Our sanctions aren’t about the Israeli people, but about the unacceptable policies of the Israeli government, and the suffering they cause Palestinians

In a difficult and dangerous world, a decade on from Brexit, there is a risk that Britain loses the confidence to lead and stand up for its values. I’m not prepared to let that happen. It is more important than ever that Britain stands for something.

We have called for years for a two-state solution in the Middle East, but we must recognise that those words are meaningless unless we back them up with action.

Andy Burnham is prime minister of the United Kingdom

The chocolate boxiest of all the impressionists has long had his haters – even Manet thought he was rubbish. Little surprise then that the thieves ditched two works on the way out

Stealing from the Louvre you can understand. I mean, who wouldn’t want a Géricault or Leonardo to hang in the downstairs loo? Same for the Musée d’Orsay too, even the Pompidou – they’re French museums absolutely rammed full of stunning art, all just begging to be audaciously heisted. But the Renoir Museum? It’s hard to see why anyone would bother.

As French art fans reel at the news that two Renoir paintings were stolen from the Cagnes-sur-Mer museum that bears his name this week, the rest of the art world has been saying really? Him? Renoir? He’s … awful. It’s like doing a heist of flares in the era of skinny jeans.

Farewell, New Mexico. The war isn’t going well and nowhere on Earth is safe from the US president’s favourite displacement activity

Busy times for crayon-wielding US president Donald Trump, Earth’s most tireless freelance cartographer, who at the weekend celebrated the US labouring under the highest diesel prices in its history while his “two-week” Iran war edges into its seventh month with a social media spree in which he pushed renaming New Mexico as New America.

In some ways, it was a surprise to see Trump go for merely rebranding a state at this point, given that it was only so recently that he declared: “If you think about it, we have a gulf, and we have a lake. Now all we need is an ocean.” This is believed to be a reference to the Gulf of America, formerly – and indeed currently, in every meaningful sense – the Gulf of Mexico. It was also a nod to Lake America, as precisely no one calls Lake Ontario despite Trump supposedly retitling it by executive order last month, in another fit of pique over his trade war with Canada. Candidates for this heavily trailed American Ocean clearly include the Pacific and the Atlantic – though why the other oceans should be locationally ineligible increasingly feels unclear. At this rate, geography exams in the US are also about to get a whole lot easier.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

What a Time to be Alive! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Venice film festival: Alex Gibney interviews former colleagues, wives, the trillionaire’s father and a CG avatar in this absorbing documentary

‘Elon is a nuke.” The speaker is Ashley St Clair, a former conservative Maga influencer and one of Elon Musk’s former girlfriends-slash-baby mommas.

She is a fascinating expert witness in Alex Gibney’s four-hour epic study of the world’s richest and dullest man: the overgrown brattish South-African-born trillionaire plutocrat, ersatz visionary and Trump courtier who owns Tesla cars, SpaceX rocket ships, Starlink satellites on which nation states’ military capabilities are increasingly reliant, X (formerly Twitter) which shapes the collective “incel” id of billions and GrokAI whose vast server farms daily guzzle oceans of precious water.

Experts helped guide weather scenes in Pressure – a film depicting dramatic buildup to 1944’s D-day landings

Dressed in a Royal Air Force uniform and sporting a trim moustache, Andrew Scott looks slightly queasy – as well he might. Behind him is a huge map of the Channel, and in front of him is Brendan Fraser, looming with a request: “I need a forecast,” he says.

Starring in the film Pressure, based on a true story, Scott plays the meteorologist Gp Capt James Stagg – the man who must tell Gen Eisenhower – played by Fraser – whether conditions will be suitable for the D-day landings scheduled to take place on 5 June 1944. But a large storm is approaching the Normandy coast.

The former A-Team legend tells his extraordinary story with endless charisma, but this show is so rushed that they even misspell his name. No wonder he isn’t happy with it

Here’s a question: when was the last time you had as good a time as when you were watching The A-Team as a child? I know.

Many of the best moments of the wholly unexpected documentary Mr T: I Pity the Fool recall his legendary turn as the soldiers of fortunes’ genius engineer, pugilist and instant fan favourite (not that we used the phrase then) BA Baracus. According to Mr T, the show was built around him; when you see now how well it plays to his talents and charisma – a proper tough guy, but shot through with warmth and humour, giving a perfectly outsize performance and never overplaying his hand – it makes a lot of sense, however much it would annoy George “Hannibal” Peppard to hear it.

Ed Miliband announces sanctions on trade with settlements as PM says in the Guardian it is time to act

• I believe in a two-state solution in the Middle East. That’s why we’re taking action to keep that hope alive | Andy Burnham

Settler terrorists supported by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government are committing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Ed Miliband has said, in the UK’s starkest condemnation since the foundation of the Israeli state.

Andy Burnham, the prime minister, said he would “not stand by” as horrific suffering continued, writing in the Guardian that for too long the UK had been hesitant to act, “fearful of being accused of being anti-Israel”.

An import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories and a new ban for arms licences and other exports that “materially contribute to the occupation”.

A comprehensive sanctions regime against providing services such as construction or financing for Israeli settlements and a ban on advertising them in the UK.

Personal sanctions against key individuals accused of promoting settler violence.

A new ban for arms licences and other exports that “materially contribute to the occupation”.

Whitehall officials ask why laws meant to clamp down on mask wearing at demonstrations were not used

Police have been told by the government they expect better intelligence gathering after masked far-right groups took to the streets at the weekend, the Guardian has learned, as the Kent force admitted mishandling warnings of potential trouble.

Police in Kent on Saturday and then Portsmouth, Hampshire, on Sunday said they were taken by surprise when hundreds massed to oppose what they say is illegal immigration via small boats.

Mira Lozi says quiet diplomacy has failed to free Rami Naimi who was first seized in Dubai in 2017

A British woman has spoken out for the first time about the alleged abduction, torture and coercion of her husband at the hands of Saudi authorities, after nine years of “failed” quiet diplomacy.

The businessman Rami Naimi was first abducted in Dubai in 2017 on his return from a trip to Australia with his father. After being tortured, he was released the following year.

At least 600 flights cancelled as airlines call for overhaul of ATC system after third incident in just over three years

• UK airport disruption: what are your rights?

Hundreds of thousands of air passengers had flights delayed or cancelled after another UK air traffic control technical glitch kept planes grounded for hours on Tuesday.

Airlines demanded action after a “technical issue” at the air traffic control services provider Nats caused the third large-scale stoppage in just over three years.

Centcom says ‘defective’ drone was surveilling regional waters and was not collecting sensitive data

Iranian forces claimed to have seized an American underwater drone in the strait of Hormuz that the US military said had “malfunctioned” more than a day earlier.

US Navy Capt Tim Hawkins, a United States Central Command spokesperson, said in a statement the drone was surveilling regional waters when it malfunctioned “more than a day ago”.

Seaside communities and businesses were affected significantly by the contamination in June 2023

United Utilities has been fined nearly £1m after illegally discharging raw sewage along the Lancashire coastline and polluting seaside holiday locations including Blackpool.

The water company pleaded guilty to five environmental permit offences relating to a pollution incident along the Fylde coast in June 2023, and was ordered by Preston magistrates court on Tuesday to pay £964,225 in fines and costs.

More attendees are in their 40s and 50s, with fewer festival-goers in their 20s

Three people died at Burning Man this year, tripling the average number of deaths in connection with the annual festival that brings tens of thousands of people to build a temporary utopian community in the brutal conditions of the Nevada desert.

The increase in fatalities comes as news reports have highlighted that the average age of Burning Man attendees is increasing, with fewer participants in their 20s, and more in their 40s and 50s.

Tickets set to cost £408 at return for Somerset festival after a fallow year, a jump from £378.50 in 2025

After a fallow year in 2026, Glastonbury festival fans can start to get excited – and nervous – about tickets for 2027’s event going on sale.

The price breaks £400 for the first time, at £408 including a £5 booking fee, a rise from the 2025 cost of £378.50. The usual scramble to acquire them – with all the attendant frantic spreadsheets and WhatsApp groups – will begin at 9am on Sunday 4 October.

Company behind ChatGPT says 10,000 of its AI systems cracked the Navier-Stokes problem in 88 hours

OpenAI claims to have solved a major mathematics problem that has stumped humans for nearly a century after spending millions of dollars on the artificial intelligence-led endeavour.

The company behind ChatGPT said it had cracked the Navier-Stokes problem, one of seven Millennium Prize Problems published by the Clay Mathematics Institute to highlight some of the biggest unsolved puzzles in the field.

Foreign secretary ends UK’s feigned helplessness with sanctions and condemnation of ‘ethnic cleansing’

• Will UK sanctions have any impact on ‘settler terrorists’?

The indefatigable ability of UK Foreign Office ministers over decades to issue boilerplate statements of concern about the extension of illegal settlements in Israel has long been a matter of ridicule.

Even some of the Conservative ministers who issued them, notably Alan Duncan and Alistair Burt, have agreed. Duncan described the UK stance towards settlements as weak and naive, while Burt wondered at the ability of the Foreign Office to find new forms of diplomatic condemnation that never amounted to any specific action. Margaret Thatcher, often torn as prime minister between her natural sympathy for Israel and her fear of the Gulf states falling under the sway of the Soviet Union, similarly expressed her anger at the settlements.

Who’s more likely to steal sweets from a child? According to science, it’s the rich. A study seemingly confirming our suspicions about the moral behaviour of the wealthy was one of the winners of the 2026 Ig Nobel prizes, which honour research that makes you laugh and then think. Science editor Ian Sample tells Madeleine Finlay what the researchers think could be behind the phenomenon, and they explore some of the other awards, including one for a surprising quality we look for in our friends and another for a biomechanical definition of kissing

Handsome, charming and vulnerable, the host made horticulture TV hotter than ever. What a huge hole he will leave

After 23 years at the helm, Monty Don has announced that he is leaving Gardeners’ World at the end of the series. All said, you are right to be distraught about it.

Gardeners’ World is a show with a long history – it was commissioned by David Attenborough as a way to showcase the potential of colour television – but Don arguably did the show better than anyone. Under his watch, the show and the host managed to mesh perfectly. He became it and it became him.

When Phoebe Bridgers appeared at Venice international film festival with unshaven legs this weekend, it shouldn’t have made headlines – but did. What do young women make of the current expectations around depilation?

In 2026, female body hair feels as if it should be the least of anyone’s concerns. But although we may think we’ve come a long way since Julia Roberts’ unshaven underarm caused a furore at the 1999 London premiere of Notting Hill, depilation remains a staple of many women’s grooming routines – and when singer turned actor Phoebe Bridgers made her Venice film festival debut last weekend, her unshaven legs still made headlines.

Even so, her au naturel look may signal that attitudes are changing – particularly among younger generations. Vogue decreed that “rather than undermining the femininity of the look, unapologetic hair sharpened it”, and pictures of the 32-year-old’s hair-covered calves were generally praised by fans. But what do other gen Z and millennial women make of the decision to ditch the razor?

A nostalgia-bait return to the witchy 90s comedy is as strange and messy as the first but there are warm seasonal pleasures to be had

Much has changed in the universe, cosmic and otherwise, since the Owens witches last graced the big screen with their practical magic of sleeping draughts, midnight margaritas and generational love curses. For one, movies like the 1998 cult-ish classic Practical Magic – a compellingly bizarre mashup of genres, aspirational 90s fashion and sisterly affection starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in their movie-star primes as lovelorn sorceresses in Puritan-lite Massachusetts – largely stopped reaching theaters. For another, nostalgia cycles only intensified and tightened, our algorithms clogged with unsolicited sequels and dupes for Bullock’s impeccable vintage 90s Levi’s.

Which makes Practical Magic 2, reuniting both Kidman and Bullock, and Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest as their lovingly eccentric aunts, somewhat of an anomaly, at once a seeming inevitability and, as a matrilineal romance comedy (though decidedly not a romcom) starring two 60-year-old women, an oddity. There’s no circumventing nostalgia bait, but Practical Magic remains so idiosyncratic in tone and, well, kookiness, that a sequel somewhat appeals.

Alex Gibney’s marathon documentary delivers numerous eye-raising insights into the broligarch’s business deals, early idealism and apocalyptic appetite for fathering children

Veteran documentarian Alex Gibney’s film about the richest broligarch on the planet has been one of the most eagerly anticipated films at the Venice film festival this year. The Oscar-winning 72-year-old, who has in previous films taken on the US military, the Catholic church, Vladimir Putin and Scientology, has been investigating the tech tycoon’s ascent and speaking to people in his orbit since late 2022, before his Maga turn and Trump 2.0.

The result clocks in at just under four hours and presents a comprehensive answer to how on earth one man managed to amass so much money and political influence. It is shocking less for any individual new pieces of information Gibney has unearthed than for its totality. Here are six things the film tells us:

At one stage, on its way to becoming a smashing success, this plucky pumpkin was packing on 40lb a day

Name: Gladys.

Age: Gladys was germinated on 19 April and pollinated on 30 June.

Venice film festival: Affleck’s third film as a director is a diverting gothic anthology about mysterious strangers, murder and – pointedly – wronged men

Gather ye ’round the glowing screen for a Casey Affleck campfire tale. It contains superstitions and murder and human oddities of all stripes. An old hermit in his shack. Something nasty in the woodshed. If you like the first tale, fill your boots, settle back, because here comes another and another; each sparked by the embers of its neighbour and playing out with the same deliberately theatrical panache. Affleck’s picture roams and rambles like a creepy cracker-barrel Jackanory.

Actually there is much to relish in Company, Affleck’s third film as a director, even if many of its elements feel like off-the-peg eccentricities; a little too laundered and self-consciously strange. It begins in tried and tested fashion with the arrival of a mysterious stranger on a dark winter’s night. The stranger takes a seat and spins a tale, at which point December 1975 melts into 1953, then 1903, before finally the film crosses the ocean to Europe at the tail end of the plague. Nick Nolte is a hermit pining for his lost daughter, while Ben Mendelsohn plays a mean, mordant farmer who reaches for his handgun too readily. Both men, one suspects, are destined for a bloody end.

The radical British choreographer, who has died aged 77, was as warm and graceful as his astonishing body of work

The first contemporary dance I really loved was made by Richard Alston. In the 1990s, I was going to dance class a few times a week and watching the smattering of companies that would tour to Newcastle, where I grew up. There was dance that was pretty or provocative or intellectually stimulating, which I enjoyed or appreciated, but the dance that really had my heart was by Alston, who has died aged 77.

I was a pianist, too (and later a music student at Sussex University, with its on-campus theatre where Alston toured) and it was Alston’s deeply musical instincts that got me. They were honed in the gramophone library at Eton, where he’d pull out records by Bach and Billie Holiday or surprise the grazing cows with a blast of Wagner. We had different backgrounds, but musical alignments: a love of baroque, late Romanticism, 20th-century modernism.

Scientists are battling over whether supposedly simple organisms should be considered ‘intelligent’. The outcome could reshape our understanding of the natural world – and our own place within it

Forty years ago, as an undergraduate in Hokkaido, Toshiyuki Nakagaki came upon a lemon-yellow stain in a petri dish. That encounter turned him into a doyen of slime mould research – and fed a storm of biological and philosophical debate about the meanings of life and intelligence that persists to this day. Before, no one would have called a slime mould “intelligent”; the popular adjective, in fact, was “simple”. “A simple mass of protoplasm,” one 1895 description ran; “among the most simple of organisms”, said another. And it was hard to argue otherwise. A slime mould can appear to be just a small cell, capable only of feeding and reproducing. Simple is as simple does.

Of that first meeting, Nakagaki said: “I was just impressed with how fast it moved.” Physarum polycephalum, the slime mould species in that petri dish, has a top speed of 1cm an hour. For amoebic organisms, that’s gold-medal standard. At first glance, Physarum seems to spread as irregularly as ink on blotting paper, but in fact it senses its meals of bacteria or other microbes and reaches for them with a long, thin finger of protoplasm – which not only digests its food but then forages further or pulls back into the rest of the mould. It’s impossible to watch a slime mould over many days without sensing some deliberation at play.

Opposition to Miliband’s announcement of sanctions rings hollow – helped by fewer than 10 Tory backbenchers turning up to debate

Nobody can say they weren’t warned. The Andy Burnham government might have looked like Continuity Keir with more positive vibes for the first six weeks or so, but on Tuesday a new line was drawn. When Burnham said he felt Labour had not done enough on Palestine and Gaza, he had meant it. His decision to impose trade sanctions on illegal settlements in the West Bank was to be his first break with the past.

Some opponents chose to get their retaliation in early, before Ed Miliband had even stood up to make the announcement in the Commons on Tuesday. Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador, declared on Sunday that Ed was guilty of “hating Jews”. Which rather implied he thought Ed hated himself.

Nothing good can come of ditching annual investor votes on remuneration reports or encouraging online-only shareholder meetings

The government, like every other one in living memory, is on a mission to reduce red tape for business. The former chancellor Rachel Reeves promised “a blitz on bureaucracy” and “pointless admin” and here comes the business department with a 12-week consultation on “modernising corporate reporting to support long-term economic growth”.

Never mind that cutting energy costs for business would, by an order of magnitude, do more to support growth than any bonfire of red tape ever will. The consultation is still worthwhile: clearing out accumulated clutter, exploring digital options and clarifying reporting “exemptions and exclusions” for small- and medium-sized companies could free up a bit of time for doing more business.

The US president says criticising his soaring investment portfolio is ‘very unfair’. Tell that to the millions of Americans struggling with the cost of living

If I had a dollar for every time Donald Trump said something inane, I would be a very rich woman. But even with an income that steady, I could never hope to be as flush as the president. A Forbes calculation from March puts his net worth at about $6.5bn – and it’s growing rapidly. Trump made $2.2bn in 2025 via business interests that ranged from selling cryptocurrency and Trump Bibles to offering early access to his (often market-moving) Truth Social posts.

To be fair, Trump isn’t making all this money just so he can buy golf clubs and gold toilets. No, he’s amassing these billions for the good of the little people; it’s altruism, not avarice! “I do this for our Country, not myself,” the president wrote on Truth Social on Sunday night alongside an AI-generated picture of him trading Intel stock. “I’ve made Hundreds of Billions of Dollars on Stocks, and many other type Holdings, for the U.S.A., not myself, and all I do is get criticized by the Radical Left Dumocrats. Very unfair, but what can you do!”

The will of the elected chamber – and a popular, compassionate piece of legislation – must not be frustrated again by a small minority of peers

• Lauren Edwards is the Labour MP for Rochester and Strood

I was elected to Westminster two years ago, when the country was crying out for change and looking to parliament to tackle the big issues that had been forgotten for too long. When that change didn’t come fast enough, trust in politics once again started to ebb away. We have one last chance to prove we can deliver on people’s priorities.

Assisted dying didn’t feature in the manifesto I was elected on. Nor should it have done. Matters of conscience such as this are rightly left to individual MPs to decide upon. There will always be a range of views within all political parties. But this issue has been supported by a substantial majority in the country for a very long time. Reputable independent polling has shown support for assisted dying consistently at about 75%. The latest British social attitudes survey from the National Centre for Social Research found that “it is clear we are observing a continued high level of public support for legal change to allow assisted dying in some circumstances”.

Lauren Edwards is the Labour MP for Rochester and Strood and has reintroduced the terminally ill adults bill in parliament

For decades we were told that privatisation would deliver better services. The experience of millions of passengers tells a different story

• Steve Rotheram is mayor of the Liverpool city region

One of the best-known scenes from the TV series The Inbetweeners is the four angst-ridden teenage characters shouting abuse at people queueing at a bus stop. Only losers take the bus, is the point – except they use a much ruder word. There’s also a statement, misattributed to Margaret Thatcher, that any man over the age of 26 using a bus was a loser. This idea is deeply ingrained.

But when I was an MP it became obvious that there wasn’t the same stigma attached to jumping on the bus in London as there often was in other big cities. It often wound me up that the rest of the country was expected to accept a suboptimal public transport system – so much so that it could be joked that only losers would use it – while London retained its excellent bus service, which it ran under public control.

Steve Rotheram is mayor of the Liverpool city region

The pre-university shop is the moment you find out how much domestic wisdom you’ve managed to impart. In my case, none

I have yet again found my ultimate tribe in a high-street shop, this time Ikea. As far as the eye could see, there were middle-aged women trying to choose kitchen essentials for their late-teenaged sons, for whom the next chapter of life, in which they move to another city and never once use a kitchen, cannot commence fast enough. I don’t know where all the girls were – did they do it all online? Have they been collecting teapots for years, as part of a wistful university trousseau?

The negotiation started with a chopping board, which my son said he absolutely did not need or want. I said, “How are you going to chop vegetables?”, and he said he would cross that bridge when he came to it, and I said: “Oh my God, you’re going to get scurvy.” Behind me a woman and her son were arguing about whether or not he needed a cheese grater, which ended in her saying: “I think you might be about to starve.”

Ed Miliband has delivered Britain’s toughest indictment of Israeli conduct in Palestinian lands - and rightly says this has economic consequences

Rarely in recent years has the Commons felt like the cockpit of history. On Tuesday it did. The foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, placed Britain at the head of a 12-country coalition considering economic restrictions on Israel’s illegal settlements, with the UK, France and Canada committing to national trade bans.

The move comes after escalating numbers of attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian villages in the West Bank. International opinion seemed to shift decisively after Israel gave the go-ahead for 1,200 homes in the E1 settlement that would cleave the West Bank into two – using illegal settlements to bury Palestinian statehood for good. Mr Miliband added that evidence of war crimes in Gaza was mounting, making the overdue case for Britain to recast its economic and military relationship with Israel.

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.

International comparisons suggest that some things are being done right in England’s classrooms

Teachers, headteachers, children, parents and politicians should all feel proud of England’s schools, which have bucked a disappointing international trend. Results from 15-year-olds in reading, maths and science have held up well compared with 90 other countries, according to the programme for international student assessment (Pisa). Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland did not match England’s success in reading and maths, although all four UK nations scored well in science.

Worries about children reading fewer books than in the past should be dispelled to some degree by England’s results, which show no decline in capability since 2022, when the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) last published results. The decision to place more emphasis on science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem), both at primary and secondary levels, has seemingly borne fruit.

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.

Readers respond to George Monbiot’s article on Andy Burnham and political donations

George Monbiot condemns Andy Burnham for his alleged subservience to the interests of the wealthy (Andy Burnham has already made a mistake that will cost him his premiership: he lost his nerve over political donations, 2 September). If true, I agree. But the same could be said of any interest holding sway in our politics. Lobbying groups, activists, unions, thinktanks, people who obsess about this, that or the other. It is surely not OK for our democracy – at local or national level – to have its priorities dictated by those with the shrillest voices, as well as those with the deepest pockets.

Speaking from Scotland, I think that our public realm is a case in point. It seems special interest groups are, to all intents and purposes, the main driver of government policy now. And all too often, said influence is framed by an ideological mission that does not necessarily align with that boring, broad swathe of folks who don’t follow politics closely, and don’t see government as a means to progress personal hobbyhorses or single-issue causes.

The offshore windfarm at Berwick Bank is predicted to kill more than 4,000 birds in its first year alone – among them gannets, puffins and kittiwakes, writes Ashley Davies

Lev Parikian paints a vivid picture of the gannets of the Bass Rock and the impact that avian flu has had on their numbers (Country diary, 31 August). There’s another threat, though, and it’s one that puts some supporters of renewable energy like me in a novel situation: protesting against the construction of a windfarm.

Berwick Bank will be one of the biggest offshore windfarms in the world – a few kilometres from the Bass. This is perilously close, and the RSPB has calculated that it will kill more than 4,000 seabirds in its first year alone, among them gannets, puffins and endangered kittiwakes.

Readers respond to reports and commentary on far-right groups of masked vigilantes causing unrest in Dover and Portsmouth over the weekend

In Dover and Portsmouth at the weekend, mobs of masked vigilantes in balaclavas acted in an intimidating and racist manner (‘Army of Christian patriots’: how a black-clad vigilante group swarmed Portsmouth, 8 September). Critical infrastructure was blocked, with roads, boats and transport disrupted. Police officers were injured and vehicles damaged. Permission for the orchestrated demonstrations was not sought or granted. Arrests? None.

Imagine if this had been a masked pro-Palestine protest or an unauthorised environmental action disturbing the flow of traffic, intimidating the public and injuring police officers. There would have been hundreds of arrests. So, we have an extraordinary example of “two-tier policing”, with the police service being tough on Palestine and climate protesters while going easy on anti-immigrant demonstrations.

Directors of the William Blake Congregation respond to an editorial and a letter about writers’ homes

We were pleased to see your editorial about writers’ houses (18 August), and the response from Richard Clemmow, a trustee of the Blake Cottage Trust (Letters, 25 August). However, we must disagree with Clemmow’s statement that William Blake’s cottage in Felpham, Sussex, is the only one of his residences that could ever open to the public. The other surviving house where Blake lived, 17 South Molton Street in London, is not “disappearing behind new development”, but is at present being carefully restored by its owner, the Grosvenor Estate. With inspired support, the leasehold could be acquired and it could be made into a culturally significant museum.

The William Blake Fellowship has been in negotiations with the Grosvenor Group/Grosvenor Property UK about this project for several years, and has the support of Sadiq Khan, Tate Britain, the V&A, English Heritage and thousands of Blake lovers, artists, poets and musicians who have signed our petitions and our letter to the Duke of Westminster, and sent messages of support. This project is gaining momentum and may even, with luck and vision, also be able to open to the public for the bicentenary of Blake’s death on 12 August next year.
Helen Elwes and Stephen Micalef
The William Blake Congregation

Sabalenka shows spirit to deny Noskova and reach semis
Will influencers bring down US Open? | You can mail Katy

First set: Sabalenka* 3-1 Noskova (*denotes next server)

At 30-all, Sabalenka is applying more pressure on Noskova’s serve, but Sabalenka smacks a backhand return into the net and Noskova can breathe a little at 40-30. And the Wimbledon champion gets her side of the scoreboard moving when Sabalenka again errs with her return. The Arthur Ashe crowd – perhaps only about a half full so far – cheer loudly. They’re not against Sabelenka – as they were in the previous round when she played the American Taylor Townsend – but of course they want a close match.

Sometimes football is silly and sometimes it is more fun for it. On a night when there were 37 shots and the goalkeepers shared thirteen saves between them, some of them absurd, José Mourinho’s Real Madrid found a way to beat his former team Inter in his first Champions League night of his second spell. Just don’t ask exactly how. Except perhaps to cite Thibaut Courtois, whose astonishing save in the 89th minute saw them hold on to a 2-0 first-half lead given then by goals from Kylian Mbappé and Fede Valverde themselves. You would say that they had shot themselves in the foot, only if they tried, Courtois would probably save that too. This wasn’t always good, in fact at times it was terrible, but they had got through somehow.

You would say that they had shot themselves in the foot, only if they tried, Courtois would probably save that too. This wasn’t always good, in fact at times it was terrible, but they had got through somehow. When Madrid scored the first, this grand arena cheered but they might as well have laughed too. That Madrid led really didn’t make much sense; not when it came to the goal and not when it came to the game either. It had taken Madrid four minutes to get a meaningful hold of the ball, and by then Courtois had already made a superb save from Marcus Thuram. But now, somehow, they led. Ninety minutes later, they still did.

Enzo Maresca admitted a liking for the “boom-boom” of house music, then oversaw a gritty performance that ended with Manchester City enjoying the sweet notes of victory.

They had lost six of their past nine away games in the competition and also lost the 2021 Champions League final at this venue, so to beat Porto and claim three points is a fillip for the manager’s nascent project.

Aston Villa were 3-1 up after 43 minutes but were made to sweat for their first win of the season, emerging victorious from an entertaining Champions League opener with Club Brugge. John McGinn, who struck the only goal when Villa belatedly got their season up and running last September against Bologna, opened the scoring before Emi Buendía and a first goal for Nicolas Jackson in claret and blue appeared to put Villa out of sight at half-time.

The Belgian side have become familiar foes since Villa returned to the big time, the glitziest club competition of them all; a freakish Tyrone Mings handball gifted the hosts a penalty, and subsequently victory, in 2024-25 and on this occasion Aaron Wan-Bissaka conceded a second-half penalty to plunge a seesawing contest back into the balance.

Late-night drinking incidents and a post-Bazball reboot have given the hosts plenty to think about, while the tourists have their own problems to sort out

There are some chilly white-ball games still to come this month and with it the sight of Kevin Pietersen back in England training kit for the first time in 12 years. KP is down with the kids these days, 6/7 memes and the like, and starts a new life as the “specialist mentor” to Harry Brook’s young thrusters.

But the final Test of the summer that starts at Edgbaston on Wednesday does feel like an end of sorts, or at least one last push before a breather for the side that has undergone the more significant recalibration. And that is before we get on to Pakistan and a tour that has descended into a bonfire of players and a phone-snatching investigation into “discipline and conduct”.

Newcastle United did just enough to progress to the next round of the Carabao Cup against a spirited Millwall team that wasn’t so much down to the bare bones, as the bones beneath the bones.

Joe Willock scored the only goal of this boisterous, fun, slightly vague early-season cup tie, finishing neatly on 81 minutes. Although by the end there was a sense both sets of fans were more or less happy with the result. Millwall for the vigour of the performance. Newcastle for the result, the clean sheet and any signs of early progress in the dawning of the age of Jaissle-ball.

• Teetotal Hull teed off alone in practice

• Briton in Women’s Open controversy in August

Charley Hull has, unsurprisingly, been involved in a colourful start to Solheim Cup week. After arriving late for her Tuesday practice tee time in the Netherlands, an online clip of her joking about the reason prompted a cascade of online speculation and ended with members of the European team hierarchy forcibly denying any overindulgence on the teetotal Hull’s behalf on Monday night.

In an unusual scene, Hull, who is crucial to Europe’s quest to reclaim the Solheim Cup from the US this week, drove off alone at Bernardus Golf and caught up with her teammates after arriving on the 1st tee minutes behind them. In a clip that gained traction, Hull appeared to jokingly blame “drinks” from the night before. The English golfer did, however, seem to point towards her caddie at the time.

• Briton powers to victory in sprint finish on stage 16

• Mas remains in red jersey as race enters final week

Matthew Brennan enhanced his status as the standout sprinter at the Vuelta a España by winning a fourth stage on his Grand Tour debut.

The 21-year-old British rider was delivered to the front of the bunch with 100 metres left by an ideal leadout from Wout van Aert, his star teammate at Visma-Lease a Bike who had already won two stages at this race.

• Pair have joined Sale after spells in France

• Duo last played for England at 2023 World Cup

Courtney Lawes and Joe Marchant have been warned they must go “over and above” the performances of their rivals in the first five weeks of the new season to earn England recalls this autumn.

Lawes, 37, and the 30-year-old Marchant have both joined Sale this summer after spells in France and stated their ambition to resurrect their international careers, having last represented England at the 2023 World Cup.

Trump passed the long weekend posting a torrent of memes and musings on his Truth Social platform

The long weekend may have proved too long for Donald Trump, who passed the time by musing about annexing other countries, unilaterally renaming places he’s not allowed to rename and turning himself into a superhero.

Amid the torrent of memes and posts by the president on his Truth Social platform over the Labor Day holiday weekend was a bizarre AI-generated video depicting Trump as the Green Lantern DC superhero, wielding a glowing green power ring to erect his border wall, illuminate an “American manufacturing” scene, and command a fleet of warplanes and warships behind him.

Lisa Nandy says government will introduce legislation after talks end without breakthrough

Apple and Google will be forced to block explicit images on children’s smartphones by law in the UK after talks failed to produce a breakthrough, the government has said.

The legislation commitment puts ministers on a collision course with two of the biggest players in Silicon Valley, months after the government announced a social media ban for under-16s.

Alarm that Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania may fall next after party’s Saxony-Anhalt election victory

• ‘It breaks my heart’: victory sparks dismay

• Europe live – latest updates

Thousands of Germans have staged protests against the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) after the party’s watershed victory in a state election, warning it posed a danger in two more polls this month.

Demonstrators at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate held a peaceful pro-democracy rally denouncing the anti-immigrant, pro-Russian AfD, which has called for mass deportations of asylum seekers and a rollback of state support for renewable energy and public broadcasting.

Ashley St Clair was speaking at the Venice film premiere of Alex Gibney’s documentary Musk, where she warned of his dangerous influence

• Musk review – epic study of the world’s richest and most banal man

Elon Musk is sowing “deliberate division” via his social media platform X that will be catastrophic unless regulated, the mother of one of the 14 confirmed children fathered by the world’s richest man has warned.

In Musk, a new documentary by veteran film-maker Alex Gibney, former Maga influencer Ashley St Clair says Musk told her in a text message he wanted to have a child with her because he needed to have “a legion of children before the civil war”.

EU’s highest court allows Swedish furniture firm to begin proceedings after Vlaams Belang used its trademarks in immigration campaign

Ikea has won the right to take legal action against a Belgian far-right political party that parodied the Swedish flatpack furniture firm’s branding in its anti-immigration campaign.

In a ruling on Tuesday, Europe’s highest court said that Ikea had the right to oppose the use of its trademarks and distinctive graphics by Vlaams Belang, a rightwing Eurosceptic political party that advocates for an independent Flemish state.

Officials say sighting a sign species – driven to extinction in state before reintroduction in 2011 – expanding its range

A gray wolf has recently been seen in California’s Mendocino national forest for the first time since the species returned to the state 15 years ago, state wildlife officials confirmed.

Officials in Lake county, which is about two hours north of San Francisco, said last week the California department of fish and wildlife (CDFW) had received reports of sightings in the forest in late August. The agency verified the presence of a wolf in the far north end of the county, county supervisor Brad Rasmussen said in a statement on social media.

More than 140 clubs breached licences, with a third caught taking water illegally, analysis shows – but no fines issued

More than 140 golf clubs in England have breached their water extraction licences in the past five years, according to data analysis by the Guardian.

More than a third of these clubs were caught taking water illegally from the environment, either by taking more than permitted or by removing it outside the permitted period.

Appeals court dismisses lawsuit from Jackson residents claiming that tainted drinking water violated their rights

A US appellate court has decided that the federal constitution does not guarantee a right to clean water.

That legal opinion came in the form of a decision on Friday from the fifth circuit court of appeals to uphold a lower court’s dismissal of a 2022 lawsuit from several Jackson, Mississippi, residents claiming that tainted drinking water violated their constitutional rights.

Researchers urge governments to help worst afflicted countries, such as Nigeria and Algeria, which rely on oil revenues for public services

Conflict, migration and economic upheaval will accompany the global move away from oil, unless governments act urgently to help the worst afflicted countries to cope, research has found.

Nigeria, Iran, Angola and Algeria are among the countries that will be severely affected, as they rely strongly on oil revenues for their government and provision of public services, but have little diversification and too little capital to cushion the blow.

Exclusive: London mayor accuses council of ‘ignoring’ responses to a consultation

Sadiq Khan has criticised the “breathtaking arrogance” of Westminster council, which has kept restrictions on vertical drinking in Soho and an effective ban on new bars and pubs in the area.

The mayor of London has accused the Conservative-led council of “ignoring” the responses to a consultation into its new licensing policy. The vast majority of respondents, 81%, disagreed with the council’s “cumulative impact zone” which decrees that applications for bars and pubs in the West End of London, one of Europe’s most famous nightlife districts, will be refused unless in exceptional circumstances. Eighty-four per cent said the licensing policy would be bad for business.

High yields threaten to wipe out at least half of the £24bn headroom John Healey was expecting to have for his budget

The UK government was forced to pay the highest interest rate for a 30-year bond since 1998 on Tuesday, underlining the fiscal challenges facing the chancellor, John Healey.

Echoing the global bond market sell-off that has driven up yields, or interest rates, on government borrowing across the main markets, the Treasury paid 5.82% to borrow £4bn.

Exclusive: Staff expect ‘brutal’ cutbacks as broadcaster seeks to reduce costs amid advertising slowdown

• Business live – latest updates

Channel 4 is poised to cut about 300 jobs – about a quarter of its workforce – in the biggest round of layoffs in its 43-year history, as the broadcaster seeks to dramatically cut costs.

Priya Dogra, who took over from Alex Mahon as chief executive in March, is to address an all-staff meeting on Wednesday on a wide-ranging review of Channel 4’s strategy and structure.

More rapid use of blood products may have raised chance of 19-year-old making it to hospital, though chance was low, says counsel

The death of a 19-year-old student who was killed in the Nottingham attacks in 2023 was “potentially preventable”, a public inquiry into the incident has heard.

Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and Ian Coates, a 65-year-old caretaker, were fatally stabbed by Valdo Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenic, on 13 June 2023.

Authorities accused Missy Woods of altering years worth of data in cases involving homicide, sexual assault and robbery

A judge sentenced a former forensic analyst for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to 10 years in prison on Tuesday after authorities said her manipulation of DNA data had raised questions about the validity of hundreds of criminal cases.

Yvonne “Missy” Woods pleaded guilty in June to perjury, attempting to influence a public servant, forgery and committing a cybercrime. Dozens of other counts were dismissed as part of a plea agreement.

One-day strike called after Paris landmark agreed to keep women out of sight for visit by Hindu group

The Eiffel Tower has reopened after a one-day strike was called in response to the landmark’s management ordering female staff to keep out of sight at the request of a visiting religious group.

City Hall, which operates the Paris landmark, has apologised for breaching France’s republican principle of equality and ordered a full inquiry.

Bloc losing €13bn in revenue with one in 10 cigarettes illegal, watchdog reports

• Europe live – latest updates

The illegal trade in tobacco is booming in the EU, according to a report by the bloc’s financial watchdog, with almost one in 10 cigarettes produced illicitly or smuggled, causing an estimated €13bn loss in tax revenue each year.

The European Court of Auditors (ECA) said in a report on Tuesday that the trade had “changed significantly” in recent years as smuggling, while still “a problem”, was overtaken by illicit manufacturing, which has increased dramatically in the bloc.

With a lower fertility rate than Tokyo and the number of pensioners rapidly rising, Colombia’s capital is being forced to change the way it thinks about growing old

From his wheelchair, Alberto Delgado Londoño can see over the wall of the sunlit courtyard towards the mountains east of Bogotá, Colombia’s capital. The 74-year-old lives in a care home for destitute elderly people, which opened at the end of last year.

Social workers found him in hospital, where he was being treated for throat cancer and a head injury that left him partly paralysed. “I had nowhere to go,” he says. “My daughter couldn’t take me in because she’s a single mother, she already has two children.”

Firms warn of impact of company’s decision to to axe 4,000 jobs and call for government to support sector

• Jaguar Land Rover confirms plan to cut 4,000 jobs

David Roberts is not in an optimistic mood. The chair of Coventry-based Evtec may preside over a business with 900 highly skilled employees, multiple sites and precision machinery, but the outlook for the manufacturer appears tricky. “Everything is against us,” he says.

Evtec is a “tier 1” supplier to Jaguar Land Rover, also headquartered in Coventry, which this week announced 4,000 job cuts over two years even as the chancellor, John Healey, attempted to talk up Britain’s growth prospects in his first big speech, just down the road.

Hedge fund tycoon is latest financier to exit amid fears among super-rich over tax rises

• Business live – latest updates

The hedge fund billionaire Chris Rokos is poised to leave the UK, the latest in a string of high-profile exits among Britain’s super-rich.

The founder of Rokos Capital Management is preparing to move his residency to Greece, and will open an office in Athens as part of the move, according to Bloomberg.

Plus: Americans think they have it bad with unwanted surveillance. They should visit London

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you after visiting Coney Island in New York City, where I ate a hotdog, rode a ferris wheel and enjoyed a quintessentially American summer holiday.

Today in tech, we’re examining OpenAI’s new model release and the Silicon Valley’s monopoly power, and wondering why Brits and Americans have such vastly different opinions about surveillance cameras.

Nvidia to buy developer platform Hugging Face in $12.9bn deal

New York City to ban student AI use in public schools until high school

Freelancers are getting buried with ‘soulless’ AI slop cleanup: ‘It’s a shame we need to do it’

Tumbler Ridge mass shooting victims file 30 new lawsuits against OpenAI

Child sexual abuse survivor alleges Elon Musk’s AI chatbot used photos of her to generate new illegal images

Rene Haas also claims artificial intelligence could pave way for widespread use of humanoid robots within five years

• Business live – latest updates

The boss of one of the UK’s biggest chip companies has claimed AI will be able to find a cure for cancer “in our lifetime”.

Rene Haas, chief executive of the chip designer Arm Holdings, said that, while modelling how a DNA marker is affected by cancer was currently “too complex” a problem for either humans or technology, computers were “going to solve it” in the future.

The masterful ​Harrow MC behind the year’s funniest, most inventive UK rap debut explains how his parents sparked his ravenous outlook – and why he’s wrestling his peers

A few Guinnesses into an interview in his local Irish boozer, and 26-year-old Harrow rapper Kibo is cooking. We’re talking football. As a kid, he preferred playing Fifa Street – where ordinary players backflip off walls to score incomprehensible bicycle kicks – to regular realistic Fifa. “If I’m gonna play a video game, I want to do some shit I can’t do in real life,” he says. He’s drawn to similarly miraculous footballers: Balotelli, Drogba in his Chelsea days, Ronaldinho and his dad’s favourite, Eric Cantona: “Oh God, with his collar popped, looking like Kanye West?” Kibo then recites Cantona’s 2019 Uefa president’s award speech – a mash-up of King Lear and philosophical musings on war and science – to near perfection.

Magic is at the heart of Kwengletarianism, “the idea of being in a place that’s very grey, and trying to find a prismatic iridescence in it”, that underpins Kibo’s sensational album Kwengletaria: Ragamyff. (Cantona? “He’s a Kwengletarian to the nth degree.”) During his long rise through London’s rap scene, canonised by co-signs from Skepta, JME and Dave, Kibo has become a rare MC from Harrow, the town that produced Kate Nash and Jai Paul but no rappers of note. “It’s awesome,” he says of its lack of rap tradition, “a complete blank slate” to be as imaginative as he wants. Kwengletaria finds the myth in the mundane: on the track Bakerloo Dragon, a normal tube journey becomes a cruising broken-beat roller aboard a fire-spitting Bakerloo line train. I tell him my train to Harrow was one of these flame-graffitied dragons. “But did you get any sparks?” he asks enthusiastically. “You get sparks after Stonebridge Park!”

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Venice film festival: An architect (Javier Bardem) alienates his book editor wife (Penélope Cruz) when he agrees to build a luxurious bunker for a tech billionaire

Even the formidable pairing of Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem can’t save this new movie from writer-director Florian Zeller – his first created directly for the screen, and not adapted from his own stage original. It’s shallow and unsatisfying, a drama without the intimate, authentic passion of his previous movies like The Father (2021) or The Son (2022).

Bunker has nothing that interesting or original to say about its metaphorically showcased theme of alienation and inequality; the central relationship is left unexplored in favour of so-so home-invasion suspense styling – although one extended marital-argument scene showed what might have been achieved if their relationship was the film’s point – and the violent finale ending is outrageously glib, silly and unconvincing. An off-camera paramedic or doctor actually has to be heard explaining in a brief sentence afterwards what is supposed to have happened. Very lame.

Made in response to the success of hetero Sex and the City, the groundbreaking show follows queer women navigating love and life in perpetually horny LA

I recently posted a simple question on Instagram: “Attention queer people in my phone: what is your relationship to The L Word?”

A few people responded with names of the characters: Bette, Shane, Dana. Others lamented over storylines that should have been: Kit was supposed to be a leather dyke journalist but apparently they wrote it out; why did they let Alice and Tasha stay together for so long? Many gleefully commented on the amount of sex the show has. One well-meaning gay man said it takes him a while to say The L Word in a relationship, then he immediately realised I was talking about the TV show and retracted his statement. Overwhelmingly, however, was the variation on one take: It’s so terrible and I love it so much.

Impressive stunts and tongue-in-cheek flourishes elevate Scott Waugh’s silly Aussie action flick

Credit where credit is due: of the many, many variations on the hammy late-summer action romp, very few have applied the gonzo B-movie treatment – physics-defying car chases, knee-smashing violence and the like – to the practice of organ transportation.

Donor delivery is not the direction you think things are going in upon first meeting Hank Malone, Alan Ritchson’s outlandishly muscled fixer, of sorts, in Runner, the latest attempt from faith-based distributor Angel Studios to enter the market of more straightforward base entertainment.

The directing duo behind uplifting mega-hit Intouchables return for this heartwarming coming-of-age drama, but it is the parents in the story who pull focus

Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano are the French directors who created the uplifting mega-hit Intouchables, about a wealthy quadriplegic and his carer. Now the pair bring their brand of squishy heartwarming charm to the 1980s, with this nostalgic movie about a 13-year-old boy growing up in the Paris suburbs. It’s funny and sweet but I couldn’t help feeling the film-makers missed a trick; their coming-of-age plot is all very well, but Louis Garrel and Call My Agent! star Camille Cottin give such funny and charismatic performances as the boy’s bickering parents, a portrait of their marriage in crisis would have been 10 times more entertaining.

The film opens with Vincent (Simon Boublil) preparing for his barmitzvah against a fractious atmosphere at home. The country is gripped by recession and money is tight. His dad, Yves (Garrel) was laid off months ago, but every morning puts on a suit and pretends to go out to work; Garrel is terrific, likable but fundamentally unreliable. Vincent’s mum is a go-getting secretary, who can see that the future is technology and signs up for an IT course. At school, Vincent has a massive crush on a girl who cannot remember his name, or chooses not to – she calls him “Thingummy”.

Royal Albert Hall, London
Simon Rattle, guest conducting the period instrument ensemble, brought insights and detail to these three lesser known works by Schumann. Isabelle Faust was a spirited and graceful soloist in the Violin Concerto

Simon Rattle sure loves a challenge. This all-Schumann evening featured three “problem” works: the overture to a failed opera, a violin concerto deemed sufficiently disappointing that the composer’s executors ordered it locked away for a century, and a symphony written in the depths of depression. What’s more, he was conducting the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in an acoustic hardly conducive to the soft-grained tones of period ensembles. In the event, we needn’t have worried, but you have to admire his pluck.

The overture to Genoveva got off to a moody start. Rattle and the Freiburgers drew the listener in by tapping into the musical storytelling – the quartet of horns was especially striking – rather than relying on sheer volume. Closer to Mendelssohn than Wagner, it must have felt old hat in 1848, but here came up bristling with romance and chivalry.

Larmer Tree Gardens, Wiltshire
Hitting 20, this festival has grown into a warm, genre-hopping powerhouse where fringe experimental acts are greeted as warmly as the star headliners

There is a celebratory feeling in the air at End of the Road festival this year as it turns 20. The piano stage has been turned into a giant birthday cake with candles on top, one man is dressed as a toilet to commemorate the porcelain anniversary, and Jarvis Cocker leads a spirited singalong of Happy Birthday while wishing for 20 more years.

Retaining a core identity while also expanding and evolving has been key to that longevity. While early days were centred more on alt-folk and Americana, EOTR is now a genre-hopping powerhouse, blending everything from pop fun to noisy experimentation via global grooves, and with an equal focus on the familiar and the unknown.

The US marine turned journalist went missing in Syria 14 years ago – and now, a suspenseful new pod uncovers essential evidence. Plus, the charming Julie Andrews serenades audiences with Jane Austen’s Emma

It has been 14 years since US marine turned journalist Austin Tice went missing in Syria. Much has changed in the embattled nation since then – not least the end of Bashar al-Assad’s regime – but Tice is yet to be found. In this series, Josh Baker and Sara Obeidat uncover crucial new evidence, some of which has already made headlines. Sensitive and highly suspenseful. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

Royal Albert Hall, London
Gwilym Simcock’s concerto – written for Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Ben Goldscheider and Jess Gillam (cello, horn and sax) – had problems of balance but at its best was a riot of colours and energy

BBC Young Musician has produced a whole galaxy of stars over the years, but 2016 was rather special. It was a neat idea then to commission a 10th-anniversary triple concerto for three of its finalists – cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, saxophonist Jess Gillam and horn player Ben Goldscheider – each of whom has gone on to a significant career. The composer of choice was Gwilym Simcock, an eclectic artist who straddles the worlds of jazz and classical music. The result was stretched to bursting with musical interest, though not without its problems.

At its best, the concerto was a riot of primary colours, with vibraphone, harp and orchestral piano – played here by Simcock himself – adding spice to the mix. The outer movements grooved, the first with a minimalist nod to Steve Reich, the finale channelling a Scottish reel. The serene central “Mesto” – the word means mournful or melancholy – was a keening lament for Simcock’s father who died during the work’s composition.

A journalist embarks on a wild goose chase that might – or might not – be informative about the male condition

Recovering from surgery at home in upstate New York in 2023, Jon Ronson awoke to a string of texts from his adult son about a weird evening he just had at a stranger’s castle in Connecticut. Having gone along with a friend who’d been invited to a party there, he arrived to find a few lost-looking young women with the sixtysomething host, Chris Mark, a steel heir filming a reality show about “101 princesses” whose first rule was “Never say no to King Chris”.

As a parent, Ronson is worried; as a reporter of more than 30 years on the cranks-and-crooks beat, he’s already on the clock. After trawling online whispers of sinister goings-on at the castle, he decides to pay a visit to Mark, who proudly shows off the stalactites and waterfall in his “cave-themed” bedroom before explaining how he picks up women on dating apps to “adapt” them to life as “princesses”. “The only girls that really work are drug addicts ... they don’t know what’s going on,” he says. Almost touchingly, Mark asks Ronson to sign an NDA, and the book describes Mark flooding his phone with threats when he declines.

The third in a loose American trilogy follows the epic journey of a formerly enslaved man in the aftermath of the civil war

But is not the story as good as the truth?” asks Tennyson Bouguereau, the narrator of Sebastian Barry’s The Newer World. Tennyson, a formerly enslaved man in post-civil war America, recounts his life story in ways that call to mind the age-old debate about whether it’s better to get our history from novelists or historians. While historians might argue that there is no contest, the question hints knowingly at the novelist’s counter-argument. It sent me searching for a line from Barry’s 2008 Costa-award winning novel, The Secret Scripture, in which the narrator describes history as “a fabulous arrangement of surmises and guesses held up as a banner against the assault of withering truth”.

In her Reith Lectures, Hilary Mantel suggested that history is “what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it”, but I tend to think of it as more of a butterfly net. Historians chase after and capture the things they deem significant. They leave things out, often deliberately. Barry’s entire body of work is a prime example of fiction’s ability to fill history’s gaps, merging personal tragedies with national ones in ways that (dare I say) demonstrate the supremacy of the form – especially for those of us descended from people for whom history never cared one whit. I was therefore intrigued to learn that he had set out to write the story of a man like Tennyson. Barry’s earlier novels refracted Irish history through the lens of two fictional Irish families, the Dunnes and the McNultys. His first foray into this period of American history in Days Without End, for which he won his second Costa award, also followed one of the McNultys – Thomas McNulty flees the Irish famine for America, where he finds himself drawn into the genocidal work of clearing Native Americans off their land, and then, together with his lover and fellow soldier, John Cole, adopts a Lakota girl, Winona, whose family they have helped slaughter. Barry picked up Winona’s story in A Thousand Moons, published in 2020, which follows her fortunes as she, Thomas and John settle on the same farm outside Paris, Tennessee that is occupied by Tennyson and his twin sister Rosalee among others.

A biography of the physicist recognises his achievements, but also reveals the selfish narcissist underneath

When I wrote an unadoring review of Stephen Hawking’s final book, a collection of essays published posthumously in 2018, New Scientist suppressed some of my criticisms on the grounds that it was “too early” to voice anything other than praise for the physicist who died, aged 76, that March. It was apparently still too early in 2021, when no British publisher would touch Charles Seife’s exposé of Hawking’s bullying and self-aggrandising behaviour, Hawking Hawking.

In this new biography, veteran science writer Graham Farmelo takes a different approach. It is a comprehensive and accessible portrait of a brilliant scientist and an extraordinarily determined man who also possessed deep personal flaws to which the scientific community and the public mostly turned a blind eye. The uncomfortable but unavoidable truth is that Hawking’s overweening ambition and self-promotion, his repeated failure to acknowledge the work of others, his sexism and controlling behaviour were largely ignored because of his disability. I think it is indeed going to take us years to process that.

Carlo Gébler describes mother’s doomed battle to complete a final book as age and infirmity sapped her powers – and his own feelings about her passing

After visiting his dying mother in London, Carlo Gébler returned to his rural home in Northern Ireland one night and encountered a hedgehog sitting on the doormat. A thought bubbled up: his mother had died and returned as this woodland creature.

In fact his mother, the novelist Edna O’Brien, was still alive, and not reincarnated, but his mind insisted otherwise. “At that moment that’s what I believed. And then of course I stopped believing it because I knew it wasn’t true.”

As one card recently sold for £12m, opportunistic thefts have surged – envelopes are being opened en route, costing small businesses thousands

Pokémon’s success over the last 30 years has seen it grow from a much-loved Game Boy classic, to a world-dominating brand with TV shows, spin-off games, toys and even a theme park. The trading card game is a huge part of that, with more than 85bn cards printed over its lifetime, and the appetite for them shows no signs of slowing down. Packs get snapped up after release so quickly it’s now almost impossible to find them in shops, and a booming resale market is driving the hobby into murky waters.

One card recently sold for an eye-watering £12m, and an increasing number of people have gotten into the collecting business on the hunt for huge profits, leading to a rise in thefts targeting card shops. More recently though, some small businesses have reported that their sales have been hit by thieves targeting envelopes within Royal Mail, leading to thousands in lost revenue.

As FromSoftware’s new multiplayer game The Duskbloods nears release, the legendary game director behind Dark Souls talks connection, pessimism and of course, feet

Since 2009’s Demon’s Souls, Japanese video game director Hidetaka Miyazaki has shown the world a different way to think about game design. His games defy convention with punishing fights, obscure rules, and unknowable, inhospitable worlds. The “Soulslike” genre – named after Demon’s Souls and its sequel Dark Souls – is now ubiquitous, influencing multimillion-sellers from God of War and Star Wars: Jedi to Hollow Knight. Miyazaki’s most recent success, 2022’s Elden Ring, which credited Game of Thrones author George RR Martin as a co-creator, sold over 30m copies and inspired Alex Garland to adapt it for the big screen at A24. It earned Miyazaki a spot on Time magazine’s “most influential” list, an accolade he shares with just one other game developer: Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto.

Miyazaki is now 51 and has been FromSoftware’s president since 2014, elevated from game designer to CEO after the success of the Souls series. He has a cherubic face that could pass for 35. He rarely speaks publicly, and never on camera. When he does speak, he answers questions like one of his characters – softly, sadly, his head bowed, making eye-contact only when I am speaking. Outside the studio where we speak is the sprawl of Tokyo’s Shinjuku, an ever-changing maze where tourists get lost and pop-up stores appear and vanish without a trace. Today, a J-pop band performs in the square as the cicadas scream from the trees. A gilded statue of Malania, one of Elden Ring’s toughest bosses, looms over this dimly lit conference room inside From’s headquarters, a bonfire checkpoint away from the chaos.

As Rockstar’s blockbuster prepares to dominate the headlines, it’s time for the mainstream media to stop treating video games as a novelty that needs explaining

Predictably, the Grand Theft Auto VI “extended look” which premiered on Netflix last week was a success for all involved. The 30-minute preview scorched to No 1 on the viewing chart and even brought the site down for a few minutes as millions of gamers tried to watch what was, effectively, a very long teaser trailer. According to data collated by Eurogamer, more than 9,000 Twitch streamers covered the show leading to 5,227,798 hours of viewing there alone. And this was just the beginning of what will surely be two months of escalating hype – and unprecedented media attention.

Call me cynical, but I suspect the coverage of GTA VI in the media over the next few weeks will follow a familiar pattern. Mostly, it will be five-minute slots wedged in near the end of news bulletins in which games journalists, industry analysts and other pundits will be asked why the game is such a big deal, how much it cost to make and how much revenue it will generate. Perhaps a few will try to reignite the hoary old “violence in video games” debate, there will be presenters laughingly admitting they’ve not touched a game since Pac-Man, rolling their eyes and wallowing in their ignorance, in a way they never would while discussing any other art form. Somebody will venture the subversive view that “games are no longer just for kids”; somebody else will say “games make more money than films and music put together”. And that will be that, job done for another decade … or until there’s a funny story about Pokémon.

PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, PC; Bit Reactor
Split priorities between scripted and emergent story moments hamper an otherwise brilliant Star Wars-themed successor to XCOM

Even if you’re unfamiliar with the term “emergent storytelling”, you’ve likely experienced some of the unscripted tales that can bubble up out of a game’s systems. Perhaps you’ve led a scheming dynasty in Crusader Kings, or watched a favourite hero succumb to madness in Darkest Dungeon. Maybe you’ve surrendered yourself to the infinite yarn-spinner that is Dwarf Fortress – or read about it from the mid-00s forums where users helped popularise the term “Let’s Play” by chronicling their games in descriptive posts. Or perhaps you’ve played Firaxis’ XCOM, the alien invasion tactics hit that several key members of Zero Company studio Bit Reactor had a hand in.

Zero Company hinges on a concept as simple as it is perfect: take the complementary class abilities, tough dice rolls, and permanent character deaths of XCOM, and house them in a sci-fi setting known for spaghetti western blaster duels, last stands and heroic sacrifices. As creative director Greg Foertsch puts it, “Star Wars is about loss.” Which losses you end up mourning in Zero Company depends on you.

The uplifting, award-winning show about a girl aging four times too fast electrified New York. As it hits the UK, co-creator Jeanine Tesori talks about being inspired by the Aids crisis and all her friends who died young

Jeanine Tesori is thinking about her mother back home in the US. “She’s 95,” says the composer, “and she’s not been well. But she would look in the mirror and be like, ‘I can’t believe I’m old.’ It’s always a surprise, always. There’s an interiority about ageing, especially as women. You stay playful and you stay curious, but the world has other ideas.”

Ageing – and growing up, which is not necessarily the same thing – are a central consideration in the musical that Tesori has been rehearsing. Kimberly Akimbo, which the composer developed with David Lindsay-Abaire from his play, follows a teenage girl with a rare genetic condition that causes her to age at four times the normal rate. Its London debut stars the 66-year-old Maria Friedman as Kimberly. “And she has such a bright young energy,” says Tesori as we chat in a rough-and-ready rehearsal room in London, “that she doesn’t have to do anything to play 16.”

It was her very first film and it won her an Oscar. But can Callie Khouri now make it work on stage with songs? She talks about the outrages that made her write it – and how little has changed since

‘I have a world-class case of beginner’s luck,” says Callie Khouri, who won an Oscar for her very first screenplay, Thelma & Louise. She also scored a hit with her first TV series, Nashville, which lasted six seasons. And at 68, she is taking on another first by penning a musical theatre version of Thelma & Louise, hoping her luck hasn’t run out. “I hope that this is not the end of that streak,” she laughs. “That I don’t hit a wall here and slide down it like Wile E Coyote.”

Thelma & Louise isn’t an obvious bet for a musical. A story that features an abusive marriage, attempted rape, murder and double suicide doesn’t scream “jazz hands”, and Khouri had turned down offers before. “My agent said, ‘There’s a guy who wants to meet you to talk about doing Thelma as a stage musical,’” says Khouri. “And I just thought, ‘Well, that’s nuts!’” But the iconic 90s film – starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis (and a young Brad Pitt) – is an ultimately triumphant piece of cinema: a feminist road movie driven by the power of female friendship, which still captures imaginations. Khouri was eventually convinced. It’s been a decade in the pipeline, but things took off when uber-producer Sonia Friedman came on board, and now it has premiered at London’s Young Vic, starring Rachel Tucker and Amy Lennox.

A selection from the dozens of outdoor art performances that made up the Greenwich+Docklands international festival, which finished on Sunday. The theme was We Move – a celebration of the resilience of Londoners facing the challenges of city life

Finborough theatre, London
Nichola McAuliffe returns to the roles Wesker tailored for her in 1981, in a trio of wistful and insightful soliloquies about working-class women’s inner thoughts

Some years before Alan Bennett spawned Talking Heads, his celebrated televised monologues on the inner lives of solitary women, Arnold Wesker created a trio of short soliloquies for women who speak their thoughts and vulnerabilities aloud in the same wistful manner.

His three-character series, written in 1981 and tailored especially for the actor Nichola McAuliffe, originally began with elderly, homeless Annie Wobbler, who wanders around London’s Waterloo station ruminating on her life in service, the changing world, and what she sees as the ever-rising tide of “foreigners” in it. Younger women follow, their names variations on Annie’s, and each incorporating a specific question or inquiry into their life.

Luca Guadagnino-directed film will be released by Neon after being dropped by Amazon amid OpenAI partnership

• Big tech goes to Hollywood: is Silicon Valley ready for a silver-screen reckoning?

The first teaser trailer of Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial has been released.

After being dropped by Amazon MGM Studios in June, the biopic of the OpenAI tech executive Sam Altman will be released in the US on 25 December by Neon after it premieres at the New York film festival this October.

The actor and others involved with the phenomenon speak about the legacy and progressivism of a much-loved science fiction TV series as it reaches an important milestone

‘The mystery of time,” muses William Shatner, and for a moment we are back on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise listening to one of Captain Kirk’s philosophical tag-line speeches. “Not just the passage of time and our perception of it, but what is time? What does 60 years mean? It really is meaningless, isn’t it, 60 years, in terms of what time is? On the other hand, Dolly Parton just died. It brings up the whole concept of the passage of time and what that means.”

In an episode called The City on the Edge of Forever, Shatner’s Kirk travelled back in time and fell in love with a pacifist (Joan Collins) only to discover that she must die to prevent Nazi Germany winning the second world war. Such ethical quandaries help explain why Star Trek will celebrate its 60th anniversary on 8 September not just as a force in US culture but a mirror held up to the country’s politics.

To generations of women, the feminist campaigner was an inspiration, a fearless challenger of sexism and domestic violence. Guardian readers share memories of her courage, intelligence, and warmth

What I appreciated most about Gloria was she let me feel normal. I graduated in engineering as one of three women in a class of over 150. In her world, a feminist was a woman that wanted to be judged for her capabilities and not her gender. She was very inspirational and empowering when I first read her books as a young engineer. Teresa, Switzerland

Beyond her famed paintings of flowers and landscapes, the American artist created stunning studies of urban architecture

Georgia O’Keeffe is celebrated for her ethereal depictions of flowers, sunlight, landscapes and animal bones, their gracefully swooping forms dripping with organic curves and seemingly on the verge of melting before our eyes. Such an approach would seem to be quite at odds with the firm, straight lines of farmhouses and barns, to say nothing of the electrified skyscrapers of New York City – and yet that is exactly what is centered in Georgia O’Keeffe: Architecture, a new show at the Detroit Institute of Arts (Dia).

“I wanted to tell a new story about an artist who is so familiar,” said curator Ben Colman, who oversaw this collection of close to 40 works from the famed artist. “We can take a fresh look at works that O’Keeffe always considered essential and celebrate them in the way she wanted to.”

Conservationists have helped Cantabrian brown bears claw their way back from the edge of extinction in the beautiful mountains of Asturias – and carefully controlled nature tourism allows visitors to see them

Once upon a time, in the woods outside Pola de Somiedo, lived a family of Cantabrian brown bears. The villagers reported sightings of a mother bear who had lost a leg to a hunter’s trap, her two cubs and two adult males, either of which might have been the father. In those days, at the end of the 1980s, they seemed to be the last of their kind in this part of Asturias. Meanwhile, the wider population dropped to about 60 bears across the surrounding Cantabrian mountain range that gave the species its name.

They have since clawed their way back from the edge of extinction here in northern Spain, and nature guide Luis Frechilla believes their numbers may now be upwards of 500 again. “They’re still classed as endangered,” he tells me, until the official count hits 1,000. But relative abundance makes them much easier to see today in Somiedo natural park – one of Spain’s first such protected areas, established in 1988.

In a cheap London flat with no heating, dozens of the insects swarmed, leading to a Valentine’s Day that still makes me break out in a cold sweat

I don’t know if cockroaches really could, as we’re often told, survive a nuclear apocalypse, but I can tell you this with certainty: they can definitely survive pest control. “Hopefully that should be a bit better now,” said the friendly exterminator after his first visit to our flat. By the third visit he was speaking more honestly. “The only way to get rid of your cockroaches,” he said, “would be to burn this whole block of flats to the ground.”

It was January 2003 when I moved with my girlfriend Helen into our first London flat. It’s fair to say there were red flags we probably should have spotted. It was suspiciously affordable – £140 a week for a place less than a minute’s walk from Finsbury Park tube station? Sure, the place looked pretty skanky, but it was still spacious for a studio flat. We put the price down to the fact there was absolutely no way of heating the property and signed up.

Christmas might be months away, but beauty Advent calendar waiting lists are filling up fast. From cult favourites to cruelty-free picks, here are the ones worth buying

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As I write, an ice-cream van has just parked outside my flat. It’s the middle of this year’s umpteenth heatwave, and I’m finally understanding the appeal of a cold shower. That can only mean one thing: it’s time to start testing the best beauty Advent calendars.

I wish I was joking, but many beauty brands and retailers have been curating their 2026 beauty Advent calendars since before last Christmas. And since these calendars offer a selection of high-end cosmetics, bestselling beauty staples and new launches at far less than their usual combined price, they’ve become a festive staple for beauty fanatics.

From loafers to lunch boxes to fancy stationery, these picks for kids, teens and grownups will bring that new-term energy, whatever your age

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Shiny shoes. Freshly sharpened pencils. New rucksack. Back-to-school season is here, and even for those of us no longer in full-time education, the energy of this time of year is undeniably one of fresh starts and renewed momentum.

A couple of well-chosen items, from a notebook to inspire ideas to a lunch box that might encourage you to bring in your own food, are often all it takes to feel a touch more pulled together after a languorous summer. So whether you’re looking for school kit or your own stuff, here’s our pick of the best back-to-the-grind products for kids, teens and grownups.

From space-saving storage to an affordable toastie maker, here’s how to set yourself up in halls without blowing the budget

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Clothes packed? Laptop at the ready? Flip Cup skills honed? As freshers’ week beckons, thousands of students are preparing for life away from home. But what do you actually need to bring with you, besides an eager mind and a broad tolerance of Jägermeister?

We’re here to help. Because student debt is big enough without spending on stuff you don’t need, we quizzed veterans (well, second- and third-year students) on what is and isn’t worth packing. We’ve also rounded up some of our best budget buys – from mattress toppers to toastie makers – rigorously tested by the Filter experts. These won’t break the bank and should last far beyond your first essay deadline.

From sustainable catch methods to the most pleasant texture and aroma, which tinned and jarred fish had our tester hooked and which left him reeling?

• The best supermarket anchovies, tasted and rated

Eaten straight from the tin, without seasoning, lemon, olive oil or mayonnaise, canned tuna is pretty gruelling stuff, not least because it’s pungent, mealy and hard to swallow. Testing tuna in this way demonstrates the overall poor quality of the product and why certain brands and species are revered for their superior texture and flavour. That said, a tuna mayo sandwich is one of my go-to lunches, so long as the fish is sustainably sourced (so as not to leave a bad taste in the mouth) and there’s enough pepper to balance out its flavour.

Skipjack is a fast-growing species with a softer, flakier texture and fishier flavour than some others. Albacore tuna, meanwhile, is a larger, slower-growing fish, which makes it more sensitive to overfishing. Its flesh is much paler and more delicately flavoured, with large, meaty flakes.

It all depends on the variety of tomato and the dish you’re making, says our panel of experts

Why do recipes often say to deseed tomatoes? Isn’t that where the flavour is, especially since the seeds don’t make much difference to a sauce’s texture?
Catriona, by email
“It all depends on the variety of tomato,” says the Guardian’s Rachel Roddy, “because some are much seedier than others. Sicilian varieties that require little watering, for example, have loads of little bitter seeds, which do need flicking or sieving out.” If, however, Catriona had some vesuvio tomatoes destined for a salad, Jay Patel, co-owner of Italian restaurant Legare in London, wouldn’t bother: “Those are generally pretty meaty and don’t have many seeds, so I’d just slice and dress them generously with olive oil and salt, and you’ll have something pretty special.” And that’s the crux of the matter: as well as the type of tomato, the answer hinges on what you’re planning to do with them, too. “If you’re making a salad with watery winter tomatoes, say, there’s a purpose for those seeds,” Patel adds, “because they provide a lovely pop as well as acidity.”

The most common deseeding scenario is for pasta sauces, but even that comes with a caveat, Patel says: “If I’m going for a slow-cooked sauce, it’s tinned chopped tomatoes, seeds and all. But if I’m after a lighter, fresher tomato sauce, I’ll quickly blanch, peel and deseed fresh tomatoes myself.” Nick Molyviatis of Zylia in London, meanwhile, scoops out the seeds with a teaspoon or he grates his tomatoes instead – “the skin acts as a protector, a glove” – while Roddy’s “best defence against seeds” is a food mill: “Seeds don’t contain flavour as such, but the fleshy gel around them does, which is why a food mill is great,” she explains. “It presses the flavour from that and the skin, while at the same time separating them from the sauce base.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

A winning combination of oily fish, sweet berries and a sharp dressing

One of my favourite summer memories is making collares de moras as a child in Extremadura, which involved threading wild blackberries on to a piece of straw to make little necklaces. We’d always eat some too, of course, as well as wearing them, and we’d always come home with stained hands and big smiles. At the time, I never imagined that one day I’d be cooking sardines and pairing them with those same wild berries, but that’s the magic of food. The ingredients that filled my childhood with such simple joy have become part of the dishes I love creating today. Every time I make this recipe, it takes me straight back to those carefree summer days.

A seasonal special featuring both summer vibes and autumn comfort

While I dig my head in the sand at September’s arrival and the back-to-school dread, I’m trying to hold on to summer flavours for as long as possible. And this salad does just that: it’s summer and autumn, vibrant and comforting, all at the same time. It can also be served a multitude of ways: still warm, at room temperature with the feta added at the last minute, or even as leftovers (it’s great for lunchboxes, say).

Making your own filo is notoriously faffy but, luckily, there are great ready-made versions out there that make these crunchy, golden savoury treats a doddle

I love this gossamer-thin pastry for its lightness and crunch, not least because it can be used for both sweets and savouries. Once, on a trip to Athens, I learned how to make filo from scratch: it needs to be rolled very, very thin, so, unless you are skilled with a rolling pin, it’s hard and time-consuming. Luckily there are good ready-made varieties out there (if you’re using the frozen variety, make sure it’s fully defrosted). And always keep the pastry you are not working with under a damp cloth, because it dries out very quickly and will probably crack.

He was the gorgeous furry tabby who made my day, even when he waltzed into my flat just to finish my takeaway. Now he’s a campus celeb, with a part-time job guarding the doors of the village shop

In 2022, when I moved into halls of residence at the University of Sheffield, my biggest concern was no longer having a furry friend to come home to, as I’d had a cat since I was 11 years old. Then I met Harold.

My first encounter with this gorgeous tabby was quite unusual. One day, in our 10-bed flat, a flurry of messages appeared on the group WhatsApp chat after my fellow roommates caught an intruder on the sofa, innocently munching on my leftover pizza.

A woman in the queue said she was happy to drive an hour, pick up the vacuum, then bring it to Mum’s house. I was worried – but how wrong I was!

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

For a 94-year-old woman, my mother is still very busy and active. So when a vacuum cleaner she liked the look of went on sale at a national electronics chain, Mum drove herself to the nearest store to buy it.

Unfortunately, the shop in her area had sold out by the time she got there. The sales assistant told her it was still available in another Melbourne store – but that store was an hour’s drive away. As active as she is, Mum pointed out that at her age she really could not manage a drive of that length. She asked the sales assistant if they could transfer the vacuum to this store and was flatly told no.

A part-time musician and an office manager disagreed on benefits and work-life balance, but ​where did they stand on community responsibility?

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

Henry, 33, Manchester

Occupation Waiter and musician

Alfredo Bravo had a job he loved and was determined never to be grounded by marriage and kids. Then a voice from the control tower changed everything

Alfredo Bravo had landed aeroplanes in a lot of sticky situations – as a bush pilot in Chilean Patagonia and as a commercial pilot in rural China – but it was a singular voice floating over the radio waves from air traffic control in Santiago, Chile, that set his heart aflutter, upended his concentration and reshuffled his life.

It was the 1990s and, although he was still young, Bravo had held pretty much every low-level flying gig possible. He had dumped plumes of orange chemicals on to forest fires and flown surveillance missions to detect illegal fireplaces polluting the already smoggy Santiago airspace. He had completed hundreds of flights with photo crews operating a big Hasselblad camera as they mapped tree farms, calculating the heights of trees in a forest owned by a timber company involved in a low-level guerrilla war with the Indigenous Mapuche. As a pilot for the company, Bravo was a conspicuous outsider who slept in the fields amid the Indigenous communities, and worked alone in the hangar. But Bravo had a pair of aces up his sleeve.

Transport for London has fined me and warned that if I don’t pay it will possibly destroy my car

I paid the £12.50 London Ulez charge on my Amex card within hours of driving through the zone. I was then fined £90 for non-payment. According to my card issuer, Transport for London (TfL) had failed to collect the £12.50.

TfL’s letter threatened a £180 fine, rising to £360, and possible destruction of my car, if I did not pay. My appeal was rejected.

Thefts spike during freshers’ week so make sure you choose a good lock and check your insurance

For hard-up students, a bike is a low-cost way to travel. But with cycle theft at an all-time high, experts are urging young people not to skimp on insurance and to buy a good lock.

Recent data from Aviva shows one in five (19%) of insurance claims involving student possessions relates to bicycles.

I arranged for my daughter to attend three sessions during the school holidays but the venue and one of the dates were changed

I booked my daughter for three sessions during the school summer holidays at The Gymnastics Academy. The reservation was made and paid for last November because of a promotional offer.

In June, I received emails from The Gymnastics Academy, confirming a session for a venue I had not booked. I was concerned my account had been hacked.

Longer battery life, faster chip, actually useful AI tools and better cameras keep quality Android ahead of competition

Google’s Pixel 11 continues to set the standard for what you should expect from the base model of a flagship phone with class-leading cameras, long software support and almost all the bells and whistles of its most expensive phones.

The regular Pixel 11 costs £879 (€999/$899/A$1,499) making it £80 or equivalent more expensive than last year’s model as the cost of RAMageddon continues to bite. It’s not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but it comes with 256GB of storage and is £200 less than the Pixel 11 Pro, matching rival Samsung’s Galaxy S26.

Screen: 6.3in 120Hz FHD+ OLED (422ppi)

Processor: Google Tensor G6

RAM: 12GB

Storage: 256 or 512GB

Operating system: Android 17

Camera: 48MP+ 13MP UW + 10.8MP 5x tele; 10.5MP selfie

Connectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 6E, UWB, NFC, Bluetooth 6 and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes)

Dimensions: 152.8 x 72.0 x 8.6mm

Weight: 197g

GLP-1 medications have been a gamechanger in the fight against obesity. But for a minority of patients, their impact is negligible. Why?

When Mercedes was told by her doctor that she could be prescribed GLP-1 weight loss jabs in 2024, she broke down. “[When] she said yes, I cried in her office. And I didn’t really stop crying for a week,” she said.

“Finally, after being overweight my entire life, this was going to save me. My struggle, my burden, my shame was finally going to come to an end.”

Mineral deposits can accumulate, making hair drier, but removing them can cause different problems

From hair treatments to shower filters, a wave of products have been launched promising to protect hair from the “problems” caused by living in a hard-water area. But are they really necessary? “Hard water has a higher concentration of dissolved minerals, especially calcium and magnesium,” says Desmond Tobin, professor of dermatological science at University College Dublin. “These are naturally occurring in water, particularly water that is not rainwater.”

When water moves through soil and rocks, such as limestone, minerals dissolve into it and remain there when it comes out of your tap. These minerals are responsible for the limescale that builds up in your kettle.

The pressure to self-optimise at the start of the new school year can lead to disappointment and burnout. Instead, here are seven ways to slow things down and reap the benefits

It is a hangover from our school days that September can feel like a time for getting back to the grind. As in January, there is a sense that we should return as better workers, partners, friends and parents. This sense is even stronger now a culture of optimisation – has taken over – evidenced by the fad for adding “maxx” to everything. Yet that can lead to disappointment and burnout, which Mental Health UK reports up to 91% of adults were at risk from over a recent 12-month period.

One antidote to this drive is to embrace a slower way of living. Rather than always rushing from one activity to the next, we could be enjoying life.

New Zealand decision follows Australian approval in 2023 of psychedelics to treat PTSD and treatment-resistant depression

Two psychiatrists in New Zealand won approval on Friday to prescribe pharmaceutical-grade MDMA to people with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The move by New Zealand’s pharmaceutical regulatory body Medsafe makes the country only the second worldwide to approve the party drug for use in treating PTSD, following Australia in 2023.

Despite Anna Wintour’s years-long redemption campaign on his behalf, the Dior designer’s controversial past got him booted as the 2027 Met Gala honoree

When the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced it was dedicating its 2027 costume exhibition to designer John Galliano, vintage dealer Johnny Valencia figured it would be a red carpet for the ages. Celebrities would show up in full Marie Antoinette drag, or squeeze into tightly bound corsets showcasing hourglass figures, recreating the pageantry of Galliano’s over-the-top runway shows.

“There was a lot of excitement around this theme,” said Valencia, whose customers include the likes of Beyoncé and Rihanna. “There had not been this much excitement since camp” – the institution’s fete of outrageous and questionable taste in 2019.

The ‘hip boost’ aims to create hourglass silhouette, much like Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand’s padded shorts

For decades shapewear has been used to compress and cinch. But now there is a sub-genre emerging. Rather than shrinking a silhouette, it aims to add inches.

This week M&S launched a bodysuit that features exaggerated padding at the hip allowing the wearer to create an hourglass shape, or at least the illusion of one.

With the release of his new biography, the British designer talks about leaving school at 15, the real reason he won’t retire and why no one wears velvet trousers any more

Go for a browse in the Paul Smith shop in Mayfair, London, on any given Saturday and you’ll likely find an older shop assistant, straight-backed in fine tailoring, approaching to help you with a new shirt, or a suit for a special occasion, perhaps a jaunty pair of socks. There aren’t many global fashion brands, Paul Smith points out, perhaps unnecessarily, “where the owner is a Saturday boy”. But working in his shop, one of more than 130 around the world, is probably Smith’s favourite part of the job. “It’s fantastic, you meet so many interesting people,” he says, smiling broadly. Smith’s whole career, he says, has always been about doing things in a different way. He’s the untrained fashion designer who created a global British brand, who put a bright lining or some stripes into classic tailoring, and who has turned down multiple substantial offers to buy his company, in order to remain in control.

Sir Paul Smith has just turned 80 – and he has the enviable energy of someone less than half his age, swimming each day before 6am. He’s about to publish his memoir, Threads: My Life in Style. It’s been a good opportunity to do a stocktake. His has undoubtedly been a lucky life – right place, right time, right people (not least his wife, Pauline, whom he met at the age of 21 and who has been integral to his success) – but it’s also a story of hard work, integrity and modesty. We’ll get to whether those values are still relevant in a harsher, more competitive world, and whether Paul Smith can survive.

NYC’s elite figures, led by Julie Menin, made Wintour blink, and the designer who in 2011 had gone on a drunken antisemitic rant, bowed out of industry’s biggest event

Did Anna Wintour, Vogue’s long-serving fashion titan and ringmaster of the annual Met Gala, meet her match in Julie Menin, the speaker of New York’s city council?

The museum is the crown jewel of the wealthy neighborhood and some residents hold significant sway at the institution, financially and in terms of the art they plan to bequeath to it. So when it was announced late in July on a Friday afternoon that Galliano would be the focus of the Met Gala next year, it left many stunned.

On a self-drive break in search of Lake Saimaa’s autumn colours, we encountered blue skies, cosy lakeside cabins and saunas, great food – and lots of stubbornly green trees

I wasn’t sure what to expect from an autumn trip to Finland, my first ever to the country, but spending an afternoon sprawled on a deck chair beneath blazing blue skies certainly wasn’t part of it. After a morning walking beneath the leafy canopy at the Mustila Arboretum – the oldest, most extensive botanical garden in the country – and a lunchtime wine-tasting (more of which later), my friend Sara and I pitched up at the Sahanlahti resort, deep in the Finnish Lakeland, only to find sun-drenched scenery that felt far more Mediterranean than Nordic.

Sahanlahti was the second stop on a mid-September road trip from Helsinki to the shores of Lake Saimaa; a journey in search of ruska, the spectacular autumn colours that blaze for a few short weeks before the long Finnish winter sets in. However, on our opening drive east from the airport to the Radalla resort, set on Lake Urajärvi, most of the thousands of trees we drove past were resolutely green, with just the very tips of the leaves tinged with auburn, like a foliage balayage.

From the Renaissance treasures of Parma to offbeat creativity in Nantes, these cities offer world-class art, great food and a laid-back alternative to Europe’s hotspots

As dilemmas go, it’s an unusual one: saddle up a giant squid or board a submersible for a voyage to the bottom of the ocean. In the end, I find myself drawn to a fierce-looking merhorse and tentatively take the reins. High above, my daughter glides by on a flying fish, metallic fins flapping, while her Dad is battling stormy seas at the helm of a huge conch shell. A ride on the Carrousel des Mondes Marins (marine worlds carousel) – a three-storey steampunk merry-go-round inspired by Jules Verne’s novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – is one of the highlights of a visit to Nantes. A surreal fairground ride, a work of art and a homage to the city’s most famous son. It’s also a lot of fun.

The imposing red-brick mills of its industrial past are a stunning example of urban regeneration in the former ‘city of a thousand chimneys’

Sometimes travel delivers a real shock. I’m moving along the boulevards in the Polish city of Łódź, enjoying the excellent cafes and warm sunshine, when I spot the vans. They are parked up on the verge, with racks of clothing and heavily laden tables behind. I can’t resist a Sunday morning market and walk towards a group of men huddled around a car that is covered in blankets. And then it happens. They turn – and I see they are weighing pistols in their hands. I recognise the lean profile of a German Luger, and then the bulkier Colt 45.

There is a second of doubt. I hesitate. They replace the weapons on the display and walk away laughing. I approach. On the car roof is a row of dusty soldiers’ helmets. “We were repairing a pavement in the centre of town,” says the seller cheerfully, handing me a badge to inspect. “Imagine! For 80 years, all this stuff was just under our feet.”

A fragment of temperate rainforest lies on the edge of Dartmoor, and following years of conservation work, its owners have now opened up a sustainable campsite next to this fragile ecosystem

Mist blankets the valley as I wheel my camping gear down the small hill towards a clearing ringed by trees and shrubs. A picnic bench sits at its edge, angled towards the reason why I’m here: one of the last remaining fragments of temperate rainforest in Britain. I’m pitching my tent at Wray Valley Camping, a low-impact site on Dartmoor’s eastern edge between Lustleigh and Moretonhampstead, where I’ll spend five days on one of the site’s “nearly wild” pitches.

Also known as Atlantic woodland, temperate rainforests depend on a rare combination of high humidity, rainfall and consistently mild coastal temperatures where the sea moderates the climate. They once stretched from the western Highlands of Scotland down to Cornwall, covering 20% of the UK, and sheltering rare and delicate lichens and plants. Today more than 95% of our temperate rainforest cover is gone, but Devon’s near-constant dampness and its exposure to the Atlantic make it one of the last strongholds for this rare habitat.

Who’s more likely to steal sweets from a child? According to science, it’s the rich. A study seemingly confirming our suspicions about the moral behaviour of the wealthy was one of the winners of the 2026 Ig Nobel prizes, which honour research that makes you laugh and then think. Science editor Ian Sample tells Madeleine Finlay what the researchers think could be behind the phenomenon, and they explore some of the other awards, including one for a surprising quality we look for in our friends and another for a biomechanical definition of kissing

Rich people more likely to steal children’s sweets, finds Ig Nobel prize-winning study

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

Dust and hard water can leave deposits that slow photosynthesis, but don’t believe everything you read about using acids to remove them

The problem
Dusty leaves are more than a cosmetic problem. A film of dust blocks light, which slows photosynthesis and dulls the plant. Hard water makes it worse, leaving chalky white mineral spots on the foliage that a damp cloth simply smears around.

The hack
The acids in white vinegar, or lemon juice, dissolve the mineral salts left behind by hard water – just wipe a very diluted solution over the leaves with a microfibre cloth.

Eyam Moor, Derbyshire: It’s a place that I treasure greatly, and now it has a change of ownership that is worth celebrating

Can a landscape sigh with relief? It felt that way, pushing through bilberry and cowberry hung with pearls of overnight rain that soaked my lower legs.

On the path, dry, dusty soil had reverted to reassuring gloop. I was thrilled, at one point, to step cautiously round a puddle. Overhead, a buzzard wheeled and a small gang of swallows skimmed across heather whose purple intensity was already fading, too soon it seemed to me. To the west, a kestrel was quartering the slopes of Wet Withens.

We all know tiredness can lead to hunger, and vice versa. But there are so many other ways our habits in these areas are linked. Here are some easy tweaks to help us feel properly refreshed

A study published in the journal Nature Health last month found that food choices and meal timings have “immediate and measurable effects” on sleep. It was just the latest in a growing body of research into the link between diet and rest. Here is the latest science on what to eat for better sleep – and how sleep deprivation can affect your dinner the next day.

Anglers will help scientists investigate the porbeagle, tope and blue shark to boost knowledge and conservation

‘We have really cool sharks,” says Dr Lucy Hawkes. She is not referring to animals in the rich coastal waters of South Africa or Mexico, but instead talking about the species that live around Britain. Hawkes, an associate professor at the University of Exeter, is co-leading a new three-year project to investigate the lives of three of England’s most vulnerable shark species.

“I like the porbeagle, which looks like a baby great white shark,” she says. “Surfers could see one and absolutely poop their pants, but they’re not dangerous. It’s amazing that we share the water with some pretty exciting animals.”

Thousands died because of this summer’s extreme hot weather – caused by the climate crisis. Anita Bazell, taken to hospital during June’s heatwave with a body temperature of 41.2C, was one of them

Anita Bazell had never coped with the heat very well, her family said. So they were worried about her when temperatures across the UK soared to record highs of 35C (95F) in May, and then again in June.

She was living in a nursing home in Southampton near her family, who had struggled to care for her at home due to her declining mobility. Although there were air conditioning units in the communal rooms, there was not one in Anita’s room, which was on the third floor.

Child was sent to live in 11 different Airbnbs or hotels and two ‘barren and inhospitable’ houses, as companies profited

• Councils pay more than £125m a year placing vulnerable children in illegal care homes in England

Princess had a hard start in life. Her father drank too much, and referrals were made to social services. As she got older, she started going missing, telling police officers she was being physically abused by her parents, who in turn claimed they could not manage her behaviour. She was eventually taken into care amid concerns about self-harm, aggression and exploitation outside the home.

Even though social workers described her as a lovely child, they struggled to find her a permanent home capable of keeping her safe in England’s dysfunctional, largely outsourced residential care system.

We would particularly like to hear from people whose commute has been affected by others who keep Lime bikes or other ebikes in their private areas and gardens

Nearly half of Londoners aged 18-34 now use Lime bikes weekly, and the rental ebike company reported 16 million commuter journeys in 2024.

But are you a Lime bike or other ebike user who has experienced selfishness from other riders during the commuter rush? Specifically, have you recognised a problem with “Lime bike hoggers” – users who keep booked bikes in their private areas so that you can’t actually access it?

Are you dealing with subsidence or other issues caused by the hot weather?

During a dry spell, such as the successive heatwaves that affected some parts of the UK this year, houses built on clay-rich soil suffer as moisture is sucked away by trees and bushes. This causes the clay to shrink and foundations to drop, causing structural problems.

We would like to speak to homeowners who are dealing with damage to their homes which is likely to have been caused by this year’s extremely hot, dry weather.

We would like to hear from people who live in an area where there are plans for AI datacentres to be built – or who already live near one

The Scottish National Party and the Greens have backed a moratorium on new developments of AI datacentres, as part of a growing backlash against the boom.

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

We want to hear from young people who have chosen to start their own businesses rather than follow a traditional career path

A growing number of Gen Z are starting their own businesses, with the number of Start Up Loans taken out by young founders rising by 132% over the past five years, according to analysis by the British Business Bank. Meanwhile, Hiscox analysis of Companies House data found nearly 400,000 Gen Z directors are now running UK-registered businesses.

We’d like to hear from people aged between 18 and 29 who have started a business about what inspired you to do it and how you got started. How is your business going? What have been the biggest challenges and rewards? Do you see yourself continuing to run your own business in the future?

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