Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
This prequel to the TV series has one joust after another, spectacular stagecraft and plenty of modern resonance

During the RSC’s 65 years, numerous Lears have lost their minds and frequent Caesars been slaughtered by their courts. Now, though, a tyrant new to its stages faces both fates. He is King Aerys II Targaryen, ancestor of one warring bloodline in Game of Thrones, the dramatisation of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels that helped TV streamers’ rise to global domination during eight HBO seasons from 2011 to 2019.

Some may balk at an institution named for England’s greatest dramatist staging an American drama franchise. There is, though, a compelling economic imperative: rising costs due to current wars (a frequent problem for Martin’s ancient oligarchs too) and Covid-era debts now exacerbated by paying back government loans means that the RSC could use another big commercial transfer – as its musical Matilda may not be immortal.

After being on the brink of divorce, Antonia and Rob have experienced a radical revival of their sex life

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

The perfect storm of work stress, menopause and raising kids meant our sex life slowly slipped out of view

Black people are more prominent than ever in the UK’s politics and culture. But are they overwhelmingly from the middle class, as Brown argues in his new book? And if so, why isn’t anyone talking about it?

Symeon Brown and David Lammy went to the same primary school in Tottenham, north London. One went on to a selective secondary school, and became the second black person to hold one of Britain’s great offices of state. The other became a journalist who would go on to survey the country’s black professional class more thoroughly than anyone ever had – and who remembers being told by Lammy that he could “never become prime minister, because you sound like where you come from”.

It was 2010, and Brown, interested in politics, was interning for the then Labour backbencher. “And he was right, certainly at the time,” Brown says now.

Whitehall wants to triple their number in the UK. Yet in Slough, I saw the impact they’re having on communities

Amid headlines about the UK’s drought, Europe’s wildfires and impossible global temperatures, it was 28C when I arrived in Slough last Monday. I was there to look around Slough Trading Estate, a place that might once have conjured up images of the TV comedy The Office, many of whose laughs came at the expense of this overgrown patch of suburbia, 20-odd miles west of London.

But these days, this area of town – an incongruous mixture of old-school businesses such as Mr Clutch and Angling Direct, and vast, metal-clad leviathans that look like something pulled from JG Ballard – has become a byword for the constant expansion of datacentres, those hulking symbols of the vast computing power that big tech now requires, not least because of the ever-more complex workings of artificial intelligence.

Bombus dahlbomii, a giant ginger bumblebee fondly known as the flying mouse, is in decline in its native Patagonia due to commercial farming

• Revealed: the top 10 invertebrates of the year

We all love bumblebees. Not only are they beautiful, busy and social, they perform pollination services that are crucial for plants, crops and human civilisation.

Any bumblebee would be a worthy winner of invertebrate of the year but a gorgeous giant ginger bumblebee fondly known as the flying mouse? Come on!

US-Iran war has stranded up to 20,000 seafarers, mostly Indian and Filipino crews, with none knowing when the nightmare will end

The panicked crew of a cargo ship broadcast a distress signal late on Monday night from their location in the strait of Hormuz. About 20 nautical miles north of the coast of Oman, the Minoan Pioneer bulk carrier was hit by an unknown projectile, causing a blackout in the engine room and a fire in the accommodation area.

The crew scrambled to put out the blaze and called for help from nearby vessels. When they managed to disembark from the Greek-owned, Liberian-flagged ship on Tuesday morning, they realised the third engineer was missing. Days later, he is yet to be found.

Exclusive: Hamish Falconer wants ‘sense of renewed pace’ in post-Brexit talks while staying within Labour’s red lines

• ‘I was on my honeymoon!’: Hamish Falconer’s surprise call-up to Burnham’s cabinet

The UK will move faster and be more ambitious on achieving closer ties with Europe under Andy Burnham’s government, his new chief post-Brexit negotiator has said.

Hamish Falconer, the new cabinet minister in charge of the EU reset talks, said there was “room to be ambitious” within Labour’s red lines on Europe, which exclude reopening discussions on the single market and customs union, and he would look at the “art of the possible”.

Netanyahu says IDF will not withdraw until Hamas is disarmed and rebuked US pressure to end wars without Israel’s buy-in

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed 15-point peace plan for Gaza in a rare public break with Donald Trump.

In a statement on Sunday, Netanyahu said that he was confronting a “wave of rumours about Israeli weakness and Israeli withdrawals on all fronts” and rebuked US pressure to end wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran without Israel’s buy-in.

PM expected to announce policies to tackle cost of living and indicate intent to help improve country’s high streets

Andy Burnham is to undertake a national tour this coming week as he aims to improve the government’s connection with the British public during his premiership.

The prime minister is expected to announce a set of policies that will help people financially as many struggle with the cost of living, as well as indicate his intent to improve high streets across the country.

Kinahan built boxing empire while in exile in Dubai but now faces trial in Dublin charged with directing organised crime

A decade after escaping assassination and fleeing into exile, Daniel Kinahan is back in Ireland – but it is not the homecoming he wanted.

The alleged leader of the Kinahan organised crime group was extradited from Dubai in an Irish government jet on Sunday and headed to a huge security operation in Dublin, marking the end of a global game of cat-and-mouse with European, US and Gulf authorities.

Katie and John Meehan say responses to campaign they launched after death of daughter Genevieve must be ‘wake-up call’

The parents of a nine-month-old girl who died after being placed in an unsafe sleeping position at nursery said they feared poor practice may be “rife” across England.

Genevieve Meehan suffocated when she was strapped face down to a beanbag for an hour and 37 minutes at a nursery in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, in May 2022.

Rukhsar Ahmed was recently elected an MP in Pakistan while on bail over alleged child rape in 1990s Manchester

A grooming gang suspect released on bail in the UK and then re-elected as an MP in Pakistan has reportedly declined to say when he would return to face rape charges.

The Guardian disclosed that Rukhsar Ahmed, a former Pakistan state minister, was arrested at Manchester airport in July 2024 on suspicion of raping and trafficking at least two underage girls from care homes in the city’s Rusholme area during the 1990s.

Exclusive: Sadiq Khan urges Westminster council to adopt ‘positive vision of economic growth’ of nightlife

Sadiq Khan has ordered Westminster council to scrap a policy that would ban new pubs and bars from opening in Soho and the West End of London.

This comes after the Guardian revealed the council’s new licensing policy asks pubs to stop customers from standing up while consuming beverages, which it calls “vertical drinking”. The policy is under consultation and also asks pubs to have table service rather than allowing orders at the bar.

Small cruise ship rescued skiff in south-east Alaska even though Meta billionaire’s $300m megayacht was closer

Mark Zuckerberg has faced questions over why a small cruise ship in south-east Alaska rescued a stranded skiff and its crew when his 387ft superyacht had been closer.

The Silicon Valley billionaire’s yacht, worth a reported $300m, is said to have “repeatedly” declined to assist when a nearby boat called for help last week.

Plane spends 30 minutes off the Essex coast marking out shape of a bin in apparent tribute to Nigel Farage’s rival

A pilot has traced the shape of a bin with their flight path near Clacton before Count Binface challenges Nigel Farage in a byelection on Thursday.

The light aircraft spent around half an hour between 2,100ft and 4,150ft above the sea near the Essex coastal town zigzagging to mark out the shape of a bin, according to data from Flightradar24.

With Abdul El-Sayed’s win, the party’s leftwing insurgency had breached the walls of a midwestern swing state, forcing a reckoning about Democrats’ direction and leadership

Standing before The Spirit of Detroit, a landmark bronze statue in the city’s downtown, in the early hours of a Wednesday morning, Abdul El-Sayed channelled boxing great Muhammad Ali. “We shook up the world,” he declared.

The 41-year-old former public health official had just delivered a knockout blow to the Democratic establishment, defeating the US congresswoman Haley Stevens to claim the party’s nomination for the Senate in swing state Michigan.

New EU negotiator, who previously helped free Taliban hostages, thought it was safe to book holiday during recess

• Labour seeking ‘deeper relationship’ with EU under Burnham, new minister says

When Hamish Falconer left his career as a Foreign Office diplomat for the hostile environment of a Labour party selection process, one of his last acts was a negotiation to free six hostages from the Taliban.

When he won the key marginal seat of Lincoln in the 2024 general election, he did not expect to be back in those offices on King Charles Street quite so quickly – he was appointed Middle East minister just two weeks later.

Guardian journalists have been uncovering cases involving US military personnel that bypassed British courts. It involved telling the stories of women who have been denied important rights and protections, and safeguarding them as sources

• Support investigative journalism today

When reporters talk about protecting their sources, it isn’t always about protecting a source’s identity. Some sources are prepared to go public. Others may have already shed their anonymity before a journalist gets in touch with them. But they all still need to be supported and safeguarded as their stories are brought to light.

“I try to ensure there are no surprises for them,” says Harry Davies, a Guardian investigations correspondent. “You have to prepare them for the exposure and talk them through what it will mean.”

Using ‘spy glasses’ made by Facebook owner leads to floods of negative comments, say content creators

It was hardly an offensive video. Amid the buzz of the Tour de France finale, Oliver Hooson filmed himself whipping up a delicious-looking flat white for a fellow cycling enthusiast. But after posting the footage on social media, the comments that soon rolled in were a real shock. “PERV,” read one. “Out here pushing creep glasses,” said another. His mistake? Documenting the moment with Meta’s “spy glasses”.

Despite being marketed as the latest must-have gadget, Meta’s smartglasses, which can record video footage while being worn, have faced a vicious backlash, particularly relating to concerns about surveillance. There are widespread fears about the glasses being used to film people, especially women, without their consent, and the resultant footage being posted on social media. This has earned them the label of “pervert glasses”, and content creators, no matter how they are used, have faced a flood of negative comments for deploying them.

From big-name standups to dance performances and experimental plays, here are our picks for an excellent festival

• ‘If you’d done that in the 90s, you’d be torn to shreds!’: comedy icons share their survival tips with Edinburgh first-timers

• Explore the rest of our coverage of the Edinburgh festival 2026

Kirsty Mann: Corpse
To 30 August, Red lecture theatre at Summerhall
Kirsty Mann bought a house – and it came with a ghost. Winner of the best theatre award at Adelaide fringe, this real-life one-woman comedy horror is dark, funny and deliciously disturbing.

Ayo Adenekan: Homeland Insecurity
To 30 August, Cab Vol 2 at Monkey Barrel Comedy
Following his sellout debut, Black Mediocrity, the Scottish comic and SNL writer is back with a “romantic hour” of finely observed comedy. Think summer romances, chased dreams and messy endings.

Zoo Playground, Edinburgh
Veering from confident to crumbling, Verona Verbakel delivers a vivid show mixing humour with trauma

We are all familiar with the cliche of the influencer narrating their daily routines – or should I say, their journey? – and trying to convince us, and perhaps themselves, they are living their best life. We know, too, about the websites offering intimate access in exchange for cash.

But what if the online medium were put to more honest purposes? What if, instead of endless positivity, it presented a painful recovery from trauma?

Domestic dramas, bodily fluids, drink, drugs, rudeness and worse … ushers and box office staff have seen it all. So much for the myth of the ‘genteel’ theatregoer

‘Theatre still has a sheen of respectability, so people feel they can behave badly because where they are cancels out how dreadful they are being,” says John, who has been a box office manager for 15 years. From my early 20s to my mid-30s, I too worked in the box office, at some of London’s top theatres. During my decade in the job, I witnessed audience behaviour ranging from the odd and the outrageous to the outright belligerent. If you are under any illusion that theatre audiences are classy, allow my former colleagues to disabuse you of that notion.

The misuse of phones is one of the most common offences. In April, Cynthia Erivo stopped her one-woman West End production of Dracula mid-performance to urge an audience member to stop filming. Former Love Island winner Amber Davies, starring in a tour of Legally Blonde, last month asked staff to kick out an audience member who was filming the performance from the front row of a Dublin theatre. And in May, Rosamund Pike spotted an audience member texting during the climax of her performance in Inter Alia. After the curtain call, Pike returned to the stage and shamed the behaviour, without singling out the culprit. Part of me hoped that, like a teacher, she would make the individual in question read their texts out to the rest of the theatre.

A Labour-voting ex-headteacher and a police officer keen on Reform hit it off, but would they find common ground on immigration or Andy Burnham?

Steph, 66, Chester

Occupation Retired primary school headteacher. Now does consultancy

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

Read this week’s new question: How is it physically possible to continue breaking sporting records?

I’ve heard that in Germany you can buy sausages in vending machines. What should be sold in machines that isn’t offered at the moment? Sybil Freestone, Oregon

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Vicky Krieps puts her heart on the line in Anna Cazenave Cambet’s romantic drama, and the Glaswegian comedy superstar is back on stage for a massive UK tour

Love Me Tender
Out now
Vicky Krieps heads up Anna Cazenave Cambet’s drama about a woman who splits amicably from her husband to follow her dream of becoming a writer, but then falls for a woman – at which point, the ex-hubby files for sole custody of their child. Also starring Monia Chokri and Antoine Reinartz.

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

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

Good morning. Maybe you’ve been worrying about the rise of Silicon Valley billionaires and what it means for humanity, or whether your exercise regime is hurting your health, or if those adult birthday invites and plans are just getting way out of hand, or … maybe you have not. Regardless, that is where some of our best reporting went this week. Enjoy.

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

Ryan Murphy and Brett Easton Ellis team up for a retro serial-killer drama, and the California songsmith is back with a remarkable new album. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Alan Milburn has outlined a generation cut adrift by austerity. We must grasp the nettle and rebuild a preventive state

Most people think Britain is not working as it should. For young people, the situation is at its most acute: only one in four believe that everyone in society has a fair crack. Most think the game is rigged.

It is clear why the generation who grew up during the post-2008 crash austerity years and in the shadow of the Covid pandemic are downbeat: the level of public service provision their parents enjoyed is gone, living costs are rising, the AI revolution is changing everything, and the planet is on fire.

Beyond the white noise lies a vibrant world of possibility, so take your headphones off and listen to your surroundings. It may even save your life

Er, excuse me. Hello? I’m sorry, but would you mind taking your … I SAID, WOULD YOU MIND TAKING THOSE EARPHONES OUT FOR A SECOND, PLEASE?

I try, in the main, to be a live-and-let-live kind of person. Patient. Considerate. But this patience is being tested to breaking point by the proliferation, the epidemic, of almost-ubiquitous earphones.

Stefan Stern is co-author of Myths of Management and the former director of the High Pay Centre. His latest book is Fair or Foul: The Lady Macbeth Guide to Ambition

The hit TV show confirms that sports lore is rife with powerful hexes. But there’s really nothing mystical about the dread and self-doubt they can induce

As the new season of Ted Lasso started, I was reminded of one of the show’s stranger storylines. When Dani “Football is life!” Rojas gets injured, his teammates blame the incident on a curse said to haunt the treatment room.

Absurd? Perhaps. But sports curses aren’t just fictional plot devices. Football is fertile ground for stories of mysterious forces, blamed for everything from missed penalties to decades of failure.

Helen Pilcher is a science writer and author of Life Changing: How Humans Are Altering Life on Earth and This Book May Cause Side Effects

New research shows that a class gap on the left threatens any winning coalition – but there are ways to address it

Debates on the left are typically framed as a division between moderates and progressives, with the two sides wrestling over how best to form a governing coalition. Yet, in many ways, this divide obscures a much bigger fault line: the class divide. The fact is, many of the Democratic party’s ideological factions consist almost exclusively of college-educated professionals. As a result, the priorities of this class tend to dominate the party’s appeals. The priorities of working-class voters, meanwhile, are an afterthought.

A new report from Jared Abbott, the director of the Center for Working Class Politics, and Joan Williams, author of Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back, looks at ways to bridge the yawning class divide that threatens the possibility of forming a winning coalition.

From running red lights to dumping bikes, some Lime users get a bad rap. But many who grumble about them don’t appreciate their own privilege

The night belongs to Lime bikes in the capital this summer. Buses and tube carriages are boiling, cars crawl between low traffic neighbourhoods and Thames Water roadworks, and pedestrians plod through the sticky heat. But Lime riders exist in a different, breezier realm: whirring along, chatting in pairs or blissfully alone, weaving through the city’s tree-lined maze, choosing impulsively between destinations, rarely stopping for anything or anyone.

“My favourite part of a night out is Lime biking home,” writes Annie Lord, a dating columnist and author, in Freewheeling: Essays on Cycling. “As I ride up a hill, the bike’s electrics click … And, for a little while, I’m free.”

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

The sponsorship deal between Cwmbran Celtic and the Welsh indie-rockers is a nostalgia trip rather than a cynical attempt to monetise ‘adjacent audiences’

As someone born on the cusp of the gen X-millennial divide, I am the perfect target for today’s 90s nostalgia. I played my modest, teenage part in the Battle of Britpop (verbal skirmisher, Blur division); I fervently sang – and, God help me, believed – that Things Can Only Get Better. Super Furry Animals were a band I knew only distantly, via the transgressive thrill of that song they had with all the swearing in. And yet the news they’ll be shirt sponsor for a Welsh football club this season has managed to whisk me straight back to a time when things seemed simpler, kinder and more hopeful.

Nearly three decades have passed since Super Furry Animals last had their logo on a football kit. Back in 1999, their frontman Gruff Rhys and bassist Guto Pryce, both Cardiff City fans, persuaded their Bangor-born bandmates to lay down their north Wales allegiances for the duration of the Bluebirds’ Welsh Cup run – which was, incidentally, all they could afford. The cup shirts cost them £2,000 and were, according to Rhys, knock-offs made for ice hockey. This year’s beneficiaries are a more modest outfit: Cwmbran Celtic, just relegated from Wales’s second tier. Cwmbran is the town where the band send their stage props for repair, and given the props in question are giant inflatable bears, you wonder whether they could get one installed in goal.

An exchange between Dr Erica Schwartz and Senator Josh Hawley during her confirmation hearing is alarming

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s new cooking show isn’t the only big news out of the public health world this week. On Wednesday, Dr Erica Schwartz was confirmed by the US Senate as director ‌of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), making her the first Black woman to hold the position. This is the first time in almost a year that the agency has had a permanent leader; the previous director, Susan Monarez, only lasted 29 days before she was ousted for butting heads with RFK about US vaccine policies. Translation: she was a little too keen on following accepted science for the Trump administration.

So is Schwartz an RFK-approved vaccine skeptic who thinks you can cure cancer by praying to trees? Surprisingly: no. Schwartz, who served as deputy surgeon general during Trump’s first term, actually has government experience and a public health background. During her confirmation hearing in July, she walked a careful tightrope when asked about her stance towards vaccines. Schwartz said she “will never betray the science” but also dodged questions about how she would handle pressure from Kennedy.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Seventy years after CP Snow warned of estrangement between the sciences and arts, breadth in education should be encouraged

After the playwright Tom Stoppard died last year, one of the most striking tributes to his work came from a clinical scientist. Michael Baum explained in the British Medical Journal how, in the interval of a 1993 performance of Arcadia, he experienced an epiphany. Thomasina Coverly’s attempt to plot the equation for a rose prompted him to realise that chaos theory was the best way to explain breast cancer’s pattern of recurrence. It was, he wrote, “the bond that links the arts and the sciences as one enterprise rather than the contents of two silos”.

Mr Baum was not the first person to celebrate the bridging of this gap. CP Snow famously criticised the incuriosity of “literary intellectuals” about technology in his essay The Two Cultures (later turned into a lecture and a book). Whether or not this was justified at the time, many literary intellectuals besides Stoppard have since taken a close interest in science; Richard Holmes’s latest book, about the influence of evolutionary theory on Tennyson, is just one example. But the split between the humanities and sciences remains pronounced, and will be evident when this year’s A-level results are released on Thursday.

The world’s most populous country needs state-generated demand to industrialise, decarbonise and avoid China’s overcapacity trap

India is attempting to do something the world has never seen before. So claimed Niti Aayog, the government of India’s policy thinktank, earlier this year. It said that no major economy has tried to expand GDP nearly eightfold within a generation while simultaneously redirecting its energy and industrial systems to reach net zero within two generations. Hence its detailed report’s claim that there is “no historical precedent”.

There is something to this. China industrialised at vast scale, but not on a sustainable net zero path. Korea, Japan and Europe became wealthy by industrialising before decarbonising. Today, rich nations have already satisfied the basic demands of their people and created the infrastructure and high per-capita energy use that India is still trying to build. The world’s most populous country has to do this while also reducing emissions.

Molly O’Brien responds to an article by Natalie Morris about her five-day labour, while an NHS doctor shares her personal experience of feeling ‘othered’

It is not clear whether Natalie Morris’s labour began spontaneously or was induced (By day five of my labour, I didn’t want an ‘ideal birth’. I only wanted to survive, 6 August). Nevertheless, what is described is not a debate about “ideal birth”, but an account of undiagnosed labour dystocia.

By day four she had contractions but no cervical dilatation, was exhausted, unable to sit down, and knew instinctively she needed help. These are features of pathophysiology that should have prompted reassessment. That failure was not ideology. It was a lack of education and training among both midwives and doctors in recognising difficult labour, also known as labour dystocia. This same issue, with tragic consequences, was highlighted in the Nottingham maternity review. That system’s failure receives far less attention than the “culture wars” surrounding birth.

Sjúrður Hammer responds to NatureScot’s decision to prohibit the annual guga hunt, where islanders collect gannet chicks on the Hebridean island of Sula Sgeir

What many celebrate as a win for nature conservation is, in my view, a significant step in the wrong direction for our relationship with the natural world (Scottish gannet chick hunt blocked for first time in 400 years, 3 August). The decision to prohibit the community on Lewis from collecting gannets runs counter to the spirit of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which recognises that safeguarding biodiversity will not be achieved by scientists and city dwellers alone. Instead, it affirms that indigenous and local communities hold a legitimate and essential role as stewards and caretakers of their own environments.

Too often, people in our part of the world assume that “indigenous and local communities” refers only to distant, exotic cultures or to the shameful legacies of colonialism. But the Kunming-Montreal accord makes clear that this category also includes small, place‑rooted communities in countries such as Scotland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland – communities with ancient traditions, distinct languages and ways of relating to nature that have endured for centuries.

In 1963 and 1966 Garry Sobers toured England with the West Indies. But in those days it was not so easy for cricketers from other countries to play for the English counties, so for the summers of 1964, 1965 and 1967 he appeared for Norton Cricket Club in the North Staffordshire and South Cheshire league.

What a player! His whole personality and cricket skills lit up not only the club but also the whole league. Gerry, Garry’s brother, kept wicket at Norton, and other top visitors included the fast bowler Wes Hall at Great Chell.

Labour peer Ruth Lister disagrees with the high number of party members looking to reduce spending on social security

The finding that 47% of Labour party members surveyed believe the government is spending too much on social security is depressing (Labour members ‘have tougher view on welfare than you might think’, poll suggests, 4 August). But perhaps it’s not surprising given the relentless false “out of control” political and media narrative, when in fact spending on non-pensioner social security has remained at about 5% of GDP for the past decade.

Social security was one of the main victims of austerity, leaving benefits too low to meet basic needs – hence the increased reliance on food banks. If members had been presented with the evidence from academics, thinktanks and charities showing that improving social security represents the most effective way of tackling child poverty, I suspect they may have been more supportive of spending in this area.

• Dutch cyclist finishes 1:18 clear of Kasia Niewiadoma

• ‘I know what’s right and what’s not,’ runner-up says

In the end, there was no debate. Demi Vollering went clear on the Col d’Èze, overlooking Nice, to win her second Tour de France Femmes from rival Kasia Niewiadoma, champion in 2024, by one minute and 18 seconds.

The decisive attacks came on the narrow snaking climb of the Chemin du Vinaigrier, past swimming pools and art deco villas, where breakaway rider Isabella Holmgren was finally overhauled and ­Vollering and Niewiadoma again went head-to-head.

• Birmingham hosting European championships

• ‘It would mean almost as much as Olympic title’

Keely Hodgkinson says winning a European gold medal in front of her home fans in Birmingham this week will be nearly as special as her Olympic title in Paris.

Hodgkinson is the headline act as the European Athletics Champion­ships come to Britain for the first time in its 92-year history, but she insists the intense spotlight on her only increases her determination to win 800m gold.

• Tebas says Swiss is ‘destroying essence of football’

• Any reform at highest levels must be ‘genuine’

Javier Tebas says Gianni Infantino’s position as Fifa president is untenable, claiming he is “destroying the very essence of football” while calling for reform at the highest levels of the game.

The La Liga president, who is a longstanding and vociferous critic of the current Fifa regime, said “the Infantino era is over” and called for control of the game to be expanded beyond the current “elite”.

• Head coach frustrated by ‘tired’ performance

• Monaco come from two down to win 3-2 at Anfield

Andoni Iraola told his Liverpool team they have work to do after ­squandering a 2-0 lead against Monaco to lose a second successive pre-season friendly.

The former Bournemouth coach last managed a game at Anfield almost exactly a year ago in the memorable opener to the 2025-26 Premier League season, a game the Cherries were unfortunate to lose 4-2. Now on his debut in the home dugout, Iraola saw his team produce a similarly open display and lose again. It became clear Liverpool’s longstanding defensive frailties are still to be eliminated.

• Arsenal lose 3-2 to Borussia Dortmund in Emirates Cup

• Man City’s wide players shine in 3-2 win against Atlético

The Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta, has backed “warrior” Bruno Guimarães, to “ignite something different” in the Premier League champions. The Brazil midfielder was introduced to fans ahead of Sunday’s 3-2 defeat by Borussia Dortmund in the Emirates Cup after completing his £75m move from Newcastle.

The 28-year-old, who has signed a four-year deal, bolsters a midfield which already includes Declan Rice, Martin Ødegaard, Mikel Merino, Martín Zubimendi and Eberechi Eze.

• Delap scores twice from spot in 3-3 draw with JDT

• Manager made 11 changes against Malaysian champions

Chelsea’s problems mounted as their pre-season tour came to an end in a strangely fiery draw against the Malaysian champions Johor Darul Ta’zim. The omens do not look promising with a bloated choice of forwards, echoes of their inexperience and indiscipline last season, and fewer than two weeks for the new manager, Xabi Alonso, to reintegrate key players and work with the entirety of his squad before they kick off the Premier League season against Fulham – managed by his old friend Álvaro Arbeloa – on 24 August.

Alonso, tasked with transforming a club that finished 10th in the Premier League last season into Champions League qualifiers, made 11 changes for the friendly against JDT. He rested players after beating Milan with a strong lineup only 24 hours earlier, 600 miles away.

• World No 1 out of tournament with knee injury

• Italian trying to stay fit for US Open which starts 30 August

The World No 1, Jannik Sinner, has pulled out of the Cincinnati Open due to a right knee injury, the Italian announced on Sunday.

“After consulting with my doctors and my team, I have to announce that I need to withdraw from the Masters 1000 tournament in Cincinnati,” he said in a statement posted on the ATP website. “My right knee has been bothering me and even though we have been working hard with my medical team, I have to accept that I’m not ready to compete yet.”

British Columbia battling 102 fires day and night across province, as breakneck speed hampers firefighters’ efforts

Canada’s federal government has announced it will provide urgent assistance to British Columbia after an onslaught of unprecedented fast-moving wildfires forced about 22,000 people to flee their homes in frantic evacuations.

A total of 102 wildfires were raging across the province on Sunday, of which nearly half were categorised as “out of control”, according to the BC Wildfire Service. Of those fires, 78 ignited during the past week.

Chuck Schumer and other senators took part in exercises in which legal experts laid out election disruption scenarios

In a Washington DC conference room last month, some of the most senior Democrats in the US Senate gathered to plan for a prospect that only recently would have felt more akin to science fiction: they started to wargame democracy.

Chuck Schumer, the US Senate minority leader, and senators including Alex Padilla, Adam Schiff, Mark Warner, Elissa Slotkin and Raphael Warnock were among those in the room as a team of legal experts offered scenarios.

Astronomers say viewing conditions promising for this year’s shower, and 50 to 100 meteors an hour may be visible

The Perseid summer light show is back, and viewing conditions are especially promising across the northern hemisphere.

The meteor shower’s is expected to peak on Wednesday night into Thursday morning, and coincides with a total solar eclipse across Spain, Iceland and Greenland and a six-planet parade – though the best time to view the fireballs will come after totality.

Tropical cyclone brings torrential rain and high winds to east coast after hitting Japan’s southern Okinawa province

Typhoon Dolphin, the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit China this year, has made landfall on the country’s east coast, bringing torrential rain and strong ⁠winds and triggering warnings ​of flooding and landslides.

The storm has already swept through Japan’s southern Okinawa prefecture, injuring six people and cutting power to more than 50,000 buildings.

Travellers caught up in migration row as Madrid introduces checks on visitors from Italy in retaliation for Rome’s move

Italy’s foreign minister has called Spain’s decision to impose retaliatory checks on travellers from Italy “incomprehensible and completely unacceptable” as people making their way between the two EU countries were left grappling with the effects of the escalating feud.

Spain started carrying out spot checks on visitors from Italy at midnight on Saturday. The tit-for-tat move came after Rome infuriated Madrid by launching checks on 1 August for travellers from Spain in response to the recent influx of about 72,000 people into Ceuta, a Spanish territory in north Africa.

Mutual aid groups that started giving out PPEs during Covid are now loaning air purifiers and distributing masks to fume-addled communities

Miquette Thompson’s home in rural Mendocino county has been covered in smoke all week. There are the nearby Feliz and Woodside fires in northern California, which have burned more than 1,000 acres, as well as the wildfires devastating Oregon and Washington that are sending smoke their way, too.

“It’s become not unusual,” she said of walking outside and seeing a hazy sky.

The 3,500 population is divided over the venture, which would bring investment and jobs, but critics claim the environmental cost would be too high

It is among the world’s last pristine wildernesses, with unique coastal waters rich in krill and squid that attract sea lions, elephant seals, dolphins and whales, and where penguins, of which there are five different species locally, outnumber people.

But plans to make the Falkland Islands, one of the most remote and furthest-flung British overseas territories, a new frontier for salmon farming has split the 3,500-strong population. Now, people opposed to salmon farming are calling for a referendum because they have lost confidence in a consultation process they claim is biased towards the industry.

As residents, nature wardens and experts consider the damage to the heathland and how to restore it, the climate crisis is foremost in their minds

A local community pulling together, emergency services saving homes and caravan parks from catastrophe, and farmers and nature reserve wardens working to rapidly create fire breaks to halt a marauding fireball 40 metres high – there was plenty to praise the week after a swathe of east Suffolk burned.

But local people were also in tears at the blackened, ruined state of more than 112 hectares (277 acres) of Dunwich Heath, mourning the devastation of a much-loved nature reserve alongside neighbouring Minsmere. The rare birds that inhabit the reserve have lost crucial habitat, while the rare invertebrate species there will have been “decimated”, according to the reserve staff.

Researchers find microplastics can persist in compost, leaching into agricultural soils

Plastic contamination should be a central concern in efforts to deal with food waste, which campaigners call one of the most overlooked problems of the climate crisis, researchers have said.

This is despite the fact that, as the chef, author and activist Max La Manna puts it, food waste management is “one of the few climate problems where everyone wins”.

Costs of security and removal efforts have reignited debate over whether work is vandalism or valuable public art

Three Banksy artworks have cost taxpayers almost £150,000 in removal efforts, security and other costs, with the bill expected to rise.

The largest bill relates to a mural painted on the Royal Courts of Justice in London in September 2025, where efforts to remove it and provide security have so far cost more than £85,000, according to the BBC.

Exclusive: Analysis shows 55% of accounts were located overseas – and seven of 12 most-read posts came from US

More than half the accounts that posted on Elon Musk’s X about the rioting in Belfast and the civil disorder in Southampton in June were based outside the UK, an analysis by the Guardian can reveal.

Of the 8,672 accounts whose combined posts about the events exceeded 1,000 views, just 45.3% were shown as from the UK, according to the social media platform’s own location function.

Turner prize nominee whose installations, sculptures and films returned repeatedly to the histories embedded within bodies

In 1994, Christine Borland, who has died aged 61 of cancer, opened her first solo exhibition at Tramway in Glasgow. Its starting point was a mail-order catalogue through which human skeletons could be legally purchased for medical teaching.

The discovery that a person’s remains could be bought anonymously through the post gave rise to one of the defining questions of her career. Working with forensic experts, police and medical professionals, Borland attempted to reconstruct the life behind one such skeleton, producing a bronze facial reconstruction alongside the original bones.

Exclusive: Lack of funds left British museums unable to pay eight-figure sum for collection, which went to Abu Dhabi institution

• Britain’s Jurassic gold rush: the fossil hunters chasing fortunes on Dorset’s beaches

One of the most important collections of UK Jurassic fossils ever compiled has been sold to a museum in Abu Dhabi, the Guardian can reveal, in what British experts have described as a loss for the nation.

The collection, which was amassed by a private fossil collector, consisted of 318 specimens, including ichthyosaurs, fish and crustaceans among other creatures, some of which could be new species.

Two aviators will take off from Iceland to photograph the sun while flying at high altitude along solar eclipse’s path

After lunch on Wednesday, two Nasa aviators will climb into a research plane and take off from Keflavik airport on a western tip of Iceland. They will climb north towards Greenland and then bank to head south on a gently curving course 40 miles (64km) off the Icelandic coast.

Their mission can be described as chasing an eclipse, but in reality the eclipse is chasing them. As the plane cruises at 50,000ft (15,000 metres), the shadow of the moon will race up from behind, crossing the ocean below at more than 2,000mph (3,200km/h). The pilot will aim to reach the point of greatest eclipse, when the largest fraction of the sun is obscured by the moon, at the moment the shadow catches up with them.

Musician and record producer who reignited Madonna’s career with his work on her 1998 album Ray of Light

The career highlights of William Orbit, who has died aged 69, would run to several pages, featuring collaborations with Robbie Williams, All Saints, Prince, Kraftwerk, Britney Spears, Beth Orton and U2, but one of the most celebrated was his partnership with Madonna on her 1998 album Ray of Light.

Coming at a point when Madonna had starred in the movie of Evita and had her first child, Lourdes, and her music career seemed to be waning, Ray of Light marked a decisive step into a new world of techno and ambient music. Orbit, who had previously made remixes of Madonna’s Justify My Love and Erotica, proved to be the perfect production partner, and Ray of Light’s blend of styles and textures made it one of Madonna’s most admired achievements, with 16 million copies of the album sold worldwide.

• Fifa backs ‘democratically-elected’ president

• Thinly-veiled attack aimed on Uefa as crisis roars on

Fifa last night issued a thinly-veiled attack on Uefa and other leading figures in European football in a statement which alleged there is a “concerted and ongoing effort by some to undermine Fifa and its president,” as football’s civil war escalated further.

Uefa has made it clear they regard Infantino’s continued leadership of world football as untenable following his role in the World Cup sell-off plans, while the Guardian revealed on Friday the Norwegian Football Federation has publicly called on him to resign, with Fifa responding by accusing them of attempting to subvert the organisation’s democratic processes.

Jurors hear from host of medical experts as defence says postpartum psychosis caused young mother to kill children

It’s been called “America’s saddest murder trial” and last week jurors in the Lindsay Clancy case listened to mental health professionals, counsellors, psychiatrists, and medication experts explain the circumstances in which the young mother killed her three children.

It has been a spectacle that has gripped America, not least because Clancy’s legal defense has been supported by her now divorced husband.

In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. You can also reach Crisis Text Line by texting MHA to 741741. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978

Imports this year now account for 14% of the market amid claims vehicles are being dumped in the EU and UK

Chinese electric car sales have risen across Europe to a record high driven by strong demand and low tariffs in the UK and a surge in buyers in Italy.

Against a backdrop of claims that Chinese carmakers are “dumping” state-subsidised vehicles in the EU and UK to gain market share, the figures will give impetus to calls for quotas and higher tariffs to protect European manufacturers.

Exclusive: Adira says she doesn’t know much about her target countries or even know who their leaders are. Instead she’s chasing money from Meta, which pays for engagement

From her home in West Java, Adira* often starts the day with a Facebook post about coffee and the busy day ahead. Then she gets to work.

In a Facebook group called Team Pauline Hanson, she shares a photo of the Australian senator and One Nation leader and asks its almost 26,000 members for thoughts about Hanson’s comments about Islam and Australia’s way of life.

Finance sector will gain from the tech but it will need substantial investment and create risks, says rating agency

The rating agency Moody’s has said the race to adopt AI is putting big banks at the mercy of a small group of Silicon Valley firms, leaving them vulnerable to widespread outages and price gouging by profit-hungry tech bosses.

The financial sector’s efforts to integrate AI into day-to-day operations will eventually cut costs and increase revenues across the City and Wall Street, Moody’s said.

Mike Ashley says it’s in a ‘death spiral’ but a refocus on design could be what the department store needs

Such was the buzz around Harvey Nichols in its 90s heyday that the department store was regularly name-checked in Absolutely Fabulous, with Edina and Patsy’s frequent retail therapy trips to the store reflecting its position at the heart of the fashion industry at the time.

How times change. These days Harvey Nichols is a business in trouble, one that has not turned a profit since the pandemic. Pre-tax losses were £35.3m in 2024. The retail chain – comprising the the original store in Knightsbridge, London, plus stores in cities including Bristol, Leeds and Manchester – was put up for sale in June by its current owner, Sir Dickson Poon, with Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group and Next bidding to take control.

As a tween, Hull’s finest learned the rap from Waterfalls – now she blubs to prog. But which song from a British singer-songwriter is her guilty pleasure?

The first song I fell in love with
Caravan of Love by the Housemartins, when I was four or five. They’re also from Hull, but I think I mainly liked it because my granny and grandad had a caravan in their garden that I used as a wendy house.

The first single I bought
I remember buying Thriller by Michael Jackson from HMV in Hull, even though it was before my time. Everyone loved Michael Jackson so I was probably copying somebody at school.

Locarno film festival
A couple attempting to leave Ukraine when the war encounter gender identity issues in this bold and challenging film

A movie’s themes could hardly be more urgent and contemporary than those on offer in this entirely absorbing film from German director Isabelle Stever and Ukrainian critic turned screenwriter Anna Melikova. It’s a bulletin from the frontline of Russia’s war on Ukraine, and from the culture war too. It is about identity and choices made in peacetime when less was at stake. There is a bold and brilliant premise that may at first look artificially satirical but is actually inspired.

When Russia begins its attack, the crisis is very specific for a scared young Ukrainian couple, recently engaged: Olya (Tania Myronyshena) and Oleh (Markus Bright). As bombs rain down, they head west in the cramped car of Olya’s elderly mum and dad – with Olya grumpily objecting to her dad’s sexist comments from behind the wheel about female drivers – to stay with Olya’s sister, who is married with a young baby and whose husband, to her fury, has joined up. Oleh’s plan is to get out of Ukraine and live with Olya in the safety of Germany and the EU.

As the survivalist takes the cast of the Christian drama out in the wild to discuss faith, it’s surprisingly moving to find two very confident men so comfortable in their gentleness

Judas Iscariot is so nice! That’s a surprise. Just goes to show – you betray ONE messiah, the scroll-media gets to work and people forget everything else.

I’m joshing, of course. I’m having a little religious joke because The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls has put me in such a good mood. The Judas Iscariot in question is actually Luke Dimyan, the actor who plays him in The Chosen: the multi-season series about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The Chosen is a venture by evangelical Christian film-maker Dallas Jenkins that began as a crowdfunded project in 2017 and is now watched by an estimated 280 million people worldwide. Bear Grylls is a fan and a Christian – what could be more natural than him taking members of the cast for survivalist adventures in the Utah desert, to talk to them about faith in between ziplining across chasms, filtering water through socks and rappelling down cliffs?

Monsters of God is a jaw-dropping new series from the makers of the hit Netflix pandemic smash, exploring the murky world of exotic reptile smuggling

In 1993, a sci-fi blockbuster about an animal theme park that resurrected the dinosaurs sparked more than a flurry of interest in those long-extinct beasts. It left audiences jonesing for the next best thing: a close encounter with a bearded dragon or a ball python. Jeremy McBride, the Emmy-winning film-maker was one of them. “I wanted a pet iguana,” he said. In the wake of the Spielberg classic, reptiles have become fixtures of the modern imagination, adorning zoo exhibits, living room terrariums and every corner of pop culture while underpinning a multibillion-dollar pet trade.

But just as in Jurassic Park, the urgent danger isn’t the prehistoric creatures with the teeth and venom. It’s the people willing to steal, smuggle and kill for them. People like the Pablo Escobar of animal trafficking. “Our next documentary is going to be called Who Backstabbed Who,” jokes Eric Goode, an Emmy-nominated director. “You never know when that knife is going to go in your back because everyone’s trying to make a deal with the feds, with another reptile dealer. Even the good guys were supposedly doing bad things. It’s messy.”

Force of Nature has a powerful polemic edge as it explores oceans. Plus, the finale of chaotic climate crisis drama The Rapture. Here’s what to watch this evening

6pm, ITV1

The US songwriter’s third album has drawn rave reviews, she counts Taylor Swift as a fan and pop bears the imprint of her wit and pathos. Her peers explain how she did it

This week, indie star Phoebe Bridgers releases her long-awaited third album, six years since her pandemic-era breakthrough. Alongside a slew of glittering reviews for Lost Weekend, including five stars from the Guardian, with it comes her first solo charting single in the UK – although the Californian musician’s influence runs far deeper than reviews or record sales could measure. Just how did a RuneScape-referencing, Halloween-costumed Berklee drop-out become the most influential songwriter of the 2020s?

Bridgers’ idiosyncratic writing has shaped the sound of the decade. Her second album Punisher, released in June 2020 (and recorded many months before), spookily anticipated that strange, lonely year: in her eerie double-tracked vocals (a nod to Bridgers’ musical hero, Elliott Smith), Bridgers sang of empty shopping malls and conspiracy theories over lush, unsettling music made from watery electric guitar, Mellotron, strings, screams and birdsong. Today, Bridgers’ distinctive mix of dry wit and pathos is traceable in the lyrics of pop’s new chart toppers, such as Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams, while heavyweights across generations and genres, including Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift and SZA, have clamoured for collaborations. “She is the reference now,” Swift told the Guardian in 2022.

No stranger to rebuilding after disaster, the US band’s frontman Zachary Cole Smith now sees the entire capitalist project as ripe for reinvention, on a surprisingly upbeat new AG Cook-produced album

Zachary Cole Smith used to be a miserable interviewee. He had plenty to say – always generous, always voluble – but spoke with grim introspection, chastising himself and cataloguing his misdeeds with a fervour that engulfed him like his oversized T-shirts. A decade later, the Diiv frontman who materialises on my screen seems well rid of that old self. Suspiciously well rid of it, perhaps. He looks as if he has stepped out of a middle management meeting.

“Precisely!” Smith concurs cheerfully, speaking via video call from a back garden in La Cañada, California. “We’re trying to have a visual language, which is fun. We’ve never done that with what we wear.” The singer-guitarist, 41, wears thick-rimmed square glasses, slicked-back black hair and a pinstripe shirt, its neck clasped by a tie printed with stock market emblems. He has an earnest but pranksterish energy. He uses the word “fun” so many times – more than a dozen within 10 minutes – that I suspect he is testing some sort of subliminal PR strategy.

Day’s latest album Halo is all high-energy exhaustion, injected with a crushing electroclash chaos that illuminates her insecurities in bright neon

From Los Angeles
Recommended if you like Slayyyter, Charli xcx, Underscores
Up next Halo out now. UK and Ireland tour starts in December

Right now popstar breakthrough and burnout are a hair’s breadth from one another. Enter Tiffany Day, a Wichita-raised artist who first went viral in 2017 when a video of her singing Hallelujah on a school trip blew up online. She spent the subsequent years unsuccessfully chipping away at building on that virality, cycling through acoustic guitar covers and bedroom R&B. Only by channeling her frustrations into this year’s anxiety-ridden sugar rush Halo did Day finally regain her early momentum.

Vladimir Feltsman
(Nimbus)
Feltsman’s comprehensive survey of the Lyric Pieces is revelatory and authoritative

Russian-American pianist Vladimir Feltsman’s love of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces dates back to his childhood in Moscow and his first piano teacher, EM Timakin, who introduced him to the works. Part homage, then, this comprehensive survey draws on the accumulated wisdom of over 60 years in a set that abounds with interpretative imagination.

Feltsman approaches Grieg as if it were Schumann, bringing a probing flexibility that transforms this music into more than just occasional salon pieces. Book I’s famous Arietta, for example, responds eagerly to his supple sense of rubato. He also points up the composer’s cosmopolitan influences, with a Nocturne that could almost be Chopin, a Scherzo redolent of Saint-Saëns and a Nordic Valse-Impromptu that could only be by Grieg.

Touring her memoir and talking to others helped the author come to terms with her brother’s death, but the book’s success left her feeling guilty. Had she commodified her family’s pain?

When my memoir about my life after my brother’s death was published, I was very fortunate that people connected with it. It’s not easy to feel good fortune from the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. But I suppose I felt pleased when the experience that had once made me so lonely suddenly became a point of connection.

I had not always been an open book. I was 22 when my brother died from a rare bone cancer. The people around me didn’t know what to say about this awful thing, so they pretended it hadn’t happened and I pretended, too. For a few years I was a ghost in my own life. Nothing felt real. I got very good at imitating normality, imagining I was in a video game called Office.

Education is at a crossroads, argues the author and academic. Should we embrace new technology in the name of efficiency, or is it time to fight back?

If you set out to design from scratch a tool to facilitate authoritarian rule, it would look exactly like AI. You would cherish it for its ability to destabilise our shared reality and its creation of disinformation on a scale unprecedented in human history. With it you need no armies of typists and artists to spread your propaganda. It can enable mass surveillance and thereby put shackles on those who seek to resist you. Its lethal autonomous weapons systems can perfect and normalise remote killing. It will turbocharge inequality; it is already facilitating a breathtaking shift of power and wealth from the hands of the many to the hands of a tiny number of men who – to put it in terms for which I can’t be sued – seem to hold dangerously damaged views about the value and dignity of human life.

AI could be a magnificent thing. It could revolutionise medicine, speed the cure of cancer, assist disabled people, transform the way we are able to understand data, democratise access to the law, bolster disaster early warning systems and uncover hitherto unimagined truths about the Earth’s ecosystems. But if it ends up in the hands of crooks and despots that will be completely irrelevant.

The Salt King by Natasha Pulley; A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett; Netherwood by Jake Arnott; Fawn by CN Vair

The Salt King by by Natasha Pulley (Gollancz, £22)
The latest from the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street blends an apocalyptic end-of-the-world tale with folk horror and two slowly developing love stories. Avelyn Brocken is a trainee priest at the Vatican, sent to check out a possible miracle in the fens of East Anglia. His only qualification for the job is that he was born and raised in Hreodwater, a strange community based around a salt mine with its own language, religion and rituals. But what begins in Hreodwater, involving the mysterious salt light and a sleeping king deep in the mine, threatens civilisations. An original, rich and gripping tale that’s also an interesting exploration of the power of faith.

A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett (Hodderscape, £25)
A new case for Ana and Din, the crime-solving team introduced in the Hugo and World Fantasy award-winning novel The Tainted Cup, focuses on a murder among the cattle-ranching gentry of the Empire of Khanum. The murderer has been caught red-handed, unable to remember what happened. The victim was his lover, and their families were enemies; he is the last of his line, and fears his family is cursed. The detectives suspect a more material and dangerous adversary behind the scenes, with access to a terrifying weapon. This is the sort of other-world fantasy with close ties to speculative fiction, based on natural laws and science rather than any magical system, and some of the issues it raises are of immediate concern in today’s world of shrinking resources. Great world-building and a masterfully conceived mystery make for a compelling cross-genre blend.

The Nobel-winning economist takes aim at elites for no longer meeting the needs of the masses

In 2009, the tech billionaire Peter Thiel published an essay with the portentous title The Education of a Libertarian, in which he announced: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Since the 1920s, he wrote, “the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women” had rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” an oxymoron. To be fair, Thiel still seems happy to exercise his freedom to extract money from democracies, via his co-founding of Palantir, which was lately given lots of money by the NHS.

Thiel calls himself, as many such do, a “classical liberal”, but Daron Acemoglu argues that his ilk still has much in common with left-liberals. All of them, he writes, agree on “the desirability of basic individual rights and freedoms (including the right not to be coerced and the freedoms of expression, religion, association, and choice); constraints on power, especially political power; and broad protections for equality before the law”. On his telling, by the mid-20th century democracy with liberal characteristics had amply proved its worth: blue-collar labour was generously rewarded, and there was a sense of “shared prosperity”.

The all-conquering franchise’s revamps are technically impressive, its transfers more true to life – and its new grassroots social hub is surprising fun

As if the world wasn’t sufficiently football-obsessed, it’s time to prepare for the arrival of its biggest football video game. EA Sports FC 27 (the franchise that used to be Fifa – what better time to no longer be Fifa-branded?) is due to be released on 25 September. I just spent two intense days in Vancouver, where the EA FC games are made, playing FC 27 and talking to its developers.

With an annual franchise such as EA FC, it helps to have something fresh to entice regular fans, and FC 27 has a whole new element, entitled the Grounds. It’s a physical hub-type area, similar to the City as seen in 2K’s recent NBA 2K basketball games, but much more pleasant to frequent, split as it is into areas inspired by British, French and Argentinian street-football culture.

Daniel Mullins explains how he plans to follow up his quirky classic without losing what made it stand out in the first place

Glitchy aesthetics. Literally collapsing menu boxes. The game taunting you by “possessing” your Steam friends. Technical tricks of this nature may sound gimmicky in 2026, but they felt excitingly unorthodox a decade ago, when Pony Island came out to critical acclaim.

Fans of Daniel Mullins, the celebrated indie developer of Inscryption, will be forgiven for forgetting that Pony Island 2: Panda Circus is in active development. After all, it’s been almost three years since the announcement – and a full decade since it was first teased as an Easter egg in Pony Island’s ARG (Alternate Reality Game) – with only a single trailer and a bunch of tunes from the soundtrack released to the public.

Being a woman who loves video games has often felt lonely, like being on a hostile planet – but Metroid’s female space hunter has been with me all the way

It’s 1986, and you’re playing a brand-new game. (You’re in Japan in this scenario, by the way; the game in question, Metroid, won’t come to North America and Europe until later.) Anyway, this new game has you in its grip. You are a lone astronaut exploring a hostile alien planet full of ancient, mysterious structures. This astronaut looks human enough – but this distinctly alien place is full of objects that power up their spacesuit’s capabilities. Each new ability allows you to explore a new area, and as you do, you realise that the entirety of the planetary base you’re exploring is one, massive, interconnected maze. Whoa.

Hours later, you finally defeat Mother Brain and set off a timed self-destruct sequence. Upon your escape, you’re treated to an endgame screen: the little astronaut faces you as text on screen implores you to “pray for peace in space”.

Explore Antarctica as a flightless bird – and dodge some earthly monsters – in this surreal adaptation of HP Lovecraft

While watching the 2006 animated film Happy Feet with his daughter, Origame Digital founder Naphtali Faulkner noticed something interesting. “[In the movie], they see the digger fall into the ocean, and it has an almost eldritch quality,” he says. Over time, and with plenty of iteration, Faulkner’s inspirations coalesced, from HP Lovecraft to the 1982 version of The Thing and the works of David Lynch. “I’m a big fan of horror that sits in your head rather than in your stomach,” says Faulkner.

In Penguin Colony, players body-switch between species of flightless birds, piecing together cryptic cosmic clues as they tail a Nazi expedition to Antarctica. In the process, Origame Digital draws on Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness. “I’d always wanted to do a creature that’s a manifestation of colonial thought, energy and power, and the idea of it resting and then regrowing,” says Faulkner. “I was looking through the history of Lovecraft and him being a gigantic racist, and this idea of the Nazis sort of came out,” he adds.

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
The standup is on sparkling form as she mines a lifetime of baffling and alarming experiences for a smart, purposeful and very funny hour

Sophie Duker is done with men. She swears it. And, in her fourth hour, Hot Beef Injection – named after a crude euphemism from 80s teen film The Breakfast Club – she is going to tell us exactly why.

Duker has had her fair share of relationships, tracking all the way back to her adolescence. “I did hand stuff with a 16-year-old boy,” she announces at the show’s opening. On reflection, though, most of those experiences have left her feeling, well, weird.

Royal Albert Hall, London
Thunderous timpani, stereo harps, a supersized horn section and 160 teenagers combined for Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, Adès’s Dante and a Liszt waltz

Three big pieces on the programme. 160 teenage musicians almost all on stage throughout. No choreography, no body percussion and not a kazoo in sight. By National Youth Orchestra standards, this Proms appearance – the all-guns-blazing finale of the cohort’s year together – was positively straight-laced.

Yes, there were still whoops when friends and family members greeted individual musicians as they all poured on to the stage. And this remains the only orchestra on the annual Proms roster where 10 horns come as standard and piccolo-playing is a team sport.

Royal Albert Hall, London
Nil Venditti’s animated account of Rossini’s choral work embraced its lyricism and theatricality – paired on the bill with the Proms debut of Respighi’s Church Windows

Cheered to the rafters at its 1842 premiere, Rossini’s Stabat Mater has held its place in the repertoire ever since. Its nonchalant bel canto tunefulness, however, has attracted its fair share of detractors. True, the famous tenor aria Cujus Animam Gementem, which skips along like a Neapolitan street song, is an unusual setting for lyrics like “Her spirit groaning, saddened and grieving, a sword has pierced”. Yet Rossini writes with sincerity and, especially in the daringly unaccompanied choral sections, considerable power.

Nil Venditti was equally fervent. Her briskly animated account with the BBC Symphony Orchestra embraced the work’s lyricism while mining the score for theatrical nuggets in a pacy reading that favoured lithe-limbed drama over heavyweight grandeur. The BBC Symphony Chorus, bolstered by London’s semi-professional Epiphoni Consort, went with her cheek by jowl in a robust and disciplined performance, their crisp consonants landing with pinpoint precision.

Church Hill theatre, Edinburgh
At the Edinburgh international festival, Olivier Rannou’s lone cowboy encounters desert dangers in a mix of clowning, mime and visual trickery

The lone ranger at the centre of Olivier Rannou’s family-friendly western initially appears as stranded and desolate as one of Samuel Beckett’s anti-heroes. Parched and prone across a table, with a knotted handkerchief on his head, he is marooned in a desert landscape with a water bottle full of sand, a desperate thirst and a scattering of human skeletal remains.

He retains an edge of existential angst, struggling to survive in extremis, but also becomes more clown-like by turns. Rannou shows us, through movement, expression and sound, that this cowboy is a wanted man, on the run, wrestling with the dangers of his barren, unpeopled surroundings.

I wish I could say that expressing concern for the pop star’s health is helpful – but I know from experience it’s not that simple

The last time I opened X, a photo of Ariana Grande leaning over in a low-cut black dress, clavicle showing, was at the top of the feed. The post read: “hey @grok make Ariana Grande healthy and fat”.

Images of celebrities at their most skeletal regularly rise to the top of social feeds because they generate enormous, dissenting engagement. Social media platforms have made half-hearted efforts to suppress explicit pro-eating disorder content; Instagram and TikTok redirect searches for “thinspo” toward support resources. Yet over the past couple of weeks, Grande has sent users into a frenzy that outstrips the platforms’ attempts.

Crystal Palace Bowl, London
Nas performs his gritty but intricate 90s classics, sharing the bill on the first London edition of the Roots Picnic festival with Questlove and co’s exuberant funk

Looking out over the audience at the Crystal Palace Bowl, Nas feels moved to reminisce about his first visit to London. It was in 1994, around the time he released his landmark debut album Illmatic; he remembers performing on pirate radio stations and “eating good Jamaican food”. It seems unlikely that he ever thought he’d be back in the capital sharing the stage with a man playing a sousaphone, but such is the power of the Roots Picnic, a US institution for nearly 20 years. Its famously eclectic bill has regularly featured great rappers backed by hip-hop’s premier live band, sousaphone player and all: Lil’ Wayne, the Wu-Tang Clan, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z.

Before Nas appears at the festival’s first London iteration, the Roots play their own set, augmented by a guest appearance from Common. It plays out almost as one long medley which shifts restlessly between their own back catalogue and old funk, soul and disco covers. They do a killer version of James Brown’s The Payback. Awesomely tight, driven by the relentless crack of drummer Questlove’s snare and heavy on jazzy brass solos, it’s a perfect demonstration of the unique musical space they’ve carved out over the years, somewhere between hip-hop and jam band: the Grateful Dead of rap, if you like.

Versatile actor whose career spanned The Liver Birds, Doctor Who and an Edward Bond season at the Royal Court theatre

The actor Tom Chadbon, who has died aged 80, was a deft character player, blessed with a versatile voice – his naturally light, delicate, melodious vocal register acquired steel and depth when required – and an almost cherubic physiognomy that could toughen on command. He became well known to television viewers in 1977 as Derek Paynton, the boyfriend, then husband, of Sandra (played by Nerys Hughes) in the long-running Carla Lane sitcom The Liver Birds (1969-79) and between 2008 and 2011 enjoyed a recurring stint on the BBC series Casualty as the hospital’s director of clinical care, Henry Williams.

He will also be remembered as the inept but dogged detective Duggan in the 1979 Doctor Who story City of Death, helping (and sometimes hindering) Tom Baker’s attempts to thwart an alien scheme to steal the Mona Lisa. A comically imaginative caper, filmed partly on location in Paris and co-written by Douglas Adams, City of Death is a high-water mark for Doctor Who and remains the series’ most watched story: the final episode notched up an impressive 16 million viewers. In a perfectly judged performance, Chadbon was both doughty sidekick and comic foil – playing Duggan dead straight (bar the odd well-timed double take when needed) and being hilarious as a consequence.

In the acclaimed new drama Tony, the early career of the late food writer and chef is brought to life, and those who knew him best are now also looking back

The novelist Michael Cunningham has described Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod, as “the only small town I know of where those who live unconventionally seem to outnumber those who live within the prescribed bounds of home and licensed marriage, respectable job, and biological children. It is one of the places in the world you can disappear into.”

This idiosyncratic bohemia has attracted the likes of Edward Hopper, Eugene O’Neill, Mark Rothko and Tennessee Williams along with poets, dropouts, drag queens and drifters. In the summer of 1975 came a lanky, restless 19-year-old from New Jersey with no job and no money, sleeping on the floor of a shared cottage while his roommates worked to pay the rent. His name was Anthony Bourdain, who would later become a celebrity chef, author and television globetrotter.

The standup and presenter on performing at the back of the school bus, his funny aunts and uncles, and swerving a career selling perfume

Born in Lambeth, south London, in 1988, Mo Gilligan is a comedian and presenter. His online sketches went viral in 2017, which led to his debut tour, Coupla Cans, and the start of his TV career, co-hosting The Big Narstie Show and presenting The Lateish Show. The winner of two Baftas, Gilligan has released three standup specials, most recently In the Moment. His new documentary, Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy, is available on Netflix now.

This was my go-to pose as a kid. The expression is a combination of me being a bit cheeky, my mum telling me I shouldn’t smile with my teeth out, and someone else telling me that I had a nice smile when I did that grin. It was a safe bet, and I would bring it out for every school photo.

This may be more to do with ageing than a lack of love. Talk about it – hopefully you can work out a new repertoire together

My husband and I have been together for six years. He is 60, 20 years older than me. We had a baby last year and went through a really difficult time in our relationship. Things are better after some couples therapy, but we are both still unhappy with our sex life.

I take a while to orgasm, and he gets very impatient and essentially just gives up (he always orgasms first, and quickly). I also have longstanding health issues that make sex painful. He has always been respectful when I say I can’t have sex because of the pain. But he gets defensive and unkind when I ask him to try new things to give me pleasure. He bought sex toys and says these were his way of trying, but I saw them as a way of him passing off a job he can’t be bothered to do.

Whether you’ve got a tiny patio, a narrow balcony or a postage-stamp garden, these space-saving ideas will help you make every square metre count

• Gardening pros on the tools they can’t live without

The reality of city living is that if you’re lucky enough to have a “garden”, it’s more likely to be a patio or balcony that can barely fit a bike than a huge expanse of grass.

But just because an outside area is small and lifeless doesn’t mean it can’t be transformed into the perfect place to relax. Whether you use walls to add greenery, maximise outdoor dining with folding furniture or create ambience with lighting, your balcony or garden can be small but mighty with a bit of thought.

Creamy, high-protein and all over our socials, cottage cheese is having a moment. We test the best …

• The best supermarket vine tomatoes

When I was growing up, cottage cheese was tasteless and mostly only eaten by dieters. Its recent revival in the UK, most likely driven by social media, has similar health reasons at its root – the current protein obsession in gym bros and weight watchers alike – but cottage cheese has become cool. The flavourless squeaky varieties of yesteryear are still around, but a whole new category now exists on supermarket shelves that is unabashedly fatty, rich and full of flavour, with artisanal complexity and a lacto-fermented sour twang.

I scored these based on flavour; the more complex and sour, the better, especially when balanced with a rich, sweet and creamy suspension. None of these products were bitter.

Worried about microplastics? Whether it’s titanium pans or loose-leaf tea, here are the changes you can make right now

• The best sustainable subscriptions for greener, easier living

It all started with a black plastic spatula. When an article went viral in 2024 for suggesting we may be unwittingly infusing our food with harmful chemicals by using one, I, along with many I know, lobbed ours into the bin (without a backup in place, to the annoyance of my partner).

It later transpired that the study the article was based on had miscalculated the dosage by a factor of 10. UK regulations also limit certain hazardous substances in plastics, meaning that risks should be lower in this country. But alas, it was too late for our poor spatula.

Love a blow dry but not the salon cost? Shark’s versatile brush styles wet and dry hair, making it ideal for refreshing your look between wash days

• The best hot brushes, tested

Not just a pretty brush (although it definitely also is that), Shark’s Glossi is a well-designed styling tool that aims to streamline your routine. It combines wet-to-dry air styling for blow-drying freshly washed hair with a dry styling mode for smoothing and refreshing between wash days.

Hybrid wet-and-dry hot brushes have become increasingly popular in recent years: current competition includes Dyson’s super-premium Airwrap multi-styler, and the Glossi upgrades Shark’s own discontinued SmoothStyle brush.

Shokupan, fresh fruit sandwiches and soufflé pancakes are part of a growing interest in east Asian cuisine

Golden brown and glistening with melted butter, a tray of freshly baked bread fills the screen in a TikTok video. The camera lingers on the glossy tops before one bun is gently pulled apart, revealing a cloud-soft interior.

The clip is one of countless videos of Japanese milk buns that have racked up millions of views and thousands of comments and shares, helping to propel the pillowy rolls into UK supermarkets.

A free-form fruit tart that’s easy to throw together with whatever seasonal fruit you have to hand

The galette takes its name from the pebble it’s said to resemble – as Elizabeth David observes, it takes many forms, all of them round and flat. For me the word conjures the buckwheat pancakes of Brittany while French friends, in a quick straw poll, tend to think first of the frangipane-stuffed puff pastry galette de rois served at Epiphany, with one vote for a buttery Breton biscuit.

Ask the English-language internet, however, and you’ll be served what is more commonly known as a tart(e), more specifically a charmingly rustic, free-form version which doesn’t require a tin. Though Anne Willan references prune and apple three-tier galette pies from the Pyrenees in her 1981 classic French Regional Cooking, and David includes a yeasted version that sounds more like a cobbler in French Provincial Cooking, most fruit galette recipes I find seem to be American. My hunch is that Alice Waters’ tradition of a daily seasonal galette at Chez Panisse may have popularised the name across the pond, but the general idea never needed upselling. As a quick and easy way to turn a punnet of fruit into a dessert, it’s hard to beat, whatever you call it.

Bullgogi’s largely automated hospitality will either delight or horrify you, but the food is serious

Bullgogi, a whopping new interactive multiscreen Korean restaurant in Manchester’s Piccadilly Plaza, has arrived, heralding the end of traditional hospitality – again. It’s the UK’s largest Korean barbecue restaurant – 165 covers, traditional tabletop grills at every booth – but has no servers with notepads, just screens. Your gyeran jjim, your dolsot bibimbap, your bulgogi: jab the at-table screen and it will arrive, ferried by human hand. Think McDonald’s, but as a gargantuan restaurant. Jae Cho and his Maguro Group have built an empire of 21 locations across London and Manchester, but this is their biggest venture to date. We arrive without reservation, which is no problem, because Bullgogi is the size of a small planet. We order pots of barley tea and pints of Asahi at £6.90, and sit back to enjoy the Blade Runner vibes.

Bullgogi’s largely human-free hospitality will either delight or horrify you. Personally, I greet our new robot hospitality overlords with calm scepticism. Over the past few decades, I have staggered through the Covid QR menu wilderness, prised my dinner from the temperamental jaws of robot fridges in rural farm shops, and watched with mirth as the robot chef at a recent Soho yakitori joint still required a human to load every skewer into it before performing. For these reasons, I greet Bullgogi with a raised eyebrow. In fact, the moment we flag, via the screen, a food intolerance at our table, a bright, chipper human appears immediately to check through the menu for said offending item.

On Saturday, a sold-out crowd cheered on as 15 contestants battled it out to claim the championship spurtle – with a pinch of Celtic salt the deciding factor

Oatmeal sloshes out of pots and into stovetop flames as contestants frantically fumble with their finishing touches. The timer is ticking down but spectators clap and cheer, their whoops ringing through the rafters of Pearl Beach memorial community hall before a voice cuts through the chaos: “please make way for the porridge carriers”.

The five cooks step back, glance at each other’s mess, and hope they’ve done enough.

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There’s a difference between longing for the past and assuming it was better, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. The trick is knowing which you’re feeling

• Read more Leading questions

Is nostalgia a negative emotion? I often feel nostalgic these days. It is a background noise that I am trying to ignore.

It was especially present during the pandemic, when my nostalgia seemed to spread into a species of grief for lost places and activities. I find myself thinking sadly about places I won’t be able to visit for a very long time.

In an app-based era, new dating tactics emerge rapidly and while you may have deployed one or been subject to one, how many of the following are real?

In the age of app-based romance, fresh dating trends seem to emerge every week. Many of them – in the mould of ghosting and catfishing – are profoundly antisocial, while some are defensive strategies against toxic suitors. More than a few are but new names for disgraceful behaviours as old as time. You may have been the victim of one – or you may have unwittingly deployed one – but how many can you identify? Which of the following are genuine trends, and which are not?

Riya says her boyfriend has road rage, but Declan insists he never loses his temper. You decide if needs to put the brakes on his motormouth

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

Every time Declan chooses kicking off over de-escalation, he compromises our safety

I don’t believe people should get away with dangerous or disrespectful driving

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.

From a house in the country once used as a drovers’ inn to a high street landmark in a bustling part of London

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.

Madeleine Finlay is joined by Ian Sample, Guardian science editor, to discuss three eye-catching science stories including an investigation that has identified four distinct types of thinker. Also on the agenda is the unprecedented cyclosporiasis outbreak in the US which has now been linked to two fatalities, and the funding cuts that threaten the iconic Jodrell Bank world heritage site, home to the Lovell telescope

After his fall from grace, media’s former enfant terrible is now sober and helping others with his addiction recovery newsletter and podcast, The Small Bow

Every other Tuesday, AJ Daulerio wakes up at 5.30am and meditates for five to 20 minutes before beginning his multistep daily journaling protocol: reading a selection from a poetry anthology, then a passage from one of his daily wisdom readers (his go-to is a heavily annotated copy of Leo Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom); writing his Fear of the Day and gratitude list, then sharing his spiritual takeaway in a note to his three kids.

After a banana and coffee, Daulerio trains Brazilian jujitsu before hitting a 9.45am meditation at Besant Lodge – a community center just below the Hollywood sign that once served as a meeting place for mid-century mystics – immediately followed by him leading a recovery meeting of his own through Zoom.

Research suggests addressing risk factors for poor cardiovascular health between the ages of 45 and 65 could help reduce risk of cognitive decline

Scientists claim to have identified three health measures in middle age that can ward off dementia for more than a decade.

Having normal blood pressure, no type 2 diabetes, and not smoking between the ages of 45 and 65 were associated with almost 13 additional years, on average, of dementia-free life, a study shows.

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.

Bold colours are out and short, (seemingly) bare nails in, but some see trend as part of criticised ‘clean girl aesthetic’

Trends at Copenhagen fashion week are usually easy to spot. The so-called “fifth fashion week”, a laidback sibling to the other four main fashion cities, has previously popularised everything from romantic floaty dresses with practical trainers to giant hair scrunchies. But during its latest iteration that wrapped up on Friday, a much more subtle trend had emerged – naked nails.

From the models on the catwalks to show-goers and passersby, fingers and toes featured short and unvarnished nails. The trend is a sharp shift away from the long, bright and glossy mani/pedis that have more recently dominated beauty standards.

From leggings that don’t roll down to bras that keep everything in, keen amateur cyclists, weightlifters and swimmers reveal the bits of kit they can’t do without

What is the perfect sports kit? That is the question we set out to answer, talking to sport and fitness enthusiasts all over the country. From Zumba dancers in Bristol to marathon runners in Leeds and gym bunnies in Thurrock, we asked different groups for the activewear they swear by and why it works for them.

Sea swimmers in Felixstowe had conflicting views about wetsuits, but all swore by brightly coloured tow floats and swim caps. Boxers in east London were united on the best kind of glove, but had different takes on clothing choices. Cyclists in the Wirral had differing levels of bike-collecting addiction, but agreed on the benefits of being Mamil (middle-aged men in Lycra).

From Dua Lipa to Zendaya, the kerchief worn by gang members, presidents and pirates has become ‘mad-glamorous’

Baseball caps have been keeping the heads of fashion folk covered and shaded for the past few years. But there’s a new accessory to be seen everywhere this summer: the bandana.

They are as common as cinnamon buns at Copenhagen fashion week, which is taking place in the Danish capital this week. They have also recently been worn by Dua Lipa to the beach, Zendaya to shop for books and Priyanka Chopra Jonas to watch the tennis at Wimbledon.

From olive to lime to mint, green trousers are a nice summer alternative to darker colours. Style them like jeans and they’ll work easily with pieces you already own

From the source to the sea, our writers share their favourite ways to immerse themselves in nature by paddleboarding, canoeing, camping, walking and fishing

It’s early afternoon on an unusually hot and sunny Yorkshire day. I’m standing on my paddleboard on the tidal section of the River Esk, near Whitby’s New Bridge, as cars stream across. The 28-mile-long Esk is special, as it is the only major river in Yorkshire that flows directly into the North Sea.

You don’t have to be a sailor to cruise the estuaries of Essex on this historic craft. The skipper will show you the ropes – or just sit back and enjoy the ride

In a darkened room in Maldon, Essex, a ship’s lantern illuminates the laundry drying on a web of ropes suspended from the ceiling. Between piles of sailing memorabilia, 86-year-old Barry Pearce is flipping through a yellowing logbook, watched by his mongrel, Winkle. It feels more like a ship’s cabin than a terrace house. Pearce is one of a handful of surviving skippers who delivered freight on the Thames by sailing barge, the flat-bottomed trading boats famous for their striking red sails that were endemic to the river’s estuary until the 1960s. He remembers the names of every vessel he worked on – Remercie, Edith May, Colonia.

In the 19th century, the ochre sails of thousands of Thames sailing barges pierced the skyline as the craft carried cargo from the Thames estuary and beyond in and out of London. Their shallow draft allowed them to snake far upriver in as little as a metre of water (bargemen would boast that they could sail anywhere there had been a heavy dew). Their ingenious rig, with sails that could be set and stowed with the help of winches, meant around 150 tonnes of cargo could be shifted by just a skipper and mate – often accompanied by a guard dog. This efficiency allowed them to outlive all other commercial sailing vessels, surviving until the 1960s, when Pearce himself took the helm.

Our rivers may be running low at the moment, but they still offer an abundance of adventure and nature to explore. Here are your favourites, from the Tees to the Shannon

• Tell us about a favourite holiday in the UK – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Last summer, I enjoyed a six-mile walk along the fast-flowing River Wharfe from Ilkley to Bolton Abbey, with calming vistas of the Yorkshire Dales every step of the way. I set out at Ilkley’s Riverside Gardens on the south bank, near the remains of a Roman fort. Trace the path to the ancient stone bridge and along to the picturesque village of Addingham with its Low Mill weir and views of late bronze age or early iron age Castleberg fort. Simply carry on hugging the riverbank to the splendid remains of 12th-century monastery of Bolton Abbey, situated in wonderful woods and parkland.
Helen

With great beaches, culture and nature, the resort town of Palanga and the wild Curonian Spit offer an affordable – and cooler – alternative to the Med

The water off Palanga’s sandy white beach is tinged pale green – the colour of the feathery clouds of Furcellaria lumbricalis that occasionally brush against my calves. Underfoot, the Baltic seabed is ridged, the sea so clear and shallow that every ripple is visible. The water deepens very gradually – making it ideal for families. I’m quite far from the coast, but still only thigh deep, the sea still cool as I duck beneath the surface.

Elsewhere in Europe, another heatwave has prompted health warnings and school closures. But here in Lithuania, children scamper on the sand and splash in the shallows as temperatures remain, if not cool, bearable. I’ve come to explore some of the Baltic beaches – here and on the Curonian Spit – which are fast gaining popularity as the Med heats up and prices in southern Europe remain stubbornly high.

The roads were so treacherous that what should have been a five-minute drive took 40 minutes. My mum didn’t speak much English, so I did the talking

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I was graduating from university the same day Storm Goretti was due to hit Birmingham. The forecast was for snow – and lots of it – so I decided to get the bus in, rather than risk driving and having to leave my car behind in a snowstorm. Joining me was my mum.

We successfully attended the ceremony and managed to get on a bus back home but as the snow worsened, it broke down a kilometre from my house. The whole bus emptied and we were forced to walk through the blizzard. It was like The Day After Tomorrow out there. Tough conditions for anyone, but my mum, who was in her late 60s, was struggling to take even a few steps.

The benefits of all three come down to a crucial piece of cellular kit

Sleep. Exercise. Eat well. It’s the oldest recommendation in medicine, repeated so often it’s become a cliche. We know the advice, even if we don’t always follow it. But have you ever stopped to wonder why these three seemingly different habits have such remarkably similar effects on our brains and bodies?

For generations we’ve treated them as separate prescriptions – sleep restores us, exercise strengthens us and food fuels us. Yet neuroscience is beginning to suggest something rather more elegant: they’re all essentially doing the same job.

‘Can’t you just plug it in?’ asks our garage mechanic neighbour. If only it were that simple

On a Wednesday morning the doorbell rings while I’m working in the kitchen. My wife, who is expecting a delivery, opens the door. “No, I don’t want brake pads,” she says. I don’t hear the reply. “Because I’m not a garage,” my wife says. “Do I look like a garage?”

There actually is a small garage just beyond the end of our back garden. Only a brick wall separates it from my office shed – my working days are punctuated by the bright ring of dropped wrenches and the grating whine of power tools.

The Brighton-based photographer was walking along a crowded beach looking for ice-cream when he spotted this calm, minimalist scene

Bertram Greenhough had promised his six-year-old daughter Audrey an ice-cream. It was a warm June day in Brighton and the pair were playing tourists in their own city, having just visited an upside-down house near the i360 observation tower. The beach was packed, and they were heading in the direction of the Palace Pier so that Greenhough could stay true to his word. Along the way, they passed this lifeguard shelter.

“I often walk around Brighton with my SLR film camera – very hipster of me. However, that day I only had my phone,” Greenhough recalls. “But, as the adage goes, the best camera is the one you have with you. I saw this calm, minimalist scene suspended above thousands of people and I remember saying to my daughter, ‘Oh, look at that, I need to take a picture!’ She had no idea what I was talking about!”

Gerson Turcios was 17 when he fled violence in Honduras to build a new life in the US. Six years later, he was mowing lawns in his home town of Rhinebeck when immigration officers took him. Within hours, friends, neighbours and local celebrities sprang into action. Could they stop his deportation?

Gerson Turcios didn’t recognise the men standing next to a couple of dark SUVs outside his house one July afternoon last year. He figured they were lost and approached to see if he could help. A slim 23-year-old with short dark hair and big brown eyes, Turcios had just finished work mowing lawns in the pretty town of Rhinebeck, in New York’s Hudson Valley. The men asked if he knew someone called Jimmy – he did, but Jimmy hadn’t lived in the small, white weatherboard house with Turcios, his brother and his brother’s girlfriend for a while.

The men noted Turcios’s accent and asked where he was from. Turcios didn’t answer, so one took out his phone and snapped a photograph. The next thing Turcios knew, he was in handcuffs in the back of one of the SUVs and on his way to an ICE processing centre in Newburgh, New York, then on to a detention centre.

While there are fears that people harvesting their food could put pressure on habitats, some ecologists suggest responsible foraging can boost conservation and biodiversity

Angus Morton crouches behind a cricket pavilion in a London park to snip stinging nettles from an unkempt patch of greenery.

“They’re so abundant and they’re so good,” says Morton, a regenerative gardener who pops out once a week to forage bits for dinner. “I use them in pesto, tea … I’ve even seen someone putting them in croquetas.”

Have you - or a child in your care - been filmed by Meta’s smartglasses without your consent? We would like to hear from you

With more than 7m pairs reportedly sold in 2025, it’s clear that the popularity of Meta’s smartglasses is on the rise.

And while they can transform the lives of some people, for example those with visual impairments, others have raised concern about nonconsensual filming - including of children.

Have you - or a child in your care - been filmed by Meta’s smartglasses without your consent? We would like to hear from you if so.

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

We would like to hear your favourite true crime TV documentary and why

From OJ: Made in America to Tiger King, the Guardian has compiled TV’s best true crime shows. Now, we would like to hear yours. What is your favourite true crime TV documentary and why?

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

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.

How long did you have to wait? Perhaps you are in a queue now. Tell us your experience

Long queues and waiting times caused by the EU Entry-Exit System (EES) are starting to deter people from travelling, ACI Europe, Europe’s airport trade body, has said.

ACI Europe director general Olivier Jankovec told Travel Weekly that fixing the Schengen Entry-Exit System must be “Europe’s immediate priority”.

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The two-week event celebrates the creativity of the Yorkshire Dales village and has gone from strength to strength since beginning as a fundraiser for the local primary school in 1994