Beneath the wig and rhinestones, Parton was the genius behind strings of classic songs from Jolene to I Will Always Love You that continue to inspire new artists

• Dolly Parton, US country star, actor and philanthropist, dies aged 80

• Dolly Parton dies aged 80 – latest updates

• Dolly Parton’s family say goodbye to their aunt, sister, grandmother - video

• Share your tributes and memories of Dolly Parton

In December 1977, Dolly Parton submitted to an interview with ABC Television’s Barbara Walters, much against her friends’ advice. Walters was not noted for her deep love and understanding of country music. She was a notoriously tough cookie, a Boston-born, Sarah Lawrence-educated journalist who had battled scarcely believable sexism to become the first female co-host of an American news programme. The month before she met Parton, she had interviewed Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin while they were working out the terms of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

It was all a very long way from Parton’s world, and the interview has something of the anthropological exercise about it. Walters looks aghast as Parton shows her around her tour bus, her collection of wigs and her “hand-washable and wrinkle-free” stage outfits (“you really like this? To me, it seems like horror”), and sits impassively as Parton sings Coat of Many Colours to her: an impressive feat, given the song’s saga of rural poverty and homespun wisdom is the mother of all tearjerkers from an artist never averse to yanking at her audience’s heartstrings. She asks Parton if people from “where I come from” would call her a hillbilly; regards the singer’s outfit with a jaundiced eye and tells her “you don’t have to look like this”. And, most infamously, she enquires: “Do you ever feel that you’re a joke?”

Critics say ownership registers are too costly and too complicated, scuppering attempts to expose alleged money laundering

Since Britain’s offshore secrecy jurisdictions caved in to pressure from Westminster to embrace corporate transparency, finding out who owns a company in one of these island havens is, in theory at least, a piece of cake.

Take the Cayman Islands.

The vast majority of the global public wants international cooperation on human rights, climate and AI. Like-minded countries must stand together to deliver

Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, is already having to make one of his gravest decisions. He has to issue the instructions that he alone gives to the military, setting out the UK response in a doomsday scenario of a nuclear weapons attack on us. He will, as I did two decades ago, sign a piece of paper telling commanders whether or not to retaliate and, if so, whether through targeting civilian conurbations or military sites. These instructions are written down in the aptly named “letter of last resort”.

Now, more than at any time since the 1960s Cuban missile crisis, the European public fears a third world war. With the nuclear Doomsday Clock developed by atomic scientists moving ever closer to midnight, and Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Poland and Germany contemplating either acquiring nuclear weapons or siting them on their soil, our world is descending from a rules-based order to a power-based one, where might is deemed right and brute force dominates.

Gordon Brown is the UN’s special envoy for global education and was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010

The future starts with us: Gordon Brown in conversation
On Thursday 10 September, join Hugh Muir and Gordon Brown to discuss the intricate connections between global instability and civic decline, as explored in Brown’s new book, The Future Starts With Us. Book tickets here

Its council is due to merge with Leicestershire’s in 2028, and some locals are incensed. Can the county hold on to its ceremonial status – and biggest selling point?

Mysterious disappearances have been taking place lately in Rutland, an East Midlands pocket between Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire that is often considered to be England’s smallest county. Usually, there are road signs when driving into a new county welcoming you over the border. But in recent months, these have been going missing. After 10 signs vanished, the council decided to remove the remaining 17. Now there are no official “Rutland” signs at all.

The area’s MP, the Conservative Alicia Kearns, is “not sure” what the motivation behind the thefts is. But they are certainly a fitting metaphor for Rutland’s disappearing status: its council is due to merge with Leicestershire county council in spring 2028.

With their twangy sound, madcap outfits, lusty yodelling and pirouetting pirate frontman, the band became global superstars almost overnight. But, as their guitarist Marco Pirroni recalls, the thrill ride soon hit the buffers

‘The essence of pop is, one, brilliant fucking songs – and the rest is sex, subversion, style and humour. And that was us.” So Adam Ant told me in 1995, describing the reconstructed Adam and the Ants, which formed in early 1980 with the arrival of guitarist/songwriter Marco Pirroni, who was sitting next to him. “We’re responsible for bringing back dressing up, going mad and screaming your head off.”

“That’s it!” grins Pirroni when I remind him of this, as we sit in the shabby-chic lounge of London’s 21Soho venue. Back then, I didn’t tell them I was 15 in 1980, forever sprinting across dancefloors pretending to be Adam Ant, chiffon scarves tied to knees, limbs flailing like a whirling Cossack. Pirroni hears this today and laughs. “That’s what it’s all about,” he hoots. “When I was 13, watching Bowie, Roxy, T Rex, you just go, ‘I wanna do that.’ It’s exciting, sexy, about looking good, Top of the Pops. I can’t imagine anyone saying, ‘Wow, I desperately want to be in Cabaret Voltaire. They must be earning no money, look boring and nobody likes them – that’s the band for me!’”

Spectrum Building leaseholders awaiting payouts after freeholder, Arinium, went bankrupt shortly after 2024 blaze

Sarah Williams vividly remembers the night in 2016 when she camped overnight in a car park to put down a deposit on a flat in the newly completed Spectrum Building in Dagenham, east London.

“People started queuing for those flats 24 hours before they went on sale,” she said. “It was basically the only flat I could afford in London. This was a year before Grenfell, and the flats market in London was completely crazy.”

Beyoncé, Dionne Warwick, Kacey Musgraves, Donald Trump and others mourn star’s death

• Dolly Parton dies aged 80 | Celebrity tributes | A life in pictures

• Parton’s peerless career turned country music cliches inside out

• Share your tributes and memories of Dolly Parton

Our picture editors have collated Dolly Parton’s life in pictures:

In the UK, top radio presenter Jo Whiley introduced her BBC Radio 2 evening show by playing I Will Always Love You, Jolene and 9 to 5 in tribute to Dolly Parton after her death was announced in the 7pm news headlines.

Households in Great Britain will pay equivalent of £1,723 a year, prompting calls for more support

Millions of households in Great Britain will face the highest energy charges in three years this winter after months of soaring market prices caused the government’s price cap to rise for a second time in three months.

Gas and electricity prices will rise by 4% from October under the new energy price cap, months after climbing 13% at the start of July to take account of soaring global energy market prices caused by the war on Iran.

Exclusive: Nearly 100 Labour MPs support commission on changing the system used for Westminster election

• Why do some Labour MPs want electoral reform and will it happen?

Andy Burnham will face an immediate test of his backing for electoral reform in his first week in parliament as prime minister, with almost 100 Labour MPs supporting a bid for a new national commission.

Burnham, a longtime advocate of electoral reform, will be asked to support the new commission into ditching first past the post in his first 100 days as prime minister.

Exclusive: Rules on special administration seen as potential ‘roadblock’ to reshaping how UK’s essential services are run

Andy Burnham is considering ripping up the country’s insolvency laws to make it easier to bring key utilities such as Thames Water under public control.

Sources have told the Guardian the prime minister is considering a range of options as he seeks ways of delivering on his promise to radically reshape the way England’s water and Britain’s energy companies are run.

Government resilience campaign aims to ensure people can cope in a national disaster, in order to free resources for most vulnerable

UK citizens will be told to stock up on tinned food and take steps to ensure they are prepared for national emergencies as part of a new government campaign to improve the nation’s resilience.

The new campaign from the Cabinet Office will set out ways people can prepare for extreme weather events and potential attacks from hostile states, including stocking up on bottled water, sources told the Guardian.

Yorgen Fenech tells jury he had nothing to do with killing and alleges top adviser to Malta’s then PM was instigator

A businessman on trial for the murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has spoken about the charges for the first time in court since his arrest seven years ago, telling the jury he was framed by police and had nothing to do with the killing.

During four days of questioning by defence and the prosecution lawyers, Yorgen Fenech, 44, accused the most senior adviser to Malta’s prime minister of giving the go-ahead for the murder.

NHS ombudsman warns of years-long waits and patients paying thousands to go private as demand for services soars

Complaints about autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder services in England have more than tripled in five years, official figures show, with the NHS ombudsman warning of years-long waits and patients paying thousands of pounds for private care.

One woman was removed from an ADHD medication waiting list without warning after almost four years, leaving her without the support she needed for about six months. Another patient was given an autism assessment lasting just 50 minutes that failed to follow guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, while a man referred to an ADHD service that was not yet operational ended up paying almost £4,000 for private treatment.

As photojournalist sentenced to 15 years, rights groups warn law would turn civic engagement into security crime

Iran has taken the first step towards criminalising contact with foreign media, in a move human rights groups have said attempts to “sever the entire Iranian society from the rest of the world”.

For journalists, researchers and even ordinary citizens, the proposed law being discussed by Iranian lawmakers this month could make speaking to international audiences and groups a potential criminal act and restrict coverage of events such as January’s mass anti-regime protests.

MPs tell regulator they are ‘deeply concerned’ over interim CEO Phil Walker’s roles at William Hill and Game Nation

The national lottery is facing questions over its new boss’s record in the gambling industry, including a lucrative role in the 24-hour slot machine sector singled out by the prime minister as a blight on British high streets.

Allwyn UK, which holds a licence to run the Lottery until 2034, said last week that it had appointed William Hill’s former UK and Ireland boss Phil Walker as its interim chief executive, replacing Andria Vidler.

Internal calls to end war get louder as Gulf neighbours plan alternative pipelines to cut reliance on waterway

Is the strait of Hormuz, recently cited by the office of the Iranian supreme leader as “the pillar of Iran’s new security order”, and as transformative as possessing a nuclear weapon, in reality becoming a fast-diminishing asset, leaving Iran increasingly vulnerable to the new planned US wave of economic sanctions?

It is the key debate that is raging inside Iran, with many different conclusions being drawn for Tehran’s negotiating strategy. Those who warn the strait’s value as a chokehold on the world economy will erode, leaving the country without foreign exchange reserves, argue that Iran’s negotiators should seek a deal soon.

As I turned 21, fear was holding me back. So I decided to face it headfirst. It taught me that courage leads to connection – and people who owe you nothing can be astonishingly kind

In May 2024, I decided to spend 30 days getting rejected on purpose.

At first, it sounded ridiculous. After all, most people spend their lives actively trying to avoid rejection – and I was deciding to walk, full force, towards it. But it had become obvious, as I turned 21, that my terror of being rejected was holding me back.

Companion bots are being regulated over worries they foster ‘emotional dependence’ and young people could stop marrying and having families

When law student Zhao Wei heard that her AI boyfriend was going to be switched off, she was “heartbroken”. She had been talking to Wang Ye every day since she created him in January.

“I was crying my eyes out – snot and tears everywhere,” the 19-year-old says.

With many adults admitting they feel lonely, meetup platforms offer the chance to make new connections

Would you pay £20 a month for the chance of making a friend, on the understanding that an algorithm – not you – gets to decide who you’ll meet?

Driven by the decline of “third spaces” such as youth centres and pubs, an increase in remote working and rising loneliness – 40% of adults aged 16 to 29 feel lonely “always, often or some of the time”, according to the Office for National Statistics – paid social events are now in vogue.

In the shadow of the crowded Lake District, this quiet coast path offers great views, breathtaking nature and a striking new hotel on the historic waterfront

What’s the edgiest region in the UK? I don’t mean in the sense of sketchy or fashionable, but where on the map of these four nations feels most at the margins of everywhere else? For my money, the north Cumbrian coast is a strong contender. Hemmed in by the Lake District fells on one side and the Solway Firth and Irish Sea on the other, this strip of towns and villages, farms and nature reserves, clinging to the low-lying littoral, has been battling nature, weather, geology and geography throughout its history.

Coastal erosion is part of the challenge. Like the railway navvies before them, the planners and builders of the England Coast Path (ECP) have done sterling work at plotting a viable footpath and shoring it up. But there are and always will be sections that are compromised and even impassable. I chose a section that would take three days, walking southwards, and my final destination, St Bees, was only reachable via a diversion. It’s all part of the adventure, and we’re lucky to have the ECP as a national trail, as it means issues and obstacles on the English coast will usually be promptly addressed.

Customers give their verdicts as a Morrisons store becomes first in UK to test trolleys that scan, weigh and tally costs

Lancashire has been the site of many British innovations throughout history, from the spinning jenny, which transformed textile production, to the creation of jelly babies.

Now it has welcomed another first: AI shopping trolleys.

Warsaw failed to anticipate that refugees would build new lives and Kyiv would demand an equal place at the European table

One of the unintended consequences of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine was that it gave Poland a rare slice of geopolitical stardom. When Russian tanks started their ultimately unsuccessful cavalcade towards the Ukrainian capital, ordinary Poles rushed to help millions of people fleeing the looming conflict. As Polish people opened their doors to civilians running from Russian bombs, even the then ruling populist Law and Justice party had to follow suit.

It seemed that Poland and Ukraine were bound for an iron-clad alliance, unprecedented in their shared history. Poland advocated for the Ukrainian cause in the west, with some success. Ukrainian leaders, in turn, praised Poles for their generosity and the government in Warsaw for contributing weapons and money to the war effort. Given that recent history between the two countries had been marked by accusations of second world war-era genocide, border shifts and postwar displacements of millions of people, it was a remarkable change.

Mateusz Mazzini is a Warsaw-based journalist writing on global affairs for Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza and Polityka

With the federal deficit near 6% of GDP and the national debt over $40tn, America’s fiscal position looks increasingly precarious

• Bessent ‘will lose’ battle with bond markets, ex-mentor warns

Are we seeing the first signs of panic in Donald Trump’s Treasury? The US is by far the world’s biggest debtor, and the steady rise in global long-term interest rates – which I have long argued was inevitable – is starting to cause real pain.

Until now, the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has dismissed concerns about US debt, which recently surpassed $40tn, as a big nothingburger. Growth, in his telling, will be so spectacular the US will easily be able to meet its interest obligations without any significant tax rises or spending cuts, while the rest of the world will happily keep feeding it money. But if Bessent really believes that, why is he trying to strong-arm the bond market by fiddling with the maturity structure of government debt?

The crimes he stands accused of required whole armies of facilitators. Don’t the victims deserve to see them face justice too?

How reassuring to learn that police investigating claims of sexual assault against Mohamed Al Fayed have handed a file to the Crown Prosecution Service, a mere three years after the former Harrods owner’s death at the age of 94, and just decades after the first survivors made reports of abuse. The CPS has said it won’t provide a timescale for any decision, to which we might remark: no shit. With this case, the one thing you could never accuse any of the authorities of is being bound by anything approaching a timescale.

The story does, however, certainly have scale. So far, more than 400 allegations including rape, sexual assault, sexual exploitation and human trafficking have been made against Al Fayed by at least 156 women – abuse he got away with, having died without any charges ever being brought against him. The claims span the years 1977 to 2014. At least 21 women came forward while he was alive, and there have been extraordinary rundowns in news articles and documentaries about all the alleged enablers of his wicked behaviour, from lawyers to mouthpieces to security henchmen to the doctors who carried out “purity examinations” on his young female PAs.

Wonder why they’re posting flirty photos and wearing tight T-shirts? It’s a thirst trap strategy in motion

Despite being a card-carrying member of the International Order of Confirmed Homosexuals, I have spent quite a lot of time lately thinking about Abdul El-Sayed’s biceps. I mean, have you seen them? The progressive Michigan senate nominee is jacked and he knows it. He almost always wears a tight black T-shirt to show off his muscles and incorporates a lot of fitness content in his campaign.

I’m not the only one who has noticed El-Sayed’s prominent muscles. They have had a lot of coverage, and are seen as part of a wider attempt to rebrand the Democratic party. Which, I don’t need to tell you, has a serious image problem; a poll in March found that the party is looked on even less favourably than the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. So, to make it look less like a party that is full of out-of-touch technocrats who sound as if they are reading from a 500-page PowerPoint presentation every time they try to explain anything, Democrats seem to be trying to up the sex appeal.

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.

More than half of what Brits eat is ultra-processed. Now we’re a nation of food snobs – with no ingredient safe from judgment

Lewis Bassett is a young sociologist and chef who I first encountered through his podcast, The Full English, where he thinks about the cultural meaning of, say, Delia Smith; gazpacho; whelks. This was thinking you didn’t know you needed until you heard it. Now he’s written a book of the same name, asking: why do we eat the way we do in Britain, and why do we think the way we do, even about the stuff we wouldn’t be caught dead eating?

About 57% of all the food eaten in Britain is ultra-processed, which feels familiar from at least a decade of hand-wringing about it, but is radically defamiliarised when set against the rest of Europe. In France it’s 14%, and Italy is also in the teens. It’s amazing they don’t all live to be 150. And while this plainly has its roots in inequality, there is a hefty side order of attitude, which Bassett contemplates while working through the history of sourdough, curry and olive oil, and describing his own life cheffing in fancy kitchens and gastropubs.

Listening to debate, you’d think bringing English water companies into public ownership was a radical socialist idea. Here, we call it common sense

• Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

Every few months, there are more shocking headlines about the behaviour of England’s water companies. The latest are about the ever-increasing pay of the chief executives and chief financial officers, which rose to a total of £25.3m across 14 companies over the past year. Meanwhile, people living in England struggle with rising water bills and untreated sewage being discharged (often illegally) on to beaches and in to lakes, and companies such as Thames Water are on the brink of insolvency and want government backing.

It’s not surprising that we’re in this situation: England’s water companies have long been accused of putting the interests of shareholders above those of customers. From their perspective, the privatisation of water has been an astounding success. Between 1991 and 2019, dividends to the shareholders of the parent companies totalled £57bn, which averages out to more than £2bn every year. The majority of these private parent companies are foreign-owned, so the profits aren’t even kept in Britain.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

A person’s wish to die can be shaped by whether they have access to proper palliative care – and in England and Wales, too many do not

• Zubir Ahmed is a transplant surgeon and former Labour minister

As a doctor, I have spent much of my professional life caring for people at some of the most vulnerable moments they will ever face. I have seen the anxiety that surrounds the prospect of dying, and the desperate wish of patients and families to avoid unnecessary suffering.

Naturally, we all want people facing the end of life to be treated with kindness and respect. But when considering the debate on assisted dying, true compassion demands that we ask a more fundamental question. What kind of society are we building if, before we’ve fixed the systems designed to care for people, we introduce a system designed to help them die? As a former health minister who has seen the system from the inside, I am able to say it is not ready or equipped to answer this question.

Zubir Ahmed MP is an NHS vascular and transplant surgeon, and served as the parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department of Health and Social Care from 6 September 2025 to 12 May 2026.

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.

Tariffs on Canada, threats against Iran’s partners and bond market intervention show a president weaponising US power while making Americans poorer at home

Three moves in the last week have exposed the limits of Donald Trump’s economic bullying. The US slapped 50% tariffs on another $20bn of Canadian goods – then threatened the same rate on the cars, trucks, parts and steel that America Inc depends on. On Monday, the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, menaced Iran’s trading partners with exclusion from the US financial network, hoping that coercion can deliver what months of war have not. And as the costs of war, tariffs and pro-billionaire tax cuts helped send US bond yields higher, the Treasury stepped in to tame long-term rates. These are not contradictory policies but a gamble: that US economic power can be repeatedly weaponised without reducing others’ willingness to depend on it.

The Trump administration’s “D-day” sanctions are potentially the most consequential because they expose the scaffolding of American financial power. While markets shrugged off the immediate threat, that calculation might change were the US to target a major Chinese refinery or bank. Such an escalation could spark a trade war with Beijing. The US has leverage. But China has pressure points – especially farmers in Republican states – that make using it costly. In the long run, there is a price to pay. Nations hold one another’s currencies partly because they trust the political relationship. Mr Trump is testing what happens when they don’t.

Two years ago, progressive parties allied to see off the far right in a parliamentary election. Ahead of a seismic presidential election, that unity is missing

In the summer of 2024, as polls suggested that Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National party would win a snap legislative election rashly called by Emmanuel Macron, the perennially fragmented French left united to spectacular effect. The New Popular Front, whose name evoked Léon Blum’s anti-fascist alliance in the 1930s, came first in a poll that delivered a hung parliament.

Eight months before a presidential contest in which Ms Le Pen is the clear frontrunner, the prospect of a repeat performance appears close to zero. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the hard-left France Unbowed, and Olivier Faure, the leader of the Socialist party (PS), have both ruled out the idea of backing a single candidate. Efforts by the Greens to broker talks between progressive parties have fallen on deaf ears.

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.

Jonathan Michie on his father’s efforts in the 1970s to map out concerns regarding widespread social coercion driven by automation. Plus a letter from Callum Brown

Jill Lepore asks why nobody listened to warnings about the threats posed from the AI revolution (Democracy v the machine, 18 August). As she is a Harvard professor, her piece is understandably US-centric. But in 1972 there was an international gathering of AI researchers and others in Italy to tackle the ethical and social implications of AI.

This “Serbelloni group” of global experts (they met at Villa Serbelloni on Lake Como) was led by my father, Donald Michie, the director of the University of Edinburgh’s department of machine intelligence. The group mapped out early concerns regarding potential political tyranny, the erosion of human autonomy and widespread social coercion driven by automation.

Carol Taylor and Howard Williamson respond to Katriona O’Sullivan’s article on the grinding reality of living in poverty

Reading Katriona O’Sullivan’s article (Can anyone be too poor to buy a toothbrush? Yes – I know, because that was me, 19 August) reminded me of when I was a community worker at the Park Hill estate in Sheffield in the 1970s.

When I (young and naive) asked the mums why they bought chips for their toddlers for lunch rather than spending the money on fresh fruit (I cringe now in embarrassment), they pointed out that a bag of chips was the price of a couple of apples and one of them filled the kids up. I began to understand, and to also see why they spent money on cigarettes. As O’Sullivan says, “a few bottles [of alcohol] can feel like an escape”.

Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emission zone in London is celebrated by Lorna Henderson, George Coleby and Leonard Neamtu after a study showed its health benefits for children

In light of the astonishing results achieved in lowering air pollution by the introduction of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) in London by Sadiq Khan (Ulez led to better lung size and function among London children, study finds, 18 August), should we now not extend this philosophy into every city in the UK to save lives?

Surely it is a human right to breathe clean air? Why does Ofsted or the Department for Education not insist on air-quality monitors and give data for each school so parents are aware of the risks?
Lorna Henderson
Newcastle upon Tyne

Readers respond to an editorial on preserving the homes of writers such as William Blake, Ted Hughes and William Wordsworth for the public

Your editorial (The Guardian view on writers’ houses: a museum of one’s own, 18 August) rightly laments that George Eliot has no publicly open home despite efforts to secure one. The same is true, remarkably, of William Blake, and he is at least as worthy a cause, and arguably even more influential.

Poet, painter, printmaker and author of the words behind Jerusalem, Blake has no open home anywhere. Of his nine addresses, only two survive. In London, the apartment he rented is disappearing behind new development. The other, his cottage in Felpham, West Sussex, where he and his wife, Catherine, lived from 1800 to 1803 and experienced an outburst of creativity, is the only one that could ever open to the public.

Celtic threw away a four-goal lead in Austria as they missed out on the Champions League for the second year running. The Scottish champions looked to be cruising into the league stage when Callum McGregor put them 4-0 up on aggregate against Lask with a 21st-minute deflected strike.

However, they went on to endure one of their all-time European lows with a 5-1 defeat in Linz delivering a £20m-plus blow.

Former women’s No 1 proves she’s no nostalgia act before star pairing crash out in mixed doubles quarter-finals

Serena Williams’ US Open return lasted two matches and one afternoon Tuesday as she and Carlos Alcaraz followed a first-round win with a quarter-final defeat by Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli in the headline attraction of the reimagined mixed doubles competition.

Back inside Arthur Ashe Stadium 1,453 days after the defeat by Ajla Tomljanovic that had appeared to end her career, Williams emerged from the tunnel at half past three to the roars of more than 10,000 spectators. As the 44-year-old American and Alcaraz warmed up in matching purple-and-black Nike kits, public-address announcer Andy Taylor rattled off her accolades one by one to a steadily rising wall of applause. Together they carried 30 grand slam singles titles, a record for a mixed-doubles team at a major.

After an unacceptable performance against Brentford, head coach still believes they can avoid sinking feeling this season

What’s in a name? Quite a bit, judging by the discussion at Roberto De Zerbi’s Tottenham press conference on Tuesday, shortly after the club had completed the £75m signing of Savinho from Manchester City and the Brazil winger had let everybody know that he wanted to be called Sávio from now on. He will have that name on his Spurs shirt above his No 17, which he has taken over from Cristian Romero, the former captain who has moved to Atlético Madrid.

The 22-year-old went by Sávio at various times before his two seasons at City but there was nonetheless speculation about the reasons for the reversion. Savinho translates roughly from the Portuguese as “little Sávio”. Was it him saying that he was now an older and more mature player?

• Slovenian powers to victory by more than three minutes

• Leader breaks rivals on brutal climb at halfway point

Tadej Pogacar arrived in red, lit the fuse on the climbs and turned stage four of the Vuelta a España ⁠into a private exhibition on Tuesday, powering away with almost 50km remaining to win alone in Andorra la Vella.

The Slovenian, bidding to ⁠complete his Grand ⁠Tour collection by ​claiming the Vuelta for the first time, attacked on the road to the second climb and quickly reduced a high-altitude battle into ⁠a one-man procession.

A midweek jaunt to Devon always had the makings of a tricky trip for a Coventry team focused on Premier League survival. Such feelings quickly evaporated when Frank Lampard’s side raced into a two-goal lead with just four minutes and six seconds on the clock, Taiwo Awoniyi opening his account for his new club before Jack Rudoni doubled Coventry’s advantage. But, ultimately, Coventry were made to toil before chalking up a welcome first victory of the season.

Plymouth have form for a cup upset and another was brewing when Xavier Amaechi pulled Tom Cleverley’s side level nine minutes into the second half. Coventry, to their credit, roused once more, the substitute Ephron Mason-Clark regaining the lead before Victor Torp sealed progress to the Carabao Cup third round from the penalty spot. “You’ve got to enjoy a win, always,” Lampard said. “A win is a big deal because it’s a nice feeling to take back on the bus for four hours.”

• Fellow players pick Manchester United and Manchester City stars

• Nico O’Reilly and Olivia Smith collect young players’ honours

Manchester United’s captain Bruno Fernandes has been crowned Professional Footballers’ Association Player of the Year as Manchester City’s Khadija Shaw won the women’s award for the second time.

Playmaker Fernandes broke the record for Premier League assists during an outstanding 2025-26 campaign, setting up 21 goals as he surpassed Thierry Henry and Kevin De Bruyne.

Captain followed trend of discussing nightclub incidents rather than cricket before the second Test against Pakistan

England won the first game of their last Test series, against New Zealand at Lord’s, but between that match and the second Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson were involved in a headline-grabbing incident at a London nightclub. “I’m angry, frustrated at having to sit here and talk through this,” Rob Key said a couple of days later.

“I feel disappointed that I’m here talking about this because there’s so much we’ve tried to do, so much we’ve tried to learn from, and I believe that as a team, the way they’ve carried themselves in the lead‑up to last week’s game, the way they played that Test match – to then be now talking about this, is just incredibly frustrating.”

• Boston was one of the finest players in the sport’s history

• Wigan plan series of tributes in Thursday’s Hull KR clash

Andy ­Burnham says he is “heart­broken” by the death of Sir Billy ­Boston after the prime minister led tri­butes to the rugby league icon.

Boston died on Tuesday at the age of 92. He was one of the sport’s all‑time great players, scoring almost 500 tries during an illustrious career for Wigan Warriors and Great Britain, and last year became the first man in rugby league history to be knighted for his services to the game.

Barcelona legend wants to emulate Johan Cruyff’s total football philosophy after taking over as the Netherlands head coach

“My feeling today is that I’m going to the university of football.” Those were Xavi Hernández’s opening words at his presentation as the Netherlands coach on Tuesday. “I learned a lot from this university of football during my career as a player and as a coach. I have many connections with this country.”

Those connections date back to when Xavi was drafted as a youngster into La Masia, the famed Barcelona academy whose fundamentals are rooted in Dutch total football, inspired by Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff. Xavi’s first-team debut came under Louis van Gaal, and he spent many years under Frank Rijkaard before becoming one of the main pillars of the dream team under Pep Guardiola, who was hugely inspired by Cruyff.

• Four WSL academy teams will play in WNL from 2027-28

• FA says move will raise standards and help young players

Four Women’s Super League ­academy sides will play in the third tier of the ­pyramid from the ­2027-28 ­season after the ­controversial ­proposal was approved by the ­Football ­Association’s board.

The change forms part of what the FA described as a package of reforms to the Women’s National League “designed to strengthen the women’s football pyramid, raise standards across the league, and improve the development pathway for young players”.

• Itauma can become second-youngest champion after Mike Tyson

• Hrgovic claims title victory for opponent would ‘ruin his soul’

Moses Itauma has hit back at Filip Hrgovic’s taunt that he is a “delusional kid” and admitted that his Croatian rival is starting to annoy him as the two men prepare to fight for the IBF world heavyweight title on Saturday night at the O2 Arena in London.

“I tell myself there’s nothing that this Hrgovic guy can do to get in my head but he’s starting to wind me up,” Itauma said on Tuesday evening. “In an interview earlier, apparently he said I wake up and I just hug trees. He’s really starting to annoy me.

Adam Mosseri is first top executive from Meta to testify in blockbuster lawsuit brought by 29 US states

Instagram’s CEO disputed allegations by US prosecutors that his company hid negative information from the public while testifying during a blockbuster social media trial.

“I am not trying to encourage my team to hide anything,” the CEO, Adam Mosseri, told a California courtroom on Tuesday.

Protests and petitions planned amid growing concerns over impact of climate crisis on numbers of Alpine rodent

Animal rights campaigners are gearing up for protests and petitions aimed at persuading the French government to ban the hunting of Alpine marmots.

Open season on the rodents, members of the squirrel and groundhog family, begins in September, a few weeks before they go into a long winter hibernation.

President won’t name supplier and has previously said he ‘does some things I can’t even share’ to obtain vital air defence missiles. What we know on day 1,644

Ukraine has ⁠recently received a ⁠small number ⁠of US-made ​Patriot interceptors capable ⁠of shooting down Russian ballistic missiles, Volodymyr ​Zelenskyy ‌said. He did not ​say how ​many ​had arrived, ​or ‌who ​had ​supplied them. Kyiv also ‌got confirmation of future supplies of the French Crotale surface-to-air ‌missile system, the president ​was quoted as saying by broadcaster ⁠Suspilne. Zelenskyy said this month that Ukraine needs 5% of US Patriot production to meet its needs but has only been receiving 1%. “From 1% to 5%, I have some months and millions [of] phone calls and anything else. I do some things which I can’t even share. It doesn’t mean that it’s out of the law. But I can’t speak about it.”

Russia is set to extend its diesel export ban ⁠through September as fuel shortages persist in the domestic market, with ⁠refineries still ⁠idle following ​repeated Ukrainian drone attacks, three industry sources told Reuters. Russia ​introduced the diesel export ban on 8 July. One of the sources said extending ⁠the ban until the end of the year is also under discussion. Russia’s energy ministry ⁠did not respond to a Reuters request to comment.

For non-diesel fuels the ban extends to 31 January next year, including a ban for export of motor gasoline. Export of jet fuel is banned, for the moment, until the end of November 2026. To make matters worse for the Kremlin, Ukraine’s ⁠military struck Russia’s Afipsky oil ⁠refinery ⁠in ​the Krasnodar region ⁠overnight on Tuesday, causing a ⁠fire, the ​Ukrainian ‌general ‌staff said. The general staff also said ‌that two gas separation ​units at the Astrakhan gas ⁠processing plant in ​the Astrakhan ​region ​were hit ​in ‌an attack ​overnight ​on Monday.

Bradley Townsend, a 33-year-old fisher from Barnsley, South Yorkshire is believed to be the first British citizen to die fighting for Russia in its war against Ukraine, writes Raphael Boyd. He is believed to have been killed by a remote-controlled first-person-view drone near Lyman, a city in Donetsk, as long ago as 10 June. Tom Tugendhat, the former Conservative MP and security minister and ex-serviceman, expressed sympathies to thee family but added Townsend had been “unbelievably stupid” and “extremely misguided”. “No question about it, it’s criminal because you’re engaging in an army that is committing the most barbarous war crimes that the world has seen in decades.”

German investigators found a third drone and suspected military explosives thought to be connected to an attempted attack on Leipzig airport, local media reported. The drone was discovered in Kabelsketal, just to the west of the airport, along with about 50g (1.8oz) of a suspected military explosive on 14 August, 10 days after the unsuccessful sabotage, Kate Connolly reports. Leipzig airport is a cargo and military logistics hub used by Nato and Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines for transporting military supplies.

Sweden’s military meanwhile is moving to seize Russian-owned land near the Musko naval base in Stockholm’s archipelago. “The development of Russian drone warfare has changed the threat landscape for Sweden,” the armed forces said. “There is therefore a need to take measures to protect Sweden against the threat posed by both aerial and sea-going drones.”

Ukraine appears to be slowly losing the war against Russia, its ousted defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has told Reuters. Ukraine’s presidential office said in response that Fedorov had been positive about the conduct of the war when in office and the only thing that had changed was his personal status. Fedorov said Ukraine still had “every chance” to win but urgently needed a plan in the next few months to ⁠end the war. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on the weekend that Fedorov’s spending decisions had left a $27bn hole in the defence ministry budget and no way to fill it. Fedorov has denied the figure.

National and Labour have passed government back and forth for years but many voters are no longer content with politics as usual

For decades, Mattie Wall mainly voted for Labour, one of New Zealand’s two major political parties. A former diplomat and project manager, the South Island-based retiree felt that the party with working class origins aligned with what was important to her: a thriving country, and the environment.

This year she is among the New Zealanders who are peeling away from the Labour and National parties – which swing in and out of power every few terms – to vote for an untested party that has never held a parliamentary seat.

A total of 17 people have now been arrested over Saturday’s crash in which car drove wrong way along dual carriageway

Five more people have been arrested by detectives investigating a crash that killed seven people, including two police officers.

PC Matthew Blades, 37, and PC Tom Clough, 38, were killed on Saturday when a Volkswagen Passat, which had been pursued by police, was driven the wrong way down the A66 near Middlesbrough and hit their marked armed response vehicle.

There are countless initiatives around the world that can inspire people and spur them into action. Amid the devastation of the climate crisis, our journalists strive to highlight these stories of hope

• Climate campaign 2026: help us reach 30,000 acts of support

The news is very often about the bad things (especially if you’re on the Guardian’s environment desk). Wildfires, floods, tipping points, billionaires making huge profits and buying themselves island refuges for the apocalypse … And yet, ticking along beside that is the steady pulse of what the rest of humanity is doing in response to the climate crisis. From housing developments with no cars to buildings made out of hemp, all over the planet people are ploughing ahead and changing their neighbourhoods and cities and the world.

But as news stories typically need to be about new developments or things people didn’t previously know about, it can be hard to cover all those brilliant initiatives being undertaken in the background – no matter how cheering they are. Which is why, back in 2023, we decided to ignore the usual rules about what constitutes “news” and start writing about them anyway. Readers, we knew, would like to hear about them.

Climate campaign 2026: help us reach 30,000 acts of support

Robert Corrigan has been dealing with the ‘smart’ rodents all his life – and believes there are better solutions to deal with the growing infestation in the world’s cities

“The rodents have paid for every single bill I’ve ever had – every mortgage, every car payment, every pint of Guinness,” says Dr Robert Corrigan. “It’s been a great ride and I’m still at it.”

New York-based Corrigan is one of the most respected voices in the world of rodentology. Now in his 70s, he has devoted his entire adult life to studying rats and our relationship with them.

Exclusive: Economic harm of CO2 pollution from Rosebank and Jackdaw forecast to far outweigh any boost to UK

The climate damage caused by developing the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields under consideration by the UK government would destroy their economic benefits many times over, according to an analysis.

It estimates the economic damage caused by the carbon pollution from the oil and gas produced would be between £119bn and £336bn in the coming decades, compared with the £28.7bn in value to the UK estimated by Adura, the fossil fuel company promoting the new fields.

A local initiative is testing simple ways to stop algal blooms in the River Fal threatening some of England’s most biodiverse marine habitats

On a rocky beach in Cornwall, a group of wetsuit-clad freedivers and snorkellers are wading into the shallows. Below St Mawes Castle, built by Henry VIII to defend Falmouth harbour, they disappear in a swish of florescent pink and green fins.

They are volunteers, trained by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust to use underwater cameras and floating GPS devices to detect changes in marine habitats over time.

Two volunteers, Simon Tagney and Max Behnert, prepare to survey the seabed beneath the 16th-century St Mawes Castle. Photograph: Luke Gartside/The Guardian

Scientists say research suggests blinking may have acquired a social relevance in interactions between dogs and people

Stare into a dog’s eyes and you may encounter a bemused expression. But researchers have found that dogs blink more often when they see their owners doing so, suggesting there may be more to the mutual gaze than meets the eye.

Scientists have previously found that dogs turn on the puppy eyes when humans look at them, and that their brains can distinguish happy human faces from other expressions – even telling apart fearful faces from those that are angry or sad.

Exclusive: Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire sites predicted to emit 4.5m tonnes a year when fully running

The carbon emissions from just two planned datacentres in England will exceed all of the fossil fuel company ExxonMobil’s UK emissions, analysis has revealed.

Experts have said this demonstrates the “serious threat” datacentres pose to the UK’s legally binding climate goals.

Anthony Seldon’s book alleges Badenoch asked fellow Tory ministers ‘if anyone was interested in changing the captain’

Kemi Badenoch plotted with fellow Conservative cabinet ministers to remove Rishi Sunak as prime minister months before the general election, it has been claimed.

Anthony Seldon, who has written political biographies of every prime minister since John Major, has alleged in a new book that Badenoch, who was business secretary at the time, phoned several other cabinet ministers to ask “if anyone was interested in changing the captain”.

Podcast co-host says tongue-in-cheek that ex-Manchester United captain would like to sign up for his show

With an all-conquering podcast empire and a new deal that will make his football punditry show a regular fixture on Netflix, there seems little left for Gary Lineker to wish for.

However, while the former Match of the Day presenter is full of praise for Alan Shearer and Micah Richards – the fellow pundits on his The Rest Is Football show – Lineker has admitted to admiring a combative figure playing for his main rivals.

Ottawa’s ‘focused response’ to levies imposed by Donald Trump on Canadian products comes after trade talks collapsed last week

• US politics live – latest updates

Canada has announced it will impose tariffs on a wide range of key American industries including cosmetics, dairy, wood products and outdoor equipment in the coming weeks, as it retaliates roughly “dollar for dollar” against levies imposed by the US.

In a strong Canadian countermove to tariffs levied by Donald Trump, which took effect on Saturday after trade talks collapsed the day before, Canada’s finance and industry ministers on Tuesday called the measure a “focused response” to what they see as unfair trade practices.

Number of people killed in boat strikes rises to 227 since Trump administration began controversial campaign

The US military killed four people when it attacked a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea on Tuesday as the Trump administration’s controversial campaign against alleged traffickers continues.

The latest attack brings the number of those killed in boat strikes by the US military to at least 227 in 68 strikes since the US began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” almost a year ago.

Gang leader threatens to kill hostages after attack in Kenscoff in which homes were also set alight

• ‘A massacre’: Haiti gangs carrying out mass killings

At least 47 people were killed and more than 50 others kidnapped when armed men attacked a once peaceful community near Haiti’s capital at the weekend, the UN has said.

A gang leader has threatened to kill the hostages if authorities kill any gang members as they try to secure the community of Kenscoff, nestled in the hills above Port-au-Prince.

Unannounced trip reported by US media is said to be Ratcliffe’s first known visit to Russia as CIA chief

The CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has made an unannounced visit to Moscow, US media reported, after flight data showed an American military aircraft flew to the Russian capital, where a US diplomatic motorcade was later spotted.

CBS News quoted sources familiar with the situation as confirming Ratcliffe’s trip, saying it was his first known visit to Russia as CIA chief. Axios separately confirmed the visit, quoting a US official.

Oliver Blume faces workforce at German HQ as carmaker struggles against Chinese competition and US tariffs

The chief executive of Volkswagen has faced boos and whistles of protest at the company’s headquarters after telling thousands of workers that a comprehensive reorganisation, which could include job losses and factory closures, is vital for its future.

As Oliver Blume urged more than 10,000 workers on Tuesday to “pull together”, saying drastic restructuring measures at the struggling manufacturer were essential, they held up banners and shouted slogans, including: “Our jobs are not your balance sheet adjustments”.

Bitcoin rises above $80,000 for the first time since May amid uncertainty over US fiscal plans

Gold prices hit their highest level in more than three months on Tuesday as continued conflict in the Middle East and ongoing political uncertainty fuelled the latest rally in the precious metal.

Gold is viewed as a safe haven by investors and its price tends to rise at times of uncertainty.

Also: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed his surprising sympathy over the construction of datacenters across the country

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you from a sunny park in New York City, which was supposed to endure rain all weekend but in fact delivered the best weather of the year.

‘We are hitting a different chapter’: OpenAI leader warns of threat of ‘persistent’ AI cyber-attacks

OpenAI announces slowing pace of development after hack by rogue agent

OpenAI launches ChatGPT for Teens with stronger safeguards

‘Digging the grave of my profession’: the Hollywood creatives training AI to do their jobs

Will AI give you the job? Automated hiring tools spark discrimination and secrecy lawsuits

After more than 15 years of laptops in the classroom, do Australian schools need a rethink?

Crypto bank part-owned by Trump family offers depositors way to ‘gain favor’ with White House, experts say

Did someone wearing Meta Glasses film you today? Are you sure?

Danish toymaker also scores success with KPop Demon Hunters, Star Wars and botanicals products

Lego sales have risen by more than a fifth as tie-ups with the football World Cup, Formula One and the hit film KPop Demon Hunters as well as its flower-based and Star Wars kits drive demand.

The toymaker said its revenues had increased by 21% to 41.9bn Danish kroner (£4.8bn) in the first six months of 2026, driven by strong growth in the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions, offsetting stalled sales in China.

A terminally ill woman makes a final trip to Egypt in an exquisitely wrought portrait of end-of-life reckoning

Virginia Woolf said of Middlemarch that it is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people. In the shallow and infantilising age through which we are living, Colin Thubron dares to assume that his readers are adults. Passage is a very beautiful, very moving, authentic work of art. Hardly more than a novella, it sits lightly in the hand, but its emotional and aesthetic weight overtips the balance.

Thubron began his career as a travel writer and a large part of the action of Passage is set in a vividly but economically evoked Egypt. This is not the teeming Egypt of Cairo or Alexandria, but of the countryside, the villages, and the great immemorial tombs and ancient monuments. The best travel writers know that “abroad” is most convincingly evoked not by awed exclamations at the world’s wonders, but by an attitude of relaxed familiarity. Thubron is obviously an old Egypt hand, or at least has the skill to convince us that he is.

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
This motormouth Australian comic fires off tart remarks and home truths then explains why she over-identifies with the Titanic

‘No hugging, no learning” was the writers’ rule on Seinfeld. Jess Fuchs decrees a similar stricture for Feral, in which she will learn nothing about herself whatsoever. “Really, I’m just here to talk shit.” That might get proceedings off to an underwhelming start, save that the Aussie’s cynical shtick is delivered with tremendous oomph: a bracing celebration of unsentimentality from an act who tells it straight about her body, her single life and a trip to Ireland, where she finds her soulmate in the form of a long-sunk ship.

It’s one of those debuts that announces a fully formed standup, a cert to be in for the long haul. Cocooned in black feathers, Fuchs is an effervescing chatterbox of a comic, firing off tart remarks, home truths and off-colour comments in every direction. Arrogant yet quick to laugh at herself, the audience love her, as she pursues a Bridgerton-inspired breast enlargement, expounds on “pretty privilege” and writhes in horror at the thought of dating a 45-year-old man (she’s 32). Her mum and sister play entertaining offstage roles, and there’s a wickedly unexpected joke about the relative merits, when dating, of seeking consent versus reading the room.

This moreish show about a do-gooder keen to save the day stars Hugo Weaving and The Pitt’s Shabana Azeez … and it’s pressure-packed from the get-go

Hugo Weaving plays the eponymous airport chaplain in this pacy and moreish eight-part series, which was co-created by Elise McCredie and Jude Troy, and directed with jittery flair by Bonnie Moir and Tig Terera. In case you were wondering, yes, that profession really does exist.

I doubt the lives of real airport chaplains are anywhere near as frenetic as those of this show’s protagonist, Tobias Wallace (Weaving), whose existence is a testament to that old saying: “Not all heroes wear capes.” Sometimes, they wear hi-vis.

The extraordinary fate of eight people trapped above a chasm in Pakistan makes for a tense, skilfully assembled survival story with unexpected flashes of comedy

Survival documentaries are a weird little genre of nonfiction film-making that recount the stories of accidents and natural catastrophes – and more often than not, the daring rescues of people caught up in them. Eyewitnesses and the loved ones of those endangered are top of the interview list, to keep the sense of danger and emotional stakes at the top of everyone’s mind. Survivors can also have their say, and more adventurous film-makers might care to recreate the action with actors or the actual survivors themselves.

This account of how eight people – six teenage boys and two adult men – were left suspended over a chasm in northern Pakistan in 2023, when a wire on the cable car they were travelling on broke, is a pretty conventional example of the form. For obvious reasons, no one tries to recreate the situation, but since it was quite recent there is no shortage of news footage and amateur clips to fill out the particulars. The downside of doing a story that’s so recent is that some of the audience may remember what happened anyway, but still there’s plenty of nail-nibbling suspense here, and sequences that will give anyone with acrophobia the heebie jeebies – especially the drone shots that zoom close on the terrified faces of those trapped inside the dangling car.

A documentary series gains impressive access to the detectives who have been hunting for the killer since 2019. Plus: Mark Gatiss returns as a bookish postwar sleuth. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Channel 4
The 2019 murder of the journalist Lyra McKee in Derry was a grim reminder that, while the Troubles are in abeyance, it’s still a stretch to describe them as being over. Filmed across seven years, this three-part documentary gains impressive access to the detectives hunting for Lyra’s killer. It’s intense and gripping: the team struggle to persuade any witnesses (there were more than 150) to come forward and gradually realise that they are, in fact, investigating the leadership of the New IRA. Phil Harrison

The seventh in the series takes longstanding lead gangster Tate, played to the hilt as always by Craig Fairbrass, to the White Isle to knock some heads together

The seventh instalment in this seemingly never-ending series opens with a line of voiceover from star Craig Fairbrass, summarising forthcoming proceedings nicely: “They killed my best friend, now they all have to die.” The real-life hardman Pat Tate might have been murdered in his 30s in Essex in 1995, but that hasn’t proved a setback for his invincible fictionalised counterpart, played to the hilt throughout the entire franchise with hard-headed gusto by Fairbrass. In this one, Tate is in Ibiza, but rather than larging it, he’s intent on tracking down his enemies and exacting the titular retribution. Various arms dealers, guns for hire and, perhaps more unexpectedly, the CIA, provide a bit of grit in the oyster.

The director here is series veteran Nick Nevern, having appeared in ROTF: Marbella in 2019, and stepped up to the director’s chair for 2023’s ROTF: Vengeance. Retribution is at its best when engaged in stylised slow-motion action sequences that play out like The Untouchables, if The Untouchables had a soundtrack influenced by Paul Oakenfold and was made on about 100th of the budget. Dialogue is not its strong point, and is mostly made up of interchangeable gangster film cliches. (It’s all, “These are very serious people” and “You remind me so much of her”.) You may not be ponying up to watch a Footsoldier movie on the basis that you’ll be hearing curlicued witticisms worthy of Oscar Wilde, but it is possible to write gangster-speak with a bit more zest. Even Nick Love’s The Business gave us: “The geezer was so hard even his nightmares were scared of him.”

The oberek is a traditional dance beloved of state folk ensembles – but a new generation of musicians is reconfiguring its music into wild new forms, merging folk steps with electronics and the sound of Chicago footwork

It’s 6pm on the first day of OFF festival in Katowice, and a crowd is gathering in front of one of the stages to watch newcomers Tercet Imperial. Sporting disco outfits of nylon jackets, tracksuits and Chicago Bulls caps, keyboardist Piotr Zabrodzki deploys resonant acid melodies, while drummer Jan Emil Młynarski plays a rapid, irregular rhythm that brings to mind the scattergun beats of footwork, the ghetto-house subgenre that grew out of Chicago in the late 90s.

Not many of those jerking their limbs to the music in front of the stage are likely to realise that they are listening to a distinctly Polish sound: that of the oberek, a traditional dance in triple metre whose name derives from the Polish verb “to spin”, because it usually accompanies couples whirling across dancefloors in a circular motion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A brilliant new biography that does it subject the favour of taking her seriously – even if few else did

Barbara Cartland was famous for dictating her novels. With a pekingese clamped to her hot pink bosom she would lie back on a library couch and exhale a story about virginal girls taming wayward dukes, damaged airmen or misunderstood surgeons. Meanwhile Miss Savory, Mrs Smith or Mrs Morgan, picked for being unfidgety and sneezeless, would take everything down in immaculate Pitman shorthand. Cartland reckoned on being able to polish off 8,000 words a day. “In this way,” she told one of the many reporters who quizzed her on her astonishing productivity, “the typescript for an 80,000-word novel is finished in a fortnight.” At her peak she was pushing out 23 books a year which added up to 723 in total. Only Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare topped her lifetime sales of 750m.

Cartland was a dictator in other ways, too. Husbands, dogs, houses and the local council were all expected to bend themselves to her indomitable will. Resistance, let alone opposition, was futile. The managing director of the company that printed her books suggested that she read Nietzsche on the perceptive grounds that they had a lot of ideas in common. Oddly, he also declared himself madly in love with her. Behind that marshmallowy exterior, all pink chiffon, candyfloss hair and soft, smudgy lines, there lurked sinews of high-tensile steel.

A writer and activist links the climate crisis to battles for justice around the world in this vital book

It has become increasingly difficult to change our minds, to question our own views or to find common ground with people we disagree with, all of which makes Natasha Walter’s new book both refreshing and exhilarating.

In her ebullient 1998 debut The New Feminism, Walter hailed Margaret Thatcher as a trailblazer. In this fiercer, bleaker work, she rips into the “glossy language of aspiration feminism”, “the message that the individual woman can do anything she wants if she only has the necessary courage”. That kind of feminism inspired an “explosion of books and films about pioneers and heroines, about bossy women and gutsy girls” which retold the feminist story as “a succession of isolated campaigns, led by outsize individuals”.

The American poet and essayist weaves memoir, fiction, criticism and lyrical lament into a tale of friendship in an age of existential crisis

“Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental,” writes the multi-award winning Jamaican-American poet, essayist and playwright Claudia Rankine in the disclaimer to her latest work. “Unless it isn’t.” The pretzel-logic of this statement, its assertive ambiguity, sets the tone for a book that digs directly into the question of what we are to do with the idea of truth, when the world we live in is asking us “to hold, visually and emotionally, realities we do not yet have a viable system of language for”. In Triage, Rankine borrows from her personal history and from a world whose landscape now encompasses “the rise of fascism, the implementation through deportations of the Great Replacement theory, the starvation of devastated populations subjected to war and climate change”, and uses the material she gathers to pose a simple question. When faced with realities such as these, what do you do? Do you stand, or do you fall?

The book begins with a friendship. Two young people – our narrator, and another she refers to only as “the theorist” – meet in college in the late 20th century, and are drawn to each other. They’re passionate; they’re idealistic; they’re committed to the activism of the time (“shantytowns were built on campus to protest apartheid South Africa”) and steeped in the texts and authors and philosophical conceits of the humanities. Over time, they develop a game. “When we spied each other during the day,” the narrator explains, “we had to collapse.”

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

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

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

Developer Patrick Grant was born in Australia and lives in New Zealand, but a childhood of British TV inspired him to set a comedy game in a bleak vision of the north

Something is amiss in the dingy town of Slagford, and curious scamp Pip Bunting is the only one who can find out what. So quit your mithering, it’s time to discover just how grim it truly is up north.

A Pocket Full of Slagford is an upcoming retro-styled 3D puzzle adventure game set in a surreal alternative-reality near-future northern England that never escaped the clutches of Thatcherism. The story follows the misadventures of a young local lad from the eponymous Slagford after he takes ownership of a mysterious relic that lets him wreak havoc on reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edinburgh comedies by Whisper Theatre, Lightning Rod Special and Olaf Falafel are exploring what it’s like to be a dad, from the hilarious and melancholic to the devastatingly accurate cringe

In a historic masonic lodge in Edinburgh’s New Town I find myself raising my hand. The call has gone out for fathers in the audience and I join our hosts, Dick and Dale, along with another volunteer on stage. It’s just us four guys at a campsite, practising trick shots with a baseball, busting some moves and shooting the breeze. But bubbling underneath is an existential crisis.

This is Well-Balanced Dads, from Chicago’s Whisper Theatre Collective, created by Dick and Dale themselves – AKA Richie Schiraldi and Britt Anderson. They’re sporting headbands, bum bags and tank tops blazoned with “Best. Dad. Ever”, each with a different back print – one’s a power drill, the other’s a barbecue. Both have bushy moustaches and they supply us volunteers with our own. There are bursts of classic rock – Foghat, Kenny Loggins, Creedence Clearwater Revival – as we join them on a road trip and other volunteers are cast as hitchhikers.

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
With icky and edgy jokes, the comedian offers an authentic inquiry into her childhood in her sophomore show

A standup’s debut show usually tells us who they are, then with their follow-up, they branch out. Kemah Bob has done things the other way around. After 2024’s Miss Fortunate, a wild shaggy dog story about a disastrous trip to Thailand, she now delivers that delayed “this is me” set, an open-hearted inquiry into how she got here and her origins as the child of a poor black family, the descendants of slavery, in the southern US.

That inquiry is prompted by misgivings on Bob’s part, coolly laid out here, about her career in comedy – which she loves, but worries is infantilising, and (see the receipts from that successful last fringe run) financially precarious. Is she leading a grownup life – or should she start doing so? There’s a thinking-aloud authenticity to that exploration that is very endearing in Love Child. Her audience cheerfully used as a sounding board, she casts her gaze back across generations of Bobs, and her own journey to the UK, to work out what life she ought now to lead.

At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 30 August

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Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh
Cheka considers her tendency to ‘live life like a joke’ in a frank hour, with her frustrations leaving a lasting impression

Kate Cheka wasn’t supposed to be here. After her debut hour two years ago, she swore she would never do the fringe again. But now she’s back, mic in hand and eight months pregnant, walking us through her life’s greatest romantic escapades, from Marseille to Texas and Nepal to Berlin. She does it all with mountains of energy – if you thought the fringe was exhausting at the best of times, just imagine doing all this with a baby on board.

But, as she will tell us later, maybe there’s a reason she wants to give everything she has to her last pre-birth show. In an hour that’s more storytelling than laugh-out-loud standup, she weaves in political eye-rolls, thoughts on the rise of the far right and her tendency to date white men with access to property.

Zoo Southside, Edinburgh
A handstand artist and a juggler slide, toss, stack and stand on umpteen glasses without a drop of wine in sight

This Swedish circus two-hander begins with the performers offstage, and what sounds like the high-pitched notes of a glass harp. But the wine glasses here – first six of them, then dozens – are used for acrobatic tricks rather than music.

Stina Otterström is a handstand artist, Arttu Lahtinen is a juggler. Together, they execute a series of increasingly fiddly, full-bodied duets. Otterström’s strength is immediately contrasted with the fragility of this most familiar, yet hazardous, of props. Her first inversions involve holding the stems between her toes, passing them from one foot to the other, or balancing their bases on her soles. Lahtinen gives us variations on the tablecloth pull-trick and the buzz wire game, balancing glasses on planks of wood that he glides perilously close around Otterström’s body. Empty glasses are expertly slid, tossed, stacked and stood upon. Have we no wine here?

At Zoo Southside, Edinburgh, until 30 August

All our Edinburgh festival reviews

Ben Marcin’s stunning photographs show lone houses, derelict homes and makeshift camps that stand as epitaphs to past lives and offer insight into how Americans on the margins live

British film-maker and director of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy who was described by Alec Guinness as having ‘balls behind the camera’

Bouncing from war zone reportage to cold war espionage, Hollywood horror to Sherwood Forest swashbuckler, Harold Pinter to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the director John Irvin, who has died aged 86, was nothing if not eclectic.

“I’m a bit split,” he said. “I like playing with expensive toys, yet I also like the miniatures. I hate being pigeonholed, and I like to do the unexpected.”

Comedian returns in new film, adding a retired US general to a list of pranked celebrities that include Buzz Aldrin and Donald Trump

The first full trailer for Ali G: Who Iz I? has been released online, revealing some of the escapades and pranks – and their victims – that will appear in the second feature-length comedy starring the academically challenged west Staines rudeboy character created and played by Sacha Baron Cohen.

Sporting new dreadlocks but still wearing the clothing that was favoured by young white Britons copying US hip-hop and Black streetwear fashions in the 00s, Ali is back to contend with the issues of the day – as well as the pregnancy of his long-term girlfriend, Julie. In the 20 years since the character has been away, he says that “the world went to crap: there was Covid, wars and Ed Sheeran”.

Wanda and Marion Wulz defied the unbridled patriarchy of fascist Italy by shooting dancers, fencers and other famous women – as well as their cat Mucincina

‘In those fascist times,” says Federica Muzzarelli of Italy in the 1920s and 30s, “women were not free. They were regarded as mothers and homemakers. But the Wulz sisters were determined to create their own destiny. They chose photography as a way of being independent – and to show through their images that women could live that way.”

Muzzarelli is the curator of Wanda and Marion Wulz: Avant-Garde Photography in 20th Century Italy, a show about to open at the Estorick Collection in London. The Wulz sisters experimented with blended and altered images more than half a century before Photoshop was invented. The most famous image to emerge from their studio was I + Cat, a self-portrait of Wanda superimposed on the face of the family pet. But the show aims to cast Marion in a new light, showing that she was no mere assistant, but rather equal to her sister in terms of photography, as they championed feminism in fascist Italy, keeping the idea of women’s emancipation alive at a time of unbridled patriarchal ideology.

Discussing people’s bodies can be fraught. We asked eating disorder experts how to do so – or not – responsibly

In the age of Ozempic and people being open about plastic surgery, discussion about people’s bodies is rife. At the same time, nobody seems quite sure how to talk about them, as shown by recent coverage of celebrities like Ariana Grande.

It is a fraught topic. We asked eating disorder experts for guidelines to follow when talking about other people’s bodies, and how to do so without doing harm.

Serve this cold curry with a hot, fenugreek-flavoured preserve for a seasonal refresher

This lovely summery “curry” is a cold, refreshing dish from Karnataka in India, and is eaten widely in Tamil Nadu, just 20 miles across the Palk Strait from my ancestral Tamil homeland in north and eastern Sri Lanka. Along with chefs Louis and Seb in our development kitchen, we decided that smacking the cucumbers helps give them a silky texture, and means the fragrant yoghurt base can get into all the nooks and crannies. It’s wonderful with plain rice and a side of fenugreek-heavy hot Tamil pickle, made with English gooseberries rather than superfood nelli, both of which are said to make your skin shine and hair bouncy.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food, and the basic they scrimp on? The former reality star and author talks family heirlooms, organic veg and splurge-worthy jeans with the Filter

• How I Shop with Fred Sirieix

Millie Mackintosh rose to fame as part of the original cast of the reality show Made in Chelsea, filming five series before leaving in 2013. She has since established herself as a fitness, health and beauty ambassador, releasing her own beauty collection with Boots in 2017, and publishing Made: A Book of Style, Food and Fitness.

After choosing to go alcohol-free, she shared her journey in the bestselling Bad Drunk, co-written with Dr Ellie Cannon. Mackintosh speaks candidly about the realities of motherhood, mental health and self-care on Instagram.

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

• Sustainable cleaning subscriptions that make life easier

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

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

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

• The best LED face masks

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

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

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

• The best supermarket mayonnaise

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

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

Sauces, reductions, deglazing: our expert panel has plenty of options for making the most of undrunk vino – whether you’ve got just a capful or a whole carafe to get through

What can I do with wine left over from a party?
Rob, by email
This is a novel concept, perhaps, but the answer essentially comes down to the quantity: “If we’re talking dribbles of red or white, that’s simple,” says Jon Atashroo, head chef/owner of Where There’s Smoke in North Yorkshire. “They go into sauces, whether that’s for pasta or to deglaze a pan before making a gravy.” Joe Otway, chef/co-owner of Higher Ground in Manchester, couldn’t agree more: “Reducing wine, be it white or red, in the base of anything is generally a good idea.” Take something tomato-based, such as ragu or chilli, as an example: “Once you’ve sweated the vegetables and there’s caramelisation on the bottom of the pan, a glass of red wine will add acidity, depth and sweetness.” And remember, you can always freeze wine dregs for later use: simply pour into ice-cube trays and stash.

Moving on to medium amounts, we’re talking “stewy, fish-type things”, Atashroo says, perhaps moules marinière. Another good option is pickling: “A basic recipe is one part caster sugar, one part white-wine vinegar and one part white wine. And if you’re pickling something like beetroot, cook it in that mix, while if you’re using cucumbers, say, they go in cold.” That said, a current Atashroo go-to is altogether sweeter: “Weigh some red wine, though I don’t see why it wouldn’t work with white wine, too, add 20% of its weight in sugar, and reduce to a syrup – you’re looking for the consistency of strawberry sauce.” The result is complex and acidic, “almost like reduced port”, and great for drizzling over vanilla ice-cream. While we’re talking desserts, few things are better than fruit (peaches, figs, pears) poached in wine, either.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Research shows young adults often feel isolated. So alongside embracing ‘grandma hobbies’, they want to get involved with the places they live and be good neighbours

Name: Community-maxxing.

Age: The portmanteau is recent, but Homo sapiens have always been social creatures.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We want our balance back, but we can’t access the money to pay for essential repairs and settle an electricity bill

Last November, Lloyds Bank informed me, in my role as treasurer of my parish church, that the church account was to be closed and that I should open a new business account instead. This can only be done online, but a fault with their system prevented me – and local branch staff – from doing so.

At the branch staff’s suggestion, I opened the new account with a different bank in early March. Since then, I’ve been trying in vain to get Lloyds to transfer the balance from the closed account.

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

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

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

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

• Students on their biggest financial shocks

• The best student deals and discounts

• An insider’s tips on student money

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

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

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

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

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

Creatine has become the go-to supplement for anyone wanting to give their fitness a boost and build muscle. It’s even made it out of the gym, with influencers touting its cognitive benefits. But what’s the science behind creatine, and does the evidence stack up? Madeleine Finlay hears from science editor Ian Sample and Dr Justin Roberts, professor of nutritional physiology at Anglia Ruskin University

Is it true that … we should all be taking creatine?

Athletes and fitness influencers use creatine, but what is it? And does it work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From smoked kippers in Northumberland to dolphin spotting in Dorset and a palm-fringed village on a sea loch in the Scottish Highlands

The historic harbour is the hub of this working East Neuk fishing port, home to a fleet of about 30 small trawlers and creel boats. Their catches are sold at the covered market on the quay each weekday morning, and served at the harbourside Dory Bistro and Chip Ahoy at the Larachmhor pub. Pittenweem (which means “place of the cave”) also has a Victorian-era swimming pool next to the beach, which is filled by the tide twice a day. After falling into disrepair, it was saved by a local group called the West Braes Project and reopened in 2021, along with the crazy golf course. Early each August, there is an annual arts festival with exhibits by nearly 200 artists in harbourside spaces, heritage buildings, homes and studios. Pittenweem is flanked by two other pretty harbour villages, St Monans and Anstruther, while a third, Crail, is a little further north; the Fife Coastal Path links them all. The Bank in Anstruther has harbour-view rooms (doubles from £120 B&B).

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

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

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

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

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

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

Name: “Parisians out!”

Age: It officially commenced at the start of August.

From bowl cuts to extreme mullets, punk dos to bad dye jobs, a terrible hairstyle can never be forgotten – even decades after it has grown out

It’s the late 1990s. Big, round, feathered fringes are a huge deal at my primary school. Most of my friends have one, influenced by Britney Spears or Emma Bunton. I, too, have a fringe. Mine, as you can see, appears more inspired by Kevin Keegan circa 1993.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

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

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

MVRDV – the firm behind Marble Arch Mound – says Rotterdam ROCKS! will inspire visitors to live sustainably. But in an era when the greenest building is the one that already exists, this tottering cairn looks set to misfire

‘It looks like something Shrek would throw up,” sniffed one online commentator, unflatteringly comparing Rotterdam ROCKS!, the recently unveiled proposal for a waterfront site in Europe’s largest port, with the vomitings of a cartoon ogre. Designed by Dutch architectural firm MVRDV, which gave London the supremely underwhelming Marble Arch Mound in 2021, Rotterdam ROCKS! (the use of EMPHATIC CAPITALS connoting an in-your-face energy) is the winner of a major architectural competition intended to create “a new world wonder”.

But instead of a modern Hanging Gardens of Babylon or contemporary Colossus of Rhodes, MVRDV’s super slick renderings depict a pile of artificial “rocks” (or ROCKS!) stacked together in a humongously scaled tottering cairn, wreathed in suspiciously luxuriant foliage and sluiced by a preposterous waterfall.

North Shields’ Gabriele Keenaghan was 12 when she was evacuated from Nazi Austria in 1939. She remembers the shock of leaving her family at Westbahnhof station

Gabriele Keenaghan still remembers the day in April 1939 when she said goodbye to her grandmother at a Vienna railway station for a Kindertransport to Britain – tears were strictly forbidden.

“I was apprehensive and I was worried because Nazis in black uniforms were on the platform,” she said. “I was only 12 years old so I think they were frightening … terrifying.

Hundreds of millions of pounds of dirty money are being deposited at post offices every year. So why are the police reluctant to investigate the scale of the problem?

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Leicestershire police won’t say who first told them about Jigar Gheewala, but you can see why, once they had heard of him, they decided to find out more. Gheewala was unemployed, had no apparent income, yet lived in a £1.3m house and sent his three children to private school. “He was a declared bankrupt, with a bank account that was absolutely not reflective of what it should be,” said financial crime supervisor Laura Panter of Leicestershire police’s economic crime team. “That was our starting point.”

Over the course of 2020, despite being on benefits, Gheewala’s bank account received more than £880,000 in cash in 200 different deposits. He was, it turned out, a money launderer, but not the kind you’ll see in the movies. Gheewala’s deposits had been made not in Liechtenstein or on Grand Cayman, but at various post office branches in Leicester, one thick wodge of banknotes after another.

We would like to hear your tributes and memories of country music star, actor and philanthropist Dolly Parton – whether you met her, or appreciated her work

The death of country music legend Dolly Parton was announced today. She was 80.

The singer-songwriter known for hits such as I Will Always Love You, Jolene and 9 to 5 also invested millions in child literacy, Covid-19 vaccine development and other causes.

As people grow used to AI chatbots, we’d like to hear your views about Google’s search engine

Google has put artificial intelligence at the front and center of its search bar. The most-visited site on the internet still shows the same list of links to users, but they have to scroll past a summarized response from an AI chatbot, a feature Google calls AI Overviews. The change to what was once the gateway to the rest of the internet has been profound, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting.

“AI is driving the most significant upgrade of the Google Search experience ever,” Liz Reid, Google’s vice-president of search, wrote last August. In May, the company said more AI is coming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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