City has become caught up in the drama as team stands on brink of a first NBA championship in 53 years

After the New York Knicks’ furious comeback over the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday night, the last place anyone in the city wanted to be was at home. Taylor Swift and Larry David were among the celebrities who lingered at Madison Square Garden after the final buzzer sounded on the 107-106 victory as Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York washed over the arena.

The former Knick Iman Shumpert, sporting his old No 21 jersey, made a beeline from the arena to Times Square to join the stunned celebration. All over the city, car horns blared, raucous watch parties spilled on to the streets and perfect strangers greeted one another by barking “Go Knicks!”. As they might put it on Broadway: it was just one of those nights.

More resignations, more possible leadership challenges and dubious ‘sources’ – the PM has lost control of his own political agenda

“This isn’t the beginning of the end,” one senior Labour adviser remarked yesterday. “It has gone way beyond that.” To the middle of the end? The late-middle? Forgive the attempt to ascertain the precise coordinates of where we are in the decline and fall of Keir Starmer, which feels like it’s clocking in at slightly longer than the last days of Rome (conservatively estimated at a couple of centuries). Some believe that – like the phrase “heat death of the universe” – the “end of Keir Starmer” may sound like it should be a cataclysmically white-flash event, but will actually unfold over trillions of years.

I think something else is happening. I think we’re getting to the part in the movie where the mortally wounded antagonist hisses: “My death is only the beginning.” Andy Burnham is the sequel nobody asked for. The current inadequacy is a franchise.

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

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

We’ve tried, tested and rounded up 62 thoughtful gifts – from gardening gloves to a cold brew coffee maker and a parkrun keyring – to make the father figure in your life feel special

• Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Whoever you’re celebrating this Father’s Day – your own dad or a father figure in your life – our bumper list of gift ideas should help you think beyond the norm (though we have included some sock options, because sometimes it’s OK to go classic).

Whatever their age or your budget, we’ve focused on sustainable products that stand the test of time. All of the products have either been tested by me or by our own brilliant testers on the Filter and should still be going strong on Father’s Day 2027 and beyond.

Of all the bases Scotland fans could have found for their World Cup journey, it had to be the city renowned for chasing the English out of town

Sam Adams is the beer of Boston, named after a founding father of the United States who was the fourth governor of Massachusetts. Downtown, there’s a tap room where you can drink it all day. On Thursday lunchtime the bar was packed, full of Scotland fans, and hanging over the first-floor balcony was a big yellow flag. It bore the legend “Remember Bannockburn 1314”.

Of all the bases the Tartan Army could have found for their World Cup journey, it had to be the city renowned for chasing the English out of town. Supporters dressed like William Wallace have been bonding with tour guides dressed as Paul Revere.

Feeling abandoned and overwhelmed, families are turning to controversial new therapies backed by the US health secretary

Landyn Holdren is an eight-year-old autistic child who has high support needs and is nonspeaking. His mother, Christy Holdren, says he can be self-harming, slapping his chest, face or head when distressed.

Later this month, she will spend $15,000 on an unapproved stem cell treatment she hopes might help him.

Is my metabolism slowing with age? What’s the secret to good skin? And is there anything I can do about my crows feet? Medical, health and diet experts offer a midlife MOT

According to the dietician Rick Miller: “By the time a man hits his mid-40s, several physiological changes are already under way. Testosterone drops at around 1-2% annually from the mid-30s, insulin sensitivity decreases and the liver’s capacity to process certain nutrients changes. The diet that kept a man lean and energetic in his 30s simply stops working.”

The Bradford-born painter made his name with sunkissed visions of California and never stopped breaking barriers, going on to become one of contemporary art’s most important figures
• ‘David Hockney caught the look of the modern world’
• David Hockney’s life in pictures

David Hockney, the iconic British painter who cast a revolutionary gaze across 20th-century art, has died aged 88.

He made his name as a pop artist during the swinging 60s and was perhaps best known for his paintings of swimming pools that helped define the Los Angeles aesthetic. Works such as A Bigger Splash and Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) depicted hedonistic scenes of love, lust and loss taking place below the city’s sun-soaked skies.

Measures to include restrictions on ‘safe’ social media apps, with some fearing banning some platforms and not others will lead to legal challenges

Teenagers under the age of 16 are to be banned from accessing “high-risk” social media apps while safer platforms will be subjected to restrictions, under a sweeping government crackdown.

Under-18s will also be banned from using romantic or sexual AI chatbots after a consultation on keeping children safe online.

Four found guilty will face tougher conditions as judge says actions were ‘designed to intimidate the UK government and a section of the public’

Four Palestine Action activists who smashed up drones and other equipment at an Israeli arms manufacturer’s UK factory will be sentenced as terrorists, a judge has ruled.

Mr Justice Johnson made the ruling at a sentencing hearing on Friday for Samuel Corner, 23, Charlotte Head, 30, Leona Kamio, 30, and Fatema Rajwani, 21, who were all found guilty of criminal damage last month in relation to a 2024 break-in at the Elbit Systems UK site in Gloucestershire. Corner was also convicted of grievous bodily harm without intent for striking Sgt Kate Evans with a sledgehammer.

Islamabad working with both sides to finalise next steps, says Shehbaz Sharif

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) has cautioned against media speculation about a potential memorandum of understanding to end the war, particularly on claims regarding the strait of Hormuz.

IRNA reported that Iran will not surrender its control of the strategic waterway and the US will have no role in its future management.

Contrary to some bizarre claims in the media, Iran in no way makes a commitment in this text to hand over its management or to restore the strait of Hormuz to the state before the military aggression of the US and Israel. The only point mentioned is the normalisation of transit through the strait of Hormuz upon the end of the war, the establishment of maritime security by the coastal states, the end of the illegal blockade, and the removal of threats to commercial shipping by the US and Israel. At Iran’s request, the US will have no role whatsoever in the future management of the strait of Hormuz. It has been made clear that the future administration of the strait will be based on an Iranian initiative and proposal, within the framework of a matter pertaining to the countries of the region. In this framework, discussions about the future of the strait of Hormuz will not take place even in negotiations after the signing of the agreement, and Tehran will directly resolve this issue in talks with Oman.”

The record-breaking IPO valued Musk’s company at $1.77tn after raising $75bn through a share offering

SpaceX’s shares will be supported by a number of “forced buyers”, such as tracker funds.

Richard Hunter, head of markets at interactive investor, explains:

The Nasdaq index has tweaked its rules, which has allowed SpaceX to join the index on a fast-track basis. It remains to be seen whether the company will have a disproportionate effect on the index in terms of weighting, but in any event its inclusion guarantees some additional and significant buying pressure.

Exclusive A vast area of the Bellingshausen Sea should be covered by sea ice by now, with one expert calling the loss of ice ‘depressing’

Antarctica’s west coast is missing an area of winter sea ice the size of France, sparking concerns for threatened penguins other marine life and global sea levels.

One expert said the loss of ice in the Bellingshausen Sea was “depressing” and the failure of ice to form could have intensified a heatwave over the continent’s peninsular last week that saw daytime temperatures peak at 15.4C which is more than 20C above average.

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The Athletic is reporting that Thomas Partey will not play in Ghana’s opening game after his visa application to Canada was refused. The Black Stars face Panama next week in Toronto before playing England in Boston and Croatia in Philadelphia.

It is a brilliant atmosphere at Toronto Stadium, with Canada and Bosnia and Herzegovina supporters drinking in the occasion. Canada fans marched to the ground en masse, some high-fiving the Bosnian supporters who got stuck amid the traffic, flares and chants the order of the day. It was a sticky morning in the city, with no discernible evidence of a historic match taking place, but that has all changed with a couple of hours until kick-off. There was an a cappella version of O Canada, of course. There is pedigree among the media corps, too, with Bastian Schweinsteiger and Owen Hargreaves, who was born in Calgary, both in the building. There were suggestions in Bosnian media that they may have more fans in attendance, but Jesse Marsch was in no doubt on the eve of the game. “That stadium is going to be red, not blue,” he said, matter-of-factly.

PM promises to fight any leadership challenge, saying any successor would face same problems as him

Keir Starmer has said he knows he has to “turn things around” after a series of crises culminating in the resignation of John Healey, the defence secretary, but warned that any successor would face the same difficult decisions.

In an interview with the BBC after Healey’s departure in a row over defence spending, Starmer promised again to fight any leadership challenge from Andy Burnham or others, saying: “I’m not going to walk away.”

President is first in US history to be impeached twice, over abuse of power and inciting an insurrection

Donald Trump is pressing Congress to erase one of the darkest chapters of his political career, urging Republicans to pass a resolution that would symbolically nullify the two impeachments he suffered during his first term in office.

The effort, first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by a White House official, would allow Trump to claim a symbolic victory on a key grievance from his first term. But experts say it would have little legal significance, since the constitution provides no procedure for undoing an impeachment.

Amid rhetoric, market uncertainty and tit-for-tat exchanges, the two sides are still trying to find a way out of the impasse

Great news! Donald Trump has said the US and Iran are on the verge of a peace agreement. Oil prices are down, and the stock market is up. This comes only hours after Trump warned Iran was about to be struck “VERY HARD”, a threat that had sent oil prices up and stocks down.

It has been another ride on the Trump rollercoaster, keeping traders on edge, most of the world poorer, and people of the Middle East constantly whiplashing between fear and hope. But whether the ride veers up or down, the management always makes money.

Does qualifying for the World Cup mean you now support the Knicks?

From World Cup promos to NBA Finals ads, AI imagery is becoming more common in sports promotions. Many athletes are under contracts that permit the use of their likeness, but in an age of hyper-real AI, do new rules need to be put in place?

Our reporter Mark Mcpartland takes a look.

Ex-paratrooper described by colleagues as straight shooter has long seemed destined for role but may not get long

MPs who know Dan Jarvis are not surprised he accepted the cursed job of defence secretary – even knowing he may last only a few weeks in the job. The former paratrooper, once touted as a leadership contender, has long seemed destined for that role, having worked his way diligently through ministerial ranks, a South Yorkshire mayoralty and the shadow cabinet.

“He’ll have done it out of a sense of duty,” said one MP who knows him well. But they said he would “no doubt” be hoping that a successor to Keir Starmer would keep him on in the role.

Artists and cultural figures celebrate the great Yorkshire painter who could ‘make teabags and toothpaste glamorous’ – with a poem from a fellow Yorkshireman

• ‘David Hockney caught the look of the modern world’

• David Hockney, revolutionary British artist, dies aged 88

My earliest memories of modern artists were of David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Bridget Riley. I remember seeing a TV programme about David in the 1970s as a young kid and thinking “wow, is that what being an artist is like?” Because my mum was an artist but she wasn’t anything like that!

(Geffen)
Gossips have rushed to the lyrics for details about her personal life, but the rest of us can just get on with luxuriating in Rodrigo’s funny, Cure-infused craft

With a certain crushing inevitability, the arrival of Olivia Rodrigo’s third album has been accompanied by a lot of frenzied decoding of its lyrics for references to Louis Partridge, the British actor whose relationship with the singer ended late last year. One magazine ran a 1,200 word essay, complete with annotations, panning its songs for nuggets of gossip: the fourth piece they’ve published on the subject in recent months. A British broadsheet plumped for a news story about the fact that Rodrigo had apparently changed the lyrics of a track called Purple, formerly a “very sweet and saccharine” love song, to reflect the end of their relationship. Over in New Delhi, The Hindustan Times was pondering rumours that the couple had actually got back together: “Interest in Partridge has grown after Rodrigo released her new album since fans believe the track Stupid Song has references to the singer’s relationship with him.”

Well, of course it has: for better or for worse, that kind of speculation seems to have become a major part of modern pop, and Oliva Rodrigo in particular has long been a beneficiary of the clickbait publicity it brings. Her breakthrough single Drivers Licence gained traction thanks to the rumour that its lyrics were about her former boyfriend Joshua Bassett’s dalliance with Sabrina Carpenter; Vampire, the lead single from 2023’s Guts invited yet more speculation about whether its subject was another ex or Taylor Swift. Indeed, she actively seems to encourage it: “I never talk about my personal life in interviews or in any public forum, so I guess the music is where people go to deduce things,” she recently told an interviewer, a line that seems to have a distinct hint of “go ahead, fill your boots” about it.

The BBC’s chief international correspondent was awarded the prestigious nonfiction prize for The Finest Hotel in Kabul – which she hopes will bring more attention to the Taliban’s draconian treatment of women

• Women’s prize: Virginia Evans wins for fiction and Lyse Doucet takes award for nonfiction

Lyse Doucet first checked into Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel on Christmas Day 1988, as Soviet troops were withdrawing from Afghanistan at the end of a decade-long occupation. She expected to stay briefly. Instead, she remained for almost a year, and the hotel became her first Afghan home.

More than three decades later, it became the subject of her first book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, which has now won the Women’s prize for nonfiction. But while the prize recognises a remarkable work of reportage and history, the BBC’s chief international correspondent is more interested in what it might do for the country that inspired it.

Dear Frances offers the latest take on ballet flats, offering ‘a glove-like fit wearability’ – which is fine if you have nice feet

When is a shoe not a shoe? On sale this month is a pair that seems to pose the question – the no shoe-shoe is the work of the cult brand Dear Frances and the latest in a steady march of shoes that are barely there; a take on naked dressing but for the foot.

The Balla shoe, which the brand calls a “sock shoe”, covers almost the entire foot, but also leaves it – encased but on display – in a kind of flimsy foot-cage. According to Jane Frances, the creative director and founder of the brand, it “offers a unique, glove-like fit wearability” and “takes inspiration from the delicate strength of a woman”.

With more than 177,000 people forcibly disappeared since 2011, short doc Maybe Tomorrow captures ‘the violence of waiting’ experienced by family

When Wafa Mustafa was a child, she remembers her father playing the music of Umm Kulthum non-stop at home in Syria, humming along to the legendary Egyptian singer’s melodic tones. One day, in an effort to encourage his daughter to appreciate music, he asked her to take a pen and paper and write the lyrics of a song she loved. Wanting to impress him, Mustafa chose an Umm Kulthum song called “Aghadan Alqak”, which translates to: “Will I meet you tomorrow?”

“The lyrics are literally about someone who’s gone, about the waiting for them and the love you have for them,” says Mustafa. “It feels like I knew what was coming … as if I manifested my life since I was very young.”

This collection of ‘art meets theatre meets activism’ by more than 80 writers can feel overwhelming, writes our critic, but it devastatingly conveys the cumulative horror and anger of abuse against women

Can social media bring on the revolution? Maybe not, but it was vital for the collective action behind this theatrical event, conceived on a WhatsApp group for playwrights shortly after the release of the Epstein files. Members of the group were angry that the world was not talking nearly enough about the impact of Jeffrey Epstein’s actions on the girls and women he abused. They were also concerned that America’s war with Iran was serving as a distraction from the violence that lay festering in these files on the paedophile-financier. So when British playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz sent out a prompt, scores of writers responded.

That was four months ago. This week, more than 80 of those writers have mobilised a creative response under the lead direction of Lucy Morrison along with Hannah Hauer-King, Madeleine Kludje and Tessa Walker. It takes place across 15 spaces, cupboards as well as open plan areas, on the upper storey of an office in London, currently occupied by Theatre Deli, a company that takes over empty locations.

• Player had been due to play against Panama in Toronto

• Fifa says decision made by Canadian government

The Ghana defender Thomas Partey will miss their opening World Cup game against Panama after being refused a visa to Canada, where the game is being staged in Toronto.

In a statement to the Athletic, Fifa said: “Fifa can confirm that player Thomas Partey will be unable to travel from Ghana’s team base camp in Boston, USA, to Canada for their first match against Panama on Wednesday, 17 June, as his visa application has been refused by the Canadian government.

More details soon …

Last triumph was in 2002 but Italian head coach, without Neymar against Morocco, brings ‘joy and enthusiasm’

It is Marcio Santos who best sums up the predicament Brazil’s players found themselves in before the 1994 World Cup. “We hadn’t won in 24 years. That’s way too long for the Brazilian people,” says the former defender in the new Netflix documentary USA 94: Brazil’s Return to Glory.

Having suffered the ignominy of a first defeat in qualifying that prompted the manager, Carlos Alberto Parreira, to offer to step down, the fabled Romário and Bebeto strike partnership inspired the Seleção to win a fourth World Cup the last time the tournament was held on American soil.

Usage in opening matches focused on replays of goals from a unique angle, offering the viewer greater depth to watch from home

Not all of Fifa’s innovations at this men’s World Cup have been an instant hit with fans. But amid the clutter of the opening day, one success did seem to emerge – the new and improved refcam view.

As part of their matchday equipment a small, high-definition “stabilised” camera is attached to the referee’s headset. Before the tournament, the Italian veteran referee Pierluigi Collina, chair of Fifa’s referees committee, said: “We think that it is a good chance to offer the viewers a new experience … from an angle of vision which was never offered before.”

Platini among former players to accuse captain of creating distraction as Deschamps defends captain’s right to speak

“If there’s one wish I have, it’s for you to ask my players about the opponents, about football,” Didier Deschamps told journalists after announcing France’s World Cup squad. “I understand that you might feel obliged to ask other questions, but they’re not there to answer them.”

Deschamps has found himself batting away questions about off-pitch matters beyond his scope before his final tournament as head coach. He has sought to protect his players from media scrutiny while insisting they are anything but sheltered from the wider political issues surrounding this tournament.

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There’s an elemental force to football that can never be bottled and sold off. For reasons only known to Gianni Infantino and attendant pen pushers, the Azteca has been renamed the Mexico City Stadium for the Geopolitics World Cup. You can change a name for admin purposes, make punters pay through the nose for tickets, and charge 280 pesos ($17) for a beer (!) but legacy endures. It cannot be costed, sliced and diced. The ghosts of 1970 and 1986 were present and correct, just as present as JJ Balvin, Salma Hayek, David Guetta, EJAE and Andrea Bocelli were for a decent enough opening ceremony as these autotune extravaganzas go. Few would term Mexico 2-0 South Africa a classic tournament opener for the GWC but it served plenty of reminders this still actually means more.

At the Euros I think we got a few things wrong off the pitch, I don’t feel the group connected as well as it could have for a number of reasons. When it came to the tournament, we were seen as one of two or three teams that could win it. We weren’t playing well, which doesn’t help, so even when we were winning, we didn’t get the feeling that we were as happy as we should be” – Jude Bellingham, there, suggesting that England were lacking vibes at the Euros. Where was Conor Coady when they needed him?

Back in the 1994 World Cup, it was suggested the games should be split into four quarters to pander to increased advertising revenue. Needless to say, this idea was treated with the intense derision that it deserved and quickly booted into touch before it was implemented. Thirty-two years later we have ‘hydration breaks’ splitting the game into quarters and two extra advertising breaks. The more things change, the more they stay the same” – Nigel Sanders.

Re: yesterday’s Football Daily. Apologies if this sounds like a story meant for a campfire but it’s hard to convey the feelings and the emotion that this tournament brings to the surface. The first tournament I distinctly remember was the 2002 World Cup – I was in India and the time difference was perfect to catch a game or two after school. I saw it all – Ronaldinho’s smile, the Ronaldo haircut, Oliver Kahn’s intimidating presence and the South Koreans going far (shout out to Turkey). The tournaments that followed were great but it never reached the same levels (for me). I swore as a 12-year-old (in 2002) that I’d go to one tournament in my lifetime; I came close in 2022 but it never came to be. Now we are in 2026, I am to be a citizen of a country that is co-hosting this tournament and, despite the ticket lottery and Fifa circus, I have secured tickets to two games. Twenty-four years later the promise is being kept. The little boy from 2002 will be proud” – Girish Chandra.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

A small, eccentric electorate gets to oust the UK’s leaders and then chooses largely inadequate replacements. It’s an absurd process and we’re locked into it again

One thing is clear. British politics has yet to rid itself of the torments of the past decade. The resignation of Keir Starmer’s defence secretary, John Healey, and the armed forces minister, Al Carns, indicates that the prime minister lacks cabinet support for his chancellor’s desperately needed budgetary balance. This gives ever greater prominence to next week’s Makerfield byelection, its multiplicity of feuding parties adding to its uncertainty. But its purpose is plain, to enable Andy Burnham to challenge Starmer’s leadership of the Labour party.

Healey is not the first defence secretary to have had to fight a lone battle for his budget. But Starmer’s argument with most of his colleagues is not over policy or principle. It is personal. It reflects the raw ambition of rivals eager to exploit his unpopularity in office. Burnham has said a byelection victory would presage a leadership vote, and it is clear that the party’s paid-up members would probably go for a change. A small town in Lancashire has thus the privilege of staging a Downing Street coup.

Russia is also included on the UN’s blacklist – and it faces enormous pressure from sanctions. The same consequences must apply to Israel

• Janine di Giovanni is executive director of The Reckoning Project, a war crimes reporting unit in Ukraine, Sudan and Palestine

Yousef, a Palestinian journalist, and I stood on a beach in Gaza during the first intifada – the uprising that began in 1987, defined by popular resistance and young men throwing stones. He was in his early 20s at the time, but he had already spent time in Ansar III, the dreaded Israeli prison in the Negev desert. He had recently been released.

This was before post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was widely understood, but I knew my friend was deeply traumatised. Staring at the sea, his hands shook as we spoke. Even though he was free, he doubted he would ever feel safe again. Prison had meant beatings, torture, sleep deprivation. “The soldiers kept asking me if I wanted to be a woman,” he said. “That is the worst thing – to threaten to destroy your manhood.”

Janine di Giovanni is a war correspondent and the executive director of The Reckoning Project, a war crimes unit in Ukraine, Sudan and Palestine. She is the author of The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria

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.

Plus, Brexit at 10, dinner as protest, 100 best novels and not watching the World Cup (yet)

We’re approaching the 10-year anniversary of the Brexit referendum. Documentaries are being aired and newspaper features are being written. But one thing seems to be missing. Why aren’t all those big names who campaigned for Brexit back in 2016 now shouting from the rooftops about what a great success it has been?

Everyone here knows this is a sliding doors moment. A win could be a new beginning for the party, a loss an unimaginable calamity

They flock to Makerfield from everywhere: canvassers and camera crews, MPs, peers and volunteers, from Swansea to Gateshead, 700 a day to help the Labour campaign. Every door has already been knocked four times, boasts the Burnham team.

How does it feel for voters to be the most important constituency in living memory? Most are quite pleased, bar the usual “we only see them round here when they want our votes”. But with a chance to choose a prime minister, never was a vote so valuable.

I think I’ll leave new methods to measure biological age to the Kardashians. Too much knowledge about your mortality can be bad for your health

In the season 5 finale of The Kardashians, the family took a commercially available blood test to discover how fast their bodies were ageing. It came as little surprise, given their privileged lifestyles, that the reality TV stars were said to be ageing more slowly than most mortals of the same age. Khloé, then 39, found she had a biological age of 28. Cue whoops of joy and much smugness.

The Kardashians join a growing list of celebrities who have taken similar tests and then crowed about their “biological ages”. Now, there’s a new test on the block.

Helen Pilcher is a science writer and the author of This Book May Cause Side Effects

‘Piggy’, ‘corrupt’, ‘stupid’: the president keeps lashing out. Here’s how journalists can stand up to him

For many years now, Donald Trump has been saying awful things to – or about – the female media figures who have the nerve to ask him questions and challenge his falsehoods.

“Quiet, Piggy,” he ordered a Bloomberg reporter, Catherine Lucey, last year in a press gaggle when she pushed him about the release of the Epstein files.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

Leaving Cole Palmer at home surprised me, but I know Thomas from Chelsea – he’s the type of coach to die on his sword

In Thomas Tuchel, England have an elite coach. Don’t underestimate him. In my 12 years working at Chelsea, he and Mauricio Pochettino were my two favourite managers.

Thomas is a great communicator, he’s demanding and he articulates himself really well. I admire the way he transfers information to the press and to players in a clear, concise way that is methodical, inspirational and detailed, all at the same time.

A win for Labour would show how the party can speak to working-class insecurity without scapegoating minorities

The resignations from the heart of government this week will only deepen the anti-Westminster mood ahead of the Makerfield byelection. The departure of the defence secretary, John Healey, and his deputy illustrates that Sir Keir Starmer’s problem is not just his unpopularity. It is that his claim to competence is being challenged from the inside. When ministers resign saying that the government is too timid and its politics largely performative, they are not just criticising decisions. They are arguing for a different leader.

Step forward Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor and Labour candidate in the most consequential byelection for decades. Mr Burnham has not disguised his leadership ambitions if he wins the seat and enters parliament. His sales pitch is that he is Labour-but-not-this-Labour. He sells himself as a party insider who is outside Westminster; an experienced politician, but not one involved in the present governing mess. He styles himself as plausibly loyal but interestingly dissident.

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.

Writers do not only document the horror of conflict; they speak to a future that must exist beyond it

Last week, thousands of readers gathered for a literary festival in Kyiv, risking air raids to hear from writers. Four brutal years of war have not destroyed the appetite for writing, but fuelled it. Russia’s extensive and systematic attempts to destroy Ukrainian culture, and therefore identity, have rightly received widespread attention. Over 700 libraries were damaged or destroyed outright within the first three years of the full-scale invasion.

But that campaign has also spurred efforts to move away from Russian literature and the Russian-language titles that previously dominated the market. Ukrainian literature and publishing has flourished far beyond the powerful documentary accounts of war often awarded attention outside the country, with growing room for experimentation. Newer writing also attempts to bridge the gap between those on the frontline and those more safely at home.

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.

Readers respond to nights of rioting in the city fuelled by anti-migrant rhetoric

I agree with John Harris’s analysis (Cars burn in Belfast, bricks fly in Southampton – and the ubiquitous cry of ‘civil war’ goes up again, 10 June). He misses one obvious point, though. Since the election of the first Thatcher government in 1979, there has been a continuous attack on the rights and living standards of working-class people, such that we are now seeing a decline in healthy life expectancy for the poorest in the UK.

We might think of this as a civil war which only one side is waging. Because the language of class has been erased from our politics, the “white working class” only hear themselves being spoken about when Nigel Farage or Stephen Yaxley-Lennon tell them how the system has failed them.

Readers respond to an article by Jonathan Freedland about our entire political and cultural landscape being shaped by the referendum

Jonathan Freedland is right to highlight the disastrous role played by David Cameron and George Osborne in using the prospect of an in/out referendum to garner votes in the 2015 election, with a view to dropping it if the expected coalition with the Lib Dems emerged (Britain is a swamp of lies and disinformation – and we got here on the Brexit bus, 5 June).

But even their win with a majority did not necessitate the calamity the country suffered. They could have kept their referendum commitment, but demanded that those proposing leave come up with a model for it to be put to the electorate as the “out” option.

Letter writers challenge what appears and what doesn’t

Alex Clark writes that The Lord of the Rings “is, strictly speaking, a trilogy” (Move over Middlemarch! Readers’ top 100 novels, 6 June). Strictly speaking, it isn’t a trilogy but a single work of fiction originally published in three volumes for practical reasons. None of the three volumes can stand alone. Compare, for example, the late David Lodge’s Changing Places, Small World, and Nice Work – a proper (and still sharply entertaining) “campus” trilogy.
Prof Chris Walsh
Hawarden, Flintshire

• Critics should read Bleak House in full before condemning it as miserable: the demise of Mr Krook by spontaneous human combustion must be one of the most darkly hilarious scenes in 19th-century literature, concluding with an appropriate warning from Dickens for contemporary corrupt administrations.
Noel Kavanagh
Cambridge

The origins of the English nation long preceded the Anglo-Saxons, says Rev Dr Richard Cleaves. Plus a letter from George Nicholson

Rev Dr John Caperon, writing about the Bayeux tapestry’s visit to Britain, appears to think that “the real origins of the English nation” lie in the “pre-1066 Anglo-Saxon culture” (Letters, 9 June).

This is utterly outrageous. A little respect is due to the Danelaw and the Vikings, to the Celts of the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, to the continental, Middle Eastern and north African Roman occupiers, and to the iron-age Celts.

Updates from Edgbaston; play starts at 6.30pm BST
Hosts get ready to rock | Mail James | Read the Spin

Right then, here we go! Danni Wyatt-Hodge and Amy Jones stride out to bat in bright sunlight. There’s a blast of Paranoid from local heroes Black Sabbath. The clock counts down and the crowd cheers. Right arm medium pacer Malki Madara has the ball in hand for Sri Lanka. Let’s play!

A coven/seam quartet of green faced witches belt out a couple of musical numbers at Edgbaston. Nasser Hussain sounds about as confused as I am on Sky’s coverage but it’s all good fun. Time for the anthems and then we’ll be into the action.

• Representatives say increase is ‘a signal of intent’

• Tennis stars had boycotted media at French Open

Wimbledon will avoid the threat of player protests after representatives of the world’s top players welcomed the significant prize‑money increase offered by the All England Club.

“Leading players from the ATP and WTA Tours welcome Wimbledon’s 2026 prize money announcement as a genuine and significant step forward – the 20% increase is the largest single-year uplift in the tournament’s history and a meaningful signal of intent,” the player group said in a statement.

• Frenchman was demoted to seventh for pit lane speeding

• F1 said it had made a mistake with its measurements

A tangled legal and regulatory mess was developing at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix on Friday after Pierre Gasly of Alpine was restored to the Monaco podium, with the FIA conceding his pit lane speeding penalties last Sunday were incorrect.

Alpine’s successful appeal, in which they demonstrated the official speed measurements were ­inaccurate, prompted McLaren and Red Bull to notify the FIA of their intention to appeal against Gasly’s reinstatement. Red Bull’s Isack ­Hadjar was knocked off the podium by his fellow Frenchman, who had initially been demoted to seventh after the finish.

The Prem’s top points scorer has been rejuvenated this year as the Chiefs look to overturn their fancied hosts Bath in Saturday’s semi-final

It is early afternoon in Exeter and Henry Slade is reflecting on his day so far. As a type 1 diabetic he has already injected himself “four or five times” and a training schedule change has left him playing catchup with his insulin levels. “I had a bit of a stinker today. I had to bang some carbohydrate down me before training but didn’t quite get it right. I was a bit on the low side and didn’t feel very good. I guess it was my fault for not reading the schedule properly.”

Later there will be further injections and more monitoring, none of it stress free for someone who wrestles with obsessive compulsive disorder. Plus, there are the demands of having three daughters under six back at home; the youngest, Delphine, is not yet three months old. After an intensely physical match even changing a nappy can be challenging. “With the last two I’ve spent hours on the floor changing nappies. It’s a nightmare getting up again. We’ve now got nappy-changing tables which are an absolute gamechanger.”

Royal Ascot-bound stayer will sport them in parade ring and down to start next week owing to eye condition

Trawlerman, last year’s winner of the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot, will wear an equine version of ski goggles in the paddock and on the way to post before defending the stayers’ crown next Thursday, John Gosden, the gelding’s trainer, revealed on Friday.

Speaking on the Nick Luck Daily podcast, Gosden said the unusual step was necessary because Trawlerman “has a weird problem with his eyes in that he becomes very sensitive to light”.

• Jackett spent whole playing career with Watford

• He managed seven clubs including Millwall and Wolves

The former Watford and Wales player Kenny Jackett, who managed clubs including Wolves, Millwall and Swansea, has died aged 64.

Jackett won 31 Wales caps during a playing career spent entirely with Watford, his local club, before starting his managerial career with the Hornets in 1996. He took charge of more than 900 games across spells with seven clubs, most recently Leyton Orient, but also including Portsmouth, Millwall and Swansea.

• Ex-Arsenal forward signs three-year deal with champions

• ‘The way City plays suits me really well,’ says 31-year-old

Beth Mead believes Manchester City’s playing style suits her own and has described her move to the Women’s Super League champions on a three-year contract as a “no-brainer”.

The 31-year-old forward, who has scored 40 times in 81 appearances for England, has become City’s first signing of the summer, having completed a free transfer from Arsenal, whom she left at the end of the season after nine years.

• Had been calls for Nations League tie to be boycotted

• FAI agrees to move contest away from Aviva Stadium

The Republic of Ireland are to play their upcoming Nations League game against Israel at a neutral venue behind closed doors following protests by players and fans over the death toll of Palestinian civilians during the war in Gaza.

Ireland had been set to host Israel at the Aviva Stadium on 4 October, while a 27 September fixture designated as an Israel home match is also expected to be staged at a neutral venue. But Irish footballers, fans and celebrities launched a campaign calling for a boycott of the game.

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Cyber agency says BlackCore targeted John Swinney, as well as interfering in New York and French elections

France’s cybersecurity agency has accused the Israeli tech company BlackCore of interfering in the Scottish elections earlier this year by targeting the first minister, John Swinney.

The disinformation detection agency Viginum said BlackCore had this year used proxy social media accounts to target Swinney, the Scottish National party, and the Scottish government on four occasions.

Public figures sign open letter calling for scheme to be moved from Home Office to independent body

The prime minister and the home secretary have been urged to remove the Windrush compensation scheme from Home Office control.

About 70 public figures have signed an open letter backing a call by the Windrush Justice Community Collective (WJCC) for a radical overhaul of the scheme, which was set up to compensate those, mainly Black Britons, who were wrongly classed as illegal migrants and stripped of citizenship rights over decades.

British journalist becomes one of most prominent appointments made by embattled editor-in-chief Bari Weiss

CBS News has hired the prominent British broadcaster Trevor Phillips as its senior global affairs correspondent in a significant hire for embattled top editor Bari Weiss.

The network said that reporting by Phillips, who currently presents the flagship Sunday political show on Sky News in the UK, would appear “on all CBS News programs and platforms”.

Pontiff urges leaders to do more to welcome refugees and tells people smugglers to expect ‘divine justice’

Pope Leo has used the final day of his week-long tour of Spain to stress that “all of us are migrants” as he praised the power of integration, adding: “Yesterday’s foreigner may be today’s brother and neighbour.”

The pontiff arrived on Friday in Tenerife, the largest and most populous of the Canary Islands. Soon after, he made his way to a reception centre housed in a former military barracks, which has accommodated as many as 4,000 people, to address the hundreds of migrants gathered there.

Figures suggest common travel area being used in both directions, but particularly UK to Ireland

Up to 90% of asylum seekers in Ireland may have entered the country via the Northern Ireland land border in the last three years, figures suggest.

Irish government data shows the common travel area (CTA) is being exploited in both directions but suggests it may be more popular for those seeking asylum in Ireland than in the UK.

Guided by floating barriers, the Interceptor has already stopped more than 143,000lbs of rubbish from entering the Pacific from one LA river

On an overcast June morning, I step from the rubber-sided Zodiac boat on to a floating barge at the mouth of Ballona Creek, where it meets Santa Monica Bay on the west side of Los Angeles. The first thing I notice? Salty air is the only smell, despite six giant waste bins sitting atop the tennis court-sized barge.

The contraption is actually two barges – a smaller platform sits nestled inside the larger boat. A floating barrier directs rubbish into the device, where a conveyor belt scoops it up. An automated shuttle then distributes the waste into six dumpsters on a separate barge, sending an alert to crews when it is full. Above, solar panels form the ceiling and a conveyor belt runs slowly, dropping bits of plastic and waste into each of the bins. The whole thing can hold about 20,000lbs (9,070kg) of rubbish – the same as one fully loaded lorry.

While La Calera faced severe water rationing, local springs were being drained by the drinks giant’s franchise. So the residents fought back

When a severe drought struck La Calera near Bogotá, many of its residents lost their water for drinking, cooking and farming and faced up to 15 days of strict water rationing each month. Yet the area is home to Chingaza reservoir, which supplies about 70% of the drinking water for Colombia’s capital.

As the drought stretched from April 2024 to April last year, people began to look more closely at how their water was being managed.

Despite plunging border crossings, the Trump administration is circumventing laws to expedite building in a vast, pristine wilderness

The Trump administration has waived a slew of environmental and historical preservation laws that would allow it to build a towering border wall that cuts through Big Bend national park, a vast protected wilderness in south Texas.

Congress poured a whopping $46.5bn for border wall construction into the “Big, Beautiful” bill last year, supercharging Donald Trump’s ambition to wall off the southern border with Mexico. The longest unwalled stretches lie along a roughly 500-mile (800km) section of west Texas that Customs and Border Protection calls the “Big Bend sector”.

Elusive creatures have previously only been seen on fishing lines and experts know ‘virtually nothing about them’

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Rare and eccentric-looking goblin sharks have been seen alive in their deep ocean habitat for the first time ever.

Prof Alan Jamieson, director of the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, said goblin sharks were a bit like the colossal squid – creatures with an almost mythological quality. They were almost never seen alive, he said, and previously only when they were accidentally hooked on a fishing line.

Bouchon Racine is old school, for lovers of traditional French cooking and boozy afternoons – it even aims to stop taking bookings online

If you are someone who consults social media to find the best spots for a weeknight dinner reservation, you’d be forgiven for thinking that having a viral social media account or influencer chef at the stove is the only way to run a successful restaurant these days.

However, the operators of the newly crowned top UK restaurant are not just unbothered about competing in the algorithm olympics, they’re actively seeking out ways to be more analogue – even considering only take bookings by phone.

Green surge in local elections and recent polling of Labour members may cause government to toughen stance on Israel

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• Middle East crisis – live updates

Pro-Palestine activists believe there could be a “sea change” in the Labour party’s approach to the crisis in the Middle East which could result in the government taking a tougher stance on Israel.

Campaigners have pointed to the threat posed to Labour by the Green surge in the local elections, the likely departure of Keir Starmer from No 10, and new polling which shows an appetite among Labour members for a ban on all arms shipments to Israel.

One-off programme to begin in July after recent MenB outbreaks in Kent, Dorset and Berkshire killed three people

Teenagers in their final school year and young people starting university will be offered two doses of a vaccine to protect them against meningitis B, the government has announced.

The one-off vaccination programme, which will begin in late July, comes after an unprecedented outbreak of meningitis B in Kent earlier this year along with clusters of cases in Dorset and Berkshire that, together, led to the deaths of three young people.

Report says confidence among 16- to 21-year-olds has fallen sharply as they doubt hard work will be rewarded

Young people in England are increasingly “losing faith in their futures” according to a report, as record numbers fear long-term unemployment.

Analysing survey data, including from the Office for National Statistics, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said 16- to 21-year-olds were less confident about being successful than a decade ago.

Midland police reported that the suspected shooter was dead after a two-hour standoff

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A shooting on Friday in Midland, Texas, has killed one person and sent a further nine to the hospital with injuries, according to the city’s authorities.

The possible suspect was in a standoff with officers for around two hours but later on Friday afternoon was reported deceased, police and the city’s mayor said.

New batch of government documents takes no position on origin of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs)

A possible UFO sighting over a busy southern African airport, and yet more mysterious glowing orbs in the sky above the US feature in the latest batch of previously classified documents released by the Pentagon on Friday in its stated quest for “transparency” amid the irrepressible debate about the chances of extraterrestrial life.

In keeping with the first two document drops of government papers last month, Friday’s tranche of more than 50 files contains no proof that the tantalizing videos and written accounts of possible alien encounters are anything other than perception, vivid imagination or conspiracy theories.

Beloved royal, said to have embodied ‘everything good in Thailand’, died in hospital after nearly four years in coma

At King Chulalongkorn Memorial hospital in Bangkok, mourners dressed in black sat side by side, their eyes pink from crying for the woman whose portraits they cradled in their laps.

Some images were framed in gold, others in plastic sleeves, charting the life of Thailand’s Princess Bajrakitiyabha from a rosy-cheeked baby to a young royal in red military dress replete with shining badges and ceremonial sword. Later photos showed her posing with one of the dogs she was out training in 2022 when she became gravely ill with heart problems.

Relatives of those killed on flight AI171 are still struggling to obtain answers about what happened

When Sagar Patel’s mother boarded Air India flight AI171 on 12 June last year, she called her son as she always did before takeoff. The flight was due to leave Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel airport in Ahmedabad, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, and was destined for Gatwick.

“We always had a little traditional thing,” said Patel, a business manager from London. “Once she got on the flight, she would sit down and call me. She’d tell me: ‘Yep, I’m on the flight. See you later.’”

Decision to not overturn fallen crypto mogul’s 25-year prison sentence was handed down by three-judge panel

Sam Bankman-Fried on Friday lost his bid to overturn his fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence over the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange he founded.

The decision was handed down by a three-judge panel of the New York-based second US circuit court of appeals.

Location scans from the globally popular augmented reality game have helped train AI to recognise and interpret physical spaces

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An AI model trained on data collected from users of Pokémon Go will potentially help military drones find their location in war zones.

Pokémon Go, a 2016 augmented reality mobile game, allowed players to find and catch Pokémon in the real world using the cameras on their mobile phones, and exploded in popularity. In 2018, the company reported having more than 800m downloads worldwide.

High street bank to buy UK business from US fintech company Acorns as it targets young people

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Barclays is to buy an app designed to help children understand and manage their money, as it targets young people in affluent families.

The high street bank has agreed to buy the UK business of GoHenry, which provides children with personalised debit cards carrying their name, from the US fintech company Acorns, which will retain GoHenry’s US branch.

GDP hit by higher energy prices caused by Middle East conflict, after 0.3% rise in March

The UK economy contracted by 0.1% in April as the Iran war began to take its toll on growth, official figures show.

As energy prices have risen as a result of the conflict, after Iran closed off the strait of Hormuz – a vital shipping route for global trade – the UK’s strong expansion in the first quarter slid into reverse.

He was subversive and bold, yet also playful and accepting – putting the fun into pop art and finding freedom and fulfilment amid the blue skies and pools of California. David Hockney, who has died aged 88, lived and painted the truth
• David Hockney – a life in pictures
• David Hockney, revolutionary British artist, dies aged 88

David Hockney’s art was a feast of unabashed visual pleasure, one long orgy of the gaze, the delighted lifelong epiphany of someone who cherished flowers in a vase and freeways in the sun and thought endlessly about new ways of making pictures of such passing treasures. He changed the world just by looking at it. It didn’t seem to occur to him that the way he saw was revolutionary – all he cared about was truth. But no one had ever captured the look and feel of the contemporary world with such acceptance before. He has the same simple perfection as the Beatles – just as they caught the sound of the modern world, he caught its look.

The most revealing fact about Hockney is that he loved LA. Where some might see a moronic inferno, he saw freedom and possibility under an unjudging blue sky. Low-lying houses with patio doors glinting vacantly, tall thin palm trees with tiny heads, the white spume of a diver’s splash – Hockney’s California is a vision of paradise. He is the Matisse of pop art, A Bigger Splash the 1960s answer to Matisse’s 1904 manifesto for hedonism, Luxe, Calme et Volupté.

Eras. Easter eggs. Masters. Monoculture. It has been 20 years since Swift released her debut single, setting in motion a career so extraordinary, it permanently redefined the concept of pop stardom. Not only did her fight to own her music educate a generation of fans in how the music industry works, she also bent that industry to her will, outwitting the competition and defying norms to reset its terms. This is how she did it

WARNING: Minor spoiler ahead!
By the power of Grayskull, Amazon MGM has the power to revive a franchise that hasn’t been big since Choppers were the coolest bikes in town

Reports suggest Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe made just $54m (£40m) globally on debut at the weekend, a figure that, while not exactly fatal, would usually be considered a disappointment for a mainstream movie with a budget of more than $200m. Worse still, this heavily caffeinated, meta take on the 1980s TV show arrived carrying the weight of a major studio relaunch and decades of pent-up nostalgia. On paper at least, its bow looks less like the birth of a cinematic universe than the sort of expensive stumble from which some franchises never recover.

So why then does everyone involved in this thing seem so cheerful? “Travis Knight and the entire cast and film-making team have delivered something truly special,” Amazon MGM’s Kevin Wilson gushed to Variety. “This opening is exactly the kind of critical first moment that validates our holistic distribution strategy – building awareness and engagement that will carry well beyond the theatrical window.”

Don’t want to spend months watching corporate greed besmirch football? Fear not. From the spectacular return of Larry David to Will Ferrell’s wild golf comedy and Anya Taylor-Joy as a badass con artist, it’s going to be a summer of fantastic TV. Here are the shows you can’t miss

House of the Dragon finds itself slightly up against it this year, as the faster and funnier A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has snatched its crown as the premium Game of Thrones spin-off. But let’s not discount it, because what House of the Dragon has in spades is scale and spectacle plus newly announced co-star James Norton. If that doesn’t excite you, nothing will. Sky Atlantic/Now/HBO Max, 22 June

A study in obsession and delusion explores the origin of the scandal. Plus: can Dolly Parton unite the US? Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Documentaries
The grainy 1947 footage that purports to show the body of an alien being dissected near a crash site in Roswell, New Mexico, has now been viewed by an estimated 1 billion people. But where did it come from? This hugely entertaining three-part series tracks down the parade of eccentrics behind its release in 1995 and works as a study of obsession and mass delusion. Phil Harrison

Zazie Beetz kicks ass in a relentlessly gory horror thriller, while Paul Mescal will absolutely break your heart. Plus: Wonka!

Coming from a director whose first feature was Why Don’t You Just Die!, the title of this rampantly bloody, defiantly silly horror caper suggests Kirill Sokolov has a bit of a one-track mind. An unholy stew of Rosemary’s Baby and the zaniest bits of The Evil Dead, the film follows Asia (a kickass Zazie Beetz) as she visits exclusive New York apartment block the Virgil in search of her younger sister, Maria (Myha’la), who is a maid there. But she realises there is something very wrong with the place, particularly after the residents try to kill her. The undead comic action comes thick and fast (the roaming eyeball is a standout), while Patricia Arquette’s accent is a thing of mystery and wonder all by itself.
Saturday 13 June, 9.30am, 6.15pm, Sky Cinema Premiere/HBO Max

Surreal genius from Harry Hill, trailblazing women and a passionate ode to an incredible New York rapper – these are the best listens from the last six months

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The Ivor Novello-winning musician has written works inspired by his family history. He talks about building music from testimony – and why the Windrush generation deserves new narratives

A briefcase-sized console with a large, sleek keypad, the MPC One drum machine is an eye-catching piece of kit. It can’t be easily overlooked among the various synthesisers, guitars, amps, samplers and vinyl albums in Renell Shaw’s studio in Wood Green, north London. This month, when the 38-year-old musician plays a double-bill show at Kings Place, five miles down the road, the treasured black box will travel with him – and it has special sounds.

“On stage, I’ll have my score and the MPC, with my grandparents’ voices stored in there. They’ll be there with the band in front of me,” says Shaw, artist-in-residence for Kings Place’s Memory Unwrapped season, a series of musical performances that explore nostalgia, transformation and future.

Riya Mahesh is the ‘insanely Texas girl’ and medical student whose music splits the difference between dazed ambient production and big-tent pop melody

From Boston, via Texas
Recommended if you like Grace Ives, Porter Robinson, Grimes
Up next Touring EU/UK in November

Riya Mahesh has perfected her own sweet, whimsical brand of plunderphonics; her seventh project as Quiet Light in six years, this year’s Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2, sounds a little as if it’s been chopped together from samples of Mahesh’s own memory. On Berlin, she sings to a wayward love interest over a moony breakbeat and IDM glitches, as a spoken-word part – what sounds to me like a recording of a lecture – floats in the background. Star100 starts all whispers and garbled laughter, before ceding space to Mahesh’s multitracked harmonies. Sometimes, Mahesh will suddenly deliver a wildly catchy chorus, something she clearly has an aptitude for – check Dealerz, her collab with Danish band A Good Year.

(Pussy Riot)
On a disappointing record helmed by co-founder Nadya Tolokonnikova, corny guitars and generically moody synths undermine the activist group’s political acuity

Great music rarely makes for great activism, and the reverse is true on Pussy Riot’s official debut album. A scattergun mix of icy electronics, pumping EDM and whispered rap, CYKA (“bitch” in Russian) follows a decade of musical protest performances from the activist collective. Made by co-founder Nadya Tolokonnikova (she and Maria Alyokhina were imprisoned in separate penal colonies between 2012 and 2013), CYKA’s powerful point of view is diluted by weak delivery.

Lead single Candy Dopamine, with metal band Avenged Sevenfold, disguises its critique of big pharma with cutesy lyrics, corny electric guitar and inconsequential key changes. Generically moody synths and cliched siren sounds run through much of the record, as does blunt-force EDM: Nothing to Lose is both a cluttered trance track, and about being hated by Russia’s “liberal intelligentsia” for supporting Ukraine.

My mum, the author Mary Hooper, who has died aged 81, left school aged 15 with no qualifications. Her last school report said: “Far too noisy and talkative.” When she was a young mother in the 1970s she read a short story and thought “I could do better than that,” wrote one up and sent it to Jackie magazine. To her surprise, it sold for £14.

She went on to write hundreds of stories and more than 100 books for children and young adults, before YA was an official genre. Among them were Newes from the Dead (2008), which won teenage book of the year at the North East Book awards and Bank Street best children’s book of the year in 2009; Fallen Grace (2010), which was nominated for the Carnegie medal in 2011; and Poppy (2014), which won the Young Quills Historical Association award that year, nominated by young readers.

The US author, film-maker and Zen Buddhist priest on smart young girls, the difference between irony and cynicism, and working her way through 13 volumes of Chekhov

My earliest reading memory
I was reading – or pretending to read – before my brain could encode memories, so probably around three or four? I “read” Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, but that was mostly pictures.

My favourite book growing up
Charlotte’s Web by EB White. For years, I remembered it as a story about a little girl named Fern who saved her pet pig, Wilbur, but it’s not. It’s a story about a writer named Charlotte, who happens to be a spider, who spins words into her web that save Wilbur from slaughter. It’s about the power of language to save lives. Looking back at the books I’ve written, I can see now that all of them are an attempt to recreate Charlotte’s Web. It’s the perfect book.

Not With a Bang by Temi Oh; Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh; Atomic Coffin by Benedict Anning; The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden; Bad Things Happen Here by Mark Morris

Not With a Bang by Temi Oh (Solstice, £20)
The four daughters of a doomsday prepper were trained what to do in an emergency: grab their bags and head for the well-stocked bunker he had built in the garden of their London home. But when a world-shattering event occurs, the family are dispersed, individually forced to weigh their best options for survival as they shelter in place or struggle through devastated, chaotic streets. The story could suit a disaster movie (the author also writes screenplays), but it’s the complex characterisations and conflicted relationships that make for a powerfully compelling read. The characters are shown from different perspectives, and are flawed, human and real. Perfectly paced, this is a suspenseful depiction of survival amid civilisational collapse.

A historian makes the case that a meeting of minds in 1726 changed the course of English literature

In 1726 Jonathan Swift, dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, crossed the Irish sea with the manuscript of Gulliver’s Travels in his luggage. Beneath the child-friendly chatter about a sailor marooned on an island full of tiny Lilliputians, the book was a scabrous satire on the corruption of public life under the politically ascendant Whigs, whom Swift regarded as a pack of moral pygmies.

Swift’s ultimate destination, though, was not Whitehall but rather the idyllic Twickenham – “Twitnam”, as they knew it – home of his old friend, the poet Alexander Pope. Here he intended to work out a plan for anonymous publication of his sulphurous masterpiece, one that would not land him in legal trouble. In Pope he could be sure of a sympathetic co‑conspirator. Both men were members of the Scriblerus Club, an unofficial association of dissident wits who nonetheless set great store by literary collaboration. Pope was equally disaffected with the state of the nation, although his loathing was directed towards the philistine Hanoverians, who had arrived from Germany in 1714 to take up the British throne. Pope, whose Catholicism disqualified him from royal patronage, made a big point of not having to scramble for favours from the court. Instead, he emphasised the superiority of his life of suburban independence on the banks of the Thames.

If you fancy roaring around Japan’s open roads, scaling impossible mountains and playing with post-apocalyptic Pokémon, this year’s highlights mean you can do so without leaving your chair

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch; Vertigo Games
This clever update captures the 1990s magic of the original… including some of the technical issues

The 90s were a gold rush for adventure games. LucasArts kicked off the decade with its legendarily irreverent Monkey Island games. Then, Cyan Worlds materialised to deliver a series of atmospheric and boundary-pushing odysseys with Myst and Riven. Nestled between these primary genre texts is The 7th Guest, a lesser-known but still notorious adventure that earned plaudits for its unique FMV visual style, blending live-action filmed footage with pre-rendered 3D backgrounds. It was remade originally for VR, and now has been reconfigured into something playable on PC and consoles, its digital cobwebs cleared and tricky puzzles tinkered with for a fresh (or nostalgic) audience.

We are dropped into the ectoplasmic shoes of an amnesiac apparition, arriving at the gloomy haunted home of a toy-maker. Armed with a time-bending lantern and a Ouija board-shaped map, your job is to solve a historical whodunnit by literally illuminating events from the past. It’s a melodramatic, surprisingly campy adventure that effectively evokes the overzealous CD-Rom horror of its original era.

From horror galore to Chinese action games, the key trends, trailers and surprises from Summer Game Fest’s many, many hours of streams and broadcasts

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Did you spend hours of your weekend watching a relentless series of video game adverts? No? I don’t blame you – Summer Game Fest, the collection of livestreams that has arisen in place of the giant annual E3 video game expo in Los Angeles, is extremely overwhelming. There are the bigger, longer shows: the PlayStation and Xbox streams, the main SGF show hosted by Geoff Keighley and Lucy James, Future’s duet of the Future Games Show and the PC Gaming Show. Each show is two hours long. Then there are all the indie showcases: cosy games, women-led games, Black voices in gaming, Day of the Devs. Between them, they show off hundreds of games that might pique your interest.

I picked out exactly 34 highlights here: the biggest news, the most interesting-looking smaller games. But from the barrage of trailers I was also able to discern some trends. Here’s what we can learn.

Hundreds of video games were shown at June’s annual bonanza. After watching more than 15 hours of showcases, our video games editor picks the highlights

The sequel to a revered 2014 horror game from British developer Creative Assembly: this time you must evade the xenomorph on the surface of a storm-ravaged colony world.

Royal Opera House, London
Prodigal son Paul Lightfoot returns with Sol León for their first performance by a British dance company. The result is impressively choreographed, if in need of more heart

Paul Lightfoot is a prolific, multi-award-winning British choreographer, more than 35 years in the industry, making dance as a duo with his former wife Sol León. Yet this is the first time their work has been performed by a British dance company. Seems hard to believe.

The pair spent their careers at Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), as dancers and choreographers, then Lightfoot was artistic director from 2012 to 2020. But Cheshire-born Lightfoot trained at the Royal Ballet school, so this is a bit of a prodigal son situation, the Royal Ballet dancing an evening of the duo’s work: one two-decades-old piece revived, another that originated in lockdown that’s been dramatically recreated especially for this company.

The style of dance is so distinctive (influenced by that of NDT’s longtime director Jiří Kylián). It’s full of steps, exclamations, exaggerations and quirks. It is ultra specific, with constant switches of tone and timbre. The Royal Ballet’s dancers are used to demanding, ultra-contemporary movement but you can see how challenging it is to completely absorb a new style, and it’s interesting to see dancers play against type, like Vadim Muntagirov, a classical prince, now an ultra-serious, starkly angled figure in 2006’s Shoot the Moon. He’s one of five protagonists on a clever rotating set where different rooms and relationships come into view. Not so much a story as a set of (moderately opaque) situations. The style can be a bit Marmitey: Euro arthouse angst, well-dressed people in crisis to Philip Glass. Always a beautiful crisis, though.

The dancer most impressively invested in the work is Lauren Cuthbertson, almost reinvented for this piece. At one point there’s a live camera feed on stage and we see a closeup of Cuthbertson on screen, facial expressions as frantic as her body. She’s mesmerising, like a silent movie star scrolling through different roles – puffed cheeks, villainous pout – it could be comical if she weren’t so committed. The only thing is, there are so many expressions (and so many steps), it’s saying so much, that it almost doesn’t say anything; trying to tell a hundred stories, but sometimes one story is enough.

Citizens theatre, Glasgow
The novel is adapted with equal parts wit and horror to capture the depravity of a notorious crime in Glasgow

On the bare brick wall backing Jen McGinley’s set – half courtroom, half saloon – there is a faded poster of The Searchers, John Ford’s 1956 western. The whisky-swilling hard men who haunt the clubs and dives of The Long Drop may well see themselves as cowboys. They are double dealers and grandstanders, full of bluff and bluster; sometimes cosplay baddies, acting as tough as John Wayne; other times, they are the real thing, meting out beatings and sociopathic violence.

But this is not Monument Valley. Rather, it is the same Gorbals streets outside the theatre where, in a different time, one of Glasgow’s most notorious crimes played out. Adapted with equal parts wit and horror by Linda McLean from the true-life crime novel by Denise Mina, it is the unravelling story of a triple murder.

Sadler’s Wells, London
The company’s centenary celebration isn’t about nostalgia – this occasionally thrilling triple bill of recent creations showcases some excellent dancers

Britain’s oldest dance company is celebrating its 100th anniversary but this celebratory tour is decidedly no exercise in nostalgia. As the title, This is Rambert, makes clear, it’s a mission statement, a manifesto, and all about the present moment.

So no harking back to the company’s beginnings in the early years of British ballet, or the deliberate shift into modern dance in the 1960s. The Rambert brand has gone through some chameleonic changes across the last century, settling for a while into a pattern of reputable, reliable, something-for-everyone shows. Current artistic director Benoit Swan Pouffer wants to shake things up, to prove there’s nothing geriatric about this centenarian.

O2 Apollo Manchester
The Messy hitmaker is back after taking time away from live performance, and this charming, relatable set shows why she is such a gen Z icon

The rollercoaster ride towards international pop stardom seldom runs smooth, but few rising stars have been flung through its loops and freefalls as publicly as south London singer-songwriter Lola Young. In 2024, gen Z anthem Messy became her breakthrough moment, but social media scrutiny surrounding her open struggles with addiction and a stage collapse in New York last year brought live performances to a halt.

When the 25-year-old musician strolls on stage in a baggy black hoodie, she seems relieved to be here. Casual though the look may be, she is worshipped as a Y2K style guru, as evidenced by the young crowd: a blur of bleached mullets and denim jorts cry every word of her single Sad Sob Story!.

My friend Rachel Nicholson, who has died aged 91, is known as an artist whose paintings possess rich colour, extraordinary focus and stillness, yet she only began making them in her 40s.

Rachel was born in London, one of triplets born to the artists Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. She, her sister Sarah and her brother Simon spent a childhood shaped by her parents’ need to maintain their own careers. At first they were cared for at a training school for nursery nurses. When the family moved to Cornwall in 1939, first to Carbis Bay and later to nearby St Ives, the children had a nurse, attended a small private school and then, aged 10, became boarders at Dartington school in Devon.

The $750,000 relationship horror about a cursed wish is set to outgross a new Star Wars movie, energizing Gen Z audiences and creating a rare cultural conversation

This week, the independently produced horror movie Obsession, which cost either $750,000 or $15m depending on whether you count its actual budget or acquisition cost for its studio, officially passed the latest Star Wars movie at the box office (the film has so far made over $165m in the US alone).

It’s not a coincidence that this happened on a weekday. Obsession’s box office power lies not just in its astonishing weekend-to-weekend strength (including the virtually unheard-of trajectory of increasing grosses on its second and third weekends) but in its powerhouse weekday grosses. This past week, as it approached the one-month mark in theaters, it was averaging over $4m on its weekdays. At the same point in the run of Avengers: Endgame, that movie – the biggest summer blockbuster of modern times – was pulling in half as much.

Anish Kapoor gets a blockbuster showing, Barbara Hepworth’s pioneering use of colour is showcased and we look back at our beloved David Hockney – all in your weekly dispatch

Anish Kapoor
The sublime is unleashed in a blockbuster spectacle by this modern master of colour, space and mystery.
• Hayward Gallery, London, from 16 June to 18 October

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

‘Late life’ male celebrities are turning the need for spectacles into a style statement as they refuse to disappear into fashion invisibility

A heart-throb for more than 40 years, Brad Pitt is no doubt used to people looking at him. But this week, that gaze was distracted by an addition to his face – aviator-style glasses.

Worn to watch the tennis at Roland Garros and with a pink trenchcoat when out for dinner in Paris, these retro glassesare more typically worn by younger men. That’s changed recently – they’re now becoming central to a makeover for men entering their “late life” era, but who aren’t willing to submit to the fashion invisibility associated with ageing.

As a conflict journalist, I was aware of the dangers – but nothing prepares you for the mental trauma

I arrived in Mogadishu as a conflict photojournalist in 2008. Years of civil war had left the Somali capital in tatters. As rival factions continued to fight for power, hundreds of thousands had been forced from their homes. I’d arranged to visit a camp for displaced people, joined by a Canadian journalist named Amanda.

The camp was in a militia zone, so we took two armed guards, but they soon jumped out of the car, saying it wasn’t safe to go any farther. I wasn’t happy about being unaccompanied for the drive, but it was that or abort the trip.

Whether it’s fancy sauces or lesser-known cuts, skip the obvious with these creative garden party gifts (and not a pasta salad in sight)

• The best (and worst) chef’s knives – tested

Summer’s here, so you’ve probably got an invitation to a barbecue. If someone’s gone to the effort of hosting one, they deserve better than supermarket sausages and a bottle of wine grabbed from the corner shop on the way.

But what to bring that’s thoughtful and a little bit different? Whether it’s olive oil or ice lollies, green harissa or Lambrusco (yes, really), here are some suggestions from those in the know.

Our writer grilled halloumi, veggies and spatchcock chicken to find the best barbecues, from crowd-pleasing all-rounders to models that can smoke, roast and more

• The best (and worst) chef’s knives – tested

Salmon don’t know that they swim upstream. Some ancient instinct impels them; they don’t think about it any more than trees think about growing. You are a British person of a certain age and bearing. You are buying a barbecue.

But this half-century-old compulsion often ends before it starts. Few products are marketed with as much machismo as BBQs, and the jargon makes them surprisingly tricky to buy. While we all enjoy the unintended high camp of a snap-jet ignition, it’s unclear if such features are essentials or optional extras. Add in the tedious difference between planchas and kamados, and you can easily spend hundreds of pounds on what is essentially a hot metal box.

Best BBQ overall:
Weber Bar-B-Kettle charcoal barbecue

Best budget BBQ:
Argos Home drum charcoal BBQ with cover and utensils

Whether it’s Harry Styles’s retro tailoring, CMAT’s joyful mash-ups or Metallica’s silver tones, here’s how to nail concert dressing – without looking like a tribute act

• Jess Cartner-Morley’s June style essentials

Over the past few years, dressing to see your favourite artists live has moved on from just throwing on a band tee and calling it a day. With ticket prices higher than ever, concerts are special events; as a result, there’s been a noticeable shift towards dressing up. Fans are embracing intricate looks inspired by the live shows, songs, albums and even obscure references only the most hardcore listeners would understand. With this, the question of “what to wear” has never felt more important.

The good news? You don’t need to turn up in a full costume to feel part of that experience. There are subtle ways you can channel your favourite artist’s aesthetic while still wearing something that works beyond the venue doors. Here’s how.

Whether it’s water-saving showerheads or natural sponges, these easy swaps cut waste and make your bathroom a little kinder to the planet

• The best refillable beauty products for a sustainable routine

As a sustainability journalist, I’ve often despaired at how unsustainable our bathrooms are – from water use to plastic bottles to chemical-heavy cleaners. However, there are ways to reduce their carbon footprint. As water becomes increasingly precious, hacks for our loos that cap its usage are useful, as are smart showerheads that cut down on water, particularly as baths these days feel like a guilty indulgence.

Swap plastic-packaged and chemical-loaded products, such as bleach and multipurpose sprays, for eco-friendly ones, and buy secondhand good-as-new fixtures. From bamboo loo roll to solid shampoo bars, here are my tips for a more planet-friendly bathroom.

Bloody mary, but not as you know it …

This sour-spicy twist on the classic brunch drink is very easy to recreate at home.

Heath Ball, owner, The Red Lion & Sun, London N6

Its nutty, zesty flavour combination makes this single-layer cake an absolute winner for everyday eating

A good snacking cake earns its place not through grandeur, but reliability. It sits patiently on the counter, improves with a day’s rest and can be sliced into at odd hours: with coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon or something stronger during a tense World Cup match. This lemon and pistachio version is especially companionable: tender, bright and just sharp enough to keep things lively.

Savour the glorious sound of mussels popping open and finish cooking the pasta in the shellfish liquor really to ramp up the flavour

If you put your ear close (but not too close) to a covered pan full of mussels, olive oil, garlic and a bit of white wine (not too much) over a lively heat, you will hear the sound – a cross between a crack, or that of a rip and an unzipping – of the mussels opening. To begin with, it’s intermittent, so you lift and look under the lid to reassure yourself that they are indeed starting to open … But there are only a few, so the lid goes back on. You shake the pan until, like popcorn, the mussels are off – crack, rip, unzip – at which point, get the lid off and the mussels out, so you can admire the liquor. Taste to see how salty it is and measure how much you have: you want about 200ml, so take some out, reduce or add water to get the proportions and taste to your liking.

Spaghetti (or linguine) with mussels is a recipe that benefits from finishing the cooking of the pasta in the sauce, which is also a great technique to know generally, because it can be applied to countless pasta recipes. The benefits of finishing the cooking in the sauce (or broth) are: deep flavour (because the pasta absorbs and gets completely coated in the sauce), shine and a slightly thickened sauce, thanks to the starch that seeps from the pasta and combines with the fat.

New Farm Bill places caps on non-US foods; nutritionists say it restricts availability of healthy meals for kids

School nutrition workers and advocates have “lots of concerns about bananas”, said Erin Ogden, policy associate for federal child nutrition programs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

Bananas are nutrient-dense foods that many children like. That makes them popular offerings in school cafeterias, since any healthy food that a kid will eat prevents waste and ensures that child isn’t eating either nothing or something less wholesome instead.

Jordan wants one catch-all digital resource for him and Charlene, so their social lives don’t clash, but she prefers to communicate in person. You decide whose time is up

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

I’m not trying to control her but having one shared calendar helps us plan our lives together

Up there by myself, I decided life might be best on my own. That thought has shaped my travel and relationships ever since

I grew up in Kenya and was nine when we went camping by the beach in Mombasa, with two other families. The constant games and laughter were new to me, as we were a quiet, rather insular family. I went bodyboarding, watched crabs emerge from holes in the sand, climbed all over rusty cannons in the old fort and bought colourful strips of kanga fabric in the market to make sarongs.

One day, my father asked some fishers to take us to the reef in their canoes. It was a good mile offshore: I wanted to stay behind with Mum, but Dad fixed me with a look and said: “You’ve got no sense of adventure, have you?” Then I knew I had to go, clambering shakily into the wobbly wooden construction, clinging on to the sides for dear life.

Like many couples, my husband and I bickered over who would do what and who did more. We came up with a radical solution

It was when my second child was born in 2021 that I realised I needed a new system for parenting. We were coming out of lockdown, and I was tired and overwhelmed. During the pandemic, my husband and I had built our own mini unit in the UK, as our families lived in the US. I had decided to start my own literary agency as soon as my daughter was old enough to start nursery at six months. It wasn’t ideal timing, but I wanted to start as soon as possible.

I approached finding a parenting system the way I think many women of my generation do, with the same intensity that we would have approached a school dissertation. I decided to crowdsource my research: I watched videos of home-schooling mums in the US demonstrating their morning routines, I read every parenting book I could, I listened to podcasters interviewing mothers who seemingly “had it all”, and listened to others who argued that “having it all” was impossible.

Chronicling your humdrum, solitary life has become an online trend. It’s certainly perplexing. Is it also empowering?

Name: Loneliness influencers.

Age: A few months old.

The clock is ticking to take advantage of this valuable UK scheme, as the benefits are to be restricted from April 2029

Millions of workers are able to take advantage of a scheme that allows them to boost their pension and pay less tax, and experts are urging people to “max out” this valuable perk before the rules are tightened.

Salary sacrifice lets you exchange some of your wages for a different benefit from your employer, such as a company car – or, in this case, pension contributions. You will then pay less tax and national insurance (NI) on your lower salary.

Also: Anthropic advocates for a ‘pause’ on AI advancement – days after filing to go public on the US stock market

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, the US tech editor at the Guardian. Today we’re discussing Donald Trump’s neediness for AI and the contradictions of Anthropic’s safety-first posture.

OpenAI confidentially files for initial public offering on US stock market

Apple debuts revamped ‘Siri AI’ and new child safety features for iPhones and iPads

The Guardian view on children and the internet: rolling back big tech’s untrammelled power | Editorial

Silicon Valley including Meta has embraced Maga politics, says Nick Clegg

Bernie Sanders’ AI sovereign wealth fund plan is good. But we think this is better | Nathan E Sanders and Bruce Schneier

Majority of US’s new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land

Billions spent and hypothetical returns: the AI boom explained with six charts

‘A driver of political violence’: how the breakneck AI boom is fueling anti-tech extremism

The line is vital for our elderly relative’s care, but after 20 calls BT seems unable to resolve the problem

My elderly aunt, who lives alone, has been unable to receive incoming calls for more than two months after BT switched her analogue service to Digital Voice.

Her care is overseen by a rota of relatives who check on her and arrange medical appointments and in-home help.

Bereaved relatives have been bombarded with calls, emails and letters addressed to the deceased

ScottishPower sent a debt collection letter to my house demanding £130 owing on my late brother’s gas account. I am his sole executor and had informed it of his death.

The company, meanwhile, owed a £430 credit on his electricity account. It eventually paid this with a cheque issued in my late brother’s name, which could not therefore be cashed.

Influencers often brand sugar as inherently harmful – but not all sweet foods are created equal

‘It’s a common myth,” says Dr Emily Leeming, a dietitian at King’s College London – and one that thrives on social media. The confusion, she says, often comes from people cutting out sugary foods and feeling better. But that can be because removing ultra-processed sweet treats improves the overall quality of a diet (making more room for wholefoods).

Leeming says influencers who call sugar “toxic” often see it as inherently harmful – solely responsible for weight gain, poor blood sugar control and heart problems. But in controlled studies where calorie intake is kept the same, diets high in sugar don’t appear to worsen weight loss, metabolism or key health markers. “It’s not ideal nutritionally if you’re missing out on fruits, vegetables and whole grains,” Leeming says, “but sugar isn’t in itself directly harmful in that context.”

Doctors say diagnosis is usually clinical and doesn’t rely on a blood test, with symptoms often starting in the mid-40s

There’s a special frisson to period changes in your mid-forties. Every deviation from your usual pattern can feel like a harbinger of the menopause transition, also known as perimenopause.

One might spend years staring at their underwear, wondering: am I or aren’t I?

Keren Landman MD is an independent health reporter who is also trained as an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist, with experience serving as a disease detective at the CDC and conducting HIV and malaria research in resource-poor countries. Her public health newsletter is called Landmansplained

Drug that stops cancer cells hiding and a breakthrough for pancreatic cancer among highlights from Asco conference – but there were also notes of caution

Doctors, scientists and researchers shared new research about ways to tackle cancer at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco) annual meeting, the world’s largest cancer conference.

The event in Chicago, attended by 40,000 health professionals, featured more than 200 sessions and 2,700 poster presentations on this year’s theme, “the science and practice of translation: improving cancer outcomes worldwide”. Here are the five biggest takeaways.

As demand for cobalt, gold and other minerals grows, mining is accelerating deforestation in the Congo basin – and increasing the risk of deadly Ebola outbreaks

For decades after the discovery of Ebolavirus in 1976, outbreaks of the disease were relatively small and contained, affecting a few hundred people at most.

Not any more. In recent years, outbreaks of Ebola have been much larger, affecting thousands and even tens of thousands of people across multiple countries. The 2014 outbreak of Ebola in west Africa infected more than 28,000 people in 10 countries on three continents. The current eruption, which began in early May and shows no signs of abating, has caused 363 confirmed cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has crossed into Uganda.

Sonia Shah is the author of five books including Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, and writes the newsletter Cross Pollinations on Substack

The design, which was conceived in the 70s, became a pop culture staple in the 90s and 00s. Now, thanks to gen Z and anti-Trump sentiment, it’s being embraced once more

The biggest faux pas a tourist can make? Dressing like one. Selfie sticks and oversized backpacks fall within this category, but there is one item that has seemingly transcended cringe and entered the realm of cool.

The “I heart” T-shirt is an instantly recognisable item. While it’s found in every souvenir shop in every major city across the world, there is no place the T-shirt is more associated with than New York. But what would ordinarily be found for sale at a stall on Canal Street for no more than $20 has recently caught the interest of a kitsch-loving, meme generation – and now it is making its way down the catwalk.

More customers are seeking out meticulous e-file manicures, but there are concerns about the risk of infection with the cuticle-raising beauty treatment

A drill with a speed of 35,000 revolutions per minute sits on Alina Huck’s orderly work station. The drill bit is the length of an almond, and as soon as it touches the client’s nail it whips up a fine dust of dead skin.

“It’s definitely a satisfying experience,” says Huck, a Sydney-based nail technician who has spent nearly a decade specialising in e-file manicures, also known as Russian manicures.

When the singer got married in London last month, her skirt suit made headlines. But she was hardly the first to reject tradition. Here are the stories behind some other beautiful but unconventional outfits

For some people, wearing a big white dress on their wedding day feels as key as the rings. For others, less so.

When Dua Lipa wore a Schiaparelli couture white skirt suit as she wed the actor Callum Turner in London last month, she joined a long line of women who have opted for a suit. Not least Bianca Jagger, whom Lipa was speculated to be emulating – the model and activist caused a stir when she got hitched to Mick Jagger in 1971, wearing a Yves Saint Laurent Le Smoking jacket and bias-cut skirt.

Want to keep your makeup in place but always end up looking shiny? These sprays have a blurry finish that flatters everyone

I don’t know how any makeup wearer lives without setting spray, but for oily skins I do recognise it has pitfalls as well as many benefits.

Setting spray keeps makeup in place when warm weather might otherwise melt it away, and allows for creamier, more flattering products to be used in place of powders. But it also cuts through the dusty look of any powdery makeup to give it a softer, more youthful finish.

From Iceland to Italy, you share your best adventures behind the wheel
• Tell us about your favourite European hike – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Jeremy Clarkson described Romania’s Transfăgărășan Highway as “one unbroken grey ribbon of motoring perfection”. The route (the second highest in Romania after the Transalpina) with its hairpin bends and climbs over the mountain was thrilling. Although we’d been told bear sightings were possible, we didn’t anticipate spotting them literally on the roadside, with one hanging over a stone wall posing for photographs, taken through the car window. Because of the harsh winters in the southern Carpathian Mountains, the section of the road to Bâlea Lake is open only for a few summer months – it proved particularly beautiful.
Helen Jackson

Follow the folklore and you will discover a landscape full of wonder and powerful women – from a fearsome Scottish warrioress to the first queen of a united England

It’s just past midday and I appear to be inside a rain cloud. Soaked to the skin, my walking boots squelching through tufts of grass and black bog mud, I can hear hundreds of streams rolling off this wide mid-Wales peak, each vying to be the fastest. I’ve hiked around more than 8 miles (13km) of Hafren Forest trails to the top of Pumlumon Fawr (Plynlimon), to reach a wooden post carved with the words Source of the Severn. And I’m here, alone, because I’m hoping to meet a river goddess.

It’s perhaps not as strange as it first sounds. Starting about 150 years ago, the folklorist John Rhys travelled across Wales to archive as many local myths as possible, and among them was the very tale that brought me to this peak: the story of the birth of the River Severn, in which three sisters – Hafren (Severn), Rheidolyn (Rheidol) and Gwy (Wye) – each choose their own route to the sea. My trip to the river’s source was itself a moment of mythically inspired travel, something that has been common practice in the British Isles for as long as we’ve told stories, not least as a means of passing them on.

Affordable, family-friendly and largely flat, the Lelångenleden is a gateway to an otherworldly wilderness with wild swimming, canoes and cabins as part the ride

Imagine the Swedish landscape and a stereotypical scene of idyllic red cottages with white trim, foregrounded by a lake of glimmering blue, might spring to mind. Beyond perhaps, adding depth, lies a band of birch and spruce, and a midsummer view of wooded islands.

Now, add to this image the sight of two half-naked men lunging from a tiny sauna cabin into the cold shock of a lake. One screams. The other ducks his head under, pops up, shivers, then does it again. His skin has the pinkish tinge of salmon, but he’s smiling.

Matosinhos was built on fish, but today its retro seafood restaurants and canneries sit alongside great art spaces, museums and landmark architecture

This once declining industrial city is on the up, but not so much that it has been ruined – yet. See it now, mid-gentrification, before its humble seafood restaurants become overpriced and its beautifully curated museums and galleries overrun.

Cardiff: I still remember my first otter sighting, on a bog in the mid-90s. This, in a lab on a stainless steel table, is something else

Otter No 4,888 was found at the side of the road near the River Cefni on Anglesey in November 2024. The collector froze her body and sent it, as every dead otter in the UK should be, to Cardiff University’s Otter Project for a postmortem. The vast majority of the 200 or so animals dissected here annually are roadkill.

On one of the hottest days of the year, we put on lab coats, gloves and masks. Otter No 4,888 is laid out on the stainless steel table. Aside from a mark on her hind left leg and some bleeding from the nose, this young female’s body looks intact. I take the rare opportunity to look closely at her cat-like whiskers, the white patch under her chin, and the round black pads of her webbed feet.

They come in a variety of cheerful colours, actively prefer poor soil, keep popping up for years – and you can eat the entire plant

Every time I’ve moved into a place with a garden, I’ve arrived at the wrong time of year. There’s a huge privilege to gaining access to land that you can actually grow in, of course, so it’s a minor grumble, but we arrived at our last house in the dying days of a July heatwave, and this one in early August last year.

I’ve now seen three seasons unfold here, accidentally following the old adage to wait a year and see what comes up – in this case, mostly green alkanet and a rainbow of spring-flowering trees in the neighbouring gardens – and I’m finally feeling green fingered. But, as any experienced gardener will tell you, it’s a bit late, really.

From a new-build in the UK’s only Unesco city of media arts to a buzzing area in London famous for its street art

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.

More women are rejecting state pressure over their reproductive choices, amid the devastating legacy of the one-child policy

Ever since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, women’s bodies have been the business of the state. In the 1950s, labour for state-controlled work units was organised according to women’s menstrual cycles. Then for decades, there was the one-child policy.

Across vast swathes of the country the policy was enforced with a brutal severity. As well as fines for additional children, women were forced to have abortions and subjected to forced sterilisations.

About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds are not in employment, education or training – and the obstacles they face are bigger than ever. Those unemployed for a year or more explain how they are coping

Thomas doesn’t leave the house much. Apart from walking his dog, the only other excursion the 24-year-old regularly makes is a “humiliating” weekly trip to Iceland, where he stocks up on seven £1 frozen meals, usually an assortment of bland curries with the occasional garishly sweet, takeaway-style Chinese meal. “You’re going in and buying seven and the cashier is 100% thinking: oh, that’s one a day,” he says.

Half the time, he doesn’t bother eating them. “You just sit there and go: I don’t want it again. I’ve had it for two days on the trot.”

Named in honour of the writer CLR James, the hub did vital work to help the city’s Black communities and now campaigners are seeking its return

“When it comes to Manchester history, there’s not a lot of Black Manchester history that’s recorded,” Bianca Danielle said.

“We’ve got a lot about certain topics like suffragettes, but if you type in Nello James, hardly anything comes up.”

We would like to hear your advice that might help younger people looking for a job

About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds are not in employment, education or training – and the obstacles they face are bigger than ever. With this in mind, we would like we would like to hear your advice that might help younger people looking for a job.

Do you have experience of looking for work that you could share? What useful tips do you have for job seekers? Let us know below.

We would like to hear about your television highlights of the year so far. Share your thoughts now

The Guardian’s culture writers have compiled their favourite TV shows of the year so far – and we’d like to hear about yours, too.

Are there any new series that you would recommend watching? What have been best TV shows of the year so far, and why?

We would like to hear from people who have been affected by the disorder following anti-immigration protests

Police have used water cannon against rioters in Northern Ireland during a second night of anti-immigration protests.

It dispersed a crowd of about 300 people on Wednesday night who burned a truck and threw bricks and petrol bombs close to the Sandyknowes roundabout near Newtownabbey, eight miles north of Belfast.

We’d like to hear from UK adult adoptees about they navigated their reunion with a birth parent

Guardian journalist David Batty has described the complex family trauma many adult adoptees have to navigate during reunion with their birth parents, often without professional support.

We would like other UK adult adoptees to share their experiences of adoption reunion. How challenging was it to forge relationships with birth relatives and to maintain them? What, if any, support did you receive? How did it impact your relationship with your adoptive family?

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Disorder in Belfast, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, the Ebola outbreak, and the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs in the NBA finals – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists