If you thought he was just a shady rule-dodging reprobate, the Fifa boss’s latest 15-page Instagram rant might make you think again

I hope you have found time to enjoy Fifa president Gianni Infantino’s 15-page Instagram meltdown about his World Cup. The last time I saw this many defiant words, they were inked on someone sitting cross-legged on the floor of a Salvadoran supermax prison.

Infantino has been clapping back at his haters – putting them on blast, in the parlance of our times – and on this evidence seems mesmerisingly close to picking out a Chicano script font and getting STILL I RISE needled across his corporate clavicles. Right next to the ones reading THROUGH THE FIRE, UNBREAKABLE and BUILT DIFFERENT.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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

The Grammy-winning band had an acrimonious rift with Hinds – then he died in a motorbike crash. They explain how they’re paying tribute on their new album, and why their love for each other never ended

Mastodon are near the end of a tour where they’re playing 22 shows in 14 different European countries during a record-breaking heatwave, when they video-call me outside a Bordeaux venue. Bassist and co-lead singer Troy Sanders says the experience has been “31 days of musical bliss”. He’s not being sarcastic, either.

“Things are super energetic, even at day 31,” he insists. “We’re contemplating even staying in Europe for a few days when this tour is over, because we’re enjoying ourselves so much.” It’s pleasantly surprising to see Sanders and drummer/co-vocalist Brann Dailor, sat to his left, in such high spirits, given the anguish and unrest they’ve endured over the last 18 months.

Shots fired in the Channel are all in a day’s work for the intrepid shadow home secretary

C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre. Captain Chris “Hunter-Killer” Philp had been on patrol since first light in the Channel. While the rest of the country was still asleep, the Philpster was scanning the horizon for rubber dinghies full of illegal immigrants. Something he had never done in his previous life as immigration minister. Back then he had sought to rehouse new arrivals in hotels. Now he wanted to send them to a watery grave.

It had been a quiet morning. Too quiet. Just the one sighting of a child with a rubber ring paddling off the beach in Boulogne. But Hunter-Killer was taking no chances. All it takes is one child and before long there will be hundreds of thousands making the crossing with swimming aids bought from the local Carrefour. So the Philpster had called in the RAF. Minutes later, a Typhoon FGR4 had blasted the kid out of the water. Job done. Pour encourager les autres.

As she brings her memoir to the Edinburgh festival, Keeley Hazell talks about trauma, exploitation, the hollowness of the high life – and her new career as a writer on Ted Lasso

There was a time in the mid-2000s when it felt as though “everyone” had seen her topless, says Keeley Hazell. Page 3 was a staple of the tabloid press, lads’ mags were booming and she was one of the country’s most recognisable glamour models. “There was excitement, but also a lot of shame and embarrassment,” the softly spoken Hazell reflects. “Topless modelling never really aligned with me as a person.”

Hazell, who was born in Lewisham, London, left modelling in her early 20s and moved to LA to become an actor. But the emotional impact of her time in the industry has stayed with her, partly inspiring her 2025 book Everyone’s Seen My Tits: Stories and Reflections from an Unlikely Feminist. She describes the writing process as a “release” when we meet in London, where she has been preparing for an Edinburgh fringe theatre/comedy show based on the book. “I was able to give myself a voice,” she says, for “a period where I felt voiceless”.

Now 30, Holland is back as the vexed webslinger in a sometimes shocking, occasionally sluggish new instalment opposite his Odyssey castmate

Just a few weeks ago, Tom Holland was telling us that his role as Telemachus in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey was his “last chance to play a boy”. Well, Holland is back as the supposedly scrappy, gawky, arachnid young superhero Spider-Man. Not Spider-Boy admittedly, and these days Holland is actually a chunkier and more stacked Spidey than previously, flexing some pretty serious biceps. He is maturing in the role. But is the role maturing with him?

The point is that this film is a reset. At the end of the last movie Spider-Man: No Way Home, courtesy of Dr Strange’s colossal psychic powers – which might have come in handy in this episode incidentally, part of the narrative-universe inconsistency that you just have to overlook – Peter Parker was able to erase everyone’s knowledge that he is, in fact, Spider-Man, and that includes his goofy best friend Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) and more to the point, the love of his life MJ (Zendaya).

The new breed of camera-equipped streetlights has the potential to fight crime and track down missing persons. Or will it just take Britain one step closer to a surveillance state?

How would you feel if your neighbourhood lamp-posts could recognise your number plate, and also your face? Maybe you wouldn’t mind, given how long we’ve had automatic number plate recognition and CCTV. What about if that lamp-post could power itself through its own solar panels, and perhaps find another use for any extra power generated – that would be good, right? This is what Conflow Power Group (CPG) in Warwickshire claims for its iLamps, the first of their kind in the UK.

What if lamp-posts had the potential to incorporate new AI capability – gait analysis, suspicious behaviours – that you haven’t even heard of? This is what the organisation Big Brother Watch worries about. And what if the home secretary had explicitly said she believed in a “panopticon state” – that is, a state that could watch you at all times (as Shabana Mahmood already has) – and what if she still had a job when the lamp-post eyes got their updates? Or what if the next home secretary was even keener on hyper-surveillance (hard to imagine), and the street apparatus was already in place? What about all the data this would harvest – who would own it?

Man already serving life for killing his cellmate while awaiting trial also murdered and dismembered his friends Claudio Aquilino and Daniel Coleman

On a spring day last year, James Desborough marched up to Cornwall’s county hall in Truro and began bombarding the offices with dozens of eggs stolen from a supermarket.

It was a drug- and drink-addled protest at his plight – homeless, jobless and generally angry at the world. He expected to be arrested and messaged a friend: “If I’m going to get nicked, might as well round the charges up.”

Deaths expected as Kumamoto shaken by 6.8-magnitude quake, knocking out power and damaging buildings

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake has shaken south Japan, leaving at least 100 people injured. Some are trapped and presumed dead inside a shopping mall.

The earthquake hit Kumamoto prefecture on the southern Kyushu island late on Tuesday afternoon, knocking out power to thousands of homes and damaging roads, bridges and buildings.

Chris Philp says shots were ‘deliberate intimidation’ while he filmed interview on small boats crisis but France says it was training exercise

When Chris Philp heard a volley of shots on the high seas and spun round to see a French gunship, he believed he was the victim of naval aggression – and updated his social media feed accordingly.

The reality appears to be more mundane: it was, the French authorities said, a routine Channel training exercise by officers who had no idea that the shadow home affairs spokesperson was present, or who he was in the first place.

Exclusive: Work and pensions secretary echoes Andy Burnham as he announces funds to stop families in England losing benefits

Young people will be expected to engage with new support to find work, Pat McFadden has said, as he announced parents receiving benefits could get £4,500 a year if their child starts an apprenticeship.

Speaking to the Guardian, the work and pensions secretary echoed the comments of Andy Burnham when he suggested that access to support would be conditional on young people properly participating in the support that would be provided. To help with that, the new funds announced would stop families losing benefits when teenagers take up apprenticeships.

Ukraine seeks more firepower for air defenses and Israeli prime minister tries to repair relationship with US president

Donald Trump hosted back-to-back White House meetings with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, as Ukraine seeks more firepower for its air defenses and the Israeli prime minister tries to repair his strained relationship with the US president.

It was Netanyahu’s first visit to the Oval Office since he and Trump launched their joint military campaign against Iran on 28 February.

Return of winds and extreme heat threaten firefighters’ attempts to bring blazes under control

Nearly 4,000 people have been evacuated from tourist sites on France’s Atlantic coast as the return of winds and extreme heat jeopardises firefighters’ battles to contain wildfires raging in France and Spain.

The precautionary evacuation order in France, which covers campsites, holiday villages and other tourist accommodation around the resort of Lacanau to the west of Bordeaux, exacerbated a wildfire emergency described by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as the “toughest” situation the country had dealt with since the second world war.

Jess Asato’s particulars of claim states Grok added explicit sexual material users had not asked for

A Labour MP who is taking legal action against Elon Musk’s xAI company over fake sexualised images created by Grok says the AI tool was instructed to operate with “no restrictions on adult sexual content or offensive content”.

Jess Asato’s lawyers published her particulars of claim in the case on Tuesday, which included details of publicly posted instructions that the claim says illustrate how Grok was trained to generate harmful sexualised content.

• World governing body set to raise millions from venture

• Uefa hits out at proposal and could take legal action

Fifa has announced plans to sell the commercial rights to its tournaments, including the World Cup, to private investors in a controversial move that triggered an immediate backlash from Uefa and leading European clubs.

Uefa released a strongly-worded statement accusing Fifa of “attempting to sell the soul of football” and is believed to be considering its legal position, while sources at numerous elite clubs were highly critical of the proposal in private.

Viral video apparently shows a Saltburn 2nd XI fielder clicking his fingers to mimic a batter’s nick

The ball is bowled, the batter plays a shot and it’s caught by the wicketkeeper to cheers all round. The batter is clearly bemused. Did he hit it? Or … did a fielder click his fingers to mimic a nick?

A row has erupted in the normally friendly, if ultra-competitive, world of English club cricket after footage went viral of alleged cheating. Australian cricket will always have Sandpapergate. The North Yorkshire and South Durham Cricket League now has clickgate – or, as it has been christened online, “Clicky Ponting” – a play on the name of the former Australian captain Ricky Ponting.

Ukrainian and Israeli leaders converge on Washington with criss-crossing fortunes, but knowing they can count on little from US counterpart

The converging visits of Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington offer an unusually eloquent snapshot of a world in turmoil, unmoored from decades-old certainties.

Some things remain the same. The US is still an almighty military and economic power and for both foreign visitors, a White House encounter with Donald Trump is critical to their governments and the wars they are fighting.

Labour has overtaken Reform UK this week for the first time since March last year, according to multiple polls. The ‘Burnham bounce’ comes two weeks into Andy Burnham’s tenure in No 10, during which he has made major announcements on the cost of living and localised education to reduce youth unemployment, and an announcement on social care is expected soon. Is this a turning point for the beleaguered Labour government – or simply a honeymoon for the new PM? Lucy Hough speaks to senior political correspondent Peter Walker.

Conservationists are thrilled at the arrival of three juvenile birds at Willington Wetlands, hoping more will follow

A long orange beak poked curiously out from its wooden crate, followed by a sleek head and slender body. Then the first white stork of the morning flapped its wings and took to the air. Moments later a second emerged tentatively to stalk through the long grass, followed closely by a final sibling who stretched its wings and explored the length of the enclosure.

The trio of juvenile white storks have just arrived at their new home in Willington Wetlands in Derbyshire and conservationists are hopeful that their presence will kickstart the return of the birds to the Midlands after an absence of more than 600 years.

The bestselling crime writer and Scotland’s first female Geographer Royal had long kept their work separate, until a chance discovery about a doomed 17th-century expedition forced them to collaborate

The airy, modern house on the outskirts of Edinburgh shared by Val McDermid and Jo Sharp is surrounded by greenery and feels as though it was designed to provide enough space for two minds to think.

Both women are high achievers in their fields, a Scottish power couple made up of the Queen of Crime and the Scottish Geographer Royal. Happily for them, there is normally no overlap in their work.

Avoid espresso martinis and wear the right pajamas: experts give tips on how to sleep when it’s hot outside

• Tell us: what impact have GLP-1s had on your relationships?

Getting a good night’s sleep when it’s hot out can feel impossible. Unfortunately, worrying about not being well-rested doesn’t help.

Experts say worrying about sleep in warm weather will inevitably make you feel worse. “When people cannot sleep because they are too hot, it often becomes both a physical and a mental challenge,” says Dr Shelby Harris, founder and director of NY Sleep and Psychology, and author of The Women’s Guide to Overcoming Insomnia. “They may start watching the clock, worrying about how tired they will be the next day, or trying harder to force themselves to fall asleep.”

After seven days in charge, how is the new UK PM doing? You asked our political columnist about electoral reform, social care and more.

SonOfTheDesert asks: Given that nothing in this world ever turns out quite as intended, and that good intentions in politics are always hit by unforeseen misfortune, which of the commitments that Burnham has made so far do you think is most likely to fall by the wayside between now and 2029?

Polly says:

I think I will answer your question the other way round, if you don’t mind. Which of his good intentions will he keep? There may be a lot of wishful thinking involved in my answer, because I am making the most of this no doubt brief time of hope and optimism.

By the time of the next election he will have devolved power and created more mayors to cover every area to make sure it reaches everywhere. Unfortunately this does not much engage the public, who are pretty clueless on who does what anyway. It won’t always have good results, as Reform run many councils: governments lose local power the longer they are in office. But there may be a magic in his Manchesterism that ignites a new enthusiasm for the local: people might actually bother voting for their councils when they see it makes a real difference who wins.

It’s not the communications that changed, it’s the great communicator. It’s not the words, it’s the sentiment and determination behind them. Keir Starmer’s dull delivery didn’t matter: the lack of underlying passion and purpose did.

Briefing? It will go on, forever. Because you never know who that mystery “senior source” is, it can never be challenged or chased down. The PM can storm about it, but the 24-hour hungry media will flam up what the door man said, for lack of anything else. Or plain make it up sometimes ( Never the Guardian, only the hostile media).

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Esperanto had always seemed to me like an idealistic movement that had failed. So why was its annual congress so vibrant and full of young people?

• The summer issue of the Long Read magazine is out now. Click here to order

One day, as a 16-year-old in the late 2000s, I received an AOL instant message from my friend Kenyon. He wanted to know whether I had heard of Esperanto, the universal language. Kenyon was several years older than me, and something of a mentor. Like me, he was a musician – he engineered my teenage band’s first record – but unlike me, he had a head full of trivia that made him the confidently nerdy star of any Saturday-night gathering of outcasts. His pitch: Esperanto was invented in the late 19th century by a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist named LL Zamenhof, who aimed to create a language so irresistibly easy to learn that it would be adopted as a shared second tongue by people the world over. From a position of mutual understanding, world peace would surely follow. Yes, the language had been around for well over 100 years and, yes, universal fellowship had yet to be achieved. But the internet had inaugurated a new era of global connectivity, and users could learn through an abundance of online classes. Perhaps we were on the verge of an Esperanto renaissance. Kenyon had been practising for a few years and was practically flua.

As a typical adolescent, I was in the midst of my own social awakening. I had begun to travel the US playing music, relying on nothing but the hospitality of friends of friends of friends. I was finding communion and what felt like boundless possibility in mass bike rides and sweaty dance parties in derelict churches. I was also dabbling in the world of hitchhiking and freight-train-hopping, visiting new places by exploiting the only slightly off-limits mechanisms of our industrialised society. Goods needed to move, and I could move with them, thanks to the kindness of those who showed me the ropes just because I wanted to learn. Esperanto seemed comparable: another disparate social club with a baked-in rejection of the forces, writ large and ill-defined, that sought to divide us. But even then, its goals felt redundant: the internet had already given me new tools to communicate across distance and difference. Simple as it might be to learn the language, why bother?

Marlon James, Douglas Stuart and Elizabeth Strout are names we know, but there’s a welcome element of surprise elsewhere

• Previous winners Douglas Stuart and Marlon James lead Booker prize longlist

This year’s Booker longlist is led by two previous winners. Twelve years on from A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James returns to Jamaica in The Disappearers, out in September: a polyphonic epic of a murderous mob attack on a gay theatre group in 1988 Kingston, and the two-decade aftermath of trauma and revenge that follows. A brutal expose of Jamaica’s homophobia, it’s also an energetic portrait of queer culture and the Caribbean diaspora. Douglas Stuart, whose debut Shuggie Bain won in 2020, is included for John of John, in which a young gay man returns to his childhood home on the Hebridean island of Harris, where his devout father is also hiding his sexuality. Both novels open up territory not often trod in literature, with Stuart illuminating faith, repression and the fading traditions of the Scottish Hebrides.

It’s no surprise either to see a third nomination for Elizabeth Strout. The Things We Never Say introduces new characters to her fictional universe, in the story of a fiftysomething teacher with a secret in his marriage and a sadness in his heart. Strout has always been interested in class and deprivation in American society; the spectre of Trump brings a growing darkness, but as ever her spiky warmth and wisdom carry the reader through. The other big-name American author on the list is Emma Cline; Switzy, out in September, takes us inside the mind of a high flyer whose grip on the world is failing as dementia encroaches. David is taking his last journey, to a euthanasia clinic in Zurich, and on the way will hopefully make his final reckonings with friends and family while he can still recognise them. It’s a technical tour de force of the unreliable narrator, and a hugely moving account of life’s meaning as everything is stripped away.

The 20-year-old crypto bro likes to keep a low profile. He could still be forced to testify before the House oversight committee

Unlike his garrulous father, Barron Trump seems to be a man of few words. The president’s youngest son has been busy flogging energy drinks and making millions from cryptocurrency schemes, but he’s not big on public speaking. Indeed, the best-known clip of him talking is probably from when he was four years old and said “I like my suitcase” in a Slovenian accent.

Still, while 20-year-old Barron Trump might prefer to stay behind the scenes, he may find himself hauled in front of Congress and forced to answer some difficult questions. Last week, Yassamin Ansari, a Democratic congresswoman and a member of the House oversight committee, called for Barron to testify about his alleged connections to the toxic influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate. The Tate brothers, who have become household names by monetising misogyny, were recently arrested in Miami, just before Andrew was due to co-host a bare-knuckle boxing event. They’re now fighting extradition to the UK, and face allegations of rape, assault, trafficking and offences relating to “indecent images of a child and extreme pornography”. They deny these charges.

Pharmaceutical company’s move to new £400m research centre accompanied by encouraging news for shareholders

“A vote of confidence in British business,” trumpeted Andy Burnham, seizing the political gift of GSK splashing out £400m on a shiny new research and development centre in Cambridge.

For positive vibes, it definitely beats the early pharma news his predecessor as prime minister received. That was the painful tale of how AstraZeneca, frustrated by indecision in the Treasury, cancelled its intended £450m expansion of a vaccine plant in Speke in Liverpool.

Some have called for Nuremberg-style trials against big oil. But there are laws already on the books to describe companies’ conduct

The sky outside is hazy orange, and my five-year-old son is screaming bloody murder. “Sorry, buddy, we have to stay inside,” I say. “It’s not safe to breathe out there.” I had told him we’d be going to the beach today. Something inside me tears a little as I wonder how many promises he’ll see similarly broken in the coming years.

Far too many parents were forced to have some version of this conversation with their children this month, as smoke from record-breaking wildfires poured across the midwest and north-east. Some of them already had to tell their kids that their Fourth of July festivities were canceled because of the lethal heatwave that caused numerous mass casualty events earlier this month.

Activists under threat from Beijing are facing strange difficulties with UK immigration. Their safety must not be traded for warmer relations with China

• Nathan Law is a pro-democracy activist and former legislator from Hong Kong. He is currently a political refugee in the UK

As authoritarian countries such as Russia, China and Iran are more active in engaging in long-arm strategies to silence their critics in the UK, transnational repression is garnering more attention. It is right that the Metropolitan police and other British law enforcement agencies have specific units and mechanisms to counter it. But it takes more than just confronting this long-distance repression to make political dissidents of these authoritarian countries feel safe in the UK, and the UK government is not living up to expectations.

The threat is real. Members of the Hongkonger community have received threats from the Chinese regime – some have had threatening letters, some people were deepfaked into sexual content, some even had families questioned and arrested back home. With the level of this targeting linked to the deterioration of Hong Kong politics, many have utilised the humanitarian pathway enabled by the previous government to relocate.

It’s a bit of a mystery why it takes Odysseus so long to get home if he’s not shacking up with Calypso and others ...

I did not walk into Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey intending to pick holes. If there was zero sexual chemistry between Odysseus and Circe, who was I to say that’s not how it went in the poem? I was most likely thinking of a feminist retelling (Madeline Miller’s novel Circe), rather than Homer, anyway.

Nevertheless, even allowing for metaphor and whatnot, even factoring in that Circe’s passion for Odysseus is (almost?) definitely a rumination on the double standards of godliness, in which the guy gods are allowed to sleep with whichever mortals they please, but the lady ones are not supposed to (I don’t think?), I am sure something happened.

A youth movement born from exam leaks and online mockery has pierced Narendra Modi’s aura of invincibility and may yet reshape Indian politics

“What if all cockroaches come together?” was the question that humbled India’s strongman prime minister, Narendra Modi. It was posted on X by Abhijeet Dipke, an Indian student in the US with a master’s in public relations. Enraged that India’s top judge likened unemployed youths to insects and “parasites”, and that millions saw medical exams compromised by leaks, Mr Dipke lit a fuse. For India’s nearly 400 million gen Z, public exams are often the only ladder to a secure future. When papers leak or tests are cancelled, that ladder is kicked away. By June, young people were protesting peacefully in Delhi as the Cockroach Janta party (CJP), a parody of Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP). They demanded the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.

This weekend, Mr Pradhan became the first senior minister in Mr Modi’s 12 years in power to be forced from office by a mass-protest movement. It came after credible reports suggested police officers attacked protesters marching to parliament. Security sources say it was they who were attacked. This may be just the beginning. The concession has taught the Cockroach movement’s leadership that pressure works. They could have declared victory and gone home. Instead they have accused the government of breaching the terms of the settlement offered by Mr Modi’s government. The CJP claims at least 100 people have been arrested, many on non-bailable charges. Its leaders are now demanding the release of detainees and threatening to remobilise nationally.

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New research linking the issue to Parkinson’s disease adds to the evidence of serious health repercussions from traffic volume and other sources

The roar of late-night traffic is not just annoying for those trying to sleep. It can also have profound effects on their health. A pioneering new study, published this month, has found a clear link between road noise and Parkinson’s disease. The research, which followed more than 3 million Danish participants, found a modest but consistent effect: for every 11.5dB rise in noise level, the risk of the degenerative disorder rose by 3% over the 18-year study.

The study adds to the growing body of evidence that auditory nuisance is associated with serious physical consequences. The European Environment Agency reported last year that more than 110 million people across the continent suffer high levels of health-damaging noise pollution, with physiological stress and sleep disturbance leading to 66,000 early deaths annually as well as heart disease, diabetes and depression. It found that the harm caused was greater than from secondhand tobacco smoke exposure.

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

Mark Bergfeld and Derrick Joad on Zoe Williams’ interview of the political theorist Anton Jäger

Zoe Williams’ article on Anton Jäger (Meet the man whose groundbreaking book is being devoured by the left, 23 July) reminded me of something that I encounter in trade union meetings: people no longer come to them. But neither do they go to church or the synagogue, nor do they volunteer as the youth football coach. They work intolerable hours or are logged in, like me, writing this from my beach vacation in Greece.

In that sense, I agree with Jäger’s premise that we are in an era of hyperpolitics. Yet, as a trade unionist who dedicates his life to rebuilding the power of working people, I confront a problem that has led me to cave in to hyperpolitics. I co-produced a podcast on cleaners’ work and lives, and have been running an influencer campaign with hairdressers because that is how we get the union message out. People might not attend a meeting, but they will watch something on TikTok or Instagram, or listen to a podcast on Spotify.

Richard Griffiths and Will Raw respond to an article by George Monbiot in which he argues that industrial poultry farming is killing our rivers

George Monbiot is wrong in his belief that chicken farms harm rivers (Besieged by lobbyists, will UK ministers protect our ecosystems? No, they’ll chicken out, 23 July). Our farms have no direct contact with the soil and operate under permits issued and regulated by the Environment Agency, giving transparency on how manure is managed on site and where it goes when it leaves.

The chicken manure produced in the UK is used either for energy generation or as a fertiliser by other farming sectors. Each destination has full traceability, and manure will often be transported across the country to be used where it is most needed.

Dr Sally Cheseldine reflects on the experience of people who cannot articulate their pain and the significance of cravings

During my clinical career, I noticed that migraine was rarely diagnosed in individuals with severe intellectual disabilities or autism who were non-verbal and therefore unable to say that they had a sore head (Letters, 24 July). Instead, there was a high level of damaging head-banging, something that others say they feel tempted to do if they don’t have access to rapid pain relief for their migraine.

I was interested in the suggestion that cravings for cheese might be caused by migraine (The truth about migraines: what causes them – and how to find relief, 19 July). Cheese contains tryptophan, and it was shown in the 1990s (McDougle et al) that people with severe autism who had very low levels of tryptophan showed dramatic increases of several stereotypic behaviours, including banging.

Dog’s dinner | Short illnesses | Andy Burnham’s smart move | Missing brunch | Making a meal of it

The humorous tale of Morris the staffie (The pet I’ll never forget, 27 July) reminded me of when I returned from work one evening wondering why my husband hadn’t roasted the joint of beef I’d taken out from the freezer that morning for the evening meal. There was no trace of it anywhere, nor the plate it was on. Next day, evidence of the butcher’s string tied round the meat appeared during our dog walk, but we never found the plate.
Jeanette Hamilton
Buxton, Derbyshire

• Dr Terry Scragg (Letters, 27 July) would like to know what the “short illness” is that features so often in the obituaries so that he can avoid it. Death notices also frequently refer to people dying in “the excellent care” of a particular medical facility. I note the names of these institutions with a view to avoiding them, their reputation for excellence being somewhat belied by their mortality rates.
Eoin Dillon
Dublin, Ireland

• Follow updates from Tuesday’s action around Glasgow

• Full medal table | Day five – in pictures | And mail Daniel

Check out the medal table.

Swimming: Another impressive swim from 16-year-old Amalie Smith who wins her 200m medley heat comfortably. This comes after taking silver in the 400m event.

Mohammed Ayub Qureshi has invited Pakistan’s opponents Australia for dinner at his restaurant – whatever the result

The invitation has already been extended. Even if Australia beat Pakistan in their men’s pairs match at the Commonwealth Games, they are still welcome to dinner afterwards. There is just one small catch. “If we lose, they are still invited to the restaurant, but I will probably give them a spicy vindaloo as revenge,” Mohammed Ayub Qureshi says with a smile.

Qureshi, better known around Glasgow’s bowls community as “Chico”, has spent decades serving food at Alishan Tandoori while also becoming Pakistan’s most recognisable lawn bowler. On Wednesday the restaurateur swaps the shirt and tie for Pakistan colours as he and his teammate, Maqsood Waseem Khan, face one of the toughest assignments in the sport.

Our favourite pics from Glasgow where the strongest, fittest and fastest athletes are competing for medals

• Jockey fell off Amiloc as horse was leaving stalls

• Trawlerman lost all momentum after interference

Scandinavia confirmed the form of his Ascot Gold Cup defeat of Trawlerman with a wide-margin win in the Group One Goodwood Cup on Tuesday, but the bare result does not tell the full story of a race in which a riderless horse led the field for much of the way and veered across the leaders with three furlongs to run.

The drama began at the start, when Hector Crouch was unshipped from Amiloc, the jockey catching his foot on the stalls as the horse jinked to the right. The gelding then worked his way to the head of the field with nearly 12 furlongs still to run and, having veered wide on the home turn, drifted sharply across both Scandinavia and Trawlerman soon afterwards.

• ‘There will be a lot of transfer links, a lot of rumours’

• Chelsea hit back to beat Western Sydney Wanderers 6-4

Xabi Alonso refused to confirm Chelsea are interested in signing the veterans Danny Welbeck and Jordan Henderson after his first game in charge of the team, a 6-4 pre-season victory against Western Sydney Wanderers on Tuesday, but said he was looking to build a squad that had “proper balance”.

Chelsea are understood to be in talks over a surprise move to sign the 35-year-old Welbeck from Brighton, with the club also reportedly interested in signing the 36-year-old Henderson from Brentford. The links to two Premier League stalwarts reflects a revised transfer strategy under Alonso, with Chelsea seeking to recruit more experienced players into their squad as opposed to focused solely on signing young players, often tying them to lengthy contracts.

• Club have been promoted three times in four years

• Phil Parkinson’s side missed out on playoffs in 2026

The Wrexham co-owner Ryan Reynolds called it a “punch-me moment” – his club playing Liverpool in a pre-season friendly at Yankee Stadium just five years after he and Rob McElhenney (now simply Rob Mac) completed their takeover of a club languishing in the National League. The knockout blow would be playing Liverpool at Anfield in the Premier League in 2027-28 and the manager, Phil Parkinson, accepts there is expectation on Wrexham to complete their remarkable rise through the divisions next season.

Parkinson’s team face Liverpool with confidence in the Bronx on Wednesday having defeated Manchester United and Leeds in pre-season so far and moved on from the anguish of missing out on the Championship playoffs on the final day of last season. The near-miss was undoubtedly a setback to an ambitious club’s grand vision but finishing seventh in the Championship at the first time of asking, Parkinson insists, was an accomplishment that should not be dismissed lightly.

Oscar Onley’s pre-race injury presaged three bleak weeks and new director of racing knows he has his work cut out

Crashes, punctures and injuries ensured that the 2026 Tour de France campaign was one of the worst for the beleaguered Netcompany Ineos team. From the first stage, when Dave Brailsford’s team came close to winning the team time trial in Montjuic, the 2026 Tour was, in the words of their director of racing, Geraint Thomas, “tough going”.

Thomas, who has taken Brailsford’s place as the team’s frontman, said: “I’m happy to not be racing any more, because I suffered way too much. But it’s good to still be involved in the nitty‑gritty of it.”

As she heads to Royal Lytham as a guest of the R&A for Thursday’s start of the Women’s Open, the inaugural winner looks back

Golf commitments in the United States meant Jenny Lee Smith was unable to accept the North East Sports Personality of the Year award for 1982 in person. She attended the following year’s event, this time to present the trophy to Kevin Keegan. His death last week shocked Smith, prompting her to reflect back on that time. It delivers a snapshot of Smith’s sporting status at a time when Keegan was wooing Tyneside.

“It is very sad,” Smith says of Keegan’s death, aged 75. “We did a lot of work together because I was sponsored at the time by Scottish and Newcastle Breweries, who did the same for the football team. He became a good friend and was such a lovely chap.

The Republican senator died earlier this month; his funeral is attended by members of Congress as well as Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelenskyy

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Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, set for 9:30am ET on Tuesday, will be closed to the media, the New York Times is reporting.

The meeting is expected to be much more cordial than the one last year where Trump openly berated Zelenskyy and said, “you don’t have the cards”. The administration and rightwing influencers have shown a shift on Ukraine as of late, and Trump and Zelenskyy had a friendly meeting at a Nato summit earlier this month.

Exclusive: King’s College London analysis finds diabetes and hypertension are more common in Black African and Caribbean people

Stroke risk factors including high blood pressure and diabetes are rising faster among people from Black African and Caribbean backgrounds compared with their white counterparts, according to analysis.

Researchers at King’s College London analysed data from more than 8,500 adults over a 30-year period from the South London Stroke Register, one of the longest-running population-based stroke registers in the world.

Share price rally driven by strong product demand as well as decision to sit out AI spending race, amid wider tech sell-off

Apple has become only the second company to pass the $5tn valuation mark, as it benefited from investors fleeing AI and semiconductor stocks amid a wider tech sell-off.

The iPhone maker’s shares hit a session high ⁠of $342.89 on Tuesday, giving it a market ⁠capitalisation of $5.04tn (£3.78tn), then eased back to 0.8% up at $339.68 – around the $4.99tn mark.

Waste firm Veolia pays £27k after ‘Yes It’s A Genocide’ banner taken by Greater London Authority was destroyed

The campaign group Led By Donkeys has received £27,000 in compensation after a giant banner it displayed in Parliament Square saying “Yes It’s A Genocide” was seized by Greater London Authority officials and destroyed.

Representatives of the GLA arrived on the scene in central London and confiscated the 40-metre by 40-metre banner after it was unfurled on 4 December 2024, just over a year after Israel began its assault on Gaza after the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas.

In recordings made in 2016 and 2017 former president also appears to describe possessing classified information

Former US president Joe Biden appeared to discuss sensitive information and describe possessing classified documents in audio recordings released on Monday by the Oversight Project, a conservative activist group.

The heavily redacted transcripts and recordings were made in 2016 and 2017, while Biden was working with a ghostwriter on his 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose. No classified material was ever alleged to have appeared in the book.

The Earth keeps getting hotter and experts fear this year's El Niño, nicknamed 'Godzilla' because of its predicted intensity, could raise global temperatures by up to 3.6C. Environment correspondent Damien Gayle spoke to climate scientists to understand how the weather phenomenon and the climate crisis pose a huge threat to the planet

• ‘Super’ El Niño could cause global food price shock lasting into 2028, analysts say

• El Niño is back with a vengeance – and fears of ‘Godzilla’ strength may be the least of our worries

Funding crisis could lead to an exodus that would be a blow for British science and national growth

On a chilly day in December 1945, Bernard Lovell, a physicist at the University of Manchester, struck out for the Cheshire countryside to study cosmic rays, the streams of high-energy particles that crisscross the universe. Peering at the signals from his army surplus radar, he made an unexpected discovery: radio reflections from the ionised trails of shooting stars.

The work marked the birth of radio astronomy at Jodrell Bank. A year later, engineers at the site mounted a radar on the base of a searchlight, providing sweeping access to speeding meteors. When Sputnik launched in 1957, they had just completed the Lovell telescope, the largest radio telescope in the world, the only one capable of tracking the Soviet satellite.

With large areas still burning, damage from national park’s worst blaze could take decades, if not longer, to put right

It is the jewel in the crown of the Highlands, one of Scotland’s most impressive natural landscapes, but 12 days on from the start of an enormous wildfire that is tearing through moorland and forest, the Cairngorms national park is unrecognisable.

Hectares of blackened land were visible as low cloud cleared on Sunday, with smoke billowing into the air from large areas still ablaze. In the evening, the sky glowed an eerie orange.

From Afghanistan to Taiwan, unprecedented deluge highlights devastating impact of climate breakdown

“It rained for 10 days and 10 nights, non-stop – I’d never seen anything like it,” says Anar Gul, a construction worker who lives in the remote district of Dur Baba in eastern Afghanistan.

The houses in his village are built from stone and mud, which makes them extremely vulnerable to heavy rains. After days of rain, Gul’s kitchen collapsed and his neighbour, Sayed Afsar Sadat, saw a large part of his house completely destroyed. “Rains like this are coming heavier and earlier each year,” says Sadat. “They are destroying the roads and washing away our crops. It’s impacting us directly.”

Chair of judges Mary Beard said each of the 13 books in contention for the £50,000 award ‘takes the reader to new places’

• Comment: This Booker longlist may have two previous winners, but it’s keen to experiment

Douglas Stuart and Marlon James, two previous winners of the Booker, have been named on this year’s longlist, alongside three-time nominee Elizabeth Strout, in a collection that “rewards risk”.

The 13 novels selected for the 2026 prize, announced on Tuesday, feature authors of seven nationalities across three continents, with almost half from the UK. Ten of the writers are appearing on a Booker longlist for the first time, including three debut novelists: Kenan Orhan, Rebecca Perry and Djamel White.

Upper tribunal unable to find document cited in case and claims it is ‘analogous to relying on bogus evidence’

A senior judge has accused the Home Office of relying on “AI hallucinated” information to refuse an asylum claim.

The case relates to a Moroccan woman and her child who fled her country after experiencing forced underage marriage and extreme violence, including rape. The woman claimed asylum on the basis of fears that she would be killed by her husband: a powerful, previously convicted criminal.

South Western Railway joins operators in east of England in reducing train speeds and changing timetables

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Persistent drought conditions caused by the climate crisis are expected to cause further disruption to trains across England, as the lack of rainfall affects the ground supporting railway embankments.

On Tuesday, South Western Railway (SWR) became the latest large rail company to announce timetable changes and reduced speeds to cope with the effects of hot and dry weather.

Move comes after the presenter has faced allegations of bullying, but there is no suggestion it is related

Naga Munchetty is to leave BBC Breakfast after 17 years on the television show to become co-presenter of Radio 5 Live’s breakfast show.

The current 5 Live Breakfast hosts, Rachel Burden and Rick Edwards, announced on Tuesday’s programme that they would step down in December.

Company supplying drones said Ukraine-war inspired effort, where technique was effective in face of Russian attack

Several schools across the US are set to install pepper-spraying drones as part of a new effort to respond to school shooting attacks – a Ukraine war-inspired approach that is bound to put off those who would prefer leaders focus on preventing the violence in the first place.

Campus Guardian Angel of Austin, Texas, which describes itself as a response capability company, is providing the drones in question to multiple schools across the country, including at least four schools in Georgia, three in Florida and one in Colorado.

Local civil rights group alleges authorities removed evidence of killings amid communications blackout

At least 30 people are alleged to have been killed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in the past two days as part of what has been claimed is a brutal state crackdown that has engulfed the disputed region for weeks.

According to a local civil society group, Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), the Pakistani security services fired on tens of thousands of peaceful protesters, killing 25 people on Monday and five more on Tuesday.

At least 1,500 protest after six men on drug-related charges put in solitary confinement before possible execution

Prisoners at Iran’s largest jail have sewn their lips shut as hundreds of them joined a mass hunger strike amid a surge in executions over drug offences and charges linked to anti-government protests.

The hunger strike, involving at least 1,500 death row prisoners at Ghezel Hesar prison near Tehran, began two weeks ago after six men convicted on drug-related charges were transferred to solitary confinement before their possible execution, according to Iranian rights groups.

Data shows Canadians have replaced US vacations with other international trips in apparent rebuke to Trump

Canadians spent $3.3bn less on travel to the US in 2025 than in the previous year, as Donald Trump’s hostile policies towards his northern neighbour continue to incur an economic cost, new government data shows.

The research also indicates that Canadians are not bucking travel overall and instead have replaced US vacations with other international destinations, in a rebuke to Trump’s tariff regime and the president’s continued musings on annexing Canada.

Bloggers David and Ina Steiner were stalked by eBay executives over their critical coverage of the company

Ebay and three former top executives have agreed to pay $55.7m to resolve a lawsuit by a Massachusetts couple who fell victim ⁠to a bizarre stalking and ⁠harassment campaign carried out ​by several of its employees in retaliation for their coverage of the e-commerce company in a newsletter they publish.

David and Ina Steiner announced the settlement late on Monday, bringing an end to a ⁠case they filed in 2021 in Boston federal court after several former eBay employees were prosecuted for targeting them in a cyberstalking campaign that involved sending the couple cockroaches, fly larvae and a bloody Halloween pig mask.

The A350 landed in Toulouse 24 hours and 24 minutes after leaving Melbourne as airline plans direct London service

Qantas completed what is believed to be the longest-ever commercial flight when its Airbus jet landed in Toulouse on Tuesday after a flight from Melbourne lasting 24 hours and 24 minutes.

The flight, which triggered a surge in online tracking, is part of the airline’s Project Sunrise in which it plans to use a new A350 jet to fly non-stop from Australia to London.

Pharmaceuticals company is investing £400m in UK life sciences and moving scientists to new Cambridge R&D site

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The British drugmaker GSK is to announce sweeping job cuts as part of a £1.9bn cost-cutting programme to pay for a £400m investment in UK life sciences over the next three years, including in a new research and development centre in Cambridge, as it looks to develop drugs more quickly under its new chief executive.

The pharmaceuticals company announced on Tuesday it will move more than 1,000 of its scientists to its new site on the Cambridge biomedical campus. It will close its R&D site in Stevenage in Hertfordshire by 2029, while upgrading its R&D laboratories at nearby Ware and moving some employees there.

MTC provided security at heavily criticised Manston centre in Kent – and could now make £500m managing arrivals at site

A private security company linked to Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown reported a slump in UK revenues after an asylum centre contract ended but could make £500m managing the same facility until 2036.

Management & Training Corporation (MTC) said sales fell from £28.4m to £17.6m in 2025 after its contract to provide “security and care” at the heavily criticised Manston site in Kent ended in September.

Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
Era-defining photographs from the likes of Alfred Stieglitz, Saul Leiter and Dorothea Lange showcase the urban landscape, from midnight crime scenes to gloomy corridors

This – only the second photography exhibition in Dulwich Picture Gallery’s history – is a quietly contemplative but gripping show that traces two intersecting developments: the construction of the modern urban environment and the language of photography.

Focusing exclusively on works from era-defining photographers of the 20th century made in cities across the US, it’s a concise overview that begins with the pictorialist pioneers of New York, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, and keeps moving through masterpieces, starting with early examples of social documentary photography – Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother and White Angel Breadline, and Lewis Hine’s emblematic portrait of the high-steel ironworker Victor “Frenchy” Gosselin working on the construction of the Empire State Building.

Sonya Walger and Henry Ian Cusick created a love so magical that they’re responsible for what’s widely regarded as the greatest TV episode of all time – not to mention inspiring a fan to get a full leg tattoo of their faces

• More from our series Making Love: ‘We met and two minutes later we were kissing’ – how Gavin and Stacey became Britain’s most bang tidy TV couple

Lost is one of television’s most romantic dramas. Forget smoke monsters, time travel and that infamous ending – this was a show fuelled by swoony stories. Sun and Jin; Rose and Bernard; Sawyer/Jack/Kate/Juliet; Charlie and Claire; Sayid and Nadia (not Shannon). Love was the reason behind so many of the islanders’ need to survive, or to sacrifice themselves.

But it was Penny’s and Desmond’s relationship that defined the series.

Shark Week arrives in an overstuffed period for the film genre even if nothing will ever rival the greatest of them all

Tracy Jordan, Tracy Morgan’s character on 30 Rock, once advised a friend to live every week like it’s Shark Week. In 2026, Hollywood has finally taken these sage words to heart.

Though Discovery Channel is only observing its annual Shark Week of shark-themed programming for the customary seven days, shark movies have been enjoying a yearlong renaissance – in terms of volume, if not necessarily quality. Two shark thrillers – The Devil’s Mouth on Prime Video and Above & Below as a paid VOD rental – are releasing this week, presumably to complement nonfictional Shark Week programming, but they’re far from the only fish in the sea. Earlier this month, Clint Eastwood’s daughter starred in The Bay, another VOD title. In June, there was Chum, starring Alice Eve; in May, Deep Water, Renny Harlin’s return to the subgenre following his classic Deep Blue Sea. Before that, Thrash was a Netflix hit. That’s half a dozen shark movies so far this year. It’s a wonder no one has arranged a 10th-anniversary re-release of The Shallows.

Director Tzeli Hadjidimitriou grew up on Lesbos, and her elegant debut feature explores how the Greek poet’s birthplace became a hub for lesbians

A fine-boned, elegantly crafted documentary, this first feature from Greek director Tzeli Hadjidimitriou tells a story at once personal and public: about the lesbian scene that grew up around the town of Eressos on the island of Lesbos (also called Lesvos). Hadjidimitriou is from the island, but not Eressos itself, which was once the home of the seventh century BC poet Sappho, whose love poetry threads through the film. Given that pedigree, lesbians, including the director herself, have flocked to Eressos for years to pay homage. By the 1970s, the growing number of queer visitors started to form not just a scene but a community, at first one centred on the nudist beach where many women camped out.

Hadjidimitriou’s still photographs are also spliced in throughout, capturing the glorious sensuality of these often naked women, most looking chuffed to bits to have found a little corner of heaven where they can be themselves. But relations with the local people were not always easy, and unsurprisingly the tourists had to contend with homophobia of varying degrees of vocalness, as well as aggressive invasion of their women-only spaces. Luckily, as one woman recalls, there were usually a few butches around to help hustle the intruders off. Over time, tolerance grew, greased by the money the visitors brought to the island, and eventually female-run bars and hotels sprang up.

The former This Morning host has done a Meghan, rebranding herself as a cookery guru with a YouTube show that veers from agonisingly dull courgette slicing to sweary banter. Somehow, in spite of it all, I am rooting for her

Holly Willoughby is a woman in search of a fresh start. Her stint on This Morning ended messily, with her response to the Phillip Schofield scandal – the infamous “Are you OK? I hope so” monologue – making her a figure of public mockery. Subsequent attempts to relaunch her career, like her short-lived time hosting a Bear Grylls reality show, stalled. So now it has come to this: Holly Willoughby Together (With Voy).

Your response to it will vary based on how generous you’re feeling. The kindest offering would be to say that Willoughby has pivoted to YouTube, having cannily observed that television is dead and this is where all the eyeballs are these days. It is a cookery and lifestyle show that allows her to be unapologetically herself without the meddling influence of executives who have spent years trying to enforce a persona upon her.

The duo’s groundbreaking 1985 tour reveals a strange collision of pop stardom and communism, a re-edit of Lindsay Anderson’s efforts that got him fired

Here is a documentary that has a very important story to tell, maybe more important than it feels comfortable admitting. It’s about two separate subjects – or maybe three: Wham!, China and film-maker Lindsay Anderson. A superpower nervously edging towards western-style openness, a pop band nervously doing what needed to be done to make it big in the US, and a great film director, needing the money, taking on a project he didn’t really believe in.

In 1985, Wham!’s beetle-browed manager Simon Napier-Bell had a cunning plan for how George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley could break the US: Wham! would be the first ever western pop band to perform in mainland China. They would play where the Beatles, the Stones and Elvis had never played, and the resulting global publicity would launch them into the US. (He was right – it did.) In our modern age, the movie and music businesses routinely consider China as the key element of the all-important Asian market, but in 1985, Michael and Ridgeley were the Kirk and Spock of the charts, going where no pop act had gone before.

Author Alexander McCall Smith’s new series is an attempt to use short fiction to make listeners feel better about the world. Plus, what happened when two London gangsters decided to make a film?

While he is best known for his No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels, Alexander McCall Smith has something of a soft spot for short stories, which can “cover a whole sweep of history in a couple of paragraphs”. His new series features a selection of short original works that he hopes will make listeners feel better about the state of the world, beginning with a pleasingly twee tale inspired by a friend’s miniature helicopter landing pad. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

The country-pop superstar loves Abba and secretly listens to Lloyd Webber, but which British heartthrob’s single gets her out of bed in the morning?

The song that changed my life
There’s many critical songs on The Mission soundtrack, but Gabriel’s Oboe [by Ennio Morricone] hit me hard. I had to pull off the road, I cried like a baby. I didn’t realise how powerful music could be until that moment. I was 22.

The first single I bought
At Seventeen by Janis Ian. I reference it in my album Little Miss Twain and it says so much about the emotions of a teenage misfit. I felt like her, I related – but I was also thinking: “Wow, I have to some day write this well.” It gave me a goal; I was so in awe. I made very little money, babysitting, taking care of my neighbour’s horse, singing in bars. I would get like 20 bucks, that I would mostly give to my family, but I got that record for myself.

The singer-songwriter and Water from Your Eyes guitarist was unstoppably prolific, despite a growing dependence on substances. Now sober, he reflects on his new album and the songs that helped him turn his life round

For most of his life, Nate Amos made music just to get through the day. There was plenty of it: dozens of self-produced albums and EPs uploaded – since his This Is Lorelei project launched in 2012 – to what was then a plucky, independent platform called Bandcamp. Now 35, he is perhaps the quintessential Bandcamp artist: part bedroom-pop whiz, part alt-country troubadour, part indie rock rascal with a big, heavy heart. His peers treat him like a lost folk hero from a bygone era.

Amos is sitting in the basement of a cafe in Camden Town, north London, cradling an iced matcha; coffee makes him “feel like shit”, he says, and he no longer indulges such foibles. The title of one of those Bandcamp albums, OK N8, is tattooed on his knuckles. A friend inked it a few years ago, soon after Amos got sober. “Exactly when you’re not supposed to be making decisions like getting a tattoo on your hand,” he jokes. His active blue eyes dance around behind a golden-brown fringe and an unruly, woodchip beard. In a tough spot he will swing back in his chair and search for answers that always seem to be hiding beneath the table. But each time he stumbles upon the truth, he looks up with a hungry smile.

(Atlantic)
How do you follow up the album that made you a star – and a caricature? In classic Charli style: with a pivot to guitar and a meta masterpiece about the instability of identity

After a decade spent trailblazing a unique kind of pop freedom from the genre’s fringes, A-list success seemed like the thing that might finally trap Charli xcx. Her 2024 club-rat opus Brat spawned memes, embarrassing political bandwagoning, Collins’ word of the year and possibly terminal damage to the bra industry. Its ludicrous cultural impact looked set to pickle her as a caricature of a Parliament-toting bad girl; the question of whether “Brat summer” could last – whether Charli could sustain the interest – was so rife she turned it into a mockumentary, The Moment. It made success look miserable: your creation turned cringe by execs wanting to milk their prize cow dry of every last acid-green drop.

Even for a pop star renowned for reinvention, it put a higher price on her next move. Pivot and risk losing new fans and looking wilfully contrarian. When Charli released the sub-two-minute single Rock Music, many heard it as a middle finger. “I think the dancefloor is dead,” she drawls over guitars that buzzed like speakers weathering interference from a Nokia 5110, “so now we’re making rock music.” There were boring thinkpieces about the dancefloor being very much alive, actually (as if Charli had ever ridden culture for clout then binned it off), and about whether she was trying to eject fair-weather new fans. But the key to this cheeky song is surprisingly earnest: “Jump off the stage / I hope they catch you today / But if they don’t it’s OK,” she sings naively, an affirmation to take creative leaps, and to come with Charli – or not, as you like – as she takes this one.

Trinidad-born author and poet whose novel The Humming-Bird Tree is a classic of Caribbean literature

Ian McDonald, who has died aged 93, wrote only one novel, but it is considered a classic of Caribbean literature. The Humming-Bird Tree (1969), set in Trinidad in the late 1940s, tells the story of Alan, a young white boy, as he falls into friendship with his family’s yard-boy, Kaiser, who is of Indian extraction, and in love with Kaiser’s younger sister, Jaillin, who is also employed by Alan’s wealthy parents.

While Alan and Jaillin skirt around each other, trying to come to terms with the confusing feelings of their mutual attraction and the disapproval of Alan’s mother and father, wider emotional turmoil is at play in Trinidad, where the masses are beginning to throw off the yoke of British rule.

The writer and climber brings colour and carnival to his account of a country and people shaped by its mountains

It comes as a shock to learn that Britain’s uplands were not always rocky, covered with coarse grass and suitable only for sheep. About 54,000 years ago – a mere blink in geological time – this island’s high places were teeming with nature. Lushly forested peaks, crags and gorges were home to megafauna including mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and giant elk. The one sour note in this elevated Garden of Eden was the carnivorous cave lions and sabre-tooth cats who prowled the browse looking for a meaty dinner.

Ed Douglas’s achievement in this excellent book is to return a proper sense of colour and even carnival to Britain’s high places. His first job, though, is to define his terms. In 1936, the celebrated US geographer Roderick Peattie declared that what made a mountain was not its elevation so much as its capacity to “enter into the imagination of the people who lived in [its] shadows”. But by the 1990s, the United Nations, newly tasked with protecting the world’s high places from environmental and economic decline, insisted on getting out its tape measure and statistical charts and coming up with some universal criteria.

A bereaved father and son bond over greyhound racing in an east Durham town in terminal decline

The adjoining villages of Easington and Easington Colliery in the coalfields of east Durham make the perfect case study of the shift from England’s industrial boomtime to terminal decline. Twenty miles from a major town or city, they’ve been left to languish ever since Thatcher went to war with the industry that made them. If you want to understand why the white working class feel abandoned today, go to Easington Colliery and its surrounding villages.

It’s this community that Middlesbrough-born writer Louise Powell brings to life in a powerful debut set in the world of greyhound racing, or “flapping”. Underdogs is an utterly authentic depiction of an England that’s overlooked, but still very much alive. Pigeon lofts and flat caps, meat raffles and social clubs – all still exist, just very rarely in 21st-century novels.

A sad, heartbroken woman becomes obsessed with a famous writer in a continuously humorous and touching story from the Sorrow and Bliss author

The protagonist of Meg Mason’s new book, the follow-up to the 2020 tragicomedy Sorrow and Bliss, is an invisible woman. She might well be standing there but you won’t notice her. She’s a techie at literary festivals – the person who shuffles up to a famous writer a few minutes before their event and apologetically slides a microphone cable down their shirt while they’re making small talk with the chair or accepting a bottle of room-temperature mineral water from an anxious publicist.

No man is a hero to his valet, and no writer is a hero to the technical staff lurking in the wings of a venue. Mason’s opening pages present a teasing but not quite libellous series of cameos of real writers: George Saunders deciding at an inconsiderately late stage to insist on swapping his headset for a lapel mic; Ann Patchett being frosty with a fan; Mick Herron accidentally stepping on someone’s foot and not apologising.

Gamers are angry that Sony will be deleting TV shows and films from their libraries as well as getting rid of physical games. Will a boycott make a difference?

Name: PlayStation blackout.

Age: Forthcoming.

PC, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2, PS5; SFB Games
Detective Grimoire is at it again in the long-awaited new entry to this stylish series of comedy whodunnits

In a boom time for mystery games, the Detective Grimoire series stands out for its style and sense of humour. The Mermaid Mask continues to build upon the formula laid down in Secret of the Swamp and polished in Tangle Tower, and while there is still room for further improvements this sequel is worth the seven years’ wait.

This time, the casually competent Grimoire and his smart if sarcastic sidekick Sally have been summoned to a submarine to solve the locked-room murder of its captain, Magnus Mortuga. You click around the cluttered rooms of the vessel to hear the detectives’ comedic commentary and look for clues and – closer up – click and drag to move objects around for further examination or to solve a puzzle. (For those playing on Nintendo Switch 2, the mouse controls are actually useful here, if not comfortable in the long run.)

The debut from Scandinavian outfit Dead Astronauts promises shooting, survival, and, in a shake-up to the genre, seeds that terraform its pristine world right before your eyes

The wilds of the sub-Arctic north: towering pine trees, flashes of psychedelic-yellow lichen, and a sun that never wholly sets during the summer months. This land is gorgeous, yes, but also unforgiving, yet in Haex (pronounced “hex”) you have an unusual tool at your disposal to make it a little more hospitable: a cube that fits snugly in the palm of your hand out of which grows a plant. You plant this so-called Seed in the earth and – voilà – the world around you transforms: new vegetation and topography but also narrative threads to follow, and, naturally, enemies. Wield these small-but-mighty kernels of change at your own peril.

“Your adventure and your world is player-shaped,” says Haex’s creative director Tobias Nyman. He explains that everyone starts a campaign with a unique, procedurally generated world. Each Seed then contains further procedural data that causes it to terraform before your eyes. “You change the world as you go,” he says. “It becomes even more unique.”

The horror movie sensation of 2026 has its roots in gaming’s discovery of ‘noclip’ – and the hidden virtual realms that could be opened up inside games. Developers explain how everyone got lost in these liminal spaces

It starts on 4chan, in a May 2019 thread entitled “unsettling images”. The first post was a photo showing an empty room with the now iconic yellow wallpaper, no natural lighting and a kind of inexplicable jutting half-wall. Shortly afterwards, another user (there are no usernames on 4chan, just identifying numbers) responded with 78 words of text that would essentially lay out the blueprint for a future $262m A24 movie sensation.

“If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms,” the post begins. For the uninitiated, “noclip” refers to a game mode in which collision with solid objects is disabled, allowing players to move freely through walls and floors. Think of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character in the film, finding a permeable wall in the basement of his furniture store and passing through to the world on the other side.

Royal Albert Hall, London
From Kristine Tjøgersen’s tranquil woodland reverie to Canteloube’s Auvergne and Strauss’s thunderous mountainscape, the London Philharmonic – with Louise Alder – conjured colours and brought drama to this vivid programme

What do you get if you blow into a tuba full of water? With a little imagination it’s the sound of a squirrel eating, the opening salvo of Between Trees by Kristine Tjøgersen. The Norwegian composer’s ingenious nature poem drew on extended techniques and novel effects, such as prepared harp and strings, as it led us beneath the forest floor to explore the mysterious fungal threads that connect the roots of trees and plants like some vast natural internet.

Leaving the Scandinavian forests behind, the London Philharmonic’s whistlestop travelogue paused for breath in sun-drenched central France to savour a selection of Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne. Louise Alder was the soloist, the languid radiance of her creamy soprano complementing the composer’s rose-tinted orchestrations. Edward Gardner kept the orchestra on a low light while pointing up the music’s more pungent elements. For her part, Alder brought colour and the gift of storytelling to these tales of lovelorn shepherdesses, opportunistic country lads and conceited quails.

Riverside Studios, London
Joe Haddad’s solo show tilts between family comedy and football fandom as well as the horrors of the Gaza war but never quite finds its focus

Joe Haddad’s solo show is a kind of self-referential standup set which tells us about his journey into comedy. It encompasses the negotiation of his dual identity as a Palestinian south Londoner and becomes a coming-of-age story.

Born in Croydon, with Arab Christian parents from Jerusalem, he faced prejudice at his Catholic school, including taunts of “Jew-boy” because there was so little understanding of Palestine and its history of occupation. It follows him to adulthood, and an assumed, Anglicised, stage name of Joe Adams, for fear of being cancelled (even his mother tells him not to mention Palestine during gigs).

Soho theatre, London
She has penned jokes for Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien and the Academy. Now she’s seizing the limelight with scattergun routines about everything from penises to free-bleeding

Laurie Kilmartin is not afraid of vulgarity. The Peabody award-winner flits between penis jokes, free-bleeding chaos and a taste for vengeance in this scattergun hour that marks her London debut. Having made her career as a staff writer for Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O’Brien, Kilmartin’s own voice is crude, acute and pretty mean, delivering each dark joke with a furrowed-brow intensity, followed by a flash of a wide, are-you-gonna-take-it smile.

Jumping through the decades, the US comedian cycles through school bullies, the need for better assassins, and the limited dating pool of men over 50. There’s a pitch-black quality to some of these tales, with a particular knife-edge to her story of an abusive swim coach. Other anecdotes feel drier, like they’ve just had the dust blown off them; she settles too long on lockdowns, which I thought we’d all agreed we were done talking about long ago. Even a moment on Charlie Kirk feels like it missed the moment, though other elements of her US political commentary are easy winners.

Neston Park, Wiltshire
​In a new home after a year off, there’s a thread of fierce political anger running alongside the spirited musical performances – including standout sets from Barrington Levy and Daniela Mercury

At Womad, opening at new home Neston Park after a year off in 2025, the boundary between spectator and performer dissolves entirely: you bump into headliners in the loo queue, spot them wandering the site with their kids, or sit in on an intimate panel discussion with them hours after their main-stage set. Phone signal is practically nonexistent at the new site, forcing a crowd reliant on group chats into analogue meet-ups; the new arboretum layout holds a cosier, village-like setup than before, complete with a mercifully shorter trek from all camping areas. You can start the morning at your own speed: pounding through a west African djembe workshop, joining “laughing yoga”, or relaxing in a wood-fired tub while distant basslines echo through the trees.

Musical highlights often happen when artists go off-script. Reggae legend Barrington Levy provides Friday’s standout moment by rejecting strict act times, turning to the side of the stage to deliver a blunt ultimatum: “Mr Promoter, don’t invite me to your festival and tell me to get off the stage. I’m fucking playing as long as I like.” The crowd back him and he stays, launching back into Black Roses and Here I Come, his star power locking in a crowd of nodding, fist-pumping seniors, families, and kids getting a proper musical education.

As fighting intensifies in Port-au-Prince, only a fraction of its maternity services remain, and they are under constant threat

Eight months pregnant, Françoise, 45, arrives early in the morning at a deserted school in Bel Air. The hillside neighbourhood in Port-au-Prince has been controlled by gangs since a violent takeover in 2019. Schools have closed, electricity has been cut off and food is scarce. Gunfights can erupt at any time.

Françoise having a Doppler ultrasound in a clinic set up for a few hours inside a deserted school in Bel Air

Building on decades-long traditions, Black bikers host rides, picnics and other gatherings nearly every summer weekend to celebrate community and freedom

The trip was only supposed to be a Memorial Day weekend girls’ getaway to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for Patrice “Foxy” Johnson. But once Johnson and her crew arrived, they inadvertently found themselves in the middle of an annual bike week where several thousand riders had convened. Johnson watched the “backpacks”, or the women who rode on the backs of male motorcyclists’ bikes, and realized she too wanted to be part of the community. She didn’t want to accompany the male riders, though. She wanted to ride herself.

In that moment about 30 years ago, Johnson decided that next time she would be attending bike week and coming with her own set of wheels. Once she returned to her home town of Raleigh, North Carolina, she enrolled in a foundational bike riding class at Johnston community college to learn more about motorcycles. Since then, she’s become such a staple in the Black motorcycle community nationwide that she holds multiple leadership positions across organizations.

Design editor of the Guardian who changed the look of the paper in the 1980s

Michael McNay, who has died aged 91, may not have been an immediately recognisable name to many Guardian readers, but he more than anyone else shaped the modern appearance of the paper.

During a 37-year career he covered many areas of the paper as a subeditor, but also as a writer mainly on arts subjects and as the Guardian’s design editor at the time of its radical remodelling in 1988.

The superlative Royal Ballet star finally has her own show. She talks about fabulous footwork, her Argentina-inspired leotard – and why she named her cat after a certain footballer

Marianela Núñez is talking about football. This is before the World Cup final, after England’s game with Argentina. “That was a hard position for me!” she says. Núñez moved to England from Buenos Aires aged 15 and has danced with the Royal Ballet for 28 years. She’s a British citizen, but her loyalties are clear: check out her Argentina-inspired leotard on Instagram or her cat named after Lionel Messi.

In Argentina, they call her the Messi of ballet – although when it comes to who has the finest footwork, they should really be calling him the Núñez of football. A principal dancer since the age of 20, Núñez has been at the top of her game for so long you can forget what a remarkable dancer she is. When she faces the ballerina’s equivalent of a penalty kick – Swan Lake’s 32 fouettés, Sleeping Beauty’s Rose Adagio – you never doubt her, but it’s her romantic spirit, the bright beaming energy, her vivacity in Don Quixote, the tragic yearning of her Odette, the way she breathes in ballet like oxygen, that make her special. She is deeply besotted with what she does.

Holly Dyson’s addiction led to extreme pain, hospital trips and thousands of pounds’ worth of debt. Here is how she recovered

Holly Dyson’s last alcoholic drink was a can of cider to manage her withdrawal symptoms, which she had in her dad’s car on the way to rehab on 2 May 2023. She’d barely eaten in two weeks. Instead, she spent her last few days at home in the north-west of England vomiting blood into the toilet bowl and lying in bed twitching, feeling unbearably nauseous. Her hand hovered over the numbers 999 on her phone, ready to call an ambulance. At 26 years old, Dyson’s body was shutting down.

About a week earlier, a doctor had given her six months to live. For the past few years, her drinking had spiralled out of control. Her liver was “deranged”, the doctor said. To Dyson, it felt like “a bowling ball” – weighing her down so much that she would have to use “two hands to lift my body up out of bed because my liver felt so heavy and swollen.” Her face was also swollen and she was unrecognisable from the sporty young woman she had once been.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food, and the basic they scrimp on? The writer and comedian talks grownup crockery, posh hand soap and Abba Voyage with the Filter

Rosie Jones is an actor, writer and award-winning standup comedian, and a familiar face on UK television – she’s fronted her own Comedy Central series Out of Order, starred in Channel 4’s hard-hitting documentary Am I a R*tard?, and led two travel series, Mission: Accessible and the Bafta-nominated Trip Hazard.

She is the creator and star of the Channel 4 comedy-drama Pushers, a six-part series nominated for a Bafta in 2026. Her acting credits span primetime dramas such as Silent Witness, Casualty and Call the Midwife, and she has also appeared as herself on Taskmaster, Live at the Apollo, QI, 8 Out of 10 Cats, the Last Leg and many more. She set up the Rosie Jones Foundation in 2025, which focuses on mental health support for individuals living with cerebral palsy and peer support through events and workshops. She brings her standup show I Can’t Tell What She’s Saying to the Edinburgh fringe from 5 to 30 August.

Shark’s cordless vacuum is a whiz at cleaning hard floors and pet hair, but a disarmingly short battery life caught our reviewer off guard

• The best cordless vacuum cleaners – tested

Vacuuming rarely starts with vacuuming. First you have to clear the floor of stray socks and abandoned toys left behind by children, pets or messy partners. Then there’s the irritation of finding the vacuum’s dustbin still full of dirt, or the battery flat because someone forgot to charge it.

The (take a deep breath – long name coming up) Shark PowerDetect Speed Clean and Empty Pet Pro cordless vacuum Ultramarine IA3241UKT certainly won’t pick up the scattered toys for you, but it has been designed to make the job of vacuuming as frictionless as possible.

Too many outfits and not enough suitcase space? Whether it’s sightseeing or sundowners, our fashion writer shares her secrets for packing smarter

• The travel essentials that made your holiday better
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When you hear the words capsule wardrobe, you probably picture beige knits and minimalist tailoring. A capsule isn’t just about dressing neutrally, though: it’s about choosing a handful of pieces that work together in countless combinations.

There is no time that skill is more important than when you’re packing for a holiday. I have streamlined my approach by sticking to a simple rule of thumb: instead of packing for every possible scenario, I focus on versatile staples that can be dressed up or down and worn more than once.

Who makes the smoothest, creamiest, chocolatiest tub? We have the inside scoop for you

• The best supermarket dark chocolate

There’s been a marked shift towards less-processed ice-cream since I tested vanilla ice-cream for this column last summer. Most ice-cream on the market used to be a cocktail of gums and emulsifiers, but now they’re of much higher quality and with fewer additives.

All today’s chocolate ice-creams are sophisticated, rich and complex, with deep, dark flavours, and I scored them on taste and texture first (I favour denser, French-style, custard-based ice-creams). I also prioritised smoothness and mouthfeel.

Supportive and surprisingly cool for memory foam, Panda’s flagship topper gave our reviewer some of the best sleep she’s had all summer

• The best mattress toppers – tested

When I was struggling to sleep in a heatwave, diving into a 6ft slab of memory foam didn’t exactly sound like the answer. Memory foam is renowned for trapping heat, and the more “sinky” the foam, the more heat you’d expect it to trap. Less comfort layer, more boiled marshmallow.

However, the foam used by Panda in its flagship mattress topper genuinely seems to break the mould. It has the cosy feel of conventional memory foam, but it eased my night sweats so well when I tested the best mattress toppers in summer 2025 that I named it the “best cooling topper”, beating rivals filled with airy wool and microfibre.

From olive oil to matcha, soy sauce to sage and onion stuffing, there’s a frozen designer dessert out there to tickle even the most jaded palate. Here’s the best – and worst – of what’s on offer in Britain this summer

What’s with all the weird ice-cream flavours this year? It feels as if supermarkets and independent companies are vying to make the most novel alternatives to a good old scoop of vanilla. But which are actually worth having? I tried 99 varieties of ice-cream tubs and ranked them from sickeningly sweet to dinner party-worthy.

99. Paxo sage and onion stuffing, Anya Hindmarch
(One scoop £4.50 or 500ml tub £16, The Ice Cream Project, London)
Anya Hindmarch’s Ice Cream Project has become a yearly summer fixture, in which the fashion designer collaborates with well-known brands to create nostalgic novelty flavours (at designer prices) for which customers queue round the block. This year the flavours skew toward roast dinners, and include Oxo (which I couldn’t try, being vegetarian) and Paxo. It tastes exactly like the stuffing … which isn’t really what I want from an ice-cream. Taste 1/10, Value 1/10, Originality 7/10

Nostalgic foods like toad-in-the-hole also in demand at Waitrose as people pivot towards familiarity amid climatic and political upheaval

Forget a crisp salad and glass of chilled rosé. Enervated Britons are seemingly more likely to crave a rich cottage pie and a robust red in heatwaves.

In a trend termed “reverse comfort eating”, Waitrose’s cottage pie sales have soared 110% in the last month and South African red wine is up 68% compared with the same period last year. The surprise spike in demand for winter comfort foods also includes retro chicken, bacon and leek pie (up 41%), chicken korma (up 67%) and chicken and ham gratin (68%).

Tearing is a common problem with pasta dough say our experts. Culprits include the wrong type of flour, cold dough – or it could even boil down to the size of your egg

When making fresh pasta, why does the dough sometimes tear when rolling, and other times not?
Thomas, by email
“I’m sorry to hear your pasta is rippy,” sympathises Jacob Kenedy, chef-patron of Bocca di Lupo in London, who is teaming up with fellow chef Merlin Labron-Johnson to celebrate the Italian midsummer holiday ferragosto with two feasts in Somerset next month. Assuming Thomas is rolling an egg pasta dough in a pasta machine, there are a number of possible explanations. First, Kenedy says, he might be using the wrong type of flour (“use 00 flour”), the dough might be too cold (“use it at room temperature”) or too dry (“it should be supple, like Play-Doh”). Naz Hassan, head chef of Ornella and Lupa, both in London, adds that the latter might be down to the size of the egg(s) Thomas is using: “One egg to 100g of 00 flour is the basic pasta dough recipe, but that will vary depending on the size of your egg,” he says. Of course, some people prefer to use just the yolk, and if that applies to Thomas, Hassan suggests thinking about maybe adding the egg white, too: “It has the structure that allows pasta to have the stretchiness it deserves.”

But, in true Goldilocks style, a dough that is too wet might also spell trouble, Kenedy says: “I like my pasta dough wet enough to roll by hand – it gives a more elastic mouthfeel – which means, if I roll it in a machine, it sticks slightly to the roller and may rip.” The fix? Laminate the dough thoroughly and perhaps use “the finest dusting” of flour until the dough passes smoothly through the pasta machine. “Then make sure to roll that flour in, so the outside of the pasta isn’t dusty,” Kenedy adds.

Sweetness and spice abound in this refreshing summer salad

When the weather is glorious, I have very little desire to do any “proper cooking”. Turning the grill on for about 15 minutes is the maximum amount of heat I want to subject my home to, which is why, in the summer months, I eat this sort of salad on repeat: stone fruit with golden slices of halloumi is my favourite pairing. Add a little freshness with some sweetness and spice, and it is a glorious thing. You could even spoon it on to slices of toasted ciabatta for an open sandwich or elegant crostini.

It used be called playing the field, but now young people are claiming dating multiple people at once is intentional and growth-enhancing

Name: Roster dating.

Age: The term seems to be about a decade old; the practice is much older.

I was just 10 at the time but my siblings and I will never forget the sense of safety, comfort and warmth they offered

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

We were doing the groceries when a blood vessel burst in my mother’s brain. I was 10 years old and on a family holiday to France that very suddenly changed its tenor. In the following weeks Mum went through brain surgery, suffered a stroke and was placed in intensive care.

We had been staying in a gîte but moved to a small hotel closer to the hospital. It was a terrifying and stressful time, even as a young kid who knew things were serious – but didn’t understand quite how serious.

Will’s lack of self-worth is creating a barrier between him and Fi, but talking more could help them adjust to their mismatched libidos

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

I worry that Will sees me more as a mother figure than a sexual being

You are stepping into a family system with its own history and loyalties; try to consider how you might set boundaries without rejecting his mum

I’m in my 30s and have been living in Spain for a decade. My partner is Spanish and we have lived together for a year.

The bond he has with his mum sometimes makes me feel angry, jealous and helpless. I’m aware that, culturally, Spanish people often have closer bonds with their families and I try to accept that. He is an only child and his father left his family when he was a teenager and started another. I feel my partner has developed an unhealthy and codependent relationship with his mum.

We told it of our 11pm arrival time but when we got there our room was no longer available as it had ‘overbooked’

I booked and paid for a room in the Travelodge London King’s Cross Royal Scot hotel six weeks in advance. It was for myself and my husband, who has heart disease and dementia.

I had called the hotel on the day of arrival to advise that we would be checking in at 11pm and was told that was fine.

I’m a self-employed driving instructor and I’m running out of cash to hire a replacement dual-control vehicle

My livelihood as a self-employed driving instructor is under threat owing to Nissan’s failure to repair my leased dual-control car.

It has been off the road awaiting a spare part for three months, and I’ve now been told it will take at least a further month to arrive.

Criminals send victims to a cloned site that collects login, personal and payment details

You have had a Spotify account for years and your credit card is linked for the monthly payments. When an email arrives telling you that your payment couldn’t be processed you are not surprised as the expiry date on the card is soon.

“We encountered an issue while processing your recent payment,” it says. “To keep your access active and avoid interruption, please review and update your information.”

Unclear terms and expensive extras can turn what seemed like a cheap rental into a costly one

It is not too late to get a good deal on your holiday car rental, even if you have booked already and are travelling soon. But there are many pitfalls to avoid so that you do not end up paying over the odds.

A survey from Which? found that one in eight people who had hired a car in the past two years had ended up paying more than they were first quoted.

Women and men exhibit different heart attack symptoms. Knowing these lesser-known factors can help save your life

A few months ago at work, when I rose from my seat and walked a few steps, something felt off. There was a strange pressure in my chest and rib cage, but I ignored it, took my water bottle from the kitchen and returned to my desk.

The next day it happened again. There was no pain and my breathing was fine. But whenever I stood up and took a few steps, the odd squeezing would return. I work at a hospital as a neurosurgery coordinator, and the wall was lined with posters about stroke and heart distress signs. I barely glanced at the pictures, having memorized them years ago.

The classic gym routine doesn’t isolate your stomach muscles as much as you might think, but here are five that will

If someone in a film or TV show wants a six-pack, chances are they’ll drop to the floor and start doing sit-ups. According to Dr Lee Brown, senior lecturer in strength and conditioning at the University of East London, that’s more Hollywood than science.

“It’s embedded in the archaic practices of boxing coaches and therefore everyone seems to follow it,” he says. “But they’re far from the best exercise for training your core.”

Stress, the cost of living, long working hours and even excessive exercise have all been touted as reasons the illness is rising among women in their 30s and 40s. What can be done to help them?

The “lightning strike” pain was like nothing Francine Jones had experienced before. “That is the only way I can describe it,” she says, of the stabbing in her torso that would occur every 10 minutes or so. “It was a really sharp, intense pain, as if someone was giving me an electric shock … it took my breath away.”

It had started in May with a strange pricking sensation under her bra. Then 10 large blisters, plus a host of smaller ones, formed in a band from her stomach to her back. They burned, “like someone was putting an iron on me. I don’t think I wore underwear for five or six weeks.” Showering, or even a cold flannel, would make her skin burn. Then came “the itch”, which lasted for five weeks and was so intense that she was lucky if she slept for four hours a night. “It was like something was crawling all over me all the time.” I can hear her wincing.

Feel lethargic even after a full night’s sleep? From not enough fibre to too much sitting, experts explain why your get up and go has got up and gone

The very air you breathe could be an issue. “Close the door, shut the window, add a partner and a heater, and by 3am a typical bedroom sits at 1,500 to 2,500 parts per million of carbon dioxide,” says Dr Jemma King, author of Sleep First: Sleep Smarter, Think Sharper, Feel Better. “Research shows that above 1,000 ppm sleep efficiency drops, deep sleep reduces and salivary cortisol rises on waking. You’re sleeping, but your nervous system is mildly activated all night.” Luckily, it’s an easy fix: open a window – even 2cm will do the job, according to King.

Are you stuck in a makeup rut? Or maybe just beginning to wear cosmetics? Here, experts reveal how to to find the right products for you

Makeup trends change over time – and so does our skin. How can you enhance what you have and refresh your look? Here, makeup artists share the fundamentals of applying cosmetics, at every age.

Around town, on the pitch and even in the pool, the New York mayor keeps his suit on – what do his sartorial choices tell us?

Playing football. Playing in the sand. Dancing on a stage with Alicia Keys and the entire New York Knicks roster. Swimming in a swimming pool. Swimming in the ocean.

Traditionally, a suit and tie would be considered inappropriate attire for each of these activities. Yet over the past year Zohran Mamdani has seemingly been on a one-man crusade to prove otherwise: to convince people that a formal suit is, actually, suitable for all activities.

Latest edition of one of world’s most influential fashion photography publications is also shot entirely in India

Against the ancient, weathered walls of Jaigarh fort, high on the hills above Jaipur, Bhavitha Mandava stood barefoot and draped in gold.

Just a few months earlier, the Indian model had been catapulted from a life of obscurity as a student at New York University to become one of the most recognisable and celebrated new faces of fashion. This year, she became the first Indian woman to open the Chanel catwalk at their Métiers d’Art show and her divisive Chanel outfit for the Met Gala, fashion’s most exclusive event, became an international talking point.

A physio, a tailor and a historian on the style trends that can put women in hospital and how to avoid the dangers

“Buyer beware” is one of the oldest principles in English law. Now, a pair of wide legged trousers from Zara is bringing the phrase back to the forefront of shoppers’ minds.

On social media the £25.99 wide-legged trousers from the high-street retailer have earned the moniker “Zara death pants” thanks to a slew of videos showing wearers tripping over the leg of the trousers and injuring themselves.

Ebikes with child seats – plus idyllic campsites and pit stops en route – turn a five-day ride on the car-free Véloscénic into a wonderful family holiday

“Are you mad?” says a fellow guest over dinner at our campsite. “I heard you’re here on a long-distance cycle ride with your toddlers.”

I am in Orne, a region in Normandy, with my sister Issy and our three-year-old sons, Sid and Ralph. The landscape folds around us in green-over-green – hedgerow, oak, mossy manor wall – then opens into meadows where Percheron horses graze, knee-deep in wildflowers. Deer leap from the bocage. Cidre and poiré have been pressed here since the middle ages. The villages are sandy stone, blue- and green-shuttered; roses against the boulangerie.

Horchata, the revered creamy drink made from tiger nuts, is still served in grand Valencian parlours – always accompanied by sugar-glazed pastries

It was a glimpse of an old couple sharing a tender moment in the bustling horchatería that drew me into one of Valencia’s most storied culinary traditions. As he sipped his milky horchata de chufa and a white crescent moon appeared on his coiffed moustache, they shared a soft laugh and she dabbed it away from his upper lip.

“There’s no fixed time to drink horchata,” the lady said. “As long we have at least one every day.”

Sagre – the historic local events that pop up in villages across the country in summer – are the perfect way to get a taste of regional cuisine and culture

I cannot remember a summer when at least one evening hasn’t been spent following signs to a local sagra. Not quite a food market and not quite a village fete, a sagra is like a village moving its kitchen outdoors for a few nights.

When I think back to those nights from childhood, the first image that comes to mind is of a woman’s hand closed into a fist above a pan of hot oil. Through a tight circle formed between her thumb and forefinger, she would squeeze soft lumps of batter, one small ball at a time, into the oil. In a few seconds, each soft mass would become a pittula, a small Salento fritter: swollen, uneven, golden, too hot to eat straight away but too good to wait for.

On a coastline brimming with seafood shacks, crab sandwiches and hyperlocal flavour, our food writer is happy to be distracted from the stunning scenery

If we take it as read that the better the view, the worse the cooking, then by rights south Wales’s Gower peninsula should be a culinary desert. The first time I visited almost 15 years ago, I was unprepared for its loveliness – back in 1956, Gower (never the Gower, as locals were quick to correct me) was the first place in the UK to be designated an area of outstanding natural beauty, and though the peninsula abuts the country’s second city, Swansea, it still feels profoundly rural. Crisscrossed by narrow lanes flanked by towering hedges and ancient churches, it’s a great place to cycle, to drive, and above all to walk up an appetite.

Indeed, it’s been a long-held ambition of mine to hike the 43 miles of the Welsh Coast Path from Mumbles to Loughor. Sadly, it remains just that because on this latest trip I spent considerably more time chomping than yomping … though in fairness I was on a research mission for a walking trip with a friend here later in the summer, because as a food writer and semi-professional glutton, I never like to head anywhere unprepared.

Skincare-inspired regimes feel unnecessary – but giving your plants more attention is always a good thing

The problem
Plant care has had a glow-up. There is now an entire regime that’s been lifted straight from the bathroom cabinet: cleanse, hydrate, serum, tone. These beautifully boxed kits promise lush plants, make lovely gifts and look wonderful on a shelf, but the question is: does your monstera actually need a four-step routine?

The hack
The promise is that plants, like skin, thrive on a structured routine, and that investing in a multi-product care kit will reward you with glowing foliage.

The work was simple: deliver letters, notices of assessment and other important legal documents, by bicycle. The locations, I came to realise, were varied and inconvenient

• Read more in this series here

A gopher is a small, solitary rodent with large front teeth native to North and Central America. It’s also the name of the job some workplaces give to errand runners (though it’s more usually spelled gofer).

When I was a 21-year-old law student in Canberra, I was in desperate need of casual work. I came across an ad pinned to one of the corkboards outside the library. Bleary-eyed after another all-nighter to finish an assignment, I took down the number of the law firm.

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Stephen Walsh was such a workaholic that none of his colleagues would believe he’d ever leave. But then he learned to dance and he’s now part of a dazzling tap troupe

When he was 57, Stephen Walsh found himself in hospital with a stomach bleed from an ulcer. As he lay in bed recovering, he thought about his future. “‘You always had this vague idea that you’d retire early,’” he told himself at the time. “‘Well, I’m going to do it.’”

Discharged from hospital, he gave his business partners three years’ notice. They had worked together at the General Electric Company, and after it was broken up in 1999, they launched their own training and consultancy business specialising in how to improve companies’ efficiency and outcomes.

Super-premium Android has top performance, long battery life and good cameras, but is let down by software

Honor’s svelte Android phone-tablet has been given a glow-up for its sixth version, offering a great alternative to Samsung for a fancy foldable with a red suede-like back framed in gold.

The Magic V6 continues the Chinese challenger brand’s strategy of taking a razor-thin device and slapping a giant circular lump on the back to fit in top-class cameras, something others often forgo. It costs a not inconsiderable £1,500 (€1,700/A$2,999) but only until August when the price jumps to a cool £2,000 (€2,300) – a solid £300 more than last year’s model as the cost of RAMageddon continues to bite, even at the very top end of the market.

Main screen: 7.95in (403ppi) 120Hz OLED flexible display

Cover screen: 6.52in (406ppi) 120Hz OLED

Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

RAM: 16GB

Storage: 512GB

Operating system: MagicOS 10 (Android 16)

Camera: 50MP + 50MP ultrawide + 64MP 3x tele; 2x 20MP selfie

Connectivity: 5G, dual sim + esim, USB-C, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 6, GNSS

Water resistance: IP68/69 (1.5 metres for 30 minutes)

Dimensions folded: 156.7 x 74.5 x 8.75-9mm

Dimensions unfolded: 156.7 x 145.6 x 4.0-4.1mm

Weight: 219-224g

Whether in favor of or against the US-Israel war on Iran, people across the country are left holding the bill and wondering on its purpose

Five months after the United States and Israel started a historically unpopular war against Iran that was going to supposedly last weeks, the fighting has refused to resolve in victory, defeat or peace. Iran’s supreme leader had been killed in the opening strikes, ceasefires broke down, and the strait of Hormuz has been closed and reopened.

For voters interviewed across the country, while the damage may be distant, the residual effects have shown up at the pump, on the grocery bill and in a phone call telling a spouse they have a day to report for deployment. And for a country still absorbing the aftermath of Israel’s war on Gaza – funded to the tune of billions of dollars by the United States – the war in Iran lands on top of an already raw argument about what American power is for.

Suffolk police ceded investigation into James Loubeau to the US military, leading to court martial acquittal

A US airman accused of a “spree” of rapes and sexual assaults in England, drugging some women and breaking into the homes of others, was able to avoid British justice after local police handed over part of the case to the American military.

Two British women went to Suffolk police in August 2019 to allege that James Loubeau and another US airman had drugged and raped them after they met in a nightclub in Bury St Edmunds, a local market town.

Met officers issue a final appeal for information as they seek a breakthrough in hunt for missing London estate agent

Det Ch Insp Teresa Foster, who leads the Metropolitan police’s cold case homicide team, first heard about the disappearance of the London estate agent Suzy Lamplugh when she was 12 years old watching the TV news at home in the small New Zealand town where she grew up.

“It was a huge story,” she said, recalling how the unsolved case attracted global attention in 1986. “It was shocking.” Foster later emigrated to the UK and four decades on is making a final appeal for information that could lead to the discovery of Lamplugh’s body and bring closure for her family.

We would like to hear your experiences of accessing, providing or relying on adult social care in England

Andy Burnham has said he is prepared to use his “political capital” to reform England’s adult social care system, with the new prime minister arguing that fixing social care is essential to easing pressure on the NHS.

Whether you receive care yourself, support a loved one, work in social care or are an unpaid carer, we want to understand what adult social care in England is really like for the people who rely on it every day.

We want to hear how people are dealing with the very hot weather.

UK forecasters have predicted a fourth heatwave of the year, with temperatures forecast to reach as high as 35C by Wednesday, triggering heat health alerts.

Fire chiefs have also appealed to people to take care in parched parks and rural areas.

We would like to hear from people living near AI datacentres about their experiences and any concerns they might have

There are around 450 large data centres across the UK. These warehouses contain computing infrastructure that power cloud services and, increasingly, AI.

There is much debate about how datacentres affect their local areas, with concerns raised by nearby residents about land use, pollution, noise, and the “heat island effect”.

We would like to hear from people for whom GLP-1 drugs, such as Wegovy and Mounjaro, have not worked

We would like to hear from people for whom GLP-1 drugs, such as Wegovy and Mounjaro, have not worked.

About 5-10% of people who try GLP-1 drugs are in this category. We’d like to know your story. Was it that the drugs were unbearable, or that despite using them for an extended period you found no benefit? Did you encounter stigma as a result? Are you using other approaches to gain the benefits you hoped to see from GLP-1s?

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