’s blockbuster film Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Now the same development studio – Sony-owned Insomniac Games – is taking on one of Marvel’s other most recognisable characters in his first video game-starring role since some deeply mid-tier film tie-ins back in the 00s. So can they pull off the same trick with Marvel’s Wolverine?

Storywise it certainly takes a similar approach, once again grabbing ideas from a wide selection of inspirations and remixing them into a brand-new continuity. We first meet this version of Wolverine as he is discovered: wild-eyed, wilder haired and practically nude. Before we see his saviour’s face, we hear a well-spoken voice (provided by legendary game actor Troy Baker) promising a safe place “for people like us”. Surely this is Charles Xavier?

The Elden Ring creator is known for epic single-player RPGs, but its new action game is all about multiplayer interactions: fighting, chasing, befriending, even … proposing?

Lowanro City’s skyline is dominated by an oppressive clock tower, silhouetted against a moody red sky and an impossibly large, ominous moon. A retractable bridge splits the map in two, and a network of slimy sewers runs beneath the city streets, offering flanking routes for crafty players. This layered and multi-tiered map bears all the hallmarks of the team behind some of the most memorable stomping grounds in video games.

But The Duskbloods, which I recently spent two days playing in Tokyo, is a strange departure from developer FromSoftware’s usual offerings. These have included massive single-player RPGs with light, experimental multiplayer components such as Elden Ring and Bloodborne. Those games have always attracted duellists – players who love to invade other people’s games to fight them to the death – but this Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive is a different proposition entirely.

Royal Lyceum theatre, Edinburgh
Three men bicker and reflect like they’re chatting at a bar – yet this grimly beautiful piece of theatre at the Edinburgh international festival won’t let you forget their fate

Three men are shooting the breeze. “We’re just talking – man to man to man,” says Slim (Kamal Bolden), an ex-con who believes in looking after number one. In a literal sense, he is right. They are just talking. In this short, grimly beautiful production, written and directed by Zora Howard for New York’s Flea theatre, they have the kind of all-male conversation you might hear in any bar – at turns needling, teasing, argumentative, romantic, trivial and spiky. They like nothing more than when an attractive woman walks by.

Where Slim is always out for personal gain – a quick buck, a sexual misadventure – Bird (Julian Rozzell) carries the wisdom of age. He scorns Slim’s quick-fix philosophy, favouring old-fashioned values of loyalty, decency and privacy. Blood (Bryce Foley), the youngest of the three, is the romantic: the one who dreams of life beyond streets that seem to have stripped a community of ambition.

Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh
Heckling herself in character as the Greek goddess, the standup delivers an intelligent, in-your-face show about sex and expectations

You can’t argue with the opening gambit of Aphrodite: “I’ve never been in love and I don’t think it’s real.” Consider me grabbed. This is the follow-up to Elouise Eftos’s fantastically provocative 2025 debut, Australia’s First Attractive Comedian, and it’s another intelligent, in-your-face hour about men and women, sex and expectations. OK, so it doesn’t administer the shock of the new quite like its predecessor, and Eftos’s argument about love is not as authoritative as her impossibly high status requires. But Aphrodite consolidates Eftos as a gripping new presence on the comedy scene.

It starts with a steamy pop video, with the Greek-Australian Eftos in character as goddess of love Aphrodite – who then heckles the comic in interrupting voiceovers for the remainder of the show. Eftos has an Aphrodite side, she tells us, but an Athena too – and she wants to be funny. That’s a combination forbidden to women, she posits, certainly if they want to find love with (whisper it) heterosexual men. That latter disappointing category of human is mocked here for its privilege, its fear of dancing, and because “being a straight man is a little bit gay”.

Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh
Melissa Firlit recreates Dirty Dancing in a one-woman show that mixes trivia, personal memories and a singalong

Dirty Dancing was the first VHS in our house: snazzy purple box, pure 80s brushstroke title, alluring 15 certificate – and all that slo-mo, black-and-white grinding to the Ronettes before it even begins. I’m not the only one who remembers their first viewing. Melissa Firlit watched the film again and again. Now she recreates the whole thing, from the drive to the Catskills resort, to Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey’s lift, in this fizzy one-woman show.

With a coat stand for costumes and a box of props (yes, she’s carried a watermelon), Firlit strikes a fangirl pose as she whirls us through the film that “changed the trajectory of all films for ever forward”. Going scene by scene, sometimes line by line (“nobody puts Baby in a corner!”), she steps through each mambo, salsa, cha-cha-cha and merengue, with movement direction by Kristyn Pope. Firlit salutes Cynthia Rhodes’ lightning legs, recruits audience members to teach them the Swayze swivel and leads us in a slow handclap for smarmy Neil (played on screen by Lonny Price, who co-directs the fringe musical The Real Kyle McCarren across town).

Pitlochry Festival theatre
Iain Heggie’s rejigged 2001 play – now ensconced in the world of voice notes and vapes – is very funny, but the lighter moments jar with some sobering subtexts

These days, shows about care homes, dementia and end of life are very common, but when Iain Heggie’s splendidly named Wiping My Mother’s Arse premiered in 2001, it was ahead of the curve. It is set in an overstretched nursing home where Andrene (Anne Kidd) has developed a close relationship with her care worker, Larry (Johnny McKnight), little realising he previously spent five years living with her son, Derek (David Rankine). Cue the comedy of confusion and subterfuge.

The play’s fault line runs through questions of care, compassion and money. The emotionally detached Derek has been happy to farm out the care of his mother while he lives at the other end of the country. He shows less interest in her welfare than he does in her bank account.

At Pitlochry Festival theatre until 5 September

A man at a bank counter in a border town in northern India, tension in the air: how could any photographer resist?

Over the last decade, Lancashire-born, London-based Christine Rodgers has trekked in Bhutan, Nepal and the Indian states and regions of Uttarakhand, Ladakh and Sikkim. “I’ve developed something of a passion for the Himalayas,” she says. “I love being in the mountains; not climbing, but walking and camping at altitude, in sight of the wonderful range of peaks.”

Rodgers used to rely on her Olympus camera to take photographs on her trips, but has since switched predominantly to using her phone. “I love the immediacy,” she notes. “I did miss having a viewfinder at first, but I now feel completely at home with the screen.”

In this week’s newsletter: As platforms chase ​s​ubscribers, podcasts are losing their off‑screen charm​, leaving listeners to wonder whether the intimacy of audio can survive the studio lights

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This has been the year that podcasting properly, unapologetically “pivoted to video”. Yes, it’s been a progression that has been in the making for quite a while, arguably ever since Joe Rogan first trained a webcam at himself and whichever guest he was smoking weed with in his studio back in 2009 – but in 2026 the medium’s transformation from purely aural to audio/visual (often with more of an emphasis on the visual) is truly complete.

In January, Netflix started broadcasting video versions of popular podcasts from The Ringer, iHeartMedia, Barstool and more, as well as continuing to make video pods of their own. That landgrab was a slightly desperate response to YouTube’s phenomenal success with visualised pods; after becoming the preferred podcast platform for most Americans in 2024, it managed the same feat in the UK in 2026, overtaking Spotify. No wonder, then, that Spotify has – as part of a wider push to get people sticking to its platform for pods – continued to bolster viewing capabilities for its own pods too.

English translation of Élisabeth, the New Wave director’s 1946 book about young lovers in prewar Paris, receives rave reviews as precursor to auteur’s cinematic work

In the dog days of the second world war, 24-year-old Maurice Schérer wrote a tale of young lovers in prewar small-town France. He described lazy August swims in the Marne River east of Paris. He wrote about age-gap affairs and semi-incestuous flirtations. Schérer gallantly used a nom de plume, Gilbert Cordier, to shield his Catholic family from scandal, but he needn’t have bothered as his concerns were unfounded. The finished novel, Élisabeth, barely made a ripple and quickly slipped out of print. Undeterred, Scherer adopted a second pseudonym – Éric Rohmer – and decided to try his luck as a film-maker instead.

Now – eight decades on from its first publication, 16 years on from its author’s death – Élisabeth belatedly returns from the cold. Republished in an English-language translation by Aaron Kerner, Rohmer’s book has been greeted with glowing reviews, hailed as a lost modernist classic and a crucial origin story for the award-winning director of Claire’s Knee, The Green Ray and My Night at Maud’s. “It would be a rewarding, exciting read even if the identity of its author were unfamiliar,” wrote Richard Brody in the New Yorker. The fact that it’s by Rohmer? That’s the icing on the cake.

UK anthology inspired by question: ‘Where are our black and Asian nature writers?’ has boosted interest in genre

A new movement of eco poets from black and brown communities in the UK is challenging the canon of nature poetry against the backdrop of the climate and biodiversity crisis.

Mona Arshi, who co-edited the first UK collection of eco poetry from African, Asian and Caribbean diaspora voices, was inspired to put the anthology together after asking in a social media post that went viral: “Where are all our black and Asian nature writers?”

It’s time to write about daffodils
again.

Susan, 74, a retired careers adviser, meets Pete, 72, a retired Methodist minister

What were you hoping for?
A relaxed, friendly lunch with good and fun conversation.

The actor on mucking out pigs as a teenager, an apology to his first wife and what makes him cry all the time

Born in London, Nigel Havers, 74, was Bafta-nominated for his 1981 role in Chariots of Fire. His other films include A Passage to India and Empire of the Sun. On television he has appeared in Don’t Wait Up, The Charmer, Coronation Street, The Gentlemen and, most recently, Golden Boys. He has starred in West End plays and panto, and is touring his show, Talking B*ll*cks. He is married, has a daughter and lives in London.

What is your greatest fear?
Every actor has the same fear – ie, you’re never going to work again.

With gentler formulas and lower prices, children’s toiletries can work just as well for adults. From nappy rash cream to nourishing bath milk, these are the products that have earned a place in my routine

There may be plenty of worrying headlines about children using adult beauty products from younger and younger ages, but what about the reverse?

I’ve been a beauty editor for more than a decade, but when I had my first child in 2020, I was immediately impressed with the body washes, bath products and moisturisers designed for babies, particularly as someone with eczema and sensitive skin. The products’ gentler, often fragrance-free formulas are easier on my skin, tend to cost less, and result in a less cluttered bathroom, since we can all use the same things. These are the ones I’m still using – on the entire family – five years on.

They’re all the rage, but which scalp serums, oils and capsules can be counted on for nourishment and serious shine?

• The best hair masks for every budget, tested

Hair oil has become increasingly popular, with countless celebrities and influencers lauding its ability to smooth, protect and support hair growth. Some apply hair oil to their scalp, others to their strands; some apply oil to wet hair before styling, others use it on a finished style. With so many uses, it’s worth thinking about your goals before buying.

I’ve worked my way through 11 bottles, from a cheap-and-cheerful £9.99 to a steeper £65, to bring you this list of the best hair oils. Whether you’re looking for thick, nourishing oils to help nurse damaged hair to life or a featherlight option to add shine and scent to your strands, there’s something on this list for you.

Quick to fire up and compact enough to take camping, Ooni’s gas-powered model sets a high bar for outdoor dining

• The best pizza ovens – tested
• Gozney Dome Gen 2 pizza oven review

If you’re looking for a gas-powered, compact, portable pizza oven that’s easy to set up, yet still offers generous cooking space, the Ooni Koda 2 may be the pick for you.

The second generation of the company’s award-winning Koda 12 oven has space for a 14in pizza compared with the original’s 12in one. There is also more room to manoeuvre inside, a wider temperature range (so you can cook seafood and steaks, too), and a flame designed for better heat distribution. Unlike the Koda 12, the Ooni Koda 2 is available with optional accessories, including the rotating stone bundle tested here (a pricey upgrade of £229) and a smart temperature hub (the Connect, £89), which means you don’t have to constantly reach for an infrared (IR) thermometer.

Low-cal, crisp and fruity, these are our expert’s favourite non-alcoholic and hard seltzer cans to pop in your bag this summer

• I tried 75 low- and no-alcohol drinks: here are my favourites

Since White Claw disrupted the drinks-in-tins category with its UK arrival in 2020, hard seltzers have continued to grow in popularity. Loved by celebrities, festival-goers and commuters alike, these alcoholic sparkling waters are known for being low in calories, sugar and with minimal ingredients, while containing roughly the same amount of alcohol as a standard lager (up to about 5% ABV).

Hovering at about 100 calories a can and with a few carefully chosen (usually) natural flavourings plus spirit, it’s easy to see why seltzers have gained a reputation for being a relatively light choice when picking up a couple of cans. But what makes a good seltzer?

Rich, velvety nuts are offset by zippy, seasonal berries in a cake for all occasions

Most cakes I can take or leave, but I never regret a slice of almond cake. The density! The chewy crumb! The way it romances butter and other flavours! The ultimate almond cake, in the Sodha house, at least, is Claudia Roden’s orange and almond cake, which is made religiously for special occasions (of which there are many from December to March), but I wanted a more seasonal cake for a good friend’s August birthday. Blackberries are perfect (not least because we’re drowning in them right now), because they provide an excellent, zippy contrast to the almond’s velvety nature.

UKHSA says imported eggs eaten in restaurants are source of outbreak that has infected more than 200 people

Contaminated eggs have infected 207 people with salmonella across the UK, killing one and hospitalising 34.

Eggs imported into Britain and eaten in cafes and restaurants were the source, the UK Health Security Agency has said. The outbreak has prompted public concern. But what is salmonella, and are eggs safe to eat?

Edible weeds grow in abundance in our gardens, streets and parks. With a little know-how, you can harvest delicious, nutritious, free greens

Did you know that free food grows in our gardens, streets and parks without being planted by us? Not only does this food hide in plain sight, we’re encouraged to remove it from our gardens and throw it away. I’m talking about edible weeds, otherwise known as wildflowers. You may not be able to eat weeds into submission, but using them in the kitchen is a good excuse to welcome them into the garden.

We walk past edible weeds without a second thought, yet they’re nutritious and available for much of the year. They return of their own accord every year, either perennially or by seed, making it easy to familiarise yourself with them and learn how to cook.

The favourite spicy brunch cocktail gets a Scottish twist, complete with Buckfast and a slice of pickle for punch

This is our take on the ultimate brunch cocktail, though of course we had to give it a Gaelic stamp of some kind, so have added a shot of Buckfast and renamed it Maìri. If you’re not familiar, Buckfast is a sweet tonic wine, apparently known for its “healing” properties, made in Devon by Benedictine monks, but that has been adopted by the Scots as our own.

Clare Coghill, chef-owner, Café Cùil, Isle of Skye

The author and academic explains how an open, questioning mindset can bring people with opposing views closer together – and even change history

Asking a question can change your mood, and having a questioning mindset can change your life – or, as the philosopher Lani Watson, an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh, is more likely to put it, “create change in your life”. When you live in an answer-oriented world, your phrasing tends towards the glib certainty, which is one of the things Watson – speaking to me from her home in Edinburgh – seems quite naturally to avoid.

Questioning fosters exploration and curiosity, she says. It changes your relationship to yourself and to others: it can make you fall in love; it can stop you going to war. Watson’s challenging book, Q: The Hidden Power of Questions in a World that Wants Answers, is written with a deceptive simplicity and an almost kindly encouragement, so you’re knee-deep into her proposition before you have even considered that it might turn out to be quite hard work.

Pádraig has a favourite side, whereas Dave likes to sleep farthest from the door. Help us put this argument to bed
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

I sleep better on the left side of the bed. I shouldn’t have to swap just because we’ve moved to a new flat

I was living on my own for the first time in 35 years, walking every day. Nature reminded me how much there still is to be found in emptiness

After my husband died, the birds started behaving strangely towards me. This was not my imagination; it really happened. On my daily walks, I was startled by how close they came to me – approaching, hopping alongside me and chirping. If there were a lot of them – and if there was no one else around – it felt as if they were accompanying me, maybe trying to convey something.

I had walked on the heath near our home with my husband for years. But his illness meant that, during his final months, he could not walk with me any more. When he died – in January 2023 – I had been walking on my own for six months and the birds, I am sure of this, had paid no attention to me.

Because I’d visited so often to print things, she made me feel that someone had witnessed the journey I was on, all the way through to its difficult conclusion

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

Mum’s disease progressed slowly at first, and then in a really big rush. After years of battling early onset Parkinson’s, in 2015 we were suddenly told she only had six months left.

I was living in Brisbane, Australia, and Mum was in a care home 600km away in Taree, so I began flying down every second weekend to visit. At the time, it was still common to print out your boarding pass – or at least, it was for me; I was a bit late to the tech game.

Sign-up perks may capture the attention but should the focus be on the interest-free overdraft?

• Students on their biggest financial shocks

• The best student deals and discounts

• An insider’s tips on student money

In the scramble to sort out university accommodation, join freshers group chats and work out how a student loan payment is meant to stretch across a whole term, there is one big decision that is easy to put off but worth getting right: which student bank account to open.

Student accounts work like any other current account but come with two extras that don’t apply to the general public: an interest-free overdraft, and a lot of perks designed to hook you in as a customer for life.

It said that was what I was due after I submitted a claim for £300 for energy exported through my solar panels

British Gas paid me more than £38,000 by mistake, then had no idea how to reclaim it. I receive quarterly feed-in tariff (Fit) payments for energy exported by my solar panels.

In May, I submitted a claim for £300, based on my meter reading, and I received an email stating that I was due £38,611.59.

Fraudsters use pictures posted on Instagram or Facebook to create emails seeking bank account details

You are on a short break in Porto and post some pictures of your family on Instagram or Facebook. With a small section of the Douro river in the background, you think it could have been taken anywhere.

A few days later, you get a text saying that your card was compromised. “We detected unusual activity while you were travelling in Porto – please verify immediately,” says the message.

You can save money at university, especially using schemes such as UNiDAYS, Student Beans or TOTUM

• ‘Watch your spending, use free perks’: an insider’s tips on student money

With rents on the up and food costing more, maintenance loans are stretched thinner than ever. Knowing how, and where, to get a discount can make a real difference.

A golden rule is to register with the big discount websites and apps – UNiDAYS, Student Beans and TOTUM – using your university email address as soon as you have one. Each has a slightly different roster of retailers, so it is worth signing up to all three.

As weight-loss drugs gain popularity in the US, brands are scaling back their ranges – and frustrating customers

In March 2023, the model, activist and writer Tess Holliday announced that she had been working as a size and inclusivity consultant for H&M. The fruits of their partnership felt like “one of the most meaningful things that I’ve done in my career”, she told US Vogue at the time. The fashion juggernaut had committed to an expansion of its sizes, from XL to 4XL, and to increased body diversity of its models.

This bucked a trend, coming at an otherwise gloomy time for plus-sized fashion. By 2023, the fashion industry was in the grips of an Ozempic-fuelled celebration of skinny bodies, after its brief flirtation with curves during the body positivity movement of the late 2010s.

Here’s what professionals have to say about good workout etiquette, from using equipment to being on your phone

I like to think of myself as a fairly laid-back person. Other people’s behavior is not my business. There is one notable exception: my gym nemesis.

He brings his computer to the gym and takes work conference calls at full volume. He has four to six pairs of dumbbells around him at all times – then doesn’t put them away. Intellectually I understand he is a fragile, flawed human like the rest of us, but in my gut I sometimes wonder if he arrived here from another galaxy.

Findings highlight importance of sleep health during middle age, particularly for those with lower socioeconomic status

Sleep that is extremely disrupted or that goes on too long could mean a loss of nine months from working life after the age of 50, a study has found.

It also found that women with no sleep disturbances had a longer working life from 50 to 68 than their male equivalents.

Premixed drinks are ultra-processed products but their marketing claims create a ‘health halo’ that takes the focus away from the harms of alcohol, researchers say

Premixed alcoholic drinks are not known for their health benefits. But that hasn’t stopped a boom in products being marketed with “better for you” claims designed to appeal to younger, more health-conscious drinkers.

Labels such as “low sugar”, “gluten-free” and “low carb” are being used in advertising to promote the products, and social media influencers spruik the products under the hashtag #healthydrinking.

Melissa Davey is Guardian Australia’s medical editor

Antiviral is a fortnightly column that interrogates the evidence behind the health headlines and factchecks popular wellness claims

The event feted its 25 year anniversary with labels like Zambesi, promising emerging designers and an explosion of Māori and Indigenous culture

New Zealand fashion week took place in Auckland this week at the heritage-listed Shed 10 on Waitemata harbour and other venues across the city. Founded by Dame Pieter Stewart in 2001, now run by entrepreneur Feroz Ali, the 25th anniversary featured a mix of established names, exciting newcomers and a dramatically enhanced Indigenous program. The event boasted three separate group showcases of creatives from not just the Pacific region, but India, Taiwan and the US, in addition to the inaugural New Zealand Indigenous fashion symposium.

If ‘lifespan’ is the time you’re alive and ‘healthspan’ the years you’re disease-free, then ‘hotspan’ is the period you’re attractive and vibrant. Want to increase yours? Experts share their tips

Forget 12-step skincare routines, red light therapy and injectables – the single most important thing you can do for your skin is wear UV protection. “Not just sun protection, but UV protection, every single day, regardless of weather or season,” says Dr Jennifer Owens, resident aesthetic expert at the Reborne Longevity clinic in London. “Up to 90% of visible skin ageing is caused by UV exposure – nothing else comes close in terms of impact.”

Cute, egoless canines offer a break from a world that feels dominated by ‘nepo babies’ and ‘Maga lady aesthetic’

What do Nicole Kidman, a pair of “nepo babies” and a beagle called Sansa Martínez Berlingeri have in common? They all appear on the covers of the all-important September issues of Vogue and Dogue. But the winner of the unofficial battle of the covers? The one with the keenest sense of smell and a penchant for playing with socks.

The September covers of British Vogue and Vogue US have come under intense scrutiny after their recent release, while their canine counterpoint, Dogue, has been almost unanimously celebrated.

From Nike’s infamous 110s to £250 and back again, sneakerheads are rediscovering why cheaper shoes can be worth just as much hype as much more expensive ones

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When Nike’s Air Max 95 trainers first landed in Britain back in the mid-1990s, they looked unlike anything else. Created by footwear designer Sergio Lozano, the shoe had wavy layers running down its sides, neon yellow accents, and visible ‘Air’ bubbles underfoot. But in the UK, one detail quickly became as famous as the shoe itself: its £110 price tag.

The Air Max 95 immediately picked up the nickname “110” because spending £110 on trainers seemed outrageous at the time. Owning a pair quickly became a status symbol among young men across Britain, while in celebrity circles they were worn by everyone from Jay-Z to Kylie Minogue.

Exploring prehistory sites around the Irish Sea – that were old even before the pyramids were built – throws a magical light on our ancestors

The guide was adamant. “I’ve picked human teeth out of there and I’m not doing it again.” The small group of tourists looked suitably aghast, except the boy. He was jiggling the wellington boots on his feet and singing to himself. He looked about 14. I sensed that he was the catalyst, the one to make things happen.

“So, if anyone is planning to leave human remains in this ancient place,” went on the guide, throwing the boy a stern look, “I say, DON’T.”

Your best UK breaks include an island off Mull, a rail journey along the County Antrim coast and Dorset’s best-kept secret

• Tell us about your favourite under-the-radar European city – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Mudeford feels like one of England’s best-kept secrets, the sort of place visitors from abroad might never imagine exists here. Golden sand and sparkling water give it an almost Mediterranean feel, while Hengistbury Head adds beautiful coastal walks and wide-open views. Our perfect day is simple: arrive early, wander along the headland, let the children play on the beach, then stop at one of the relaxed cafes for lunch or an ice-cream. My tip is to take the little ferry across the harbour – it turns an already lovely day out into a proper seaside adventure.
Priti Singer

The Mjølkevegen was once used to bring milk from high pastures to the towns below. Now cyclists are discovering the road’s breathtaking panoramas of peaks and lakes, dotted with cosy inns

‘Norway is a hilly country,” shrugs Glenn Roar Berge. He’s not wrong, though he is fond of an understatement. I’m in Valdres in southern Norway to explore the cycle routes that skirt the edges of Jotunheimen national park. Glenn from Jotunheimen Travel is our guide, a born-and-bred local of these mountains.

For most of our three-day ride, we’ll be following the Mjølkevegen, or Milky Way, a 155-mile (250km) route from Vinstra in the north to Gol in the south. It was developed after the second world war, when increased demand for fresh milk meant connecting the mountain farms with the towns below. While farming continues, the road has been embraced in recent years by gravel cyclists, (typically riders on drop-bar bikes favouring unpaved roads and trails), looking for a multi-day adventure far from towns and cities.

Anyone who has frequently landed in New Zealand’s capital has a hair-raising story to tell, and this year’s ‘super’ El Niño could only intensify the winds

It had been a smooth late-July flight from Auckland, until the plane started its descent into Wellington. Then the bumps and swaying began.

“The more we went down, the rockier it got,” says Laura, a Wellington resident who wished to give her first name only. “There was one point where we must have got a horrible cross-wind and it felt like the plane was about to flip over. At that point, the entire flight screamed.”

The weather is unrelentingly glorious, the views are amazing, but I cling to the freelancer’s habit of never quite admitting I’m on holiday

In the summer of 1995, I went on a family holiday to Portugal. On the first day I got a call from a UK magazine, asking if I would be interested in interviewing Meg Ryan, in three days’ time. I looked out to the pool, where my wife and my mother-in-law were pushing my infant son across the water in an inflatable ring.

“Sure,” I said. I broke the news, packed my things, flew to London and, the next day, to LA.

From Adventure Galley and Queen Anne’s Revenge to a bus station that’s a classic of brutalist architecture, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Emily Firmin was the only human in which children’s TV series?
2 What is the most spoken language written in Devanagari script?
3 Which brothers were, respectively, King of Scots and High King of Ireland?
4 What is the pan-European emergency telephone number?
5 Who has trained a record 12 Epsom Derby winners?
6 Where is the bus station a classic of brutalist architecture?
7 Who is said to have found the True Cross in Jerusalem in the fourth century?
8 Whose last general election victory was in 1906?
What links:
9 Photographed by Luna 3; Berlin 1961-89; Judith Chalmers series; Wind in the Willows, ch 7?
10 Adventure Galley; Fancy; Queen Anne’s Revenge; Royal Fortune; Whydah?
11 Daedalus; George London and Henry Wise; Adrian Fisher?
12 LA Dodgers; San Francisco Giants; New York Jets; New York Giants?
13 Maestro; Taking Sides; Tár; Unfaithfully Yours?
14 Satoshi; Wei; lamport; lovelace?
15 John II; Louis Philippe I; Napoleon III?

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

• ​Submit a question

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

When my son texted me from a Connecticut fortress in the middle of the night with an alarming message, it set me on a quest to understand the bizarre lifestyle of its owner

I awoke one morning in the summer of 2023 to discover that, while I’d slept, my son Joel had been texting my wife and me a series of unnerving messages about a perilous situation he had found himself in, in Connecticut.

From what I could tell, as I frantically tried to piece together the night’s events, one of Joel’s friends had been invited to a party being held by a stranger she’d met that week on Tinder. So Joel and two others went along for the ride. But when they arrived, they found the man’s home so bizarre that Joel did something he’d never done before – he sent me the coordinates of his location and a photograph, just in case.

Jason Murphy believes he knows who killed McKee in Derry, but culture of silence and mistrust of police is denying her family justice

When Lyra McKee was shot and killed on the night of 18 April 2019, approximately 150 people were in her vicinity. The 29-year-old journalist had watched in a crowd as rioting broke out in Derry, Northern Ireland. Police footage captured the grainy outline of a man firing a handgun.

“Someone’s fucking shot,” a bystander could be heard crying in mobile phone footage shown as evidence in court. “There’s a fucking kid shot in the head.”

The cyber-fraud industry has flourished in Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar, with thousands of people trafficked into the industry. But even those who have managed to find a way out often cannot return home

Artillery fire thundered. Windows shattered. Roofs caved in. And thousands of foreign workers – many who had been tricked and trafficked into the vast cyber-fraud industry that has flourished in south-east Asia – fled.

For a brief moment, the regional crackdown appeared to mark a turning point in one of the world’s fastest-growing criminal industries, which has defrauded millions of people globally and generated billions of dollars for organised crime networks. Police and troops across Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar conducted mass raids to empty and demolish some of the region’s massive scam centres. But for many of those who escaped, freedom was only the beginning of another ordeal.

Was it a government initiative or help from a charity? Or perhaps the support of friends and/or family?

Andy Burnham has called on local leaders to offer all rough sleepers in England a route off the streets by Christmas, as he pledges another £100m to end street homelessness.

The prime minister has promised he will mount a Covid-style campaign to get everyone off the streets this winter, arguing that rough sleeping has become so common it now “feels like part of the scenery”.

We would like to hear from frontline or key workers about how the heat has affected them in the workplace this year

With record high temperatures across the UK this summer we want to hear from those whose work meant they couldn’t escape the extreme heat.

August 13 marked the hottest day of the year so far with temperatures reaching 38C in London and 37C recorded in other parts of the country; this marks the first year temperatures of 37C and above have been recorded on three separate days in the UK. Climate scientists are saying the incoming Super El Niño is likely to deliver more record breaking hot weather next year.

What are some of the weirdest or priciest things parents and carers have to buy

From September 2026 a new law comes into force, which will mean parents and carers in England should not have to buy more than three items of branded school uniform. Secondary and middle schools may ask for four items if a tie is one of them.

The government says it hopes the new law will “ensure the cost of school uniforms is reasonable and provides the best value for money”.

We want to hear from young people who have chosen to start their own businesses rather than follow a traditional career path

A growing number of Gen Z are starting their own businesses, with the number of Start Up Loans taken out by young founders rising by 132% over the past five years, according to analysis by the British Business Bank. Meanwhile, Hiscox analysis of Companies House data found nearly 400,000 Gen Z directors are now running UK-registered businesses.

We’d like to hear from people aged between 18 and 29 who have started a business about what inspired you to do it and how you got started. How is your business going? What have been the biggest challenges and rewards? Do you see yourself continuing to run your own business in the future?

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Wildfires in Europe, Russian strikes in Kyiv, the Meta trial and swimming in Gaza – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists