Olivia Rodrigo, Noah Kahan and Morgan Wallen have all dealt with audience effluence in recent weeks – but that’s only one part of a fearsome subculture that has built up around fandom, endurance and ‘getting barrier’

The front row of a gig is a sacred space. When you love an artist, you want to be as close to them as possible, without a view obscured by someone else’s hairdo. You want the possibility that the artist will pluck you from the crowd, form a deep and enduring connection and end up marrying you. Or at least notice you.

Last month, Olivia Rodrigo revealed how acutely she had noticed some of the fans lining the barriers at her shows. “People wear diapers so that they can be front row,” she said, adding, to everyone’s absolute horror: “That’s been an experience as a performer that I have smelled.”

This is no aberration, and while genuine medical needs should be taken into account, situations down the front have clearly got out of control. Also last month, video of a very stoic stadium worker cleaning up human excrement at a Noah Kahan gig went viral and prompted Kahan himself to post on X: “If you have to poop at a show please dear god just go to the bathroom lmao.” This week, a fan of US country star Morgan Wallen complained that he, his brother and his niece were urinated on by another concertgoer, and police are investigating. Must we be subjected to headlines such as “Someone Also Shit Their Pants at a 5 Seconds of Summer Concert”? And in 2024, someone urinated on the floor of the standing section of a Sabrina Carpenter concert, causing a run on a fairly horrifying item called a “pit diaper”, whose mere existence speaks to a wider problem.

From over-hyped shows to the woeful Turner prize, this huge institution has been beset by problems – yet new boss Jessica Morgan seems too much like a safe pair of hands to shake things up
• Jessica Morgan named new Tate director

Even Tate knows it needs to change. This top-heavy montage of four museums really needs to scrutinise itself and ask hard questions about its aims and how it works – including why it often doesn’t. Apparently aware of the crisis, it hails its new director Jessica Morgan as “an agent of change”. Well that’s a relief. But is she really?

Morgan is a highly rated curator of contemporary art, recently leading the Dia Art Foundation in the US to great acclaim and with an earlier track record at Tate Modern itself. Yet these very strengths suggest she will stay within a groove that Tate is all too comfortable with. It’s unlikely she’s going to rush to put on a show about art and the Reformation, for instance.

We asked readers what they hoped to see and consistent themes around courage and communication emerged

• UK politics live – latest updates

With Andy Burnham entering Downing Street we asked people to tell us what they wanted from the new prime minister and government. About 400 people from around the UK responded to an online call-out asking about the values and issues they care about.

The words that came up most when people outlined how they wanted Andy Burnham to govern were honesty, integrity and courage, and the issues were climate change, cost of living and health and social care.

Anger, guilt, shame: the deepest unseen wound of this war is the rift between those who left and those who stayed behind

“Can we reschedule?”

Over the years of working with western colleagues, I had learned to accept that they don’t fully understand what war feels like from the inside. They would ask me to find someone in occupied Mariupol for an interview, or seem genuinely puzzled that I couldn’t just log on at a time that suited them. I made my peace with this long ago – they don’t have to understand. But this time, it was a Ukrainian who asked.

Diana Berg is a Ukrainian artist, writer and cultural manager from Mariupol, and the founder of Platform TU, an independent cultural initiative now operating in exile after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

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

Gold dances, the Good Friday agreement and standup superstardom … get ready to blub because here are the most heartwarming denouements in TV history

Warning: this article contains spoilers

Despite official claims that the São Francisco River project supplies 12m people, many of those who had to make way for its construction in 2007 still have no water at all

A concrete canal cutting through the Caatinga scrubland feeds a surface reservoir two and a half miles from Maria de Fátima Ferreira da Silva’s home in rural Brazil. The canal passes Sertânia and continues until it reaches Monteiro, the next town along, where it spills its precious cargo into the bed of the Paraíba River – a human-directed inflow into the seasonally dry waterway.

Such proximity to a reliable water source would usually be considered a blessing in the sertão, a vast outback in Brazil’s north-east known for its punishing droughts. But not for Ferreira, who was displaced nearly 20 years ago by the construction of the canal and now lives in a house without any water supply, despite the nearby reservoir.

Maria de Fátima Ferreira da Silva in her maize crop at Salão productive rural village. She bathes at the reservoir and collects water there for her smallholding and donkey, and pays to fill her barrel with drinking water each month

Exclusive: Guardian investigation of CT Group uncovers practice that appears to seek hidden influence over public opinion

A political lobbying firm founded by the former electoral strategist for David Cameron and Boris Johnson secretly pays journalists to write pieces for British newspapers that are favourable to their clients, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

In a practice that appears to create a backdoor for private companies to influence public opinion, lobbyists for CT Group – co-founded by the campaign strategist, Lynton Crosby – told an undercover reporter that they had paid journalists to place apparently independent stories in newspapers.

PM says he wants to make sure ‘everything has been looked at’ after backlash from victims’ organisations

• UK politics live – latest updates

Plans to release killers, rapists and sex offenders early from jail in September are to be reviewed, Andy Burnham has said, following a backlash from bereaved families and victims’ organisations.

The prime minister said he wanted to make sure that “everything has been looked at again” before a fresh tranche of about 6,000 offenders were freed on tags into the community.

Proposal ‘throws global south countries under the bus’, says ActionAid UK director

• Burnham announces bus fares to be capped at £2

• UK politics live – latest updates

The world’s most vulnerable people will be put at risk by Andy Burnham’s decision to use the aid budget to pay for cheaper bus fares in England, charities have said.

The prime minister announced on Wednesday that he would reduce the fare cap from £3 per journey to £2 for next year, funded mainly by changing international climate donations into repayable loans.

Threat from US president comes after US military completes 11th night of strikes on Iran

The Jordanian army said it intercepted four Iranian missiles on Wednesday with two additional missile falling in an open area, AFP reports.

The two missiles that the army did not intercept fell in “two remote, uninhabited areas, without causing any human casualties or material damage” the army said in a statement.

New defence secretary emphasises military will be spending priority over other departments under Burnham

• UK politics live – latest updates

Wes Streeting has said increased defence spending would make “an enormous contribution” to economic growth as he emphasised that the military will be a spending priority for Andy Burnham’s government over other departments.

The new defence secretary, in a speech at the Farnborough airshow, did not make any extra financial commitments but promised he would give the arms industry “clarity and confidence” in contrast to the row that contributed to the fall of Keir Starmer.

Daniel Siad faced allegations of rape and trafficking in France and appeared in more than 1,000 documents in Epstein files

A modelling scout who recruited women for Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home near Paris, French officials have said.

Daniel Siad, 69, was under investigation by the prosecutors specialising in human trafficking in France, accused of rape and other charges. His name appeared in more than 1,000 documents in the US Department of Justice Epstein files that were declassified earlier this year.

It is hoped opening of unit tackling narcotics trafficking will deter people from visiting it as pilgrimage site

Austria has opened a police station in the birthplace of Adolf Hitler in an attempt to “neutralise” its toxic legacy, after years of debate over how to stop neo-Nazis visiting it as a pilgrimage site.

Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in a rented flat in the centre of Braunau am Inn and spent the first weeks of his life there.

Bloomsbury has 14,087 titles listed in agreement between AI startup and authors over use of their work

The publisher of Harry Potter has received a multimillion-pound payout as a beneficiary of a $1.5bn (£1.12bn) copyright settlement between the AI startup Anthropic and thousands of authors over the use of their protected work to power chatbots.

Bloomsbury, which is home to the bestselling novelists Sarah J Maas and Susanna Clarke as well as JK Rowling, said it had 14,087 titles listed within the settlement, with a proposed compensation of about $3,000 a title.

Clear frontrunner leaves lucrative role at New York’s Dia Art Foundation to join UK arts organisation at critical juncture

Jessica Morgan has been confirmed as the new director of Tate, marking her return to the arts organisation where she worked as a curator for more than a decade, at a critical juncture in its history.

Morgan, the clear frontrunner in the race to replace Maria Balshaw, who left this spring after nine years in charge, is currently based in New York, where she has led the Dia Art Foundation since 2015.

Drapatyi has long been a critic of the military’s command culture, but experts warn change could take time

Through a haze of smoke, a lone Ukrainian armoured vehicle suddenly bursts into view. The BMP-2 accelerates towards a barricade of tyres and debris, smashing through it in seconds as protesters scatter.

Behind the controls, on the chaotic streets of Mariupol on 9 May 2014, was a little-known officer named Mykhailo Drapatyi. The footage became one of the defining images of Russia’s first attempt to seize eastern Ukraine, and made Drapatyi one of the country’s earliest military heroes.

What does a grownup mermaid look like? It starts with the silhouette …

Before wild swimming was even a twinkle in the eye of the culture, and before ice plunging went viral on TikTok, there were mermaids. Mermaids are the original summer It girls. Who doesn’t want hair that looks great when it’s wet and salty, shell jewellery, killer sex appeal and a life of sun, sea and winding up sailors for kicks? These chicks know how to live.

Mermaidcore is this summer’s hottest style vibe. It is beach chic with a hot-sauce dash of brat energy. Every summer has its own off-duty avatar – tomato girl summer, anyone? – and 2026 is all about mermaids. For legal reasons, please note this column is not endorsing the luring of innocents to certain death. The vibe is Daryl Hannah in Splash, not selkies and sirens.

The Carr family took in Steven Judy, hoping to ‘save’ a troubled teen. They didn’t know he would become one of the most hated men in America

Childhood returns to Traci Carr in fragments.

Night-time. She is five. She wakes to shadows on the wall, her room strange in the dark. Her footie pyjamas slip against the wood as she pads downstairs and climbs into bed next to her foster brother, Steven Judy.

The Australian actor on posing as a patient for medical schools, having multiple birthdays on The Airport Chaplain and the song ‘nobody likes’ by the Strokes

What is the most disgusting thing you saw on the set of The Pitt?

I mean, American coffee. It’s bad over there. The de-gloved leg was gross. I saw a full vaginal birth. I drilled into a skull!

From auroras and nebulas to deep sky star clusters, the competition features submissions from amateur astronomers and photographers from Australia and around the world

• Blue mushrooms, shy trees and glowing seas: Beaker Street science photography prize – in pictures

Deemed Africa’s first Netflix success, the show’s appeal is rooted in a universal story: what people tolerate for love and money

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Over the past few weeks, I have been gripped by The Polygamist, a new, record-breaking South African Netflix drama, which racked up more than 23 million views in its first month. I’ve been zealously talking about how special it is to anyone who will listen. And now it’s your turn, dear reader.

The Polygamist is by all accounts the first African smash hit of the streaming age. Released in mid June, the show has topped streaming charts in Africa, and broken into the global top five non-English series globally. It has also broken through all sorts of cultural and language barriers. African and western stars have raved about it. Its protagonists have become overnight celebrities. And its twists, turns and surrounding discourse so saturate social media that I have had to forgo Instagram and TikTok to avoid spoilers.

Good taste doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Whether it’s designer-looking cutlery or affordable art, these clever buys start from £2 – but punch well above their price tag

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You don’t need the budget of a boutique hotel to make your home look a bit more pulled together. It’s all down to knowing where to look, picking a few well-made objects, choosing good-quality fabrics and materials, and spotting timeless classics (or designs inspired by them) that won’t date too quickly.

Here are some tricks, hidden gems and affordable-but-stylish finds, from egg cups to art, that will elevate your space – and prove good taste and quality needn’t cost the earth.

‘Manal suffered severe burns to her arms and face after a missile explosion in Iraq. Yet in many ways she seemed just like a regular young girl’

When I started to take photographs about 18 years ago, I was more interested in the aesthetics. Then there was a moment when I realised the power of the camera as a tool. On 3 October 2013 there was a huge shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa. More than 250 migrants from Eritrea lost their lives. I was sent to cover the event, and it was during that assignment that I understood I was interested in telling stories about social injustice, about people’s lives post-conflict.

At first I worked mostly on stories about refugees in Sicily, where I am from, but a few years later I had the opportunity to travel to the Middle East with a friend, the journalist Marta Bellingreri, who is an expert on the region. She was living in Jordan and I joined her there for six months . That is how our project, The Hospital of All the Wars, about the patients at the Médecins Sans Frontières Al-Mowasah hospital in Amman, began.

The Guedez García family spent 18 days searching for their missing daughter in La Guaira, Venezuela, after devastating earthquakes last month. When her body was finally found, the family and volunteers from their village of Poblado Uno travelled back home to lay her to rest

In a mountainside cemetery high above Caracas, far from the chaos of Venezuela’s earthquake-lashed coast, a family of three huddles in the back of a pickup truck coming to terms with their loss.

“At first, it will be difficult,” says Adolfo Guedez, tears rolling down his cheeks as his eldest daughter, Carmen, hugs a wooden cremation box containing the ashes of her sister, Alexandra.

Yaritza García and her daughter, Carmen, hug after receiving the box containing the remains of Alexandra at El Junquito Cemetery on the outskirts of Caracas

Fifty years ago, another Healey ran the Treasury. Today’s chancellor may find some things haven’t changed

Some things never change. Fifty years ago, Britain was sweltering in the long hot summer of 1976. The Labour government was acutely aware that the financial markets were scrutinising its every move. And a man called Healey was running the Treasury.

On the surface, the challenges facing John Healey are less severe than those Denis Healey had to grapple with half a century ago. Inflation is a lot lower and the City has reacted calmly to Andy Burnham as prime minister. And, while things could turn nasty pretty quickly, they would have to get a lot worse before Healey Mk II felt the need to ask the International Monetary Fund for an emergency loan.

Many Black Americans were not cheering Spain’s complicated history. They were rooting against the racism, politics and silence associated with Argentina

There are moments in sports when you realize people aren’t just watching the score any more. They’re watching values. They’re watching who speaks. They’re watching who stays silent. And they’re watching what those silences say.

I found myself thinking about that throughout this World Cup. On paper, Sunday’s final looked simple. Spain v Argentina. Two footballing giants and countries with glorious soccer histories. Two nations whose pasts are also stained by colonization, oppression and chapters of history that shouldn’t be whitewashed simply because someone can score a goal.

The US president has been complaining about Canada’s ‘filthy, polluted and unhealthy air’. Maybe he should put all that energy into tackling the climate crisis

Right, that’s it: we’ve got to do something about Canada. The country’s wildfires, which resulted in air quality alerts across more than 20 US states, ruined my weekend. On Friday the air in Philadelphia, where I live, was so unhealthy I couldn’t go outside without my eyes stinging. My kid’s preschool cancelled outdoor time, while the city suspended trash pickup and closed public pools.

You know who did not suspend their regularly scheduled programming because of a bit of toxic smoke? The plot monitoring committee at my allotment. Despite the apocalyptic conditions, they were still busy ensuring the gardening bylaws were strictly adhered to. I realised this on Saturday when I got an official violation for too many weeds. Yes, I’d got a bit carried away with “chaos gardening” (all the rage these days) and I’d meant to clean things up on Friday, until the smoke got in the way. So, thanks for that Canada.

Stephen Miller warned of a leftwing ‘cancer’ threatening civilization. As a critical care doctor, I have a response to his diagnosis

The presumption that US elections are legitimate died last week in Washington. It was 237 years old. It did not die of one wound. It died of three, inflicted in a single day, in daylight, on the record. And the country, running to the loudest of them, never examined the one most likely to kill.

In critical care we distinguish the mechanism of death from its cause. The mechanism was a Thursday. The cause was chronic, progressive and untreated.

Robert B Shpiner is a clinical professor of medicine in pulmonary and critical care at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Utilising empty homes, capping rents and fixing the benefits system would all help, but they’d require a serious fight

In January 2017, the then mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, promised to end rough sleeping in the region by 2020 – a bold, frankly absurd promise that inevitably didn’t materialise. Nearly a decade later, shortly after becoming prime minister, Burnham promised to end rough sleeping again, only this time for the whole of England. So why should we believe him this time around?

I have interviewed Burnham several times over the past decade. At the end of 2019, when it was clear he had not lived up to his promise, I asked him if he regretted making it in the first place. “I wasn’t making what you would call a traditional target,” the mayor said. “I issued my commitment to make it more of a wake-up call to the system. And I think it has had that effect.” Burnham’s advisers had told him to tone down the pledge, but he resisted. “The team here said I should have said: ‘End the need for rough sleeping,’ because you can’t force people into a shelter … In retrospect, if I had said ‘end the need for’, that probably would have been a wiser thing to have done. But I wasn’t in the space of wanting to play semantics with it.”

Daniel Lavelle writes on mental health, homelessness and social care. He received the Guardian’s Hugo Young award in 2017, and is the author of Down and Out

The popular presenter is by no means the first to have come a cropper hosting a talkshow. But new formats provide new opportunities

You might think the TV chatshow is an easy format to get right. Hire a well-liked host with comic chops and some successful shows under their belt. Build a cheerful set with a big sofa in the middle. Book some A-list celebs plus the obligatory comedian, invite a live audience et voilà! A prime-time hit is surely born.

Except that time and time again, it has proved not to be that simple. Just ask Claudia Winkleman, who revealed last week that she won’t be returning to do a second season of The Claudia Winkleman Show on the BBC. The series, which launched in March, filling the gap while The Graham Norton Show was on hiatus, was received with lukewarm reviews and so-so ratings. The decision to call time on it is reported to be Winkleman’s – “I was just too nervous to enjoy it,” she admitted – though, given the cuts rippling through the corporation, she may have opted to jump before being pushed.

Ending the pattern of broken pledges and ditched proposals could help to rebuild trust in politics

Andy Burnham chose not to make social care the centrepiece of his first speech as prime minister. Instead, rough sleeping was named as his top priority upon entering 10 Downing Street. Given that earlier attempts at overhauling social care have flopped, he was wise not to over-promise on day one. Louise Casey, who is leading the independent commission on the issue, says that “an honest conversation with the nation” is needed. If Mr Burnham agrees, he will have to wait before making any big announcements. The public outreach phase of her work has not even begun.

Social care has personal significance for Mr Burnham. In recent days he revealed that his father’s Alzheimer’s means that he does not understand that his son is the prime minister. But he was right to name social care as an area on which “to expend quite a lot of political capital”. If public trust in politics is to be lifted from its current low base, and faith in the welfare state restored, politicians need to show that they are capable of gripping these seemingly intractable problems. For relatives of people with unmet needs, and others who see the system’s flaws closeup, feelings of helplessness and injustice can undermine confidence in society and the state overall.

The row over the sacking of the popular defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, highlights questions about the country’s military and political direction

Even as Ukraine’s civilians endure brutal strikes by Russia, thousands have taken to the streets to protest against Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s sacking of Mykhailo Fedorov, the popular young defence minister, last week after he clashed with the commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi. On Tuesday night, demonstrators’ calls were answered as the Ukrainian president fired the general and offered Mr Fedorov a “prominent” role and promised an overhaul of the army command.

Mr Fedorov, widely credited for significant improvements in the country’s military performance and reducing corruption, had made a scathing attack on Gen Syrskyi after his dismissal – accusing him of blocking reforms and refusing to cooperate. The general seems to have seen the minister as exceeding his remit and effectively taking control of units. The pair also butted heads over Mr Fedorov’s plans to improve recruitment and training to reduce the deep anger created by the conscription system. A Soviet-schooled military officer deeply embedded within institutions tussled with a young civilian disruptor taking a more agile, improvisational approach.

Readers respond to a warning from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health on a ‘national embarrassment’

We were pleased to see your report (UK children will be one of unhealthiest generations in decades, doctors say, 14 July) on the deteriorating health of UK children, based on a study by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. However, it was disappointing to see no mention of the shrinking health visitor workforce and the impact that this has on the health and wellbeing of young children and their families.

Health visitors are described by Unicef UK as the “backbone of the early years … the safety net around all families”. A long-established and trusted profession, health visitors are specialist public health nurses who work with families to improve health and reduce inequalities. They provide the only universal service that sees babies and children in their own homes.

Screening for spinal muscular atrophy is a step forward, says Dr Janet Hoskin, but what about other serious genetic conditions such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy?

The decision to introduce newborn screening for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a major breakthrough for families and campaigners (All newborns in England to be screened for spinal muscular atrophy from 2027, 16 July). Early diagnosis means children can access treatment sooner, improving outcomes and giving families clarity at a crucial time.

However, this success raises an important question: why are other serious genetic conditions, such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), still excluded from newborn screening programmes? About 100 boys are born with DMD each year. It causes progressive muscle weakness and is often diagnosed only after years of uncertainty. Although new treatments such as Givinostat are beginning to offer hope for some young people, early diagnosis remains vital. It can help families access information, specialist care and support much sooner, and may allow more children to benefit from emerging treatments.

The former Labour MP David Hinchliffe recalls working with the former Conservative MP, saying their disagreements were always without rancour

Of all the many articles I have read following the death of Ann Widdecombe, I think Gaby Hinsliff’s piece got closest to portraying her unique character (Ann Widdecombe’s death should make Britain ask itself: what sort of political culture do we want?, 17 July). I entered the Commons in 1987, at the same time as Ann, and got to know her well as a formidable opponent through doing media interviews and committee work together. We fundamentally disagreed on most issues, but always without rancour.

Our most heated clash was over my amendment to adoption legislation to allow unmarried partners to apply to adopt. It was a strange situation where we had Ann, who as Hinsliff recalled, publicly professed to being “a middle-aged virgin”, passionately arguing the case for marriage, while I, married with children, put forward the numerous merits of single people.

I’ve worked to cope with the chronic pain through ashtanga yoga, says Louise Zamparutti. Plus letters from Kirie Pedersen and Alice Devon

Thank you for publishing Natasha Livingstone’s article (A moment that changed me: I started yoga – and saw my scoliosis in a surprising new light, 15 July). I have been ashamed of my scoliosis my entire life. It wasn’t diagnosed until my early 20s, and by that time I had begun a career as a dancer and choreographer. My dance teachers were always criticising my off-kilter posture and I constantly felt that I didn’t deserve to pursue a career in dance due to my disfigured spine. My curvature is both thoracic and lumbar, and runs both sideways and forward-backward. I, too, have an uneven waistline, a hip curve on one side and straight rib-to-hip line on the other. Pants fit unevenly on me, and for years I would never wear an open-backed top.

Reading this piece made me recognise how hard I’ve worked to cope with the chronic pain, through ashtanga yoga, which I taught for over 10 years, and now through lap swimming. But I haven’t come to terms with the shame. This piece gave me the sense that I am not alone – that there are others of us who have scoliosis and deal with it in a myriad of ways. As the author of this article shows, there should be no shame in having the strength to cope with it and do whatever we want to do in our lives.
Louise Zamparutti
Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, US

• Discover and buy more of Ben’s cartoons here

Route runs 174.7km from Chambéry to Voiron
Stage-by-stage guide | Team guide | Email Niall

162km to go: Astana rider Davide Ballerini has suffered a crash and is working to catch up. Ahead of him, Florian Vermeersch (Emirates) is making up ground after a puncture.

The peloton is passing Lac du Bourget, which looks an absolutely lovely place to spend a Wednesday afternoon. The route will then loop to cover all four climbs before passing back through Chambéry.

• Almost 700,000 ticket registrations were analysed

• Club worked with local police economic crime team

More than £1.2m in assets have been seized and 432 lifetime bans issued as part of a clampdown by Liverpool FC and Merseyside police on ticket touting. In the first operation of its kind between a Premier League club and their local police authority, Liverpool’s investigations team worked with the force’s economic crime team to analyse almost 700,000 ticket registrations last season and to focus on the laundering of criminal proceeds from illicit ticket sales.

The joint investigation has led to £1.2m in assets related to organised ticket touts being detained with several cases taking place under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Two people have been convicted and another is due in court next month. The assets seized will be split between Merseyside police and the Home Office.

The best games, goals and personal highlights – from a magical Azteca to Erling Haaland breaking America

Paraguay 1-1 Germany. There were plenty more games with more goals but none could match the drama of the penalty shootout in this last-32 tie. Germany aren’t supposed to lose in them but they did this time in spectacular fashion. Ed Aarons

The first 48-team World Cup had its positives and negatives – do we need to brace for a 64-team future?

It was less than 12 months after Gianni Infantino succeeded Sepp Blatter as president that Fifa announced the expansion of the men’s World Cup from 32 to 48 teams. The reaction was mixed. Diego Maradona said he was “delighted by Gianni’s initiative” because it allowed each country to dream of reaching the tournament, renewing their passion for football. Joachim Löw, then in charge of world champions Germany, said: “I don’t think it’s a good idea to dilute the sporting value … In the long term, the quality suffers.”

On the evidence of the first 48-team edition, won by Spain after 104 games across five-and-a-half weeks in North America, it’s fair to conclude Maradona and Löw both had a point.

The European champions’ squad is falling apart … because of the men’s team’s struggles with financial fair play

The joy of lifting all four trophies in 2025-26 has been short-lived for Barcelona’s women’s team as they face a second consecutive summer exodus.

If winning the Champions League is not enough to retain players then you have to wonder what is. Seven players have left the European champions so far with 19-year-old Renee van Asten from Ajax the only arrival.

This is an extract from our free email about women’s football, Moving the Goalposts. To get the full edition, visit this page and follow the instructions. Moving the Goalposts will be sent out once a week, on Wednesdays, in the close season but will be back on Tuesdays and Thursdays from September.

With no national funding, England’s successful men’s amputee side is struggling to raise the £50,000 needed for November’s tournament in Mexico

Every time Scott Rogers walks into St George’s Park there is a sign on the wall that catches his eye. It boasts that the 330-acre site is the proud home of all England’s football teams. “I look at it every time and go, ‘Well, not all of them’,” Rogers says.

As head coach, Rogers guided the England men’s amputee team to the Nations League trophy in 2023. But while the Football Association funds six para national teams, amputee football is not among them.

• Italian football federation confirm interest in Guardiola

• Mancini and Pirlo also linked with national team vacancy

Financial “exceptions” are in place to allow Pep Guardiola to become Italy’s next head coach, the president of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), Giovanni Malago, has said.

Guardiola left Manchester City at the end of last season after winning six Premier League titles, three FA Cups, five League Cups and the Champions League during a hugely successful 10-year reign.

Figures come as large parts of southern Europe endure another record-breaking period of extreme temperatures

France recorded more than 5,700 excess deaths during its June heatwave, authorities have said, as swathes of southern Europe continue to endure another record-breaking period of extreme temperatures.

The French national health agency said on Wednesday that it had recorded 5,764 excess deaths ⁠between ​17 June and 2 July, an excess mortality rate of 36%.

Up to 25 tonnes of nurdles, the raw material for plastic manufacturing, have spread further than initially feared

Approximately a billion tiny plastic nurdles have entered the River Tyne after a “devastating spill”, with the pellets thought to have spread much further than first thought.

Nurdles, which are usually 1mm-5mm in size, act as the raw material to manufacture most plastic products.

US secretary of state says international community should ‘join forces’ against authoritarian Ortega regime

Nicaragua’s congress, controlled by the country’s long-serving president, Daniel Ortega, has announced a “work plan” to implement the authoritarian leader’s order that the country should no longer hold elections.

The UN and the US strongly condemned Sunday’s announcement by Ortega, who has been in power since 2007 and, after a controversial constitutional change last year, now governs alongside his wife, Rosario Murillo, as “co-president”.

Isabel Rose, 26, sentenced to six years for blackmail and perverting course of public justice over her allegations against British man

A British woman who reported being raped to police in Hong Kong has been sentenced to six years in prison for blackmail and perverting the course of public justice.

Isabel Rose, 26, from south-east London, travelled to Hong Kong in early 2024 to visit a British banker she had met while travelling in south-east Asia.

Ex-chief executive Matthew Wright among those named in criminal proceedings by Environment Agency

Britain’s ⁠Environment Agency (EA) is ⁠bringing ​a fraud case against ⁠four former Southern Water employees, including ⁠the former chief executive ​Matthew ‌Wright, over ‌allegations they manipulated wastewater ‌testing results.

The regulator said the four had allegedly conspired ‌to defraud the Environment Agency and ​water regulator Ofwat between 2012 and 2017 by ⁠creating artificial “no-flow” ​events ​at wastewater treatment ​works to ​influence ‌compliance checks.

Researchers listening off the Caribbean island of Dominica found variations in the mammals’ audible clicks when marine traffic was close

Sperm whales produce a specific pattern of clicking noises when they hear the noise of boats, researchers have found. The pattern is so distinct that the scientists who identified it said they can now use it to predict when ships are nearby.

Researchers from Project Ceti (the Cetacean Translation Initiative), a non-profit research organisation working to decode sperm whale communication, spent four years tuning in on the calls of 15 sperm whales off the coast of Dominica.

Greenpeace petitions Dutch courts to order JBS to disclose how its aims are compatible with responsibilities to climate and human rights

The world’s biggest meat company, JBS, faces a landmark legal challenge to disclose how its $6bn (£4.5bn) global expansion plan is compatible with responsibilities to the climate, nature and human rights.

Courts in the Netherlands, where JBS is headquartered, will assess the petition filed by Greenpeace for information on whether the company is compliant with Dutch laws on “duty of care” as well as its own publicly stated commitments.

Puffling excites volunteers trying to save the last known regular nesting site on mainland of southern England

For years, volunteers have craned their necks and tested their patience to peer into the crevices of the cliffs hoping for a glimpse of fluffy joy.

Finally it all paid off as a puffling – baby puffin – poked its way into the sunshine, becoming the first to be spotted on the coast of Dorset in southern England for three decades.

Trust that treated Valdo Calocane, who killed three people in 2023, sectioned him four times between 2020 and 2022

The NHS trust that treated the triple killer Valdo Calocane in the years before the Nottingham attacks is being investigated by police for corporate manslaughter.

Calocane, who has paranoid schizophrenia, was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order after he fatally stabbed the 19-year-old students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley Kumar, and the 65-year-old caretaker Ian Coates, on 13 June 2023.

Exclusive: Research shows millions live more than a 1km round trip from 24/7 accessible device

More than 16 million people in England and Wales risk dying from a cardiac arrest because they live farther than a 1km round trip from the nearest 24/7 defibrillator, according to exclusive research.

Analysis of publicly available defibrillators by the Heart Restart campaign found that in England and Wales alone, 35 million people – more than half the population – do not live within the recommended three- to five-minute brisk walk of a defibrillator. Of these, about half live more than a 1km round trip from a 24/7 accessible defibrillator.

There are more than 40,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests each year in the UK, but fewer than one in 10 people survive. However, early cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillation can more than double the chance of survival.

Hackney council will close Keith Miller sports pitch at end of year to build urgently needed social homes

Campaigners say the loss of a much-loved football pitch in east London to a housebuilding programme will be a huge blow to the local community.

Hackney’s Keith Miller sports pitch is known locally as the “San Siro of east London” – for non-football fans, that’s the famous Milan stadium that is one of the biggest in Europe. The Hackney version, however, is due to be demolished at the end of the year so that urgently needed social homes can be built.

These visualisations from exclusive polling modelling show how the UK parliament could change under different voting systems

New analysis produced exclusively for the Guardian reveals how different voting systems would return wildly different seat totals in the UK parliament based on current polling.

While the current first past the post (FPTP) system could leave Reform UK just 30 seats short of a majority based on recent polls, the modelling shows how proportional systems would be likely to give the UK a more finely balanced parliament that better represents the votes people cast.

Mayor admits he has no authority to direct Israeli prime minister’s arrest after saying he’s ‘not welcome’ in NYC

Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, doubled down on his support for the international criminal court on Wednesday, a day after calling on federal authorities to execute the court’s warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest should he visit the city in the fall.

“I call on the federal government to join the international criminal court and to execute both this warrant as well as any warrant the international criminal court holds,” Mamdani told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday.

Exclusive: Global investigation reveals 235 lawsuits have been brought against governments in five countries since 2010

The world’s biggest ultra-processed food companies have filed scores of lawsuits challenging government policies that tackle junk diets, the Guardian can reveal.

Ultra-processed food (UPF) is linked to harm in every major organ system of the human body and poses a seismic threat to global health. Worldwide consumption is rising and UPF now makes up as much as half the average diet in many countries, including the UK, the US and Australia.

Venezuelan president and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been held at Brooklyn jail and both have pleaded not guilty

Nicolás Maduro returns to court with his lawyers on Wednesday and is expected to continue objecting to the US military action that snatched the Venezuelan president from power and deposited him in New York to face drug-trafficking charges.

Maduro, 63, and his wife Cilia Flores, 69, have been held at a Brooklyn jail ever since US forces seized them from their Caracas home in a stunning middle-of-the-night raid and brought them to New York in early January.

Hadi Matar, already serving 25 years for attempted murder, denies federal charges that could bring a life sentence

The man who stabbed Salman Rushdie in the eye on stage in 2022 is standing trial for a second time – this time facing terrorism charges after being found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison last year.

Hadi Matar’s federal trial begins in Buffalo, New York on Wednesday, about 70 miles from the venue where Rushdie was due to speak about writers in political exile in August 2022, when he was stabbed more than a dozen times.

Pub chain blames worse-than-expected sales on rising costs for workers, food, energy and property taxes

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JD Wetherspoon has issued its fourth profit warning in seven months, with the pub chain blaming worse-than-expected sales, despite the World Cup, as it struggled with rising costs for food, workers, energy and property taxes.

Shares in the pub chain tumbled as much as 10% on Wednesday as its chair, Tim Martin, warned that profits would fall short of forecasts when it reports full-year earnings in October.

John Neal failed to disclose ties with colleague that created a potential conflict of interest, investigation finds

Lloyd’s of London has ruled that its former boss John Neal breached compliance rules by failing to disclose a “close relationship” with a female colleague that risked triggering conflict of interest concerns at the insurance market.

An investigation by the Council of Lloyd’s, which is responsible for the market’s management and supervision, said it could not find any “conclusive evidence” Neal was romantically involved with the company’s then corporate affairs director, nor that there were any process failures relating to her promotion during Neal’s tenure.

Neso denies allegations aired by Tory MP that staff took part in cover-up over decision-making in heatwave

In a control room in Wokingham, Berkshire, staff work around the clock, minute by minute, to align Great Britain’s fluctuating power supplies with its ever-changing demand.

However, as households struggle to adapt to soaring summer temperatures, staff at the government-owned National Energy System Operator (Neso), tasked with keeping the lights on, have faced the kind of challenge usually reserved for the country’s coldest winter nights in recent weeks.

Figure of £16bn from ONS comes after Andy Burnham revealed plans to cut VAT on electricity bills

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The UK government borrowed less than expected in June, in a boost for Andy Burnham as he set out plans to cut VAT on household electricity bills and promised a new direction for the British economy.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said public sector net borrowing – the difference between government spending and income – was £16bn last month, £7.9bn less than in June 2025.

These days, I ‘collect’ birdsong and wild flowers, but it all started when my sons and I first set out to find Pikachu and pals

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Believe it or not, Pokémon Go is 10 years old this month. The wildly successful smartphone game, which allows you to track down lovable creatures in the real world using GPS and augmented-reality technologies, has reportedly been downloaded 800m times across 150 countries and regions. A trillion Pokémon have been caught so far – and I have been responsible for a modest percentage of that figure.

When the game was first released, my sons and I spent many happy hours wandering the streets and parks of Frome searching for Jigglypuffs and Charizards, and the game’s social element, which lets you take on gym battles with other players in your vicinity, offered my autistic son a route to communicate with other children in a way he’d never been able to before.

A scholar has an existential crisis while researching the life of a composer in the Russian director’s Italy-set 1983 masterwork

Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1983 film is a mysterious, imagist cine-poem about alienation and belonging, whose title means a yearning not simply for a lost time or lost place but for something, anything, else – with a profound anguished sense that the here-and-now of existence is unsatisfactory.

The movie takes something from the poetry of the director’s father Arseny Tarkovsky, which is quoted in the film. A distinguished Russian scholar is in Italy to research the life of the (fictional) Russian composer Pavel Sosnovsky who is supposed to have travelled there before being overwhelmed by homesick longing and returning to the motherland. His beautiful, flirtatious interpreter is reading Tarkovsky’s poetry in an Italian translation, and the Russian coldly tells her to throw the book away: “Poetry is untranslatable, like the whole of art.” Does he really mean that? This movie is itself, in a way, translated; it is set in Italy and co-written by Tarkovsky with the veteran Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra, who worked with Fellini and Antonioni. (Like Jean-Claude Carrière, Guerra, who died in 2012, was a prolific collaborator in European cinema.)

Difficult new Hulu documentary follows a 26-year-old woman’s startling discovery that she’s related to the notorious, murderous cult leader

Sophia Maddox spent her life hearing from her father about how he had never met his father. He would tuck her into bed as a child, she said, and tell her about how much he wanted to know him.

Four years ago, following a match on a genealogy website, they finally learned the shocking truth: her father’s father – her grandfather – was Charles Manson, the notorious cult leader and criminal.

After a bigoted online backlash, led by Elon Musk, The Odyssey achieved a monster weekend – the latest example of a targeted takedown that didn’t work

• The Odyssey: jaw-dropping action, dark magic and dolphin cameos – discuss with spoilers

Elon Musk was a man on a mission. Yes, he’s supposedly intent on colonizing Mars, or the moon, or maybe, if you give him some more time to move the goalposts, just a really, really tall mountain, but this spring, a more pressing task presented itself, a sequel to his early-2026 mission to post white supremacist rhetoric: take down Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which he decided was the latest of “woke Hollywood’s” attempts to spread racial animus (towards white people, of course) and win Oscars while doing so. Nolan, Musk explained to the trade publication Variety, was “pissing on Homer’s grave”, referring to the author of the film’s epic-poem source material.

As the final phases of the movie’s promotional campaign ramped up, Musk posted dozens of times on his self-owned social media platform with grievances related to the casting of Lupita Nyong’o (a Black woman) and Elliot Page (a trans man) in the movie, often spreading false statements about this casting existing to satisfy new Oscar requirements. (As detailed here, those new Oscar diversity requirements are extremely flexible, and often satisfied by studio-wide programs that have nothing to do with casting. The Odyssey did not need to hire Oscar winner Nyong’o to be eligible for awards.) Musk may be a divisive-at-best figure who large swaths of the population do not take seriously, but he commands enough attention and adulation from a vocal minority that plenty of online accounts were soon parroting his willful misunderstanding of Hollywood and The Odyssey. Many of them abruptly and hilariously zeroed in on the 2004 movie Troy – which the right flank of social media suddenly decided was a beloved masterpiece, rather than its own, far greater distortion of Homer’s epic poem The Iliad.

In a jaw-dropping return to true-crime form, Netflix’s new documentary delves into the Anaheim Craigslist case – and it’s a horrifying monster indeed

The sound of barrel-scraping during true-crime documentaries is becoming more and more frequent at Netflix these days (the dismal Worst Neighbor Ever being the most recent case in point). Such are the perils of being the pioneer of a form; you run out of material first but must keep trying to recapture past glories while you search desperately for another way to seize the fickle audience’s attention once again.

A Toxic Love Story is a welcome, if doubtless temporary, return to form. It is a rigorous, 88-minute recounting of an astonishing story that became notorious about 10 years ago in the US and was known as “the Anaheim Craigslist case” or “the Anaheim Craigslist rape fantasy case”, depending on just how many local Craigslist-based delinquencies were occurring at the exact time of reference. It has, after all, been the most criminally fertile of lists.

A Sunday morning Prom showcases the magnificent RAH instrument, but the organ’s not just for Bach – check out pioneering musicians from Jonny Greenwood to Kali Malone. Plus, Igor Levit is cancelled – and at the top of the German charts

It has 9,999 pipes, it’s 155 years old and 21m high. You can see it, but not always hear it, at every single London prom. I’m talking of course about the Willis organ in the Royal Albert Hall, which takes centre stage this weekend on Sunday morning’s recital by French organist Olivier Latry.

With his mostly Bach programme, Latry’s recital represents the core of the organ’s repertoire, music that has been heard in cathedrals and on concert hall organs for centuries. It will be magnificent in the building-shaking flesh on Sunday morning, but my assurances might not be enough to convince non-organ fans that they should forgo a lazy Sunday morning and head to South Kensington.

The late songwriter released around 50 records, writing gay love songs and effortless folk songs from folk’s fringes. Fans including Bill Callahan explain his singular brilliance

In a grainy television clip from 1986, a flame-haired and neckerchiefed troubadour plucks away at a lute-like instrument, harmonica under chin, the gentle ripples giving way to a voice full of longing. This performance, uploaded to YouTube in 2010, has generated only a handful of comments, but peruse any of them (“Ed the Great!”; “pure gold”) and you begin to understand the passion that Ed Askew – an under-the-radar US poet, artist and musician – has inspired over the years.

“He was living in a world that was for people who didn’t fit in,” Askew’s collaborator, Jerry David DeCicca, says on the free-spiritedness of his friend, whose musical life began with discovering the 10-stringed tiple as a teenager in the 1950s and ended with his death a year ago, aged 84, on the verge of him releasing his album The Final Painting, now being released posthumously this month.

The popular broadcaster investigates what happened after a large pile of murdered animals were dumped outside a primary school in Hampshire. Plus, Lena Headey tackles an idea from an ‘ethical pornographer’

Mangled pheasants, mutilated foxes, weeping kids: the third series of the multi-award-winning show about environmental crime opens with a huge pile of murdered animals outside a primary school. The investigation leads to revelations about the world of illegal bloodsports and rural organised crime. It even recruits Chris Packham. “It’s low-level terrorism, isn’t it?” he exclaims at one point – and it’s hard not to agree. An essential listen. Alexi Duggins
BBC Sounds, all episodes available

The soul-rockers achieved worldwide success before surprising everyone by deciding to quit while they were ahead. Now they’re back with a new album railing against the state of contemporary America

In the autumn of 2024, Alabama Shakes showed no sign of ending their indefinite hiatus – and nobody was asking them to. Seven years had passed since the blues-soul-rock band, who exploded out of Athens, Alabama in 2009, had last shared a stage. Their transatlantic Top 10 2012 debut Boys & Girls announced them; the million-selling 2015 follow-up Sound & Color went to No 1 in the US and won them four Grammys. Their fanbase included Bruce Springsteen, Robert Plant and Barack Obama. But by 2017 they were physically and creatively spent, and they stopped. Then, in December 2024, with almost no warning, they played their first show in more than seven years.

“We had a friend in Tuscaloosa who had a brewery, but it wasn’t doing so well after Covid,” explains singer Brittany Howard. “He called me and said he was going to do a fundraiser and asked if I’d like to perform. I said, ‘For sure.’” But then she started reminiscing, remembering how that particular friend had been a huge help to the band, not just her personally. She felt the band owed him something, collectively. “So I called the fellas,” she smiles. “‘Do y’all wanna perform at this thing – like, all of us, together?’ And they instantly said yes.”

Celebrities are hosting literary clubs and designers are launching products emblazoned with the classics – but does reading’s trendy turn have a darker side?

From celebrity book clubs to the revival of the edgy literary party, being a book lover is in. Dior has launched new versions of their Book Tote emblazoned with the covers of classics such as Ulysses and Dracula. Earlier this year, Coach collaborated with Penguin to produce miniature literary bag charms – fully readable micro-versions of books, from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to Sense and Sensibility. Miu Miu hosts a Literary Club; Chanel its Rendez-vous littéraire.

Being bookish is now sexy, we’re told. i-D magazine recently ran a piece on the Whitney Review – a literary journal based in New York – proclaiming its team part of the “hot literati reshaping criticism”. The founder describes the Review as “sexy, surprising, stubborn”, and its contributors “curious and beautiful” (corroborated by an accompanying shoot in which the Whitney team look more like a bunch of models than anything else). But the piece raised eyebrows in the comments section of i-D’s Instagram page: “the definition of vacuous and vapid”, writes one user; “No room for ugly literati, only HOT”, says another. Should we be sceptical about reading’s voguish turn?

Moments of beauty and horror punctuate this account of an ill-timed sub-zero camping trip

In late February 2022, Charlie Walker set off on a hiking holiday in northern Siberia. In temperatures as low as -50C, he intended to trek a thousand miles north along the frozen surface of the river Lena, then out across the solid Laptev Sea to the port town of Tiksi, before finally flying home to London. “The plan,” he writes, “was simple in concept.” A sub-zero camping trip through a region populated by wolves and bears and scarred by centuries of historical trauma, in a country that was about to invade one of its neighbours: what could possibly go wrong?

On Thin Ice is Walker’s third travelogue. Previous excursions have included a 43,000-mile bicycle ride across three continents, a 1,000-mile solo walk through the Gobi desert, and a river trip down the Congo in a leaky canoe. When not performing incredible feats of forward motion, according to his website, he gives talks to business leaders on subjects such as “risk taking” and “the line between courage and recklessness”. Reading his latest, it’s clear he’s familiar with the terrain on both sides of that line.

This portrait of a Jewish painter in bohemian Berlin is filled with insightful observations

In the summer of 1937, two exhibitions sponsored by the Nazis opened in Munich. For the Degenerate Art exhibition, hundreds of confiscated works by banned modern artists – including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso – were gathered: a derisive demonstration of the supposedly anti-German spirit of contemporary culture. The show was also meant as a counterpoint to the first Great German Art Exhibition, essentially an art fair for state-sanctioned work, which ran annually until 1944. The official style of Aryan art was traditionalist neoclassicism; popular subjects included idealised female nudes, pastoral landscapes and heroic battle scenes. Hitler was among the main buyers. You probably haven’t heard of any of those artists.

What if one of them were secretly a Jew, working under a pseudonym? Rebecca Birrell’s debut novel imagines this scenario, telling the story of a fictional Jewish artist who comes of age in Berlin in the last days of the Weimar republic. Hannah Sherman is working as a seamstress for the family business when she learns that she is about to be married off. She runs away, finding lodgings using the “desirable Christian” name of Schmidt, and begins to realise her artistic ambitions. A free-thinking New Woman, she also takes two lovers: Saul, a museum curator, and Charlotte, a dancer at a lesbian bar where Hannah likes to sketch.

Historian Kim Phillips-Fein’s book Country of Lords looks back at the many men who have tried to fight against egalitarianism, from John Adams to Peter Thiel

The historian Kim Phillips-Fein’s new book is published amid celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence and its truth “self-evident, that all men are created equal”. Country of Lords, however, is a history of Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America.

Concise and hard-hitting, the book arrives at a time of glaring social and economic inequality, Phillips-Fein seeing Elon Musk “emerging as a trillionaire very much on people’s minds, with a deep level of discomfort, both fear and anger about what this portends”.

Inspired by interactive theatre and fuelled by the motion capture tech used by VTubers, the vampire spies in Red Kiss have personality in spades

‘You look at the news and you’re like, ‘Another pointless war, another pointless bloodshed, another pointless genocide.’ And that can make you a bit hopeless.”

Roy van der Schilden, narrative designer and business director at Wispfire, speaks of a very human feeling. But the protagonist of its upcoming game Red Kiss can relate – despite being a vampire.

Nintendo Switch 2
The single-player offshoot of the quirky and colourful multiplayer series is disappointingly run-of-the-mill

Splatoon is among Nintendo’s most ingenious inventions of the last decade: a series of shooting games whose paint-splattered turf war nature means being bad at shooting is just as valuable as – if not more so than – being good. It is also blessed with an abundance of personality, with vibrant characters, a richly imagined world, and a hipness that the competition can only dream of achieving. Unfortunately, Splatoon Raiders makes it difficult to remember all of this.

The first spinoff in the ink-soaked franchise, Splatoon Raiders is advertised as a single player-focused entry in this primarily multiplayer series. While this is true enough – one can play through the entire game solo just fine – Raiders is clearly best enjoyed cooperatively with up to three others. Players start each session on a hideout ship where they can upgrade their equipment and tweak their play style before heading out on bite-sized repeatable missions, and this structure is tailor-made for teaming up with friends or helping out strangers (the game lets you do either), as each person works towards creating their ultimate squid-kid avatar of chaos.

Splatoon Raiders is out 23 July; £41.99

An autobiographical game about the devastating effects of chronic illness on an artist’s creative life gives players the chance to slow the pace right down

Bub does not look like a traditional video game. Artist and stop-motion animator Case Jernigan spends hours, days, months in his studio drawing, painting and delicately cutting out pieces of collected paper, while coder and gameplay designer Todd Anderson builds scripts and physics simulations to make them into a game.

In Bub, you play through the life of an artist in New York City, making art but also diving into his early memories and imaginative dreams. “You go from present day New York City into his childhood, or different sort of visions, which are all rendered in stop motion,” says Anderson. “His story is told in the present day, but also how he’s making sense of his past.”

The developer of Duck Detective reveals details of her ‘sad grandma game’ follow-up: a whodunnit – or who-plans-to-do-it? – with a darker edge

Someone wants to kill grandma. In this Knives Out-inspired mystery game, each of your family members is suspicious in their own way: your stressed mum, your “midlife crisis uncle” and especially that stranger in your bedroom. Yikes!

While Apple Crumble is still a mystery, it is mechanically different from Happy Broccoli Games’ previous game, Duck Detective, in which the player solves crimes in a small office. Here you are largely snooping through your family home. “I love the idea of having a walking sim where you can really open up every drawer, every door, and see what’s behind there,” says founder and creative director Annika Maar. As you learn more about the different grievances and troubles of your family members, the mystery slowly unwinds.

Royal Albert Hall, London
Sueye Park’s poetic, enthralling Proms debut in Sibelius’s violin concerto was followed by an effervescent late-night concert from Thomas Dunford’s Jupiter Ensemble with Laurence Kilsby

A late-night Prom can sometimes serve as a musical Rennie, a soothing digestif after 90 minutes of heavyweight orchestral fare. Fortunately, none was needed here. In the early evening programme John Storgårds kept the BBC Philharmonic sufficiently light on its feet, while Sueye Park made the most poetic of Proms debuts in Sibelius’s violin concerto, a cornerstone work she owned from start to finish.

If the opening wash of strings was barely audible over the whirr of the Royal Albert Hall air-con, it wasn’t long before the South Korean violinist grabbed our attention, her lean, silvery tone penetrating and intensely lyrical. In fact, Storgårds seemed to worry unnecessarily, keeping the orchestral volume on a low simmer for much of the work’s span. Park, an enthralling musical raconteur, imbued the first movement with a forthright romantic sweep before conjuring the kind of laser-focused, ethereal fireworks that set the finale dancing.

Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon
Tamara Harvey’s production of Chekhov’s final play can seem woolly in meaning and soft-edged tone mutes its force

Laura Wade’s reworking of Anton Chekhov’s final, plaintive play brings a dazzle of big names. Helen Hunt is the aristocratic matriarch Madame Ranyevskaya, Bill Pullman her brother, and Kenneth Branagh (so soon after his lead role in the Royal Shakespeare’s production of The Tempest) their nemesis, Lopakhin, a shopkeeper’s son here who takes over the reins of the family estate and represents the rising forces against Russia’s old order of ossified elites.

But for such a starry cast Tamara Harvey’s production has a disappointing lack of sparkle. You do not feel the story’s charge, its complications around love and its stinging losses. The tone is too soft-edged, almost endearing, and the cast such an ensemble that there is no magnetic centre to hold you.

Royal Albert Hall, London
A programme – Bach, Beethoven and a Jessie Montgomery premiere – that looked odd on paper made perfect sense in the hall, with Abel Selaocoe a mesmerising soloist in Montgomery’s ‘These Righteous Paths’

‘Thy magic power reunites / All that custom has divided / All men become brothers / Under the sway of thy gentle wings.” The BBC can’t have known when they booked Manchester’s BBC Philharmonic to perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – culminating in Schiller’s ode to fellowship and unity – that it would mark Andy Burnham’s appointment as prime minister. Our new leader’s “gentle wings” will need the span of a 747 to embrace every warring faction beneath them, but what a welcome from a Proms concert that was everything the festival does best.

A strange programme on paper – Bach, Beethoven and a brand new cello concerto – made absolute sense in the hall, where musical past and future were held suspended together in a rapt continuous present. Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in G minor set the tone. Arranged for orchestra by Andrew Davis, it had a distinct twinkle in its eye. Dutiful, even dogmatic, string exegesis takes a sudden sideways turn as the wind bend and distort the theme. And is that a celesta doubling the flute – a shimmering ghost in the orchestral machine, a childish distortion of the original organ? It’s wittily done, and under former chief conductor Gianandrea Noseda, the orchestra relished this fusion of sonic worlds.

Menier Chocolate Factory, London
Platt excels as a crooner looking back on falling for his songwriter-lover – dazzlingly played by Gregor Milne – in a show of beguiling, bittersweet nostalgia and pristine songs

Ben Platt’s sky-gliding voice was made for decades gone by. The Tony, Emmy and Grammy award-winning actor (Dear Evan Hansen, The Last Five Years) is beautifully cast in Mark Sonnenblick’s (KPop Demon Hunters) out-of-time love story, a honey-hearted cabaret-musical of two gay musicians trying to make it in 1960s New York.

With the Menier Chocolate Factory set up as a lamplit cabaret (set by Scott Pask), Platt is Trevor Copeland, a crooning bar-singer reliving the years he spent with songwriter Arthur Brightman, played with plate-spinning brilliance by Gregor Milne. The history of their love is told through stories shaped around American Songbook-style music, only occasionally syrupy, as the pair slip in and out of Sonnenblick’s inventions: now a jaunty knee-bouncing number; now a big-band ballad.

With soulful eyes and ‘reverse chicken legs’, greyhounds are challenging to sketch. At a fundraising event in Melbourne, Josh Nicholas tries his hand

I’ve done life drawing before, but this time I am a bit worried. The woman across the room from me has done life drawing too, “but not with dogs”.

The problem with drawing people from life is they tend to move. The same is true of greyhounds, but they also don’t understand when you ask them to hold a pose.

Ray Exworth spent his life filling Cornish sheds with breathtaking sculptures – but wouldn’t let anyone in to view them. Now, after his death, his secret body of work has been revealed

Ray Exworth spent six decades creating one of Britain’s most extraordinary bodies of sculpture – and almost nobody has seen it. Hidden inside a labyrinth of sheds on a remote Cornish smallholding, his vast, obsessive constructions have remained locked away from the world, visited only by a fortunate few. Even his wife Susie, 92, was largely kept out. “I could not visit without an invitation!” she recalls.

Exworth, who died in 2015 aged 84, had just one major exhibition in his lifetime, at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1975. Since then, the man who might belong among Britain’s most notable artists has disappeared almost entirely. His works – sprawling, intricate and wildly ambitious, assembled from an array of salvaged materials – have remained exactly where he left them: filling seven studio sheds and a scattering of shipping containers, unseen.

João Linneu’s raw and intimate photographs capture his partner and child as they navigate isolation, lumbar punctures and even a lightning storm

The deaf actor, who played a major role in Godzilla vs Kong and its 2024 sequel, was killed in a car crash in Maryland

Kaylee Hottle, who played a major role in Godzilla vs Kong and the sequel Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, has died at the age of 18.

Her death was confirmed by her father, Joshua, in a video shared on Facebook. The stream was in American Sign Language (ASL) as the Hottle family is all deaf. “I am taking a flight that I never would like to take,” is the name of the video.

From neighbourhood scavenger to baseball mascot and Daily Show guest, the Seattle animal has become social media’s newest cult hero

Pygmy hippo Moo Deng is washed up and humiliated, having flunked all three of her football World Cup predictions. Punch the Japanese macaque orphaned in Ikea is so February . And if you can even remember Grumpy Cat, may she rest in peace.

As of today the internet belongs to Jimothy: a raccoon with a striking silhouette who has gone from a minor celebrity in Seattle to social media main character overnight. Jimothy is suddenly all over Instagram, and if you hover over the critter for so much as a nanosecond, he will be all you will ever see on your feed.

I thought this commission would be straightforward. But my sitter’s response made me question my own attitude to my looks and body image

In September 2024, I was asked to paint the portrait of an 86-year-old man. He had apparently always wanted a formal portrait of himself, and a binge watch of Portrait Artist of the Year had finally spurred him to action. I had been receiving painting commissions for about three years, so I knew the drill: take receipt of a photo, render a painting that wouldn’t look out of place on a county cricket clubhouse wall, and pocket my semi-hard-earned money.

On this occasion, there were two immediate sticking points: first, the sitter wanted me to paint him in person, which would involve commuting to Reading from London and making small talk – to my mind the very worst of obligations. And second, to quote his WhatsApp message, he wanted me to “capture him”. How hard could that be, I thought?

Camping season has arrived, but which mattress is worth packing? Our expert rigorously tested 28 to find the best for durability and comfort

• The best camping chairs

Whether you love sleeping under the stars or only do so under duress, a decent camping mattress will at least help ensure you are well-rested and better equipped to handle the wider thrills and spills of outdoor living.

The days when your only choice was between a foam roll mat or a leaky airbed and foot pump are long gone. From self-inflating mattresses to lightweight sleeping pads and insulated airbeds, the comfort and portability of sleeping mats have dramatically improved. But with so many types of camping mattresses available, costing from tens to hundreds of pounds, it can be difficult to know where to start.

Best camping mattress overall:
Therm-a-Rest NeoLoft

Best budget camping mattress:
Decathlon Simond MT500 XL inflatable trekking mattress

From catnip to interactive, scented and all-natural teasers, here are the toys our reviewer’s panel of feline testers fell head over paws for

• The best gifts for cats and dogs

Watch a cat doing as they please in a garden, and you’ll witness a procession of behaviours passed down from their wild ancestors. They may crouch with ears pricked up at the sight or sound of birds in flight; rub against objects to leave their scent; chase buzzing, drowsing insects; or sniff a favourite plant with gusto. Regrettably, some will hunt and catch prey.

The best cat toys help any cat – indoor or outdoor – live out these behaviours safely, humanely, and often with their owner’s involvement. Having a few within paw’s reach is valuable to a pet cat’s fitness, mood and fundamental felinity.

Best cat toy overall:
Nature’s Goodies colourful long raffia tail teaser sticks

Best budget cat toy:
Pets at Home scrunchie ball

They claim to fix fine lines, blemishes, and redness – but which stand up to scrutiny? After consulting dermatologists and putting them to the test, we have crowned a brand new number one

• The best anti-ageing creams, serums and treatments

LED face masks are booming in popularity – despite being one of the most expensive at-home beauty products to hit the market. They claim to either reduce the appearance of fine lines, stop spots or calm redness, with some even combining different types of light to enhance the benefits.

However, it’s wise to be sceptical about new treatments that are costly and non-invasive, and to do your research before you buy. With this in mind, I interviewed doctors and dermatologists to find out whether these light therapy devices work.

Best LED mask overall:
CurrentBody Multi Light Therapy LED mask

Best budget LED face mask:
Silk’n LED face mask 100

You told us your tried-and-tested tricks for keeping children entertained. Plus, the best eye masks and natural deodorants, tested

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If there’s one thing worse than a long journey, it’s a long journey with bored, fractious children. So what helps smooth things along? We asked for your best, tried-and-tested hacks for travelling with kids, from “fidget bags” to lollipops.

On a long car trip from the UK to France with his kids, reader Tim Leadbeater attached small plastic baskets with string around the pillars of the front headrest: “They held everything from felt tips to half-eaten food, not only preventing stains on covers but also keeping everything reachable for kids in car seats.”

‘This is my bucket-list spot for wild camping’: Outdoors expert Sian Lewis answered your questions

‘It’s the first thing we set up’: parents on everything you need for camping with kids – and what you don’t

The best camping tents: 10 expert picks for every outdoor adventure

Do natural deodorants actually work? I put 18 to the test – here are my favourites

The best walking sandals for women: 10 comfy and supportive styles for summer

CurrentBody Multi Light Therapy LED mask review: hands down the best I’ve tested

The best air coolers to chill your home during heatwaves – tested

‘Proof that delicious tomatoes can be grown in the UK’: the best supermarket vine tomatoes, tasted and rated

How I Shop with Angela Hartnett: ‘The purchase I regret the most? Any fitness machine!’

The best fake tan for a sunkissed, streak-free glow – tested

As fear and fighting ease in Mogadishu, coffee shops have become catalysts for change, bringing jobs for women and creating much-needed social spaces

Every morning at six, Saabiriin Hassan slips on her apron as she takes her place behind the counter at Cplus Cafe in the heart of Mogadishu. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee fills the air, but it is Hassan’s ever-present smile that draws the attention first.

It stays with her every move – from grinding beans and steaming milk to chatting with customers. Hassan is among the first female baristas in Somalia, serving coffee and helping a new cafe culture take root in a capital city once only known for conflict.

Fridge-friendly nougat, malty ice-cream and a hybrid brownie-chocolate bar – your summer bites are sorted

The summer heat requires special treatment of chocolate. Few experts would agree with keeping it in the fridge, but sometimes you have to gently shh them and do what feels right. Heist’s Milk and Honey Nougat is like a choc-covered torrone morbido: a big slab of milk chocolate covering honey-laced pistachio and almond nougat. It’s a disaster in hot weather. But, kept in the fridge … wow. The pre-marked pieces are so big and generous you can’t disobey them, slice your knife into it and then eat the piece within, say, three minutes before the whole lot turns molten in your fingers.

Pump Street has just launched a Walnut Brownie 60% Dark Milk Bar with Haitian beans. It features brownie crumb with English Sharpham Park caramelised, hand-chopped walnuts. It’s rich and deep in flavour.

Simple spices, fresh coconut and a handful of lentils or nuts is enough to transform leaves normally destined for the compost

Poriyal is south India’s version of sauteed spiced vegetables, and it can be made with just about any vegetable, though green beans or a leafy green such as spinach, moringa or amaranth are most commonly used. The vegetables are fried with onions and spices, a spoon of urad dal is added for texture (if you don’t have urad dal, a handful of cashews makes a delicious alternative), and it’s finished with a grating of fresh coconut. This fragrant, spicy and flavoursome side dish also works brilliantly with the earthy flavour of beetroot leaves, and I like to serve it with boiled beetroot, yoghurt, chapatis or/and rice.

Forget the underpowered, ready-made offerings of food chains: these vibrant mixes are bursting with fruit and notes of florals, citrus and spice

Most of our experiences with fruit salad are dull: straight out of a can in saccharine syrup or unripe, slippery, unidentifiable chunks hastily bought from a sandwich chain when you’re trying to be healthy. The best ones, however, are life-enhancing and made fresh at home. And, with summer offering up a bounty of ripeness, now is the best time to make them. Eat them sweet or savoury, heighten their flavour with floral waters, spices, aromats, herbs or citrus, and enjoy for breakfast, lunch or as a refreshing after-dinner treat.

A Harris’s hawk, she is capable of flying at more than 35mph, scouring the ground for prey, while also judging my footwear. The moments of connection with this wild creature are incredible

My children brought hawks into my life. My youngest son, especially, became fascinated by birds of prey at the age of six, drawing beautiful pictures and reciting endless facts to bird owners at various country shows.

Eventually I decided, why not? We live in the countryside, after all, on Anglesey (Ynys Môn). So, during Covid, Bird, the Harris’s hawk, came into our lives. We got her from a breeder after she hatched. It was perfect timing: I was home-schooling my three kids, and at 2pm every day, rain or shine, with a brilliant local falconer, we would set out on to the headland to watch her fly. It was beautiful to see. For years, my youngest never missed a day, no matter how cold.

Both Denzel and Sarita left sexless relationships before they met, but together they have discovered toys and Tantric sex

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

She’s brought a different side to my life I didn’t know existed

I went out into the car park to see if I could spot anyone nearby who might have just left the restaurant

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I lost my wife in 2020 and my son in 2021. A few years later, I was living alone in a retirement complex when I decided to go out one night for dinner. There was a little Vietnamese restaurant nearby that my wife and I used to frequent, which had excellent food and held many happy memories. It just so happened to be Father’s Day.

I dined alone, ordering my usual rice paper rolls. When I went to settle the bill, the lass behind the counter told me my meal had already been paid for.

A social media manager and a​ transport psychology ​researcher disagreed over Palestine Action, but who ​changed their view on the triple-loc​k?

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

Hugo, 21, Birmingham

Occupation Social media manager for the Conservative party

When the problem was finally sorted out in our new-build home, it increased my tariff by 19%

Residents in our new housing development are being billed for each other’s energy after the meters were mixed up.

I realised British Gas was sending bills for my energy to the developer of the estate instead of to me. I informed British Gas of my details when I moved in seven months ago.

I bought a wheelchair for my daughter, but she later died in hospital and the company refuses a refund

I bought a £435 wheelchair for my disabled daughter from my local Lifestyle & Mobility store.

She had been admitted to hospital for tests and I planned to use the chair to take her on outings when she was discharged.

They are out to steal your password to commit further fraud such as crypto scams or phishing attacks

You have had an X account for years, since it was known as Twitter. When an email arrives about a new login from a location nowhere near where you live, alarm bells begin to ring.

“We noticed a login to your account from a new device. Was this you?” the email asks.

Vibrant areas for young workers who plan to rent while saving for a deposit and then get on the property ladder

• The new 100% mortgages for first-time buyers

• Homes to rent before buying in cities

The common property rite of passage for graduates and career-focused first jobbers has changed over the past decade. Many careers used to start in London, and an early house-share would be followed by a first flat purchase, then a move to somewhere bigger.

However, the heavy burden of housing costs in the capital is making would-be first-time buyers stop and evaluate whether – even with London weighting on some wages – it is possible to get on the ladder there.

For those who are burned out, perimenopausal, or both, dancing all night can be a panacea. It’s great exercise, lowers stress, boosts energy and provides connection. No wonder so many are doing it

It’s 4am and I’m in a club – the first time I’ve done this in years. I’m 51 and in my sandwich era, meaning I’ve got teenage and elderly loved ones on my mind – a situation that generally calls for early nights. But when you’re responsibilities-maxxing, sometimes you need the opposite. A blowout. A huge, transcendent, resetting release. A rave.

I don’t know what took me so long to get around to it. Misplaced parental guilt? Internalised ageism? Exhaustion? It’s not as though I didn’t know other gen-Xers who have been regularly getting blissfully – ceremonially, even – lost in house, techno or drum’n’bass, and they’re not alone. A 2025 study by the University of Leeds went viral: “Women aged 40-65 are turning to raves for real mental health,” said one of many Instagram posts and press headlines. “Why many women over 40 still go to raves,” read another. But surely the question should be: why the hell wouldn’t they?

Experts share tips to avoid the blood-sucking pests that can transmit Lyme disease and other illnesses on to humans

I won’t go into gory detail about the tick I found latched behind my ear approximately 35 hours after a hike in early June. Suffice it to say, the parasite was well fed, and I was horrified.

I am far from alone in making such a disgusting discovery. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), emergency room visits for tick bites have been unusually high in the US this year. Thirty-one million Americans are bitten by ticks annually – and the number has been trending up for over a decade. In the UK, ticks appear to be rising in number and species variety.

Over the last decade, the understanding of these devastating headaches has grown enormously, as has the understanding of what can be done to treat them

We’ve been trying to cure migraines – without much success, until relatively recently – for as long as we’ve been able to identify them as a distinct ailment. The Ebers Papyrus, a scroll dating back to 1550BC that mentions a “disease of one half of the head”, suggests anointing the scalp with fried catfish; Galen, the second-century Roman physician whose term “hemicrania” evolved into the modern word, recommended blood-letting (this, to be fair, was his answer to a lot of things). By the 20th century, doctors were suggesting repressed emotions might be at fault, leading to suggestions that women – who suffer from migraines far more than men – were simply too fragile and neurotic. As recently as a couple of decades ago, “vascular theory” – the idea that blood vessels in the brain expanding and contracting were to blame – was still the standard explanation in many medical schools.

Over the last decade, though, our understanding of what causes these neurological disorders, which are technically a sub-category of headache, has progressed enormously, alongside the options for treating them. One of the biggest problems, as in centuries past, is a lack of sympathy for sufferers. The biggest difference, these days, is that we actually understand what is happening, and why.

The England defender wears a tracker, the heptathlete is experimenting with kiwi fruits – and world champion swimmer Adam Peaty swears by hours and hours of history videos …

Katarina Johnson-Thompson

Surfboards, knee-length shorts, wetsuits, flip-flops: all have been seen on the catwalks this year. But what do actual surfers think of the trend? We went to Newquay to find out

Summer is here, and with it the annual scramble to decide what kind of season we’re supposed to be having. What will it be? On offer in 2026 are “freaky sandal summer”, which requires you to wear weird shoes, and “euromaxxing”, which is presumably about making the most of the easyJet sale without considering the environmental impact. Maybe “poet girl summer” is for you, whereby you listen to Gracie Abrams while wearing a silk camisole. Or simply “no mascara summer”, which I won’t spell out but sounds quite appealing.

The most plausible contender is “board short summer”, a phrase coined by Marie Claire, which broadly involves dressing like you surf even if you’ve never set foot on a board.

From Lily Collins at Wimbledon to the cast of Love Island, heels-averse cohort is stepping it up a notch

Gen Z, the flats-only generation, has finally succumbed to the heel – albeit a tiny one. Long vocally anti-heel, the cohort who were born between 1997 and 2012 have famously shunned millennials’ obsession with Jimmy Choos in favour of pancake-flat shoes, from the Adidas Samba “It-trainer” to the split-toe Margiela Tabi and so-called “French girl ballet flats”.

But they now appear to be embracing a potential gateway heel, typically measuring in the region of 1.5in (3.8cm) or the height of a triple-A battery.

From M&S to Miu Miu, 50s US school gym staple adopted by 70s rockers is having its moment in the sun again

If the T-shirt is a ubiquitous sight on summer streets, fashion loves nothing more than changing up something very familiar. Enter, this summer, the rise of the ringer T-shirt.

A T-shirt shape but with contrast colour on the collar and ends of the short sleeves, the garment has been spotted at brands ranging from Marks & Spencer to Ganni, Hush and Levi’s.

Designers say that as well as offering a degree of protection from surveillance, their clothes make a powerful fashion statement about the importance of privacy

As facial recognition technology is rolled out across Britain’s public spaces, a new generation of designers say privacy could be the next big fashion trend.

Companies have started incorporating “adversarial patterns” in their garments – carefully designed arrangements of shapes, colours and repeated motifs said to exploit weaknesses in some computer vision systems.

The seven inhabited isles off the North Sea coast, part of a Unesco world heritage site, are a sanctuary for wildlife – with great hotels and restaurants too

‘Can you hear that?” my guide Andrea Wellmeyer asks as I sink a little deeper into the wet ground, cold mud seeping between my toes. When the wind drops, I detect a faint but distinct crackling, similar to the rustle of a sweet wrapper or the bubbling of sparkling water. “That’s the Wattknistern,” she says, “a natural phenomenon caused by the tens of thousands of mud shrimp that live here.”

We’re standing in the Wadden Sea mudflats on Norderney, an island just off Germany’s North Sea coast. It’s Friday evening at low tide. In the town centre, bars are pumping with music, but here, just 15 minutes along the southern edge of the island, it’s a completely different story.

Almost all of the sandy stretches on the country’s 8,000km of coastline are run for profit. Now ‘free beach’ campaigners are fighting back against the mafia, the military and those profiteering from sun loungers and cocktails

Walking along Italian beaches is like strolling through a rainbow. The sand will be subdivided into colours: for 50 metres or so the perfectly spaced parasols and deck chairs will be all red, then they become orange, then yellow, green and so on.

These are the country’s famous bagni (lidos), formally known as concessioni balneari (bathing concessions). They’re simple but stylish. The sand is raked at dawn. The bar plays ambient music and serves negronis or fried squid. There will probably be a table-tennis table, or a beach volleyball area. Some have swimming pools.

With bus fares capped at £3 and free for kids in August, it’s the ideal time for wildlife watching, woodland walks, world-class art and more

Trips to waterfalls, gardens, galleries, medieval forests and prehistoric caves will make the long school holidays a lot more fun. To help families explore affordably, throughout August buses in England will be free for kids and adult fares will be capped at £3 single. Or, if you arrive somewhere by train, you could buy a PlusBus ticket, which include unlimited local bus travel. Here are six ideas for family outings by bus around England.

From 100,000 sunflowers in Gower and cosmic art in Galloway to a bat safari and messing about in boats, there’s enough here to keep you and the kids busy till September

At the westernmost tip of the Gower peninsula, Rhossili Bay is a gloriously wide sweep of sand, backed by dunes and licked with waves perfect for bodyboarding and surfing. Wild ponies graze on the southern headland, while walkers time their trip across to the serpent-like Worm’s Head promontory to not get cut off by the tide.

Narzny McKinney and her surrogate, Sarah, discuss their experience – and the misconceptions that surround the practice

• UK surrogacy law ‘creaking at seams’ as demand rises sharply

After struggling with infertility and eight unsuccessful rounds of IVF, Narzny McKinney had two precious embryos left – her last chance to have biological children. After considering her options, she made the decision to find a surrogate to carry her child for her.

“We were eight years down the line at this point and I just didn’t want to risk anything going wrong,” she said. “It was a tough decision but it was absolutely the right thing to do.”

Elon Musk is trying to own it, competing powers are trying to fight in it and nobody seems to be regulating it. So who does space really belong to?

The last time I saw Laura Grego was in a tent in a baking field on the Welsh borders in May. The conversation on stage ranged from the dangers of space debris to how the law of the sea might pertain to outer space; from our sense of the sacred to our interplanetary futures. At one point Grego, a physicist, said intently, “People have to be aware of what is happening in space. Public knowledge has to catch up.” Three weeks later, SpaceX launched on the stock exchange, temporarily making Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

So, I ask her now, what is it that we should all know? Well, she says, the average person’s experience of space is about to change. If, so far, that has been “looking at the stars and being full of wonder, full of connection with the universe”, perhaps noticing the occasional streaking object that was not a shooting star, now “there are plans for tens of thousands more satellites, which would really change your relationship with what you see in the sky”. SpaceX, specifically, has just applied to a federal regulator for permission to launch up to 1m of them.

A woman ostentatiously making her own pasta in an eaterie in Florence or Rome might seem the height of authenticity. But travellers, beware ...

Name: Pasta windows.

Age: Pretty new.

Seeds are packed into shop-bought pots, meaning they compete and wear themselves out. The best bet is to divide and conquer

The problem
We’ve all done it: picked up a lush, generous-looking pot of basil from the supermarket – full of promise and pesto plans, and within a fortnight it has collapsed into a dried-out, leggy mess. You assume you did something wrong. In reality, the plant was set up to fail before it even reached your kitchen.

The hack
That full, bushy pot is not actually one plant; it is dozens of basil seedlings crammed into a single container to look bushy on the shelf. Packed that tightly, they compete for light, water and root space, and exhaust themselves within days. The fix is to divide the overcrowded mass into smaller, separated clumps and give each one room to actually grow.

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

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

For years, her husband was adding sedatives to her evening cup of tea. Now, with fellow survivor Amanda Stanhope, she is lifting the lid on a hidden and diabolical crime

In September 2024, Amanda Stanhope watched, transfixed, from her home in Manchester, as the Gisèle Pelicot case made headlines around the world.

“Gisèle’s case was the first time I knew of somebody else who had been raped while they were drugged,” says Stanhope. “I remember feeling: ‘Thank God I’m not alone. There’s one other person in the world that this has happened to.’” Stanhope’s former partner, David Rogerson, was under investigation at the time for raping her while she slept, and filming the abuse. Pelicot’s husband, Dominique, would end up being convicted for drug-facilitated rape and sexual assault (DFSA), along with 50 strangers he had recruited online to abuse his wife.

After her son disappeared, Isabel Miranda de Wallace swore she would bring the culprits to justice. She became a national hero. But did she go too far?

When her son, Hugo, failed to answer his phone on the morning of 12 July 2005, Isabel Miranda de Wallace did not waste a moment. Everyone knew that kidnappings were rife in Mexico City, and Wallace immediately enlisted her brother and nephew to help with the search. They walked the streets near Hugo’s last known location until they came across his SUV. A passerby told them they’d seen someone being forced out of his car and into a nearby apartment, Wallace later said. She also described speaking to a boy who had heard gunshots and seen an injured man being led out of the apartment around 4am. “Within 24 hours, we found his car, then the building where they took my son. We had the case practically solved,” Wallace later said. “But the police didn’t believe us.”

At that time, many kidnapping cases went unreported, as families feared that the police couldn’t be trusted. Those who did go to the police often struggled to get them to take their complaints seriously. But Wallace was different. She was a successful businesswoman, who had set up an advertising agency that owned and operated billboards across Mexico City. “She didn’t beg or say please,” said Federico Döring, a politician and an early ally of Wallace. “She would point her finger at public officials not doing their job – and this was unheard of,” Döring told me. “In Mexico, a lot of people are often afraid to speak up because you don’t know if a politician is in bed with the cartels. That intimidates them, but it didn’t intimidate her.”

Interviews with residents of Russian-held region point to frustration with Moscow as Ukrainian campaign to isolate it takes toll on daily life

First, the guests stopped coming. As Ukrainian drones and missiles pounded Crimea throughout the spring and into the summer, Russian tourists began cancelling their bookings at the small guesthouse Marina runs in Yevpatoria, a resort town on the peninsula’s Black Sea coast.

Then petrol became scarce, making it harder to stock the business with food and other essentials. Now, electricity and running water are cut off for much of the day, just as the summer heat sets in.

With the cost of holiday childcare rising and many parents juggling work with looking after children, we’d like to hear how you’re managing this summer

The summer holidays have begun, bringing the annual challenge many parents face in balancing work and looking after school-aged children. New research suggests arranging six weeks of holiday childcare can cost working parents up to £1,145 per child, while almost three-quarters of parents say the summer childcare juggle damages their career.

Are you paying for holiday clubs or childminders, relying on family and friends or working from home while caring for children? Are you taking annual leave, reducing your hours or working early mornings and late evenings to fit everything in?

We would love to hear about your workhorse appliances, why they’re so impressive and how long you’ve had them

An elderly couple in Gloucestershire are reportedly still using what is believed to be Britain’s oldest working fridge.

The Electrolux appliance was built in the 1930s and bought second-hand by their family in 1949, with the owners telling SWNS that it is “still going strong”.

We would like to hear about the endings of TV series that brought you the most joy

From Detectorists to The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, the Guardian’s writers have curated their list of TV’s happiest endings. Now, we would like to hear yours. What was the TV series ending that brought you the most joy?

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If you’re wearing the new glasses, we want to know more about how you’re using them. We’d also like to hear from people about how they feel about others around them wearing the glasses

With over seven million pairs of glasses reported to have been sold by Meta in 2025, it is clear that their popularity is growing and we’d like to find out more about how people are using them.

There have been some concerns around nonconsensual filming and the data protection of users, however the glasses have proved life-changing for those with visual impairments and hearing loss.

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