Abstract art like this gives all abstract art a bad name, just meaningless concoctions that avoid proper scrutiny

One thing is obvious about Ed Sheeran the painter: he doesn’t want to ruin his clothes. He paints in a white protective suit, photos reveal, as if paint was radioactive material or sewage. It’s a telling contrast with a real artist like Jenny Saville, who gets completely covered with paint like a naughty three-year-old, let alone Van Gogh, who ate the stuff.

Sheeran isn’t claiming to be one of those artists – is he? He’s in it for fun and charity. And his paintings have more energy than you’d think from the prissy hazmat suit. He must have moved about a bit, flicking and pouring the fizzy greenish blues, hot orange, lime, mixing them as if making cocktails.

The prime minister has repaired broken relations with France, but Britain still looks perilously isolated in a world of shifting alliances

Gilded carriages and royal banquets are not essential tools of modern diplomacy, but nor are they obsolete. In a digital age, when intergovernmental business could easily be conducted online, the analogue grandeur of a state visit feels potent as a bestowal of favour.

This week Emmanuel Macron is the beneficiary. In September it will be Donald Trump. The sequence is not meant to indicate preference. Both relationships are special, say officials. There are enough champagne receptions and sleepovers at Windsor Castle to go around.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

One year of Labour, with Pippa Crerar, Rafael Behr and more
On 9 July, join Pippa Crerar, Raf Behr, Frances O’Grady and Salma Shah as they look back at one year of the Labour government, its current policies and plans for the next four years

Researcher says tech could replace nearly all human labour within 20 years and societies urgently need to prepare

If Adam Dorr is correct, robots and artificial intelligence will dominate the global economy within a generation and put virtually the entire human race out of a job. The social scientist doubles up as a futurist and has a stark vision of the scale, speed and unstoppability of a technological transformation that he says will replace virtually all human labour within 20 years.

Dorr heads a team of researchers who have studied patterns of technological change over millennia and concluded that the current wave will not just convulse but obliterate the labour market by 2045. What cars did to horses and carts, and electricity to gas lamps, and digital cameras to Kodak, are templates for the coming shock, he says. “Technology has a new target in its crosshairs – and that’s us. That’s our labour.”

I don’t believe in ghosts, but I am also an extreme people pleaser. If my living room was filled with judgmental spirits, it felt disrespectful to remain such a mess

About a year after I moved into my apartment in Los Angeles, I was woken up by three loud knocks on my bedroom door at 3am. I thought there might be an intruder – but I got up, opened the door, and there was nobody there. I went to the front door, thinking I had misheard it, but there was nobody there either. I thought I had imagined it. Then it kept happening about once a week.

I thought it must be my upstairs neighbours, perhaps working a night shift, but after I introduced myself to them to ask about the noise, they assured me they wouldn’t be awake at that hour. I asked the man who looks after our 70s-built apartment block if there were problems with the pipes. He said no. At one point, I started putting my dresser in front of the door, because I was so scared. I couldn’t shake the idea that somebody was getting into my apartment, even though there was no evidence of it. I didn’t tell anyone for ages – because if I had, I would have had to recognise how crazy I sounded.

The rhetoric of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government tries to blur the slaughter and plans for ethnic cleansing. Words matter

Visiting Washington, Benjamin Netanyahu delighted in telling Donald Trump that he had nominated him for the Nobel peace prize. The Israeli prime minister cited Mr Trump’s efforts to end conflicts in the Middle East. But in truth he is grateful to the US president for joining his war against Iran last month and for allowing carnage in Gaza to continue after a brief pause. He is also eager that the US president does not strong‑arm him into another ceasefire. Perhaps the indirect talks between Hamas and Israel in Qatar will reach a temporary deal again, with hostages released and possibly more aid allowed in. Even so, few expect that a lasting peace would result.

Words matter. They have become so detached from reality when it comes to Israel’s war in Gaza that it is not merely absurd, or despicable, but obscene. The defence minister, Israel Katz, has laid out plans for a “humanitarian city”: this means forcing all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp that the military would bar them from leaving. Prof Amos Goldberg, a historian of the Holocaust, used the accurate words: it would be “a concentration camp or a transit camp for Palestinians before they expel them”. The “emigration plan” which Mr Katz says “will happen”, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, is in fact an ethnic cleansing plan. No departure can be considered voluntary when the alternative is starvation or indefinite imprisonment in inhuman conditions.

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.

Dull questions, awkward silences, excruciating gaffes: socialising can be a minefield. Here’s how to avoid disaster – and even enjoy yourself

The cliche about small talk is that everybody hates it. The misapprehension is that it has to be small. In fact, conversational interactions are objectively good. “The person who starts the conversation is in a better mood afterwards; they tend to feel more connected – and not just to the person they’re talking to,” says Gillian Sandstrom, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Sussex. “We all have a fundamental need to feel connected, valued and seen.” Even if small talk were not socially beneficial, society would demand it nonetheless – we are coming in to wedding season and we are all going to need some moves.

However, we have this perception that there are rules, which haven’t really changed since the 50s: keep things light and relevant, avoid sex, religion and politics, stay on safe territory, such as the weather. But anodyne topics tend to be boring and difficult to segue out of.

UK prime minister facing Kemi Badenoch in the Commons before talks with French president

The BMA strike decision must be a tempting topic for Kemi Badenoch at PMQs, which is starting very soon. The Conservatives have repeatedly criticised the government for the way they swiftly settled public sector pay disputes when they took office; they argue that Labour was too generous to the unions, thereby encouraging them to threaten further strikes.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

Streeting says he is “disappointed” by the proposed strike, and he insists resident doctors have had a relatively good outcome on pay. He says:

I remain disappointed that despite all that we have been able to achieve in this last year, and that the majority of resident doctors in the BMA did not vote to strike, the BMA is continuing to threaten strike action.

I accepted the DDRB’s recommendation for resident doctors, awarding an average pay rise of 5.4%, the highest across the public sector. Accepting this above inflation recommendation, which was significantly higher than affordability, required reprioritisation of NHS budgets. Because of this government’s commitment to recognising the value of the medical workforce, we made back-office efficiency savings to invest in the frontline. That was not inevitable, it was an active political choice this government made. Taken with the previous deal I made with the BMA last year, this means resident doctors will receive an average pay rise of 28.9% over the last 3 years.

He says the NHS is “finally moving in the right direction” and that a strike will “put that recovery at risk”.

He offers to hold meet the BMA to hold talks to avert the strike. He says:

I stand ready to meet with you again at your earliest convenience to resolve this dispute without the need for strike action. I would like to once again extend my offer to meet with your entire committee to discuss this.

As I have stated many times, in private and in public, with you and your predecessors, you will not find another health and social care secretary as sympathetic to resident doctors as me. By choosing to strike instead of working in partnership to improve conditions for your members and the NHS, you are squandering an opportunity.

Regulator and government accused of colluding with water industry to dump potentially toxic waste without oversight

• Millions of tonnes of toxic sewage sludge spread on UK farmland every year

• ‘A Trojan horse’: how toxic sewage sludge became a threat to the future of British farming

An Environment Agency (EA) insider has broken ranks to expose what they describe as a “deliberate and ongoing cover-up” of the public health and environmental dangers of spreading sewage sludge on farmland.

They accuse the regulator and government of colluding with water companies for years to facilitate the dumping of waste under the guise of soil enrichment – without oversight, transparency or testing.

BMA union says it is giving Wes Streeting two weeks to come to the table to negotiate ‘a path to pay restoration’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Resident doctors will go on strike between 25 July and 30 July in their dispute with the government over pay, the British Medical Association has said.

Announcing strike dates across England, the BMA said it was giving the health secretary, Wes Streeting, two weeks to come to the table to negotiate “a path to pay restoration”.

Senior judge Sir Brian Leveson unveils radical proposals to clear huge backlog in crown courts in England and Wales

Thousands of defendants in England and Wales could lose the right to a jury trial under plans designed to save the criminal justice system from collapse.

Sir Brian Leveson, a former judge asked by the government to come up with proposals to tackle a record courts backlog, said he had been forced to make recommendations he did not “rejoice in”.

The creation of a new division of the crown court in which a judge and two magistrates hear “either way” offences – those in which the defendant can currently choose to be heard by either a magistrate or a jury in the crown court.

Removing the right to be tried in the crown court for offences that carry a maximum sentence of no more than two years.

Reclassifying some either way offences so they can be tried only in a magistrates court.

Trial by judge alone for serious and complex fraud cases.

The right for all crown court defendants to elect to be tried by a judge alone.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia attempted to strike 741 targets with 728 drones and 13 missiles

Following a similar decision by Germany yesterday, the European Union has also summoned the Chinese ambassador following an incident in which China’s military allegedly targeted a German aircraft with a laser during an EU security mission in the Red Sea, Reuters reported.

“The Chinese military’s use of a laser to target a German aircraft patrolling with EU Operation ASPIDES in the Red Sea is dangerous and unacceptable,” said Anouar El Anouni, spokesperson for the EU’s Foreign and Security Policy.

This act put personnel at risk and compromised the aircraft’s mission.

Officials had sent letter warning Guilherme Serrano, 11, that staying in UK could lead to him being prosecuted

• UK politics live – latest updates

A family is celebrating after the Home Office reversed its decision to send two young children back to Brazil while allowing their parents to remain in the UK.

The Guardian previously reported on the case of Guilherme Serrano, 11, and his brother Luca, eight, who have spent most of their lives in the UK with their mother, Ana Luiza Cabral Gouveia, a senior NHS nurse, and father, Dr Hugo Barbosa, a senior lecturer in computer science at the University of Exeter.

Doctors say hundreds have been wounded by Israeli gunfire while trying to reach convoys

Medical officials, humanitarian workers and doctors in Gaza say they have been overwhelmed by almost daily “mass casualty incidents” as they struggle to deal with those wounded by Israeli fire on Palestinians seeking aid.

Doctors said many of the casualties they are treating describe being shot as they try to reach distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a secretive US- and Israel-backed organisation that began handing out food in late May.

Bectu chief says junior staff in industry feel vulnerable and she is not surprised by further claims about Wallace

Vulnerable freelance workers in television feel “real fear” about coming forward to complain about stars like Gregg Wallace, the head of the broadcasting union has said.

Wallace was fired from MasterChef on Tuesday after fresh allegations to BBC News about his behaviour from a further 50 people.

• Laurent Mekies appointed as Horner’s replacement

• Red Bull have had turbulent time on and off track

Christian Horner has been sacked as Red Bull’s team principal with immediate effect. Horner, who has been in charge of Red Bull since the team was formed in 2005, will be replaced by the principal of sister team Racing Bulls, Laurent Mekies.

Horner’s surprise removal as principal and chief executive of Red Bull Racing was confirmed in a statement from Red Bull’s parent company on Wednesday morning and comes just over 17 months since Horner was embroiled in a scandal involving accusations of inappropriate behaviour by an employee, though he was later cleared by an investigation.

Shanxi produces more coal than India. How will it survive in China’s clean energy future?

Deep in the recesses of an underground cavern, covered in dust and soot, Xu Xiaobo wondered why, having recently graduated with a degree in mechanics, he was on his hands and knees sifting through layers of coal sludge. But there was no time to ponder the ancestral forces that had brought him down into one of his province’s oldest mines. There was coal to dig for.

New to the job, keeping up with colleagues was challenging. As he tried to crawl at speed under a conveyor belt of coal, he landed badly and sprained his wrist. He still can’t rotate it properly.

A century of power could end next May amid Labour’s failure to learn lessons from Scotland, opening the door for Plaid Cymru and Reform UK

Playing Tom Jones and Catatonia at the decks and later taking to the dancefloor wrapped in a Welsh flag, Eluned Morgan, at least, was having a good time at the Welsh Labour conference in Llandudno last month.

But almost a year into the job as first minister of the Labour government in the Senedd, working alongside a Labour administration in Westminster, the party arguably does not have much to make a song and dance about.

As nation moves to raise retirement age, new report warns the real problem isn’t when people retire, but how

Insurance worker G Young Soo started working at his company at 23, and spent more than three decades climbing the ranks to become a branch director. Now approaching his 60th birthday, Young Soo’s employer has systematically stripped away his salary.

As part of South Korea’s “peak wage” system, Young Soo’s wages were cut by 20% when he turned 56, and by a further 10% each year after that. By the time he is forced to retire next year, he will earn just 52% of what he made at 55, despite the same workload and hours.

Government framework to recognise ‘core rights’ said to barely reach minimum ordered by court ruling

Dino Wong and Geoffrey Yu count themselves among the lucky ones. The Hong Kong couple were married in 2019, in a hastily arranged trip to the US Pacific territory of Guam. The couple, who had been together for about five years and wanted to marry, were spurred to take advantage of amended tax-exemption laws that finally recognised same-sex couples.

“I was a student and he was a doctor, so it helped a lot,” laughs Wong, now a clinical psychologist.

(Domino)
After winning multiple Grammys and Brits, the Isle of Wight band explore love and sexuality on their second LP – but there’s still room for some barbed put-downs

Moisturizer concludes with a track called U and Me at Home. In it, Rhian Teasdale sings about the pleasures of doing nothing over guitars that bend in and out of tune in the style patented by My Bloody Valentine. Nothing much happens in the song – there’s some discussion about possibly getting a takeaway, and a brief nod to the “happy comatose” effects of weed – but it does feature a few lines that function as a kind of Wet Leg origin story. “Maybe we could start a band as some kind of joke,” sings Teasdale. “Well, that didn’t quite go to plan … now we’ve been stretched across the world”.

You don’t need to be a member of Wet Leg and aware of the circumstances of their formation – apparently the result of a conversation between Teasdale and guitarist Hester Chambers while on a ferris wheel – to feel slightly surprised at their continued success and how hotly anticipated their second album has turned out to be. Their breakthrough debut single Chaise Longue was a great song, but it carried a hint of the left-field novelty hit, the kind of funny-weird track that temporarily ignites indie disco dancefloors and festival audiences before it and its authors recede swiftly into memory: the latest addition to a pantheon that includes Electric Six’s Gay Bar, Liam Lynch’s United States of Whatever, and – one for readers of a certain age – the Sultans of Ping’s Where’s Me Jumper? But that wasn’t what happened at all.

Michael Briggs was a well-known scientist - and a fantasist. When his daughter Joanne began digging into his past for a memoir, new lies kept emerging ...

Growing up in the 1960s, Joanne Briggs knew her father, Michael, wasn’t like other dads. Once a Nasa scientist, now a big pharma research director, he would regale her and her brother with the extraordinary highlights of his working life.

If he was to be believed, he had advised Stanley Kubrick on the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, smuggled a gun and a microfiche over the Berlin Wall and, most amazingly, conducted an experiment on Mars that led to the discovery of an alien life form. This was in addition to earning a PhD from Cornell University in the US and a prestigious doctor of science award from the University of New Zealand. Quite a leap for the son of a typewriter repair man who grew up in Chadderton, a mill town on the road from Manchester to Oldham, before getting his first degree from the University of Liverpool.

The sequel to the Netflix hit leaves viewers hanging with a tease for an unconfirmed sequel, highlighting a problem with the state of Hollywood

• Spoilers ahead

They must think they’re making The Empire Strikes Back – or at least Avengers: Infinity War. That’s the simplest explanation of how a movie like The Old Guard 2, a sequel to a generally well-liked Netflix action movie released in 2020, can be released five years after its predecessor without including the courtesy of an actual ending.

Now, technically speaking, especially by the cliffhanging standards established by Star Wars and Marvel, The Old Guard 2 does have an ending (which will be spoiled in short order for clarity’s sake, so don’t read on if you haven’t seen it and want to experience a more organic disappointment). Andy (Charlize Theron), a centuries-old warrior who has lost and subsequently regained her healing powers of near-immortality, fights her enemy Discord (Uma Thurman) to a draw – which allows Discord to escape with the other members of Andy’s immortal team, so she may steal their healing powers. This seems to set up a final rescue/confrontation for the final 30 minutes of the film. Instead, Andy and her once-estranged bestie Quỳnh (Veronica Ngô) resolve to save their comrades. As they enthusiastically run off to do so, the movie ends.

Upgraded Bluetooth cans fold up, fit well, have long battery life, sound great and reduce more noise than rivals

Sony’s latest top-of-the-range Bluetooth headphones seek to reclaim the throne for the best noise cancellers money can buy with changes inside and out.

The Sony 1000X series has long featured some of the best noise cancelling you can buy and has been locked in a battle with rival Bose for the top spot.

Dr Tim Gregory argues that nuclear power is safe, relatively cheap and the only realistic route to achieving net zero targets

Dr Tim Gregory is a nuclear evangelist. A chemist who works in the labs of Sellafield, Britain’s oldest nuclear site, he argues that embracing nuclear energy is the only way to achieve net zero.

He tells Helen Pidd it is an energy source long misunderstood – unfairly tainted by the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. It is a safe technology, he says, and despite the billions it costs to build nuclear plants, it represents good value for money.

We need to confront the social conditions that impact them – and the toxic workplaces they’re trying to push back against

Last month, new figures showed that one in four young people in England have a mental health condition. An unwillingness to examine the challenging social and economic conditions – from housing insecurity to financial concerns – means there can be a tendency to explain this rise as a result of overdiagnosis, although there is little evidence for this claim. Clinicians cite the criteria for diagnosis to show that overreporting is not substantiated – if anything, the severity of reported conditions has increased, in part due to a reduced stigma resulting in more people seeking help.

Young people with poor mental health are nearly five times more likely to be out of work, and there is a growing understanding that inadequate support around young people’s mental health in the workplace is driving them to leave or consider leaving their job. In response, the government has proposed cuts to under-22s’ health support.

Fran Boait is a leadership coach, freelancer and writer

Prevention beats cure in our view. Targeting issues like housing, personal debt and mental health will get people into work and cut the benefits bill

One consequence of the recent debate on disability benefits should be the acceptance of a shared responsibility across the Labour family to support the government with alternative approaches to welfare reform. Here in Greater Manchester, where there was strong opposition to the cuts, we accept our responsibility entirely.

As clear as the case is for some form of wealth taxation, it would be wrong to make that the only response. The Department for Work and Pensions system didn’t work for people before last week’s debate and it still doesn’t now. What is needed is a unifying version of reform, and we think we can help with that.

In Britain’s increasingly authoritarian society, any sort of protest can find itself at odds with the law. You might even go to jail

This piece must be carefully written to avoid my being imprisoned for up to 14 years. That’s a curious sentence to say as a newspaper columnist in Britain in 2025. But since the government voted to proscribe the direct action protest group Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act, any statement seen as expressing support could lead to arrest and prosecution.

You may justifiably respond that Guardian journalists are not above the law. For example, if I penned a column in support of al-Qaida, you might be sympathetic to incarceration: it did, after all, kill nearly 3,000 people on 9/11, as well as perpetrate multiple terrorist atrocities such as the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and the 7 July London bombings two decades ago. Similarly, you may conclude that a polemic in favour of Islamic State should be met with a hefty prison sentence.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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

A marketing campaign is all very well but if the LSE’s fortunes are to turn, the real oomph needs to come from the chancellor

• Looser bonus rules and tax breaks needed to save London stock market, says CBI

A marketing campaign to promote the joys of investing in the London stock market? The idea may sound slightly desperate, and will fall flat if proponents think they are rehashing the one-off “Tell Sid” privatisation campaign for British Gas from 40 years ago. But, actually, yes, give it a go.

As the CBI puts it in a report out on Wednesday, a “new narrative” is needed to stop the London Stock Exchange drifting into irrelevance. Since 2016, 143 UK-listed companies have exited to private equity takeovers. That tally is depressing if one agrees that corporate transparency and accountability are better in the public arena and that a healthy economy needs a buzzy exchange.

A market-centered model and growing inequality led to rightwing ascendance. This moment calls for a new regional solidarity

The second world war ended with an agreement of coexistence that included the creation of the UN multilateral system and a development model that combined the state, the market and democracy as an arena for political dispute. In Latin America, this was reflected in the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac) model, which promoted protectionism and addressed social issues through fiscal targeting.

But in the last quarter of the 20th century, the same postwar organizations imposed a new, market-centered model. Value was replaced by price, trade liberalization was prioritized and social issues were subordinated to the laws of the market. The concentration of capital and the delegitimization of democracy broke the previous consensus. Although progressive governments emerged, they were unable to contain the rise of the new autocratic right, supported by de facto powers such as the media, the church, the military and the technocracy. The crisis of representation led political parties to abandon their bases, leaving room for “anti-politicians” who found a platform in mainstream media.

Ernesto Samper Pizano was president of Colombia from 1994 to 1998

You thought it couldn’t get any worse, but the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history just got wider

Millie Castleton was eight when her subpostmaster father was falsely accused of theft by the Post Office. Immediately, her family were branded thieves and liars. She moved school, where she became the target of bullying for her father’s “theft”. The verbal abuse was followed by physical. Racked by stress, meanwhile, Millie’s mother developed epilepsy, and Millie began sleeping with her to be on hand when she suffered seizures. The child became depressed and self-loathing, feeling like “a burden” to her family. She won a place at university but developed anorexia and could not continue.

In her absolute gut-punch of a statement to Sir Wyn Williams’ Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, whose first report volume dropped on Tuesday morning, Millie wrote: “I fought. I tried. I am better for it … That nagging voice in my head still says ugly things sometimes. It still tells me that my past and my family’s struggle will define me, that it will be a branding on my skin forever … I’m 26 and am very conscious that I may never be able to fully commit to natural trust. But my family is still fighting. I’m still fighting, as are many hundreds still involved in the Post Office trial.”

Rightwing moralists are pushing the nuclear family as the ideal path. But this is a neo-colonial mindset that is truly unAfrican

Growing up on the Kenyan coast in a household filled with aunties and grandparents, one thing was clear to me: raising children is a community endeavour. Anyone could be a disciplinarian for a child if they were going astray: a neighbour’s stare could straighten your back; a cousin became your sibling if an elder said so. Children belonged to everyone and no one in particular.

To me, this has always felt like the most powerful kind of family: fluid, expansive and deeply rooted in care. As we say in Swahili: “Mtoto ni wa kila mtu” – a child is everyone’s responsibility.

The public inquiry judge delivered a blistering moral verdict on a public institution that turned on its own people with devastating consequences

It was not a terror attack or an earthquake but something more mundane – a faulty computer system and a rigid bureaucracy – yet it devastated hundreds of ordinary lives. Over two decades, Britain’s Post Office prosecuted its own subpostmasters for crimes they had not committed, based on the say-so of a computer system called Horizon. The software, developed by Fujitsu, and rolled out from the late 1990s onwards, was riddled with faults. But these were not treated as glitches. They were treated as evidence of dishonesty.

The public inquiry into the Post Office IT Horizon scandal, seen as one of the worst miscarriages of justice, began in 2021. In a searing 162-page first volume its chair – the retired judge Sir Wyn Williams – laid bare the human toll, and the often sluggish, inadequate attempts to put things right. Between 1999 and 2015, nearly 1,000 people were prosecuted – and convicted – using data from the flawed Horizon system. Some were jailed. At least 13 may have killed themselves. Many more were ruined – wrongly imprisoned and bankrupted with their health and reputation shredded. The report makes clear: this was not a technical slip. It was a systemic failure that destroyed lives – and one that the Post Office let happen.

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.

• Updates from the 11am BST/8pm AET kick-off

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Righto, here we go! Russell kicks off.

Almost there. Looks chilly in Canberra but a healthy crowd is in. A heavy dew apparently. The bill may be slippy.

• All the latest from Switzerland on a pivotal day

• Player guide | David Squires’ wallchart | Mail Emillia

Dutch midfielder Sherida Spitse made her Netherlands debut against England in back in 2006 as a 16-year-old and now, at 35, is still going strong as Europe’s top international appearance maker in the women’s game.

She’s no longer a regular starter but could add to her 245 caps (yes, really!) this evening, having been used in defence in recent times by her country.

• Archer only change for third Test as Tongue drops out

• Fellow pace bowler Wood targeting final Test at The Oval

Jofra Archer will start his first Test match in more than four years after being named as the only change in the England team to face India in the third Test at Lord’s on Thursday.

Chris Woakes and Brydon Carse are both retained after the defeat by India at Edgbaston that squared the series 1-1, with Josh Tongue making way for Archer.

• Error mars Fritz’s quarter-final win against Khachanov

• Point replayed after system ‘didn’t recognise the start’

Wimbledon was forced to explain yet another issue with the live electronic line-calling system on Tuesday after it malfunctioned again, only a day after it had expressed confidence that the problems that led to an embarrassing error on Sunday had been fixed.

The latest incident occurred in the quarter-final between Taylor Fritz and Karen Khachanov. Serving at 0-15 in the opening game of the fourth set, Fritz missed his first serve, which was correctly called out. He then landed his second serve but when he hit his next forehand, which landed around four feet in, the automated system called “fault”, thinking it was a serve.

Today’s tell-all is faxing in its offers

Fresh from selling their women’s team to their wholly separate, er, parent company, Aston Villa feel in the mood for waving their wedge about, with Ferran Torres their target. The Spanish site Fichajes says that Barcelona, no strangers themselves to imaginative accountancy flexes, have been sounded out for a £43m move for the forward.

Eberechi Eze to Arsenal seems to have acquired some momentum since the Mill first mulled it over on Tuesday, and the Sun is now touting the Gunners as clear favourites to gazump their rivals Tottenham to the Crystal Palace attacking midfielder’s signature. Palace are holding out for £68m but Arsenal’s sporting director, Andrea Berta, has apparently held talks with Eze’s people as interest is stepped up.

Tournament’s lowest-ranked team are not ready to come home from Euro 2025 just yet

Tourists visiting St Gallen’s famous medieval abbey library are sometimes startled to discover that one of its star attractions is a well-preserved Egyptian mummy.

Shep-en-Isis has lain in a glass coffin there for more than 200 years after being removed from her tomb on the west bank of the Nile near Luxor and, eventually, gifted to the north-eastern Swiss city. Just lately, though, there has been quite an argument about whether she should leave her adopted monastic home and be returned to Egypt.

This was further evidence that Sweden should be taken seriously. A squad rich in depth and top-level experience are gathering steam and look a nightmarish proposition for whoever is sent their way in the quarter-finals. They will top Group C by avoiding defeat against Germany on Saturday and, with the obvious exception of Spain, have looked at least as convincing as anyone on show so far this summer.

Make no mistake, they will have to pass far tougher tests than the obstacle posed by a limited Poland. The tournament debutants will play for pride in their meeting with Denmark and almost grasped a huge chunk of it here when Milena Kokosz cracked a stupendous strike against the post in added time. In truth, though, Sweden could have doubled their tally at a minimum. They were relentless, thrillingly so at times, and the only concern for Peter Gerhardsson may be that his players were not more clinical.

It wasn’t a particularly pretty victory and it was aided by some questionable refereeing decisions, but Germany made it two from two with a 2-1 win against a tricky Denmark side in what Klara Bühl called “a victory of mentality and passion”.

Having been denied twice – correctly – by VAR in the first half, decisions were more favourable in the second. Amalie Vangsgaard had given Andrée Jeglertz’s Denmark a shock first-half lead, but Germany were awarded a soft penalty, again by VAR, which was converted by Sjoeke Nüsken before Lea Schüller was able to sweep in the winner despite Emma Snerle being on the ground having taken a ball to the face from a teammate’s clearance.

Get to know every single squad member at the tournament. Click on the player pictures for a full profile and ratings

• Reds looking for permanent replacement for Matt Beard

• Taylor won FA Cup and League Cup with Manchester City

Liverpool have held talks with the former Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor about their managerial vacancy.

The Merseyside club have been searching for a new manager since the departure of Matt Beard in February, with Amber Whiteley placed in interim charge for the remainder of last season. Liverpool finished seventh of 12 in the WSL table.

The £60m Brazilian scored both goals but showed no emotion as Fluminense were his first club in his homeland

This time last week, João Pedro was on a Brazilian beach; now he’s in the Club World Cup final, handed a standing ovation by old fans and new. The 23-year-old forward had been on holiday in Rio de Janeiro when they called to say his £60m transfer to Chelsea had been completed and could he come straight here.

Two days and a single training session later, he made his debut in Philadelphia, more than 4,000 miles north of home, a promising glimpse of a future. Four days after that, he was given his first start in New Jersey. It took 18 minutes to get a glorious goal. By the time he headed off, an hour in, he had another.

Plus: more non top-flight teams playing in Europe, alumni of semi-finalists and England captains in one team

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“The Lionesses will be out of Euro 2025 after two games if they lose to the Netherlands on Wednesday and France avoid defeat against Wales,” laments Sarah Cassidy. “Would that be the earliest a defending champion has been eliminated at a major international tournament?”

In a less deathly group, England’s 2-1 defeat by France on Saturday would have been a wake-up call rather than a final warning. But that’s what it was, and if England lose to the Netherlands their title defence will probably be over after two games. Even a draw would leave them needing favours from other teams.

• Jean-Guy Blaise Mayolas rejects allegations as conspiracy

• Claims include almost $500,000 for women’s team

The president of the Republic of the Congo’s football federation (Fecofoot) has been accused of embezzling $1.3m (£960,000) of Fifa funds, including almost $500,000earmarked for the country’s women’s team.

Jean-Guy Blaise Mayolas may be charged with money laundering and forgery offences after being summoned to attend a hearing in Brazzaville this week. He was arrested at the end of May by the central intelligence and documentation office (CID), a department of the ministry of the interior. Mayolas and Fecofoot’s general secretary, Badji Mombo Wantete, have denied the allegations and described them as a “conspiracy”.

Bank of England says further rise in trade taxes could weaken demand, increase costs and make banks less willing to provide loans

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The looming threat of much higher tariffs amid Donald Trump’s trade war could lead to a fresh wave of companies going bust and cause financial losses for banks, the Bank of England has warned.

The Bank’s financial policy committee said a hike in trade levies would compound existing vulnerabilities, with the risks to global growth and inflation having grown in as a result of the president’s ever-changing border tax rates and an escalating conflict in the Middle East.

Scheme in England to identify signs of oesophageal cancer forms part of government’s 10-year health plan

Hundreds of people in England are to be offered a “sponge on a string” test to identify a precursor to one of the deadliest cancers in high-street pharmacies for the first time.

Patients with persistent heartburn or acid reflux can take the “game-changer” tablet-sized capsule that when washed down with a glass of water expands in the stomach.

Watchdog found evidence of information sharing linked to prices but firms have not admitted any wrongdoing

Seven housebuilders have agreed to pay £100m to affordable housing schemes after the UK competition watchdog found evidence that they may be sharing commercially sensitive details that affect the price of homes.

The developers – Barratt Redrow, Bellway, Berkeley Group, Bloor Homes, Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey and Vistry – have not admitted any wrongdoing but have agreed to make the combined payment, which will be split between affordable housing programmes across the four UK nations.

UK government writes to husband and wife team amid concerns finding buyer for insolvent plant will be difficult

The UK government has written to the husband-and-wife team behind the insolvent Prax Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire urging them to “do the decent thing” and support affected workers financially, amid mounting concern that finding a buyer for the plant will be difficult.

In a letter to the Prax Group owners, Arani and Sanjeev Kumar Soosaipillai, seen by the Guardian, the junior energy minister Michael Shanks said the government was “urgently exploring what support can be offered to the workforce at this difficult time”.

Some social media users falsely claimed that the extreme weather was being controlled by the US government

Disasters and tragedies have long been the source of American conspiracies, old and new. So when devastating flash floods hit Texas over the Fourth of July weekend, and as the death toll continues to rise, far-right conspiracists online saw their opportunity to come out in full force, blurring the lines of what’s true and untrue.

Some people, emerging from the same vectors associated with the longstanding QAnon conspiracy theory, which essentially holds that a shadowy “deep state” is acting against president Donald Trump, spread on X that the devastating weather was being controlled by the government.

Mass lobby in Westminster is kicked off with giant image on cliffs of Dover stating ‘89% of people want climate action’

More than 5,000 people from across the UK arrived in Westminster on Wednesday to meet their MPs and demand urgent climate action to protect their communities.

The mass lobby is one of the largest to date. The constituents, including parents and pensioners, doctors, teachers, farmers and youth campaigners, have arranged to lobby at least 500 MPs, about 80% of the total.

Heat caused 2,300 deaths across 12 cities, of which 1,500 were down to climate crisis, scientists say

Planet-heating pollution tripled the death toll from the “quietly devastating” heatwave that seared Europe at the end of June, early analysis covering a dozen cities has found, as experts warned of a worsening health crisis that is being overlooked.

Scientists estimate that high heat killed 2,300 people across 12 major cities as temperatures soared across Europe between 23 June and 2 July. They attributed 1,500 of the deaths to climate breakdown, which has heated the planet and made the worst extremes even hotter.

Exclusive: Defra warned three years ago of farmland contamination by water firms’ sewage-derived product

Government ministers have ignored Environment Agency pleas to tighten rules on the use of sludge fertiliser for three years, despite the regulator having said that water company attitudes towards the substance are “akin to fly-tipping on to agricultural land”, it can be revealed.

Sludge, sometimes referred to as biosolids, is a byproduct of the sewage treatment process that is sold by water companies to farmers as a low-cost fertiliser.

Thousands of people are killed each year by floods – and climate breakdown is making them more likely

Deluges of water are washing away people, homes and livelihoods as extreme rains make rivers burst their banks and high seas help send storm tides surging over coastal walls. How dangerous is flooding – and what can we do to keep ourselves safe?

Watchdog releases nine new rulings setting clear precedents for online selling

Online pharmacies are no longer allowed to run adverts for weight loss injections, the advertising watchdog has ruled, as part of a crackdown on what has been described as a “wild west” culture of online selling.

In the UK, advertising prescription-only medications (POMs) – which includes all weight loss jabs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro – to the public is illegal. However, a Guardian investigation previously found some online pharmacies either breaking these rules outright, or exploiting grey areas to peddle the medications to the public.

Son of Lindsay Foreman said they had also not known for fortnight if she and husband, Craig, had survived Israeli bombing

The son of a British woman who has been held in Iran since January on espionage charges along with her husband has told the Guardian he lived with the agony of not knowing their whereabouts for a month or in the past fortnight whether they had been killed in the Israeli bombing on Tehran’s Evin prison on 23 June that left more than 70 dead.

Lindsay and Craig Foreman, both 52, were arrested on 3 January in Kervan City in southern Iran while travelling through the country from Armenia to Pakistan on a motorcycle journey to Australia. The Foreign Office were informed they were due to be taken to Tehran on around 8 June, raising fears they may have been caught in the Tehran attack, but on Tuesday they were informed they were still held in Kervan.

Arsonists acting for Russian group found guilty after 2024 fire targeting building used to supply humanitarian aid

A group of men have been convicted for their roles in an arson attack ordered by the Wagner Group on an east London warehouse linked to Ukraine, in the first case to result in convictions of Britons acting for the banned Russian terrorist group.

About £1m of damage was caused by the fire at an industrial unit in Leyton, east London, last March, which took eight fire crews, composed of 60 firefighters, to get under control, the Old Bailey was told.

Committee says it has ‘credible information’ about negative impact of the legislation on disabled people

The UN organisation for disabled people’s rights has asked the UK government for details about the impact of its welfare bill, expressing its concerns about the potential adverse effects.

In a rare intervention, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities asked about the legislation after receiving “credible information” that it seemed likely to worsen the rights of disabled people.

The popular bot on X began making antisemitic comments in response to user queries

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence firm xAI has deleted “inappropriate” posts on X after the company’s chatbot, Grok, began praising Adolf Hitler, referring to itself as MechaHitler and making antisemitic comments in response to user queries.

In some now-deleted posts, it referred to a person with a common Jewish surname as someone who was “celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids” in the Texas floods as “future fascists”.

Friends last heard from Carolina Wilga on 29 June in the Beacon area of WA’s Wheatbelt region

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Fears are mounting for the safety of a German backpacker who has been missing for more than a week in rural Western Australia.

Friends last heard from Carolina Wilga on Sunday 29 June while she was known to be in the Beacon area in the north-east of WA’s Wheatbelt region.

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Bull also known as Twinkle Toes eluded capture for days in Colorado after reportedly escaping through a fence gap

Animals that have proven themselves to be escape artists as of late in the US have included a terrier and nearly four dozen monkeys. And now a rodeo bull reportedly referred to by the names of Sauce Boss and Twinkle Toes can join their ranks after breaking free from his handlers and spending four days at large.

The bull in question was being unloaded in preparation for the Snowmass Village, Colorado, rodeo on 2 July when he somehow got away, local police chief Brian Olson told the state’s Aspen Times. Olson suspected the creature found and forced his way through a gap in the fencing that was being used during the unloading.

More than 250 Australian and international journalists registered for court updates on triple murder trial, with spokesperson praising coverage as largely fair and accurate

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The Erin Patterson trial was the Victorian supreme court’s biggest case in terms of media interest in recent history, with more than 250 journalists registering for court updates on the trial.

On Monday a jury found Patterson guilty of murdering three relatives and attempting to murder a fourth with a deadly beef wellington lunch laced with death cap mushrooms almost two years ago. The media coverage has been consistent and extensive during the two-and-a-half months of the trial and has dominated media outlets this week.

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Alex Ross Perry’s intriguing documentary about 90s band Pavement offers a kind of cine-quadriptych, whose effect is to obscure clarity

If ever a film-maker and a band were a match in indie heaven it is lo-fi writer-director Alex Ross Perry and 90s band Pavement, from Stockton, California (described here as “the Cleveland of California”); the latter made critically adored albums throughout the 1990s with comparisons to the Fall and Lou Reed, while never signing to a major label. Now Perry has made a film about Pavement and it seems to be his intention here to avoid, strenuously and at all costs, obviousness – and perhaps the most clunkingly obvious thing for any newbie to ask about is the name. Pavement as opposed to Sidewalk because of a Brit affectation? No: just a functional name chosen almost at random and one that sounded right.

Intriguingly, but finally a bit frustratingly, Perry is running four ideas at once, a kind of cine-quadriptych with the plurality signalled by the title. Firstly, it’s a documentary about Pavement’s return to live performance in 2022, complete with milky, blurry analogue video flashbacks to their 90s heyday. Secondly, an account of a touring museum exhibition about the band. Thirdly: a study of a jukebox musical project about Pavement called Slanted! Enchanted! after one of their albums, which had a three-day off-Broadway workshop presentation. And finally, a conventional fictional dramatisation of the band’s history, entitled Range Life, of which we see a few clips, with Joe Keery as lead singer Stephen Malkmus, Nat Wolff as guitarist Scott Kannberg, Fred Hechinger as singer Bob Nastanovich and Jason Schwartzman as Matador Records chief Chris Lombardi. But it isn’t entirely clear whether Range Life really exists as a standalone film, or how to judge or imagine its independent existence. We get a scene showing the actors doing an onstage Q&A after a screening, and it doesn’t look like a fictional spoof.

Is it ghoulish to posthumously release this singing contest featuring Payne as a judge? Or a moving tribute? Netflix’s mashup of Love is Blind, The Circle and The Voice certainly claims the latter

Netflix’s new series is the latest in a long line of TV shows attempting to talent-spot the next big pop phenomenon. It feels as if the format has been dormant for a while, its role as A&R taken over by social media aeons ago. The glory days of American Idol and The X Factor have passed, and while The Voice trundles steadily on, it has been many years since those on-screen machines churned out the stars they were once capable of creating.

Building the Band aims to modernise the format by bolting on parts of other reality TV shows. Its wannabe singers perform to other singers, sight-unseen, who then decide whether they’d like to be in a band with each other, by pressing a button, and collecting “likes”. It is Love Is Blind meets The Circle meets The Voice, though mostly it is The Voice, replacing celebrity judges, in the early stages, with peers.

This Irish mockumentary follows two brothers as they seek violent retribution for institutional failings that killed their mother – it’s angry, engaged and necessary film-making

Luigi Mangione and widespread wrath with the 1% are what this deft and formally ambitious Irish film instantly brings to mind. In using the mockumentary form to recount the radicalisation and eventual crimes of brothers Seán and Freddie Halpin (Paul St Leger and Alex Eydt), it creates haunting intrigue about their motives, and further layers on a lyrical indignation that strongly marks out Sau Dachi’s debut feature.

Interviews with lovers, friends, colleagues and the authorities who later intervened, as well as faux archive footage, chronicle the dark descent of the fusional Halpin siblings; on the surface they are bright and artistically gifted jack-the-lads, deeper down traumatised by the loss of their mother to botched cervical cancer treatment. Séan, in particular, internalises this as a consequence of capitalism’s disregard for the little people – and focuses his ire on politician Paul Keogh (William Morgan), the brave-new-world-proselytising Minister for Change and Reform.

This Spanish marital drama finds Itsaso Arana and Vito Sanz planning a party to mark their separation. But not everyone thinks it’s a good idea

A little bit like Woody Allen, or an episode of Seinfeld minus the stream of gags, this talky Spanish comedy tells the story of a couple planning a break-up party. It follows film director Ale (Itsaso Arana) and her soon to be ex, actor Alex (Vito Sanz), as they call it quits after 14 years together. The decision is mutual, and as reasonable people who still like each other, they think they can split without the pain and heartache. “We’ve separated, but we’re OK!” says Alex, so many times it starts to sound hollow.

So, alongside the breakup admin (deciding who gets to stay in their amazingly cheap rented flat in Madrid and dividing the DVDs), they organise a party to mark their uncoupling. The idea originally comes from Ale’s dad (played by director Jonás Trueba’s father, veteran film-maker Fernando), who has a theory that people should celebrate separations. Her brother says the idea is corny and American. The pair’s friends are shocked: “You’re the perfect couple!” says one with that panicky look people get when a solid-seeming couple splits, like it might be contagious.

A harrowing investigation into online suicide forums tracks the suspected supplier of the lethal poison used by several visitors to the sites. Plus: Poldark revisited by one of the series’ writers. Here’s what to watch today

9pm, Channel 4
On New Year’s Day 2023, 25-year-old Imogen “Immy” Nunn’s body was found in her Brighton home, after she had consumed a poison bought online via a suicide forum. This unsettling two-part documentary shows that Immy was one of many who had used the sites. It looks at the devastating conversations in the forum and meets the families of other victims, with one father reading his son’s last posts and the replies from users who cheered him on as he was dying. It then follows the Times journalist James Beal’s efforts to find a man accused of shipping this lethal poison globally, which culminates in Beal going undercover and meeting him face to face. (The man is now awaiting trial in Canada over similar allegations.) Hollie Richardson

At its core, comedian Jordan Gray’s series is a broad comic caper about supermarket hi-jinx – but it also offers a refreshing rebellion against the status quo

It’s a long time since ITV set the comedy world alight. The 1990s threw up some random highlights – Jeeves and Wooster, the ubiquitous Mr Bean – but the next decade was something of a sitcom wasteland until Derren Litten’s outrageously funny Benidorm pitched up. That was followed a mere six years later by Plebs (essentially: if The Inbetweeners were Romans) and job centre-based comedy The Job Lot, whose title’s feel of this-pun-dictated-the-entire-premise still causes me to break out in a cold sweat. Yet despite these shows being the broadcaster’s only notable contributions to the form this century, ITV comedy still feels like a distinctive subgenre, one defined by old-school story beats and all the edge of a bouncy ball.

Into this decidedly unradical template struts Jordan Gray, the singer turned standup who in 2022 became the first transgender person to headline the London Palladium with her Edinburgh-award nominated hit show Is It A Bird? With her new sitcom, the 36-year-old provides the mainstream comedy mould with fresh fodder. We first encounter our hero, Liv, via a parody of one of those cheesy 00s razor adverts: a silky dressing gown is dropped; blades glide along already spotless shins and armpits – but then this classy babe begins shaving her face and urinating in the sink. The punchline? Her longsuffering housemate Tom (Thomas Gray) has been sitting on the toilet the whole time.

OVO Hydro, Glasgow
There’s nowhere for Eilish to hide as she balances intimacy and spectacle, filming her screaming fans as she paces a stage akin to a boxing ring

Billie Eilish’s face is blown up across a four-sided, NBA-style jumbotron. Below, tracked by camera crews, she prowls a bare stage akin to a boxing ring – a rectangle slapped in the middle of the arena, fans everywhere she turns. Such media-heavy, mega-watt staging is immediately at odds with ambiguous opener Chihiro: “You won’t forget my name, not today, not tomorrow, kinda strange, feelin’ sorrow,” she murmurs, featherlight, over distant, rumbling subwoofer and watery electric guitar.

The challenge for Eilish’s arena tours has always been to balance her talent for intimacy with her clear interest in spectacle. It’s unfortunate but perhaps inevitable that the intricate production quirks of tracks such as Lunch and Wildflower get lost in the mix tonight, with just the drums pounding through, but she compensates with astute theatrics; at still just 23, Eilish offers some of pop’s sharpest commentary on the push and pull of fame.

‘So-called sidechicks’ are celebrated in the presenter’s new show with a TikTok historian. Plus, a shocking investigation into gangs profiting from inheritance scams

Jameela Jamil and Dr Kate Lister host this podcast dedicated to the untold tales behind “history’s so-called sidechicks”, with interludes from TikTok’s History Gossip, AKA Katie Kennedy. If you prefer a more strait-laced approach then this isn’t the show for you: it’s a tongue-in-cheek riot, kicking off with Louis XIV’s paramour Madame de Montespan, and her fall from grace via a poisoning scandal. Hannah J Davies
Audible, all episodes out now

Oasis fans were overjoyed by the performance of the reunited band, a ‘non-stop wild’ set that brought back fond memories

The atmosphere on the concourses in Cardiff after the first Oasis gig of their long-awaited reunion tour was one of speechlessness that the once-estranged Gallagher brothers had pulled it off.

Leigh, from Cardiff, could hardly find the words to describe the two and a half hours he had just witnessed. “They were quiet at the beginning, then the crescendos went wild, then they were non-stop wild,” he said. “It went supernova – crazy. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know what to say – I was 18 again.”

Drawing on electronica and deep house, the duo’s intimate soundscapes take the listener to Ibiza via Sri Lanka and Wales

From Greater London
Recommended if you like The Starseeds, Sun Electric, the Orb
Up next Beaming Backwards out now on Test Pressing Recordings

Welding dubbed-out instrumentals with dreamy vocals and cosmic flourishes, ddwy’s music captures the spirit of a 90s Ibiza chillout set. In fact, their last label joked that their tracks were “perfect for Balearic DJs”. But the project actually has its roots far away from the flurry of the white isle: many of the songs were made from a kitchen table in a Greater London suburb where the duo are based.

A mysterious illness sweeps through an isolated girls’ boarding school, in a work brimming with horror, humour and hysteria

Even if it wasn’t perched on a cliff on the south coast, the position of St Anne’s, Eastbourne – the decaying girls’ school that is the setting for Rebecca Wait’s gleefully macabre new novel, Havoc – might reasonably be described as precarious. Deeply eccentric, staffed by the barely employable, and permanently teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, St Anne’s hangs on, against all the odds. And then, in 1984, Ida Campbell turns up on the doorstep, in possession of a full scholarship and rather a lot of baggage.

Sixteen years old and already an outcast, Ida is in flight from her hapless mother, her foul-tempered sister, the small community in the Western Isles to which they have been transplanted, and the nameless scandal that has ruined their lives. St Anne’s is to be Ida’s salvation, but it soon dawns on her that the school might not be quite the refuge she had hoped for.

The Guardian theatre critic’s imaginative exploration of life in the shadows

Arifa Akbar, chief theatre critic of this newspaper, is used to working at night: the journey from curtain call to home computer screen, writing into the early hours to make sure a review can appear as soon as possible, is familiar and comfortable – indeed, often actively comforting – to her. But all this exists very close to far more troubling thoughts and feelings. A childhood fear of the dark has persisted into adulthood, and is linked to recurrent bouts of insomnia; her rational awareness of the dangers inherent in being a woman out of doors at night are augmented by a less easily definable anxiety at what the shadows might conceal; and darkness also functions as a painful and complicated metaphor for the frequently impenetrable world of her elderly father, who has frontal lobe dementia and often, the staff at his care home tell her, passes a “difficult” night.

That last is a compact description, a kind of shorthand – easy to understand at surface level, but also vague; the nature of the difficulties, either for Muhammad Akbar or for the care home staff supporting him, is not revealed. His daughter’s book keeps returning to what happens under cover of darkness – what we fail to see, what we misinterpret, and what we allow to go unrecorded. For those who work at night, that will likely entail disturbed sleep patterns that, over time, have severe consequences for physical and mental health. Care workers, nightclub bouncers, transport staff, those in the hospitality industry, sex workers – all find themselves at risk of paying heavy penalties for their nocturnal lives.

A daughter is brought up isolated from the world in this tender debut novel from an exciting talent

In the woodland, beyond the fence, inside the old forester’s hut, Maya and Daughter live in a world of rituals. The fence is secured with “Keep-Safes” – fingernails, Daughter’s first teeth, the umbilical cord that once joined them – to protect them from intruders. While their days are filled with chores, setting traps for rabbits and gathering firewood, every night they play a game they call “This-and-That”, in which they take it in turns to choose an activity – hair-brushing, dancing, copying – before saying their “sorrys and thank yous” in the bed they share.

From the beginning of British author Rowe Irvin’s captivating debut novel, it is clear that Maya has created this life for herself and her daughter – who calls her mother “Myma” – as a refuge from the brutality of the world beyond the fence’s perimeter. Irvin’s tale switches between two narrative strands: present-day chapters narrated by Daughter, a naive, spirited girl who is as much woodland creature as she is person; and more distant sections detailing Maya’s rural upbringing with an alcoholic father and withdrawn mother, and the acts of male violence that led her to flee.

A deep dive into the surprising uses and linguistic shortfalls of the ubiquitous symbols

In 2016, Apple announced that its gun emoji, previously a realistic grey-and-black revolver, would henceforth be a green water pistol. Gradually the other big tech companies followed suit, and now what is technically defined as the “pistol” emoji, supposed to represent a “handgun or revolver”, does not show either: instead you’ll get a water pistol or sci-fi raygun and be happy with it. No doubt this change contributed significantly to a suppression of gun crime around the world, and it remains only to ban the bomb, knife and sword emoji to wipe out violence altogether.

As Keith Houston’s fascinatingly geeky and witty history shows, emoji have always been political. Over the years, people have successfully lobbied the Unicode Consortium – the cabal of corporations that controls the character set, including Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple – to include different skin colours and same-sex couples. It was easy to agree to add the face with one eyebrow raised, the guide dog and the egg. But not every request is granted. One demand for a “frowning poo emoji” elicited this splendid rant from an eminent Unicode contributor, Michael Everson: “Will we have a crying pile of poo next? Pile of poo with tongue sticking out? Pile of poo with question marks for eyes? Pile of poo with karaoke mic? Will we have to encode a neutral faceless pile of poo?”

Here’s a breakdown of how original Switch titles work on Switch 2, explaining everything from free Switch 2 updates to inbuilt backwards compatibility and the paid Switch 2 Edition upgrades

Outside of the phenomenal Mario Kart World and next week’s Donkey Kong Bananza, there isn’t much new Nintendo software to keep early Switch 2 adopters occupied. Thankfully, Nintendo has seen fit to improve a heap of existing Nintendo Switch games on the shiny new system, both in the form of graphics-boosting free updates and more substantial paid reworks. The different options can be confusing, however, so here’s an explanation of how it all works.

Whether Nazi-punching your way through an Indiana Jones sequel or losing yourself in a beautiful fantasy world, you told us your best video game experiences of the first half of the year
• The best video games of 2025 so far

Enshrouded is a beautiful combination of Minecraft, Skyrim and resource gathering that makes it at least three games in one. My daughter told me I would love it and I ignored her for too long. I’ve tackled Elden Ring, but much prefer the often gentler combat of Enshrouded. It sometimes makes me feel like an elite fighter, then other times kicks my arse in precisely the right measures.

From the lab-born Tennis for Two to the console classics of Nintendo and Sega, the sport has been a constant, foundational force in gaming’s rise

With Wimbledon under way, I am going to grasp the opportunity to make a perhaps contentious claim: tennis is the most important sport in the history of video games.

Sure, nowadays the big sellers are EA Sports FC, Madden and NBA 2K, but tennis has been foundational to the industry. It was a simple bat-and-ball game, created in 1958 by scientist William Higinbotham at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, that is widely the considered the first ever video game created purely for entertainment. Tennis for Two ran on an oscilloscope and was designed as a minor diversion for visitors attending the lab’s annual open day, but when people started playing, a queue developed that eventually extended out of the front door and around the side of the building. It was the first indication that computer games might turn out to be popular.

For his first Nintendo Switch 2 appearance, DK goes on a rhythmic rampage, powered up to new hulking heights by singing sidekick Pauline. It’s big, brash and impossibly enjoyable

While searching for gold in the dingy mines of Ingot Isle, a severe storm sweeps dungaree-donning hero Donkey Kong into a vast underground world. You think he’d be distraught, yet with the subterranean depths apparently rich in banana-shaped gemstones, DK gleefully uses his furry fists to pummel and burrow his way towards treasure. From here, the first Donkey Kong platformer since 2014 is a dirt-filled journey to the centre of the Earth.

Much like the Battlefield games of old, Bananza is built to let you pulverise its destructible environments as you see fit. That seemingly enclosed starting area? You can burrow your way through the floor. Bored with jumping through a cave? Batter your way through the wall instead. There’s a cathartic mindlessness to smashing seven shades of stone out of every inch of the ground beneath you, pushing the physics tech to its limits and seeing what hidden collectibles and passageways you unearth.

Regent’s Park Open Air theatre, London
Callum and Sephy are a modern Romeo and Juliet, forced to grow up fast as they wade through the crushing racial and class structures that pin them in their opposing places

‘Do you ever wonder what it would be like if our positions were reversed?” Callum asks his prison guard. “If we whites were in charge instead of you Crosses?” Malorie Blackman’s seminal 2001 novel flipped racism on its head. Bringing the story for young adults to life on stage, Tinuke Craig’s zippy, large-scale production confronts the audience anew.

This modern Romeo and Juliet remains one of the most striking tales written for teenagers. The production is well suited for schools, giving young people the language and imagery to talk about racism here and now. But adapted by Dominic Cooke in 2007 for the RSC, the choppy script favours faithfulness to the book over inventiveness in exploring its new form.

Tate Modern, London
The Indigenous Australian artist started painting as an old woman, making over 3,000 extraordinary works in just a few years. Emerging from a profound sense of place, they leave the viewer teetering with wonder

Painting quickly and directly, with few revisions and no changes of heart, Emily Kam Kngwarray’s art is filled with exhilarations and with difficulties. Part of the pleasure of her art is that it is so immediate, so visually accessible, with its teeming fields and clusters of finger-painted dots, its sinuous and looping paths, its intersections and branchings, its staves and repetitive rhythms. You can get lost in there, and sometimes overwhelmed. You can feel the connection between her hand and eye, and the bodily gestures she makes as she paints.

Kngwarray’s paintings might well remind you of a kind of gestural abstraction they have nothing to do with, and which the artist would never in any case have seen. The things we look at in Kngwarray’s art are about an entirely different order of experience to the similar kinds of brushstrokes driven this way and that around other, more familiar canvases we might also find in Tate Modern, where her retrospective has arrived from the National Gallery of Australia. But this similarity is also one of the reasons Kngwarray became famous in the first place.

★★ ★ ☆ ☆ / ★★★☆☆
Metronome / Rich Mix, London
New works at Spitalfields music festival by Litha Efthymiou and Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade brought a 3rd-century teenage martyr and the chattering rhythms of Dylan Thomas’s poetry to life

Small in scale yet ambitious in its intended impact: the description fits the Spitalfields music festival as much as it does Cover Her, one of two new music-theatre works that this year that took audiences into two of east London’s black-box performance spaces.

Composed by Litha Efthymiou and staged at Rich Mix in Shoreditch, Cover Her juxtaposed two stories: of the 3rd-century Christian martyr St Eulalia, and of a woman today testifying against the man who abused her 30 years earlier. Eulalia was represented by the urgent, fluid dancing of Harriet Parker-Beldeau and by the soprano Keren Motseri, who sang her story as described in a contemporary Latin poem. Actor, director and scriptwriter Jenny Ayres played the modern woman.

Inspired by club culture and reincarnation, Tianzhuo Chen and Asian Dope Boys have devised a mesmerising show that unfolds in six two-hour chapters. Prepare to enter hell and then be healed

Naked performers covered in paint roll around atop dirt and foliage. Menacing sculptures hang from the ceiling and walls. The costumes have a beastly quality. At one point, a stream of feathers are strewn across the stage; at another, pink petals float down from above. This is Trance, an immersive psychedelic experience inspired by an eclectic mix of influences from electronic music and rave culture to Buddhism, cartoons and Japanese Butoh dance theatre.

When 39-year-old Chinese artist and director Tianzhuo Chen first had the idea for Trance in 2019, it was to accompany a solo exhibition of his work at M Woods Museum in Beijing. The initial result was a three-day performance with each fraction spanning 12 continuous hours. It has since been whittled down to a single 12-hour-long production. This month, the show is on in London as part of the Southbank Centre’s ESEA Encounters, a series celebrating east and south-east Asian arts and culture.

In a world still hostile to the LGBTQ+ community, a new exhibition looks into the things that provide solace, from chosen families in Manila to a decrepit Parisian bar

From TV’s most infectious laugh to presenters so joyous they make the world a better place, here are the most adorable presences to grace the UK’s screens

There’s a lot to be said for lovability on TV. Whether it’s charming presenters or experts who entertain as they educate, we decided it was high time to salute the people who make our every day viewing a pleasure. Consider it a “soft power list” of TV’s most affable talents.

The likes of Mel and Sue, Chris Packham, Clare Balding, Guy Martin, Kaleb Cooper, Roman Kemp, David Olusoga, Joe Lycett, AJ Odudu, Tom Allen and Stephen Mangan narrowly missed the cut. But they’re all just an adorable viral moment away from breaking into the agreeable elite.

The film adaptation of Winn’s book, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, quickly became the third most successful UK movie of the year. What happens now?

On paper it has everything. A redemption-arc narrative about overcoming homelessness, adversity and illness. Two late-middle age lead characters that would appeal to the key silver-pound cinema-going demographic, as well as providing plum roles for top-notch British actors. A backdrop of glorious south coast scenery, as experienced through that most modish of contemporary activities: hiking.

No wonder film-makers were champing at the bit to make a movie out of The Salt Path, the memoir by Raynor Winn published in 2018 – and so one duly emerged, starring Gillian Anderson as Winn and Jason Isaacs as her husband Moth, who was diagnosed with the incurable condition corticobasal degeneration (CBD). It was released in the UK in May, and was a verifiable hit, taking home £7.6m from the UK box office and becoming the third most successful British film of 2025 so far, behind Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy and We Live in Time.

She is the hottest property in classical music, a dazzling musician who can play Bach one minute and mix up Robbie Williams the next. Will her epic ‘explosion of energy’ Prom blow the Albert Hall roof off?

At midnight, at least one night a week, Anna Lapwood ascends the stairs to the Royal Albert Hall’s organ loft and climbs on to its bench. Safe in the knowledge that the audience for that evening’s show have all dispersed, she starts playing the venue’s enormous Henry Willis organ, all 10,000 pipes of it. Often, she’s still going at five or six in the morning. “It’s the only downtime you get to practise,” she says.

Occasionally, some celebrity from an aftershow party will be lured by her playing. “It’s how I met Benedict Cumberbatch,” she says with a laugh. “And there was the time I gave Tom Cruise an impromptu organ lesson, after that live orchestral screening of Top Gun: Maverick. And Ludovico Einaudi, who came up and improvised something with me. And the band Wet Leg, who had a go on the organ. Sometimes it’s curious cleaners or security staff who’ll come up and chat and want to have a play. It’s a lovely vibe.”

It’s important to act quickly to keep your home secure and prevent any unwanted surprises

• What to do if your phone is lost or stolen

• What to do if your tablet is lost or stolen

• What to do if your wireless headphones are lost or stolen

Rummaging around in your bag or pocket for your house keys and coming up empty is a sure way to make your heart sink.

Whether you have misplaced them or they have gone missing for good, it’s important to act quickly in order to keep your home secure. These are some steps you can take:

Retrace your steps and look in the places where you usually leave your keys. Start where you last remember having them and check where you have been since. If a passerby outdoors has found your keys, it’s possible they may have put them somewhere visible – on a wall or bench, for example.

Check if you have left a spare key with a neighbour, family member or friend. Also, notify anyone you live with, such as a housemate or partner. This can help you get into your home, but does not remove any potential security risks.

Report the missing keys to the police. Providing a clear description of what they and any keyrings look like will help the police get them back to you in the event that they are handed in.

Post on your neighbourhood Facebook or WhatsApp group, or on an app such as Nextdoor, to see whether they have been picked up by someone. Do not include your address.

If you think you probably lost your keys some way from your home, and there is no identifying information on them that could lead someone to the property, then some people would take the view that you don’t need to get your lock rekeyed or changed. (Rekeying is the process of changing the internal mechanism of a lock so old keys no longer work and a new set of keys can be used, and is generally cheaper than changing the whole lock.) But you may want to, just to be on the safe side.

And if you have lost your only set of keys, you are going to need to call a locksmith. It is worth calling round a few firms to get quotes, and agree the price before the work is done. Emergency locksmiths are available 24/7 so can help even in the early hours of the morning. The price can vary depending on the time of day and the type of lock.

If you are renting the property, you need to tell your landlord or housing association. They might be able to help with lock changes or provide a spare key in some cases.

Get a spare key (or two) cut in case you lose them again. It is not wise to keep it under the doormat or a flowerpot – leave it with someone nearby whom you trust.

You may want to consider investing in a key safe or lockbox to securely store a spare key. If you don’t know anyone in your area, this is a safe alternative – as long as you remember the code, and to put the key back afterwards.

Consider getting a smart lock if you are worried about losing your keys again. These allow you to unlock your door without a physical key using a code, card or app on your smartphone. Companies such as Yale sell various types, and tech websites such as TechRadar have have recommendations of which to buy. If you already have a smart lock, make sure you update the access code or deactivate any lost key cards.

Think about buying a Bluetooth tracking device such as an Apple AirTag, a Tile Mate tracker or the Chipolo One tracke You can attach this to your keys (or a bag or purse). This can help locate them if they go missing again.

From wedding-worthy to workwear, crisp linen to classic black, our expert’s pick of the best suits proves sharp tailoring doesn’t have to cost a fortune

• 50 men’s summer wardrobe updates under £100

Every man needs a suit. From weddings to funerals, job interviews to formal events – like it or not, sometimes it’s the only appropriate thing to wear.

There’s one snag, though: a suit is a big-ticket item. It’s not uncommon to spend a few hundred pounds on your chosen two-piece, and if you’re after Savile Row-standard tailoring, that number can tip into thousands. But if you know where to look, a good-quality suit doesn’t need to cost a fortune. Choose something timeless and you’ll have it for years.

This week: the camping kit worth packing; Jess Cartner-Morley’s holiday essentials; and the best lawn mowers, tested

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The right kit can make or break a camping trip or festival. But what’s the secret to testing it? If Filter writers Sian Lewis and Linda Geddes are anything to go by, a love of the outdoors, willing helpers (including a friend with a field) – and some extremely creative testing scenarios.

“You’ll never have to convince me that camping is the best night out ever,” writes Sian, who tested the best tents and camping chairs for the Filter (as well as stoves, which is coming up in the next couple of weeks). “But I’ve done my share of uncomfortable nights under canvas, from gale-force winds breaking tent poles in the Scottish Highlands to festivals in £5 pop-up shelters. And I’m sure my husband will love it if I mention the time he didn’t realise our brand-new camping stove had a removable plastic film around it. I can vividly remember the taste of plastic-infused penne to this day.

This mid-priced bed-in-a-box mattress went from rock-solid to soft in weeks. Here’s what impressed me – and what could be better

• The best mattresses: sleep better with our six rigorously tested picks

I fear the Panda Hybrid Bamboo is playing games with me. When I first tried this mattress last year, it was among the firmest of all contenders in my mission to discover the best mattress. It was great-looking, easy to handle, and firm. Several months later, it’s great-looking, easy to handle, and … soft?

Not quite. But Panda’s mattress is a fine example of what happens to memory foam after you’ve slept on it for a few months. The initially solid sleeping surface adapts to your body, becoming softer and cosier. My tests with weights reassured me that the mattress was still supportive and not sagging, but it definitely wasn’t as firm as in those early weeks.

No more sour milk or sweaty cheese: these are the cool boxes that keep their chill when it matters

• The best tents for camping: 10 expert picks for every outdoor adventure

Whether you’re heading to a festival or pitching up at a campsite with the whole family, nothing spoils a trip faster than a bottle of sour milk and a warm can of beer. A reliable cool box is your best defence against such disappointments, and today’s models are designed to keep your provisions frosty, long after you’ve lost your phone signal. But which ones are actually up to muster?

From insulated picnic bags to heavy-duty ice chests, I’ve tested 14 of the best coolers and rounded up the ones that should keep you (and your hummus) fresh. Because no one should have to settle for tepid wine after the effort of pitching a tent.

Best cool box overall:
Coleman Pro cooler box
_{£135 at Millets}

Best budget cool box:
Campingaz Icetime Plus
_{£29.46 at B&Q}

Best electric cool box:
Outwell Ecocool
_{£149.44 at Amazon}

Best cool bag:
Quechua Backpack Cooler 100
_{£24.99 at Decathlon}

Best cool box for multiday chilling:
Oyster Tempo cooler
_{£353 at Oyster}

Best cool box on wheels:
Yeti Roadie 48 wheeled cool box
_{£400 at John Lewis}

An Iranian take on the frittata, spiced with saffron, turmeric and barberries, and sticky, chewy apricot, pistachio and tahini granola bars

I am obsessed with these sweet treats: soft, sticky, packed with dried fruit, nuts and seeds, and sweetened with banana and honey, these irresistible granola bars are perfect for when you’re craving something sweet but still want something relatively healthy; they also work well as a light breakfast with a mug of hot tea or coffee. Kuku, meanwhile, is one of the bedrocks of Iranian cuisine, and is the Persian word for these dense, filled frittatas that are often served as a sandwich filling with sliced tomato and crunchy, salty pickles.

Our culinary experts tackle the three most common veggie burger gripes: that they are too moist, that they have a tendency to break up and that they are boring

• Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

My veggie burgers are so often underwhelming, or they simply fall apart. Where am I going wrong?
Beth, Newark
“Veggie burgers are often lacking in everything that’s good about food,” says Melissa Hemsley, author of Real Healthy, and for her, that means texture, flavour and satisfaction. “They also tend not to have those key flavour highs – the fat, the salt – that you’re after from a homemade version.”

For Lukas Volger, author of Veggie Burgers Every Which Way, texture is by far the complaint he hears most often: “The patty is too moist, and glops out of the other side of the bun when you bite into it.” Veggie burgers often behave like this, Volger says, because vegetables contain water, so you’ll either need to cook the veg in advance or add something to the mix to soak it up, whether that’s breadcrumbs or grains. And remember, size isn’t everything: “I used to love the look of a thick, substantial burger,” Volger says, “but I’ve come to realise that they function much better on a bun when they’re thin and seared until crisp on each side in a hot pan, smash burger-style.” (Alternatively, bake in a moderate oven to “help them dry out a little” before grilling.) This will also help if you’ve ever fallen victim to burgers falling through those barbecue grates.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Comments on this piece are pre-moderated to ensure discussion remains on topics raised by the writer. Please be aware there may be a short delay in comments appearing on the site.

Musician Joy Crookes joins Grace to kick off a brand new season of Comfort Eating. Born and raised in south London, Joy’s rich, punchy and intimate songs means her music is everywhere. With Bangladeshi and Irish heritage, Joy writes music that’s rich in politics, identity and a lot of raw feeling. Her debut album, Skin, was an intimate patchwork of heartbreak, protest and pride, earning her not just accolades and a Brit award nomination, but a passionate and loyal fanbase. A rollercoaster of success was interrupted by her mental health struggles, which led to a hiatus. But she’s back with a new single out now and a big European tour getting underway later this year

New episodes of Comfort Eating with Grace Dent will be released every Tuesday

An authentic alternative gazpacho with rustic appeal, a powerful flavour mix – and not a tomato in sight

Gazpacho has been part of Spanish kitchens for centuries. Long before tomatoes arrived from the Americas, it was made with bread, garlic, olive oil and almonds, which have always been part of our food culture. It began as field food, crushed by hand in mortars and eaten by workers under the sun with nothing but stale bread and whatever else they had to hand alongside. No blenders, no chill time, just instinct and hunger. This version, with courgette and basil, goes back to that idea: take what’s around you and make something good out of it. Simple roots, but full of life.

The popular Craigslist tradition is seeing a revival from Reddit and TikTok users, hoping a chance encounter turns into more

Layla Rivera was at work when her boyfriend texted: someone on Reddit was looking for her.

In the comments of a post on the subreddit r/warpedtour, attendees of the punk rock and emo music festival searched for their missed connections – ephemeral friends or hookups they met onsite and would like to see again. Rivera could tell that one message, addressed “to Leila/Layla (the short girl with the red top)”, was almost certainly written by a man she encountered while watching the band Sweet Pill at Warped Tour’s Washington DC stop in June.

He is kind, caring, romantic and makes sure I always have a healthy packed lunch. So why am I fantasising about sex with more adventurous partners?

I’m a woman in my early 30s, and after dating my male partner for seven months I’ve become frustrated by his vanilla and mundane sexual preferences. This makes me feel bad about myself, because he is perfect in all other ways. Not only are we intellectually compatible and share many interests, but he is also kind, caring and romantic. He makes sure I never leave for work without a healthy packed lunch and is full of fun ideas for our outings. He makes me feel safe and secure. I had an unstable childhood and am not on speaking terms with my father. With my boyfriend, I am able to open up about this.

In the past, I dated difficult and unreliable men with whom I could nonetheless indulge in kinky sex, role-playing and other experimentation – and I always loved that part of the relationship. When I try to initiate this with him, he rejects it; he once said he finds it degrading to women. Sometimes I fantasise about having sex with more adventurous partners, but I can’t stand the thought of losing such a wonderful partner with whom I can build a future.

With immigration, universal tax rises and big tech on the menu, could a Tory IT director and a Labour-voting financial services technician find anything to agree on?

Matt, 52, Leek, Staffordshire

Occupation Account director in the IT sector

I saw that my toddler was annoying some passengers but the words of encouragement made a stressful situation a lot more bearable

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I had my eldest child when I was 19, and being a young mum can be tricky – I was used to feeling judged by other people in public.

One evening, I was on a crowded train home in Melbourne at peak hour, which is also witching hour for toddlers. My two-year-old son just started losing it, so I was distracting him with silly noises and games. It was largely working and he was mostly laughing and squealing with delight. I registered that it was annoying some passengers, but the alternative would have been much louder and annoying for us all. Making matters worse, no one offered me a seat, so we were standing up and bumping into other people, who were getting pissed off.

I only bought it three weeks ago and have not received any communication from the company about a repair

I’ve discovered by chance that my Citroën DS3 has been issued with a “stop drive” notice because of a potentially lethal fault with the airbag. I only bought it three weeks ago and have not received any communication from the company.

Citroën’s “customer care” line refused to answer any questions and directed me to the dedicated recall line. Despite multiple attempts I’ve never got through. My local dealer has a three-week waiting time for the free repair and my car is essential for my work. I’m one of the “lucky” ones. There are reports of people unable to arrange a recall repair at all, or having to wait months.

Meta wiped out a business account and all contacts without warning for not abiding by community guidelines

I am the mentor of a young black entrepreneur, RM, who has had his personal and business social media accounts removed by Meta, which owns Instagram. There was no notice, no option to appeal and, from my understanding, no just cause. He had built up two successful businesses in clothing design and music events.

Six days before the ban, he had sold 1,500 tickets for an electronic dance event in London. Instagram, rather than a website, is the platform for his work. However, he was suddenly informed that his content did not abide by Meta’s community guidelines on violence and incitement.

Posts on platforms such as Facebook claim people have spare tickets and seek payment by bank transfer

Your favourite band is playing, and you’re desperate to go, but don’t have a ticket. Unfortunately, scammers are trying to cash in on this summer’s must-see gigs, claiming they can get you into sold-out events. So be on your guard.

The Oasis gigs, that kicked off on Friday, are among the big-ticket events being used by fraudsters to trick unsuspecting music fans. Earlier this year, Lloyds Bank said that more than 1,000 customers had fallen victim to scams that offered access to the eagerly anticipated concerts. Fans lost an average of £436 each, with the biggest loss more than £1,700.

Insurers may be failing in their duty to offer fair value when 40% of motorists do not make a fuss over often big hikes

It is a familiar scene: you open the renewal letter from your insurer, and the quote is much higher than last year, even though nothing has changed. So you phone up and complain, and maybe suggest you will take your business elsewhere. Suddenly and miraculously, you are offered a much better price.

Most of us would chalk that down as a serious win – but what if you hadn’t called?

It can often seem taboo to discuss these muscles, but they are essential to the wellbeing of both men and women. Experts discuss how to prevent and treat any problems

In the UK, a third of women will experience urinary incontinence, and there is a risk for men, too. How can you prevent and treat it? Pelvic floor experts share the best techniques to keep the “forgotten muscle” functioning well.

They can be red, inflamed and prone to infection – but experts say there are effective ways to manage the condition

There’s never a good time to have an ingrown toenail. But navigating spring and summer with one can be particularly difficult, with warmer weather calling for open-toe shoes and more exposure to the elements. Contact with dirt or the ocean can allow bacteria to enter the skin near an ingrown toenail, leading to infection, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

I should know: over the years, I’ve managed recurrent ingrown toenails, which occur when the edge of a nail grows into nearby skin, causing inflammation and pain. Twenty per cent of people who see a doctor for foot problems have the condition, according to the National Institute of Health.

A study has found that the reason some people hate working out is less to do with ‘laziness’ and more to do with other qualities altogether

Name: Gym personalities.

Age: Genetically hardwired since ancient times.

Now thought to be the second most common cause of stroke in women under 40, it can also lead to difficulty swallowing, incontinence, seizures, memory problems, depression, anxiety and miscarriage. How has this extreme practice been normalised?

Now that Lucy has been in a steady relationship for a year, she finds herself looking back at previous sexual encounters through a new lens. The slaps to her face. Hands round her neck. The multiple late-night messages from one partner – nine years older and, in her words, “a Tinder situation”: “Can I come over and rape you?”

“I like to think I enjoyed my single 20s,” says Lucy, now 24. “I was an avid Hinge and Tinder user and I liked to think of myself as the ‘cool girl’. But I’ve been thinking about it so much – I’m not sure why. There was the friend of a friend who slapped me so hard in the middle of us having sex – no warning, just from nowhere. It actually made my teeth rattle. There was another guy I met at a bar. We got together that night and he started choking me so hard, I felt this sharp pressure, this pain I’d never experienced before. I was drunk but it sobered me up in one second. I still wonder what he did to me to cause that pain.”

Chanel’s Paris show harked back to brand’s first boutique, while JW Anderson pivots to lifestyle and homewares

There was no designer to take a bow after Chanel in Paris, but the creative director, Matthieu Blazy – whose first show will take place in October – had already been at the sketchbook. “It is not his collection – but it is not happening without him either,” said Bruno Pavlovsky, the president of fashion at Chanel, before the show. “You will see his touch.”

Inside the Grand Palais sat fashion’s favourite popstars, Lorde and Gracie Abrams, alongside the outgoing American Vogue editor Anna Wintour. But instead of Karl Lagerfeld’s elaborate Warholian sets, the show space had been transformed into a salon based on Chanel’s first boutique, with butterscotch carpets and floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

Waders you could wear to a gallery opening, vests cropped weirdly short and laden with pockets. I tried the biggest trend in fashion to find out why so many non-fishers are wearing it

It was, in the end, a fashion trend awaiting better weather. Now that summer is here, the “fisherman aesthetic”, long heralded as one of the key looks for 2025, has finally arrived. Or has it? Standing on the beach at Hastings, with a stiff wind blowing into my face, I am adding one layer of fishing gear on top of another while holding my fisherman’s hat on my head, gently overheating under a hazy sky.

I’m not sure this is what Vogue had in mind when it predicted that “the menswear customer will take to water, embracing the ‘fisherman aesthetic’” earlier this year. I can’t see anyone else on the beach embracing it. Then again, I can’t see anyone else on the beach.

From bucket hats to Man City socks and the band’s logo everywhere, gig-goers in Cardiff talk us through their outfits – and explain why Liam is still a style icon, even with shorter hair

In the weeks leading up to their first gig for 16 years, Oasis have been busy when it comes to merch. They opened pop-up shops and announced collabs with Levi’s, Adidas and Next. The results are plain to see on the streets of Cardiff the afternoon before the long-awaited gig. If they say you are never more than six feet away from a rat in a city, here you are never more than six inches away from that famous Oasis Helvetica Black Oblique logo.

It’s on bucket hats, football shirts, tracksuit tops, T-shirts and, every so often, someone’s face. The fanbase goes across generations and demographics. There are those who were there the first time, and teenagers who grew up on their music. Some have travelled for miles – from Italy, Spain, Portugal and the US. If the crowd is largely white, there’s a contingent of fans from east Asia.

From left: Ash Parker, Marcus Long and Joe Gallagher in their brand new T-shirts

As fashion empire hits middle age, it’s cutting costs and closing stores, shifting to larger outlets and new products

In Arteixo, northern Spain, workers are putting the final touches to a gigantic white box of a building, fixing windows and planting greenery in the new global headquarters of the fashion brand Zara, which turned 50 this year.

The site, complete with a private high street where the retailer will test out its latest store concepts, is not far from the small store on the corner of a nondescript street in the centre of nearby La Coruña where, in 1975, Amancio Ortega opened his first fashion store.

Exploring the magical landscape that inspired Narnia and stars as a location in Game of Thrones – just an hour outside of Belfast

Where is the finest mountain panorama in the UK? As a nine-year-old I was taken up Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) and told it was the best. Even in those days, it was a struggle to see much except the backs of other people. The following summer Scafell Pike got the same treatment and the next year we climbed Ben Nevis. I disagreed on all counts. For me, Thorpe Cloud in Dovedale was unbeatable, despite it being under a thousand feet tall. What convinced me was the diminutive Derbyshire peak’s shape: a proper pointy summit with clear space all around, plus grassy slopes that you could roll down. The champion trio could not compare.

This panorama question is in my mind as I begin hiking up Slieve Donard, Northern Ireland’s highest peak (at 850 metres), but a mountain often forgotten by those listing their UK hiking achievements. And a proper peak it is too, with a great sweeping drop to the sea and loads of space all around, guaranteeing, I reckon, a view to beat its more famous rivals.

A short stretch of chalk cliffs on the island of Møn could soon become a world heritage site due to its unique ecology of wild orchids and geology of 30-million-year-old fossils

As we sauntered along sun-splashed woodland paths, our knowledgable guide Michael started to explain the links between the local geology and flora. The unusually luminous light green leaves of the beech trees? “That’s due to the lack of magnesium in the chalky soil.” The 18 species of wild orchid that grow here? “That’s the high calcium content. You see? Everything is connected.”

That’s a phrase my companion and I kept hearing at Møns Klint on the Danish island of Møn. This four-mile (6km) stretch of chalk cliffs and hills topped by a 700-hectare (1,730-acre) forest was fashioned by huge glaciers during the last ice age, creating a unique landscape. In 2026, a Unesco committee will decide whether Møns Klint (“the cliffs of Møn”) should be awarded world heritage site status, safeguarding it for future generations.

The spectacular Shetland archipelago – with its dive-bombing gannets, ancient settlements and endless horizons – is the perfect spot for a holiday with kids

It takes us 38 hours – two trains, a tube, the Caledonian Sleeper, a day in Aberdeen, a hire car and the NorthLink ferry – to reach Shetland from our home in Oxfordshire, and yet the immortal words “Are we there yet?” are not uttered once. When the ferry docks at Lerwick, the kids, Lydia (11) and Alex (eight), are uncharacteristically silent as we take in the view: the town huddled on a low hill, the water shimmering in the morning sun, and islands as far as the eye can see.

We are spending a week in the archipelago, travelling first around Mainland, the main island, and then north to the less populated islands of Yell and Unst, linked by regular ferries. It turns out to be the perfect location for a family holiday: short journey times (it takes 80 minutes to drive from the southern tip of Mainland to the northern) combined with the sea almost always being in view, and the excitement of a boat or ferry trip every day.

From Llandudno’s promenade and Scarborough’s spa to Folkestone’s Creative Quarter and Portobello’s thriving community, these places offer a magical mix of tradition and innovation

Some British resorts are about the beach. In others it’s walking along the prom. The fashionable ones push gastronomy, drink, street art, culture. Others stick to arcades, funfairs, kids’ stuff. Llandudno delivers all of these and a bit more besides – and it does so unpretentiously, warmly and ever so slightly Welshly.

From debit and credit cards, to using hard cash, plan ahead to avoid paying more than you need to

When packing for your summer holiday, don’t forget to pay attention to your plastic. Pick the wrong card to use abroad and you will end up spending more than you need to.

Help prevent mite infestations by increasing humidity, isolating plants and using soapy water

What’s the problem?
I’ve noticed tiny webs and bugs on my orchid. Are these spiders, and will they harm my plant?

Diagnosis
Those tiny webs and minuscule bugs you’ve spotted on your plants sound like spider mites. These aren’t spiders but microscopic arachnids that thrive in dry, warm conditions, so you’ll notice they appear during summer heatwaves or winter months when central heating reduces humidity. They feed on plant sap, weakening the plant’s structure, which leads to yellowing leaves, discoloration and eventually leaf drop. They can multiply rapidly, posing a risk to your plant’s long-term health.

One thing I’ve noticed is that as they grow older, people tend to care less about others’ opinions. Sometimes that’s liberating

I started learning about ageing and ageism – prejudice and discrimination on the basis of age – almost 20 years ago, as I entered my 50s. That’s when it hit me that this getting older thing was actually happening to me. I was soon barraged by advice on how to age well. Many concepts, like “active ageing”, were obvious. (Don’t be a couch potato.) Some, like “successful ageing”, were obnoxious. (In my opinion, if you wake up in the morning, you’re ageing successfully.) One, “ageing gracefully”, was intriguing.

Although I’ve written a whole book about ageism, I wasn’t sure I knew how to go about ageing gracefully. For starters, it didn’t seem as though I qualified. When I was speaking at a conference a few years ago, a woman in the elevator recognized my name from my badge. “Are you the one talking about ageing gracefully?” she asked. “If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ve got the wrong person,” I blurted. My clumsiness, like my bluntness, is legendary.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

Whatever happened to sharing jokes in the workplace (or even among friends)? It used to be commonplace; not any more. Nigel Parsons, London

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

The plant medicine hayakwaska (ayahuasca), marketed as a mystical shortcut to healing and enlightenment, is an example of what the Indigenous storyteller Nina Gualinga, sees as commodification and extractivism in the Amazon. Nina is from the Kichwa people of Sarayaku, Ecuador, and she speaks with the memory of her shaman grandfather about the ongoing cultural appropriation, environmental destruction and marginalisation of her people, questioning our very relationship to the Earth and the quest for healing

After eight-year campaign by Perkins, a former PA for Weinstein, UK ministers have announced plans to stop bosses using NDAs to silence abused workers

Zelda Perkins was 24 when – exhausted, broken and surrounded by lawyers – she finally agreed to sign the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that would legally gag her from talking about Harvey Weinstein’s sexually predatory and abusive behaviour. The suffocating power of that document haunted her for decades, casting a long shadow over her life and making her ill.

“If I go back to that room, I did not ever imagine that it would be possible to reach any form of justice,” she says. Now, eight years since she first broke her NDA and inadvertently became the world’s leading campaigner against them, Perkins feels justice may finally be within her grasp. On Monday, in a move that surprised even the most committed campaigners, the UK government announced sweeping measures that will prohibit bosses from using NDAs to silence abused employees.

As poverty deepens across Britain, the Guardian visited some of the hardest-hit places where leaders are aiming to shift healthcare from hospitals to communities

• Britain’s ‘medieval’ health inequality is devastating NHS, experts say

The same 11 young women turn up around the clock at the emergency ward of Furness general hospital in Cumbria. The group are well known to staff, other services – and each other. Aged between 19 and 35, they have all led troubled lives. Some grew up in care, most need mental health support. All have fallen through society’s cracks and now gamble with their lives for a safe place to sleep.

They know where to look to find the precise amount of medication to take for a non-lethal overdose, guaranteeing them an overnight stay in hospital. Some resort to swallowing household objects to secure a bed for the night.

An Israeli directive gives a green light for demolitions in Masafer Yatta, where residents keep watch at night for attackers in the darkness

Ali Awad is tired. The 27-year-old resident of Tuba, one of the dozen or so villages that make up Masafer Yatta in the arid south Hebron hills of the occupied West Bank, had been up all night watching as a masked Israeli settler on horseback circled his family home.

“When we saw the masked settler, we knew he wanted violence,” said Awad, his eyes bloodshot. They were lucky this time: the settler disappeared into the darkness before police could show up.

We would like to hear from young people aged between 18-25 about their experiences of living in coastal towns around the UK

The Guardian is launching a year-long reporting series, Against The Tide, that will put young people at the forefront. For the past six months we have been travelling to port towns and seaside resorts around England to discover how younger people feel about the places they live and what changes would enable them to build the futures they want. We will continue our reporting over the next 12 months.

Are you aged between 18-25 and live in a coastal town around England? If so, what’s it like living there? What are the bonuses and also the challenges? How do seasons affect your experience? If you’re a parent or work with young people, please get in touch.

We want to hear about your experiences of sharing your location with other adults in your life

Location sharing apps and services have made it easier than ever to keep tabs on our friends and partners. For some, it is a quick and convenient way to keep loved ones updated on changing whereabouts – but others find such technology intrusive and are reluctant to use it.

One recent survey found that nearly 1 in 5 young people believe it’s OK to track their partner whenever they want. With this in mind, we want to hear about your experiences of sharing your location with other adults in your life, whether that’s friends or partners – and, of course, how you feel about having your own location tracked in return. Does having someone able to view your location at all times make you feel safer – or does it feel like surveillance? Has it proved useful, or has it caused problems in your relationships? Either way, tell us about it below.

We’d like to hear about the music-themed ink that you’ve fallen out of love with – whether it’s an artist’s name or portrait, a lyric or a logo

Do you have a music tattoo that you regret? We’d like to hear about the music-themed ink that you’ve fallen out of love with – whether it’s an artist’s name or portrait, a lyric or a logo.

Was it a band who changed the direction of their music? An artist who started spouting opinions or misbehaved in a way you didn’t agree with? Or was it a teenage favourite you grew out of? Tell us all about it below.

We would like to hear from Oasis fans about what they thought of the first two nights in Cardiff

This weekend Oasis began their sold-out, 41-date, reunion tour in Cardiff, marking the first time brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher have played together since 2009.

In a five-star review, the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis said it “serves as a reminder of how fantastic purple patch Oasis were”, but what about you? We would like to hear from Oasis fans about what they thought of the first two nights in Cardiff. Did it live up to your expectations?

Israeli medics Dr Michal Feldon and Dr Tslil Regev Paska on the killing of Dr Marwan al-Sultan and the systematic destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and medical infrastructure. Plus letters from Oisin Large and Christopher Foren on the BBC’s failures over coverage of the war

Dr Marwan al-Sultan, a senior cardiologist and the director of the Indonesian hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, his wife and several family members were killed on 2 July in a direct Israeli airstrike on their apartment building (Report, 4 July). Dr Sultan is the 70th healthcare worker killed in the past two months, and among more than 1,400 medical personnel killed thus far during the war.

The Indonesian hospital has been under a prolonged siege by the Israel Defense Forces for many weeks, has been attacked from the air multiple times and was shut down in May. Following its closure, the UN announced there were no more functioning hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip.

Readers respond to Randeep Ramesh’s article on the flaws in Labour’s approach to the economy

Randeep Ramesh certainly tackles a worthwhile and complex modern economic policy conundrum (Labour could find the money it wants without raising taxes. This is austerity by amnesia, 29 June). But his opinion that the Bank of England should simply hand over the cash proceeds from quantitative tightening (QT) and that central bank independence is somehow partly responsible for Britain’s economic woes, are misguided.

Central bank independence was hard-won and has largely proven a resounding success in the developed world for more than 30 years. Allowing a central bank to hand over substantial moneys from QT revenues to the Treasury would be a recipe for disaster, against the spirit if not the letter of the law, as well as a dangerous precedent.

The debate over electronic line-calling at Wimbledon is similar to that over technology in cricket and football, writes Dr Martin Schwarz. Plus a letter from Christine Walters

Hugh Muir’s farewell to line judges at Wimbledon, who have been replaced by electronic wizardry, fails to mention the greatest benefit: we are no longer subjected to the inane slow hand-clapping that accompanied the pause before the verdict of the electronic line judge, as if it could speed up the decision (Look at Wimbledon without human line judges and tell me this: do you really want life to be perfect? 2 July).

Technology has been applied to cricket to its benefit, with the DRS (decision review system) assisting the umpires. Yet one could argue that football has been ruined by VAR (video assistant referee), as referees have become slaves to it. Goals that were once the result of a perfectly timed run are now judged to have been a shirt’s thickness offside. Beware the machine.
Dr Martin Schwarz
Delph, Greater Manchester

Beachwear ban | A carry-on conundrum | Graduate jobs | Going forward | The final say

Milan’s La Scala is not the only place to request less flesh on display (No shorts, no flip-flops: La Scala bars beachwear from the opera, 7 July). In the Australian city where I was on holiday, many restaurants and bars had become impatient with people who didn’t cover up on leaving the beach. Being Australian, their instructions were clear and to the point. They put up signs outside stating “Remember the three Bs: No boobs, bellies or bums”.
Angela Barton
Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire

• In the good old days you could buy a carry-on bag that all airlines would accept. Nowadays, each operator sets its own size limit (UK airport staff get bonuses for spotting easyJet oversize bags, email shows, 7 July). When buying a bag, you need to decide who you will fly with. Carry-on bags have become unofficial loyalty cards of airlines.
Tony Durham
Brighton, East Sussex

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