Service charges used to be a matter of choice, but now consumers feel obliged to pay them for even a cup of coffee. How do we navigate this minefield and who is really profiting?

In a London pub, Greg Double was brutally confronted with the reality of Britain’s evolving tipping culture. “I was annoyed about the pint being eight quid, but then when you put service on top, it’s absolutely criminal,” he says. In the past, you might have told the bar staff to keep the change or have a “drink” on you, but since when did we routinely tip in pubs? Or coffee shops? Or, worst of all, at self-service machines? Tip creep is happening.

Tipping was awkward enough in the UK when the general rule was 10% at a restaurant, plus anxiety about whether you should tip the hairdresser, babysitter or food-delivery driver. Now, with tipping suggested ever more frequently, US-style, it has become a minefield to Britons. The amounts edge higher – in fancier London restaurants, a 15% service charge is relatively commonplace. And it’s often asked for – in coffee shops for example, when you pay – before any service is delivered.

Michael Gove calls the axing of his Tory strategy ‘bringing back stupid’. He doesn’t seem to care that it did more harm than good

GCSE results day was marked with the usual front pages filled with pictures of beaming students. What you didn’t see was the invisible third of 16-year-olds in England who failed their maths and English GCSEs, the obstacle to their future.

That’s 360,000 failed in a system designed by Michael Gove as education minister to mark out winners from losers. It’s a cast of mind shared by many in his party who still yearn for the 11-plus, which consigned a random number of children to failure before they’d hardly begun. A few councils still do it.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Cost of living has hit campaign group while multinationals are threatening to squeeze out independent breweries

For centuries, the wooden real ale pump has been the hallmark of a good British boozer. But now problems are brewing for the proper pint, as the Campaign for Real Ale has seen its membership sink to an eight-year low and its accounts show it is firmly in the red, making an £800,000 loss last year.

Real ale is a traditional draught cask beer, a “living” product that is produced and stored in its cask. It differs from a cold, fizzy lager, in which the yeast is killed and carbon dioxide is added. Real ale contains live yeast so it continues fermenting until it is served.

As well as pledging military help and diplomatic backing, the prime minister could be useful in dealing with the US

Since moving into Downing Street in July, Andy Burnham – a foreign policy neophyte – has expressed strong support for Ukraine. But on Monday he saw the bitter human cost of the war up close for the first time, visiting Kyiv during his first international trip as prime minister.

The occasion was the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence. Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave awards to the families of fallen soldiers. Relatives wept, hugging Ukraine’s president. Photos of young men in their prime were shown on a giant screen.

‘The show’s hardly an advert for Yorkshire. Sets would have a burnt-out car and maybe an upturned shopping trolley. Locals would say, “Can’t you put a nice floral arrangement there instead?”’

I’d been writing screenplays with Michael Winterbottom and in 2006, his producer Andrew Eaton said: “There’s this quartet of novels by David Peace. Are you interested in adapting them?” I read the first, 1974, and was drawn to it and repelled at the same time. It was strong meat, full of anger and injustice. It’s anchored in reality, especially the Peter Sutcliffe and Stefan Kiszko cases, but heightened and stylised. “Fiction torn from the facts,” David called it.

The newspaper often uses the word to describe elections with progressive contenders, implying a previous whole destroyed by the left

“El-Sayed and Stevens Project Party Unity After Divisive Race,” announced the New York Times on 5 August, the day the progressive Abdul El-Sayed beat out his centrist Democratic rival, Haley Stevens, in the Michigan senatorial primary. “Divisive” is now the Times’s favorite attack word, deployed repeatedly to disparage and try to undermine the astonishing recent advances by progressive candidates.

Four days after that first story, the Times again landed “divisive” under “Obama and El-Sayed Discuss Unity After Ugly Michigan Primary.” El-Sayed, it asserted, had “narrowly prevailed in a divisive primary after campaigning on a progressive and anti-establishment platform”.

Moscow warns of increased tensions with Britain as PM offers Ukraine declassified details of missile components

• Europe live – latest updates

Andy Burnham has accused the Kremlin of “outrageous threats” against the UK as Russia warned of an escalation in tensions after the UK’s decision to present Ukraine with newly declassified blueprints to allow Kyiv to improve its production of long-range missiles.

Speaking in Kyiv, Burnham compared Ukraine’s struggle to Britain’s fight against Nazi Germany. “My nation kept the flame of European freedom alive in the 20th century, you hold that flame in the 21st,” Burnham said in a speech in front of St Sophia cathedral to mark the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence.

Nine men and three women aged between 19 and 61 arrested as part of investigation into events leading to deadly collision

Twelve people have been arrested on suspicion of offences including being involved with organised crime as part of the investigation into events leading to a crash on the A66 that killed two police officers and five others.

Cleveland police confirmed that nine men and three women were detained by officers investigating the events that led up to PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough dying when a Volkswagen Passat travelling the wrong way on the A66 near Middlesbrough collided with their marked armed response vehicle. All five men who were in the second car, aged between 17 and 23, were pronounced dead at the scene.

Restore Britain leader paid up to £1,476 an hour by platform, which critics say is financially incentivising inflammatory content

Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain, is on course to earn as much from the social media platform X as he does from his salary as an MP, after surging income from posts that include demands for mass deportations.

Lowe has earned £932 an hour for his posts on X, formerly Twitter, since the start of the year, according to his own declarations in the register of MPs’ financial interests, which detail how many hours he has spent on X for each payment he received from the platform.

Washington launches campaign to isolate Tehran but it is unclear whether it will apply measures to China

The US has threatened to impose severe sanctions against any country or entity maintaining economic ties with Iran, hoping to achieve with economic measures what military means have so far failed to do.

It is unclear, however, how far the Trump administration is prepared to go in confronting China, Iran’s biggest trading partner, which has signalled its resistance to US economic pressure to cut off links with an ally.

Spokesperson for Duke of Sussex says he remains an ‘active and avid supporter’ of African Parks’ mission

The Duke of Sussex has stepped down from the board of a major African wildlife charity that had been at the centre of a human rights controversy.

Prince Harry’s spokesperson confirmed he was no longer a trustee of African Parks, which admitted last year that human rights abuses were committed by its rangers in the Republic of the Congo.

Prime minister praised for rejecting US trade proposal as Trump shows little interest in retreating from dispute

• Are you a Canadian boycotting US products? We’d like to hear from you

Mark Carney said on Monday that while American negotiators saw the French language in Canada as an “irritant … in Quebec, these are rights,” days after receiving widespread praise from political leaders for rejecting a US trade proposal that many perceived as weakening the country’s Francophone culture.

The prime minister’s remarks came hours after the US president, Donald Trump, showed little interest in retreating from the spat, posting on social media that Canada had been “ripping off the United States of America for years” and threatening a swath of new, economically devastating tariffs on cars and trucks.

Blaze near Crawley destroyed 140 vehicles, damaged nearby businesses and led to power cuts on Saturday night

A man has been arrested on suspicion of arson after a fire tore through a car park used by people flying from Gatwick airport, destroying about 140 vehicles.

The blaze erupted at Caldyne business park near Crawley, about eight miles from the airport just after 9pm on Saturday. Images showed vehicles on fire and enormous plumes of smoke rising close to overhead power lines.

After higher prices for winter kick in, energy debt unpaid for more than 30 days likely to rise, says Energy UK

Households in Great Britain could owe their energy suppliers as much as £7bn by the end of the year after higher gas and electricity prices forecast for the winter kick in, an industry group is warning.

Domestic energy debt and arrears climbed by about £500m over the past year to a record £6bn at the end of June as the Middle East conflict continued to stoke rising gas market prices.

• President accused by ‘Fifa Legends’ of being power hungry

• Samuel Eto’o claims chief has not ‘done anything wrong’

A group of influential current and former footballers have added to the pressure on Gianni Infantino by calling for change at the top of Fifa, saying “enough is enough” in a statement shared widely across social media.

The intervention is particularly significant given some of those behind its circulation have undertaken ambassadorial activities for Fifa as part of its “Fifa Legends” programme. Among them is the former Manchester United and Arsenal defender Mikaël Silvestre, who also sits on the governing body’s 16-member players’ voice panel designed to assist with anti-racism initiatives.

Hélène Duguy is taking on companies accused of failing to stop Pfas pollution in the area of France she calls home

The factories were just part of the landscape for Hélène Duguy growing up in the heart of an area known as France’s “Chemical Valley”.

“Those factories are visible from my mother’s apartment,” says Duguy, 34, whose mother still lives in St-Genis-Laval, south of Lyon.

Rightwing voices seize on plans to offer Black children an exclusive afternoon at an outdoor pool in the German capital

It was meant to be an outing for Black children in Berlin and their families, offering them an exclusive afternoon at an outdoor pool set up by a local theatre.

But the plans, slated for earlier this month, had to be scrapped after they were seized on by rightwing and conservative voices to whip up outrage, leaving organisers fending off racist emails and threats.

Bannau Brycheiniog, Wales
The traditional fire might be banned this year, but festivalgoers are treated by energetic performances by Four Tet, Tamikrest and Westside Cowboy

Driving towards the bucolic Welsh valley that’s home to the Green Man festival feels a little apocalyptic this year. Charred peat and grassland smoulder on the hillsides, the remnants of one of the 20 wildfires that blazed through south and west Wales the previous week. The dangerously dry conditions pose a problem for the festival organisers: the traditional closing ceremony, during which a towering effigy of the titular Green Man adorned with punters’ handwritten wishes is set alight, has been cancelled. A sensible decision, but one that left longtime festival-goers with a serious question: where would all those wishes go?

Then, the heavens open. Manchester quartet Westside Cowboy pack out the main stage arena on Friday afternoon, thousands of soggy cagoules bobbing along to the band’s charmingly ramshackle blend of British indie and amiable Americana. “We were over there last year,” grins vocalist and guitarist Jimmy Bradbury, gesturing towards the significantly smaller Rising stage. They’re clearly over the moon – and it’s infectious. To close the set, the band down instruments – save a guitar and a handheld drum – and gather round one mic for a rallying performance of In the Morning. The recorded version sounds like a lullaby, but here they transform it into a euphoric boot-stomping finale.

Our writer spent weeks putting capsules, sheets and liquid detergent through their paces to find the best for your clothes and the planet

• Sustainable cleaning subscriptions that make life easier

Nothing makes falling into bed more enjoyable than freshly laundered sheets, especially if they’ve just been dried in the sunshine. It’s a definite bonus, though, to know your clean bedding won’t bring you out in a rash or pollute your local river.

Laundry detergent can be a troublesome product. A few years ago, I suffered a full-body rash after using pound-shop detergent on my sheets. I switched to a big-brand product and never had a reaction again, but there’s still the question of whether its ingredients may be causing environmental harm after they’ve gone down the drain.

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
From Jacob Rees-Mogg as a child to Frank Sinatra’s ego in space, this is a wild collage of clowning and performance art

There are plenty of works-in-progress on the fringe. Frankie Thompson insists (or has the voice of Peppa Pig do so) that her show is a work-in-regress, an expunging of Horrible Things from the deepest recesses of her, and our, recollection. Thompson, whose brand of clowning-meets-performance art more or less guarantees something interesting will happen on stage, parades these Things as lip-synced audio and audience-terrorising stunts, all marshalled by our brisk and wild-eyed host, brooking no nonsense in a polka-dot dress.

Women in the crowd can relax: Thompson’s Horrible Things are usually male, her victims in the crowd likewise. The first sketch sound clips an interview with 12-year-old Jacob Rees-Mogg, and if you ever doubted lip-sync as an art form, I offer you Thompson’s performance here as the very junior minister. As his every word damns the way this country’s ruling classes are raised, her hyper-expressive face and nanosecond-precise timing pass sharper commentary than a thousand satirical words ever could.

At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 30 August. Then at Soho theatre, London, 9-21 November.

All our Edinburgh festival reviews

Recent incorrect attempts to reveal the White Stripes star’s whereabouts reflect how much we’re still obsessed with the one-of-a-kind drummer

In February 2011, the White Stripes announced they were no longer going to tour or release new music. The decision wasn’t based on “artistic differences” or “health issues”; instead, the decision was “mostly to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band and have it stay that way”.

In the ensuing years, vocalist-guitarist Jack White cultivated a wildly successful solo career and continued working sporadically with his other bands, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather. Drummer Meg White, meanwhile, retreated from music, preferring instead to be a private citizen. In recent years, she politely declined to speak for a 2023 Elle story and didn’t attend the White Stripes’ 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.

As holidaymakers descend on Brittany this summer, trebling the population of some villages and towns, local people are unimpressed

Name: “Parisians out!”

Age: It officially commenced at the start of August.

On a panel show last week, everyone in the audience wanted to talk about the climate emergency, but the lines rolled out by a Tory MP simply dissolved on contact with reality

As it is August, and everyone with stronger opinions is currently on holiday, last week I went on Any Questions?, the BBC Radio 4 panel show. I had prepared beforehand with a friend whose life’s work it is to make sure people don’t say anything stupid on the radio (or TV), and we’d talked about everything – the strait of Hormuz and energy prices; bus fare caps and the relative price of eggs; racism in the press and in public life; the AI bubble and the next financial crash; how many bathrooms Harry and Meghan currently have in the US, and whether a property even exists in the UK with that amount of toileting hardware.

Predictably, perhaps, the audience’s questions did not spread themselves neatly across the full suite of current affairs, though Harry and Meghan’s return did come up – it was more a matter of which question about the climate crisis best represented the fact that everyone wanted to talk about the climate crisis. The news had just dropped that El Niño would deliver us an unprecedentedly wet autumn, but that was unlikely to soothe the parched earth of the record-breakingly hot, dry summer. Crops are failing, the land is on fire and nobody has not noticed.

Carbon capture and storage could make the Rosebank site compatible with UK net zero commitments – if its owners are willing to pay the price

The British government must soon decide whether it should give consent to two oil and gasfields, Rosebank in the North Atlantic and Jackdaw in the North Sea. Amid both insecurity of energy supplies and deadly evidence of the climate crisis, the prime minister, Andy Burnham, is facing pressure from the oil and gas industry and unions on one side, and environmentalists on the other.

Labour’s manifesto commitment not to approve new drilling licences offers little help, because the fields already have licences, granted by the previous Conservative government in 2022 and 2023. But last year, Edinburgh’s court of session ruled that the environmental impact assessments on which this decision relied were unlawful. The Conservative government had, the court ruled, failed to include the emissions generated when the oil and gas from the fields is burned. The court allowed work to continue on the fields, but a new assessment had to be done and approval sought again.

Michael Jacobs is professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield and a former energy and climate change adviser to Gordon Brown when he was prime minister

It used to be that dorm rooms were chaotically messy. Does this new generation really need an £80 spice rack and velvet clothes hangers?

Of all the questions this year’s freshers may be nervously asking themselves as they prepare for this next phase – did I pick the right course? Will I make friends? Is uni worth 30 grand when my future job prospects may be limited to dusting a datacentre? – one is particularly pressing: “How many clothes hangers do I need to bring?”

Fret no longer, enquiring young minds: John Lewis has the answer on its packing checklist for students. Thirty to 40, it claims, wildly, “consisting mostly of standard velvet or plastic hangers”. “Standard” velvet? I missed this memo.

No longer banned from next year’s presidential election, Le Pen is a far more formidable force than her understudy, Jordan Bardella

France loves a battle-scarred survivor. Charles de Gaulle, François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac clawed their way back from political failure to become presidents of the republic. There is a significant chance that Marine Le Pen will be next.

Now that the Paris appeal court has unshackled her from an electoral ban for fraud, the far-right veteran has double appeal in the race for the French presidency next year. She will run, as always, as an outsider and a scourge of the political elites – despite continuously holding electoral office since 1998. She can also now pose as a “miraculous survivor”, a “mother courage” and “a battling granny”, as senior French political figures, including former ministers, described her to me during recent conversations in Paris.

Mujtaba Rahman is the managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm

Ignore the party poopers who say toddlers spoil the fun. I’ve braved the raves with my twins – and I’ve seen how families add to the magic of events

The woman I used to be died the day I gave birth to twins. That life – full of spontaneous travel, impulsive decisions and a decorated social calendar – evaporated, giving way to a blank canvas of motherhood and two glorious little human beings. While I was inside that summer, many of my friends continued on their child-free paths. They posted pictures of themselves enjoying festivals, sleeping in tents with pop-up communities that I used to be a part of.

So when the twins turned one last summer and we’d found our rhythm, I decided to take on the challenge of sharing the magic of live music with them. It went better than I expected. Before their second birthday, we had danced at day festivals such as Situation Dance, put on by Femi Koleoso from Ezra Collective, camped out overnight in the Brecon Beacons for Green Man and been to the child-focused TOTFest.

Iman Amrani is a freelance writer and producer

Ebola is a disease that spreads through communities, so we need to listen to communities if we want to halt its spread

Each time we travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), we go first to listen. In Bunia, we have met dozens of community representatives: survivors, women, young people, local organisations, health workers and leaders from affected areas.

Their message was direct: involve us. We know our communities. We know where families seek care, how information moves and why trust is breaking down. Give us the means to help drive the response. They were right.

Moscow hopes western politics will weaken support for Kyiv. The UK and Europe’s answer should be to make Ukraine increasingly capable of defending itself alone

The events of the past few days on Europe’s borders may mark a turning point in Russia’s war on Ukraine. While the political skies in Kyiv have darkened for Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the military picture looks brighter. Ukraine can already send swarms of drones against Russian oil facilities, e-commerce warehouses and airfields. Andy Burnham’s arrival in Kyiv marks a step forward. Britain is releasing classified information on its components of Scalp, the French version of the Anglo-French Storm Shadow cruise missile, enabling its assembly in Ukraine. This is more than another weapon for Kyiv. Britain is helping Ukraine become less dependent on the western armoury.

Moscow sabre-rattles, but Britain should hold its nerve. Kyiv has been at the mercy of its allies, waiting to replenish weapons stockpiles and release sophisticated arms. Producing its own hi-tech armoury gives Ukraine greater freedom of action because western governments have let go. Two years ago it was different. Joe Biden waited until November 2024 before letting Ukraine strike deep into Russia with US weapons. Yet thresholds once deemed dangerously escalatory have since been crossed without provoking a Russia-Nato war. Kyiv is now being trusted with something more consequential: a measure of weapons independence.

Two activists who organised commemorations of the bloody crackdown on China’s 1989 pro-democracy protests now face jail. Remembering is not a crime

For decades, Hong Kong mourned when the mainland could not. Its huge annual Tiananmen vigil kept alive the memory of the 1989 pro-reform protests in Beijing, and of the massacre that suppressed them. Along with Macau, it was the only place in China where the anniversary could be publicly marked and the truth preserved.

But the crackdown on the 2019 uprising in Hong Kong has crushed the freedoms that the region once enjoyed. That year’s vigil was the last. On Friday, two leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance, which organised the commemoration, were convicted of incitement to subversion under the draconian national security law. Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, and Chow Hang-tung, 41, face up to 10 years in jail.

Marco Scalvini on why it’s necessary to know what was promised by developers and local authorities, what arrived and what it costs to live in social housing

Your editorial on London’s social housing (16 August) makes a persuasive case for treating social housing as economic infrastructure. However, infrastructure is normally monitored and social housing is not, either when it is delivered or across the years in which it is meant to remain affordable. A home is counted as affordable on the day that planning permission is granted and is rarely examined again, through completion, tenure change and the service charges that can make it unaffordable within months of occupation, as your reporting on shared ownership has shown.

Southwark, like almost every local authority, publishes every pound of the financial contributions developers pay, yet offers no scheme-level account of whether the promised social rented homes were built. The consequences showed at Elephant and Castle, where residents needed three years of freedom of information battles to force out the viability evidence behind an affordable housing commitment that ended at 82 social rented homes in place of more than a thousand. By the time it came out, the estate was gone, and a record that arrives after demolition can only count the losses. On the Old Kent Road, where the council plans around 20,000 new homes and only a few thousand are yet built or under way, the record could still be kept in time to shape what is delivered.

Readers respond to Alan Milburn’s recommendation to boost internship opportunities for young people with special needs

As a retired special school headteacher, I warmly welcome Alan Milburn’s proposal to expand supported internships for young people with special educational needs and disabilities (Turbocharge special needs internships to help tackle UK youth jobs crisis, says Milburn, 16 August). For too long society has concentrated on what these young people cannot do rather than what they can, with the right support and opportunity.

I often meet former students who, once established in a workplace, have not only held down jobs but progressed to positions of greater responsibility.

Readers respond to Nesrine Malik’s article about the shift away from US society’s progressive and inclusive zeitgeist

Regarding Nesrine Malik’s article (Here is the news from the US: Woke 1.0 is over. But what did progressives do wrong?, 18 August), the mistake of Woke 1.0 was to believe that a self-evident truth was, well, a self-evident truth. I grew up in a divided society in which it was crystal clear, at least to my community, that we were second-class citizens. Nothing ever seemed to change and in the end we fought a war over it. Today attitudes are a lot different, but new truths are universally embedded.

What we learned was that the self-evident truth of “first-class” citizens was that their position was one established long ago by right and might. Against that sense of rightness, you cannot appeal to another truth that is diametrically opposed. I raised boys and girls in a progressive, liberal home. It was some surprise to me that my boys were not onboard with Woke 1.0. Their truth was Jordan Peterson’s “equality of access, not equality of outcome”, and a belief that their own privilege as middle-class, intelligent white males was good luck to be defended.

The antidote to a French Monday | August on holiday | School dinners | Dance-hall don’ts

As I write this, I’m enjoying my French Sunday (Polly Hudson, 23 August) with a croissant from the local bakery – open, of course – and a coffee. I’ll meet friends for lunch in a local riverside restaurant, then travel a few miles to a wonderful cafe, for even more coffee and their homemade cakes. Relaxing? Of course it is. It’s a much-needed antidote to a French Monday, particularly in rural France, where 80% of businesses, restaurants and public bodies remain closed all day in order to recover from the excesses of a “do nothing” Sunday.
Roslyn Lockhart
Montmorillon, France

• I enjoyed James Mackay’s article on villeggiatura, the Italian tradition of taking August off, which is shown to help rather than hinder economic output (17 August). As he says, though, the point is “reclaiming life from the totalising logic of the market”. For an expansion of this idea, I recommend the work of Amintore Fanfani, Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, who deserve to be better known in Britain. Like Pope Leo, they put human dignity and flourishing at the centre of economics.
Catherine McLoughlin
London

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Joao Pedro, Chelsea’s new No9, has scored after 30 seconds. Cuenca’s driven ball out of defence was headed whence it came by one of the Chelsea centre-backs. Palmer slipped a simple* first-time pass through to Joao Pedro, who dinked the ball decisively over Leno.

* For him.

• Bowler spoken to by police outside bar in Derby

• Carse replaced in squad for second Test by Sonny Baker

Brydon Carse has been stood down from England’s squad for the second Test against Pakistan this week while the footage of him in police handcuffs outside a bar in Derby city centre is investigated by the sport’s disciplinary body.

Carse was filmed by a member of the public while he was detained briefly on suspicion of “being drunk and disorderly” outside Molly Malone’s Irish Tavern in the early hours of Sunday morning. The 31-year-old fast bowler had been celebrating victory against Derbyshire in the County Championship with his Durham teammates.

Possession numbers, the intense physicality and the pure rhythm of games all felt noticeably new as the season began

There has been something oddly narcotic and moreish about the drip‑drip of fresh Pep Guardiola content either side of the start of the new Premier League season. Eras come and go. Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact. But four‑part Amazon Prime documentaries make angels of us all.

So we have continued to feast on the Pep-at-City visuals: dead jeopardy, reheated beefs, the uplifting team talks of a departed manager to the departed players of a departed team, and moments that often feel far more gripping than the daily churn of what we must, out of habit, call the real world.

• 46-year-old charged with possessing criminal tools

• York fined and sentenced to two days in jail

• 49ers CEO also owns stake in Leeds United

The San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York has pleaded no contest to two criminal charges after being arrested at an Ohio trailer park over the weekend.

KRON4 News in San Francisco reported that York was initially arrested on suspicion of engaging in prostitution but that count was amended to a charge of disorderly conduct. He was also charged with possessing criminal tools.

• Huge hailstones prompt organisers to act 15km from end

• Riders seen heading into hotel on route to take cover

A torrential hailstorm in the French Pyrenees forced the abandonment of the ⁠third stage of the Vuelta a España on Monday.

With 15 kilometres (9.32 miles) remaining of the 174km route ⁠from Gruissan to Font-Romeu, the ​skies darkened as the peloton neared the top of the Col de Mont-Louis and huge hailstones began ⁠bouncing off the tarmac and pelting the riders.

• Super League clubs rejected £35m deal last week

• The 14 owners due to discuss plans at meeting

The Rugby Football League (RFL) is exploring radically different terms to the funding deal initially offered by Australia’s NRL with talks under way over seeking a £50m loan package to replace the guaranteed investment of £35m that was rejected last week.

The Guardian has seen details of an alternative vision produced by Rugby League Commercial in a document entitled Project Magic, which the 14 Super League clubs owners will discuss at a meeting on Tuesday.

Barcelona target left exposed after draw with Villarreal as supporters vented their fury at his ‘dream’ to leave

Julián Álvarez entered a long, dark tunnel on his own. “We’re stronger together,” Giuliano Simeone said but that wasn’t the way it went. At the end of their first home game of the season, a 2-2 draw with Villarreal, all of Atlético Madrid’s players gathered by the centre circle, shook hands with their opponents and each other, then headed towards the south end of the Metropolitano. Almost all of them did, anyway: one was left behind. Somebody in a suit had a quiet word then the press officer came, pointing in the other direction. So, while his teammates turned to the supporters who had turned on him, the man wearing No 19 went west, to the exit.

Álvarez walked alone. Head down in silence, as he had been all afternoon and beyond, he set off slowly across the pitch accompanied only by his thoughts and the whistles that followed him. Not offered a hand to shake or a nod of acknowledgment, he stepped past the Atlético badge on the touchline where the mouth of the tunnel opens. Either side, supporters hung over the void, whistling and shouting. Way off to his left, Atlético’s other players paused, seemingly waiting for him to slip out of sight before approaching the stand, but none turned back. A scarf was thrown, landing at Álvarez’s feet and left lying there. And then he disappeared into the dark, a portrait of the place he is in.

Balding says victory is ‘very unlikely’ but there is a good chance he will improve on second-place finishes achieved in 2021 and 2024

The British Flat trainers’ championship winners’ club is among the most exclusive in the sport, with just a dozen new members through its doors in the past 50 years. Aidan O’Brien, John Gosden, Richard Hannon Jr and Charlie Appleby, meanwhile, are the only trainers to win a first title outright this century.

Becoming the fifth seems to be the last thing on Andrew Balding’s mind, however, despite an exceptional week at York’s Ebor festival that took his prize-money total for the season past £7m, his domestic Group One tally since 10 July to four and left him just under £700,000 behind O’Brien in the title race.

The WNBA has attracted grifters who care little for basketball – and whose latest stunt exposes the hollowness of their supposed concern

I regret to inform you that yet another dildo has hit a WNBA court. The Chicago Sky v Golden State Valkyries game was sullied by sex toys being chucked on to the playing surface on Friday. Aren’t we tired of all this yet? To paraphrase the Sky’s Natasha Cloud, it takes a lot of effort to bother with such a juvenile act.

This is yet another controversy for the WNBA, a league that up until a few years ago, most media observers ignored. The WNBA is full of incredibly talented players and has a rich history, but most sports fans treated all but ignored it for the majority of its 30-year existence. But when Caitlin Clark went pro, the league surged. Ratings, attendance, and interest exploded. But not all attention is good attention.

• Mercedes team principal: ‘It could become tighter’

• Title leader Antonelli will take grid penalties in Monza

McLaren’s Lando Norris and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton are genuine contenders for the Formula One world championship, according to the Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, who watched Norris take a decisive win at the Dutch Grand Prix.

With Mercedes’s early-season dominance looking to have been all but erased, Wolff noted that there would be no quick fix for the team who could not develop at the same rate as their rivals because they had opted to use their budget differently.

Wigan and Leeds tussle at the top but can all clubs come to an agreement over the investment the sport needs?

Three rounds to go until the Super League playoffs begin, and it is difficult to know whether to keep your eyes fixed on the pitch or off it. Leeds sit top after their impressive win at York on Sunday afternoon ended Wigan’s 48-hour stay at the summit, but the Rhinos are embroiled in a two- or perhaps even three-way battle for the League Leaders’ Shield in 2026.

The Rhinos and Wigan are level on points and have intriguing games against St Helens and Hull KR respectively this week. Should either or both slip up, Warrington could yet come into the picture for a top-two finish but you would be forgiven for your eyes already veering past this coming weekend’s fixtures and to the penultimate round on two fronts.

Average sea surface temperature outside polar regions was 21.1C on Saturday, latest data finds

The world’s oceans were hotter than ever previously recorded on Saturday, according to the latest data.

The average surface temperature was 21.1C, with the rising marine heat a stark indicator of the climate crisis. More than 90% of the heat trapped by carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning enters the oceans.

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On Tuesday 20 October, join Damian Carrington, and our panel of experts – including Professor Andy Haines, Katie White MP, Asad Rehman, Shruti Suresh Gareth Thomas and Amy Fairman for a hopeful and solutions-focused evening. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

US Southern Command has struck another vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing two accused of trafficking drugs

After a pause of more than two months, the US military announced Monday that it once again carried out a strike on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people accused of trafficking drugs.

It brings the overall death toll to 223 people killed in 67 strikes during the nearly year-long US campaign of bombing alleged drug boats off Latin America’s Caribbean coast and in the eastern Pacific Ocean. US Southern Command says the campaign has resulted in the destruction of 64 speedboats, three “low-profile” ships and a semisubmersible craft.

Mette Frederiksen, who received message on returning from Ukraine, advises women to embrace self-acceptance

Sick of getting unsolicited beauty tips on social media, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, rebuffed a male cosmetic surgeon’s offer to “fix” her and advised women in similar situations to embrace self-acceptance.

Frederiksen, a Social Democrat and Denmark’s second female prime minister, posted on Instagram that she had just returned from a trip to Ukraine, where she was subjected to air raid sirens, when she found a message proposing some help with her appearance.

Man, 68, was left searching for help in 116F weather after his car became stuck in mud along remote park road

A French tourist recently died in Death Valley national park after a car mishap left him stranded in 116F (47C) weather.

The visitor, identified as 68-year-old Pierre Michel Formosa, was traveling with another French man along the park’s remote West Side Road when their vehicle became stuck in mud near Queen of Sheba Mine Road.

Five-day trial at high court in Glasgow heard Dott subjected a girl and a boy to multiple incidents of abuse

The former world snooker champion Graeme Dott has been found guilty of sexually abusing two primary school age children. The 49-year-old subjected a girl and a boy to multiple incidents of abuse, with the girl targeted between 1993-96 and the boy between 2006-10.

A five-day trial at the high court in Glasgow heard Dott exposed himself in front of both children, touched them inappropriately, and kissed them. On Monday, he was found guilty of two counts of lewd, indecent and libidinous behaviour towards them. In both cases the abuse happened in the Glasgow area.

Pair are offspring of two beavers who mysteriously arrived in Pensthorpe nature reserve near Fakenham in December

Wild beaver kits have been born in Norfolk for the first time in more than 500 years.

The pair of newborns are the offspring of two free-living beavers who mysteriously arrived in Pensthorpe nature reserve near Fakenham in December.

With limited electricity and poor ventilation, many families in Nasirabad have little to shield them from temperatures of up to 50C

As the first light reaches Nasirabad, a queue of men, women and children has already formed outside the town’s ice factory, with their buckets, sacks and plastic containers. Among those hoping to buy some ice to help their families endure another scorching day is 12-year-old Taimoor, in his school uniform. He says it is his most important task of the day.

“If I do not bring the ice, how will we endure the heat at home?” he says. “And how will we drink water that feels as though it is boiling?”

US agency releases plan to lease millions of hectares of seabed off the coast of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam

A US government plan to lease out millions of hectares of seabed near the Mariana Trench for deep sea exploration has drawn opposition from US territories in the Pacific, as the Trump administration remains locked in a race with China for control of critical ocean minerals.

On Tuesday, the Marine Mineral Administration (MMA), an agency under the US department of the interior, released a proposal to auction deep sea mining leases for 28m hectares (69m acres) of seafloor off the coast of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam.

Farmer Derek Sayer let a boggy field run wild and just one annual hay-cut has led to remarkable biodiversity

Tucked away on a country lane, a small field bursts with yellow and pink flowers. Quail and whitethroats call from the thick hedges and the plants, including common centaury, yellow rattle and marsh and common spotted orchids, bounce with hoverflies and butterflies.

More than 150 plant species have been recorded on Sayer’s Old Meadow, in north Norfolk, England, which is remarkable when there was just one – oilseed rape – growing there 21 years ago.

Gardiner, who had cancer, is remembered as ‘one of a kind’ after competing in BBC show with son Sam in 2020

Tributes have been paid to the Race Across the World star Jo Gardiner, who has died a year after her son and co-star Sam was killed in a car crash.

The physiotherapist from Manchester died after “a long and courageous battle with cancer”, relatives said. She was 61 and is survived by her other son, Charlie.

Campaigners accuse ministers of trying to grab headlines with announcement before a working system is ready

Survivors of violent crime and families of victims have criticised the UK government for announcing “world first” plans to introduce restriction zones for serious offenders freed from prison within a few weeks without spelling out how they would work.

Key campaigners who have championed the idea of the zones, designed to “lock” offenders into specific areas, accused the government of seeking to grab headlines rather than providing the detail that would reassure survivors and families.

Film directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, co-directors of No Other Land along with Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal , investigates ‘Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians’ during the war

A new documentary about Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, directed by Oscar-winning directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by the Guardian, is to receive its world premiere at the Venice film festival.

The film, called NAZA, has been produced with Jim Wilson and executive produced by Jonathan Glazer, the team behind The Zone of Interest, and is the only documentary that will compete this year for Venice’s prestigious Golden Lion.

PM’s honeymoon period will come to an end as he makes decisions on the budget, welfare, migration and prisons

Andy Burnham has enjoyed a month-long honeymoon period since he became prime minister, winning public support with a series of popular but relatively low-cost announcements. They have included cutting VAT on electricity bills, reducing the cost of bus travel and reviewing business rates for small businesses.

But as MPs prepare to return to the Commons in just over a week, the prime minister is about to face his first real challenge in office, as he makes a number of key decisions that could create enemies but define his premiership.

NGO criticises ‘human cost’ of UK-funded crackdown on attempts to set off from French beaches in small boats

People trying to cross the Channel to the UK have reported an increase in French police use of violence on beaches to prevent them from getting into dinghies, according to a French NGO.

Utopia 56, which works on beaches from where migrants attempt Channel crossings, says so far this year 2,720 people have reported being victims of French police violence, compared with 1,954 over the same period last year, when crossings overall were much higher.

EU police agency says shift could point to involvement of new criminal networks focused on specific artefacts

Robberies at European museums are becoming increasingly violent, with thieves sometimes brandishing guns, assaulting staff and using sledgehammers, axes and even explosives to smash their way into buildings and display cases, according to a report by Europol.

The EU police agency said that while museum thefts were generally seen as a non-violent form of organised property crime, member states had detected a recent shift “towards violent and forceful methods” that could point to the involvement of new criminal networks focused on specific cultural artefacts.

‘Human-caused’, wind-driven fire in Reno leaves thousands of homes and businesses without power, officials say

Authorities have urged about 90,000 residents of Reno, Nevada, and the adjacent North Valley to evacuate or prepare to do so as a fast-moving, wind-driven wildfire bears down on the city.

The Hawk fire began on Saturday to the north-west of the city, and quickly grew, showing “extreme fire behavior” as it threatened foothill neighborhoods in Nevada’s second-largest city. It stood at a little more than 15,000 acres burned on Monday morning, and was 0% contained.

Gunmen ‌attacked worshippers in Dekara village on Friday taking women, children and older people

An armed group has posted a video showing what ⁠residents said were about ⁠600 women, children and ​older people abducted in an attack on a mosque in Nigeria’s north-central Niger State last week.

The video, posted on Facebook and WhatsApp, ⁠showed large groups of people seated in a forested area surrounded by armed men. Several children could be heard crying in the background.

Just 8,383 jobs for people leaving university were advertised in July, says recruitment website Adzuna

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Graduate job vacancies in the UK have sunk to their lowest level since they started being tracked a decade ago, according to a recruiting website.

Just 8,383 jobs for people leaving university were advertised in July, Adzuna reported on Monday, down 45% compared with the same point last year and the lowest since the company started gathering the data in 2016.

Campaigners say proposal for £10bn rescue deal in bid to avoid nationalisation is a ‘cosy stitch-up’

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The group of creditors pursuing a rescue bid for Thames Water have been accused of shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic after proposing an overhaul of the stricken utility’s board.

In a bid to stave off temporary nationalisation by Andy Burnham, the lenders said they would appoint Liz Barber, the former chief executive of Yorkshire Water, and Clive Selley, the former chief executive of network operator Openreach, as directors if they are allowed to take formal control of the company.

The US is scooping up treasury bonds in an effort to raise their price and push yields down – but it’s not working

The bond market is driving the Trump administration crazy. Last week, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, announced that the government would sharply ramp up its purchase of treasury bonds, in an effort to raise their price and thus push down their yield, which amounts to the interest rate the government pays on its debt.

It didn’t quite work as planned. Yields on treasurys fell after Bessent’s bond market intervention but soon bounced back. By Friday afternoon, the yield on the 10-year treasury was back near where it was before the secretary’s announcement. The yield on the 30-year bond was again trading around its highest level in 20 years or more.

China-based retailer swung to $99m loss in first quarter and faces scrutiny over its environmental footprint

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Shein, which built a fast-fashion empire on what seemed like impossibly low prices, has been forced to lower its own valuation in a cut-price stock market float, after falling into the red earlier this year.

The online retailer will list on the Hong Kong stock exchange on 1 September at a valuation of close to $27bn (£19.8bn), significantly down from a near-$100bn private market peak four years ago.

The comedian dominated Saturday night TV in the 1980s, with his sketch shows attracting 18 million viewers. Next came the West End musicals and sitcoms. But in 2016 he quietly disappeared from the limelight. What happened?

The electronic gates slide open to reveal a gorgeous Portuguese villa, a swimming pool and a beansprout of a man. “You’ve made me feel very important,” says Russ Abbot with a smile. “Come in!”

It’s more than 30 years since Abbot, aged 78, dominated Saturday night TV with his sketches, songs and impersonations. He appealed to all sorts. Kids, parents and grandparents united around the TV – first for Russ Abbot’s Madhouse, which ran from 1980 to 1985, then The Russ Abbot Show, from 1986 to 1991. He was joined by the inimitable Bella Emberg and a cast of young comics, including Les Dennis, Dustin Gee and Michael Barrymore. But make no mistake, it was Abbot’s show and the 80s was his decade. At his peak, he attracted 18 million viewers an episode.

Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles

The cult star proves she is ready for pop’s big leagues in a show that blends chaotic punk energy with technical finesse

The last time Slayyyter toured, in 2023, she struggled to break even and had to fly home boxes of unsold merch. Back then, she was still largely the domain of Twitter gays: a subcultural figure to those who assessed music in terms of “flops” and “bops”.

Then, midway through 2025, she released the electro-trashy Beat Up Chanel$, and suddenly caught everyone’s attention. With a career-defining Coachella set earlier this year, she had broken through into the mainstream alongside a class of flop-no-more artists – Zara Larsson, Raye and Tinashe – who had spent years seeming cruelly shut out of its central sphere, only to break through with a surprise big hit. For these artists, and Slayyyter in particular, the urgency of a last chance had become as galvanizing as the urgency of a first.

The latest in our series of writers picking their go-to comfort films is a grimy and gory trip back to the start of a surprisingly uplifting torture porn franchise

I was petsitting recently for a white suburban family, with the typical streaming habits therein. They had two kids; their most-watched shows, according to the history that showed up on the screen, were Bluey for the kids and The Office for the adults. When they came home from their weeklong trip, they would’ve found their watch history upheaved. The Bingos and Michael Scotts all erased by Saw I, Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI, Saw 3D, Saw Spiral, Saw Jigsaw and, finally, my new favourite, Saw X.

I was obsessed with the Saw franchise well before I ever saw it. At 11, as Jigsaw puppets became Halloween costumes, I went to bed each night convinced Jigsaw was going to scoop me up in a van because the word “hell”a popped into my head. By 13, I looked up every film on Wikipedia and read through each trap with terrified excitement. By 14, I drank my first can of Stella and typed Saw II into YouTube, watching it in 12 installments. It was utterly horrifying. And so, so, so much fun.

The actor concludes his investigation into Monsanto by meeting people with cancer who blame the company for their illness. Plus: a devastating story of foundling sisters reunited. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Two
There’s a lagoon in Ruabon, north Wales, that is so toxic that the barrels containing the chemicals dumped in it have rotted away. Until about 20 years ago, children used to play around it. Michael Sheen’s compassionate and enraging exposé of the alleged poisoning of parts of his homeland decades ago by contractors working for the now defunct chemical company Monsanto concludes with the actor meeting people with cancer who are searching for accountability. Spoiler alert: it’s an uphill battle. Phil Harrison

This portrait by Vytautas Katkus of a man contemplating his recent fatherhood and his own father is steeped in ennui and ends up drifting

At one point in this Nordic-Baltic homecoming film, Danielius (Darius Šilėnas) refuses an invite for beachfront karaoke, preferring to watch from behind a polythene partition. At another, a neighbour glimpses him exercising across the courtyard, through the window of the flat in an end-of-summer Lithuanian resort that Danielius is trying to sell. Having returned from Norway to settle up accounts, this prodigal son is often holding the world at arm’s length – and director Vytautas Katkus does his best to help him with this distanced technique in this quizzical and faintly existential drama.

Little tangible is disclosed. Danielius is a thirtysomething father who skipped the funeral of his own dad the year before. Preparing the flat to go on the market, he walks the dog of his neighbour, Vismante (Vismantė Ruzgaitė), hangs speculatively at beach gatherings and falls asleep in pine forests. Ice-cream is eaten at every available opportunity. He’s not alienated exactly, but somewhat out of step. As he looks for new anchorage, even the film seems to question whether Danielius has sufficient main character energy: it periodically drifts to follow another resident, Tomas (Rokas Siaurusaitis), who is caring for his grandmother over the way.

Kinshuk Surjan’s documentary follows women in dire financial straits whose bereavement compounds their social plight, which they confront together

Out in rural India, a crisis casts a dark cloud over the seemingly tranquil vistas of wheat fields and soy farms. Over the past 20 years, more than 400,000 farmers have killed themselves, beset by mounting debts and low market prices for crops. Shot in Maharashtra, the state with the highest rate of farmer suicides in India, Kinshuk Surjan’s documentary sensitively captures another tragedy that lingers after death: left behind by their dead husbands, generations of grieving widows struggle to find their way in a society still burdened by patriarchal values.

Sanjivani, a woman in her 30s, is one such case. Eight years after her husband killed himself, she has taken over some of the farming responsibilities, along with other odd jobs, to provide for her two children. The camera rarely finds her at rest; Sanjivani not only works in the fields but also performs domestic labour for her extended family – cooking, cleaning and doing laundry. Her resilience is stunning to witness, but even more impressive is the emotional support provided by a tight-knit network of other widows. Together, the women gather for counselling sessions where they can freely discuss their emotional, physical and financial issues.

Despite their fast rise, the Manchester indie-pop band are happily going at their own pace. But what – if anything – did they learn from the advice of Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon?

When Westside Cowboy played Later … With Jools Holland earlier this year, fellow guests Duran Duran offered some advice. “Nerves are just your mind telling you that you’re about to do something extraordinary,” Simon Le Bon told the band, who were “cacking their pants”. Le Bon’s words didn’t really help. “I was hoping for some real advice,” says vocalist and guitarist Reuben Haycocks, laughing. “Like, where do I look?”

The Manchester band have had to learn the ropes quickly. By 2025, only two years after forming, they had won Glastonbury’s emerging talent competition, supported Geese on the year’s buzziest indie tour and signed to a major label. “We’d be lying if we said there wasn’t a little bit of pressure,” says vocalist and guitarist Jimmy Bradbury.

The historian shares the astonishing story of a Peterloo massacre survivor. Plus, a delightfully wholesome new pod that is ‘Desert Island Discs … for words’

From the People’s History Museum, this series is about the Peterloo massacre in Manchester, 1819, which the host David Olusoga calls the “ground zero of industrial capitalism”. Touching on systematic disenfranchisement (Manchester didn’t have a single MP) and state-sanctioned violence through the extraordinary story of survivor William Cheatham, it’s an invigorating if sobering listen. Nell Frizzell
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As part of the Beastie Boys, the rapper shot to fame and notoriety in the 80s, before bandmate Adam Yauch’s death saw him withdraw from the spotlight. He returns with a solo album that sees him reckon with greed, mortality – and his past

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

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

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

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

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

A Guardian correspondent’s sobering account of the US betrayal of Ukraine – and the possible reasons behind it

American presidents have struggled to get the measure of Vladimir Putin. When George W Bush met him in 2001, he reported that he had “looked the man in the eye”, got a “sense of his soul” and found him “trustworthy”. Barack Obama thought Putin was making a mistake with his interventions in Ukraine and Syria, but didn’t do much about it. Joe Biden backed Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion, yet his fear that Putin would reach for the nuclear button if backed into a corner made him risk averse. He worried about the impact of the sort of long-range strikes against Russian territory that Kyiv is now launching on a daily basis.

This caution frustrated Ukrainians to the point that they looked forward to Donald Trump shaking things up after he won re-election. Be careful what you wish for: the returning president thought his rapport with Putin would be enough to get Russia to sign up to an immediate ceasefire. In Trump’s head it was President Zelenskyy, fighting a war he was bound to lose, who was the problem.

This Booker-listed epic set in Aids-era Kingston is a triumph – bitter, bawdy and ravishingly queer

“A sense of sweep,” replied Marlon James, when asked what moves him most in literature. “Sweep isn’t just about external journeys, but internal as well. It can be over years and decades, or across land and sea.” If that explanation is still hazy, pick up his mighty new novel, which is longlisted for this year’s Booker prize and is tirelessly – sometimes exhaustingly – grand and peripatetic. Mounting a grisly exposé of Jamaican homophobia, this polyphonic 640-page doorstopper is an emotionally bruising narrative that roves “uptown, downtown, ghetto and gully” through Aids-era Kingston with sidetrack excursions to 1950s England and a closing leap to 2000s United States.

The novel’s defining event is a gruesome mob attack on eight queer men who have clandestinely come together to work on bringing John Herbert’s 1967 gay prison play, Fortune and Men’s Eyes, to the stage. The goal, in the words of director Havelock Titus, is to shatter “the whole fragile myth of Jamaican male sexuality”. “Because prison,” he explains, “is the ultimate male institution and yet masculine sexualities that could never happen outside in the normal world flourish in there all the time.”

As a lonely teenager, the novels of Nancy Mitford offered the Sorrow and Bliss author a lifeline - and an imaginary friend. She explores why reading can create a particularly intense bond with a favourite writer

In the summer before university, my mother gave me a copy of The Pursuit of Love. We’d moved countries at the beginning of my A-levels and those months in between had been defined by a level of loneliness I had never known in my life. The sort of loneliness so acute and pervasive it feels like panic, and on top of all that, so shaming to be 17 with nowhere to go and nothing to do on a Saturday night.

Growing up, my mother – a great reader – would say: “When you’ve got a book, you’ve got a friend,” which is why, presumably, I wasn’t a great reader. Then, I’d always had actual friends. And suddenly I didn’t and presumably that is why I accepted the Nancy Mitford paperback and started to read it.

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

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

Players will get what they expect from the new CoD title: boots-on-the-ground military action with a slight tactical edge. But what’s with all the distractions?

There’s a lot riding on this year’s Call of Duty, the inescapable first-person shootfest that’s been lobbing a grenade into the autumn release schedule since 2003. Previous instalment, Black Ops 7, performed poorly compared to previous titles, forcing Activision to post a semi-apology to fans. And that’s not the only challenge Modern Warfare 4 is facing: there’s a new indie shooter, Wardogs, promising a feel somewhere between classic CoD and Classic Battlefield. Then, lurking on the horizon, in mirror shades and an exotic sports car, is Grand Theft Auto 6, which is surely going to smash and grab all the attention (and money) from the market in mid-November.

The good news is that, judging by the early access beta test that ran over the penultimate August weekend, we’re definitely getting what we expect from a Modern Warfare title: quasi-authentic boots-on-the-ground military action with a slight tactical edge. The weapons and general gunplay are highly effective, from default assault rifle, the Han 86 – a classic CoD beginner’s gun with decent fire rate and handling – to the bullet-spraying Nightshade SMG and the absolutely lethal KG-7 Vulcan sniper rifle. They all feel good to hold and fire, and there’s enough balance to let you experiment with slightly more offbeat numbers like the burst-fire Hyeon AR and the possibly overpowered Mar-9 marksman rifle.

Developers who met through Australia’s improv scene and publishers of comedic party games have united for this slithering challenge in which you play as one extended limb

Most stealth games cast you as a spy, an assassin or a master thief. My Arms Are Longer Now dispenses with most of the criminal person, to send in just one spectacularly badly behaved limb. It slithers across floors, winds around furniture, steals things and slaps anyone within reach – finally answering the question nobody asked: what if your own arm turned to crime?

As Toot Games co-founder Matthew Jackson puts it: “You are the bad thing that happens to the people.”

Academics and a former classification board director say Halloween: The Game’s ban due to ‘incentivised drug use’ highlights an incoherent set of standards

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Halloween’s Michael Myers is one of film’s most feared boogeymen, responsible for some of the most brutal on-screen deaths in horror cinema. The US video game developer Illfonic looked to reproduce those terrors in its upcoming title Halloween: The Game, with gruesome killings a major focus of the gameplay: for instance, you can stomp another player’s head through a toilet seat, or fry their brain by throwing them through a television screen.

But Australians will not be able to play Halloween, because it has been refused classification by the Australian Classification Board, which means it is banned from sale within the country. And it’s not because of the violence or murders.

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

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

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

Underbelly, Edinburgh
Maddie and Marcus Rice relate with words and songs the lessons passed on from one woman to a younger one

An unexpected theme on this year’s Edinburgh fringe is assisted dying. It is central to Morna Young’s After Party, about a matriarch who chooses to die after her 80th birthday, and Ben Harrison’s adaptation of Andrew O’Hagan’s Mayflies, in which a terminally ill man travels to Dignitas. It is hinted at in Eilidh Loan’s Cathy, about a woman adjusting to bereavement. And it is here again in this breezy storytelling show by sibling duo Maddie and Marcus Rice.

The semi-fictional tale is about Maddie’s befriending of the 87-year-old Darcy O’Shea, an artist and piano teacher 50 years her senior, who is full of zest and vigour. As Maddie puts it, she is “unapologetically herself”, a woman living a life of happy self-reliance with limited tolerance for anyone else. A long-gone partner nicknamed her Dandelion because of her sticky-up hair, and it suits her personality.

She was the first woman, according to myth, and she let loose all the evils and sorrows of humanity. But Aszure Barton thinks Pandora’s had a bad rap – and she’s using dance to reimagine her tale

Aszure Barton is taking herself back to the creation of Mere Mortals, remembering the creative buzz of the studio at San Francisco Ballet. “Sam was fiddling around making magic in one corner,” she says – that’s Sam Shepherd, AKA electronic musician Floating Points, who plays live in the show. Digital art duo Hamill Industries were there too, designing visuals for giant LED screens. “I was in a corner with the dancers,” says Barton. “Principals and apprentices, everyone working together. It was a really shared experience, which I loved.” In fact, it’s a “curiosity for real collaboration” that drives the Canadian-American choreographer. “If it was just about me,” she says, “the work wouldn’t be as powerful.”

Mere Mortals, which opened in San Francisco in 2024, is finally getting a European premiere, at this year’s Edinburgh international festival. While Barton’s memories of making the show are all about human connection, the subject matter is quite the opposite: artificial intelligence. It’s inspired by the myth of Pandora’s box, but instead of a box unleashing the evils and sorrows of humanity, it is reimagined as a cautionary tale about AI.

Royal Albert Hall, London
Amy Harman brought a warm baritonal vocalise to premiere from nonagenarian Thea Musgrave, while Felix Klieser bent his unique horn technique to Mozart

Amid this year’s crop of Proms premieres, one stood out a mile – long before any of us had heard a note of it. Out of the Darkness is a new bassoon concerto by the 98-year-old Scottish composer Thea Musgrave, whose music was first heard at the Proms in 1960. Sixty-six years later, Musgrave is one of classical music’s most eminent elder stateswomen; her next opera will make its debut next year. But bassoon concertos remain a rare breed.

The first performance of Out of the Darkness emerged from a dark grumble of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields’ percussion and bass instruments, which bassoonist Amy Harman answered from the back of the stage, weaving a warm, baritonal vocalise through the orchestral duskiness. Only the solo violin line of ASMF’s director Benjamin Marquise Gilmore offered a lighter, brighter sound, until it was picked up by the rest of the violins. The musical material was all beguiling loops and phrases ending in question marks, Harman’s tone deliciously lyrical. Nothing was spelled out, except her journey around the orchestra, the bassoon gathering rhythmic vitality as she walked to join the trumpets, then double basses, finally arriving at the front – a soloist’s standard spot – in time for the disarmingly near-tonal final chord.

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Are they besties, housemates or more than that? Lara Ciulli and Riana White keep the audience guessing in a gripping hour of comedy

Fifteen years ago in this room, I remember the thrill of encountering Lizzie and Sarah Daykin’s duo Toby, which complicated the double-act dynamic with highly charged, is-it-real sibling rivalry. I felt the thrills again with this two-hander featuring Lara Ciulli and Riana White, which refracts sketch comedy (and dance, and confessional) through the lens of queer female friendship. Who knows whether Ciulli and White are lifelong besties, housemates, sometimes-almost lovers? But they defy you to believe otherwise, in a gripping and slippery hour that splays their intimacy, codependency, mutual resentment and few-holds-barred humour across the stage.

In a show with a major movement component – they spend much of it all over one another – Those People begins with a mime, of two women crashing their car into a lake, then one rescuing the other. Being one another’s salvation is the subtext of much that follows, as we dip in and out of the malfunctioning relationships in their pasts: the partner who insisted on showing Ciulli his favourite porn scene; the ex who refused to return White’s Calvin Kleins. The latter abstracts into an underwear fever dream, then into a naked breakdance by scene-stealing Ciulli. “You’re being selfish,” protests Riana, stepping out of the show. “OK, and you’re being insecure,” retorts Lara.

Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Making the most of a huge orchestra, conductor Karina Canellakis treated the dissonant score with relish, but the evening belonged to the singers, with even the tiniest role superbly realised

Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey carries a content warning for “strong violence and intense mythological horror”, but even its goriest scenes do not match the mythological horror Richard Strauss produced nearly 120 years earlier in Elektra, whose special effects are confined to the 111-piece orchestra. The heckelphones, basset horns and Wagner tubas Strauss adds to an already outsized band makes staging Elektra unfeasible for all but the best-resourced companies. But the extraordinary colours he draws from the orchestra and the storytelling he entrusts to it make concert performances particularly rewarding.

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra played Strauss’s most dissonant score with relish, responsive to Karina Canellakis’s efficient, economical gestures. Brutal climaxes were suitably overwhelming, but equally striking was the refined string sound in occasional moments of repose. Clarity was exceptional, as whips crackled, flutes fluttered and trombones groaned; balance almost always excellent.

Women Photograph, a non-profit launched in 2017 to amplify the voices of women and non-binary visual journalists, has announced three recipients of its 2026 grants. Grants of $10,000 have been awarded to Fatma Fahmy, Caroline Gutman and Yixi Tian. This year’s grants were sponsored by Leica USA

The road to Kostyantynivka in Donetsk, Ukraine, is a perilous journey for the Khyzhak brigade – a mobile unit tasked with shooting down Russian drones to cover soldiers’ rotations or moving armoured vehicles

“Holy yeah! Yeaaaah! Done!”

Booooooom.

Dzhango firing to shoot down a Russian FPV-drone.

Bloody noses, ear cleanings, the first sproutings of armpit hair … the photographer reveals how he captured his two babies growing into boys and then men

Not many family photo albums open with images of the twin towers on fire. But for Nick Haymes, it made perfect sense. “When 9/11 happened,” he says, “I realised life was very short.” At the time, he was living in New York, trying to forge a career, while his friend, colleague and future wife Lina was dealing with the fallout of her previous marriage. “It made us realise we should probably get together and have a family. It was this huge historical event, but on a very micro level, it also shaped my relationship with my wife and children.”

Chronograph is a photography book that runs from those terrorist attacks to the present day, tracing the journey of Haymes’s two sons, Philipp and Lawrence, as they grow from drooling babies into young men. We are given a ringside seat as arms get broken, beloved pets die and hairs start sprouting from armpits. The mundane side of life – verrucas, messy kitchens, Lina cleaning out an ear with a cotton bud – is captured in the same way as birthday parties and rites of passage.

Despite its global reputation, my time there felt less sexy party, more wholesome summer camp. Then one day my boss told me a hard truth

When I tell people I spent a chunk of my early 20s working at a hipster clothing retailer infamous for salacious ads and sexual assault allegations, I’m usually met with scandalised interest. I imagine what they imagine: a harshly lit harem of flesh and vice, where young women were offered up on an altar of mid-priced T-shirts.

We had our moments. An occasional visiting corporate lackey would inevitably grind up against one of us while checking a window display. A weekly caller would gasp and choke while asking if we sold women’s underwear. A co-worker inquired whether I’d be interested in going on dates with rich, interesting men for money. It was impossible to ignore the reputation of our store. But it was the 2010s, a strangely liminal time of sexual and social awakening. When we could roll our eyes at the problematic gender politics of our advertisements while never considering wearing a bra to work.

Robert Solomon loves the early mornings, picking out the apples, tending to the broccoli and fussing up the dandelion greens. At 71, he says it’s the best job he’s had

When Robert Solomon’s working hours were cut during the pandemic – he did building management and tech support for a nonprofit organisation – he got an extra job at a food cooperative, helping to stock the store. It was, he says, the most ordinary job, but that’s what made it special.

That job ended with the pandemic, but in 2022 he left the nonprofit and hunted for grocery positions. Now, at 71, he is assistant buyer in produce (ie fruit and vegetables) at an independent market in New York. “I love the opportunity to do physical, creative work with my body, hands and mind,” he says. “I’m working harder than I have since my 30s, and I love it.”

Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60?

Brilliant for managing breakouts and refreshing puffy eyes, but after months of treatments, is Shark’s light therapy device the one our writer would buy now?

• The best LED face masks

Of all the LED masks I’ve tested, the Shark CryoGlow feels like the most heavily marketed. Touted as a one-stop shop for anti-ageing, blemish-busting and undereye cooling, it’s trickled its way into countless influencer morning routines and post-work wind-downs, slowly but surely filling up my social media timeline.

As an acne-prone woman whose work life revolves around beauty tech, the adverts are well placed. But that doesn’t negate the fact that, to the average consumer, LED therapy still reeks of pseudoscience. If my younger self got wind that I was strapping a glowing mask to my face every day, she would die laughing.

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

• The best supermarket mayonnaise

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The best hair masks for every budget, tested

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

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

In an extract from her new book, the Prague-born food writer shares two ways to preserve summer vegetables so they can be savoured year-round

Preserving the abundance of summer produce is a wonderful way to extend the season long after the gardens have faded. Opening a jar in the colder months offers more than just something good to eat; it also holds joy, patience and memories. When winter comes knocking, we are ready with something sweet, sour or salty waiting on the shelf, reminding us that summer will return and the sun will shine again.

A fun and easily customisable snack, to be enjoyed by kids and adults alike

Corn is a late-summer staple in our house, but its arrival often leaves me feeling a little blue (end of summer and all that). So, instead, I like to entertain more and make the most of the warm, light evenings. These nachos are a great snack for adults and kids alike (just adjust the chilli for younger palates), and a solid base that can be tweaked any which way. Have some lovely ripe tomatoes to hand? Chop them up and throw them in, too. Avocados at their peak? A side of guacamole would be a dream. Got a well-stocked spice cupboard? Add a little sweet smoked paprika and even some crushed coriander seeds to the fried beans. Make it to your liking and pantry, and enjoy with friends, ideally in the evening sun.

Hot days call for cool dinners, and these are Japan’s nutty, salty and sweet solution. Fiery or pickled accompaniments optional

Although every culture craves something different in hot weather – chilled beetroot soup in Lithuania, cooling buttermilk drinks in India, gazpacho in Spain – what many of these dishes have in common is a certain soothing silkiness as they slide down the throat, plus a decent helping of salt. Japan’s zaru soba, which Namiko Hirasawa Chen of Just One Cookbook describes as her family’s “go-to meal when the summer heat and humidity soar”, is no exception. Cold, slippery noodles paired with a savoury dipping sauce, it’s a simple, satisfying dish that’s ready in 15 minutes, and can be accessorised with crunchy salads, sweet seafood or creamy tofu sides for something more substantial. Traditionally served on a bamboo mat, or zaru, to allow the noodles to drain, you can get away without one at home (though lose the seaweed and you can call it mori soba instead), this is definitely one to stick in your summer repertoire alongside the chilled soups, watermelon salads and cucumber sandwiches.

I am forever curious as to how these kind of sizzling places feel on a normal Tuesday two months in, especially when the celebrities are all off sunning their bottoms in Tuscany

Café Clement, the all-day restaurant inside Nick Jones’ new St Clement Hotel at 180 The Thames in central London, opened with a bang in June and immediately rocketed to the top of every “sell your grandmother for a terrace table” list in London. Which isn’t that much of a surprise, seeing as Jones, founder of Soho House, is the master of restaurant rumpus.

Within days, Stanley Tucci, Nick Grimshaw and full-length-trouser-phobic heart-throb Paul Mescal were all there, tucking into oeufs mayonnaise and lobster omelettes while politely ignoring the fact that the place was still, in many ways, a building site. The hotel itself isn’t due to open fully until early autumn, when a rooftop restaurant, Lunette, will also arrive with some of London’s most wondrous views and Florence Knight at the helm. Still, Café Clement opened to frothy praise, and I am forever curious as to how these kind of sizzling places feel on a normal Tuesday two months in, when the celebrities are all off sunning their bottoms in Tuscany and, frankly, lunch is not free.

He has chased a deer across a dual carriageway, eaten an entire tray of chocolate brownies and jumped head first into a canal. But despite all the worry he brings us, he is extraordinarily lovable

Ernie found his way into our hearts and home about nine years ago, when he strategically crawled into my lap during a family visit to meet a litter of puppies. While all the other beagle puppies ran wild, Ernie sat comfortably on me with his long, soft ears dangling down. We chose him because of his placid nature and named him Ernie after my mum’s late dad, who coincidentally also had short legs and a bit of a round belly.

After a few weeks we realised that Ernie was anything but placid. His gentle temperament quickly morphed into an unruly and persistent need to find his way into danger.

Following the all-clear, Kevin and Jade found a new openness in discussing sex and intimacy – and also a shared desire for exploring polyamory

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

Since the all clear, my relationship with my sexuality has shifted a lot

Make the victim feel safe and able to talk at their own pace, and consider any danger the perpetrator currently presents to younger members of the family

A young adult woman in our family has recently shared that her older male cousin once touched her inappropriately when she was aged six and he was aged 12. This happened 18 years ago. Then a second incident allegedly occurred eight years later.

She shared the story with her parents this year and the information was then shared with her cousin and other family members. He stated that he cannot recall either incident.

In 2001, Scott Westerfeld travelled from New York City to Sydney to see Justine Larbalestier. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, they navigated the crisis as best they could, together

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

I noticed Justine before she noticed me. We were at a literary award ceremony, and she was wearing a dress upcycled from a black Velvet Elvis painting, talking to a man three times her age.

I asked my friend, Carol, who knew everyone, why I’d never seen her before. Carol explained that she was an Australian academic, researching the history of publishing, and led me across the room.

It has not paid me for months and I am in severe financial distress, and apart from my husband while I try to sort it out

I stopped receiving my NHS pension in May and, when I rang to ask why, I was informed that I was deceased.

I have repeatedly called to no avail and my emails have received auto-generated responses.

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

• Students on their biggest financial shocks

• The best student deals and discounts

• An insider’s tips on student money

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Foundayo will be available on private prescription, with pharmacists warning of counterfeit GLP-1 problem

A new daily pill that treats diabetes and helps with weight loss will be available in UK pharmacies from Monday.

Pharmacists said the move would be welcome for people who cannot use weight-loss jabs, but also issued a warning over the growing problem of fake, unlicensed or counterfeit versions of GLP-1 tablets.

Miranda Luby was only 36 years old when her tinnitus arrived in the middle of the night, without warning and for no clear reason

One night two years ago, I was lying in bed when I began to hear a high-pitched, electronic hum. The scene that followed would be comical if it wasn’t so traumatic. I roamed around the house in my PJs, frantically pressing my ears against various electrical appliances. It took half an hour to realise the sound was coming from inside my own head.

I’d heard ringing in my ears before, rising then falling, like a one-note crescendo of an orchestra. As a kid, I used to believe the myth it was the sound of dying ear cells, playing a swan song for a frequency I’d never hear again. This was different. This time, it didn’t stop.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The city’s rich history and culture have so far flown under the radar, but its fiercely proud inhabitants are determined to change that

We have hardly begun walking before I spot the side alley, curving away from the main road in a patchwork of sunlit yellow walls, shuttered windows and shadowy archways. “What’s up there?” Elena, my guide to the city, pulls a wry smile. “That is Carmine. As a kid, I was warned not to go there.”

I turn up the alley. There’s a lot of graffiti. Next to an anarchy symbol, someone has sprayed “morte al decoro” – death to decorum. I’m intrigued. We go further, finding a labyrinth of colourful streets filled with bars and restaurants, a few just opening up for the day.

Five travel writers share their favourite holidays at home, from gravel biking in Scotland and a steam train ride in Yorkshire to rowing all the way from Oxford to London

One of my best UK holidays was the week I spent in June 2013 rowing from Oxford to London with two friends, James and Tom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dutch sustainable smartphone revamped with new chip and more RAM without sacrificing modular design

Fairphone’s top Android for 2026 is a little faster with more memory while maintaining full compatibility with its previous phone, including its repairable and ethical chops.

The Fairphone 6+ continues the Dutch cooperative’s mission to make consumer electronics longer lasting and more sustainable, containing 51% either recycled or ethically sourced materials while being fully repairable at home with just the one screwdriver included in the box.

They relayed to me that the driver wanted more money. I went to grab my wallet, but they told me to put it away

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I travelled alone a lot when I was younger and often got myself into stupid situations. You think you’re immortal when you’re in your 20s.

One such occasion happened when I was 25 and travelling solo in Egypt, not long after the turn of the century. I had taken an overnight bus from Cairo to Dahab, which dropped me and my fellow passengers off in the middle of nowhere. I had to get a shared taxi into town at about 3am – one where everyone sat up the back in a ute tray – then find somewhere to stay.

A Green party member and a Labour-voting Brexiter didn’t agree on the EU, but what about renewable energy and the NHS?

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

Joe, 41, Trafford, Greater Manchester

Occupation Press officer at a university

The ​s​tudio’s co-founders on ​accidentally creating Morph, not wanting a yacht in the Maldives and being each other’s best ally

Peter Lord and David Sproxton are the founders of Aardman Animations. The pair began animating as teenagers, selling their first short – starring a superhero called Aardman – to the BBC’s Vision On in 1972. In 1977, they created Morph for the children’s programme Take Hart. The studio’s breakthrough into adult audiences came via Channel 4’s Conversation Pieces series, and its animators, including a young Nick Park, went on to make Wallace & Gromit, whose films have won multiple Academy Awards. Aardman became employee-owned in 2018, with Lord and Sproxton transferring majority ownership to staff to safeguard the company’s independence. They were knighted earlier this year.

Friends close to Margarita Reutt are shocked she could allegedly plant bomb that killed Ukrainian defector Robert Shageev, while others recall a stubborn grit to see any plan through

It was just after dawn in Sevastopol when a powerful explosion tore through a quiet square in a residential district of the Russian-occupied Crimean port city.

Hidden inside a rubbish bin, a bomb containing the equivalent of about 500g of TNT detonated on 13 August as Robert Shageev, the deputy commander of a Russian Black Sea fleet submarine brigade, walked past in naval uniform. He was killed on the spot.

More than 2,000 people have died from Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since the first case of this epidemic was recorded in May. The Guardian's global health correspondent, Kat Lay, spoke to CDC Africa's Yap Boum II to understand why health teams on the ground are struggling and what is being put in place to try to contain the spread

• Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of the Congo now deadliest in country’s history

At 85, the actor has lived through much political upheaval. But, she writes, today’s hostile times feel like ‘the worst yet’. She reflects on her journey from teenage Tory to full-throated leftist – and says there’s still time to save the nation from the bad guys

A funny thing happened on the way to 2026: I got old and the world turned nasty. It happened very quickly and it’s to do with politics (the world) and pelvic floor weakness (mine). It’s strange being this old. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, it’s a shock to see wrinkles and grey hair, because inside I am still that naughty Oxford High School girl, risking detention just for the joy of entertaining her friends. People assume that with great age comes great wisdom, but actually we remain who we have always been, only more so, and we need to make our peace with that and with each other.

The Britain I grew up in, though – that feels almost unrecognisable, and everyone I speak to says the same thing. The historian Eric Hobsbawm, whom I knew and loved, argued that people invent the past they want for their own purposes – that the real past was quite different: “Today is the great age of historical mythology.” He’s right, but that past is still the safe haven I’d like to return to. People feel adrift, they don’t understand or feel a connection to the place they thought they knew.

How did it affect your plans for either further education or getting a job? Did you go through resits? Tell us

The government plans to introduce a new “stepping stone” qualification from 2028 for students in England who do not achieve a pass in GCSE maths or English.

The new preparatory level 1 qualifications - one level below GCSEs - will “give students the essential knowledge and skills before they resit English or maths GCSE,” in an effort to “end the resit treadmill”, the government said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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