At this point of the crisis in our relations with the natural world, we’ve got to protect these creatures – and we are running out of time

• Read more from the Guardian’s invertebrate of the year 2026

Too many animals are regarded as “bugs”. And, if anything is a bug, it is a short step to it becoming a “pest”. Too many of us have a learned fear – it’s not innate – of anything with six legs or antennae.

I’m a big fan of the invertebrates and I love the Guardian’s invertebrate of the year competition because it focuses people’s attention on the little things rather than the typical animal superstars – the pandas, tigers and orangutans. In their diversity and varied ecology, the million-plus invertebrates on our planet often lead far more intricate and interesting lives than large animals with spines, like us. We urgently need to generate a much broader awareness of their beauty and importance. All these small creatures are as integral a part of our ecosystems as the fluffy things that we may want to put on our calendars.

On its anniversary, the author of a new book about the album explains the complex legacy and masterful musicianship of the 1986 classic

It was the summer of 1984 and things weren’t going well for Paul Simon. The year prior, a blockbuster Simon and Garfunkel tour ended in bickering. Meanwhile, even though the 1980 single Late in the Evening reached the US Top 10, Simon’s last two albums had not sold very well, and his marriage to Carrie Fisher was starting to unravel. In the midst of all that the 43-year-old folk icon was steadily working on building a beach home out on the far end of Long Island.

Many of Simon’s pilgrimages from Manhattan out to Montauk were soundtracked by a bootleg tape of accordion-heavy mbaqanga, a South African music style with jazz rhythms and bright guitar chords, he had received from a friend. It was on those drives that the seeds of Graceland, the crown jewel of Simon’s discography, were planted. “Many of us, in that day and age, found a moment of self-reflection – of being able to go deep inside ourselves – when we were in the car on these road trips,” said Ashley Kahn, whose new book, Days of Miracle and Wonder, follows the gestation process of Graceland. “If it wasn’t the radio, it was cassettes.”

The overpopulation of axis deer has taken an environmental toll, but Maui Nui Venison sees it as a resource instead of a pest

In 1868, the government of Hong Kong gave eight axis deer to Hawaii’s King Kamehameha V. They were a beautiful gift, these creatures that hail from south Asia, with their honey-colored pelts marked by a smattering of white spots. But their incursion into Maui started much later, in the 1950s, when they were brought to the island for recreational hunters.

Now, more than a century after their introduction, an estimated 60,000 traverse the Hawaiian islands of Lanai, Maui and Molokai in herds that are reshaping the environment. Unlike the white-tailed deer common along the US east coast, whose breeding season lasts from October to January, axis deer breed year-round. Their herds are constantly reduplicating. They feast on native grasses and endangered plants, chewing them down to their roots, leaving wide swathes of lands fallow. They can leap 10ft over fencing or barrel through it, consuming farmers’ crops and the cattle feed needed for Maui’s small beef industry.

From feelgood romances to heated interactions, here are the films that best capture the seasonal moment

Let’s begin at the end. 2 September 1962: the final night of the summer vacation; one last big blowout before adult life intervenes. George Lucas’s rambunctious salute to footloose youth paints vivid vignettes of Modesto, California, rocking around the clock with its loose-knit gaggle of characters. But this has one eye on the meter and knows that time is running short.

Pádraig has a favourite side, whereas Dave likes to sleep farthest from the door. Help us put this argument to bed
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

I sleep better on the left side of the bed. I shouldn’t have to swap just because we’ve moved to a new flat

A young activist thought her father’s disapproval of her leftwing views was purely political. Then one evening, a kiss goodbye sent her on a remarkable journey that continues today

• Last chance to buy the summer issue of The Long Read magazine, now with 15% off. Click here to order

As a child, Analía Azic used to pretend she was secretly a princess, the heiress to a magical distant kingdom. In real life, she was the daughter of a greengrocer named Juan Antonio Azic and a demure housewife named Esther Abrego. The family lived in the province of Buenos Aires, which, as anyone from the area will tell you with a dash of pride, is not the city of Buenos Aires but its rougher neighbour. Analía was not royalty, but she had an iron will and audacity out of proportion to her small stature.

Analía cared little for grades at the Ladies Institute of the Sacred Heart, where she rolled with the dominantes, girls who hiked their school skirts up so high they served as little more than belts, and dreamed of the weekend when they could finally trade in their school uniforms for designer jeans and tight tank tops and sashay into Electric Circus, the one local club that allowed in minors. There, Analía would climb atop the speakers and dance, then leap back down to toy with the boys from the Argentine air force’s technical trade school.

Exclusive: Bridget Phillipson says politicians have helped fuel hatred and that police are not taking violence against women and girls seriously enough

Racism and sexism have become normalised in Britain, the equalities minister has said, as she warned that young men were being sucked into violent misogyny by the “cesspit” of social media.

Bridget Phillipson said she was increasingly worried about how commonplace misogyny and racism had become, fuelled by online interactions and statements by politicians she said would not have been acceptable a few years ago.

Prime minister wishes couple well in their move back from the US to a non-royal residence outside London

• Harry and Meghan: key moments and controversies since US move

Security funding for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex when they return to live in the UK this month is a “private matter”, Andy Burnham has said.

News of Harry and Meghan’s planned return to Britain from the US came as a surprise to many on Wednesday night; King Charles was only informed three days earlier.

Party’s deputy leader makes comments as he unveils new policy to subsidise more apprenticeships

Reform UK’s deputy leader has defended the party’s suspension of a senior activist who criticised Nigel Farage, saying internal disagreements should be kept “behind closed doors”.

Richard Tice, who is also the party’s business spokesperson, made the comments as he unveiled a new policy of subsidising more apprenticeships, paid for by cutting student loans for foreign nationals and those studying what he termed “Mickey Mouse” degrees.

Overall results slightly better than last year, with share receiving grades 7, 8 and 9 rising by 0.1 of a percentage point to 23.1%

Almost one in four boys in England received top grades in maths while results in English improved across the board, helping to propel improved GCSE results for this year’s cohort of 16-year-olds.

The stronger performances in maths helped pupils taking GCSEs in year 11 reach a record level for higher grades in England outside the Covid pandemic years, when exams were replaced by teacher assessments.

Far-right minister says those convicted in military courts of terror offences will be executed after passing of death penalty law that does not apply to Jewish extremists

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has posted a gloating video of the construction of a gallows complex where Palestinians convicted of terror offences – but not Jewish extremists accused of similar crimes – will be hanged.

Ben-Givr, who has previously attracted international sanctions and condemnation for his activities, said the new execution site would be equipped with viewing booths for families of victims to watch the hangings.

Harp, a former One America News Network show host, has emerged as a key gatekeeper to the president

• Sign up for the US Breaking News email

An FBI team seized electronic devices from former US representative Eric Swalwell at the San Francisco airport on Saturday, then raided his home in Washington, DC, the next day, CNN reported Thursday.

The raid is part of a federal investigation into the sexual assault allegations which ultimately drove the Bay Area Democrat to resign from office in April, sources familiar with the investigation told CNN. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department subsequently opened criminal investigations on Swalwell.

Kyle Spitze of Tennessee faced federal charges for targeting girls online as part of ‘764 network’ investigated by FBI

A 27-year-old Tennessee man described by the US justice department as a “nihilistic violent extremist” was sentenced to 77 years in prison Wednesday for his targeting of girls online as part of the 764 network, an online group the FBI calls a form of “modern-day terrorism”.

Kyle Spitze of Friendsville received the federal sentence on Wednesday for “production of child sexual abuse material, abetting the distribution of animal crushing videos, and possessing and accessing with the intent to view”, the justice department said in a statement.

Derailed carriages lifted using two cranes as workers operate under ‘very challenging circumstances’

• Business live – latest updates

The East Sussex railway line on which a train derailed will reopen in September as crews continue to remove the carriages that left the track.

Rail bosses said they were prioritising reopening the route before the end of the school holidays, despite recovery workers operating under “very challenging circumstances”.

Trade body says local chains would have to balance concerns with potential benefits of AI-enabled technology

Cinemas across the UK are considering banning customers from wearing Meta’s smart glasses amid fears they could be used to pirate films.

The UK Cinema Association (UKCA) trade body said that a number of local chains could end up introducing policies that restrict camera-enabled smart glasses at the big screen, adding to a growing list of venues concerned about covert use.

Family relationships remain damaged and there is no clarity on how Sussexes’ security concerns have been resolved

Just as the departure of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’ from the UK six years ago came as a complete surprise, so too is their shock announcement they now intend to return.

Their unilateral decision could fairly be said to have blind-sided the royals. King Charles was only informed on Sunday and is said not to have been involved in the decision making. No mention was made when Harry, Meghan and their two children visited Charles at his private home, Highgrove, last month.

Racism and misogyny are becoming normalised as a result of rightwing politics and the ‘cesspit’ of social media, according to Labour’s Bridget Phillipson. In an extended interview, the minister for women and equalities and new party chair talks to Kiran Stacey about her fears for British society, the climate crisis, what Andy Burnham is really doing differently from Keir Starmer, and whether her party can beat Reform

The leaf sheep, a neon green solar-powered slug, has inspired at least one Pokémon character and triumphs in global ballot

• See the top 10 shortlist here

• Chris Packham: ‘Life as we know it hinges on invertebrates’

A neon green solar-powered slug that lives underwater is the winner of the increasingly popular Invertebrate of the Year competition run by the Guardian.

The leaf sheep, Costasiella kuroshimae, triumphed in the global ballot after hundreds of thousands of readers around the world read about and shared their appreciation for the spineless creatures who make up the majority of animal life on Earth.

As the self-professed geeky rockers release their conceptual 20th album, Rivers Cuomo and Patrick Wilson discuss dodging failure, being saved by fans and their obsessive creativity

The first song Rivers Cuomo wrote for Weezer’s new album, their 20th, blatantly mimics the US rockers’ 1994 debut single, Undone (The Sweater Song). On the track CEO, the singer-guitarist grumbles over a slow, Velvets-y backing about having to crank out “another 90s jam” and wishing he could do “something new – but nobody wants to hear that”. It’s a deliciously meta moment, but also one that allows Cuomo to gently vent “my frustrations over people wanting me to just write songs about our first two albums”.

Cuomo wrote the song straight after SZNZ, the four-album song-cycle Weezer released throughout 2022, each album named after a season. That project fed his notoriously intense, analytic and occasionally obsessive approach to songwriting. Thanks to the kind of data artists have at their fingertips in the streaming age, though, he realised that, with each subsequent SZNZ, “fewer and fewer people were listening to them”.

As her band hits the road, the metal trailblazer answers your questions on sexualisation in show business, finding inspiration in dreams and Spinal Tap moments on tour

You wrote Bring Me to Life when you were 19. When you perform it now, how do you relate to the younger you? becgoldsmith
I was in an abusive relationship, so Bring Me to Life was partly about processing the reality of that abuse and asking myself, what are you gonna do about it? Like, pick yourself up. I wrote it when I was crushing on my [now] husband, but the theme is about a quest for something bigger: opening your heart, finding more depth. It’s very empowering to perform it now in huge places; I’m very proud of the 19-year-old me that wrote it.

Artists often reveal their influences through the songs they choose to cover. You’ve performed both It’s a Fire and Glory Box by Portishead. What drew you to those songs? VerulamiumParkRanger
Beth Gibbons was one of my greatest vocal and musical inspirations. In the 90s when I was a young teen really feeling music I loved Portishead, Massive Attack and the whole trip-hop vibe. It was dark and cool, really different. Beth’s vocals have a way of teetering on an emotional crack, on the edge of wild, barely restrained emotion but never belting, which I always thought was so cool and enticing. I could happily do an entire album of nothing but Portishead covers.

Harold Pinter theatre, London
Outhwaite’s performance as Beverly, a precision-tooled showcase in hidden anger and longing, is a triumph in this eternally resonant suburban drama

Alison Steadman has cast a long shadow over the suburban gargoyle-cum-bored-housewife in Mike Leigh’s social satire about 1970s social mobility. So much so that her name is almost always invoked in relation to Beverly. Tamzin Outhwaite’s incredible achievement is that she banishes Steadman’s original portrayal of Bev as the definitive one.

Having first assumed the role in Nadia Fall’s 2024 production, that history shows in her polish and command of the character. The setting is a cocktail party in Essex and Outhwaite’s Bev (glittering dress, Farrah Fawcett flicks) is full of lady-of-the-manor pretensions as she serves up her officious rounds of drink. But there is a hard, calculating edge to her marital digs at estate agent husband, Laurence (Kevin Bishop) and her crude flirtation with guest Tony (Omar Malik, fantastically laconic), which she conducts with flamboyant disregard for his wife, Angela (Lauren Patel).

Crustaceans are the subject of tests to see if alkalis added to seawater, so it absorbs more CO2, harm marine life. But Trump’s halt to funding threatens to scupper the research

For many in the US region of New England, the lobster roll is synonymous with summertime. Loaded into a toasted bun, chunks of the sweet meat are served hot and soaked in butter, or chilled and slathered in mayonnaise with celery and herbs.

The only thing more debated than the recipe is the price: the once-humble roll now routinely fetches $30 (£22), or even $50, in a sign of the changing times – and seas.

Scott Lord brings in his catch of lobster to the wharf in Tenants Harbor, Maine

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

• The best hair masks for every budget, tested

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

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

Exhibition at Charles Dickens Museum in London looks at writer’s holiday pursuits, from Kent to the Isle of Wight

It’s summer in the city, the pubs are crowded, and the coast beckons. In a year that has so far brought five significant heatwaves, it is a fair description of the current holiday season.

But the same was true, too, of the much less frequent hot, dry summers of the past, including 186 years ago when Charles Dickens put pen to paper in anticipation of escaping London for the sea breeze in Broadstairs, Kent.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Nicky Bandini and Jordan Jarrett-Bryan for the second of our Premier League preview podcasts.

This punishingly hot and dry summer will probably be followed by another wet winter. But it’s nothing compared with what Britain will endure in years to come

This summer could be the hottest, driest and deadliest in English history. Successive heatwaves have so far claimed almost 3,000 lives. Nearly three-quarters of England and all of Wales is in drought, while key reservoirs are parched. Across this brown and stickily unpleasant land, from Grimsby down to St Ives, hosepipe bans are in force, while music festivals are staged not on green fields but in giant dust bowls.

Just how bad is it? I asked a leading climate scientist.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Channel 4’s programme wastes a chance to ask important questions about how ADHD is diagnosed and treated, instead indulging in unscientific methods and conspiracy theories

• Prof Gina Rippon is emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University

When Channel 4 announced that it would air a documentary titled The Great ADHD Myth?, an outpouring of fury followed. Despite this, I set out to approach it as a scientist – not just as a scientist whose own work has dealt with developmental disorders, but as someone who has enormous respect for the scientific process and for the importance of evidence-led debate.

Channel 4’s press release claimed the documentary sought to determine whether attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was a “genuine neurodevelopmental disorder, or a social construct”. At one level this is a brave enterprise. ADHD is recognised worldwide as a disorder, by the World Health Organization and our own NHS among others. Estimates suggest ADHD affects roughly 8% of children and adolescents and about 3% of adults worldwide. To overturn this consensus would require robust, reproducible findings capable of explaining away decades of genetic, developmental and clinical research. The press release described the documentary as “science-led”, which hinted at just such an enterprise. Was it really science-led?

Prof Gina Rippon is emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, and the author of The Gendered Brain

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.

On one side, you face the domination of the Islamic Republic; on the other, the imperialist forces that republic claims to stand against

August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the 19 August anniversary of the UK- and US-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of US-Israeli military assaults against Iran, this letter of solidarity denounces the repression of the Iranian people and their political prisoners by forces both at home and abroad.

***

Using weight loss drugs like Ozempic is not ‘cheating’ – and why does it matter how a person changes their body anyway?

As you might know if you read my columns, see me a mile away, or talk to me for five seconds, I am a card-carrying lifelong member of the Fat Lesbian Club. However, ever since I first laid eyes on the television show Roseanne (very important to me) as a small child, the actor John Goodman has held a special place in my heart. It was confusing for me: did I want to be Dan Conner, or be with Dan Conner? I’m still not sure. He has always been so hot to me, from Dan on Roseanne to Fred Flintstone to Walter in The Big Lebowski. His body has now drawn attention in the last week or so, after a photo of him showing significant weight loss went viral.

It’s not Goodman’s 74-year-old body (his choice) I want to discuss, but instead the arguments that broke out about how he lost the weight. On one side there were many people congratulating him on his hard work. Then there were people claiming he had taken Ozempic so it wasn’t actually hard work, and then there were people defending that by saying he’d been losing weight for years, so he’d done it the “right way”, actually.

It’s simple, says the SpaceX boss – according to something called the ‘Kardashev scale’, we just have to move energy production ‘off-planet’

Next time the weather gives the UK 61 days without rain and we wonder idly if this is the end, there is a term we may whistle up to soothe us. Like murmuring the rosary, or putting our fingers in our ears and humming, this phrase is to be mumbled on repeat – “the Kardashev scale, the Kardashev scale” – a buzzy concept in tech, much favoured by Elon Musk, and precisely the thing we’ve been waiting for. The Kardashev scale is the answer both to our impending doom and our anxiety around it – and if we decide to believe in it, we won’t have to give the climate crisis a single thought until the last drip falls from the tap.

This is the idea and it’s a familiar one to anyone who has watched tech billionaires take intractable, commonplace crises and decide that, among the measures and proposals in play, the vital missing ingredient so far has been them. Do you remember when Jeff Bezos, rather than doing something quotidian and loserish like funding public education by ensuring Amazon pays the same tax rate as regular Americans, decided instead to reinvent preschools?

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

For most of modern history, technology sought to imitate humans. Humans increasingly seek to imitate technology

Two faces that appeared on my Instagram feed in recent months gave me pause. One belonged to John Travolta at Cannes. The other to Carla Bruni on a date night with her husband, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Both looked recognisably themselves, yet, they both also looked oddly unfamiliar. Their looks have provoked speculation about cosmetic enhancement, though never acknowledged by them. Bruni has previously denied having had work done.

In any case the feeling lasted only a second: a flicker of unease, as though I were looking at people who had become approximations of themselves.

Joseph de Weck is an associate fellow with the German Council on Foreign Relations and writes for Guardian Europe from Zürich and Paris

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.

Americans are backing progressives not because they want socialism, but because they want candidates who will fight for the working class

Most discussions about the Democratic party in this election cycle focus on the remarkable rise of progressive Democrats, such as the Florida state representative Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist who scored an upset win in the Democratic US Senate primary on Tuesday.

But an equally big story is the remarkable decline of corporate Democrats.

Victims received less compensation than shareholders in the company behind its flammable cladding. Parliament must make corporations pay for harm caused

There is something profoundly wrong when the company behind Grenfell Tower’s flammable cladding paid more compensation to its shareholders than to victims of the disaster. Of Arconic’s £86m in Grenfell-related settlements, all but £1.5m was covered by insurers. Hardly enough to make a multinational think again. The company whose product the inquiry found was the “primary cause” of the fire’s rapid spread has ended up paying only a fraction of the wider social cost, while the multibillion-pound bill for making hundreds of buildings safe falls largely on the state. In June 2017, 72 people – including 18 children – died in London’s Grenfell Tower fire. Almost a decade later, nobody has been criminally charged over its causes. It’s hard to conclude anything but that Britain’s system of corporate accountability is rotten.

A new report by the thinktank Common Wealth and the financial investigations group FIND suggests putting right this state of affairs in England and Wales by adopting two changes that parliament could enact quickly. The first is a “failure to prevent” law that would make companies responsible for having adequate systems to prevent foreseeable serious harm. The second is to adopt a “punitive damages” approach. Rather than compensating victims for their loss, punitive damages ask what a company should pay for its conduct. Such an award against Arconic could have been used to meet the costs of remediation, the report says, “at no public cost”.

The Trump administration’s ‘America first’ approach has contributed to the scale of the crisis now unfolding in one of the world’s poorest countries

For months health experts have warned that the scale of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) could surpass the one that swept west Africa in 2014-16. This week, the authorities in the DRC announced that a grim milestone has already been passed: at least 2,325 people have died from the virus, making it the deadliest of the country’s 17 outbreaks and the fastest-growing in history.

There is no effective vaccine against Bundibugyo – a rare strain of the virus that spread fatally undetected during the spring, often being misdiagnosed as malaria or typhoid. In contrast to neighbouring Uganda, which succeeded in eliminating an outbreak, multiple factors are combining to let the disease rip through the DRC. The worst-affected region is contested by armed groups, and a context of population displacement and chronic insecurity has made monitoring and surveillance more difficult. Ebola treatment centres have been attacked as a result of misinformation and community distrust.

Local community food-growing could be best line of defence, writes Dan Farag, while David E Alexander says the government must be more open about its emergency planning, and Antony So says we need to look beyond stockpiling food

George Monbiot is right that Britain has become dangerously complacent about food security (Britain’s scorched fields mean a food crisis – and the government is ignoring the one measure that would help, 13 August). A country facing climate shocks, disrupted trade routes and increasingly volatile harvests – all of which contribute to not only the availability of food but its increased cost – cannot rely indefinitely on just-in-time supply chains and supermarket logistics.

But strategic food reserves are only part of the answer. The other underused resource is our communities themselves. Research has shown that during floods, infrastructure failures and other emergencies, local groups, charities and neighbours are often the real first responders, stepping in long before formal systems can fully mobilise. Resilience is not just about what sits in a warehouse; it is about the strength of local networks, trusted relationships and the capacity of people to act together.

Dismissing screen use entirely fails to recognise the crucial role modern technology plays in equity, accessibility and basic school operations, says Charlotte Bleakley

Your article buries the real story beneath the headline (‘Our children are less cognitively capable,’ says neuroscientist who wants to cut screen use in schools, 16 August). Even Jared Cooney Horvath’s own data, cited mid-article, shows that moderate school device use is associated with better outcomes than no device use at all – it is only the heaviest use daily that drags results down. That is a case for sensible integration, not blanket alarm.

The article’s most significant omission is what technology means for students with special educational needs and disabilities (Send), and for those learning English as an additional language.

The medical system is biased against women, says Carole Kendall, pointing to the very different way men who have colonoscopies are treated

I fully endorse everything Anna Moore writes in her excellent article on the lack of pain relief for hysteroscopies (‘It was barbaric. I was crying my eyes out’: why are so many women left in agony by routine womb examinations?, 16 August).

I have had three of these barbaric procedures, two of them being associated with being on hormone replacement therapy (HRT). All three were administered with very basic pain relief, ie a small amount of local anaesthetic, which I would compare to numbing a gum with a piece of ice and then proceeding with root canal treatment. I was offered a general anaesthetic on the third occasion, but this is way too much. At no point was anything else offered, like it is for colonoscopies.

Online ratings | School holiday scam | Back-row kisses | Barking | Champagne populism

To Stuart Heritage’s excellent list of words to describe our tech dystopia (18 August), can I add “iRate”? This is when you make an online purchase and, even before you’ve had time to remove the packaging, receive an email asking “How was it for you?”, followed by another a few days later if you fail to review every detail of the transaction, and then another, and another, until you’re left wanting to throw your purchase and/or your laptop across the room.
Elli Woollard
London

• Rather than criminalising parents who take their children on holiday during term time because it’s much cheaper (‘Cheap travel is not a defence’: the parents facing court for school absences in England, 15 August), why not address the blatant profiteering by travel firms charging inflated prices during school holidays?
Max Fishel
Bromley, London

Updates from Headingley after rain delay
Day one report | Sign up for the Spin | Mail Tim

In fact, that’s quite a decent, if soggy, rabbit hole to head down for an OBO discussion. The Butterfly Effect of rain delays. Which games and whose careers might have looked significantly different if the wet stuff hadn’t fallen at a particular time or other?

I’ll wrack my brains, right now I’m just thinking of Tim Henman v Goran Ivanišević in the 2001 Wimbledon Semi Final:

After a chaotic season under four different coaches, Forest fans will be hoping Oliver Glasner can bring some stability

Guardian writers’ predicted position: 11th (NB: this is not necessarily Will Unwin’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)

Last season’s position: 16th

• Fans say Infantino has ‘lost the right to lead’

• Statement also calls for Fifa to be reformed

Fans’ groups worldwide have launched a petition calling for the resignation of Gianni Infantino as Fifa president and for wholesale reform of the organisation.

Infantino is under mounting pressure after being forced to abandon plans to seek private investment to run Fifa tournaments, including the men’s and women’s World Cups. Three continental confederations accused Infantino of “deception” in an open letter last week over the manner the plan was devised and presented, and Uefa, European football’s governing body, is intent on boycotting Fifa events having “lost confidence” in his leadership.

Coventry’s record signing is set to make a big top-flight impact after emerging from Right to Dream academy

It is mid-July in Kössen, an Austrian village on the edge of the Alps, close to the German border, at Nordsjælland’s pre-season camp. The Danish Superliga club’s coaching staff, including Michael Essien, are preparing for the new campaign, the stunning scenery par for the course. Every training session is recorded by a drone. The operator with the joystick in his hands? Well, that would be Caleb Yirenkyi, the Ghana midfielder who returned a week early from his post-World Cup break.

He requested to join his teammates in the drills, but after physios told the 20-year-old he required more rest Yirenkyi did the next best thing. It is a story that speaks volumes of his modest character and, a month on, he is poised to make his Premier League debut at Arsenal on Friday after Coventry made him their £26m record signing.

Updates as County Championship returns
Sign up for the Spin | Mail Tanya

No play at three grounds for now: Old Trafford, Edgbaston, and here at Derby where thunder has just rolled alluringly.

Arrive at Derby in teeming rain. Apparently Ben Stokes had a net at 8.30am but it all looks very soggy now.

Milan, Napoli and Atalanta all have new head coaches as Italian football hopes to return to the spotlight

And so, calcio’s “third apocalypse” has passed. A lot of Italians enjoyed the World Cup more than they expected. Without a team to cheer for, again, a country turned its attention to different sports. And found its athletes dominating them.

On the day Spain defeated Argentina in New Jersey, Kimi Antonelli, the first Italian to win a Formula One race in 20 years, extended his lead in the standings by triumphing again at the Belgian Grand Prix. A week before that, Jannik Sinner defended his men’s singles title at Wimbledon.

A revealing Prime Video documentary out Thursday explores the stubbornness, childhood scars and siege mentality still driving Novak Djokovic at 39

The moment comes roughly 20 minutes into the thoughtfully done Prime Video documentary, Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter, where Djokovic, winner of 24 grand slam titles and owner of the most-ever total weeks atop the ATP rankings (428), gets to the core of what has driven him to tennis royalty.

Djokovic can rightfully claim the title of the greatest male tennis player who has ever lived (“It is as clear as it gets – he is the best of all time,” Andre Agassi says in the doc) but how tennis fans feel about him has always been more complex than the universal love adorned on contemporaries Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

• Updates from all Thursday’s races at York

• Unexpected Item claims International Stakes

There’s a jockey change in this race, by the way, as Tony Piccone’s flight from France to ride Tokaido was cancelled. Clifford Lee steps in to chase a share of the £300k first prize.

2.25 York, Harry’s Half Million by Goffs, 6f, 2yo

• Dutch driver had been linked with Mercedes and McLaren

• Verstappen: ‘The team is like a second family for me’

Max Verstappen has ended speculation about his future in Formula One by signing a new contract with Red Bull that will extend to the end of 2030.

The four-time champion had been linked with moves to Mercedes and McLaren and had also intimated that he might call time on his F1 career because he was so unhappy with the new regulations imposed this season and the way they have affected his enjoyment of racing.

• Coach had not been heard from for two months

• Baptiste serving a custodial sentence in Morocco

Leon Baptiste, the British Athletics coach who had not been heard from since visiting Morocco two months ago, is being held in prison in Marrakech.

The 41-year-old, who coaches a number of elite athletes, is believed to have gone to Morocco for the weekend with friends. As of last weekend he had not been heard from since by his athletes or the UK Athletics officials who pay him as a Loughborough-based consultant, with messages to his phone not returned.

Detailed accounts highlight the growing financial might of the elite, and the challenges the rest of the division face

The financial figures for 2024-25, the most recent season available, for the eight Women’s Super League clubs who published detailed accounts illustrate a growing gulf between the rich and the poor. The Guardian breaks down the key numbers. Note, any figures exceeding £1m have been rounded to the nearest £10,000.

Missile and drone attack one of heaviest since war began, with children’s hospital and residential areas hit

A heavy Russian missile and drone bombardment has killed at least 15 people in and around Kyiv in one of the most intense aerial attacks on Ukraine’s capital since the start of the war.

Vitali Klitschko, the city’s mayor, said homes, a school and a children’s medical centre were among the buildings damaged overnight in an attack that began at about midnight and was continuing into the early afternoon.

Joanna Boydell steps down after widespread criticism over company’s handling of guest safety issues

• Business live – latest updates

The boss of Travelodge has resigned after a backlash over security failings at the hotel chain, including a case where a domestic abuser was given a key to a woman’s room before assaulting her.

In a company statement on Thursday, Travelodge said Joanna Boydell had stepped down and been temporarily replaced by its finance chief, Ray Reidy. The company has launched a formal search for a permanent substitute.

Agreement is among largest third-country deportations driven by Trump administration’s immigration crackdown

The United States sent 20 deportees to Liberia, who arrived on Thursday as part of 1,200 migrants that the African country will receive under a new deal.

The deportees arrived at the Roberts international airport outside Monrovia. The Liberia-US agreement is among the largest third-country deportations driven by the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

Former chief of staff tells of fears her conversations were being recorded and leaked to media by colleagues

Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff has lifted the lid on how “unbearable” it was working in No 10, revealing she feared her conversations were being recorded by colleagues seeking to leak her remarks to the media.

Sue Gray, who was the most powerful adviser in Downing Street before her resignation in 2024, was highly critical of the working environment under Starmer, saying she was “disappointed” that he did not act on her concerns about staff briefing journalists against her.

Launches, detected by South Korea and Japan, came after US scaled back exercises with South Korea in apparent overture to Kim Jong-un

North Korea has launched about 10 short-range ballistic missiles towards the sea, South Korea’s military said, a day after Pyongyang shrugged off Donald Trump’s order to scale back US military drills with South Korea in an apparent attempt to resume diplomacy.

The joint chiefs of staff said the missiles were launched from the region of Pyongyang at around 5pm (08.00 GMT) on Thursday towards North Korea’s eastern waters.

Andy Burnham promises drive to tackle toxic waste, raise fines and use AI-powered drones to detect illegal activity

Illegal dumps in West Yorkshire, Surrey and Kent will be cleared up using taxpayer money, Andy Burnham has announced, as the prime minister promises a new drive to tackle toxic waste.

Ministers have identified dumps in Bradford, Runnymede and the Isle of Sheppey, which collectively contain about 22,000 tonnes of illegal waste, to be cleared in the next phase of the government’s national clear-up effort.

Novice gardeners James Reed McGuire and Crystal Fritz wanted to try something new when they moved out to the suburbs. Little did they know they were joining a nationwide movement

When James Reed McGuire and Crystal Fritz first decided to replace their lawn with native plants, they did not really know what they were doing. As former city-dwellers who had moved from Chicago out to the suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, they had never done much gardening together beyond growing some planters of herbs and flowers on their balcony.

But for McGuire, an avid birder who did not want to live with a sea of turf that does “absolutely nothing for the environment”, figuring out an alternative to the suburban status quo was imperative.

Crystal Fritz and James Reed McGuire’s Highland Park front garden before they transformed it with native plants

Improvements in fire management however could mitigate increases by more than 70%, study shows

Wildfires are projected to burn 39% more of Europe by the end of the century even in the best-case scenario for stopping the planet from heating, a study has found, unless action is taken to manage them better.

The increase in hot, dry and windy weather that leads to small fires turning into raging infernos is to engulf more of Europe as carbon pollution pushes temperatures higher. In the worst-case scenario the researchers modelled, which would see global heating reach 3.6C above preindustrial levels, the burnt area would almost triple.

‘Emma’ the Rotherham chatbot has 17 languages says AI firm – but health watchdog says system struggling with local ‘twangs’

Patients in a South Yorkshire town are frustrated by an AI GP receptionist not understanding their “broad accents”, a health watchdog has said.

Healthwatch Rotherham, a local health and social care watchdog, said a number of practices in the area had introduced a new AI receptionist called Emma.

Five hundred people turn up to adopt plants from conservatory that will reopen in 2030 after renovation project

Above the waxy monstera leaves and bright pink hibiscus flowers in the Barbican conservatory hangs a giant net to catch the panes of glass that are at risk of falling from the ceiling on the unwitting plant lovers below.

This precarious situation has caused the estate to shutter its greenhouse on the third and fourth floors for three years so a full refurbishment can take place. But the hiatus has a silver lining for many of those who visited on Wednesday to give the plants from the conservatory a new home.

On drive to end rough sleeping, homeless people and charities say they have heard similar declarations before

• Andy Burnham calls on wider society to help end rough sleeping by Christmas

As Andy Burnham set out his plan to end rough sleeping on Tuesday night, volunteers from homelessness charity Under One Sky were offering hot drinks, sandwiches, socks, underwear and soap to dozens of rough sleepers around Tottenham Court Road in central London.

Among those sleeping on the streets, the prime minister’s plan was met with widespread scepticism born from long familiarity with similar political declarations.

Officers still investigating deaths of Zeina Alayn, Hassan El-Khawas and daughter Sara El-Khawas at Shoreham-by-Sea

A father, mother and their teenage daughter who died off the Sussex coast on Tuesday have been identified.

Sussex police named the victims as Hassan El-Khawas, 55, his partner, Zeina Alayn, 37, and their 14-year-old daughter, Sara El-Khawas. A younger girl who was also part of the family is in hospital in a critical condition. She has not been named.

Alessandro Rapinese denies he is waging personal vendetta against cyclists amid a public backlash

The mayor of Como has set the wheels of controversy in motion for banning bikes in the walled historical centre of the lakeside city after being hit by one.

Alessandro Rapinese’s ban, which comes into force in September, targets about 30 streets and means cyclists, whether on e-bikes or push bikes, will have to dismount and walk through those areas.

Penny Wong calls in Israeli ambassador as PM expresses ‘outrage’ over IDF decision

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The family of the slain Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom has described a decision by the Israel Defense Forces not to open a criminal investigation into her death as deeply disappointing, and called on the government to push for the release of evidence, including audio from the drone strike.

Israel’s decision prompted outrage from Australia on Thursday. The country’s ambassador to Australia, Hillel Newman, was called in by the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, while the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, expressed “outrage” and insisted he would press for justice for Frankcom and her colleagues.

The cyber-fraud industry has flourished in Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar, with thousands of people trafficked into the industry. But even those who have managed to find a way out often cannot return home

Artillery fire thundered. Windows shattered. Roofs caved in. And thousands of foreign workers – many who had been tricked and trafficked into the vast cyber-fraud industry that has flourished in south-east Asia – fled.

For a brief moment, the regional crackdown appeared to mark a turning point in one of the world’s fastest-growing criminal industries, which has defrauded millions of people globally and generated billions of dollars for organised crime networks. Police and troops across Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar conducted mass raids to empty and demolish some of the region’s massive scam centres. But for many of those who escaped, freedom was only the beginning of another ordeal.

Crown prosecutor tells Victorian court that all seven of Patterson’s grounds for appeal should fail while arguing for tougher sentence

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Triple murderer Erin Patterson should have been given no possibility of ever being released from prison, or a non-parole period so lengthy that she was likely to die behind bars, Victoria’s highest court has heard.

Patterson, 51, is appealing against her convictions in the court of appeal, with the director of public prosecutions is also appealing against the sentence handed down to her, arguing it is “manifestly inadequate”.

Fashion site also broke rules on labelling by using terms ‘leather’ or ‘suede’ for synthetic products

The British online fashion seller Boohoo has been fined €2.3m (£2m) by France’s consumer watchdog ⁠for deceptive ⁠practices ​such as offering fake discounts.

The Manchester-based firm, whose parent company renamed itself Debenhams Group last year, was found to have exaggerated the discounts it was offering, giving shoppers a false impression ⁠of the savings they were making, ​according to the directorate-general for competition, ‌consumer affairs and ‌fraud control.

Hui Ka Yan also forfeits all his personal property and the company he set up is given hefty fines

• Business live – latest updates

The founder of Evergrande, one of China’s largest property developers, has been sentenced to life in prison and had all of his personal property confiscated.

Hui Ka Yan, 67 and once named by Forbes as China’s richest man, with a net worth of $42.5bn (£31.2bn) in 2017, pleaded guilty in April to eight charges.

Inflation fuelled by Iran conflict deterring shoppers, especially in the US, says high street chain

The sports fashion retailer JD has cut £50m from its profit forecast as cost of living pressures, fuelled by the US war on Iran, weighed on sales of trainers.

JD Sports, which sells brands including Nike and Adidas, said widespread inflation had hit shoppers’ wallets, particularly its core young shoppers, resulting in a drop in sales across important markets such as the US, where it struggled to shift trainers and other footwear.

Dwindling donations and stiff competition from secondhand sellers online prompt review but ‘no plans for closures yet’

Oxfam is reviewing the operations of its three warehouses in Batley, Bicester and Milton Keynes and says it “cannot give guarantees” on the future of its high street shops in a “difficult economic climate”.

The charity said it had no plans to close warehouses or shops but insiders fear that Batley, which houses Oxfam’s main textile recycling centre, will shut as part of a cost-cutting drive because the West Yorkshire site’s lease is up for renewal.

(City Slang)
Sounding weathered but undimmed, Kurt Wagner feels as if he’s standing right in front of you as he sings superb, choir-swathed songs that invite and unsettle

Thirty-two years on from their debut album – and 26 from Nixon, the gorgeous country/soul confection that brought “Nashville’s most fucked-up country band” to a wider audience – Lambchop find themselves in a curious position. Their sole continuous member Kurt Wagner has displayed an admirable disinclination to rest on his laurels. He followed up Nixon with the austere, piano-driven Is a Woman and subsequently diverted into electronics, smothered his voice in Auto-Tune and distortion. Their last album, 2022’s The Bible, threw up everything from house music to glitchy rhythms to ambient drift to accompany Wagner’s pained ruminations on mortality and faith.

Throughout, Lambchop have kept up a remarkable level of quality control that’s meant they’ve ended up being slightly underrated or at least taken for granted. There’s been no career-defining crossover hit, no unexpected viral success, no foundation-shaking disaster followed by an attention-grabbing return to form; just a stream of really good albums and positive reviews. It’s the kind of steady success that’s hard to maintain but easy to overlook in an attention-deficit economy.

Traverse at Royal Lyceum Studio, Edinburgh
Paul Ready’s playwriting debut expertly utilises his bumbling acting persona to examine what is enough in our response to climate emergency

Nobody does self-effacement as well as Paul Ready. The Motherland/Ann Droid actor excels at playing the kind of man who apologises for his own existence, well-meaning, but insecure – often comically so. He hesitates, smiles sheepishly, backtracks and gabbles to fill the silence. He, he, he is forever launching, launching into sentences, sentences that never get all the way to the … We get the gist.

It is the same now he is making his playwriting debut with Little Animals and it works to his advantage. Performing in the round to a small audience, he gives every impression of having interrupted us in the middle of something else. We are not here, he ascertains, to remember his good friend Richard, in fact, we did not even know him, but sorry, if it is all right, he will tell us about him anyway.

Led by a stellar cast of gen-Z newcomers, Alex Ullom’s directorial debut is an expertly crafted nightmare about a road trip gone wrong

Time loops often feel like the movies’ favorite zany stylistic trick: Bill Murray plotting to win Andie MacDowell’s heart, a college student solving the mystery of her own grizzly murder, or as a ruse for Anne Hathaway to face off with a T rex. The excellent new indie horror film It Ends takes a different approach with its nightmarish depiction of a carful of friends stuck in an endlessly repeating day. It’s less of the moony japes of Groundhog Day or Palm Springs than an arthouse spin on the Prometheus myth, with the unfortunate souls of the film cursed not with death but with the torture of eternal life.

After helping their friend move into a new apartment, a crew of aimless twentysomethings take a late-night drive to get food, but after GPS leads them deeper and deeper into a desolate forest, it’s clear that they have lost their way. When they pull over, they are set upon by a group of people that look eerily similar to them – young people who are dressed like they stepped out to the corner store and couldn’t find their way back. “They look scared,” one character says with a pained expression. “Why are they scared?”

The popular cosy-crime drama is back – with a couple of changes. Plus: some late-starters get into the dating game. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC One

Lisa Hayden-Johnson was convicted of child cruelty, but she still insists that she didn’t do anything wrong – and barely gets a grilling about it. Her children, who speak for the first time in this documentary, deserve much more

There’s an increasingly common pattern emerging whereby documentary makers take a story that was run through the Outrage-A-Tron by the tabloids to produce headlines that warped public understanding (“Britain’s Worst/Most Evil/Most Deadly” and so on), then proceed to put back some of the lost nuance and present the more complicated original picture. Lucy Letby (“Britain’s Worst Child Killer”) has been the subject of at least two such films redressing the lost balance. Last week, the story of Rhianan Rudd (“Britain’s Youngest Terrorist”) was unpacked and its many sadder parts laid out for inspection in The Schoolgirl Terrorist?

In Love You to Death, it is the turn of Lisa Hayden-Johnson, who became known as “Britain’s Most Evil Mum” during her trial and conviction for child cruelty after years spent fabricating her son Matthew’s apparent illnesses. He was put through more than 300 medical encounters, nine general anaesthetics, four operations by the age of nine, and endured many unnecessary constraints on his life, including using a wheelchair, feeding tube and oxygen tank, until Lisa was arrested when he was nine.

The hard-working action hero gives us exactly what we expect, and often want, in this sturdy cargo ship-set caper

The dog days of August have already seen the trotting out of some usual suspects from a junky Eli Roth horror to a belated nostalgia comedy sequel to a Mike Pence-approved Ronald Reagan drama. This weekend, yet more howls will be heard in cinemas with a lower-tier horror instalment and an even lower-tier girlies on tour comedy being shuffled out. It’s all amounting to a rather rubbishy end to what’s been a pretty remarkable summer (easily the biggest since the pandemic), allowing for Spider-Man supremacy until September slowly returns the industry from the D-list closer to the A.

There can still be low-level popcorn pleasures to be had in August. Last weekend’s throwback dino caper The End of Oak Street was a B-movie made with just the right balance of serious to silly while last year Zach Cregger gifted us Weapons, the rare genre film to end up winning an Oscar. Trophies are unlikely for this weekend’s other medium-sized release Mutiny (if only the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards hadn’t died off at the turn of the 2000s) but if the words “Jason Statham vehicle” possess a safe, soothing quality then there are far worse ways to spend a Saturday night.

Akhmetshina/Pappano
(Decca)
The mezzo-soprano lends supple and elegant voice to opera arias and musical numbers that explore womanhood

Acclaimed for embodying opera’s femme fatales such as Carmen and Dalia, Aigul Akhmetshina explores womanhood more broadly on her second album, Mujer Fatal. Accompanied on piano by Antonio Pappano, the repertoire ranges from Spanish, French and Russian art song, to Broadway and beyond.

The title track, written by Elena Roussanova especially for the Bashkortostan-born mezzo-soprano, sets the tone. Akhmetshina’s supple instrument wraps itself around the languid vocal lines while Pappano’s sensitive touch draws out the music’s delicate melismas. Two of Montsalvatge’s Canciones Negras find the singer spinning long-breathed melodies, dipping down elegantly into her burgundy lower register.

Helena Bonham Carter narrates the playwright’s impressionistic memoir, written as she was experiencing the loss of her memory

Playwright Holly Dawson’s memoir tells of memory lapses and a series of seizures that signal something isn’t right. Before visiting a doctor, she had been muddling up words, forgetting people’s names and flooding the bathroom.

The book finds Dawson in conversation with her brain, which is both part of her and a separate entity. “Don’t be cross with me, my love. I am tired,” it tells her. “Between your ears hearing a word and your mouth repeating it, I am doing all this work you don’t see.” Dawson, who is approaching 40 and a single mum of two children, later learns she has epilepsy and a brain tumour, which may or may not be benign. A consultant explains she must wait several months to find out, and so she sets about preserving memories and words while she still has them. “Come. Sit. Take your notebook … write it down,” says her brain.

After 10 years and more than 17bn YouTube views, Geonroung Park, aka Baby Shark Boy, speaks about his life as a child star and his new K-Pop career

“I just remember having fun dancing and playing on what felt like a huge set,” Geonroung Park says, recalling the day 10 years ago when he was filmed, aged seven, doing the hand movements to a children’s song about a family of sharks.

That footage became Baby Shark Dance, now the most-watched video in YouTube’s history. It has racked up more than 17.2bn views and has held the platform’s global no 1 spot for 69 consecutive months.

Alongside Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, Corin Tucker and Tracy Sawyer created a feminist punk vernacular that’s still inspiring the likes of Olivia Rodrigo. They recall the clarity and conviction of their historic teenage exploits

Back in June, a cut-and-paste photocopied flyer began appearing on telegraph poles around Portland, Oregon, promoting a DIY show by an apparently defunct band at an intimate community space. The band hadn’t mentioned it online, but hopeful fans bought every ticket anyway. Their bet paid off: the gig really was the first in 32 years for Heavens to Betsy, the pioneering feminist punk duo of drummer Tracy Sawyer and singer-guitarist Corin Tucker – the latter’s band before Sleater-Kinney unleashed her visceral vibrato unto the world. Tucker proudly made the flyer herself.

Heavens to Betsy were barely out of high school when they played their very first show, 35 years ago this week, in Olympia, Washington, a two-song set as part of a now-mythical indie fest dubbed the International Pop Underground Convention. The festival also featured the likes of Fugazi, Bikini Kill and Melvins; meanwhile Heavens to Betsy had practised only a couple times. Before an audience of about 100, Sawyer was so terrified that all she could think was, “This has to be over soon.”

Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some wonderful new paperbacks, from a short story collection by a literary great to razor-sharp criticism

***

A ‘capacity for despair’ forged by political oppression has long been considered a Magyar national trait. But after Orbán, writers in the country remind us that melancholy must not always be bleak

A lone visitor looks for a garden outside an empty monastery. A morose housekeeper won’t let anyone behind the door of her own home. A retired general living alone on a crumbling estate waits 40 years to confront the only friend he ever had. Melancholy, an affinity with oblivion without a concrete cause, suffuses the Hungarian fiction translated for foreign audiences over the past 30 years, from the tortured tales of Sándor Márai to the taut novels of Magda Szabó.

In his book In Praise of Melancholy, essayist László F Földényi tells the story of an Englishman who monomanically decides to teach himself Hungarian. For Földényi, the commitment to studying a language with 26 cases and with no connection to any other language, from a culture besieged by centuries of invasion, is to embrace melancholy, a seductive “capacity for despair”. To read Hungarian literature as an outsider, the poet János Pilinszky claimed in 1972, is to acquire unique spiritual insights that come from centuries of rootlessness, alienation and strife.

The comedian charts his life in demos from 1960s Liverpool to 2020s London in this fiery and addictive book

At 74, the comedian Alexei Sayle is approaching a dangerous phase for veteran British leftists: becoming a national treasure. Once described by special branch, in a surveillance file gleefully quoted in this memoir, as an “intellectual thug” who made “foul-mouthed comments about the royal family”, Sayle now appears regularly on Radio 4. His jolly, self-deprecating, man of the people side – one of his radio series is called Alexei Sayle’s Imaginary Sandwich Bar – has made him almost cosy.

But not quite. One fascination of his meandering career, which has included villainous Hollywood cameos, subversive podcasts and successful novelty pop songs, is the persistent fierceness of his politics – the underlying subject of this short, sharp book. “My decision to become … a professional funny man,” he writes, “wasn’t a choice made simply out of monstrous vanity … I was also … taking part in [Antonio] Gramsci’s war of position: attempting to get examples of communist thought on to Top of the Pops, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Doctor Who.”

A teenage boy navigates adolescence and the traumatic loss of his mother in this poignant coming-of-age novel set in rural Ireland

Something is happening to literary time. In the last fortnight I’ve read new or forthcoming novels about a mirror universe where history runs backwards (Under Story, Chloe Benjamin), an agency that offers appointments with the past (Time Travel for Beginners, Jaclyn Moriarty), and a young woman who’s genetically untethered from linear life (Audrey Niffenegger’s long-awaited sequel to The Time Traveller’s Wife, out in October). And these are just the latest books to meddle with the fourth dimension. There are dozens: from Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume series and Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold, to Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time. Time is losing the plot – or perhaps it’s the other way around.

I have an armchair theory about all this counterfactual longing: the lure of the do-over. The present feels like a corrupted timeline. If only we could find the glitch.

Even film-makers have been inspired by Insomniac’s take on Spidey. But the studio’s tried and tested format might not fit a superhero with such sharp claws

The recent Marvel’s Spider-Man games have become so tightly interwoven with the character’s core that they’ve been cited, by both actor Tom Holland and director Destin Daniel Cretton, as an influence on this year’s blockbuster film Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Now the same development studio – Sony-owned Insomniac Games – is taking on one of Marvel’s other most recognisable characters in his first video game-starring role since some deeply mid-tier film tie-ins back in the 00s. So can they pull off the same trick with Marvel’s Wolverine?

Storywise it certainly takes a similar approach, once again grabbing ideas from a wide selection of inspirations and remixing them into a brand-new continuity. We first meet this version of Wolverine as he is discovered: wild-eyed, wilder haired and practically nude. Before we see his saviour’s face, we hear a well-spoken voice (provided by legendary game actor Troy Baker) promising a safe place “for people like us”. Surely this is Charles Xavier?

The Elden Ring creator is known for epic single-player RPGs, but its new action game is all about multiplayer interactions: fighting, chasing, befriending, even … proposing?

Lowanro City’s skyline is dominated by an oppressive clock tower, silhouetted against a moody red sky and an impossibly large, ominous moon. A retractable bridge splits the map in two, and a network of slimy sewers runs beneath the city streets, offering flanking routes for crafty players. This layered and multi-tiered map bears all the hallmarks of the team behind some of the most memorable stomping grounds in video games.

But The Duskbloods, which I recently spent two days playing in Tokyo, is a strange departure from developer FromSoftware’s usual offerings. These have included massive single-player RPGs with light, experimental multiplayer components such as Elden Ring and Bloodborne. Those games have always attracted duellists – players who love to invade other people’s games to fight them to the death – but this Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive is a different proposition entirely.

After their hit Untitled Goose Game, Australian studio House House is back with a new game where your only goal is to go exploring with friends – so we took them on a big walk inside Big Walk

When I arrive to meet with the tiny team at Melbourne game developer House House, they’re sitting in a circle under a eucalyptus tree. After introductions, the five of us set off into the scrub. Over the course of our hike we take a train to the beach, huddle on deck chairs in the sand dunes and climb a mountain as the sun rises. All without ever leaving our desks.

Welcome to the world of Big Walk: House House’s new game after the runaway global success Untitled Goose Game, which saw millions fall in love with being a naughty goose rampaging through a bucolic village. After Untitled Goose Game’s overwhelming success, House House wanted their next game to be very different and “unusual”. Despite this, Big Walk has been an immediate success, with more than 1m downloads in the first week of release.

As gaming’s biggest publishers retreat into safer bets, a new generation of independents are building an alternative from the ground up

• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

During the 1990s, a new strata of independent film studios and distributors revitalised the Hollywood movie machine. The likes of Miramax, New Line Cinema and October Films challenged the ageing behemoths of the industry and pushed forward offbeat directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Darren Aronofsky and Jane Campion. The decade is widely considered an artistic high point for western cinema after the bloated mainstream excesses of the 1980s. Could something similar now be happening in games?

Certainly, we have a comparable setup. The big players of the games business are in various states of creative disarray: Electronic Arts (EA) has been bought out by a Saudi-led consortium, which is likely to lead to more cautious, hit-driven decisions; Microsoft bought Activision and Bethesda and then ordered waves of redundancies; Ubisoft has cancelled several titles and is posting big losses. Those companies are also facing rising development costs, so they’re circling the wagons, focusing on legacy brands and freezing recruitment. It’s hard to imagine any left-field works of genius emerging from this imaginative quagmire.

Every year, hundreds of standups from across the world descend on the venerable festival. Here are some of their finest one-liners

10 of the funniest jokes from the 2025 fringe

Olaf Falafel: I remember thinking, as I taped a piranha to my boomerang, this could come back to bite me.

Richard Stott: To the person who stole my bank card and spent all my money on ancestry.com – you know who you are.

Clary’s back with Fully Dilated, a burlesque star called Entendre Entendre is doing lewd singalongs and there’s an A-Z of very dirty words. Our writer investigates Edinburgh’s smut outbreak – and ends up getting his own fantasies turned into erotica

On a street in Edinburgh, a woman I’ve only just met is quizzing me on my sexual fantasies. “Do you want softcore or hardcore? What positions do you prefer?” asks Cameryn Moore, a former phone sex operator turned playwright from the US, along with other, less printable, questions.

Her business plan is simple: for £20, punters can tell Moore what turns them on. She will then bash out a piece of bespoke erotic fiction for them on her typewriter. “I listen to their content then spit it out on paper – no punctuation, very stream of consciousness,” she says. “I also offer to read it out loud to them – and they walk away grinning from ear to ear because nobody’s ever asked them what they like when it comes to sex. So that’s what I do every day at the fringe: sit down for four or five hours a day and crank out dirty shit.” She calls the service Sidewalk Smut.

Before he was an irascible TV pundit, the Irish midfielder was equally feared on the pitch. Irish painter Seánie Harte has documented all the times Keane was sent off playing for Manchester United. ‘It’s a bit of fun,’ he says

Across his career in the 1990s and early 2000s, Roy Keane, the Ireland and Manchester United footballer, was a widely decorated midfielder with a relentless will to win. He also had his share of controversies, which included being famously sent off on several occasions.

These have now been documented in Irish painter Seánie Harte’s Red Card series, which marks the 11 times Keane received his marching orders while playing for Manchester United.

Assembly George Square, Edinburgh
The US comic’s troupe tell the tale of a special guest’s romantic encounter, in this case Travis’s frontman – but their incoherence makes for a scatty if fun show

It’s a lovely format for improv: a special guest tells David Magidoff the story of some romantic (mis)adventure from their past, and Magidoff and pals turn it into an extemporised musical. Shades of Improbable theatre’s tender and funny Lifegame, many moons ago – although Making Love is more knockabout than that. Between musicians and improvisers, US actor and comedian Magidoff assembles no fewer than nine bodies on stage. It’s a lot, populating the stage with a surfeit of comic ideas, occasionally at the expense of the affaire du coeur that Travis frontman Fran Healy has offered up as raw material.

Magidoff is a Travis fanboy; he has Healy sing two songs, and gets starry-eyed about it, before the show proper begins. In conversation, the genial Healy then volunteers a droll story of teenage infidelity, a drunken tryst with a girl from another part of Glasgow, which he wrongly thinks will insulate him from discovery. The improvisers, led by Magidoff, then take over, goofing into being several scenes in which young Fran and his pal cop off with two Protestant schoolgirls, then must face the music when their misdemeanour is exposed.

At Assembly George Square, Edinburgh, until 23 August

All our Edinburgh festival reviews

The genre-hopping hitmaker’s new album fingerpicks the same melancholy heartstrings as Sea Change. You can ask him anything in our upcoming reader interview

News of a Beck album is always cause for celebration, especially when it’s seven years since the last one – 2019’s Hyperspace – but even more so when it’s recorded with the same wrecking crew as the melancholy classics Sea Change and Morning Phase (having originally got together for 1998’s Mutations). That’s Smokey Hormel, Joey Waronker, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Roger Joseph Manning Jr and Jason Falkner; Nigel Godrich also joined on mixing. Beck said: “This time it felt like the playing and the chemistry had evolved and deepened – a sound that’s come together over the decades of working together.”

A first taste of their wares is already available in Ride Lonesome, a wise, almost cosmic ode to keepin’ on keepin’ on, and the serene, fingerpicked In the Night.

Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Festival director Nicola Benedetti’s bold programming of these once-popular Victorian cantatas paid off with a crisp chorus and strong soloists tautly conducted

The Song of Hiawatha, Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s turn-of-the-century cantata trilogy, packed the Albert Hall for weeks on end between the wars, but it really shouldn’t work today. The unmistakably Victorian if charming score is the least of the difficulties. More problematic is the libretto: 800-plus lines of “Rum-ti Rum-ti Rum-ti Rum-ti” (trochaic tetrameter, to be technical) from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. More challenging still is a story that shows the Native American Hiawatha endorsing his country’s colonisation by “people with white faces”.

Rafael Payare did not know Hiawatha before Nicola Benedetti invited his Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal to give this Edinburgh international festival premiere, but he conducted with commitment and verve. Tightly coiled yet expansive of gesture, he never let the tension drop. The occasional drawbacks of his approach – soloists denied flexibility and space; chorus not guided towards longer phrases and quieter singing – were outweighed by the rewards. Payare highlighted the cantatas’ thematic and tonal connections and was alert to their dancelike character.

The Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm creator says Dershowitz, who also defended Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, ‘only has himself to blame’ for being ostracised

Larry David has opened up about the collapse of his friendship with Alan Dershowitz, saying that Dershowitz “made a deal with the devil” when he became Donald Trump’s lawyer.

Dershowitz, a former Harvard University law professor, has been a member of legal teams for Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, OJ Simpson and Harvey Weinstein at various points in his career, and served on Trump’s defense team during the president’s first impeachment trial in 2020.

Drummer with ZZ Top for more than five decades whose mastery of the ‘Texas shuffle’ was central to their sound

Renowned for being the only member of the Texan trio ZZ Top not to wear an outlandishly luxuriant beard, in spite of his surname, Frank Beard, who has died aged 77, spent more than 55 years as the band’s drummer, appearing on all their albums from ZZ Top’s First Album in 1971 to La Futura in 2012. He was also an indispensable fixture in their live performances, apart from brief interludes caused by illness in 2002 and 2005. Earlier this month, he was forced to miss further shows on ZZ Top’s The Big One! Tour, including a date at the Hollywood Bowl.

ZZ Top carved a singular niche for themselves with their unique blend of stripped-down blues and gutsy rock’n’roll, played with economy and focus. Beard was a master of the “Texas shuffle” beat, of which the critic David Sinclair noted that “it required looseness and absolute precision at the same time. ZZ Top’s grooves swing hard, but they never drift.”

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.

Quick to fire up and compact enough to take camping, Ooni’s gas-powered model sets a high bar for outdoor dining

• The best pizza ovens – tested
• Gozney Dome Gen 2 pizza oven review

If you’re looking for a gas-powered, compact, portable pizza oven that’s easy to set up, yet still offers generous cooking space, the Ooni Koda 2 may be the pick for you.

The second generation of the company’s award-winning Koda 12 oven has space for a 14in pizza compared with the original’s 12in one. There is also more room to manoeuvre inside, a wider temperature range (so you can cook seafood and steaks, too), and a flame designed for better heat distribution. Unlike the Koda 12, the Ooni Koda 2 is available with optional accessories, including the rotating stone bundle tested here (a pricey upgrade of £229) and a smart temperature hub (the Connect, £89), which means you don’t have to constantly reach for an infrared (IR) thermometer.

Low-cal, crisp and fruity, these are our expert’s favourite non-alcoholic and hard seltzer cans to pop in your bag this summer

• I tried 75 low- and no-alcohol drinks: here are my favourites

Since White Claw disrupted the drinks-in-tins category with its UK arrival in 2020, hard seltzers have continued to grow in popularity. Loved by celebrities, festival-goers and commuters alike, these alcoholic sparkling waters are known for being low in calories, sugar and with minimal ingredients, while containing roughly the same amount of alcohol as a standard lager (up to about 5% ABV).

Hovering at about 100 calories a can and with a few carefully chosen (usually) natural flavourings plus spirit, it’s easy to see why seltzers have gained a reputation for being a relatively light choice when picking up a couple of cans. But what makes a good seltzer?

Ninja’s assisted machine will make every coffee you crave at hundreds of pounds cheaper than some of its rivals, although you’ll have to put up with a few quirks

• The best espresso machines, tested

If you’re not a morning person, decision-making is best avoided before 8am. Or, at the very least, until you’ve had a cup of coffee. That is why assisted espresso machines, such as the Ninja Luxe Cafe Premier ES601UK, are so welcome in my kitchen. They require more effort than a fully automatic bean-to-cup machine, but the reward is a glimmer of manual espresso perfection – without all the faff.

The Ninja Luxe Cafe Premier ES601UK has been gracing my kitchen worktop on and off for over a year, and – despite some mild to moderately serious irritations – it’s a capable alternative to the similarly priced, fully automatic bean-to-cup machines found in my roundup of the best coffee machines. The big question is whether you’re willing to put in a little more effort for your morning coffee in exchange for a tastier cup – and, in doing so, put up with some of the Luxe Cafe’s quirks.

Whether you’re trying to squeeze more into a carry-on or simply want a tidier suitcase, our expert rounds up the top cubes, from compression to lightweight

• The best suitcases for your next holiday

Nightmarish scenes reminiscent of a Hieronymus Bosch painting used to erupt whenever I travelled with a case. Skirts and shirt sleeves slithered out from under compression straps, worn clothes frolicked with unworn clothes in the lid compartment, and even the best suitcases would sometimes leave my clothing creased and jumbled.

Packing cubes have changed all that. Boxy, zippable and small to varying degrees, these organisation accessories are designed to keep items neat and separate inside a suitcase or bag.

​A​ family holiday shaped by salt air, seagulls and unpredictable weather proves that the seaside serves a kind of joy no restaurant can engineer

Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

There are few things more powerful than the smell of salt, vinegar and hot oil carried on a sea breeze. Or sugar-coated doughnuts, still warm in a grease-stained paper bag. Such distinctly British perfumes are the smell of my summer, because my family and I are road-tripping through the UK and Ireland. We are embracing as much of coastline as we can, while battling seagulls and unpredictable weather along the way. And, unlike the carefully curated dining experiences we seek on holidays abroad, seaside food has always been wonderfully simple. It is rarely elegant, but it is pure comfort and nostalgia.

First up, fish and chips, in my opinion, they remain the undisputed king of Britain’s coastal cuisine. Every seaside town insists that theirs is the best (so far, the finest I’ve tried were in Yorkshire, but I am prepared for that to change on this holiday). If you are at home this summer, or not near a British seaside, you can, of course, have a go at making your own. Tim Hughes’s and Felicity Cloake’s recipes are as authentic as they come, along with a crisp beer batter for firm white fish. For a slight twist, Yotam Ottolenghi’s fish and spiced sweet potato chips is an excellent, inspired dish. Either way, all options deliver.

From Morocco to Monmouth, there’s a whole world of blushing rosé wines to discover

Hello, from rosé season, the only time of year I order wine like a patriarchal septuagenarian. For this fleeting moment in the wine-drinking calendar, questions are out and assumptions are in; everyone’s happy to drink pink – specifically, pale, dry and berry-crisp Provence rosé. Blushing like cheeks in a summer romance, pale rosé captures something of the hazy holiday spirit: easy, fun, objectively delicious. The liquid equivalent of chips with ketchup, it’s a safe bet.

Finding a wine that almost everyone approves of is close to the holy grail – and if Provence has cracked it so everyone’s happy, why deviate? But unless you’re in primary school, chances are you wouldn’t eat chips at every meal, and I’d apply the same logic here. We’re human! We’re omnivores! And even within the category of rosé, there is a world to discover beyond the Provençal style that dominates supermarket shelves. What’s more, the likes of Whispering Angel may make decision-making easy, but they also command some hefty prices (£22.50 on Ocado at the time of writing).

Sun-drying tomatoes until they’re leathery on the outside and soft within is something of an art, but it’s more than worth it for this moreish pasta dish

One set of guidelines I received in Sicily for sun-drying tomatoes was two to seven days, depending on temperature, humidity, wind and the size of the fruit. I might as well have been given a surfboard and told “go”, because that advice felt far too broad and general to be helpful to a complete beginner. So I asked someone else.

For them, with an ideal temperatures of 35C and low humidity, trays of egg-sized tomato halves arranged on wire racks on wooden boards, sprinkled with salt and left in full sun during the day, and taken in at night, generally took three days to reach the desirable point: dry enough to store, but still with a flexibility and sweet chew. From broad to specific, this advice also felt overwhelming: What if the temperature changes or turns humid? What are the signs of humidity? What if my tomatoes are bigger than eggs? What happens if it rains? In the end, though, between these two extremes of advice and temperatures swinging between being in the pleasant 20Cs and burning 40Cs, too much humidity, rain (bring them inside) and not being particularly organised, I have managed to – relatively successfully – dry batches of tomatoes of all shapes and sizes.

The English language can seem designed to trip us up, whether we’re greeting a colonel or travelling to Worcestershire. Here are some of the biggest stumbling blocks

Name: Açaí.

Age: First imported to western countries from South America as freeze-dried pulp in the 1990s.

I was living on my own for the first time in 35 years, walking every day. Nature reminded me how much there still is to be found in emptiness

After my husband died, the birds started behaving strangely towards me. This was not my imagination; it really happened. On my daily walks, I was startled by how close they came to me – approaching, hopping alongside me and chirping. If there were a lot of them – and if there was no one else around – it felt as if they were accompanying me, maybe trying to convey something.

I had walked on the heath near our home with my husband for years. But his illness meant that, during his final months, he could not walk with me any more. When he died – in January 2023 – I had been walking on my own for six months and the birds, I am sure of this, had paid no attention to me.

Because I’d visited so often to print things, she made me feel that someone had witnessed the journey I was on, all the way through to its difficult conclusion

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

Mum’s disease progressed slowly at first, and then in a really big rush. After years of battling early onset Parkinson’s, in 2015 we were suddenly told she only had six months left.

I was living in Brisbane, Australia, and Mum was in a care home 600km away in Taree, so I began flying down every second weekend to visit. At the time, it was still common to print out your boarding pass – or at least, it was for me; I was a bit late to the tech game.

A trainee accountant and a company director had differing views on opportunities for young people, but could they find common ground on the new prime minister?

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

Margaret, 22, London

Occupation Trainee accountant and part-time arts producer

Pam and Mike couldn’t keep their hands off each other when they met. But as aging and biology have taken their toll, their sex life has suffered

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

We haven’t had sex in two years. Mike says it’s because his dick is dead

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

• Students on their biggest financial shocks

• The best student deals and discounts

• An insider’s tips on student money

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can save money at university, especially using schemes such as UNiDAYS, Student Beans or TOTUM

• ‘Watch your spending, use free perks’: an insider’s tips on student money

With rents on the up and food costing more, maintenance loans are stretched thinner than ever. Knowing how, and where, to get a discount can make a real difference.

A golden rule is to register with the big discount websites and apps – UNiDAYS, Student Beans and TOTUM – using your university email address as soon as you have one. Each has a slightly different roster of retailers, so it is worth signing up to all three.

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

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

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

Findings highlight importance of sleep health during middle age, particularly for those with lower socioeconomic status

Sleep that is extremely disrupted or that goes on too long could mean a loss of nine months from working life after the age of 50, a study has found.

It also found that women with no sleep disturbances had a longer working life from 50 to 68 than their male equivalents.

Premixed drinks are ultra-processed products but their marketing claims create a ‘health halo’ that takes the focus away from the harms of alcohol, researchers say

Premixed alcoholic drinks are not known for their health benefits. But that hasn’t stopped a boom in products being marketed with “better for you” claims designed to appeal to younger, more health-conscious drinkers.

Labels such as “low sugar”, “gluten-free” and “low carb” are being used in advertising to promote the products, and social media influencers spruik the products under the hashtag #healthydrinking.

Melissa Davey is Guardian Australia’s medical editor

Antiviral is a fortnightly column that interrogates the evidence behind the health headlines and factchecks popular wellness claims

In an era of transparency, people are detailing their financial struggles on the internet, breaking one of the last social taboos

Discussions regarding personal finances have traditionally been taboo. But gen Z and millennials in the US are finally normalizing conversations about money, openly sharing about salaries, rent and investment strategies, but also their (sometimes substantial) debt.

In recent years, financial influencers (finfluencers) – some licensed professionals, others not – have gained visibility, sharing advice on once-covert, perhaps unsexy topics such as Roth IRA contributions, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and maxing out 401(k)s. The most popular have a big audience: for instance, Humphrey Yang, a former financial adviser, has more than 2 million YouTube subscribers, and Erika Kullberg, an attorney and financial expert, has more than 20 million followers across social media.

The Traitors star gives his tips on how to shine at a wedding – from mismatching jacket and trousers to rocking a man bag

For a long time, I didn’t enjoy going to weddings. It wasn’t the celebration or the party that put me off – it was the clothes. I felt I had to conform and wear a suit, and yet the shape and style of what was on offer were the antithesis of what I would normally wear.

Wedding guest attire for women is a whole micro-industry these days. But men are still stuck in the dark ages. It’s all grey, navy and black suits. I often see men wearing the same sort of suit they might wear to a funeral. What kind of message is that sending? It’s high time we got to experiment because a wedding is a celebration of love. You don’t want to look like you’re in mourning.

Soon it will be harder for the beauty industry to aggressively market at children, hopefully spelling the end of gimmicky, ineffective kiddie makeup

This summer’s announcement that under-16s will soon be banned from some social media platforms and, more recently, that 16- and 17-year-olds will face a digital curfew, strikes me as a good and sensible decision. It also has unignorable benefits for beauty consumers who are old enough to vote, as opposed to those receiving pocket money – with whom brands are inexplicably obsessed.

A social media ban makes it harder – though not impossible – for the beauty industry to market aggressively and cynically at children, which might mean gimmicky, ineffectual kiddie makeup and skincare will stop occupying a disproportionate share of marketing spend and retail space. Will it be the end for “lip oils” in 36 shades of pink?

Lululemon’s absurdly capacious 80-litre bag will set you back a small fortune – and it’s one of the cheapest giant holdalls on the market

Name: Big-Ass Bags.

Age: The titular “Big-Ass Bag” launched this month (but large carrying receptacles have been available for centuries).

How does a rabbi choose her shoes? Why does a psychoanalyst like slogan tees? And why does a doctor avoid wearing scrubs at work? Seven striking dressers share their surprising style stories

Andrew Geldart, 65, retired engineer, Cornwall

The Mjølkevegen was once used to bring milk from high pastures to the towns below. Now cyclists are discovering the road’s breathtaking panoramas of peaks and lakes, dotted with cosy inns

‘Norway is a hilly country,” shrugs Glenn Roar Berge. He’s not wrong, though he is fond of an understatement. I’m in Valdres in southern Norway to explore the cycle routes that skirt the edges of Jotunheimen national park. Glenn from Jotunheimen Travel is our guide, a born-and-bred local of these mountains.

For most of our three-day ride, we’ll be following the Mjølkevegen, or Milky Way, a 155-mile (250km) route from Vinstra in the north to Gol in the south. It was developed after the second world war, when increased demand for fresh milk meant connecting the mountain farms with the towns below. While farming continues, the road has been embraced in recent years by gravel cyclists, (typically riders on drop-bar bikes favouring unpaved roads and trails), looking for a multi-day adventure far from towns and cities.

Anyone who has frequently landed in New Zealand’s capital has a hair-raising story to tell, and this year’s ‘super’ El Niño could only intensify the winds

It had been a smooth late-July flight from Auckland, until the plane started its descent into Wellington. Then the bumps and swaying began.

“The more we went down, the rockier it got,” says Laura, a Wellington resident who wished to give her first name only. “There was one point where we must have got a horrible cross-wind and it felt like the plane was about to flip over. At that point, the entire flight screamed.”

I found two days of hard graft – repairing hiking paths with a conservation trust in stunningly remote Wester Ross – a surprisingly rewarding experience

I hadn’t planned to enjoy any of this. As summer light fell on Stac Pollaidh – the summit’s teeth bared, the views stretching across the surreal emptiness of Assynt – I found myself ankle-deep in blanket bog next to a hiking path, back bent, hacking at the tough terrain with a heavy-duty mattock. Farther up the hillside, another hunched figure was cutting a deep brown scar into the moor grass and, while he worked, I stood back to look at my efforts. At my feet was a cross drain that I’d unblocked and repacked with new stonework to prevent storm damage and aid runoff from the path. A burble began to trickle, slow yet clear across the sparkling bedrock. It felt a little like appreciating a masterwork in a museum.

I’d come to Wester Ross with a bucket and spade, not for a beach break at particularly gorgeous Achmelvich or Clachtoll nearby, but with the notion of giving something back to the hills. The Outdoor Access Trust for Scotland (Oats) is a steward of many of the Highlands’ most famous mountains – developing, building and repairing paths and habitats – and I’d joined a group of volunteers for a two-day stint on the north-west Highlands’ most visited peak. Factoring in a free stay at Ullapool youth hostel and the promise of a home-cooked communal meal in return, plus an acceptable midge-free forecast, I’d driven north from Edinburgh the night before in a buoyant mood.

Forget the vampire tales – the Eastern Carpathians deliver dramatic peaks, roaming bears and deep solitude

As the sun disappears behind the high tree line, our campfire spits and crackles. Four plump trout are sizzling on a flame-heated slab of rock, a cooking technique used by people in the Gurghiu mountains, part of Transylvania’s Eastern Carpathians, for centuries. Apart from gentle birdsong, it’s the only sound up here, 1,550 metres above sea level and far from any town or village.

“This area is very wild,” says Samir Teslovan, who drove us up through the densely forested peaks from his guesthouse in Toplița. “When I come here to the mountains, I charge my battery, charge my soul. I feel free, like the wind.”

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?

Tim Martin may have spent the better part of a decade trying to convince people that leaving the EU was the only way to secure cheap pub grub, but credit where credit is due: JD Wetherspoon is banning people from blasting out TikToks, videos and music on speakerphone in its pubs. The pub chain has not, however, banned you from asking Thursday quiz questions out loud and then showing off that you know your feral hogs from your escaped macaques. So get to it. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 261

From bank accounts to rent and food, students and recent graduates offer advice to those beginning to study

• Student bank accounts: don’t be swayed by freebies

• The best student deals and discounts

• An insider’s tips on student money

We asked students, and recent graduates, to tell us about the biggest financial shock they had when they started university, and what advice they had for freshers.

Many of my clients expected to find fulfillment from their career, marriage and home. Instead, they feel grief

“I have the career I wanted, but at this point I just don’t care.”

“I don’t know why I’m so angry.”

Madley, Herefordshire: The cool of our churches has been welcome to many, but my polyester robes are not made for the heat

Every summer, while roasting in my robes, I say to myself: “I must get a lighter set.” If I had a cotton cassock instead of a polyester cassock and alb, swaying to the singing of hymns might not raise my core temperature as much. In that regard, this year hasn’t been without its challenges.

Even so, our churches have become “cool spaces”. In Madley towards the end of term I received a call from Mr Batstone, headteacher of the primary school, wondering if classes could be held in church. Madley parish church is huge, with room in the nave for each class and a cool, subterranean crypt. I headed over later that week to find the church buzzing with children.

Speculation about US president’s executive assistant sparks furious backlash from White House

Wearing shoulder-length blond hair, gold earrings and a red dress, cancer survivor Natalie Harp introduced herself to the 2020 Republican national convention as “a formerly forgotten American from California” and compared Donald Trump to George Bailey, the everyman hero played by James Stewart in the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life.

“George Bailey’s father was right,” smiled Harp, her voice echoing in the Andrew W Mellon auditorium in pandemic-hit Washington. “All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away. Mr President, that makes you the richest man in the world.”

Whether it’s paying for dinner, going on holiday or sharing a taxi, friendships can be fraught with financial frustrations, which are very rarely aired. Here’s how to break the taboo

Summer is the season of socialising, from alfresco drinks to weddings to group holidays. It can get expensive – and suddenly you start noticing those friends who don’t pay their way. Or the ones who splash the cash and make you feel cheap. In fact, there are a host of annoying money-related habits that can cause tension among friends. Here are 20 common sources of financial frustration – and how to resolve them.

People say they’ve been secretly filmed in their own homes, at concerts and at work. Are the wildly popular smartglasses the final nail in the coffin of personal privacy?

“I’ve had one person who told me that their intentions were creepy,” a man tells me over a video call, on condition of anonymity. He’s based in Los Angeles, and while we speak, he eats what appears to be tuna directly out of the can. “He said: ‘I go to strip clubs, and I want to record the strippers … Normally I put my phone in my chest pocket, but the glasses are more convenient.’”

The man I’m talking to runs a business called Ghost Metas. He’s one of hundreds of vendors, easily discoverable online, who specialise in disabling the flashing LED light embedded in Meta’s smartglasses that blinks when wearers capture photos, videos and audio. After Ghost Metas disables the LED, it’s impossible for someone to know they’re being filmed.

What are some of the weirdest or priciest things parents and carers have to buy

From September 2026 a new law comes into force, which will mean parents and carers in England should not have to buy more than three items of branded school uniform. Secondary and middle schools may ask for four items if a tie is one of them.

The government says it hopes the new law will “ensure the cost of school uniforms is reasonable and provides the best value for money”.

It’s not always about the big things we achieve, sometimes the little accomplishments can be enjoyable. Tell us about yours here

Sometimes it’s the smallest accomplishments which bring the biggest joy. Something as simple as reorganising your cutlery drawer, for example, or repairing garden fence can prove surprisingly satisfying; it needn’t be just running a marathon or writing a novel provide a sense of achievement.

With this in mind, we want to hear about the small accomplishments which give you joy.

We’d like to hear from people who are disabling smart TV features, disconnecting from the internet or choosing older, simpler televisions

Smart TVs have become the go-to way to watch entertainment at home and have introduced apps, internet browsing, personalised advertising and even data tracking to our viewing habits.

These additional features reportedly slow down smart TVs, prompting guides on how to improve their performance and have led some to seek out simpler alternatives.

The government has announced plans to create thousands more apprenticeships. We want to hear from employers about their experiences of recruiting apprentices

The government has announced plans to create thousands more apprenticeships in England as part of wider reforms to technical and vocational education.

We’d like to hear from employers who have taken on apprentices. What has your experience been like? Have apprentices benefited your organisation? What have been the biggest challenges? What changes or government support would encourage you to offer more apprenticeship opportunities?

Wake up to the top stories and what they mean – free to your inbox every weekday morning at 7am

Scroll less, understand more: sign up to receive our news email each weekday for clarity on the top stories in the UK and across the world.

Explore all our newsletters: whether you love film, football, fashion or food, we’ve got something for you

Get smart, sustainable shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox, every Sunday

The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.

A weekly email from our star chefs featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas

Each week we’ll send you an exclusive newsletter from our star food writers. We’ll also send you the latest recipes from our star chefs, stand-out food features and seasonal eating inspiration, plus restaurant reviews from Grace Dent.

Sign up below to start receiving the best of our culinary journalism in one mouth-watering weekly email.

Upgrade your space today, with eight emails packed with tips to brighten up your home - whatever your budget

Embrace your space: the Guardian’s House to Home newsletter is bursting with tips and tricks to help you boost your bedroom and give your living room some love.

Sign up any time, and get eight emails direct to your inbox every Sunday morning.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world