At a low-key event, Helen Jenner replaces Dan Thomas, who was arrested on suspicion of assault and gets warm words from Farage

Twenty-five or so Reform members of the Senedd were lined up against a wall. Almost as if they were in a police identification parade. Reform’s need to find a new leader in Wales is becoming habit-forming.

First, Nathan Gill was banged up for 10 and a half years on eight counts of taking £40K in bribes to make statements in support of Russia. Easily done. Who among us hasn’t been tempted by the Kremlin? And then last week, Dan Thomas chose to stand down after being arrested on suspicion of assault and coercive behaviour, leaving the Welsh leadership spot open once more. He denies the allegations.

With Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles as the Dashwood sisters, this fresh take on a beloved classic is not to be confused with Ang Lee’s

There’s no reason for anyone working on a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility to be intimidated by the celebrated 1995 movie by director Ang Lee and screenwriter Emma Thompson, any more than they should be or overawed by Austen’s original novel. Sacred cows are there to be … not slain, but re-invented. The decision to bring out a next-gen Sense and Sensibility, with a new young cast – as opposed to, say, a new Northanger Abbey or a new spin on the unfinished The Watsons – might bemuse some and at first it bemused me, like hearing about a Love Actually remake starring Millie Bobby Brown. But this turns out to be a more downbeat, ruminative version, happening in much cloudier weather than 30 years ago and without the sugar-rush final wedding scene. The mood is cooler, but interestingly austere, sober and thoughtful. There are also some strange casting decisions.

The sisters at the heart of the story, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, played in 1995 by Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, are now played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles, and frankly don’t look and sound much like the sisters we thought we knew. They look like young women who knew each other reasonably well at uni and are now in a flatshare in London. It is a story of financial and romantic crisis. Mrs Dashwood and her three daughters, having happily occupied a handsome Sussex estate, are forced to move to humble Barton Cottage in Devon when Mrs Dashwood’s stepson John Dashwood inherits their property and effectively evicted them.

Ursula von der Leyen’s outreach to Canada and new security proposals are wise – but she may not be the right messenger

Europe’s strategic predicament is ever clearer, and ever darker. The continent is at war, which is being fought militarily in Ukraine, but is escalating rapidly across Europe through hybrid attacks. Germany’s disclosure that it blames Russia for the explosion at Leipzig airport; a Russian drone strike on a train near the Ukraine-Poland border; an Italian jet shooting down a Russian drone over Lithuania; flares fired from a Russian warship at a Danish helicopter – all within the space of a couple of weeks – tell a coherent story. Whether because Russia is bogged down and unable to advance in Ukraine, or because it believes the US will not come to Europe’s rescue, Vladimir Putin’s regime is ever more bent on escalating its aggression in Europe.

Putin’s calculus is not irrational. Trump never misses a chance to lash out at Europe – the latest example being his threats of further tariffs on the EU if Brussels proceeds to offer Canada “associate membership”. Europeans have grown numb to Trump’s insults and threats, but these threats do underline his deep antipathy, suggesting that if a Russian attack warranted a response, Trump might look the other way. The US certainly can’t be relied on to have Europe’s back.

Key questions answered about scheme that has sent more than 25,000 people to countries that are not their own

• Banished: Trump’s secret deportation deals

• Freedom oppressed: journalists caught up in Trump crackdown

Since returning to office in 2025, Donald Trump’s administration has deported more than 25,000 migrants, refugees and asylum seekers to countries that are not their own.

Human rights lawyers describe these so-called third-country national arrangements as a “show of force”, intended to make people fear the consequences of entering the US without permission.

Readers and the Filter team share the best buys they still treasure, from charity-shop gems to Vinted bargains. Plus, the fashion experts’ guide to women’s basics

We love secondhand shopping here on the Filter – whether it’s Second Hand September or not. You can unearth one-off, affordable pieces, and feel good about not adding overconsumption to your list of things to worry about. So to inspire us, we asked you for your best-ever preloved finds, whether that’s furniture or fashion or more (and added a few of our own, too).

“An Ercol daybed I bought on eBay for £50, in need of some TLC,” reader Fiona told us. “Stripped, re-webbed and with a new cushion, it is now a thing of beauty and very comfortable.”

Alaa lives in a tent pitched on the ruins of her house, which was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike that killed all three of her children. In one month, she will give birth again.

As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, this week, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each will tell the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the ongoing conflict.

Alaa Hessi takes each step deliberately: raises her foot to land heavily on the stair above, takes a breath, slides her hand up the railing. Resting atop an uneven mess of rubble, the wooden staircase judders with each motion. Her movements are slowed by the heavy melon of her pregnant belly.

The sound that wakes me in the morning is the buzzing of flies inside the tent, and the noise of our neighbours.

President to meet Ukrainian counterpart in New York as Ukraine steps up attacks on Russian energy sector

Donald Trump is expected to press Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy on an energy ceasefire during a face-to-face meeting this week during United Nations high-level week, as world diesel prices have soared due to the war in Iran, as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Ukraine stepped up its attacks on Russia’s energy sector over the weekend, launching its largest reported strike yet on the Moscow region in a barrage that struck a major Moscow oil refinery and killed three people.

‘Godzilla-level’ phenomenon is supercharging the climate crisis and will have a huge impact on communities across the world

The “jaw-dropping” El Niño currently heating up the planet has burst through the highest temperature ever recorded for the phenomenon, several months before its expected peak.

The latest data shows the temperature rise at the heart of El Niño in the Pacific Ocean has now reached 3.05C. That is higher than the 3.02C set in late November 2015, the previous high set in the 150 years of modern records. This temperature is measured against the average of 1991-2020.

Lawyer tells hearing that families wish to know whether weaponry involved in deaths was made in Britain

Israeli and UK military commanders could be requested to give evidence to an inquest concerning three British workers killed in Gaza when aid vehicles they were travelling in were hit by an airstrike.

It is also possible that the inquest into the deaths of John Chapman, 57, Jim Henderson, 33, and James Kirby, 47, may examine whether the weaponry that killed the men was made in the UK.

Nats says fault at Prestwick has been ‘fixed’ after airports in Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland are hit

Business live – latest updates

Airlines have called for “action and accountability” over the UK’s air traffic control services after a technical issue led to flights being disrupted for the second time in a fortnight.

Dozens were cancelled and others severely delayed after a fault on Monday morning at National Air Traffic Services (Nats), this time at its second control centre at Prestwick in Scotland.

Dr Vincent Brown will appear at Westminster magistrates court charged with seven offences

A man has been charged with crimes linked to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 in the first case of its kind to be brought in the UK.

Dr Vincent Brown, formerly Dr Vincent Bajinya, 65, who used to live in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda but now lives in Islington, north London, will appear at Westminster magistrates court on Tuesday charged with seven offences.

NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox News, the fourth other networks that make up the White House TV pool, decided they would cease coverage in solidarity with banned CNN

• Sign up for US Breaking News emails

The three news outlets President Trump banned from the White House last Friday have filed their anticipated lawsuit against his administration to restore their access.

In the new complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday, CNN, MS Now and Politico alleged that Trump had violated the First Amendment and due process by stripping the outlets of their White House access in a blatant act of retaliation for coverage he disliked.

US president reportedly changed his mind over Saudi Arabia’s pleas for assistance as bombs were being loaded

Houthi fighters are moving to seize strategic heights in Yemen that would cut the Red Sea coast off from areas held ​by Saudi-backed forces after Donald Trump called off US strikes on the group at the last minute, reportedly as bombs were being loaded on to aircraft.

Amid increasingly heavy fighting in Yemen, which has displaced tens of thousands of people in recent weeks, the New York Times reported on Monday that the US president had flip-flopped wildly in recent days after a call from Saudi Arabia for US strikes on the Houthis.

The number of potentially damaging environmental incidents triggered by this year’s hot and dry weather has surpassed that of 2025

Wildlife in England and Wales will be affected by the current drought for years to come, the government has said.

This summer saw large parts of England and all of Wales plunged into a serious drought, with both recording their driest Julys since records began in 1836.

After a plane journey in shackles, an Iranian woman found herself in the middle of Africa in a country she did not know existed. She is one of thousands deported from the US on the back of shadowy deals made with dozens of countries. An in-depth investigation reveals the ‘show of force’ costing American taxpayers millions

No one would tell the shackled detainees onboard the US immigration plane where they were going. The officers in charge would taunt them when they asked, they said. It was only when the seat-back video screens finally showed a map that the 18 migrants worked it out.

The UK prime minister will meet the US president for the first time in New York on Tuesday. With Trump at his weakest in the polls, could this be a perfect moment for Andy Burnham to charm the president and avoid a very public political spat? The Guardian’s political editor Pippa Crerar has packed her bags ready to follow the PM in New York. Pippa and policy editor Kiran Stacey discusses some of the potential high-risk topics Donald Trump and Andy Burnham might try to avoid

Small traders and drivers bear the brunt of a refining shortage taking forecourt prices towards £2 a litre as wars wipe out about a fifth of global supplies

The smoke rising from the Kapotnya oil refinery to the south-east of Moscow marks one of Ukraine’s biggest air raids on the Russian capital since the start of the war, and the latest salvo in an energy crisis that threatens to affect households and businesses across the globe.

More than 1,500 miles away, British motorists are braced for the ripple effect from that conflict, and the US-Israel war on Iran. Average UK diesel prices are expected to reach record highs within days – while across Europe and the US, pump prices have already surpassed all-time highs.

Residents say new legislation in England forcing landlords to fix dangerous hazards is not improving conditions

Sarah Killick has been battling problems in her social home for months, including mould and damp. She says the anxiety has been insufferable and she has permanently damaged her teeth from grinding them due to stress.

She thought help would come in the form of Awaab’s law, new legislation designed to force social housing landlords in England to fix dangerous hazards, which came into effect in October last year.

From a jail-inspired light sabre fight to the moment a sax-player flew, Take It or Leave It brilliantly captured the hit-makers’ grimy origins. Will the film’s return see it finally honoured as a music movie landmark?

It’s March 1981 and Madness are revisiting the haunts of their recent youth with a film crew in tow. In the 18 months since releasing their debut single, The Prince, the group have become the UK’s most beloved hit-makers, their ascent abetted by inventive music videos that have left viewers of Top of the Pops and Tiswas believing a man could fly – while blowing a sax.

But this new project is something else. Instead of squandering their newfound wealth on fast cars and country piles, the seven-piece have invested in a semi-fictional big-screen telling of their origin story that tempers their trademark “nuttiness” with a kitchen-sink realism suiting their working-class roots. While Take It or Leave It sank into obscurity soon after release, a new 4K restoration has primed the film for rediscovery as a time-capsule of grimy 70s London, and perhaps cinema’s most honest depiction of the challenges involved in trying to get a band together.

Claimants having to find decades-old medical records to prove they qualify for compensation despite inquiry’s recommendations

Suzanne Morgan will never forget the day her mother died. It was nine months after she had gone into hospital with gallstones, where she received a routine blood transfusion.

“She went downhill rapidly,” Morgan recalled. Her mother haemorrhaged in her liver, and the next day she was dead.

‘In the street or at restaurants, people still come up to me and say, “I became a lawyer because of you.” But I just went to work and said my lines!’

I was doing a play in New York, Three Sisters by Chekhov. We regularly got scripts sent to us. One going around was written by David E Kelley. I flew out to Los Angeles to screen test, and I got the part right in the moment. It was a difficult transition as I felt very much settled and happy in New York and I had only been to LA briefly, to shoot The Birdcage. I was such a bad driver that I didn’t get on the freeway there for a year. I was afraid of it.

Some admit to spending thousands of dollars for barricade spots and other VIP perks at concerts, which is slowly becoming common

When Harry Styles announced a fall residency at Madison Square Garden, 43-year-old Tara Bess knew she had to be there. She didn’t want to spend hours camping for a prime spot in the general admission area, so Bess bought a VIP ticket for $1,400 from a resale ticket site, which allowed her to enter the arena early and secure a spot at the barricade.

“When you’re up close, you can see him closing his eyes and almost meditating to the music,” Bess said. “You can hear the click of equipment on stage, you just feel very connected to the performance.”

At 51, I want many more years of a healthy, happy sex life. So I decided to compile my own guide

When I got divorced after 28 years of monogamy, I was excited to be having sex again, but had concerns. I was 48, and the last time I’d been single was in the 90s; terrified of pregnancy and hyperconscious of HIV/Aids, I hadn’t considered condomless intercourse an option back then.

Now, at 51, I’ve been wondering how important barrier protection is for me. Though I haven’t hit menopause, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says that “by 45 getting pregnant naturally is unlikely”, and HIV/Aids prevention and treatment have improved significantly in the last three decades.

I once asked a resident what she would do if she could do anything. She replied: ‘I’d run in a field’

In my 40s, I was beginning to wonder where I fit in the employment world. I had a variety of jobs including an improv instructor, actor and corporate facilitator, then Covid arrived and all those people-facing roles disappeared.

Living in Sydney, with my kids at school and a mortgage to pay, I took on some temp work through an agency.

The digital, culture, media and sport select committee is to explore why the UK’s entrants are frequently ‘dismal’. Surely such a trifling matter is not worthy of the House of Commons

The State of Play inquiry, which is run by the UK House of Commons’ digital, culture, media and sport select committee, recently announced the five areas on which it will focus in 2026-27. One of these is: why are our Eurovision entries so bad? The word used by the chair, Dame Caroline Dinenage, was “dismal”, which is parliamentary speak for “shit”.

The evidence is all around. With the exceptions of Sam Ryder (second in 2022) and Jade Ewen (fifth in 2009), the UK has bumped along the bottom of the table in recent years, coming last in 2021 and 2026, second last in 2023 and 19th and 18th in 2025 and 2024 respectively. In four of those cases, the artist received no public votes at all.

Community, camaraderie, connection: I learned about all these things while hosting pub karaoke nights. Sticky private booths are their absolute antithesis

On a gloomy Wednesday evening, my best friend and I decided we wanted to scratch our singing itch. We searched for a pub that was hosting karaoke but couldn’t find anything in our area. So we headed to the local branch of a well-known private-booth karaoke bar instead. But it wasn’t just the astounding £18 per hour (per person!) charge or the poor sound quality that made the whole experience so profoundly sad.

Private karaoke booths are sticky little cubicles for people who like singing but don’t want to be seen. They’re places where you pay a premium to avoid rubbing shoulders with strangers or making new connections. The whole point is to avoid exposure to the real world, which fundamentally misunderstands the power of karaoke.

Kelli Blanchett is a freelance writer, disabled activist and musician

The problem is not famous people speaking out, as they always have. It is the feeling that leaders have failed, obliging celebrities to fill the vacuum

Every time a public figure in entertainment speaks up about politics in a way deemed “controversial”, it is as if it’s the first time that has ever happened. The outrage is fresh; critics rediscover and announce, as if they have just captured an elusive, profound notion, that art should be separate from politics. A form of disciplining is dispensed. Please, Mr or Miss Moneybags, with your preening notions that you have anything intelligent or informed to say about immigration policy or Palestine. Stick to football. Stick to pop music. Stick to acting. Stick to children’s shows.

Even at a time when a political moment has engulfed everything, this response continues to be born again, without regard for history or ability to confront rupture. The horror of Gaza has broken the art world, roiled Hollywood, fractured literary institutions. And still, as Ed Sheeran stands alone on stage following the withdrawal of all his support acts (in solidarity with Macklemore, who was removed from the tour due to a pro-Palestinian speech), he told his audience that he wants his music to be “about unity, not division”. The speed at which his tour unravelled is not evidence of the incompatibility of music and politics, necessitating that they remain separate to avoid that “division”. It is a study in how it is becoming increasingly unnatural to separate them.

CNN, MS Now and Politico accurately call last week’s sudden lockout ‘a direct assault on the first amendment’. That’s right

On Monday, the three news organizations that had been kicked out of the White House because of Donald Trump’s latest fit of pique sued the president and three top advisers.

An accompanying statement by CNN, MS Now and Politico accurately calls last week’s sudden lockout “a direct assault on the first amendment”.

War, AI disruption and markets in turmoil: the warnings are all there. But lessons from the 2008 crash could help us

Trump’s mess has rekindled Yemen’s civil war and a years-long conflict between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia

When the US and Israel launched a war of aggression against Iran in late February, Tehran’s allies in the Middle East jumped into the fray. Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia fired rockets at Israel, while Shia militias in Iraq attacked US bases and diplomatic outposts. But the Houthis, who control large parts of Yemen, mostly stayed on the sidelines.

Over the past few weeks, however, the Houthis have changed their tactics and have entered the conflict in full force. They led a rapid advance along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, seizing a strategic port city and several islands that gave the militia control over the Bab al-Mandab strait, a vital waterway for energy shipments and other global trade. Thanks to Donald Trump’s war, Iran and its allies now dominate the Middle East’s two major regional energy chokepoints: Bab al-Mandab and the strait of Hormuz.

New facilities for witnesses who have been sexually assaulted are a step towards halving violence against girls and women

The creation of specialist courts to try rape and serious sexual offences in England and Wales is a welcome recognition from the government that the status quo is unacceptable. Victims, the vast majority of whom are women and girls, are being failed by a system that too often appears blind to the obstacles in the way of anyone who wants to see a perpetrator brought to justice. In 2025, rape cases took an average of 424 days after they had reached the crown court. Added to pre‑trial delays, this means thousands of lives being placed on hold for years.

Long waits are simply unendurable in many cases; a rape review ordered by Conservative ministers in 2021 found that the proportion of complainants dropping out of cases had risen from 25% to 43% in five years. As well as the harm caused to individuals, there is an obvious impact on public safety when perpetrators go unpunished, and chances to rehabilitate them are missed.

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

A failure to address widespread economic insecurity, and a crisis in living standards, is allowing the far right the harness a growing protest vote

After less than a year and a half in office, Germany’s beleaguered chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is already looking like a lame duck leader. Anticipating dire results in two state elections which were held on Sunday, Mr Merz cancelled a planned speech at this week’s United Nations general assembly in order to plot an emergency response. A night of extraordinary humiliation for his conservative Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) must have confounded even his own low expectations.

In the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) won its second regional election this month with 38% of the vote. The CDU meanwhile recorded its worst result since the second world war, failing even to meet the 5% threshold for representation in the state parliament. Mr Merz took over the leadership of the CDU promising to see off the threat of the AfD. Instead it has ascended to a menacing and unprecedented position of electoral strength, and enjoys a comfortable lead in national polls.

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.

Pete Dorey believes most public services are thoroughly over-managed, Michael Barrett says whistleblowing policies are essential. Plus letters from Frances Kirkham and Jenny Webb

Tom Dolphin’s excellent article on the failings of NHS management made sombre reading (The Letby inquiry report makes one thing crystal clear: too much NHS management is scandalously poor, 16 September). Yet I believe that most of our public services are thoroughly over-managed, with frontline professionals neither listened to nor respected by their institutional superiors, and at risk of damaging their careers if they speak out about poor decisions, excessive workloads and impossible targets or “performance indicators”.

Like so many of our current woes, the rise of managerialism can be traced back to the public service reforms of the Thatcher governments in the 1980s, and the mantra of “management’s right to manage”. As professionals were supposedly self-serving vested interests, the transfer of power to managers was supposed to increase efficiency and responsiveness to service users.

Phil Murray responds to articles about the precarious path talented young athletes face

Jonathan Liew’s piece (Raheem Sterling’s bleak tale a reminder of absurd path young footballers face, 17 September) is informative and timely, particularly when set against Jacob Steinberg’s report (‘They are very similar’: Arsenal’s Dowman reminds Merino of Lamine Yamal, 16 September) .

The tiny proportion of young footballers originally “signed” by top flight clubs at a ludicrously young age, who then achieve their dreams of a Premier League career, rather than being summarily dismissed at the age of 16 or 17 with the vast majority of their contemporaries, should be a reality check for parents/guardians of all aspiring young athletes.

Polly Hudson has sparked debate among readers over which camp they fall into

I realised as a teenager doing exchanges with European fellow teens many years ago that it’s always easier to be guest rather than host (There are two kinds of people in this world: hosts and guests. Nobody can be both, 15 September).

The skills of hosting can be learned, and you can make things more relaxing by buying in a few readymade dishes, or asking friends to bring one. So as someone who is often host, yes the failure to reciprocate will lead to resentment.
Dinah Robertson
Lymm, Cheshire

Readers respond to Carolin Würfel’s article on the reasons behind Alternative für Deutschland’s recent electoral success in Germany

Carolin Würfel is right to see the success of AfD in the eastern states of Germany as a way to protest against west German dominance (I know why many east Germans vote AfD. And no, it’s not an inherited longing for dictatorship, 15 September).

But she overlooks the fact that the “takeover” of 1990 could not have been done much differently. Any path more resembling those of other east European nations would have led to mass migration to West Germany. In that sense the current situation is not the fault of western politicians and industrialists. One thing could and should have been done differently, though. An attempt to build a conservative-centrist party representing the east would have been important, instead of just transferring the western parties. Die Linke fulfilled such a role for some time, but from the left, not the centre. Now AfD fulfils this role from the right.

Teams are running further and set-piece strikes are in decline as end-to-end football takes over the division

Goals in the Premier League are up. Chaos is returning. End-to-end football is back. The division is more open, in more ways than one.

The figures show a rise from 2.75 goals per game last season to 2.82 so far this year, which is a small average increase – but one that could easily widen. The goals-per-game rate was at least 0.21 higher across the final 330 games than it was for the first 50 in four of the past five seasons. If 2026-27 sees a similar upturn, it will become the second highest scoring season in the Premier League era.

Facing Diego Simeone 13 years on, José Mourinho brought a print-out and paranoia. Some things don’t change. Some people don’t, either

There were many questions to emerge from the Madrid derby, which Atlético won 2-1 in front of 70,514 very, very noisy people at the Metropolitano on Sunday afternoon, even if not the one José Mourinho was asking. Like: what year is this? Or: what was Dean Huijsen thinking? Why always Arda? And whatever happened to Vinícius Júnior? How come Koke is still the best? And how long before Giuliano Simeone actually bursts, his atlético insides exploding across the pitch? Above all though, you were left wondering: where did Real Madrid’s manager get a printer from? And how did he get the bloody thing to work?

You could still hear the singing outside when Mourinho turned up in the press room, laid down his glasses and sat. In his hand was a piece of paper. Thirteen years after his last derby, on the Santiago Bernabéu night when Madrid lost the Copa del Rey final and a 13-year unbeaten run against their neighbours, Diego Simeone had defeated him again. The stage was new – this stadium didn’t exist then – but his adversary was somehow still the same man, still dressed in black, and the scene was a bit like old times, a classic. Mourinho unfolded the paper and held it up. “We can save ourselves the bother of the press conference,” he said, “because the story is right here.”

• Palmer, Rice, Mainoo, Rashford and Livramento injured

• James Garner and Morgan Gibbs-White called-up as cover

Thomas Tuchel has been rocked by a host of withdrawals from his England squad, with Cole Palmer, Declan Rice, Kobbie Mainoo, Marcus Rashford and Tino Livramento all out because of injury. The head coach has called up James Garner and Morgan Gibbs‑White to boost his options for the upcoming Nations League programme.

Tuchel gave Palmer a high-profile recall on Friday for the beginning of the two-year international cycle that he hopes will end in glory at Euro 2028. England are back in the top division of the Nations League and they kick off against Spain at Wembley on Saturday. They then play Czechia and Croatia away before returning to Wembley to face Czechia.

• Captain says bowler ‘is working on a few things’

• England v Sri Lanka ODIs come a year before World Cup

Harry Brook is hopeful that Brydon Carse will break back into his England white-ball teams once the fast bowler is clear of his ongoing disciplinary, describing him as a “very good mate” who is “working on a few things behind the scenes”.

Carse has recently discovered he will not face a criminal charge for the late-night incident in Derby last month that led to him being briefly handcuffed. But while technically available for selection, the 31-year-old has not featured in England’s squads since that night as he awaits the outcome of an investigation by the Cricket Regulator.

The Chargers star is huge, can run and has a golden right arm. But he has never quite reached the heights many expected for him

Justin Herbert is one of the most promising quarterbacks in the NFL. In fact, Justin Herbert has forever been one of the most promising quarterbacks in the NFL. That adjective, “promising”, continued to be load-bearing on Sunday, as Herbert and his Chargers turned in an underwhelming performance in a 26-14 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders. Los Angeles are now 0-2 on the year, with those losses coming to the team who picked No 1 in this year’s draft and a moribund Arizona who picked No 3. Stockholders in Herbert’s growth were taking a beating in after-hours trading. But, as ever, there’s plenty of reason to debate whether Herbert underachieved or whether his team let him down.

Herbert is 6ft 6in, can run, has a golden right arm and is capable of making astonishing throws. NFL decision-makers view him as roughly the sixth-best QB in the league but also say things like, “He should have more accolades at this point.” Certainly, he should have more wins this season, but on Sunday the 28-year-old found himself outdueled by one of the league’s senior citizens in Vegas quarterback Kirk Cousins, 10 years his senior. Herbert completed 15 of 27 passes for a touchdown and two interceptions, and he also took three sacks. Cousins threw a pick and took two sacks but was much more efficient from down to down (8.7 yards per attempt to Herbert’s 7.1). In 13 possessions, Los Angeles put together two long touchdown drives and otherwise didn’t march more than 30 yards in a series.

• Sunderland captain withdrawn from Switzerland squad

• He will be questioned by prosecutor’s office in Lucerne

Granit Xhaka has been withdrawn from Switzerland’s squad after he admitted receiving a fake Covid vaccination certificate in 2022. The Sunderland and Switzerland captain – who was an Arsenal player at the time – has apologised for this “mistake” and will sit out his country’s forthcoming four Nations League matches.

Xhaka is poised to be questioned by the prosecutor’s office in Lucerne next week as it decides whether any criminal proceedings will be initiated regarding the alleged issue of a series of false Covid certificates by a doctor based in the Swiss city during the pandemic. The doctor, who was first investigated in 2023, has denied the allegations.

Gunners are held to second home draw in two weeks, while Spurs smash Palace 7-0 to maintain strong start

After being unable to find a way through Crystal Palace’s backline last time out, Arsenal were again frustrated at home in a draw with Manchester United on Saturday and Renée Slegers was asked post-match about how her team can turn their dominance of possession and territory into more goals. It could have been worse, of course, if Smilla Holmberg had not made it 1-1 in the 95th minute. “It’s not one thing, it’s a combination of things,” Slegers said. “It’s a cocktail of things, there are some details in decision making, some details in the technical execution. It’s also the ruthlessness in front of goal but I know the players want it and they want to do that, they want to execute for Arsenal.” Tom Garry

Match report: Arsenal 1-1 Manchester United

Match report: Manchester City 4-2 Liverpool

From F1 feuds to tennis’s soap opera love triangle, we run through half a dozen rivalries that have defined (not so) sporting culture

A boxing rivalry so intense that their sons got to copycat it 35 years later, yet the original is simply the best. That the preening, poetry-spouting, monocle-sporting, Jodhpur-wearing Eubank would irritate the rough-and-ready ex-squaddie Benn was hardly surprising. But the depth of the animosity was remarkable.

• Defence guru left France men’s team in June

• Edwards will work as a consultant for duration of WXV

The defence guru Shaun Edwards has joined the Red Roses coaching setup in a consultancy role until the end of the WXV Global Series.

The former Wales and France men’s coach has not had a role in women’s rugby before but has been brought on board with the Red Roses head coach, John Mitchell, describing his credentials as “exceptional” in the highest echelons of the sport.

Merz seeks to shore up support after CDU loses two state elections and is ejected from Mecklenburg parliament

• Latest German election humiliation puts Merz on borrowed time as CDU unrest grows

Germany’s beleaguered leader, Friedrich Merz, has vowed to keep his fractious coalition government together for the good of the country’s “democratic future” after his conservative party suffered a drubbing at the polls in two state elections.

Merz, who has vowed to plough ahead with an unpopular reform agenda, dismissed speculation over his position, saying it was vital that he and his coalition government remained in place.

Numerous possible last-minute entrants being discussed as current field of seven candidates struggle to garner support

Numerous last-minute entrants in the race to become the new UN secretary general are being discussed amid concerns that the world powers may not be able to agree a successor to António Guterres from the current field of seven candidates.

Three rounds of secret ballots have so far not produced an obvious frontrunner, with probably only three candidates regarded as still having a realistic chance of gathering the required support.

Police crack down on family and political supporters of former PM who say authorities are ‘slowly killing’ him in prison

Three sisters of Pakistan’s incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan have been arrested amid a heavy-handed government crackdown on plans for a nationwide protest to demand Khan’s release.

The lawyer for the three sisters, Aleema Khan, Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi, said on Monday that they had all been detained and jailed for 30 days under a warrant that accused them of being a threat to public order.

Nigel Farage dismisses loss of previous leader as ‘bump in the road’ and says party will ‘carry on as if nothing has happened’

Nigel Farage dismissed the loss of Reform UK’s leader in Wales last week as a “bump in the road” as the party unveiled a replacement.

Helen Jenner replaces Dan Thomas, who stood down last Tuesday after he was arrested on suspicion of assault and controlling or coercive behaviours.

States including California and New York sued over concerns of ‘extinguishing competition’ with $81bn merger

Paramount has reached a settlement with California and several other states that sued over a proposed $81bn merger with Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), the California attorney general announced Monday, clearing the way to consolidate some of Hollywood’s most recognizable TV networks and studios under one owner.

Though the merger was approved by the justice department in June, a coalition of 12 states, led by California, had sued over concerns that combining two of the five last legacy studios in Hollywood would “extinguish competition” and lead to fewer movies in theaters and on streaming platforms.

Wildfire forces evacuations and burns through mountains surrounding Villa de Leyva in the north-east

Colombian authorities declared a public calamity as a wildfire burned through mountains surrounding one of the country’s best-known colonial towns in the north-east, scorching large swaths of vegetation and forcing evacuations.

Nearly 20 active fires are burning across the South American country. Dry conditions have increased fire danger in Colombia as it braces for the effects of El Niño, which can help wildfires spread.

Guardian investigation reveals fossil fuel links of IPCC authors, with experts declaring the body’s conflict of interest policy ‘not fit for purpose’

On her first day as an expert author on the world’s most important climate reports, Prof Julia Steinberger knew nobody else, so she sat down at a stranger’s table for breakfast.

“Hi, I’m Julia. I’m from the University of Lausanne,” she said. The man across the table replied: “I’m Mustafa Babiker. I work with Saudi Aramco.”

Exclusive: The tax-funded brainchild of Dominic Cummings hopes to find ways to speed up wild species’ evolution

Vaccines for ash trees, skin treatments for newts and gene-edited swallowtail butterflies are among 14 tax-funded projects from the UK’s “invention agency” aiming to accelerate nature’s ability to adapt to the climate crisis.

The £54m accelerated adaptation programme from the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) – a public body that funds high-risk, high-reward tech projects – aims to investigate applications of biotechnology that can speed up wild species’ evolution and help them to adapt to new threats such as global warming and disease.

Intensified by this year’s super El Niño, fires in Borneo and Sumatra are emitting toxic air for swathes of the population in Indonesia and its neighbours

For months, parts of Indonesia’s Borneo and Sumatra islands have been ablaze. The fires are sometimes lit illegally as a cheap way to clear land for plantations of oil palm, of which Indonesia is the world’s largest producer.

So prevalent is the technique that it even has a special term: slash and burn.

Exclusive: Slave trader is interred at All Saints, which may be given a change of use after being closed for years

Bones of the enslaver Edward Colston are likely to remain interred in a church in Bristol if and when the currently unused building is given a new lease of life as a community resource, it has emerged.

The dean of Bristol, the Very Rev Mandy Ford, said Colston’s remains would probably stay where they were in All Saints church on one of Bristol’s busiest streets.

School leaders’ union says new system is worse than one it replaced and has left members feeling overwhelmed

Headteachers in England want Ofsted to stop grading their schools, saying its new inspection regime is harming their mental health and creating greater stress than the system it was designed to replace.

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said it has given the education secretary, Lucy Powell, “countless examples” of the damaging effects on its members since the new inspection framework was introduced a year ago.

Jane Adetoro, Christina Walters and Rebecca Walters from Uxbridge were found on 13 May

The deaths of three sisters found in the sea off Brighton beach did not involve any criminality or third-party involvement, police have concluded.

The bodies of Jane Adetoro, 36, Christina Walters, 32, and Rebecca Walters, 31, from Uxbridge, west London, were found on 13 May. A postmortem conducted that month confirmed all three women died by drowning.

Funding boost for facilities and fixed dates for trials designed to encourage more survivors to come forward

Specialist courtrooms prioritising cases of rape and other serious sex offences are to be introduced across England and Wales, with campaigners welcoming the move as potentially transformative.

The changes, designed to encourage more survivors to come forward, will include the provision of private entrances and waiting rooms, and facilities equipped for recording evidence in advance and observing sentencing remotely.

The model, who struggled with addiction and prescription medication dependency, died at a rehab facility

Presley Gerber, son of supermodel Cindy Crawford and businessman Rande Gerber, has died aged 27.

According to the Los Angeles county medical examiner, the former model died on Sunday 20 September at a rehab facility. The cause of death has not been disclosed.

Study finds overall differences between groups of newborns by sex that are likely to be determined by biology

The question dates back to the first man and woman: how does the world shape the behaviour of the sexes, and what differences, if any, are present at birth?

Untangling the contributions of nature versus nurture has proved challenging for scientists, and controversial at times, but a new study of babies sheds light on at least one aspect of the puzzle.

On Friday, MeToo journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin was released from prison. She returns to a landscape changed by censorship, and a new generation of feminists

When Jasmine, a once active member of China’s MeToo movement, organises feminist activities in Beijing, she often does so under the guise of an art or cultural event. She avoids publicising them on social media, instead sharing details privately in her personal circle.

It’s very difficult to imagine what happened during the MeToo period, she says, “when one survivor could speak publicly about her experience and trigger a broader discussion about sexual harassment.”

Move would mean deaths would rise in wealthier nations, according to NUS-Lancet Prime commission – which modelled a response to a flu pandemic based on population size, not purchasing power

An extra 2.7 million lives could be saved in the next pandemic if countries share vaccines in a less selfish way, a new study has found – although the death toll in richer countries would rise.

Researchers modelling a hypothetical global outbreak of flu found that fast-tracking vaccine development could cut deaths from 58.5m to 23.9m.

Watchdog says users may have been unaware their information was used to target adverts or infer their interests

Google has been fined more than €400m (£345m) over the way it processed users’ location data, following claims that the tech giant had manipulated users into agreeing to be constantly tracked on their mobile phones.

The fine, imposed by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), comes after complaints from multiple European consumer organisations that Google was following every step users took.

Citizens Advice says providers of services such as energy, banking, phone and internet should guarantee the ‘right to talk to a human’

Stop relying on AI chatbots for customer care and guarantee the “right to talk to a human”, Citizens Advice has urged essential service providers, as research found they wasted time, caused stress and delayed problem solving for more than half of users.

The spread of the AI-powered systems to provide help about the provision of vital services such as energy, banking, phones and internet, is making it harder for millions of already digitally excluded people to handle snags, according to the frontline charity that last year provided more than 2.7 million people with one-on-one help in England and Wales.

Theatre told that Facebook and Instagram filter out ads mentioning ‘social topics’ such as civil rights or feminism

A theatre in Barcelona has been banned from promoting a stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own on Instagram and Facebook because the work includes “social topics”.

When the newly reopened Teatre Raval, which seats 193 spectators, asked Meta, the parent company of the two social media sites, why its publicity had been blocked, it was told “any mention of civil rights, feminism or social reform [topics that are central to Woolf’s work] are usually classified as ‘social topics’ by our automatic system” and are filtered out.

Blow to John Healey before budget as UK households face ‘notable strain’ on their finances

• Business live – latest updates

Fears of a steep rise in mortgage payments and increasing job insecurity have sent UK consumer confidence tumbling to a three-month low, according to a leading survey.

In a blow to John Healey before next month’s budget, the S&P Global consumer sentiment index dropped to 42.7 in September from 42.9 in August, indicating “a notable strain on financial confidence across UK households”.

In the UK, 18 million people are hard of hearing – yet there is no dedicated centre for the Deaf community. Now urban planner and activist Amanprit Arnold has made it her mission

Meeting outdoors became second nature for most of us over this long, hot summer, but Amanprit Arnold doesn’t get the luxury of choice. She’s sitting at a terrace table when we meet at a cafe because she’s a member of the Deaf community (Deaf with a capital D denotes membership of a unique cultural and linguistic minority).

“Nowhere in London is specifically designed for me,” says Arnold, who was born deaf and used hearing aids before getting cochlear implants at 21. “Inside a cafe, the acoustics can be so bad. It’s much easier for me to hear out here.”

Creators of Post Script, made with vocals by the late Mark E Smith, defend it as ‘a great, positive record’, but fiancee describes it as ‘ethically wrong’

The fiancee and last manager of the late Mark E Smith, frontman of the Fall, has hit out against the release of an album being marketed as the band’s final official album, calling it “ethically wrong” and a “cash grab”.

When Post Script was first announced in June, several media reports assumed the nine-track album contained recordings that the final Fall lineup were working on before the singer’s death, in January 2018. However, it subsequently emerged that it contains unused studio vocals recorded between 2001 and 2014, to which longtime Fall associates Ed Blaney and Simon “Ding” Archer have posthumously added music.

The rugged roads and lush vegetation of southern Portugal are showcased in this weaving-together of disparate threads of history and landscape

In a sea of doomsday ecological documentaries, Maureen Fazendeiro’s pastoral marvel is a sight for sore eyes. A solo debut feature for the Lisbon-based French director, this hybrid film studies the historical and geographical contours of Alentejo, a rural region in southern Portugal. The opening is set to a jaunty soundtrack of energetic percussion beats and twinkling organ notes, taking in the resplendent vistas of the landscape, with its rugged roads and lush vegetation. We see, too, a small archaeological tool hunt for ancient relics beneath layers of golden dust. Mirroring these acts of care and attention, Fazendeiro’s film takes the form of a cinematic excavation, fusing present-day tableaux with archival materials, folkloric legends with historical records.

The abundant use of tracking shots not only takes in the wondrous biodiversity of Alentejo but also facilitates a fluid movement between separate epochs. Observational scenes of green hills, boundless blue skies and roaming livestock are overlaid with narrated excerpts from second world war-era letters written by German archaeologists Georg and Vera Leisner. Credited with producing the first inventory of megalithic monuments in Alentejo, the pair imbues their wartime correspondence with the joy of discovery and the sadness of exile.

The latest in our ongoing series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort films remembers a 1987 teenage girl classic

There is probably a Swedish word for the emotional state engendered in me by Dirty Dancing. A kind of turbo-nostalgia which blends solace, joy and a sense of continuity with a yearning so acute I can feel it in my ribs.

I must have been around 12 years old when I first watched Baby (Jennifer Grey) and Johnny (Patrick Swayze) fall in love while bumping pelvises as dance partners (before Strictly Come Dancing, this trajectory felt more surprising.)

Gove and Nicola Sturgeon join a simulated cabinet facing an escalating crisis. Plus: Stacey Dooley investigates ‘heightmaxxing’. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky One
Using political figures from our recent past, this docudrama maps out a British response to an escalating pattern of Russian aggression. Alongside Michael Gove (who gets to cosplay being prime minister at last), politicos including Harriet Harman and Nicola Sturgeon take their places round the cabinet table. Credible commitment to the concept is essential to make the drama elements work, and all manage it reasonably well – particularly the unnamed Potus with Russian sympathies … Phil Harrison

Religion and collective resilience are beacons of hope in an electricity-deprived DRC in this otherworldly documentary debut

In Nelson Makengo’s feature documentary debut, night stretches on to infinity. The film opens on a black screen – a void of darkness – while a recording of a fervent sermon sounds like rolling thunder. In Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an electricity shortage has long plagued the inhabitants, leaving them to cling on to religion as a beacon of hope. Their plight is worsened by climate disasters resulting in floods. Viewed through Makengo’s lens, nocturnal life acquires an otherworldly dimension, as basic human necessities become an elusive luxury.

Shot mostly in Makengo’s neighbourhood of Kisenso, the film observes the ways in which struggling city dwellers adapt to a life lived in the shadows. Meals are eaten by candlelight, while churchgoers wear light-up medallions to illuminate their prayer books. Such survival tactics speak to a collective resilience, while also rendering these previously mundane activities eerily dystopian. The matriarchs of the community lament the rise of crime and sexual assaults that occur in the absence of public lighting, while younger members of the neighbourhood raise funds to retrieve stolen electric cables. In the absence of state support, this community spirit is the only energy that perseveres in times of extreme precarity.

Bestselling book The Good Immigrant launches a series of thoughtful explorations of race – starting with the hosts of Pod Save the UK. Plus, a look at an outrageous heist

Launching alongside a 10th-anniversary edition of the essay collection by writers of colour, this podcast sees its editor, Nikesh Shukla, reconvene with the book’s contributors. A series of thoughtful conversations about what has changed and what’s stayed the same when it comes to race in the UK starts with Nish Kumar and Coco Khan on England flags, and why humour is essential to their political podcasting. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
Joe Hill-Gibbins’ claustrophobic staging of Bartók’s opera of dark symbolism is paired with his brand new production of Stravinsky’s psychological drama, with Peter Hoare superb as the tragic hero

Welsh National Opera might be marking its 80th year, but any feelgood factor is decidedly absent from their season-opener. Bartók’s only opera and Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio form a challenging double-bill: serial murders, patricide and incest, blood and more blood, but gripping performances made this a powerful experience.

Béla Balázs’s libretto for Bluebeard’s Castle transformed the Perrault fairytale and its happy ending into an intense psychological drama: the castle with its weeping walls and seven locked doors a metaphor for the secret inner workings of the male psyche, and Judith, Bluebeard’s new wife, his fourth, the archetypal woman, too curious for her own good.

Thousands of knock-off records worth a fortune are being seized in the UK by anti-counterfeit police stings

From 2017 onwards, Rehan Ahmed styled himself as a savvy business owner. But behind the facade of a successful entrepreneur lurked one stark fact: his empire was built on fakery.

On Friday, the man behind the biggest-ever UK case of producing fraudulent vinyl, who sold counterfeit copies of records by some of the world’s biggest artists including Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Kendrick Lamar, was jailed.

Kings Place, London
Works by the not-quite-minimalist composer’s included her Realm Variations and quartet Stringsongs in a compelling concert

There’s no one quite like Meredith Monk. So often grouped with her lionised contemporaries Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley and La Monte Young, she is 83 to their 90-odd years and sports long plaited hair as reliably as Reich wears a baseball cap. Yet she refuses the label “minimalism” for her music, and composition is just one element of a creative life that also takes in singing, choreography, film-making and drawing.

Monk was not present at this performance marking the launch of Phaedra Ensemble’s new album of her music, though she did loom briefly over the audience on video, professing “it’s a dream of mine for this music to be recorded and played”. (Compare that to the fortunes of Glass’s works.) But she had been closely involved, having invited the group to record some of her music after hearing them play.

From an abstract portrait of an actor who might be Natalie Portman to a groundbreaking work of autofiction, we rate the best from the coolly controversial author

In Cusk’s headline-grabbing latest, a writer invents the biography of a film star who sounds very like Natalie Portman. Set in the now standard late-Cusk sans serif typeface (no frivolous flourishes!), Life of M serves up observations on fame in a light fictional coating. “To always be playing a part is to have no home.” Having made her name as a devilishly good creator of brainy social comedies, Cusk’s pivot to wintry autofiction since the Outline trilogy appears to have reached its logical conclusion in this flat, abstracted portrait of empty celebrity. The New York Times called it “rarefied, cosmopolitan, self-serious”.
Sample line: “Everything I did or said in her company was false. It was as if I was acting, while M came across as authentic and real.”

In When America Roared, Pulitzer-winning reporter Jonathan Kaufman looks back to a decade of greed and excess, and uses it to explore where we are today

Donald Trump is “so much a creature of the 80s but even in the 80s, everyone made fun of him,” Jonathan Kaufman said. General Electric CEO Jack Welch, “the most prominent business figure in the country, maybe in the world, mocked him. No one took him seriously.

“Even today, if you look at the [White House] ballroom, you look at all the things he’s doing, it’s this 1980s aesthetic, right? You can just see the way he looks at the world: the glitz, the cheapness, the gold brocade everywhere. That screams 1980s. All he needs is big hair and leg warmers and listening to, I don’t know, synthetic pop, and he’d be right back in 1985.”

Gladwell’s highly readable investigation into US gun culture fails to engage with the bigger questions

Once, while having a steak dinner with Republicans in a small town in Indiana, the man sitting opposite me asked: “How do you cope in London, when Muslims elected that mayor and you have all that gun control?” I’d been in enough such situations to know that there was no “winning” a conversation that starts like this and so did my best to playfully bat the question away.

“Well, the Muslims didn’t elect a mayor – Londoners elected a Muslim mayor,” I said. “And we don’t talk much about gun control for the same reason we don’t talk about polar bear control: we don’t have many polar bears and we don’t have many guns.”

Writing from firsthand experience, the author offers an affecting meditation on art, mental fragility and faith

“What’s in your head?” Dolores O’Riordan’s raw, plaintive refrain loops through the Cranberries’ 1994 hit Zombie. A protest song about the Troubles could, on paper, hardly seem further removed from Derek Owusu’s third novel, about a young writer recovering from a mental health crisis. But in an author’s note before The Recovery House begins, Owusu instructs the reader to listen to the song “at least two to four times before going beyond this page”. Gradually it becomes clear that the song’s central question is one Owusu’s protagonist asks in various forms throughout the novel.

Can we ever fully understand what is going on in our own heads? We meet Jamal, a young novelist who has woken up in a recovery house – a residential alternative to hospital admission – after a breakdown. It transpires that he has overdosed, is an alcoholic, and has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. He is in a frazzled, frantic state, initially less interested in getting better than in piecing together how he got there.

PlayStation 5 (version played), PC; Screen Burn
Tragedy, and an apocalyptic fog, befall a fishing community. It is up to outsider Simon to offer some kind of closure

You spend a considerable portion of Silent Hill: Townfall in a kind of foetal position, cowering behind objects that will be eerily familiar to anyone who lived in the UK during the 1990s. Cars seem to be modelled on the era’s boxy Volkswagen Golfs; logos adorning phone boxes should narrowly escape the attention of copyright lawyers at BT Group. (For millennials, the deja vu will likely intensify the horror, as if stepping back into a childhood nightmare.) Simon, the nerdy, unassuming star of the game, pokes his head around corners to catch a glimpse of the demonic entities that wish to maim him, before shrinking back down again with a downwards motion of the analogue stick. In such moments, it’s easy to imagine him wrapping his arms around his knees, clasping his eyes shut and wishing himself away from this place.

The game’s setting, St Amelia, is based on the fishing communities of the East Neuk of Fife. The terror lurking here is wonderfully specific: absent lairds, island poverty, an oil-drilling corporation. Anguished beasts lumber down quaint streets lined with sandstone houses and fluttering bunting. This venerable horror series may have shifted to Scotland, yet we remain firmly in classic Silent Hill territory – weather and all. St Amelia finds itself suffused in supernatural fog and the vast majority of its inhabitants have vanished following some kind of mass tragedy. The artful, evocative presentation is such that you can almost taste the in-game air, the briny seaside tang diluted by rainy mist.

PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox; Arbitrary Metric
The latest work from the team behind Paratopic is part compulsive time-loop management sim, part eerie subterranean adventure

Fetch the chair from storage. Deliver a message that causes disgust. Clean vomit in the afternoon and pour another glass in the evening. In Roman Sands RE:Build, you provide concierge service to delirious, broken people who couldn’t care less about the sweat on your forehead and the bags under your eyes.

In this reimagining of the 2019 visual novel Roman Sands, crafted by the team behind the Americana horror road trip Paratopic, you’re trapped in a beach resort and tethered in a time loop. The task is deceivingly simple: fulfil menial directives from four gluttonous individuals, unlock tools and items to open more rooms and then do it all over again.

The first console I ever bought, it was hyped as a threat to the PlayStation, then mocked as a flop. But now, as it marks its 25th anniversary, it’s looked back on with misty-eyed reverence

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Nintendo GameCube, the first console I ever bought with my own money. I vividly remember getting on the bus after school with a year’s worth of savings safely zipped into the pocket of my bag and going to a branch of Currys, where I dumped a bunch of notes, coins and vouchers on the counter to collect my pre-order. (It turned out that some of the vouchers from the previous Christmas had expired, but the guy at the checkout clearly felt so sorry for me that he redeemed them anyway. If you’re out there, Currys guy: thank you for taking pity on a desperate 13-year-old.)

If it hadn’t been for the ill-fated Wii U console, whose failure to take off in 2012 resulted in the first unprofitable periods in Nintendo’s game-making history, the GameCube would be remembered as the company’s biggest flop aside from the infamous Virtual Boy, from 1995. Released in Japan this week in 2001 (and in May 2002 in Europe), this surprisingly powerful purple cube sold much less than the Xbox and the PlayStation 2. With its squat, colourful form and unusual controller, arranged around a big traffic-light-green A button and small analogue sticks designed for small hands, it had a hint of Fisher-Price about it.

The distinctively British RPG is returning courtesy of the makers of Forza Horizon – with comedy talent such as Richard Ayoade and Natasia Demetriou voicing sweary characters. We had our first play and spoke to its developer

When Playground Games was founded in 2010, its objective was straightforward: to make the best cars in video games. Operating out of an unassuming white building in Leamington Spa, the studio sought to challenge Gran Turismo with its critically acclaimed British racing alternative: the acclaimed free-roaming Forza Horizon series. Yet as the team grew, so did their ambitions. Now they are making the most intriguing British fantasy game we have seen in many years.

For those who have never ventured into Albion, Fable is a quintessentially British role playing game. Created by Lionhead Studios for the original Xbox in 2004, it boasted cheeky charm alongside world-altering player choices, and its droll writing was brought to life in later iterations by national treasures such as Stephen Fry and Simon Pegg. Thanks to its unique blend of farce and fantasy, Fable grew into a globally beloved franchise – before Microsoft unceremoniously shuttered Lionhead in 2016, after mandating that the studio turn its star series into a multiplayer game. The result, Fable Legends, was never released.

Hackney Empire, London
There is real skill in making us laugh about things that are depressing. And the gags come thick and fast in the ex-Mash Report host’s touring show

Nish Kumar is angry. And why shouldn’t he be? The world is one big, damning catastrophe. So here the ex-Mash Report host is, in his trademark linguistically dextrous, mile-a-minute style, to run us through the current affairs and colonial-history hellscape. Yes, we get Donald Trump jokes. And yes, there’s more than one mention of how the internet has corrupted us all. But, God, does it feel good to hear someone, clearly enraged, scream the things this Hackney audience is, more than likely, also thinking.

He’s the UK’s leading lefty comedian – and for good reason. There is real skill in making us laugh about things that are, broadly, very depressing. Of course, Kumar knows he is preaching to the converted; he states plainly that his audience are a bunch of non-heckling, hand-raising “geeks” who are already on board with his views. Part of the show grapples with that discomfort; he believes passionately in standup as an art form – and it has made him big money – but for the first time, he’s wondered whether now is the right time for his usual political satire. Should we really be laughing when things are, well, this bad?

Touring until 27 November

Minghella theatre, Reading
Soprano Claire Booth’s mouth is isolated against a black background to capture the racing brain of a desperate woman, with added operatic flair

There is a long preamble to Samuel Beckett’s short play, performed in darkness by an unstoppably animated mouth. First, Luciano Berio’s experimental Sequenza III, performed by soprano Claire Booth, which becomes a musical companion piece to Beckett in retrospect for its stuttering repetitions, gasps and throat-clearings. Then a trio of short films about the Irish playwright’s relationship to Folkstone (where he got married in 1961). It is a three-part programme, part of the 2026 Beckett Biennale, culminating in the drama.

None of the buildup is required. The mouth, also played by Booth, is still arresting in its speed and urgency, reaching for a truth that rests just beyond its rapid articulations, even as syntax breaks down.

Under the direction of Rufus Norris, the setup is academic, the theatre part of Reading University’s campus, but the production has nothing dusty or donnish about it. It is impressively delivered by Booth, who captures the racing brain, the split interior self and the speed of desperation to replay a life that seems to be flashing before a woman’s eyes – or rather, her mouth – from her birth to this moment in a field, among the cowslips at the age of 70, which might be the moment of death. You glean, from the repetitions and verbal hiccups, that it has been hard, loveless and undermining, yet there is an insistence on speaking it aloud.

Birmingham Rep
Alex Keenan perfectly captures protagonist Chris’s bewilderment and cheeriness in Ned Bennett’s ambitious new staging

The most alarming moment in Mark Haddon’s young adult novel is when Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old on the autism spectrum, flees his Swindon home for London. After a perilous train journey, he arrives at Paddington station and is overwhelmed. The book’s text becomes a barrage of fonts and type sizes to express the information overload: announcements, shop signs and adverts all shouting for his attention.

That sense of cacophony, a sensory assault of products, people and places, characterises Ned Bennett’s ambitious new staging of the Simon Stephens adaptation for Birmingham Rep and Melting Pot. Eleanor Bull’s bare stage, an outsize studio in white, alternates between clean geometric lines, such as the row of pastel-coloured houses that form a picture-book street, and more detailed high-definition projections.

Touring until 28 May.

Byre theatre, St Andrews
Warm-up routines lead into a reverie about life on the stage in Company Chordelia’s funny, carefully calibrated show

The inevitable aches and sprains of an ageing body take on heightened significance for a seasoned dancer turning up to work each day. Revel by Company Chordelia is a whimsical rumination on these changes, and a personal riposte to the fear that you might “make a spectacle of yourself” if you don’t stop at the “right” moment.

It is conceived and staged by the artistic director Kally Lloyd-Jones, who performs with the co-creator Steinvör Palsson, a well-known teacher and choreographer in the Scottish dance community.

Whether its a nod to frontline Covid heroes or a return to biology in a world of digital noise, there’s a rich vein of new films featuring organ deliveries, including Runner and the latest Resident Evil

Hollywood loves a ticking clock – especially when there’s a delivery involved. For decades, dangerous cargo has been entrusted to certain types of action hero: spies, soldiers, hitmen, Jason Statham.

Lately, however, Hollywood seems interested in a different kind of hero – not to mention a different kind of cargo. Forget your nuclear launch codes, stolen diamonds and mysterious briefcases, for human organs are the new MacGuffins du jour, and the medical professionals charged with getting them to the ICU have become unlikely action heroes.

Stephanie Cole, star of television, radio and stage, has died. Here are her career highlights, from Doc Martin to Coronation Street

• Stephanie Cole, Coronation Street and Open All Hours actor, dies aged 84
  

Some fans were hesitant to turn the page after Sheeran’s tour resumed in Philadelphia after the removal of Macklemore, who spoke out in support of Palestine

“This is not usually how I would open the show,” Ed Sheeran told the crowd at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday night, a humble preamble to a three-plus-minute speech addressing the greatest controversy of his career. Shaky-voiced and stealing glances at the monitor at his feet, he looked every bit the chastened superstar.

“I have tried in my career not to be a political commentator of any kind, because I want my music and shows to be about unity, not division, about humanity, not politics, but this is a humanitarian issue and I cannot hide how I feel about it any more,” Sheeran said. He described the Hamas-led attack at the Nova music festival in Israel on 7 October 2023 as “horrific”, and expressed heartbreak over civilian deaths in Gaza and the West Bank, describing the situation as “catastrophic and unjustified and disproportionate”.

Stage and screen actor admired for her television roles in Waiting for God, Tenko and Doc Martin

Stephanie Cole, who has died aged 84, was a skilful actor with a powerful voice. She was also an exemplar of the strong, no-nonsense characters that she played with layers of vulnerability, humour and kindness.

She made her television debut in a 1968 episode of Z Cars and maintained a solid screen career before coming to prominence as a leading member of a strong female ensemble in the BBC series Tenko (1981-84, and Tenko Reunion, 1985), as the stoic Dr Beatrice Mason, doing her best to maintain the health of her fellow internees in a Japanese prison camp during the second world war.

When my husband and I adopted her, Bud had to go on a strict diet. Thankfully, she got healthy and became the diva everyone loves today

Bud came into my life at the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020. I work at RSPCA Norwich as head of animal welfare and, when we all had to work from home, I offered to foster Bud, a blue-fronted amazon parrot. My husband and I thought it would be a short-term thing, but by the time the pandemic had settled down we had really bonded with her, so she never left.

Back then, Bud had a crisp addiction and was too overweight to fly. She was about 200g heavier than a parrot should be. We had to put her on a strict diet because she had some health concerns – we found a lipoma, a fatty lump, on her keel bone (which runs down from the breast); it doesn’t bother her, but we still have to monitor it. Thankfully, she has lost weight; her feathers are all better quality and she loves her life.

Modern lifestyles seem to be exacerbating the problem of bromhidrosis – an underresearched condition that is widely misunderstood and devastating for sufferers

If Hayat goes out to eat, she’ll choose a table far away from other diners, ideally by a door or open window. She likewise tries to avoid people at the cinema or on planes, even if it means paying extra – whatever it takes to avoid being too close to others.

She chalks it up to a persistent past insecurity. “I still have that paranoia … It’s just in my head, because of everything I went through.”

Which supermarket syrups ooze with potential? We put 10 of the finest, grade-A bottles to the test

• The best supermarket runny honey

Though today’s maple syrups vary dramatically in intensity, complexity and taste, they’re all of decent quality and have that classic and unmistakable flavour. I avoided blended or maple-flavoured syrups for this test, and instead tried only 100% pure, grade-A maple syrups, using Agriculture Canada’s flavour wheel and four-step tasting process as a guide. I poured a small shot into a glass to observe the colour. Then I followed the tasting process: I smelled the syrup with three quick sniffs, took a small sip and swirled it around my mouth before contemplating the flavours. Step four is to assess the flavour intensity. Alongside appearance, aroma, texture and taste, I awarded extra points for specific provenance and organic certifications, as well as for value.

Prices vary greatly, and although the dearest bottles taste divine, so do the cheapest. Each pure maple syrup is unique in flavour, with nuanced notes from mild clove tones to intense, woody and almost menthol-like piney flavours. Like wine, maple syrup has the tang of its terroir: it’s an artisanal product that tastes of the land.

Is an Oxford shirt the ultimate wardrobe staple? Are skin-tight fits ever a good idea? And what’s the perfect fabric for autumn and winter? Our menswear expert has all the answers

• The best white T-shirts for men

The photo above stopped me mid-scroll: Harry Styles, before his 30-show residency at Madison Square Garden, dressed in a big white shirt and smart tailored trousers. After a summer spent parked in front of three fans with ice packs on rotation, when wearing actual clothes felt like punishment, here was proof that normal service had resumed.

So, now the rain’s back and autumn’s creeping in, it’s time to follow Harry’s lead and reintroduce some structure to your wardrobe: coats, knitwear, tailoring, all the pieces that make you look forward to getting dressed in the morning. One staple that’s long overdue a comeback? Shirts.

Loop and tube bands are cheaper than a gym membership and take up less space than weights – our exercise buff put 18 to the test

• The best treadmills for your home

Movement breeds motivation, not vice versa. If you want a fast ticket to a regular training habit, you need to remove the friction between you and that first rep. When the sofa looks more appealing than getting a sweat on, it pays to have a simple, quick, convenient way to kick into workout mode. That’s where resistance bands come in.

Portable, lightweight, compact and convenient, the right set of bands could be the path of least, er, resistance to easy home workouts and reaching your fitness goals.

From sweaty kit to grubby trainers, here’s how to wash, repair and care for activewear more sustainably

• The best moisture-wicking underwear, socks and base layers

As a running and cycling journalist, I spend a lot of time in sportswear. Lycra is my leg coverage of choice, polyester or merino wool my base layer, and I reach for technical materials like Gore-Tex if the weather isn’t playing ball.

A near-daily workout schedule means my washing machine’s sportswear setting takes a hammering to avoid having a laundry basket overflowing with sweaty, salty, sour-scented clothes. But even then, tops can develop hard-to-shift smells in sweat-prone areas, synthetic materials can start to bobble and lose shape, and my sportswear occasionally gets a foamy detergent residue that hasn’t been properly rinsed out, particularly during wet or intensive training sessions.

Scottish breakfasts are worth getting up for: think eggs and potato cakes in a freshly baked roll, or toasted barley bread laced with sticky plums and honey butter

I’ve long wanted a space to cook the food that really excites me, and Clementine, which opens its doors in north London next month, is exactly that. These two recipes capture what the cafe is all about. This is food that feels both considered and completely unfussy: crisp morning rolls stuffed with folded scrambled eggs and tattie scones, and griddled barley bannocks served warm with salted honey butter and roast plums. Breakfasts worth getting out of bed for.

Sometimes cooking is about celebration or indulgence, but there are other times when you just need a speedy but delicious midweek meal

Of course, the act of cooking can be many things – joy, ritual, nourishment, comfort, celebration, indulgence – but this fish pie pasta bake and tomato and feta lentils are strictly about speed. Because, in reality, these are exactly the kind of recipes we all need in our repertoire, ready to whip out on a Wednesday night.

From the blissful threat of ‘death by chocolate’, to a book made of sponge and the lemon drizzle to end them all, these are the bakes that left the biggest impressions

The Sorting Hat sponge I made for my son’s Harry Potter party is not the best cake I’ve ever tasted. That would be anything baked by my granny, or the coffee religieuse (a choux pastry puff) I ate in Boulogne-sur-Mer with my mum. But it’s the most surprisingly edible cake I’ve ever made – a vaguely Jamie-Oliver recipe with buttercream filling and tinned mandarin slices. It didn’t only work; it tasted great, and wasn’t quite as teeth-screechingly sweet as expected. My one regret is that I over-pimped the decoration: it looked so sinister in the fridge with its cold, Sorting Hat stare that the next day I stuck on googly eyes and further sparkles. This perhaps explains why everyone assumed it was a poo emoji cake, despite it being a Harry Potter party with heavy-touch theming. That people thought I actually wanted children to eat shit is a shame, but it still remains my greatest culinary success. Catherine Shoard

Our main course arrived heavy and somewhat intimidating, and left picked completely clean

Earlier this month, a kind-of Turkish ocakbaşı opened on a corner in London’s Soho. The brains behind Kid are chef Sertaç Dirik and restaurateur David Carter, and I say “kind-of” because, yes, while it has a Turkish-influenced menu – sucuk with grilled peach, pide, börek, hummus, içli köfte with aged beef – and the whiff of live fire, nothing either of them does is ever remotely straightforward, hence the buzz around their new place.

Carter founded Smokestak a decade ago in Shoreditch, a wild, Americana-tinged barbecue joint where, somehow, he made brisket in buns and peach cobbler old fashioneds London’s hottest ticket. Five years later, he opened Manteca, also in Shoreditch, a reimagining of the Italian trattoria for the 2020s, followed by Oma, his Greek-influenced Michelin-starred venture in Borough, and its little sister Agora, and all of them remain dependable places where you get serious bang for your buck. All of those influences – American smoke, Italian flair and Greek boldness – are present and correct at Kid. Dirik’s story, meanwhile, has about it elements of TV’s The Bear: a Copenhagen-trained chef cajoled home to bolster the family business and going on to create the hugely loved Mangal 2 in Dalston. What Dirik and Carter have in common, aside from reputation, is a love of setting fire to stuff, in a culinary sense rather than in a Prodigy’s Twisted Firestarter sense. Kid’s Galata mackerel is testament to this: it’s almost completely blackened and has an incredible hit of smoke in its flesh.

A Reform politician and an NHS worker had different takes on Nigel Farage, but could they agree on renewable energy or tax policies?

Chris, 42, London

Occupation Electrical supervisor of the maintenance team at an NHS hospital

Rory left the monastery after feeling lonely; with Orla, herself a Catholic, he’s been making up for lost time

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

We had sex after a week. I remember thinking afterwards wow, everything has changed

Anna Malos and Georgie bonded over their shared love of travel and horses. By their third date, an awkward encounter cemented their relationship

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

Georgie and I met at a kick-boxing club in London in 2004. We sparred together in a few beginner classes, just hitting soft pads. Although I didn’t pay her too much attention initially, I immediately recognised she was tall, elegant and very good looking.

It wasn’t until the club’s Christmas drinks that things kicked off between us. We started talking and couldn’t stop. We’d both travelled and worked in Latin America, and also loved horses – Georgie had volunteered with a horse-riding business for tourists in Ecuador. The sparks were flying all over the place.

David (left), 34, a children’s doctor, meets Dec, 31, a culture and sex writer

What were you hoping for?
A sweet-hearted madman who would make me belly laugh.

Shortage of memory chips and other critical components reverses trend of electronics becoming cheaper

Apple’s recent product launch caused headlines around the world as it unveiled its first folding phone. But hidden in the slick technology showcase was a nasty surprise: a £100 increase in the price of all iPhones, including older models.

It is blamed on “RAMageddon”, which has reversed a decades-long trend of electronics becoming cheaper. It is the fallout from the AI gold rush hoovering up every memory chip available for vast datacentres. This has led to a severe shortage of the chips, and other critical components, for electronics, including phones.

Scam emails are increasingly using psychological tricks, such as using near-identical URLs like miсrosoft.com

You’ve read the email carefully and it looks legitimate. The link it asks you to click on has none of the usual red flags: there are no weird numbers or extra parts to the URL. You feel safe to proceed.

But if you had looked slightly closer you may have noticed something slightly wrong with one of the characters. Just as in the headline of this piece where instead of “a” we used the Cyrillic “α”.

It just goes to show that the split-second decision you make when clicking a link is often the most vulnerable part of the whole security chain.”

Energy bills are scheduled to rise next month but there are innovative ways to heat your home and save money

When Giles Gibson turns on the hot tap in his home, the water that comes out of it is not heated by gas but by the tiny datacentre strapped to the tank.

Attached to the hot water cylinder in his London home is a compact computer server that generates heat and then transfers it as it operates.

An app and a register of trusted traders may give greater protection to consumers but it is too late for some

In hindsight, Sheri Ingram, 35, can see the red flags. Lee Slocombe, a builder hired to renovate her ex-boyfriend’s home in the south Wales valleys, offered to do the work cheaply because he had materials left over from another job, then asked for money upfront to buy additional supplies.

“At the time, we believed him,” says Sheri, who was in her early 20s when it happened, and had just left university. The couple budgeted about £8,000 for work that included removing a supporting wall and building an extension with a balcony.

Since the ancient Olympics, athletes like Hyrox competitor Joanna Wietrzyk have experienced runner’s diarrhoea. What does the science say about extreme exercise’s ‘mechanical jostling of the intestines’?

Soiling yourself in public sounds like a bad dream. But the Australian athlete Joanna Wietrzyk has now apologised for doing just that at the Hyrox games in Beijing on Saturday.

Wietrzyk won the fitness race but not before using communal equipment with faecal matter visibly running down her legs – and muddying Hyrox’s reputation.

Natalie Greenwood says surgery is no ‘magic fix’ for chronic pelvic pain – a view backed up by a new study

“It’s really frustrating to be in this cycle of continuous surgery. It makes you feel helpless,” says Natalie Greenwood, of a condition that affects her so badly she is “non-functioning most of the time because of the constant fatigue”.

Greenwood, 36, needs to have an operation every few years to limit the impact of the endometriosis that gives her chronic pelvic pain, as well as extreme tiredness and brain fog.

Collagen powders, gummies and pills have boomed in popularity in recent years boosted by claims that they smooth wrinkles, promote glossy hair and help with joint pain. Amid the noise it can be hard to figure out whether there’s any actual science behind the promise of looking younger for longer. Luckily Dr Xand van Tulleken has spent the past three years writing Make me well: a quest to understand the confusing world of wellness, and his chapter on collagen dives deep into the evidence. He tells Madeleine Finlay what collagen does in the body, how we can get it without splashing out on expensive supplements, and why getting to the truth behind wellness claims can be so hard

Handstands display a mastery of one’s physical form that I have never quite felt – and they look cool. Experts share their advice for building up strength and practicing

My aspirations in life are modest: I want to write, spend time with my loved ones, and someday find a lipstick that flatters my skintone. But perhaps my greatest ambition is this: I want to be able to do a handstand.

Why? It turns the world upside down. It seems fun. It displays a mastery of one’s physical form that I have never quite felt. And it looks cool! Maybe it has to do with that one time in third grade when all my friends could do a handstand and I couldn’t, but that’s for me and my therapist to sort out later.

Brand returns to its physical and unconventional roots as it battles undergoes stark restructuring

Back when a young Lee McQueen was showing at London fashion week, there was Dante, the show in a Hawksmoor church with a skeleton in the front row and a blaring soundtrack of organ music and gunfire. And there was Voss, where models were trapped inside a giant mirrored box set up as a psychiatric ward.

Twenty-five years later, the Alexander McQueen brand returned from the Paris schedule to a creepily beautiful subterranean 17th century London chapel, with steel harnesses, bulky ankle strapped heels that looked like electronic monitoring tags, and a chain mail dress of tiny silver skulls.

For his trek across New York City, the singer wore a pair of Prada slip-ons. I tried to do the same in my penny loafers – and soon found out why experts advise against it

Last month, just before his 30-night residency at Madison Square Garden, Harry Styles was spotted walking the streets of New York. According to the paparazzi who trailed him throughout his journey, he walked eight miles – all the way from Brooklyn into Manhattan – in loafers.

If, like me, you own a pair of loafers, your first thought is probably: that doesn’t sound like a good idea. On Instagram, Grazia called Styles’ shoes “perhaps the least sensible footwear for such an undertaking”.

To mark Oxfam’s Second Hand September, here are some of your best thrift discoveries and the stories behind them

Oxfam’s Second Hand September campaign encourages people to avoid buying new clothes for 30 days and choose preloved pieces instead. From £28 Prada skirts to £5 wedding dresses, we asked people to share their favourite fashion finds and the stories behind them.

Innovative journalist who as fashion editor of the Daily Mirror brought the latest 1960s looks to millions of readers

Felicity Green made a career on tabloid newspapers in their most masculine era when, after secretaries and tea-trolley ladies went home, whole buildings could be as all-male as a foundry or a battleship. By 1961 she was an associate editor across Mirror Group newspapers; in 1973, as the group’s publicity director, she was the first woman on the main board of a publisher. When she found out in 1978 that a new – less experienced, male – director was paid £30,000 a year, more than twice her salary, she resigned, insulted.

Green, who has died aged 100, knew how extraordinary her value had been to the group. The Daily Mirror, at its peak of five million-plus readers, besides being a household’s source of news and sport, offered families access to what we would now call pop culture – showbiz, celebrity and especially style. Newspapers were a main advertising medium through the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and agencies yearned for content to attract women, who controlled household purchases, and young people, a new market for discretionary spending.

The Alpe Adria loop is an eight-day walking trail that crisscrosses borders, taking in dramatic peaks, glorious meadows and charming places to stay

‘Achtung! Staatsgrenze!” OK, the signpost marking the “state border” didn’t have exclamation marks but, with its no-nonsense Prussian font, it did feel quite shouty. The only thing was, no one on the Feistritzer Alm – a peaceful sweep of Alpine pasture at the meeting of Austria and Italy – was paying any attention to it at all.

Hikers hiked straight past. Mountain bikers used it to prop up their cycles. Cows grazed willy-nilly. And the patrons of the Schutzhütte Oisternig enjoyed their cold beers regardless of which country they were in. While official boundaries may have changed in these parts over the centuries, the magnificence of the mountains has not.

Beautifully situated refuges with superlative views offering sanctuary to intrepid hikers and climbers

A good mountain hut, I reckon, should be small and only accessible on foot after considerable effort. Throw in a bit of historical interest and I’m bound to be happy. In which case, Cabaña Verónica in the Picos de Europa is a fine start to this list. It sleeps six, and at 2,325 metres requires a two-hour trek from the nearest cable car station, never mind road. It has incredible views and a friendly custodian who keeps things in good order. Yet the real attraction is that this place was formerly a gun turret of a US navy battleship that was scrapped in Bilbao in 1960. An enterprising engineer, Conrado Senties, had it carried up on horseback and reassembled on a plug of rock in the middle of nowhere. Don’t ask why, just enjoy the eccentricity.
€15, reservarefugios.com

From the foothills of the Pyrenees to the peaks of the Dolomites, you share your top views, meals and adventures at altitude

• Tell us about a trip to Germany – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

No doubt your first thought on hearing the words “double-decker” is of a bus. But in the Swiss village of Stans, an old wooden funicular carriage ascends to the station, where a double-decker cable car awaits. Inside, a spiral staircase leads you to an open upper viewing deck. At the summit, the views back to Lucerne are superb, and there are alpine marmots to spot too. There was a wedding ceremony going on at the summit on our trip!
Martin

Perched above the clouds in northern Italy, Santnerpass refuge doesn’t just look stunning. It’s a marvel of eco-building – and vegetarian cuisine

‘I think my boots are falling apart!” shouts Nigel just as we hit the pinnacles, a whole range of them jutting up and out from the mountainside, all thrillingly tall, spiky and knobbled. Through them we painstakingly step, fingers aching in gloves, heads sweating in helmets – squashing up narrow chimneys, squeezing through mighty boulders and inching along slender ledges on a twisting path that’s only just discernible through swathes of sharp white scree.

I know how Nigel’s boots are feeling: the going is far harder than I was expecting. This is only the first day of our annual trip to the Dolomites, a vast range of breathtaking sawtooth peaks in northern Italy, but my head’s already full of the thought I have every year as we start out: “If only you’d got fitter.”

Arthur Plummer got a bike when he retired at 65 and joined a cycling club as one of its youngest members. Now he is its oldest but still racking up 5,000km every year

When Arthur Plummer retired at 65, he bought a secondhand bicycle. His sister was a member of a cycling club for seniors in the Canadian city of Waterloo, Ontario, where they lived, and Plummer joined, too, becoming one of the club’s youngest members. Now he is 92 and its oldest member – but he still cycles thousands of kilometres every year. His odometer for this year so far reads 4,270km (2,650 miles). After our conversation, he intends to cycle another 40km.

“I love cycling,” he says. “Wherever I go, even if I ride on the same roads, there’s something new happening. When I get on my bike, I feel great. I come home at about 3pm and I feel exhausted. However, it’s the nicest feeling. It’s exhilarating, and it’s resulted in me being extremely healthy.”

Fantastic display and two-day battery life plus everything that’s great about Google’s more pocketable Pixel Pros

Google’s latest super-sized Pixel takes everything that’s great about the relatively pocket-friendly 11 Pro and adds a huge, high-quality screen and a big battery.

That makes the Pixel 11 Pro XL one of the largest smartphones available in Europe and the US, competing directly with Samsung’s giant Galaxy S26 Ultra and Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro Max, with an equally sizeable £1,279 (€1,399/$1,299/A$2,099) price tag – £80 (€100/$100/A$100) more than last year with less memory because of the cost of RAMageddon.

Precise moment of equinox in UK is 1.05am on Wednesday – but day and night will not be equal until Friday

The September or autumnal equinox takes place this week. It marks the astronomical beginning of autumn in the northern hemisphere and spring in the southern hemisphere. This year, the precise moment of the equinox falls at 01.05 BST on 23 September.

It is commonly said the equinox is when day and night are equal, because the name derives from the Latin for “equal night”, but in practice that is not quite true. An equinox occurs when the sun crosses the celestial equator, the imaginary projection of Earth’s equator into the sky.

Brigg, Lincolnshire: As my attention turns to drilling next year’s cash crops, I create a disturbance out in the fields

Sometimes a moment of surprise has years of experience behind it. Last week as I was out in the oilseed rape fields applying a cocktail of microbe food (molasses, humates and fish paste), I had quite a shock when up went a large flock of grey partridges, a covey of 26. Twelve would be considered large, with red-legged partridges only ever appearing in pairs, but I’ve not seen 26 grey here in my lifetime.

This is testament to our nature‑friendly approach to farming, including this year planting specific margins to encourage sawfly larvae, crickets, weevils and ground beetles. These insects form the entire diet of grey partridges (and yellowhammers) during their first two weeks of life. In addition, rather than just planting overwinter cover crops and “catch” crops to mop up loose nutrients and protect the soil from the elements, I now add millet, the seed of which is a boost for older birds. The idea is to create a mosaic of habitats that connect through the landscape.

While global billionaires and multinational companies have been lured to its shores, many islanders feel left behind and priced out, with food bank use increasing

On a late Friday afternoon on the Channel Island of Jersey, tourists and locals are flocking to St Helier’s waterfront where the town’s sprawling beach has emerged at low tide.

In one direction, they face the calm waters of St Aubin’s Bay, ringed by a seaside promenade and punctuated with a tidal island hosting the 16th century Elizabeth Castle.

Tensions grow as Trump tells Fox News he is considering ‘wiping Iran out’ after attacks on Riyadh by Houthi rebels

Governments across the Middle East are bracing for an escalation of violence after Iran claimed it had received intelligence that the US was preparing for a renewed bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic.

In a potential sign of growing tensions before the UN general assembly in New York this week, Donald Trump cut short a weekend visit to the Camp David presidential retreat on Sunday with no official explanation, and a new security alert was issued by the state department to all US citizens in the Middle East.

Toor’s electrifying pictures have made him a global star – and he’s even painted Zohran Mamdani. As the artist hits London’s prestigious Courtauld Gallery, he talks about Manet, mullahs and the mayor

In Salman Toor’s paintings, queer south Asian men hang out in bars, twerk at trippy gatherings and lose themselves in phone screens. Sometimes they huddle in the back of taxis or pillow-fight on beds. In one portrait, a brown man stares apprehensively while facing customs officials. For the 43-year-old Pakistani American artist, it’s crucial that these figures take centre stage, after years of being demonised and erased.

“It excites me that the cuteness and sexiness of brown protagonists can become familiar,” says Toor when we meet at his sun-drenched Brooklyn studio, a few weeks before his first solo show in Europe. “Their stories are not a gay side story in a family saga. It’s the main story. And everyone else is in the background.”

Has your accommodation provider gone bust? Have you been able to find alternative accommodation?

Nearly 70 students in Dundee have been left scrambling to find new accommodation for the new academic year after a university housing scheme went bust.

It is the latest in a string of issues with university housing schemes amid severe financial strain on the sector.

We’d like to hear from people in the UK who have abandoned or delayed plans to get on the property ladder

UK house prices rose for the first time in four months in August, while mortgage approvals fell to their lowest level in more than two years amid increasingly difficult conditions for first-time buyers.

The boss of Britain’s largest housebuilder recently described it as the most challenging time to buy a first home since the financial crisis, pointing to rising interest rates, student debt and squeezed wages. Meanwhile, research from the Building Societies Association found 59% of renters aged 25 to 44 thought they would own a home by now but do not.

We would like to speak to people about how their early years coloured their relationship with cash

We would like to speak to people about how their childhoods shaped their attitude towards money in later life.

Do you think the way you manage money has been affected by your upbringing? Did your family talk about money openly, or was it a subject that felt taboo? And how has that shaped your attitude to your personal finances today?

The Guardian is looking for single men of all ages to talk honestly about the experience of being unattached

The Guardian is looking for single men of all ages to talk honestly about the experience of being unattached. Whether you are 16 or 100, we want to hear the unvarnished truth about what it’s like to live as a single man today.

Are you trying to find love? Or are you happy living life as a bachelor? Do you find the experience of modern dating – with all its red flags and height requirements – to be a minefield? Or are you attracting more attention than ever before?

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