'Most people don’t want pervert glasses that can film us without our consent,' said a spokesperson from activist group Everyone Hates Elon. The group has launched a series of guerilla adverts deriding non-consensual filming by the glasses as well as an email campaign encouraging people to legally object to being filmed by Meta glasses under general data protection regulations, which over 20,000 people have signed.

Rights groups have warned that the glasses threaten the right to privacy, while countries such as Germany are reportedly considering a ban.

And while Meta’s safety guidelines say smart glasses should not be used for 'harassment, infringing on privacy rights, or capturing sensitive information', women have taken to social media to share their stories of being filmed by men without their consent.

Watch as Guardian columnist and Opinion editor Kirsty Major dives into why fears of surveillance and 'creepy men' mean Meta can never convince her to love the glasses – and read more about the glasses via the link in the bio

Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In is longest-running No 1 single in UK chart history, and yet it seems to have passed many people by

It’s the biggest song in the UK, but have you ever heard it? That was the question many were asking this week, after Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In became the longest-running No 1 single in UK chart history, spending an unprecedented 19 weeks at the top.

The British Phonographic Industry said the song had resonated with listeners “in such a profound way”, while Fender thanked Dean and fans “for making this song the juggernaut that it is”.

Federation leaders are massing forces at the gates, but years after the first proposed selling off of its commercial legacy and the Qatar World Cup

In recent decades the city of Salé, just across the river from Rabat on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, has undergone a remarkable transformation. At the start of this century it was a gritty working-class area, whose old town was still weathered enough to serve as a body double for the Somali capital Mogadishu in the film Black Hawk Down. But in recent decades, under the country’s autocratic government, the area has been transformed beyond measure, and largely beyond control.

The population has trebled in the space of 40 years. Slums have been cleared, often forcibly, to make way for grand megaprojects: a new tram system, luxury tourist spaces, a sparkling marina, a blue-chip business park called Technopolis, and – since last July – the African headquarters of Fifa. And in a way, this hub of disruption and avarice, unshakeable volition and rampant capitalism, feels like the perfect location from which a besieged warlord might choose to make his desperate last stand.

‘What if The Purge was for premarital sex?’ is the odd, gimmicky elevator pitch for this slickly made yet ungainly oddity that can’t quite get past the grimness of its conceit

Going into a romcom, there are always the same questions. Will there be genuine chemistry? Will the rom and the com be equal in parts? And, for the last decade and change, will this be the one that finally resurrects a genre long past its prime? But for Universal’s glossy late summer offering One Night Only, notably the first wide-releasing romcom since April, there are more probing questions than usual. The film is the ungainly result of a four-cocktails-in elevator pitch which imagines a world where single people are only legally allowed to have sex on one night of the year, an idea that has seen it been referred to as “Sex Purge”.

On paper, it’s the set-up for a grim Handmaid’s Tale-adjacent horror of a totalitarian state insisting extreme control over the body, but instead it’s used as the backdrop for a sunny meet-cute, screams of protest drowned out by a zippy Top 40 soundtrack. One sits down wondering not just if boy will end up with girl but also how the government would be able to enforce such tyranny and what horrifying punishments lay in store for those willing to pick personal freedom over state-mandated abstinence. If it sounds like far too much for a breezy summer romp to take on, then that’s because it most definitely is, an overstuffed yet undercooked soufflé that can’t quite, ahem, rise to the occasion …

The UK’s AI Security Institute test revealed AI models indulging in unprecedented hacking attempts

• AI models shock UK testers by using fake identities to trick developers

Two cutting-edge AI models have targeted real people and organisations in the latest safety scare to hit the technology. The UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) said the incident was unprecedented but could become more common as the technology becomes increasingly capable.

In my new book, I narrate the existence, behaviours and sensibilities of the black British middle class, a social group largely ignored, until now

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While narrating the audio version of my new book, The Good, the Black and the Boujee, came a revelatory reminder of why many black Britons see middle class status as a “white people ting”. After a recording session, I headed upstairs to see if I could find any friendly faces from my publisher before heading out into the sweltering heatwave for my cycle home. To my disappointment, I found a near-empty office floor, and left minutes later. Donning my helmet, I joined the middle class commuters who regularly left the office in cycling gear.

As I approached the exit, something peculiar happened: I was met with a friendly expression of relief from the reception staff. The building had received a concerned report about a potential intruder on the top floor, they told me. The intruder was believed to be a rogue courier who had somehow passed the loading bay and made it into the editorial offices. It took me a moment to realise – the intruding courier was … me.

Joshua Bonehill-Paine says Conservative leader has asked him to work with party’s culture and integration commission

• UK politics live – latest updates

A former neo-Nazi activist who was convicted of harassing a Jewish MP has withdrawn as a Conservative election candidate after Kemi Badenoch offered him a role as an adviser to the party.

Joshua Bonehill-Paine said on Wednesday that he had withdrawn from next year’s local elections, and that the Conservative leader had instead asked him to become an adviser to her party’s culture and integration commission, where he will specifically focus on how young men become radicalised.

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The ⁠geographic coordinates for a shipping ⁠route ⁠through the ​strait of Hormuz ⁠have been agreed by Iran and ⁠Oman, and ​a ‌joint announcement ‌is being ‌finalised, provided no third parties interfere, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei ‌said on Wednesday.

Baghaei added ​that any such agreement between Iran and ⁠Oman would not, ​by itself, ​guarantee security ​in the ​strategic waterway.

Metropolitan police say 47-year-old woman arrested on suspicion of possession of offensive weapon and assault

• Covent Garden stabbings – latest updates

A woman has been arrested after four men were stabbed in Covent Garden, central London, police said.

The Metropolitan police said the men, aged 34, 39, 42 and 52, were found with stab wounds. They were taken to a major trauma centre after the lunchtime incident on Endell Street.

Sociology professor to stand down after university announces investigation into his qualifications and career

• Playbooks, plagiarism and a pig’s head: new claims surrounding a star Cambridge professor

Jason Arday, the Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism and embellishment, has resigned after the university announced he was to face a new investigation into his qualifications and career.

Arday, who had been dogged by a growing series of questions over his academic work and credentials, issued a statement on Wednesday night, saying the “relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love”.

Counter-terror team investigating after DHL plane also collided midair with unknown object at Leipzig airport

German police deployed a bomb disposal robot after a drone carrying explosives was found at Leipzig airport, causing alarm and the diversion of several flights.

A DHL cargo plane that had been forced to abort its landing at the airport then collided with an unknown object in mid-air as it was climbing away from the airport. It later landed safely elsewhere.

• Document shows Fifa staff were involved in project

• Fifa was prepared to sideline member associations

Gianni Infantino held talks about rebranding the ill-fated European breakaway competition the “Fifa Super League”, with ­negotiations going as far as the term sheet for an agreement that would have changed the face of European football.

The term sheet, whose full contents can be revealed for the first time, is dated October 2020 and proposes renaming any new competition under Fifa’s branding. It outlines the extent to which Infantino’s administration were implicated in a scheme that caused widespread revulsion among fans and excluded clubs in April 2021. It also reveals that Fifa was prepared to sideline its member associations in pushing plans to cut back the number of international windows and outlines how global football’s governing body would have been given special governance and political rights with a “golden share”.

Move comes as fourth heatwave of summer intensifies, edging temperatures in some areas close to 40C

Italy is to place all of its 27 major cities, from Trieste in the north to Palermo in the south, under the highest heat alert as the fourth heatwave to hit the country this summer intensifies.

A red alert means there is a higher chance of an emergency owing to the health risk posed by prolonged extreme temperatures to the entire population.

Burnham said his wife, Marie-France van Heel, took some persuading after he ran and lost in contests in 2010 and 2015

Andy Burnham has revealed his wife’s dismayed reaction when he told her he wanted to make another attempt at becoming Labour leader.

Burnham said that his wife, Marie-France van Heel, had been surprised by his decision to run, having lost contests in 2010 and 2015 to Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn respectively.

Highest-ever resolution pictures of our star could help show why its corona is millions of degrees hotter than its surface

Golden bands and swirling vortices have been spotted on the sun in the most detailed images ever captured of the turbulent surface of our home star.

Astronomers observed the sun with the Inouye solar telescope in Hawaii, the world’s most powerful solar telescope, and saw new features smaller than 20km (12 miles) across in a magnetically active region close to a sun spot.

Initial evidence suggests aerial drone, found near Ukrainian cargo planes at German airport, came from Russia

The armed drone found at Leipzig airport on Wednesday may not have exploded, but the fact that it got inside the perimeter, close to Ukrainian cargo planes, raises obvious concerns for the security of international aviation.

Though the identity of the culprits is unknown, the initial evidence points firmly towards a Russian-orchestrated plot. It is the first time that a drone with explosives has been found in Europe far from the Ukrainian border.

If the progressive wins Michigan’s general election, it could redefine the 2028 presidential contest. If he fails, the establishment will call him a cautionary tale

• US politics live – latest updates

In the final stretch of the state’s Democratic primary for US Senate, Abdul El-Sayed challenged voters at a small event in rural Michigan to think about the message they could send the rest of the country when they cast their ballots.

“Who are we? Who do we want to be?” El-Sayed said. “Do we want a state that’s defined by how much money corporations brought in to tell us what we couldn’t have? Or do we want to be a state where we demonstrate to the rest of the country what’s possible when you build a movement of, by and for the people?”

Rightwing narratives have gone mainstream, and Madrid finds itself increasingly isolated for its humane approach to migrants

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It was over almost as quickly as it began. But the human cost of the mayhem in Ceuta over the last seven days, and the disunity it exposed within the EU, will take a lot longer to fix.

To recap: more than 70,000 people swam or waded into the tiny Spanish enclave in north Africa from neighbouring Morocco in a matter of hours at the end of last week. The exact circumstances in which the heavily securitised border came suddenly to be open are still unclear.

The beady-eyed, Pokémon-like leaf sheep is far more ingenious than us land mammals

• Revealed: the top 10 invertebrates of the year

• Invertebrate of Year Q&A: discuss our countdown with Patrick Barkham

A neon green punk sheep that lives underwater. A solar-powered slug that can perform photosynthesis. If you are seeking beauty, brains and a wonderfully innovative lifestyle, then vote leaf sheep.

The leaf or sea sheep, Costasiella kuroshimae, is a sea slug about the size of a grain of rice. Like a sheep, it grazes on green stuff – certain species of algae, which it finds in tropical waters around Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines. But its sheepy nickname does it a disservice because it is far more ingenious than us land mammals.

‘Looksmaxxing’ culture has led to the rise of facial analysis services – but experts warn they aren’t backed by science and can be harmful to users

Danielle, 37, didn’t always have issues with body image: she used to be a model and recalls receiving positive attention from men. However, when two years of unemployment plunged her into a period of financial insecurity, her confidence faded. “It was easy to wonder, if I was prettier, if some of my features were different, would that help?” she said.

So, when Danielle saw videos on TikTok about a “facial analysis” service that claimed it could provide her with “science-backed” glow-up advice, she bought it without hesitation. Three-hundred and thirty dollars later, after sending in selfies to be analyzed, Danielle received her personalized 30-page report from the company Qoves.

As Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and their peers have grown richer and more influential, Gil Durán argues they have all but abandoned democracy – and found the perfect government to enable them

In April, Gil Durán was permanently banned from Elon Musk’s X for posting just two words. Durán was responding to a post from the tech company Palantir outlining its 22‑point “technological manifesto”, which praised American “hard power”, western culture and AI weapons, denounced inclusivity and called for compulsory national service. Durán responded: “TLDR: Fascism” (TLDR is short for “too long, didn’t read”).

Durán didn’t break any of X’s written rules, he points out over a video call from San Francisco – so much for Musk’s “free-speech absolutism”. His ban might just have had something to do with his preceding tweet, showing the cover of his new book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. The book’s central argument is that big tech is no longer our friend, as many of its billionaire owners have seized economic and political control and are steering the fate of the planet towards their own bizarre, apocalyptic visions.

Our guest columnist reveals how he found his personal style, from jumpsuits to high-waisted trousers

Other than the jumpsuits, I don’t think I wore anything particularly groundbreaking when I appeared on The Traitors. I just think the bar for men’s fashion is so low that for me to come on television in a chunky mint green jumper and a pair of high-waisted jeans – which is probably one of the most neutral looks I own – seemed like a revelation. There was no styling budget, so most of what I wore came from my wardrobe.

The discovery of my personal style began when I was at primary school on the Isle of Lewis, off the north-west coast of Scotland. I realised I was different to the other boys when I began experimenting with fashion. From a young age I was turning my hems up, and I was certainly more interested in what the girls in my class were wearing.

We need an enlightened US president to make the case for global AI regulation. Donald Trump is the exact opposite of what is needed

When I am woken by the sound of my dog whining, I understand that she is hungry and wants me to get up. When my alarm clock goes off, I don’t consider its needs. It is following an instruction to rouse me at a certain time but it doesn’t care if I stay in bed. It doesn’t try to get me up by other means. The dog, on the other hand, will go to plan B. She barks.

This capacity for autonomous action was once a difference between animals and machines. AI has blurred the line. Advanced models devise their own strategies to reach a goal. The task might be defined by a human master, but the machine weighs its options for delivery. It can make its own choices. Given rules, it can break them.

AstraZeneca’s rumoured takeover of Bristol Myers Squibb already looked weird, and was met with a lack of enthusiasm by shareholders

• AstraZeneca falls to third-largest UK company amid US merger talks

Hold the heartburn pills. It seems AstraZeneca is no longer contemplating a takeover of US rival Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) to create a $400bn (£300bn) pharmaceutical colossus. On Monday, the UK firm’s shares plunged 9% on the FT’s report of preliminary talks. On Wednesday, Reuters said there are no ongoing discussions. Cue a mini-relief rally in AZ’s share price.

Neither company has seen fit to tell its shareholders what was happening, so it’s impossible to know if the talks were a tentative ‘what if?’ corporate flirtation or something more substantial that has been killed, perhaps, by the lack of enthusiasm on the part of AZ’s shareholders.

As climate disaster stares us in the face, the radical right says ‘Embrace the Mediterranean life’. Embrace death, more like it

Can’t you leftists understand? Mass death is good for you. Reject the woke love of life! Welcome civilisational collapse! Watch it all burn, then dance in the ashes! This, roughly speaking, is how the dismissal of climate action is now being justified: the argument has shifted from science denial to outright nihilism.

The new incendiary spirit is exemplified by that serial arsonist Allister Heath, editor of the Sunday Telegraph. In a column in the Daily Telegraph last week, originally titled “Britain can’t stop climate change. Scrap net zero and embrace Mediterranean life”, he argued that “climate change is real” but “the war against global warming has been lost”.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Andy Burnham inherited the crisis in our prison system – but the solution cannot be to further endanger the women and children who have survived violence

It’s time to be blunt: the government is about to expose hundreds of vulnerable women to the risk of death or serious injury. Survivors of domestic abuse, including women who have suffered years of physical violence and intimidation, are now preparing for the moment in October when 5,000 prisoners begin to be released early. What are these women supposed to do? Where are they supposed to go? Their abusers know where they live. They know where their children go to school.

Following an outcry, rapists and some child sex offenders have been excluded from the early release scheme. But by refusing to exclude men convicted of domestic violence, this government is sending a message that this category of crime – serial in nature and implicated in the deaths of one woman every five days – is simply not a priority.

Joan Smith is an author, journalist and a former chair of the mayor of London’s VAWG board

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.

From histories of opera to compendiums of mosses, they’re beautiful, expertly written and don’t leave you feeling grubby. What’s not to like?

There are lots of reasons not to read picture books. You can’t really mark them “done” in the same way you might, say, tick A Tale of Two Cities off your bucket list, or add them to your tally when you’re humble-bragging about what you’ve read over the past 12 months. They aren’t going to become part of the cultural zeitgeist, like Middlemarch or The Odyssey, and you probably won’t be able to persuade a book group to talk about them.

Recently, though, I’ve been getting back into them in a big way, poking around the “oversized” shelves of my local charity shops, cooing over large-format collections of Hokusai prints in Waterstones.

Shouldn’t the health secretary have his hands full with the cyclosporiasis outbreak, measles or rabbit fever? Not when there are crispy salmon cakes to prepare …

The US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has got his work cut out for him. A cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce has the entire country playing salad roulette: one bad leaf and you could become very unwell. The condition isn’t normally deadly, but, on Monday, officials in Michigan confirmed the first two fatalities. Meanwhile, it’s the worst year for measles in the US since 1991. A disease that was once eliminated now looks as though it’s back with a vengeance – thanks in part, according to experts, to anti-vaxxers such as Kennedy himself. And this week New York officials are warning about a rare tick-borne illness called rabbit fever (tularemia).

Still, despite having rather a lot on his plate, Kennedy has found the time to front a new cooking show, hosted on YouTube. It’s called The Real Food Show and it’s supposed to help Americans prepare healthy, affordable meals at home. The first episode features the chef and TV personality Andrew Gruel (perfect name) teaching the US to prepare crispy salmon cakes with … salad. Which is certainly a bold way to kick things off.

The candidate has crafted a progressive nationalism and shown his party how to turn Republicans’ financial advantage against them

Every now and then, a Senate race sets the direction for an entire party. In 1991, a state official named Harris Wofford – advised by a foul-mouthed Cajun named James Carville – upset his far better-known Republican opponent to win a special election in Pennsylvania. He did it by promising to expand access to healthcare – and thus created a template for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign the following year.

If Abdul El-Sayed can follow up his victory in last night’s Democratic Senate primary by winning the general election in Michigan this fall, he will have created a template of his own. Despite his closer-than-expected margin of victory, his campaign offers a model for how Democrats across the country can answer the political challenge posed by Donald Trump.

A row over a local council candidate reveals a deeper problem with the Tory leader’s diagnosis of her party’s electoral predicament

Kemi Badenoch has been clear about the qualifying criteria for prospective Conservative MPs. They must be “serious people who understand common sense,” she has said. The situation in local government is different, as demonstrated by Mrs Badenoch’s ill-judged support for a former neo-Nazi, selected to stand as a councillor in Somerset next year.

Joshua Bonehill-Paine has convictions for racially aggravated harassment of a Jewish Labour MP and assaulting a police officer among other offences. On Wednesday, as pressure grew on the party leader to repudiate him, he withdrew his candidacy.

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.

A wave of films dealing with the second world war is captivating a nation facing major contemporary challenges

For weeks now, anglophone cinephiles have been focusing their attention on the virtues and vices of Christopher Nolan’s $250m adaptation of The Odyssey. Across the Channel, however, Homer’s epic tale of a flawed Greek hero has been facing stiff domestic competition. A two-part biopic of General Charles de Gaulle, concentrating on his struggles to liberate France during the second world war, has been the word-of-mouth box office hit of the French summer.

It may be that five hours’ worth of De Gaulle attracted some punters seeking air-conditioned sanctuary from the heatwaves. But there have been rave reviews both from critics and audiences, and a notable upsurge of interest among the young. The success of the films has already had a cultural knock-on effect, boosting the number of visitors, for example, to the Museum of the Liberation of Paris.

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 an article by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in which she argues that Labour should abolish fines for parents taking their children on holiday during term time

I am in support of Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s suggestion that we should abolish fines for holidays in school term time (I’m all for the nanny state – but we should abolish fines for holidays in term time, 2 August). She makes all the correct and logical arguments, to which I would add one more. One of the justifications for the fines is that children miss out on valuable learning, but this is simply not the case as teachers turn to movies, games and other distractions in those last weeks of term.

There is very little curriculum learning happening in those periods before the main school holidays. And from what my children describe to me, over the years this “downing of tools” seems to be happening earlier each year. The argument that taking a child out of school a week before the end of term means they miss valuable learning is, frankly, laughable.
Nick Johnson
Dorset

Responding to an editorial, Scott Hunter writes that the benefits of being a devolved authority have not yet arrived in Tees Valley, while John Hall calls for constitutional reform. Plus letters from Richard Dowling and Miland Joshi

Devolution has become the flavour of the month (The Guardian view on England’s centralised state: Andy Burnham must unbundle it, 31 July). The case is well argued and the need for such reform fits neatly into the situation we find in the Tees Valley – chronic underinvestment, lack of economic growth, depopulation, and so on.

But the Tees Valley has had a devolved authority for 10 years and the benefits of devolution have not landed. The Tees Valley authority was issued a best value notice in April 2025, though there’s nothing to show for it.

Jimmy Cricket | Creative science | Clacton vote | Humanists and humanity | Short showers

I remember fondly Jimmy Cricket (No smut, no swearing, wrong-feet wellies and a silly hat: the gentle comedy world of Jimmy Cricket, 4 August) taking over the intercom from the cabin crew who had just announced our flight to Manchester would be delayed. Groans from the passengers quickly gave way to laughter as Jimmy read a letter from the mammy in Ireland and the next hour passed so enjoyably that when the pilot announced take off, disappointment could be heard.
Martin Brayford
Altrincham, Cheshire

• Goodness me, Mick Foster (Letters, 3 August)! Don’t you know that “creativity” is the sole prerogative of the arts? As someone who has recently lived through Bradford City of Culture 2025, I have also learned that a “creative” is someone who paints or is a poet. No way can scientists be allowed in. What next? Engineers?
Les Brook
Saltaire, West Yorkshire

We are trying to keep a pre‑industrial flora alive in a post‑industrial climate, writes Richard Eltringham

Your report (Half of England officially in ‘exceptionally serious’ drought, 29 July) makes me think that perhaps it’s time to admit what horticulturists have whispered for years: the native‑plants‑only doctrine has had its day. We can keep insisting that every garden, park and verge must resemble a 1790s botanical inventory, or we can face the obvious – the climate those plants evolved for no longer exists.

We are trying to keep a pre‑industrial flora alive in a post‑industrial climate. Oak saplings are crisping, beech woods are browning, and “rewilded” meadows are going from hopeful to tinderbox in a single heatwave. Meanwhile, drought‑tolerant non‑natives – Mediterranean shrubs, prairie perennials, desert grasses – sit ready to do the job: hold soil, feed pollinators, stay green, stay alive.

• Forward becomes most expensive African player

• Club are in positive talks with Vinícius Júnior

Real Madrid have agreed a club-record fee of €135m (£115.7m) with RB Leipzig for Yan Diomande and are confident of warding off Arsenal’s interest in Vinícius Júnior after offering an improved contract to the Brazil forward.

After several weeks of negotiations that saw Paris Saint-Germain pull out of the race, the deal for Diomande – the 19-year-old who joined the German side from Leganés last summer and starred for Côte d’Ivoire at the World Cup – was finally struck on Wednesday afternoon. It is understood that Madrid will pay an initial €125m plus another €10m in add-ons, a total that would eclipse the fee the Spanish side paid Borussia Dortmund to sign Jude Bellingham in 2023, believed to have been worth up to €134m including add-ons.

• LIV chief refuses to disclose new funders’ identities

• Scott O’Neil hopes DeChambeau and Rahm will stay

LIV Golf has secured a “lead investor” to safeguard its existence until 2030, although the agreement is unlikely to prevent a batch of high-profile players departing by the end of this year.

Scott O’Neil, LIV’s chief executive, announced basic plans for the “next generation” of the tour on Wednesday while refusing to disclose the new funders of the business. After the withdrawal of backing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, O’Neil has been engaged in a race against time to save his business.

• Three outstanding riders in race broke clear of peloton

• Padding row intensifies after footage of male inspection

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s defence of her Tour de France Femmes title unravelled among the Beaujolais vineyards as the French rider lost even more ground to rivals Demi Vollering, Marlen Reusser and Kasia Niewiadoma.

The three outstanding riders in this year’s race broke clear of the peloton over the final steep gradients of Mont Brouilly, with 2023 Tour winner Vollering outsprinting overall race leader Reusser to take the fourth Tour stage win of her career.

• Australian officials touring clubs to gauge mood

• Wigan and Warrington set date for Dublin clash

NRL officials have arrived in ­England to hold talks with clubs as the prospect of a groundbreaking deal with Super League nears completion, while two of the competition’s heavyweights, Wigan Warriors and Warrington Wolves, confirmed they will lead an on-the-road weekend to Dublin in 2027.

Rugby league’s two premier club competitions have been in discussions for most of this year about a deal that would see the NRL invest a significant sum into Super League, while taking authoritative control of the competition in a bid to transform its long-term fortunes. That investment would also ensure the financial security of clubs. Both competitions put talks on hold while they finalised their broadcast details; the NRL has just completed a A$5.3bn (£2.8bn) deal for its rights, while Super League expects to confirm in the next week how its new-look broadcast deal will be shaped. Sky Sports is expected to show two or three games a week, with the rest of the fixtures streamed or broadcast elsewhere.

The Wigan prop only took up the sport in her 20s when she moved north to work for the Home Office but now hopes to play at the World Cup

There was something old-school about the England women’s team that beat France 38-4 in Toulouse last week. With eight players from Wigan, five from Leeds and three from St Helens, it looked like a Great Britain side of the early 2000s. But among the Wigan contingent was a player with a story that feels very 2026: Mary Coleman, a prop from Kent who works for the Home Office, has a first-class degree in psychological and behavioural sciences from Cambridge University, and had not heard of Wigan – or played rugby league – until she was in her early 20s.

“I didn’t grow up in a rugby household,” says Coleman. “I didn’t really know anything about rugby until I was in sixth form. My school was setting up a girl’s union side and I said to my boyfriend at the time: ‘Maybe I’ll give it a go.’ He said: ‘Don’t be silly, that’s not your thing.’ When we broke up, my 16-year-old brain wondered: ‘How am I going to get my boyfriend back? I’ll give rugby a go.’ My first session was a contact session and I immediately fell in love with someone encouraging me to run at someone as hard as I could.”

In this exclusive book extract, Melissa Reddy documents the Egyptian King’s sacrifice and dedication to make his vision a reality

The entrance to Al Mokawloon Al Arab’s youth sector feels imposing. At first it is confusing to pinpoint the reason. Is it the facade; a mesh of thick concrete slabs, a marble-like trim that alters in colour depending on the light, and the no-nonsense black steel gate? Perhaps it is the stately signage of white block letters in Arabic juxtaposed against the dark background, with satellite pieces of information and announcements signifying importance. But to stop and pay attention to buildings around Nasr City in eastern Cairo is to notice that the blend of functional and decorative elements of the entrance, down to even the font and array of notices, is not unique.

The building’s aura can be explained by the main image above its gates, and the knowledge that to walk through them is to follow the footsteps a history-maker took from the age of 14. Mohamed Salah’s face has pride of place above the gates; it is a reminder of where he’s been, but more pertinently, of why it is important to marry talent with discipline and determination. The truth is he has achieved the impossible.

Exclusive: Rukhsar Ahmed was re-elected as an MP in Pakistan last week despite being on police bail in the UK

A former Pakistani state minister was arrested two years ago on suspicion of raping vulnerable young girls in Manchester in the 1990s, the Guardian can reveal.

Rukhsar Ahmed, who was re-elected as an MP in Pakistan last week after five years out of office, is on police bail in the UK after his arrest in July 2024 on suspicion of rape and trafficking children in care as part of a grooming gang.

• Portugal legend calls for Fifa president to stand down

• ‘Too late to save his dignity, not too late to save football’

The Portugal legend Luís Figo has described Gianni Infantino’s ill-fated scheme to sell off stakes in the World Cup to private investors as “the lowest, most deceitful and cravenly self-interested behaviour I have ever witnessed” and called on the Fifa president to resign.

Infantino was forced to scrap his controversial proposal after a fierce backlash that was led by Uefa, with the 56-year-old now battling for his future having called an emergency meeting of Fifa staff on Wednesday as pressure on him mounts.

Minnie Merriman was found injured on industrial estate in Arbroath on Monday and a man has appeared in court

A girl of nine who died on a family camping trip in Scotland has been named as Minnie Merriman.

In a statement released through Police Scotland, her family said: “We are devastated with the loss of our beloved, absolutely incredible, beautiful and brave Minnie Moo. Our family asks that our privacy is respected at this extremely difficult time.”

Sheikh Hasina plans a December comeback two years after being ousted in a bloody uprising led by students

Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina has vowed to return home by the end of the year, even though she faces a death sentence.

“They may put me in a cell. They may kill me. Anything may happen, but still I have to go,” said Hasina, two years after a student-led uprising toppled her government.

César Gastélum was filming outside a fast-food outlet in Sinaloa state when he was killed by a motorbike driver

A popular Mexican influencer has been shot dead while doing a live stream on social media outside a restaurant in Sinaloa state, where lethal cartel violence has become widespread.

César Gastélum, who had nearly 600,000 followers on TikTok and was known for making comedy videos, was filming with two friends outside a fast-food restaurant in the city of Culiacán. The three were dressed in the bright orange jackets and backpacks of food delivery drivers.

Farmers advised to vaccinate after recent hot weather provides ideal conditions for virus-carrying midges

There has been an alarming surge in the number of sheep affected by an outbreak of bluetongue in the UK, and farmers whose livestock are at risk are being urged to move them out of areas where midges are plentiful.

The viral disease, which does not necessarily kill sheep but makes them ill and can have a long recovery time, presents as high fever and swelling of the lips and tongue. The tongue may go blue and even protrude from the mouth.

Aaron Farinacci is accused of starting the Old Trails fire that has destroyed homes and forced thousands to flee

The Washington state man accused of starting a wildfire that has destroyed homes and forced thousands to flee around Spokane was previously questioned in connection with two fire investigations last year, according to court documents.

Authorities allege that Aaron Farinacci, 37, of Spokane, started Old Trails fire, one of three major wildfires burning in Spokane county in north-eastern Washington. He was arrested on Monday and booked on suspicion of first-degree arson.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Cristian Lucañas has discovered multiple species of cockroach in the Philippines, and believes there’s far more to the much-maligned insect than meets the eye

When Cristian Lucañas tells people about his job, their response is normally a mix of shock and confusion. “The majority would actually be questioning why,” says Lucañas, 32, who is the only entomologist specialising in cockroaches in the Philippines, where he is known as the “Cockroach Lord”.

He recalls one person, apparently perplexed at the insects’ existence, asking simply: “Did God create cockroaches?” Others seek advice on how best to kill them.

Flurry of articles has raised eyebrows and drawn response from Kemi Badenoch defending stance on net zero

“Nobody can deny that the UK is getting warmer and high temperatures are becoming a clear threat to homes, nature and food security,” read the lengthy news report, which explored the devastating effect of British wildfires on families in recent years.

The article’s conclusions, written after the wildfires in Suffolk last week, were no surprise given the UK’s changing climate. However, the fact that the piece appeared in the Telegraph, the rightwing title that has been a leading critic of green policies, did raise eyebrows among some readers.

Wayve Uber wins first minicab licence for autonomous cabs from TfL but vehicles will have a safety driver (at first)

The taxi app company Uber and the autonomous technology developer Wayve have been granted the first minicab licences in London allowing them to offer self-driving taxi rides to paying customers – but with a human safety driver in place, for now.

The companies said they would start trips in the UK “later this summer” before the full public launch.

Watchdogs say adverts in London tube stations broke its rules with ‘realistic impression of a dead child’

Film posters for The Mummy have been banned from outdoor public display in the UK because they include realistic depictions of a dead child.

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received 30 complaints over the promotional campaign in London tube stations for the new Lee Cronin film.

Victims’ minister said earlier that PM was ‘looking into’ inquiry into Epstein and another into Mohamed Al Fayed

Andy Burnham is not actively considering a public inquiry into the actions of Jeffrey Epstein in the UK, despite claims to the contrary.

The victims’ minister, Alex Davies-Jones, said on Tuesday that the prime minister had agreed to meet the sex offender’s victims, was “looking into” an inquiry and was “taking this very seriously”. A separate inquiry into the alleged actions of the former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed is also being considered. But the Guardian understands a public inquiry is not being actively considered by No 10.

Exclusive: New health secretary promises root-and-branch reform after damning maternity scandals

Women should not feel pressurised into experiencing an “ideal birth”, the new health secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said, promising a root-and-branch reform of standards after several damning maternity scandals.

Cooper, who returns to the department 27 years after she was the minister for public health under Tony Blair, said maternity and child health would be a major focus in the role, where she will also be expected to implement significant reforms to social care.

Obama-appointed judge seemed unmoved by Trump attorneys’ arguments in case also naming Murdoch

A federal judge in Florida seemed skeptical of arguments from Donald Trump’s legal team on Wednesday over whether the court should allow a $10bn defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal to move forward.

Trump sued the Journal and the News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch over a July 2025 article about a “bawdy” letter reportedly from Trump that was included in a 2003 birthday book for disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Trump has denied authoring or signing the letter, and his attorneys have argued that the Journal published the story despite having been told it was false.

Rules brought in soon after killing of dozens of protesters, news of which was reported only by overseas outlets

Pakistani authorities have imposed severe new restrictions on international media, including barring them from reporting in most of the country, in a move that has provoked a significant backlash from journalist organisations.

According to the new rules anyone, including Pakistani nationals, should seek permission first if they want to report from anywhere Pakistan except three cities – Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore.

Lahore police official says all personnel were responsible for preventing and reporting any wrongdoing at station

The alleged rape of a 20-year-old woman with learning disabilities in a police station in Lahore, Pakistan, has prompted authorities to suspend all 78 police officers and staff at the precinct, in one of the country’s biggest ever disciplinary actions against its police force.

The woman alleges that an assistant sub-inspector apprehended her, took her to Ghaziabad police station and raped her in a room on the second floor. The woman’s family said she disappeared on the street, before returning home in tears and stating that she had been sexually assaulted at the station.

Matt Walker couldn’t pet a dog without sneezing – until he and other scientists used a gene editing technique to produce a hypoallergenic beagle named Bailey.

Now, he can feed Bailey spoons of peanut butter while she lies on his lap and play fetch with her in Central Park. His allergies didn’t go away: Bailey’s saliva and hair no longer contain a key allergy-causing protein.

Mr Justice Hildyard, who approved rescue plan in July, said turnaround plan came with ‘very considerable’ risks

The judge who approved a rescue plan for the former WH Smith high street business – now named TG Jones – cast doubt on the future prospects of the retailer, suggesting there were “very considerable” risks in achieving a turnaround.

“This has all the hallmarks of an adventurous equity play,” wrote Mr Justice Hildyard in his judgment published on Wednesday, after he last month approved the restructuring, which involves the closure of 150 of the books-to-paperclips retailer’s 450 stores.

AI Security Institute says OpenAI and Anthropic models went rogue during a cybersecurity test and showed a new type of risk

• Explainer: Should we be alarmed at AI models going rogue in tests?

Advanced artificial intelligence models have stunned the UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) by carrying out a hacking campaign against real people during a cybersecurity test.

The institute said the incident was unprecedented and involved sending targeted emails to software developers in an attempt to pass a cyber challenge.

Characters and memorable scenes from back catalogue made available to group of creator fans

The likes of Darth Vader, Spider-Man and Moana are about to become TikTok stars for the first time – at least now on an official basis – after Walt Disney struck a “first of its kind” deal with the booming short-video platform.

In an acknowledgment of the influence fan-made content now has in the entertainment industry, a select group of creators will be allowed to use characters and memorable scenes from Disney’s back catalogue.

More than half of tariff income refunded after supreme court ruled Trump’s levies were illegal

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The Trump administration has refunded about $100bn from the tariffs it collected before the US supreme court ruled them illegal, according to reports.

The $100bn (£74bn) figure, which represents 60% of the total $165bn collected from Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs, was reported by customs officials to the US court of international trade (CIT) on Tuesday, according to the Financial Times.

It looked like it was gone forever, but Jason Sudeikis’s hugely popular show returns with a premise that’s all twee nonsensicality. If you love messages of positivity and togetherness, you’ll be thrilled

Having transported a flailing AFC Richmond to the upper echelons of the Premier League with his wholesome, folksy and highly simile-reliant management style, the finale of Ted Lasso’s third season saw our titular coach return to the US to spend more time with his son in Kansas. At the time (2023), the general impression was that we were waving goodbye for good. But could this intensely American protagonist really do the most British thing of all and bow out at the height of his sitcom’s popularity? Nope. Last year it was announced that its star and co-creator Jason Sudeikis had caved to market forces and was reprising his colossally popular alter ego.

It was the logical thing to do: the 11-time Emmy-winning show was the most-watched streaming original of 2023. Not that logic features heavily in this fourth season. Before we discover how Ted has been lured back to south-west London, we find out what he’s been up to in the interim. Did he parlay his success into US soccer? Return triumphantly to college football? Sit back with his millions and rest on his laurels? Nope, nope and nope again. Instead, he’s working in his local supermarket, warmly greeting his customers by name, providing moral guidance to younger colleagues and generally radiating his trademark howdily-doodily energy. Why? Because he’s a good man without ego who loves to connect and make a positive difference in his community! This is Ted Lasso we’re talking about!

Ted Lasso is on Apple TV

The playwright and director, who has died aged 86, completed DH Lawrence’s revolution in spotlighting stories of working people

• Peter Gill: a theatrical visionary with an unsparing honesty

I was, in Michael Coveney’s parlance, one of Peter Gill’s acolytes. I knew him in his autumn; after he’d directed his last play for the National, after he’d moved from Harriet Devine’s house in Hammersmith, where he lived for most of his adult life, into his flat a little further down the river. For 20 years we met there, or in the community centre when we held workshops with actors to help him develop material. One day he told me I should write a book about him: “I introduced postmodernism to the theatre, darling.” I was proud he’d asked me, a feeling that only slightly receded when I read an article by Nina Raine a few years later, in which she revealed he’d suggested the same thing to her. Now Peter has died, I have a strong feeling I should be writing about him again.

I think the framework hasn’t yet been created to talk about Peter’s significance. When I was researching my book about him, I went to interview his friend Bill Gaskill. What we talked about most that day was Wordsworth, and over the years I’ve come to see that as significant. It was Wordsworth who proposed that literature should speak in “the real language of men”. That project flowered a century later in the work of DH Lawrence, who broke free of the conditions of his birth to revolutionise English literature. Lawrence tore through almost every barrier he encountered, for better or worse, in every aspect of his life – but he couldn’t break into the theatre. A “vertical invader” from a peasant class, to borrow John Berger’s description of Picasso, Lawrence reshaped the artistic landscape, but the English theatre made no room in his lifetime for the stories of working people. It took another vertical invader to complete that revolution: a docker’s son from Cardiff who took Lawrence’s plays, placed them at the centre of the world and said, once and for all, “as much happens for you as for other people”. That was Peter’s achievement. He showed us anywhere could be the centre of the world.

Set on an idyllic Canadian island, this coming-of-age series is juicy stuff. It swaps the darkness of recent YA TV for warmth, humour and a surprisingly compelling mystery

I’ll be honest: I was prepared to grit my teeth through Sterling Point, Prime Video’s newest coming-of-age offering, which I dismissed as another by-the-numbers high-school drama. The show follows a type-A teen on a journey of sun-dappled self-discovery, escaping her native New York for an idyllic getaway on a picturesque Canadian island. It’s an unassuming, summer camp-style narrative, but in the style of last year’s seasonal phenomenon that was series three of The Summer I Turned Pretty, it manages to transcend the limits of its YA niche, revealing itself to be quite juicy.

Protagonist Annie (Ella Rubin) is a highly strung 17-year-old, still reeling from a rejection from a summer business school programme when she receives the news that her estranged maternal grandfather has left her some mysterious assets. Annie, whose mother had died years ago, and her twin Connor (Keen Ruffalo), are prompted to start digging through family secrets, much to the distress of their dad (Jay Duplass of Transparent and Industry). The two learn that they’ve inherited a house in Canada – prompting Annie to take off on a secret trip in search of answers about her late mother’s life.

Sterling Point is on Prime Video

The Hostel and Thanksgiving director takes a massive stumble with a rushed retro horror made on the cheap

A few years ago, Eli Roth realized his long-held ambition to make a movie out of Thanksgiving, the horror-movie trailer he made as a gag for the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez anthology feature Grindhouse, back in 2007. Though he didn’t actually go so far as to make the scratched-up decades-ago slasher shown in the original trailer, Thanksgiving was still Roth’s most satisfying movie in ages, replete with ridiculous gore and a side of satirical commentary – a 2020s movie fit for an old video store’s VHS horror section despite its contemporary setting.

Now Roth has founded a horror-focused company actually called the Horror Section, aimed at releasing movies, shows and “experiences” that appeal to the modern equivalent of those VHS-shelf gorehounds. After “presenting” a few other movies, Roth’s first direct contribution to the company is Ice Cream Man, exactly the kind of knowingly disreputable button-pusher befitting the company’s retro-sticker logo. (Indeed, Roth’s movie shares its title with a 1995 direct-to-video curiosity starring Clint Howard, though this one is unrelated.) Unfortunately, rather than a companion piece to the blackly funny murder-mystery of Thanksgiving, which riffed on Scream as much as 80s slashers, Roth’s latest feels like a demo reel for someone vastly less talented.

Despite the movie’s stacked cast, an oddly threadbare storyline and comedy that targets low-hanging fruit leaves the laughs few and far between

Three stubborn old nuns and a wide-eyed young whippersnapper head off on a mission to save the farm – sorry, convent – in this earnestly made but emotionally lukewarm road movie. The ace up Holy Days’ sleeve is the casting, with each nun played by a legend of stage and screen: Judy Davis as Sister Agnes, Miriam Margolyes as Sister Luke and Jacki Weaver as Sister Mary Clare. It quickly becomes clear, however, that nobody is on their A-game. And the film itself is a frustrating mix of comedy and drama: not funny enough to solicit any real laughs, nor sufficiently dramatic to forge strong connections with the characters.

These folk are a rather unexciting lot, despite a clear desire to present young Brian (Elijah Tamati) as the emotional glue holding things together and the habit-wearing trio as hot-blooded eccentrics. Their run-down convent, which we’re supposed to feel invested in, is a drab location both aesthetically and emotionally; it’s decaying – but not in a handsome, cinematic way. Nor is it brought to life by the people who inhabit it; in fact, the building feels borderline soulless. Maybe the developers have a point, I caught myself thinking, and this crusty old place could become a snazzy new apartment block or shopping centre.

Candy-coloured recreations of one woman’s pregnancy unravel as dark truths are revealed in Maite Alberdi’s intimate docudrama

This cheekily inquisitive docudrama by Chilean director Maite Alberdi features a unique variation on the long con, and one with a precise duration: nine months. After suffering three miscarriages and under pressure from her husband and in-laws to give them a child, Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza (aka Ale, and played by Ana Celeste in re-enactments) decides to fake her next pregnancy. She is determined to have something to show at the end of it: after meeting single mother Mayra, who wants to abort her second pregnancy, at the hospital where she works, Ale agrees to take her baby once it is born.

The details are hardly believable: eating copiously to gain weight, Ale manages to convince husband Arturo (Armando Espitia) and his family that this pregnancy is on track for her entire term. She reflexively tenses her muscles while he strokes her baby bump and smiles through a swirl of conflicting thoughts at her baby shower. While most con artists must dupe themselves on some level, it is true down to a physiological level in Ale’s case: a judge later testifies that her desperation to bear children may have resulted in a pseudo-pregnancy. How else to explain that the doctor signing off her maternity leave appears to hear the baby’s heartbeat?

Elon Musk may be able to buy a trip to Mars, but when the super wealthy pay to be conductors – as Canadian entrepreneur Mandle Cheung is doing – it makes a mockery of a meritocracy in classical music

There are some pretty gigantic non-negotiables for an orchestral musician. You have to be able to perform the right notes in the right order, with a combination of technical expertise, artistry, skill and understanding that demands years, decades and lifetimes of devotion.

But there is one figure on the orchestral concert platform who is both the most important person in the room – at least according to classical music’s hierarchies – yet who makes no sound, and whose job looks the simplest of all: the conductor, waving their arms about in time with the music and gurning at the players.

Unlike their Disney peers, the toothesome trio didn’t pivot to being sexy – and they’re now at their stadium-filling peak. Fans and collaborators explain their unique, cheesy appeal

The Jonas Brothers appeared in the mid-00s in a blaze of smiles, dressed in shirts, suspenders and ties, singing sappy love songs that won the hearts of girls who quickly became obsessed with this Disney-signed band. Many assumed the fraternal trio would fade away, overtaken by whatever new act replaced them in the whims of teenagers. Yet this week marks 20 years since the release of their debut album, It’s About Time, and the toothsome threesome are bigger than ever.

Kevin, Joe and Nick Jonas started out with danger-free pop-punk, evolving into a kind of broad-brush feelgood pop. Their true breakthrough was in 2008 with US No 5 hit Burnin’ Up, teeing up three back-to-back US No 1 albums as they became the youngest group to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone. The usual dreaded “creative differences” precipitated a six-year hiatus and the pursuit of solo careers and acting. But they reformed in 2019 in spectacular style, getting their first US No 1 hit with Sucker, and by last year they had the clout to sell out the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where the World Cup final was later hosted.

(Dead Oceans)
After sweeping the Grammys and being scrutinised by the press, Bridgers deploys electronics and unsettling sound design to brilliantly evoke emotional turmoil

The last time Phoebe Bridgers put out a solo album was six years ago, at the height of the Covid pandemic: Punisher not only ended 2020 near the top of many critics’ best-of lists, it made the UK Top 10 and sold half a million copies in the US. The intervening period has proved just as commercially triumphant. With the release of their debut album The Record, Boygenius – the band she had formed with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker – went from a kind of supergroup for Pitchfork readers to a genuine mainstream phenomenon: the album won three Grammys. Another win, for Bridgers’ collaboration with SZA, Ghost in the Machine, meant Bridgers left the 2024 ceremony the night’s biggest winner. Other pop stars called on her services: she sang on Taylor Swift’s re-recorded version of Red (and supported on the Eras tour), Lorde’s Solar Power and on Paul McCartney’s McCartney III Imagined.

But to judge by Lost Weekend’s opening track, all was not well. The Outside depicts the singer crowd-surfing at a gig in Ohio – “they never let me hit the ground, way beyond the barricade” – and ending a song with her fist triumphantly raised. Then it adds a qualifier. “But I was on the outside, watching,” she sings, the sense of dislocation heightened by the fact that her voice is smothered by a vocoder, and the musical accompaniment – a sweet fingerpicked acoustic guitar figure – keeps vanishing into an ambient backing that sounds like static.

Full of panache and originality, Weber’s grand opera is the work of a composer at the height of his powers – but its plot is a load of nonsense. The conductor of its Proms premiere celebrates its brilliance

Carl Maria von Weber was a great opera composer with a minimal ability to find the right libretto writers. He never made a good choice in any of the three pieces for which he’s still known.

Oberon was his final work. He wrote it in London 200 years ago for Covent Garden theatre and died of tuberculosis shortly after its premiere in 1826, aged only 39. He was buried in the cemetery just north of the Barbican, although his grave today is in Dresden. Some 18 years after his death, Wagner – who adored, and was inspired by, the older composer (there could not have been Lohengrin without Weber’s earlier opera Euryanthe) – raised the money to repatriate his body. A large crowd met the coach at the gates of Dresden and processed through the rain to the city’s old Catholic cemetery where a second funeral was held and Wagner’s specially composed fantasia for wind band based on themes from Euryanthe was performed.

An Indian mountaineer follows in the footsteps of explorers and conservationists in search of an enigmatic animal

When bored, try the following game – I call it “Purr or Roar?”. Take any feline and guess whether it can purr or roar (it cannot do both because purring and roaring require different anatomical structures). Some candidates are easy: any child knows that lions and tigers roar and that a tabby does not. But between the great cats and our pets are numerous other species, from lynxes to panthers, whose anatomy is not so easy to infer. A leopard, for instance? Roar (or growl). The discreet, mountain-dwelling snow leopard? Purr.

The snow leopard is the protagonist of Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi’s first book, a compelling and intimate look at this elusive mountain specialist. An Indian conservationist and mountaineer, Suryawanshi pursues the creature through the Himalayas and Gobi desert. This is a gritty and detailed portrait of an often misunderstood and endangered species in an increasingly hostile, crowded and hot environment.

A dysfunctional family comes together for a funeral in this heartfelt, keenly observed novel

Most of us come upon our family’s dysfunctions gradually, like a door that opens a little wider each year. This uncle, you find out, has had an affair; grandma has a hoarding problem. The cremation of the nuclear family illusion is a cornerstone of literature, especially when it’s hastened by one of those unavoidable core gatherings: weddings, births, funerals. But what happens when there was never any illusion to start with; when the story begins in the ashes?

The delight of Brodie Crellin’s accomplished, surprising debut lies in the way it wrestles with this question, and in its depiction of a family that fails to meet any conventional definition of the word. With a cutting eye and wry humour, Crellin finds fantastic power in the story of three maladjusted people reeling in the face of death, whose relationships to one another are endlessly confronting and complex.

There is friendless Patch, riddled with anxiety, who bursts into tears at the memory of the postman’s suicide and falls victim to a terrible haircut. There is Patch’s father, Robin, who is “gay, yes, mostly, but mutable”. And there is Jude, her domineering, malevolently competent cousin, a playwright who “loves to make an entrance”. They’re bound by the newly deceased Mary: Robin’s ex, Patch’s mother, and Jude’s aunt – a woman who “[didn’t] have a problem with gay men” but was lukewarm on lesbians. Orbiting this “isosceles”, as Jude calls it, is Juliette, Jude’s gleefully moneyed mother, and Mel, Mary’s neighbour. Various other characters swing in and out, all fully realised no matter how brief their appearances, my favourite of which was Mary’s poor, forgotten “empath” labrador, Leonard.

The stage is set, as Jude cruises in from Naples, for a fraught collision of past and present. As the funeral draws closer and tensions simmer, Crellin juggles the minutiae of death – chopping vegetables, arranging memorial photos – with fragmented recollections of messy family history. It’s rare to read a novel that can skip in and out of so many points of view and keep the different styles of narration intact. Yet even with regular flashbacks, A Sense of Occasion feels remarkably natural thanks to Crellin’s light touch, especially in the arch, zippy dialogue. There are shades of classic mid-century stories, particularly Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding, and some of the caustic social wit of Edward St Aubyn’s Melrose chronicles, but the boldness feels entirely modern.

It’s a joy, too, to read fiction that understands sex so well, and is neither sentimental nor sleazy. Crellin conveys the importance of sex as a vehicle for each character’s foibles and desires; as a shadowy place where so much can be manipulated and communicated. The book summons up a kaleidoscope of erotic experience across the spectrum, sometimes hot and sometimes ridiculous, including a quasi-incestuous relationship rendered with nuance and consideration.

If the novel leans a little hard on Jude and her mother, Juliette, for its class critiques, it’s easily forgiven on account of just how much fun it is to watch these characters crash into each other, and for the deftly nasty one-liners that they toss out. “Patch lacked the confidence conferred by a private education,” Jude thinks smugly. “But she could also say that Patch was simply less intelligent.” And yet the story never veers into mean-spirited satire, largely thanks to Patch herself, the grief-stricken daughter, who is the heartbeat of the novel. Perennially misunderstood and underestimated – including by her own mother, when she was alive – Patch is awkward but raw, a keen observer of herself and others.

There is immense pleasure and vitality – and ultimately a great deal of tenderness – in A Sense of Occasion’s depiction of flawed, strange people who love badly, and can’t help but get in the way of themselves over and over again. After all, as George Bernard Shaw wrote, “If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”

Written by a US army veteran, this novel of courage and cruelty during the first world war is filled with unsettlingly authoritative depictions of violence – but its characters are less believable

Kevin Powers’s fourth novel marks a return to the themes and subject matter of his acclaimed debut The Yellow Birds, winner of the 2012 Guardian first book award. Through the lives of its central characters, it explores the courage, folly, cruelty and absurdity involved in war, and the challenges of adjusting to civilian life afterwards. But while The Yellow Birds focused on the experience of US soldiers fighting in Iraq, where Powers himself served between 2003 and 2004, Children of the Wild is set amid the carnage of the first world war.

It follows the fortunes of two young men from a remote valley in Virginia. Roy is the arrogant young heir to a wealthy local landowner; Ennis is an orphan of unknown origin who has been living, like a character in a fairytale, in a shack on the top of a mountain. Ennis and Roy are first linked in a love triangle when Ennis is lured off his mountain top by his desire for Samantha, the daughter of the local minister, whose eyes have the “lustre of smoky quartz”. Roy has expected to marry Samantha, but she chooses feral Ennis. Roy accepts the setback remarkably swiftly, transferring his affections to Esther, the wealthy and shallow sister of his college roommate, Fintan. Roy and Ennis settle their differences with a mighty punch-up that cements an unlikely friendship between them.

From an ashram in India to an ayahuasca ceremony in Peru, a travel writer searches for meaning after the death of his wife

In this moving, sometimes grandiloquent grief-memoir-cum-travelogue, Rory MacLean pairs an affinity for new-age thinking with a habit of loftily holding forth (“none of us are created for naught”, “love can but lead to truth”) and a proclivity for arresting one-liners (“I watched gods walk on fire”). In his search for meaning in the five years after his wife’s untimely death from cancer, he shows himself to be both refreshingly broad-minded and unnecessarily crotchety, like a more cantankerous Michael Palin.

MacLean’s work as a travel writer has taken him across the world, whether flying a handbuilt plane over Crete or riding shotgun with a drug warlord in Burma. This is his first book since losing Katrin, for 32 years the “fixed point” in his life, whose final weeks and moments he describes tenderly. Unable to process her death, he turns to travel to seek out “thin places”: áiteanna tanaí in Celtic mythology, where the veil between worlds is porous. Starting in Jerusalem, his quest takes him to more than a dozen sacred locations, including an ashram in India, a Native American community in South Dakota, an “excruciating” Vipassanā retreat in Suffolk and, inevitably, an ayahuasca ceremony in Peru.

Big developers are discovering that the technical progress of photorealism doesn’t always translate into the creative spark that gives gamers joy – and keeps them playing

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Last week, Asha Sharma, the new head of Xbox, laid out her vision for the future of the console and interestingly, the two titles she picked out as potential areas of growth were Minecraft and Candy Crush Saga – games that don’t exactly scream next-generation entertainment. Neither relies on hyper-realistic visuals, which is the north star that games consoles and gaming PCs have been aiming at for the past 40 years. They are, instead, well-designed, well-loved franchises that you can play and enjoy on almost any PC, console or phone.

The fact is, the quest for visual hyperrealism is breaking the games industry. It’s becoming more and more expensive to put high-end graphics hardware into machines thanks to demand from the AI sector; at the same time, creating superrealistic visuals is an incredibly expensive and complex part of game development, leading to longer development periods. GTA VI, for example, has taken at least eight years to develop and is rumoured to have cost between $1bn and $2bn. By my back-of-an-envelope calculations, that’s around four times more than GTA V. Admittedly, the detail on everything, from the characters’ faces, to the cars, to the cityscapes, is astonishing. But will it be four times better than GTA V? Will it be four times more fun?

Since Stardew Valley rejuvenated the farming sim genre a decade ago, games like Fields of Mistria are capitalising on its popularity with their own special touches

Farming simulator games deliver on an escapist fantasy: going off-grid from the modern work grind, in exchange for charming small-town life and a farm to call your own. While these games have had dedicated fans since the days of Harvest Moon, the most popular today, Stardew Valley, contemporised the genre with a larger range of activities and lovable townspeople to befriend and romance. Created in 2016 by independent developer Eric Barone, it has now sold more than 50m copies and become the mould for so many other indie farming sims.

Fields of Mistria is one of these farming sims in a post-Stardew world – though it updates the core formula. Created by independent developer NPC Studio, Fields of Mistria has already proven popular: it debuted in early access (a pre-release version of the game meant for early players to find bugs and give feedback) for PC players on Steam in August 2024, and in the first month the game racked up more than 4m player hours. It’s for a good reason: Mistria satisfies all of those same farming sim desires but with more expansive character creation and a story steeped in magic.

Denkiworks’ debut lets players pull off tricks and pull pints in a stunning, Japan-inspired setting

A freeloading tanuki, mounting debt, and a town full of possibilities will sound familiar to fans of Animal Crossing. Alas, while you won’t find accountability from Tom Nook, Kyoto-based studio Denkiworks has stepped in to heal your financial trauma with a BMX-filled adventure in which a mammal finally pays the price for their years of bad behaviour. “Even Japanese people ask why it’s a tanuki,” jokes Liam Edwards, a game designer at Denkiworks. “They have such a mythological background to them; they’re almost like dragons in terms of their mythology.”

In Tanuki: Pon’s Summer, you play as an adorable but irresponsible critter named Pon, who’s bled the coffers of the local shrine – his home – dry by buying video games and snack food instead of preparing for its semicentennial matsuri. As a result, the shrine is in total disrepair, and important architecture and cultural artefacts – such as the ema stand and the chōzuya – are left cracked and broken, unbefitting a festival half a century in the making.

Switch 2, PlayStation 5, PC; House House
The creators of Untitled Goose Game return with an online, open-world adventure that delivers slapstick silliness and bucolic majesty in nearly equal measure

Radiant sunsets glinting on lapping waves; bushland valleys that beckon with secrets; modernist buildings sat atop craggy ridges: Big Walk’s setting is as arresting as it is beguiling – a kind of architectural fever dream transplanted to a handsome Australian wilderness – but it is the images created by players that lodge deepest in the mind. Here’s one that has stuck with me: in the black of night, cicadas kicking up an almighty din, I had lost my partner. Panic. Despair. Fear. Then, there in the far distance, I saw him signalling in my direction. He was relentlessly spamming a gigantic, ball-shaped lamp on and off, the ground around him flicking from inky dark to warm pastel pink and back again, like a single Christmas light blinking from afar.

This kind of encounter is common in Big Walk, the brilliant and whimsical new online co-op puzzler from House House, the Melbourne-based studio behind the 2019 viral hit, Untitled Goose Game. Rather than playing as a honking, mischief-making goose as you do in that game, you are a bug-eyed, gangly limbed kind of bird person (think Pingu as drawn by Mondrian) for whom getting separated from your mates is all part of the fun. That’s somewhat because this rugged terrain is dense with vegetation and cliffs to fall down, and also because the game makes ingenious use of proximity and direction-based voice audio. Step out of earshot of your party and you will find it difficult to call for one another (unless, of course, you’ve picked up a Fisher-Price-like walkie-talkie).

Southbank Centre, London
A part-canine cop, a villainous cat and a psychokinetic butterflyfish burst into song as the wildly popular children’s books are adapted for the stage

Perhaps, if you don’t have a child in primary school, you will be blissfully unaware of Dog Man, Dav Pilkey’s series of graphic novels about a cop who – after a terrible injury – has his dog’s head sewn on to his own body, thereby creating a crime-fighting canine/human crossbreed. But if you’ve been swept up by the phenomenon – and Dog Man is a phenomenon, selling more than 70m copies in the decade since the first book was published – then you will know that this mutt has some serious star power: there’s a Dog Man film, video game, board game … and now a musical, arriving in the UK after off-Broadway success.

The Dog Man books are chaotic, hilarious and full of pathos, but writer/lyricist Kevin Del Aguila and composer Brad Alexander’s show leans largely on the former. There’s slapstick humour and jokes about butt-sniffing. When Dog Man is asked how his day is going, he replies: “Ruff!” It’s aimed at the younger end of Pilkey’s readership, which is confusing as there are also Dickens references.

Troubadour Wembley Park theatre, London
Alexandra Burke is valiant in the leading role but the superstar’s story is squandered in this sprawling and uneven show

In the pantheon of soul divas, Chaka Khan is surely one of the fiercest. With a soaring, multioctave vocal range that earned accolades from Aretha Franklin and Miles Davis, as well as a chequered personal life and a stint in the Black Panthers alongside Fred Hampton, Khan’s story has long felt ripe for immortalisation in a jukebox musical.

I’m Every Woman features X Factor winner Alexandra Burke in the lead role, with a book by Khan’s own creative director, Nia T Hill. Running just shy of three hours, it is a gargantuan undertaking of two uneven parts.

Forget cheesy acts, these days cruise ships boast the cutting edge tech to stage hip West End productions and Olivier award-winning musicals – and young people are loving it

The phrase “cruise ship entertainment” conjures vivid images, even to those who have never set foot on an oceangoing vessel. Starry backcloths, sequined frocks, tunes and croons from yesteryear, the lite-ent values of the 1970s preserved in aspic. Perhaps those stereotypes held water way back when the singer Jane McDonald ruled the reality TV waves. But – lazy thinking ahoy! – do they still?

Look at the shows currently a-sail on the high seas, from the Olivier award-winning 9/11 musical Come from Away, to hip theatre-maker Emma Rice’s acclaimed Brief Encounter. And look at the onboard production values, which “way surpass what you see in London theatres”, says Susannah Daley of Peel Entertainment, which provides shows for the Ambassador cruise line. “These ships are now being built with theatre in mind, to a really high spec, to hold between 600 and 1,000 people. What can be produced in them is pretty phenomenal.” Producer David Pugh, a veteran of the West End who has collaborated with Cunard cruises, says: “These are probably the most technical theatres, in terms of lighting and sound, that you’ve ever seen outside of the best theatres in the world.”

Drew McOnie skipped school to audition for the original. It launched his astonishing career. Now he’s getting his claws into a no-pussyfooting version of the classic hit

At the age of 17, Drew McOnie was so determined to be in the musical Cats that he snuck out of school to audition. Four days later, he was on a flight to Germany to join the international production. (Luckily, he was at a performing arts school and they forgave him.) It was a life-changing moment: at that point, McOnie’s stellar career as a dancer, Olivier award-winning choreographer and director began – and, 23 years later, it’s all about to come full circle. McOnie has created his own version of the musical he’s been obsessed with since childhood.

For any dancer growing up in the 1980s and 90s, Cats was the musical: dance wasn’t just an accompaniment, but instrumental to the show. Gillian Lynne’s original choreography is iconic – much copied by local dance schools and student shows of the era. Lynne was a force of nature, still doing the splits at 88, four years before she died in 2018. For McOnie, artistic director at Regent’s Park Open Air theatre and famed for his blazing choreography in Jesus Christ Superstar, it takes some nerve to remake it.

‘The men in this jail in Bulgaria used to adopt these stray kittens. But pets can be a problem. They get killed as punishment or for revenge’

Belene prison, in northern Bulgaria on the border with Romania, is the most heavily guarded facility of its type in my country. It is on an island, so escape is near impossible, and has the largest number of people serving life sentences for murder in any Bulgarian prison.

This image describes a sad, terrible story. There are a lot of stray cats on the island, as well as pigeons and mosquitoes. The prisoners used to adopt stray kittens and keep them as pets. When I started my project, For the Grace of God, at the prison, many prisoners had pet cats. But in a prison, this can become a problem – prisoners kill each other’s pets as punishment or for revenge. So now it’s forbidden. It’s even the same with flowers – some think of the flowers as friends, they nurture and grow them in the sun, but then other prisoners destroy them. Anything a prisoner can create a relationship with can be destroyed. Part of their punishment is to be alone, without any family, or any attachments to anything.

From Obsession to Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a new wave of movies are ditching minimalism for retro settings

The indie-horror hit films Obsession and Backrooms opened this summer’s movie season with a bang, each grossing hundreds of millions of dollars and turning out legions of younger moviegoers. Many have pointed out the similarity between the films: both were made for comparatively minuscule budgets by gen Z directors – Curry Barker and Kane Parsons – who first rose to prominence on YouTube.

Fewer people are talking about the other quality the two movies share: a steady stream of analogue props and production design that plunges you into some bygone pre-digital era. Obsession’s lead characters Bear and Nikki work at a mom-and-pop music store, take rides in Bear’s vintage station wagon and the plot centers around a kitschy, old-fashioned gag gift. In Backrooms, Mary hawks her self-help cassette tapes on late-night infomercials, Clark smacks his TV to adjust the fuzzy signal – in the HDTV age, no one has done this for decades – and the wall-to-wall carpeted, ceiling-tiled backrooms look straight out of a long-abandoned office park on the side of the highway.

A new blog post by the fantasy writer has outlined his recent difficulties, as fans continue to speculate on the elusive sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series

George RR Martin has opened up about experiencing depression during a “stressful” and “overwhelming” year, as readers continue to await the long-delayed sixth instalment of his A Song of Ice and Fire series.

The 77-year-old American author, whose fantasy novels shaped and inspired the hit HBO television series Game of Thrones, wrote candidly about his recent difficulties in his first personal blog post for almost six months.

A new exhibition showcases the Italian fashion photographer’s technical mastery, where light, blur and even mistakes contribute to an image’s beauty

The new stars of TikTok have eight furry legs and eight soulful eyes. But are they quite as adorable as real puppies?

Name: Web puppies.

Age: Pet jumping spiders typically live for one to three years.

Paraquat is banned in over 70 countries. Some farmers and their families in Hebron believe the pesticide is causing Parkinson’s disease and are demanding that New York ban it

Gordon Chaplin gingerly stepped out of the car at the top of the steep hill behind his farmhouse, sporting a bandage on his hand from a fall the day before. He gripped his cane as he shuffled through the knee-high grass. He stopped every few feet to catch his breath, leaning on his caregiver for support.

Looking out at the distant Adirondacks and Catskill mountains, he thought back to the years when he could run up the hill with ease.

From capsule to bean-to-cup, espresso to filter, these are the coffee makers our aficionado rates the highest from his test of 30

• The best espresso machines to release your inner barista

When it comes to something as earth-shatteringly important as coffee, everyone has an opinion. Some crave a single perfect shot of espresso, while others seek the milkiest latte; some love Starbucks and others, well, don’t. That’s why the idea of there being a single best coffee machine is fanciful – everyone’s idea of the perfect coffee couldn’t be more different.

As a selfless service to coffee drinkers everywhere, I’ve spent the past two years researching and trialling coffee machines to produce a shortlist of tried-and-tested recommendations. The list spans all the main types of coffee maker: manual espresso, filter, bean-to-cup and capsule. (Not sure what all of this means? Read our dedicated guide to the different types of coffee machine.)

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

• The best anti-ageing creams, serums and treatments

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

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

Best LED mask overall:
CurrentBody Multi Light Therapy LED mask

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

They’re perfect for time-poor cooks, but which deserves your counter space? From combi models to smart designs, here’s what our expert recommends

• The best air fryers

If you’re at a restaurant and hear a ping a couple of minutes before your meal arrives at your table, it’s unlikely to be a good sign. But microwave ovens are a brilliant tool in the home kitchen. They’re fearsomely fast at heating up – or even cooking – food when you’re time-poor and lacking the energy to make something wholesome after a hard day at work. And in hot weather, cooking by microwave isn’t just quick: it also won’t warm your home.

Microwaves work best for heating food with a high water content (they make the water molecules in food vibrate to create heat). However, before testing, I asked around to find out what people use theirs for most, with a view to using this information to shape my tests. I learned a few things – like lots of people eat mug cakes. Who knew? And that wheat bags are a popular alternative to hot-water bottles. But the majority of folk use their microwave for reheating cold cuppas, defrosting frozen batch-cooked meals, warming food, popping microwave popcorn – and, of course, cooking jacket potatoes more quickly. I used these insights to shape my testing.

Most suitcases look hardwearing, but which ones actually are? We dropped bestselling brands’ luggage from a ladder to find out …

• The best carry-on luggage

A suitcase is like the portrait in the traveller’s attic, accumulating more than its fair share of knocks and scrapes while we refresh ourselves on the road. We trundle them over cobbles, see them tumble from luggage racks on the train – and if we choose to fly, there’s a fair chance they’ll be mishandled before we reunite at the carousel.

For our testing, we pushed 11 suitcases to the limit by dropping them on to a hard surface, as if they’d been fumbled by a baggage handler. Air travel is especially tough on suitcases, so you might get away with choosing a less-resilient case if you make the climate-conscious choice to travel by rail or sea.

This powerhouse ingredient injects umami and depth of flavour into a simple green sauce. Come on, chop-chop!

The oil from a tin of anchovies is a powerhouse larder ingredient that you possibly never knew existed. It’s a flavour bomb that carries all the delicious flavour compounds of the fish themselves, especially if you want to add their wonderful flavour to a dish but want to save the anchovies to serve separately or as a garnish.

This salsa verde is based on Giorgio Locatelli’s in his book Made in Italy, and it’s made with a knife rather than a blender. Chopping by hand gives it a much better texture, especially when you’re also using the stalks, which a blender can turn fibrous. The boiled egg is optional but traditional, and helps emulsify the sauce. Locatelli uses just the yolk, but I’ve used the whole egg, not least to avoid the faff of finding a use for the spare white. This sauce is incredible with lamb or mutton and very good with grilled fish.

Two inspiring summer dishes to enjoy in the sunshine: grilled peaches with green beans and mozzarella, and gnudi in a roast tomato sauce

At Cicoria, peaches, green beans and tomatoes are among our favourites ingredients right now, inspiring dishes that celebrate freshness and flavour. The restaurant is perched at the top of the Royal Opera House in London, so our dining room is flooded with sunlight throughout the day, which is just as well because these vibrant, simple dishes are best enjoyed in the sunshine.

From the cost of milk and chocolate to diesel and electricity, every part of producing the summer treat has been hit by the climate crisis and other shocks

Name: Iceflation.

Appearance: An ice-cold rip-off, with a Flake on top.

There is no exact plant-based substitute – the ideal option will depend on the dish. But, ultimately, it’s easiest to choose a recipe that doesn’t require gelatine

How do I go about substituting gelatine sheets for a vegetarian setting agent?
Sarah, Aberdeen
“The truth is, there’s no exact substitute for gelatine, because it has an incredibly unique texture,” says Richard Phillips, head of pastry at Timberyard in Edinburgh. Sure, there are plenty of plant-based gelling agents out there – “agar-agar [or just agar], gellan gum, pectin, carrageenan, locust bean gum, vege-gel… the list goes on,” says Phillips – but the result will never quite be the same.

“The temperature you have to use them at is different [to gelatine],” says Philip Khoury, author of Beyond Baking, so his usual workaround is to simply formulate recipes that don’t use gelling agents. Now, that’s all well and good when you’re a pastry chef, but what about the rest of us? “If, for example, I’m making a thick, pipeable cream, then I’ll use cornflour,” says Khoury, and just manipulate it to get different textures. Let’s take the panna cotta and creme brulee recipes in his first book, A New Way to Bake, as an example: “You get two very different textures from essentially the same recipe. The only difference being that if you pour the custard into a tray and chill it, it will set, whereas if you beat it with a whisk, it will turn into this luscious, creamy texture that’s just set.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

He could seem judgmental, even moody. But the whole neighbourhood mourned when this remarkable moggy went to meet his maker

When my cat Eric passed away from stomach cancer in 2001, I wasn’t sure I would ever be ready to have a pet again. But a few months later I was given another cat, Karl, by an old friend from Camberwell College of Arts in south London, who was moving back to Germany. I had known Karl when I was a student there, where he had been mates with Eric. Karl, an unassuming brown tabby with a judgmental glare, took me back to living in student halls in the 90s.

Karl was perhaps the most average-looking tabby in south London, but on my quiet street he became a legend of sorts. He accompanied my children and me on school runs. He would walk ahead with his belly swinging and take us to the top of the road. There he would wait until I dropped off the children and escort me back home.

Vivian and Thomas both left physically unfulfilling marriages and are rediscovering their sex drives in later life

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

Since menopause and being with Thomas, my interest in sex is much higher

A prospective Restore Britain voter and a Green-supporting Chinese immigrant found some common ground over small-boat crossings, but where did they land on foxhunting?

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

Phill, 58, Hertfordshire

Occupation Stairlift surveyor

Rachel forked out £700 for beauty treatments, Kojo confessed to a £25 cigarette habit, and Jake indulged his love of fancy timepieces. Were their other halves forgiving or furious?

Rachel and Kojo, Northampton

Many UK workers have cash in multiple schemes – should you roll them into one? There are pros and cons

How many pensions do you have? In the days of a job for life, many people had just two: the state pension and the one offered by their employer. But a combination of people changing jobs more often and rules that force employers to enrol workers into schemes automatically, means you are likely to end up with more.

The number of people saving into a private sector workplace pension has doubled since 2012 to reach 23 million, according to the Pensions Regulator, largely because of “auto-enrolment”. On top of that, millions of people have personal pensions and self-invested private pensions (Sipps). And some will have all three.

Reader expresses consternation after enforcement officer issues penalty notice outside station in London

I was outside London Waterloo railway station and was looking for a bin to dispose of an empty coffee cup.

The only bin I could see was completely full, but there was a plastic bag containing rubbish at the base.

Criminals hope by using threats of enforcement action, people will panic and click link to bogus parking app site

You use parking apps a lot – you have several on your phone – but it is not always straightforward. Sometimes there is a lack of reliable mobile signal, or the app crashes or behaves oddly, or it does not seem to want to accept your bank card.

Also, it is sometimes hard to keep track of which apps you have used when. So when you receive a text from RingGo saying you owe it money, you are not totally surprised.

From melted electric sockets to shabby alternatives, readers tell of dealings with platform when things go wrong

Jane Ripley* spent some time researching the best apartment to stay in for her family’s trip to Batumi in Georgia, eventually settling on one with an “exceptional” rating on Booking.com.

But when the Ripleys arrived at 11pm on the first day, they were directed to another property that was shabby and had stains on the furniture and ceiling.

Whether you’re nursing a joint, have an existing condition or just don’t feel like running, these exercises help get your cardio in

The runner’s high might be contagious. In 2024, the fitness tracking app Strava recorded a 59% increase in users attending social running events and run clubs globally. Applications for London’s marathon have increased 40% since 2024, while New York City’s received about 20% more applicants this year. Overall, an estimated 56 million Americans regularly run on a treadmill and 51 million jog, according to a report from the Sports and Fitness Industry Association.

But running has a reputation for being rough on our joints. There is some good news for those chasing the high: one 2023 study found little relationship between recreational running and arthritis of the hip or knee, and another suggests that the impact of running causes cartilage to adapt, fortify and thicken over time.

From the 47-year-old runner who needs a double hip replacement to the 27-year-old CrossFitter with a ruptured ACL, those who push their bodies too hard often regret it. What are the lessons for the rest of us?

Jonathan Price has always been active and exercise-focused. Growing up in south Wales, rugby was his first love. Through school, university and beyond, he also surfed, rowed, played squash and ran competitively – on track, in 10k races and cross-country. Career and family demands meant that much of this fell away in later years, but the running stuck. He found time for marathons, half marathons – “I’d run a half marathon every weekend just for fun,” he says – and, through the working week, regular 30- or 40-minute runs to manage stress and clear his head. “I travel a lot for work,” says Price, now 50, a company CEO. “With running, all you need is a pair of running shoes and you can do it anywhere.”

By his mid-40s, though, Price’s body was beginning to object. He wasn’t recovering so well. “I could run just fine but I’d be in pain for two or three days afterwards,” he says. On top of this, every six months or so, his lower back seemed to seize up completely. A physiotherapist thought it was “tight hip flexors” and pointed Price towards “hip opening” exercises, designed to reduce stiffness and increase range of motion. Someone else prescribed him muscle relaxants, but the pain only deepened, and his range of movement continued to dip. Finally, in the summer of 2023, a chance encounter with a hip surgeon led to the diagnosis of osteoarthritis and, at the end of that year, Price, then 47, had a double hip replacement.

Want to lower your temperature and drift off to sleep quicker? An ice-cold shower might seem the best solution, but the truth is more complicated

It’s another sticky summer evening. You’re too hot to sleep. Surely an ice-cold shower is the best way to cool off and drift away quicker? Not really, says Mike Tipton, a professor of human and applied physiology at the University of Portsmouth.

“If you’re trying to go to sleep, the last thing you want to do is go into a freezing cold shower,” he says. The shock of cold water immersion causes the body to produce adrenaline and cortisol, stress hormones designed to keep us alert. “That’s just about the last thing you want before you go to bed.”

Menstrual and digestive discomfort often coincide, and a researcher who has been looking in to it for a decade tells us what she learned

Every period, right on schedule: the cramps arrive, and right behind them, the urgent need to poop.

If this is your experience, you’re in good company: in one study, 73% of healthy premenopausal women reported at least one significant gastrointestinal symptom in the days before or during their period. Abdominal pain and diarrhea were the most common complaints, but women reported nausea and constipation too.

Want to brighten dark circles without accentuating wrinkles? You’re not alone – this is the most-asked makeup question and here is the answer

The most common makeup question asked by women over 35 is this: what’s a good undereye concealer that won’t make lines and wrinkles look cakey and dry? I’m getting to them, I promise. But first, I must say that prep is key – dry, flaky skin will only look more so under makeup, so undereyes should first be hydrated and smoothed with a good, moisturising skincare routine. Only then can a concealer get on with the business of brightening and camouflaging.

Givenchy’s Prisme Libre Skin-Caring Concealer (£37) is my most recommended for fortysomethings and beyond, regardless of skin type. It’s perfectly balanced in that it’s moisturising and softening, but not so much so that it slips and slides and doesn’t deliver on lasting coverage – it has just enough heft. It works as well on the face as it does under eyes and stays fresh looking all day.

Whether you’re in full summer mode or quietly planning for autumn, our fashion expert’s monthly picks will carry you stylishly between the two

• How to create the perfect women’s holiday capsule wardrobe

August: do you buy for the holiday you’ll be melting through this month, or the one you’ll be pretending to enjoy in a jumper come October? Answers on a postcard, please! The key to staying (relatively) sane in silly season is to embrace the contradictions.

Read on for the holiday-coded necklace I’ve fallen in love with and the elegant leather handbag I’m dreaming of when I hang up my straw basket. Plus, a lace camisole and a cosy jumper – and the absolute sweetest grip socks for my pilates girlies.

Private White VC’s James Eden says PM should not be criticised for wearing a high-quality British-made brand

It has not yet been two weeks since James Eden, the founder of the Manchester men’s clothier Private White VC, saw one of his best-known customers move in to No 10 Downing Street.

In any sane world the man who makes the prime minister’s jackets would be popping open the champagne. His garments have been seen by millions of people and described by journalists all over the world writing about Burnham’s buttoned-down style.

Celebrities including Charli xcx and Gabbriette and avant-garde brands honour tradition while also rejecting it

If a wedding day brings to mind a bride dressed in a big white dress, the styles coming down the aisle in the near future may strike you as a little different. Whether it is through celebrity references, or new brands, wedding gowns are entering a more experimental era.

For Charli xcx’s marriage to the 1975 drummer George Daniel last year, the bride wore a minidress and sunglasses.

From Calais to Le Touquet, the Côte d’Opale is home to thriving fishing ports, grand old seaside resorts and restaurants serving the freshest seafood

Stellio Lestienne, chef at La Matelote in Boulogne’s harbour, shows me his shopping list as we browse the city’s daily morning fish market. He wants to pick up some crab and sole, which are in season, but his usual lobster fisher is still out on his boat, so he’ll have to wait a bit for that. Although I’ve been a regular visitor to both Boulogne and the surrounding Hauts-de-France region for about 30 years, this is my first time in the fish market. Now I’m kicking myself for all that lost time.

It’s not very big, nor is it remotely picturesque, stretching along a nondescript car park in the port. But it does have a fantastic selection of fish and seafood, both from fishers (pêcheurs artisans in light-blue stalls) and retailers (commerçants in dark blue). And it’s considerably cheaper than other fish markets I’ve seen. “People come here from the UK with cool bags to do their shopping,” Stellio says, pointing to a man doing that very thing. I spot filleted roussettes (dogfish) going for €2 each. At another stall, a man deftly slices through a grotesque-looking monkfish, cutting out the prized cheeks.

Globetrotter and TV presenter Alice Morrison trades in her camels and backup team for wild camping in one of Scotland’s most beautiful glens

‘I miss my camels. I miss the sun. I miss the vast emptiness of the desert plains …” These are my thoughts as I trudge through thick conifer plantations and my fifth consecutive hour of rain at the start of the Affric Kintail Way in the Scottish Highlands.

My last big adventure was a world first. I became the first recorded person to walk the full length of Saudi Arabia, north to south, from Jordan to Yemen. It took three years to organise, then 112 days of walking half a marathon a day, and I had a backup team plus Juicy and Lulu, my naughty but nice camels.

From Blackpool to Bournemouth, these quintessentially British institutions celebrate a lot more than fish and chips and amusement arcades

Perched in our glass-fronted eyrie, 300 metres out to sea, we watch a murmuration of starlings rise and fall and swoop around us. When the show is over, we turn our attention to the food. I have a bespoke vegan menu based on the best early summer ingredients: jersey royals, asparagus, strawberries. My boyfriend orders off the weekly changing à la carte: slow-cooked beef dumplings followed by butter-poached halibut.

We are at Ebb, a restaurant at the end of the pier in Worthing, West Sussex, which opened in May. Its art-deco design and fine-dining dishes are a far cry from the fish-and-chip shops and ice-cream parlours more commonly found on seaside piers. But traditionalists need not despair: downstairs at Perch on the Pier, fish and chips – as well as tofish (tofu) and chips – are always on the menu, with a knickerbocker glory to round things off in fine retro style.

Falling in love with a novel motivated these five travel writers to immerse themselves in locations from the Yukon and Kyrgyzstan to the Côte d’Azur

Inspired by Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express

Growing up in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, romance was frowned upon – as was much of my Uyghur culture. But one day, exploring a strange house, I found a gateway to both worlds

Many people have a book that changes their life. For me and my wife, one book in particular changed our destinies for ever. We have been in love since we were teenagers, and today we are happily married – all because I accidentally discovered a forbidden novel in someone else’s house.

It was a hot summer’s evening in 2009, in Kumul, Xinjiang. I was 16 and my father insisted I accompany him to visit a distant relative, where they would spend hours chatting about the old days and feasting as if they hadn’t eaten in years. As the well-behaved teenager I tried to be, I sat politely, nodding at their stories and pretending to absorb their “life lessons”, attempting to hide my boredom. The living room, with its small windows and bright lighting, was unbearable.

It’s easy to lose your cool when you’re crammed into a train, bus or plane with a bunch of strangers and one of them is playing music without headphones or fighting you for the armrest. Here are the rules everyone should be following

Public transport can be a hot, noisy, cramped and stressful environment – and that’s before you add in people with pungent food, questionable hygiene and giant backpacks. Most of us know the general rules – though we don’t all follow them – about letting people off first, not putting bags on seats, where to stand on escalators and offering your seat to others. But what about the vaguer conventions? How can you avoid chatty passengers? Or manspreaders? Is it sometimes OK to put your feet on the seats? (Spoiler: it’s not.) Here, three etiquette experts show us the way to public transport propriety.

Fuelled by TikTok and street dance battles, the coupé-décalé offshoot is latest expression of Côte d’Ivoire’s pop culture

The 400-strong crowd, perched on plastic chairs and wooden benches in Abidjan’s Yopougon-Selmer neighbourhood, roared with approval as Sauce Graine twisted and turned on the spot with breathtaking speed and dexterity.

The dancer, named after the Ivorian palm nut delicacy, was competing in a series of street dance battles set to biama, a frenetic offshoot of coupé-décalé, a type of percussive dance music popular across west Africa that originated in Côte d’Ivoire around the turn of the century.

It took a heatwave to get me to shed my shame and my sleeves, but now there’s no stopping me. Life is cooler in every way

‘Aren’t you hot in that?” was the question that plagued my summers as a teenager. I would never bare my arms; instead, I would cover up with a trusty black cardigan. Even T-shirts felt too revealing, too tight on the arm, too clinging to the body. I needed layers to feel comfortable. Well, comfortable isn’t the right word. I was never comfortable, despite telling everyone: “No, I’m not hot. I don’t really feel the heat.”

In my 20s and 30s, I collected a hot-weather capsule wardrobe of T-shirt dresses in various sizes, all baggy and sleeved. But why? I’m someone who should know better. I’ve read the books, I’ve shared the memes. I know, from body-positivity activists, that you don’t have to deny yourself the joy of being at the beach or pool just because a magazine tells you you have to get yourself “beach-body ready”: slimmer, hairless, perfect.

The N-Dubz and X Factor star’s career went into freefall after an elaborate sting by the Sun on Sunday, and she’s still campaigning for tougher press regulation. But will it work?

Late last year, Tulisa Contostavlos took a good look at her life. Her relationship had come to an end and she found herself in her late 30s (she’s 38 now), wondering what next. “I started thinking about all the things I’d never done,” she says. At 20, life had got weird – Contostavlos was in the successful hip-hop group N-Dubz and became an adult just as the fame and money started coming in. By 24, she was a judge on the Saturday night TV show X Factor. If that hadn’t happened, she thinks she might have become an archaeologist – she’s obsessed with ancient history. And so last year she went travelling, to Egypt to see the pyramids, and to Peru to visit Machu Picchu.

There were other, bigger changes. She gave up smoking and started having therapy for the first time. Contostavlos sat down, she says, and “I wrote a list of what my ‘greatest self’ looked like – where she’d go, how she thought, how she felt, the things she would do. I started implementing every single thing on that list and I found through doing that, you just become her – it is actually that simple. It just takes effort and discipline.” Her greatest self, she says, “is a person of action, and she turns lemons into lemon cake”. It got her thinking about the criminal trial that left her career in freefall. “I was like, right, let’s try to do something.”

Turritopsis dohrnii has the ability to turn back into a baby jellyfish and grow up all over again

• Revealed: the top ten invertebrates of the year

Immortality is generally considered the realm of the gods or science fiction, a fantasy that’s actively pursued by tech entrepreneurs in macabre experiments that include injecting “young blood”, cryopreservation, or resurrection in an AI afterlife.

But one ethereal, thimble-shaped jellyfish has already cracked the code.

It’s Invertebrate of the Year again! From 3-12 August, every day we will be profiling one of the thousands of amazing invertebrates that our readers have nominated, and then, when you have got to hear about all of them, we will open the voting so that you can choose your favourites. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with thoughts and ideas: email us at environment.desk@theguardian.com with Invertebrate in the subject line.

This evening service from London to Crewe is hot, sweaty and heaving with people, many having to stand or sit in the gangways

The 5.46pm train from London Euston to Crewe is the low point of Nikhil Patel’s week. “I’ve never gotten a seat. I always stand up even when I get here early,” says the 22-year-old, struggling to keep his balance while the gangway underneath sways from side to side.

Painfully for Patel, who is commuting back and forth to the capital for a computer science internship, it’s the first leg of a three-hour journey home to Walsall. He grabs the back of a chair to remain steady but says he’s just thankful that the train has left on time – and that it’s even on the move at all.

We would like to hear from people for whom the film has increased their interest in poetry or classics in general

UK poetry sales are on course to reach a record high this year, thanks to the success of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey.

We would like to hear from people for whom the film has piqued their interest in Homer’s poetry. Has it led to a greater interest in classics or poetry in general? Tell us below.

The government has announced plans to create thousands more apprenticeships. We want to hear from employers about their experiences of recruiting apprentices

The government has announced plans to create thousands more apprenticeships in England as part of wider reforms to technical and vocational education.

We’d like to hear from employers who have taken on apprentices. What has your experience been like? Have apprentices benefited your organisation? What have been the biggest challenges? What changes or government support would encourage you to offer more apprenticeship opportunities?

We would like to hear from people who have recently installed renewable energy sources in their home, or considered doing so

Great Britain has recorded more new solar power installations in the first half of this year than in any six-month period since 2011, with most of the new panels going onto household rooftops rather than large-scale solar farms.

The government’s data also shows a rise in households turning to other low-carbon technology: applications to the boiler upgrade scheme, which offers grants for replacing gas boilers with greener alternatives, reached 4,512 last month – up 21% on June last year – with demand for heat pumps expected to climb further in the months ahead.

We would like to hear your experience of using peptides for therapeutic purposes

In recent years there has been a boom in interest in using peptides, from weight loss to anti-ageing and recovery from injury.

These include approved prescription weight-loss medications based on synthetic peptides that mimic natural hormones. However, sales of experimental and unregulated peptides are rising as online sellers tout them as part of a “wellness” regime.

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