Experts say there will still be opportunities ahead in everything from teaching to hotels and the law

Entering the world of work often brings some uncertainty, but now there is another question: how can I AI-proof my career?

We asked people from across various industries what they think the impact of AI will be on careers, and which jobs may be less affected. While it is still early days for the tech, many had ideas about how you can best prepare yourself for a successful career in this new world.

Outdoor fan parks allow football lovers to enjoy the messy euphoria – so long as they ditch the denim

Once upon a time, the pub was the default choice for most football fans keen to watch the match with fellow supporters – and spilling your beer on a fellow patron was a serious faux pas. But watching the World Cup this year is a bigger, some would say better, and almost certainly wetter experience.

The phenomenon of fan parks has changed the way supporters have been cheering on the Three Lions in recent years. Large crowds amass under a giant screen to sing and shout their way through the ebbs and flows of England’s tournament progress.

I had always longed for adventure, so when ‘the Captain’ invited me on a 4,000-mile sailing trip, I took the plunge. Then coronavirus hit, and I found myself stuck in a relationship as choppy as the sea we were navigating. Who exactly was the man I’d followed onboard?

I sat on the stern bench, the sun shining down on me. The bright orange wheel spun gently on autopilot, keeping us on course to the Marquesas Islands. We were a week out of Panama, and it had been a smooth passage so far, with everyone settling into their rhythm and responsibilities as we worked as a team to sail the 4,000 nautical miles. Then, the email from the Pacific Crossing network we were part of arrived.

Coronavirus had become a worldwide pandemic – borders were closing fast. There was nowhere to land. I was on a 47ft (14-metre) sailboat with my on-again, off-again boyfriend (the Captain), three strangers and a dog – the safest place on Earth, and the most stuck I had ever been in my life.

Reports of falling sperm counts and testosterone levels have fuelled fears over chemicals, pollution and modern lifestyles. But how much do scientists agree on what is affecting male fertility?

The world is unwittingly walking into a male reproductive crisis, scientists warned this week as they presented data that revealed an apparent halving of average male testosterone levels over the past 50 years.

“It is mind-blowing that testosterone has declined by 50%,” Prof Hagai Levine, who led the work, told the Guardian. “This is a lot. Wake up people. Wake up.”

From novels by James Baldwin and Han Kang to a guide to quantum physics – a former Booker prize judge recommends immersive one-sitting wonders

A one-sitting read is typically the domain of the short story – a form that largely depends on a reader’s pure, unbroken attention. But there is some­thing special about the intensity of beginning and ending an entire book in a single day. Of all my reading experiences, these have been among the most memorable.

As a judge for last year’s Booker prize, faced with 153 books and just over six months in which to read them, it was my task to try to turn every novel into one that could be read in a day. While I loved the experience, it wasn’t exactly a recipe for satisfying reading.

The tube cannot easily be adapted to cope with heatwaves, making conditions almost unbearable

As the escalator descends below ground at King’s Cross St Pancras station in London, the shift from what was already a hot station entrance to the furnace-like subterranean depths is perceptible.

On the tube it’s worse: a man leans back in his seat, eyes closed, sweltering; people hold electric fans an inch away from their faces. London commuters are known for their stoicism and the heat appears to be another tribulation to accept. They will need to: heatwaves in the capital are becoming routine.

Suspect arrested in South Yorkshire after ex-politician was found dead at her Devon home on Thursday

A 28-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of Ann Widdecombe, police said.

The suspect, who is a white British national, was arrested at an address in the South Yorkshire area on Saturday evening and is in police custody.

⚽️ World Cup kick-off: 5pm EDT/10pm BST/7am AEST
⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Mail Scott

You won’t need reminding that tonight’s game could go to extra time and penalty kicks. So if it indeed goes all the way, what on earth should Harry Kane do if he wins the toss? Mo Salah has the answer …

England have four players walking the disciplinary tightrope this evening. Jude Bellingham was booked against DR Congo, while Marc Guehi, Nico O’Reilly and Declan Rice were all cautioned against Mexico. A yellow card for any of them tonight, and they’ll miss the semi-final should England get through. Norway have only one player on a yellow in winger Antonio Nusa. (Yellow cards were wiped at the start of the knockouts, and will be again after the quarters.)

Errol Musk says far-right activist is ‘a fine young man’ and held meetings with Russian business figures

Elon Musk’s family foundation took Tommy Robinson to Russia, according to the billionaire X owner’s father, who was with the British far-right activist in Moscow as he encouraged anti-migration protests in Britain.

Robinson – whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – appeared last month in Moscow, from where he issued calls for supporters to take to the streets after a knife attack in Belfast. He shared video of himself in a luxury Moscow hotel with the older Musk, whose son has been a vocal supporter of Robinson.

Warren Lyttle, who was in his 40s, died from his injuries after incident on the Braniel estate on Friday

A man in his 40s has died after falling from an Eleventh Night bonfire in Belfast, police said.

The incident occurred on the Braniel estate in the east of the city on Friday night.

Temperatures will stay above 30C on Sunday, with warnings of wildfires and heat health alerts in some areas

The scorching heatwave conditions experienced by much of England and Wales will last until at least next week, the Met Office has said.

Temperatures in parts of England and Wales will continue to exceed 30C on Sunday and into next week, the forecaster said.

Ro Khanna said settlers were armed with US-made weapons and Israel Defense Forces refused to intervene

The US congressman Ro Khanna says armed Israeli settlers detained him during a visit to the Israel-occupied West Bank recently, describing the experience as a first-hand view of the realities faced by Palestinians living under occupation.

In an interview with Reuters on Thursday from a Palestinian village, the progressive US House Democrat from California said his detention happened the previous day while his delegation visited an area of the southern West Bank that has experienced repeated attacks by Israeli settlers.

The former ITV, BBC and Sky News journalist died peacefully at home in London on Saturday, his family say

The former BBC and Sky News presenter Dermot Murnaghan has died aged 68 after a “period of illness with prostate cancer”, his family have said.

The journalist, who was long a fixture on British TV screens, was also known for hosting the quizshow Eggheads.

Voters’ views range from adulation to scepticism to outright cynicism over contest triggered by sitting MP

As Nigel Farage inflicts an August byelection on the Clacton constituency in Essex, local voters are divided over whether they need, or want, to give the Reform UK leader a fresh mandate.

In this self-styled battle between the “establishment and the people” views range from adulatory to sceptical to outright cynical over a contest that all mainstream parties are boycotting, leaving Count Binface and Laurence Fox as Farage’s only potential rivals.

• Ninth seed beats fellow Czech 6-2, 5-7, 6-3

• Muchova falls short in second major final

As one of her worst nightmares on a tennis court appeared to be unfolding before her disbelieving eyes, Linda Noskova walked solemnly to her chair with both index fingers plugged into her ears. She was attempting to block out the roars of a booming Centre Court crowd, which had erupted in jubilation at her failure to convert no fewer than five championship points. But the 21-year-old knew deep down that what she truly needed to block out were her own fatalistic thoughts.

Noskova’s hopes of capturing her first Wimbledon title were in freefall by that point. She had lost five consecutive games, her easy 6-2, 5-2 lead crumbling to dust as she found herself in an unwanted final set. Having betrayed all of her tension and fears to her bloodthirsty compatriot, victory seemed much further away than the scoreline suggested.

Merger stokes fears over job cuts, US influence and possible BBC and Channel 4 tie-up to take on Netflix and YouTube

Only five years ago a bullish ITV was riding high, trumpeting the biggest annual advertising haul in its history, as the broadcaster pledged to become a national champion in the battle against the US streamers.

Now its chief executive, Carolyn McCall, has raised the white flag, arguing that a cut-price sale of its TV and streaming business to Sky is the only route to survival as deep-pocketed companies such as Netflix and YouTube hoover up audiences and commercial revenues.

Nigel Farage foresaw a summer stroll to glory when he forced a byelection – but now risks his career being trashed

The votes were being counted and the media had gathered for the moment that Andy Burnham, his sights on Downing Street, would be elected as the MP for Makerfield in greater Manchester. But Nick the Flying Brick, a candidate on numerous occasions for the Monster Raving Loony party, could not help but be distracted. How could it be that the candidate across the Edge Conference Centre with a silver bin on his head had managed to secure the 10 local nominations necessary to stand?

The Flying Brick, real name Nick Delves, 60, who is also treasurer for the Loony party, had knocked doors-a-plenty to get the nominations for his veteran candidate, Howling Laud Hope. Yet, the Flying Brick hadn’t seen any chaps on the streets with bins on their heads. Certainly not in recent days. Not a single one.

After meeting in then-Zaire in the 1980s, Steve Sherwood and Martha Meares became good friends. But when she planned to leave for England, he decided he wanted something more

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

It was 1986, I was 26, had been travelling for two years, and was making my way through Africa. I was camping in the grounds of a run-down hotel, the only camp site in Kisangani, a city in what was then known as Zaire. On my first day in town I asked when the next River Congo ferry would leave. Tomorrow, they said.

Overland trucks would arrive and spend two to three days in town. A truck travelling from Kenya to the UK came, and its passengers put their stools in a circle to eat dinner. I asked to sit with them. Martha from Sydney sat beside me on the last spare stool. We spent most of that night chatting and laughing and got on really well.

It’s exciting, propulsive and not based on the same old threadbare franchises … this adaptation of a French comic book series is a steampunky tale of a secret experiment to inject wounded first world war fighters with a serum

The alternate history show has long been a TV mainstay, be it For All Mankind (what if the Soviets had won the space race?), The Man in the High Castle (what if the Axis powers had won the second world war?) or even Blackadder (what if Tudor history was essentially all nonsense?). The Sentinels enters this crowded, often conflict-heavy genre with a wartime premise of its own: what if, during the first world war, the French army had groomed a secret cabal of doped-up super soldiers, capable of incredible feats of violence?

An unapologetic mashup of postapocalyptic, steampunk action and old-timey war drama with a distinctly Gallic (and Germanic) feel, this eight-part series – adapted from a comic book series by Enrique Breccia and Xavier Dorison – is an intriguing entry to the “what if?” genre. And if it sounds a little too on-the-nose (bad historical event plus major anachronisms equals … TV gold?!), know that The Sentinels is so confident in its worldbuilding that it manages to work not just as an alternate history, but as a solid sci-fi thriller.

Yankee Stadium, New York City

The rapper celebrates 30 years of his classic debut album Reasonable Doubt with eye-popping visuals and special guests in a love letter to hip-hop culture

The beauty of watching Jay-Z live is more than just watching him calmly spit bars that effortlessly prove why his career has been this long and brilliant; it’s also the complex but lovely feeling of watching an audience (and the artist himself) relive the past. It’s almost unfathomable that 30 years ago, Jay-Z was starting out as a relatively unknown rapper from Brooklyn chronicling his life as a hustler. Quite possibly the greatest pure MC of all-time – encompassing flow, patience, humor, live ability and his taste as an auteur – Jay built a career on restrained tales of wide-eyed dreams and braggadocious stanzas about financial gain.

His 1996 debut album, Reasonable Doubt, was the start of that career, and on Friday night, I’m at New York City’s Yankee Stadium as Jay-Z performs the album’s tracks in order, front to back, making it impossible to forget its legacy in a visually stunning show that splits the difference between close connection and grand spectacle. At times, with a wide, movie-like screen backing Jay that shows funerals of presidents, footage of Mike Tyson, or his wife, Beyoncé, cutting his hair at the ballpark, the show feels influenced by previous tours like Watch the Throne mixed with the street romance of the 2002 movie Paid in Full. Yet the care and attention to detail ensures that the 50,000-capacity venue feels intimate, for the folks who heard the album and felt seen through its songs of regret and paranoia.

My sister and I were enjoying our all-inclusive getaway, but my mum hated forced fun and sitting by the pool. So we went off exploring in the searing heat. Our hike through the island’s building sites didn’t end well

Package holidays weren’t yet a thing people did, in 1983 or 84, and Mallorca hadn’t completely become itself, but wasn’t unspoilt either. Me, nine, my sister, 11, and my mum, 46, would have been early adopters of the all-inclusive getaway, if in any sense my mum had arrived in an adopting frame of mind. It’s hard to describe the attitude she brought with her without making her sound like a monster, so you just have to fill between the lines with “she had other nice qualities”.

She didn’t like small talk and didn’t like buffets; didn’t like bumptious dads who invited your kids to join theirs; didn’t like nuclear families; and she wasn’t wild about other single-parent families either. She hated sitting by the pool, drinking piña coladas, group activities and any kind of quiz. She had an aversion to forced fun, which she used as cover for her distaste for many other kinds of fun. Me and my sister loved forced fun. We would lose our shit over a cocktail umbrella.

There’s no getting away from it: these are all ultra-processed, but which sponges are the life of the party and which are too sweet for comfort?

• The best (and worst) supermarket dark chocolate

Some of these taste tests – for instance, the oven chips one from last summer – surprise me with their overall quality and minimal processing. But others, such as today’s party cakes, sit firmly in the ultra-processed category, and often make contradictory claims, “handmade” and “carefully selected high-quality ingredients” being just two.

I want my children to enjoy treats without food anxiety, but we also owe it both to ourselves and to them to know what we’re actually eating. Unusually, the price of today’s cakes didn’t reflect processing levels. While more expensive products are often less processed, even the premium cakes included an array of emulsifiers (including mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, polyglycerol esters and sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate), preservatives, stabilisers, synthetic raising agents such as diphosphates, and glucose-fructose syrup, a heavily processed industrial sweetener linked to metabolic concerns. I’ve listed the number of additives in each product, excluding natural colours and flavourings, pectin, citric acid, carbonates and bicarbonate of soda, beeswax and glucose syrup. I also scored the cakes based on their appearance, taste, texture, value, certifications, animal welfare considerations and total sugar content (which varied greatly).

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

Dwayne Johnson and Catherine Laga’aia star in the latest Disney animation to get the live-action treatment, and the model-actor-singer proffers more of her signature lush soft rock

Moana
Out now
The 2016 Disney animation gets the “live action” treatment with a more-or-less remake starring Dwayne Johnson and newcomer Catherine Laga’aia, joined by, as you’d expect, animated versions of various critters, including Tamatoa the coconut crab (once more voiced by Jemaine Clement).

Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports

The octogenarian rock legends return with a new record continuing their creative renaissance, while the K-pop behemoths bring their latest album to global stadiums. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

• Adams played in South Africa’s World Cup group games

• Midfielder played for Mamelodi Sundowns

Jayden Adams, who played in South Africa’s three group games at the World Cup, has died aged 25.

The Mamelodi Sundowns midfielder started the tournament opener, a 2-0 defeat by Mexico, and the 1-1 draw with Czechia, being substituted in both matches. He then came off the bench in the 1-0 win against South Korea, but took no part in the 1-0 last-32 defeat by Canada.

Swirl around Fifa’s machinations and about big team and big name bias creates doubt – and that’s a dangerous game

About 25 years ago, I was in the office of a sports newspaper in Bucharest on a Saturday afternoon following the Premier League games with some local journalists. With about five minutes to go, Chelsea trailed 2-1. Somebody had backed Chelsea to lose and brandished his betting slip. Chelsea scored. A couple of minutes later, they scored again. The reporter tossed the slip away. I saw drama; the Romanians saw a fix.

This is why integrity and the perception of integrity are so important. I don’t think that game was fixed. There is no evidence whatsoever it was fixed. Given the salaries players earn and the sophistication of the early warning system for unusual betting patterns, there is little chance Premier League games are fixed. But if you grew up in the declining days of the Ceauşescu era or the wild west that followed, when match-fixing wasn’t so much an open secret as a simple fact, cynicism is the natural response.

Packed stadiums, record TV viewers, and an outlet for joyous multiculturalism under attack by Trump – the tournament has taken the US by storm

There were plenty of reasons to believe the US hosting the World Cup would be a disaster.

In the year and a half leading up to the kick-off, Donald Trump had threatened to annex tournament co-host Canada, and to invade the other co-host, Mexico; he was at war with one of the tournament’s participants, Iran. Harsh travel restrictions were preventing fans from Senegal, Ivory Coast and Haiti from getting visas. Ticket prices were outrageous. Hotels weren’t filling up as promised. Fifa was introducing “hydration breaks” during games, allowing TV commercials in what appeared to be a shameless cash grab that threatened the flow of play.

Midfielder has risen from the bench to come up with the decisive goal in past two games – Spain’s first World Cup knockout victories since they won the tournament in 2010

“I look behind me and I see Mikel Merino and I think: ‘I’m calm as can be,’” Luis de la Fuente said when at last the heart rates had returned to normal. Everyone else’s heart rates, anyway. In those moments when time is running out and the tension is running high, there’s something about Spain’s coach. And there’s certainly something about the midfielder.

On the afternoon before Spain faced Belgium in their quarter-final, De la Fuente had an attack of the giggles as he recalled how when he was a kid only three television events gathered his family around the screen: the national team, Eurovision and the gloriously silly, inexplicably bizarre gameshow Un, dos, tres (whose UK version was 3-2-1).

• Former Liverpool manager to replace Julian Nagelsmann

• Germany lost to Paraguay in last 32 of the World Cup

Jürgen Klopp has “reached an agreement on the key points” to become the next Germany head coach, the German football association (DFB) has said. The 59-year-old is expected to sign a contract until 2030 to succeed Julian Nagelsmann.

A statement said: “The DFB president Bernd Neuendorf and DFB vice-president Hans-Joachim Watzke held their first in-depth talks with Jürgen Klopp yesterday in New York regarding his potential appointment as national team coach. During the constructive exchange, an agreement was reached on the key points of a potential contract. Talks will continue next week.

“Both sides are confident that the negotiations – subject to an agreement with Klopp’s current employer, Red Bull – can ultimately be successfully concluded. Any potential contract must be finalised in a joint meeting of the supervisory board and shareholders’ meeting of DFB GmbH & Co. KG.”

With its gushing interviewees and weird (y’know) ways of talking, the BBC news flagship show I used to present now has me harrumphing at the radio

It’s seven years since I stopped presenting the Today programme and started listening to Radio 3 instead. Or at least, that was the plan. On the first day it lasted for almost an hour. By the second day I’d given up on it. I suppose it was inevitable. You can’t spend 61 years as a news hack – more than half of it presenting the same programme – and then just erase it from your memory and start a new life.

What you can do in my own case – or, rather, can’t help doing – is mutate into a “new” listener. How to describe this “new” listener? I suppose if I were Today’s editor, the phrase “pain in the arse” might come to mind. Having been the one on the radio informing (and possibly sometimes annoying) the listeners for 33 years, I’m now the man shouting at his radio about how irritating the programme has become.

John Humphrys presents The Odd Couple podcast with Matthew Norman

We have a Victorian attitude to child offenders. It is harmful to them – and, when they reoffend, damaging to everyone

• Kirsty Brimelow KC is chair of the Bar Council of England and Wales

It is said that there can be no truer revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats its children. The Bar Council of England and Wales has just concluded an expert review of the minimum age of criminal responsibility. At 10, it is the lowest in Europe. We recommend that it is raised to 14.

Society should have moved on since the 1800s, when Charles Dickens railed against the storm cloud of unfairness that gathered over children. However, Dickens’s anger at the law and society, and the harsh treatment of children, remains familiar today. England and Wales are outliers in bringing the criminal justice system to bear on young children who cause harm.

Kirsty Brimelow KC is chair of the Bar Council of England and Wales

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.

Even White House interference and Fifa’s greed cannot spoil the celebrations. At last, an arena in which multiculturalism triumphs and underdogs score

Of all the outrageous things Donald Trump has done, from bombing other countries to appeasing dictators, his sneaky interference in last week’s USA v Belgium World Cup match sparked by far the most united and furious reaction across the world. Condemnation was all but universal. Trump’s cheating heart cannot understand the unmatched, ubiquitous power that the “beautiful game” exercises over ordinary lives everywhere. It massively surpasses his own. The world truly loves football. It doesn’t love him. And then USA lost the match anyway. Karma. This modern morality play joyously illuminated the limits of authoritarianism.

In an age dominated by overbearing, illiberal economic and military powers, the men’s World Cup is upending the conventional geopolitical pecking order and power balances in refreshing and instructive ways. In this alternative universe, smaller nations – and ordinary people – can and often do get a bigger shout. Despite huge state investment in all aspects of the game, China again failed to qualify. Russia, never much good at football in the first place, was kicked out after invading Ukraine. And despite all Trump’s Maga hooliganism, the US remains soccer small fry. So much for superpowers.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

Acting is about human connection across cultural and social divides. But we can’t expect much of that in the ‘Tillyverse’

Rejoice, cinema lovers. Tilly Norwood is back! Not familiar? I don’t blame you, as she’s not exactly a household name yet – though a fleet of well-fed publicists is certainly trying to rectify that. Tilly Norwood is an “AI actor”, as in, an actor that’s not actually an actor at all. Just a series of digital blobs and lines of code designed to resemble a young woman in the lucrative 18-to-49-year-old target demographic. Thus far, Tilly has lived exclusively in easily digestible social media clips and hyperbolic press releases about the “future of entertainment”. But now, “she” (I feel like a complete buffoon for assigning a gender to a computer program) is finally ready for the world of feature films. The company Particle6, which spat out this risible creation, announced that it has commenced development on a motion picture starring this very elaborate and expensive cartoon avatar.

The film, titled Misaligned, will see Tilly seduced by a rogue program into experimenting with human emotions – “desires, impulses, and ambition”, as described by Variety. The company claims that the film will be a “coming-of-age story infused with existential AI chaos”. I can’t help but wonder what resonance a “coming-of-age story” can have if the protagonist is a computer program that doesn’t understand the concept of time, ageing or mortality. Does Tilly Norwood understand the concept of a 24-hour day? Does “she” know the glorious warmth of a mid-afternoon sun? Has “she” ever forgotten to move her car because it’s street cleaning day on her block? Tilly Norwood, being an animated sprite, is neither “coming” nor “of age”. But then again, isn’t acting all about accessing experiences you’ve never had?

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

The senator’s health is shrouded in mystery after he was hospitalized. Why can’t we get a clear answer?

Is Mitch McConnell dead?

This shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer. The response is either “yes”, “no” or something along the lines of “he’s on life support but appears to be brain dead”.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

New Trump administration rules would undermine longstanding research practices. It’s death by a thousand cuts

A politician who aims to gradually privatize and ultimately destroy an institution funded by tax dollars – say, a public school system or public transportation network – may choose to do so by strategically disinvesting resources from that institution until it becomes barely functional, leading users to look elsewhere to meet their needs. Eventually, the user-base of the public system gets so low or frustrated that it seems reasonable to scrap the thing entirely, or re-direct public funds to private companies as contractors to provide the needed “service”. We’ve seen this strategy play out many times in states and city councils across America.

It appears that the endgame of the Trump administration’s attacks on science and the research funding ecosystem is similar: grant freezes and administrative disarray at federal funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), new layers of project review by political appointees hunting for forbidden keywords such as “disparity” and “marginalized”, and proposed new restrictions to make international collaboration difficult or impossible all point towards a world where it’s just too onerous to do federally-funded scientific research. Is the goal to make scientists simply give up on the endeavor?

Daniel Malinsky is an assistant professor of biostatistics in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University

Nigel Farage has billed his byelection as a clash with the powers that be. To wit: Laurence Fox, a naked celebrity and a man with a bin on his head

Quick look at the Clacton byelection field as it stands: Nigel Farage, Count Binface, Piers Corbyn, Laurence Fox, some bloke who’s been on Married at First Sight and Dating Naked ... anyway, there’s more, but you get the picture. It’s going to be a long hot summer. By the end of this contest Clacton will be begging to be left behind again.

To recap, Reform leader Farage this week delivered an address to the nation on his political future, which can effectively be summarised as “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the messiest bitch of all?” Under fire over his recently exposed penchant for taking mental amounts of money and benefits from Thailand-based cryptophiliacs/convicted fraudsters and their mums, Nigel has decided to seek validation by asking the voters of Clacton to rule on him. So yes, Farage has triggered a byelection – but he’s also triggered anyone who’s ever been in a toxic relationship where their partner forces them into public declarations of loyalty. It’s all very “I always choose you over everyone, Nigel, and I hate that my family are trying to destroy us”.

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Stronger European welfare states expose a Tory myth. Benefits can enable independence, work and growth

Sir Stephen Timms, Labour’s minister for social security and disability, is widely acknowledged to be a parliamentary expert on welfare. He has seen the system from almost every angle: as a pensions and Treasury minister under New Labour, a shadow welfare spokesperson, a select committee chair, and now as a government minister. After Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’s ham-fisted attempt to balance the books on the backs of disabled people sparked a backbench revolt, the pair retreated behind Sir Stephen.

His interim review into personal independence payment (Pip), the main non-means-tested disability benefit for working-age adults, is an attempt to clean up the mess. The deeper problem was Labour’s fiscal rule: that the current budget should be on course to be in balance or surplus. That rule disadvantages spending on the “current” side of the ledger, including welfare, because it is treated as expenditure to be “paid for”.

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.

The universal themes addressed by one of humanity’s greatest storytellers more than merit Hollywood box-office treatment

The Magasphere’s endless appetite for culture wars is wearily familiar. But who could have foreseen that Greek literature would become the new casus belli? Ahead of its much-anticipated general release next week, Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey has triggered Elon Musk and other supposed defenders of western civilisation. Directorial decisions such as the casting of the Kenyan-Mexican actor Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, Mr Musk ranted incoherently, amounted to “pissing on Homer’s grave”.

The absurd insistence on the white skin of a mythological figure reveals nothing we didn’t already know about the owner of X. The rest of us can move on and look forward to a lavish cinematic take on a story that has inspired artists for almost 3,000 years. Homer’s account of Odysseus’s 10-year struggle to return home from the Trojan wars has been reworked by Virgil in the Aeneid, relocated to Dublin in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and given a feminist treatment by Margaret Atwood in her Penelopiad. Now for the 21st-century Hollywood treatment.

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 an article about a woman who was hit by a child on a Lime bike

The case of Jane Ouartsi is horrific, but not surprising to many disabled people who move around central London and know how quickly careless riding can become dangerous (‘I felt my spine and body split’: the woman who was hit by a child on a Lime bike – and denied compensation, 7 July).

I am a powered wheelchair user in Westminster. I support cleaner streets and fewer car journeys, so I am not opposed to ebikes in principle. But the present dockless system too often transfers risk on to pedestrians, disabled people and older people.

Readers relive some live performances that made history – and the ones they missed

No legendary gig list is complete without the one by the rock band Free at Middlesbrough Town Hall on 19 February 1972 (‘I was there!’ Writers remember legendary gigs by Beyoncé, Brian Wilson, Britney, Oasis, Daft Punk and more, 6 July). Free were led by local lad and now legendary vocalist Paul Rodgers, and it was rumoured to be, and was, their farewell tour, leading to massive anticipation.

The gig was a 50p a ticket sellout, but due to the seven-week miners’ strike there was a power cut scheduled for 9pm, so the starting time was moved to 5pm. Coincidentally, the miners settled their pay dispute on the same day, but the power cuts continued until the following week.

Katherine Arnott on the health and community benefits of lidos

I am heartened to read of the drive to increase access to lido swimming for the benefit of public health, especially as the planet heats up (Labour MPs call on water firms to save Britain’s lost lidos, 4 July).

Having recently published a peer-reviewed study on the meaning of lido swimming as part of my MSc in occupational therapy, I propose that their health and wellbeing benefits reach far beyond their cooling properties during heatwaves.

Readers tell us about hearing their musically inclined avian neighbours

How I envy Jane Horne and her resident blackbird with a taste for musicals (Letters, July). Some years ago, I used to push my husband in his wheelchair along the road early each morning, and one of his great joys was to listen to our local blackbird whistling the last movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Sadly, my husband died a few years later, the blackbird has long gone, and the tree where it sang has been chopped down, but I remember them all whenever I hear the Beethoven concerto.
Frances Holloway
Harlesden, London

• Many years ago in our Yorkshire back yard, a blackbird used to visit each day and sing the first four notes of a major scale. The following year it returned and sang the next three notes, and the year after it completed the scale. Was this just a random choice, or could it be connected to the fact that my husband was a musician, working from home?
Anna Crabtree
Lewes, East Sussex

• Fiji 8-73 England

• Scrum-half Simione Kuruvoli sent off before break

To say England needed to shine in sub-tropical Liverpool is the understatement of this protracted season. Had they slipped to a sixth straight Test defeat it would probably have been the end of Steve Borthwick’s tenure as head coach. Instead a one-sided romp, their first win since February, has given the management a little respite as they prepare to head to Argentina for the last leg of their continent-hopping summer itinerary.

In all honesty, though, Fiji were so disjointed and ill-disciplined for lengthy periods that the game resembled something close to a training run. A litany of botched offloads, silly penalties and back-pedalling mauls had long since allowed England to cruise away over the horizon even before Simione Kuruvoli was sent off just before half-time with his side already 35-3 behind.

• Noskova wins women’s singles after 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 victory

• ‘What really helped me … the trophies were there’

A jubilant Linda Noskova said seeing the Wimbledon trophy sitting by Centre Court helped her reset at a vital time as she clinched her first grand slam title with a dramatic 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 victory over her fellow Czech Karolina Muchova at Wimbledon.

The 21-year-old led 6-2, 5-2 only to miss five match points as Muchova levelled but Noskova took a bathroom break and reset brilliantly to become the sixth Czech woman to lift the title in the Open era.

• Current Lord’s Test will be her final appearance

• ‘I’m privileged to have gone on this journey’

Heather Knight will retire from international cricket at the end of this week’s Test against India at Lord’s. Knight, who has made a record 320 appearances for England, has joined her teammate Tammy Beaumont in calling time on her career at the end of what is the first women’s Test at the home of cricket, and one in which England appear headed for defeat after a gruelling second day’s play on Saturday.

The 35-year-old made her England debut in 2010 and went on to captain the side on 199 occasions between 2016 and 2025, guiding the team to success at the Women’s World Cup on home soil in 2017. However, Knight was sacked as captain in March last year after a disastrous three-format Ashes tour of Australia in which England were trounced 16-0.

• Fifth T20i: England, 257-3 beat India, 201-8, by 56 runs

• Buttler hits 131, Brook 95 as England seal 4-0 series win

Cast your minds back to February 2022: the Partygate scandal is in full swing as news breaks of the surprise birthday party held for Boris Johnson two years earlier and four of the prime minister’s top advisers resign; Russia launches a “special military operation” in Ukraine; Adele sweeps artist, song and album of the year awards at the Brits; and India beat West Indies to go to the top of the ICC’s T20 rankings. Finally, 1,601 days and two World Cup wins later, and after a humbling series of defeats across Ireland and England came to an often calamitous crescendo, they have been usurped. Instead England end a couple of phenomenal weeks on top of the world.

An extraordinary, and extraordinarily one-sided, series got the ending it deserved, with England scoring a remarkable 257 for three – breaking the record they set in Mumbai in March for the highest total ever posted against India in T20s – and though the tourists’ chase was, at least for a while, more spirited than much of their fielding they managed only 201. England won the game by 56 runs and the series 4-0.

• Stage eight: Tadej Pogacar untroubled in overall lead

• Merlier produces superb sprint win for second day
  

Sunday’s ninth stage of the Tour de France has been shortened by 30km due to a red heatwave alert in the Corrèze département of central France. The stage from Malemort to Ussel will now be raced over 155.5km instead of the scheduled 185.5.

In a statement the Tour said: “This decision aims to ensure that the race can take place under conditions compatible with the red heatwave alert.”

German’s long-awaited first slam title came in Paris after his rival wilted in the heat but was his triumph a turning point or a blip?

For a brief moment on the first day of Wimbledon, there was reason to believe that Jannik Sinner was still processing his collapse at Roland Garros. Any loss in Paris would have been significant, considering the certainty with which he had dominated the clay court season beforehand, but it was the manner of his defeat that stung.

Sinner, it cannot be repeated enough, had been leading the innocuous Juan Manuel Cerundolo by two sets to love and 5-1 in set three when he crumbled physically. No matter how Sinner tried to emphasise his satisfaction at his achievements in the entire clay court swing, this was an excruciating loss.

• Bates oversaw eventful 21-year period in club’s history

• Subsequent ownership of Leeds was hugely troubled

Ken Bates, one of the most colourful and controversial figures in the history of English football, has died aged 94, Chelsea have announced.

The club reported on Saturday afternoon that Bates had died peacefully in Monaco surrounded by his wife and family. “It is with great sadness that we share the news of the loss of Ken Bates, former owner and chairman of Chelsea Football Club.

Outlet said journalists subpoenaed to testify before grand jury after story detailed security concerns with Qatar-gifted plane

The Trump administration has issued subpoenas to several New York Times journalists after the newspaper reported on security concerns with the president’s new plane, according to the outlet.

The Times said its journalists were subpoenaed on Friday by the US justice department to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan five days later, marking the latest effort by the Trump White House to compel testimony from journalists under the threat of penalty. Agents delivered some of the subpoenas to the Times reporters at their homes, the paper added.

Exclusive: CCRC will test serial killer as part of inquiry into whether Michael Stone was wrongly convicted of 1996 murders

The serial killer Levi Bellfield will have his DNA taken in an attempt to establish if he murdered Lin and Megan Russell in 1996.

Michael Stone has protested his innocence since his conviction in 1998 for the killing of Lin, 45, and her daughter, six-year-old Megan, as well as a vicious attack on Megan’s sister Josie, nine, who survived.

Nearly 17,000 injured and thousands more listed as missing amid calls by president Delcy Rodríguez and UN for financial help

The death toll in Venezuela’s devastating twin earthquakes has passed 4,300, the government said on Saturday.

At least 4,333 people were killed and 16,740 injured in the back-to-back quakes on 24 June that flattened entire districts in the coastal state of La Guaira, the Venezuelan parliament chief, Jorge Rodríguez, wrote on Telegram. Thousands more people are listed as missing.

Watchdog says public being put in danger by closure of premises that accommodate most dangerous offenders

Nearly one in ten probation hostels where England and Wales’ most dangerous offenders live after leaving prison have been closed after a staffing crisis.

As ministers prepare the early release of thousands of inmates in September, a leaked memo revealed that “staffing challenges” have led to temporary closures of the heavily-supervised “approved premises”.

Exclusive: Alarming shortfall of specialists stops about 4,000 procedures a day, many for patients in urgent need of surgery

The NHS is unable to perform 1.5m operations a year because of a drastic shortage of anaesthetists, a report reveals.

More than 8 million patients are on waiting lists across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Many are in urgent need of a surgical procedure.

As Nigeria braces for another season of devastating rains, people affected describe the mental toll of repeatedly rebuilding their lives

Murky water first tore down a perimeter fence, then bubbled into the yard before spilling into every room. Within minutes, electronics, kitchen appliances, furniture, documents and academic certificates lay submerged.

With the water rising rapidly, Daniel Ebiesua evacuated his home in the Shogunle area of Lagos, with his wife, their two-week-old baby, four-year-old son and his mother-in-law to a neighbour’s upstairs apartment. There they stayed trapped for four hours, helplessly watching the flood swallow the streets below.

Every few decades mass blooming in Mizoram’s forests causes a rodent boom – and devastation to crops. The cycle is well-known, so why aren’t farmers and authorities better prepared?

In the hills of Mizoram state in north-east India, the first thing that farmers notice are the swarms of stink bugs, known locally as thangnang. It can mean only one thing: the rats are coming. And with them, famine.

As dawn breaks in Mamit district, Maunsanga, a 62-year-old farmer, walks across his plot, stopping where his rice crop once stood. He bends down to examine a broken stalk.

Twenty-three people missing and four Britons thought to be among those who died trying to flee Almería blaze

• ‘I had an incredible escape’: British woman tells of close encounter with wildfire

At least 12 people have been killed and 23 are unaccounted for after one of Spain’s deadliest wildfires broke out in the south-eastern province of Almería as the country endures its second heatwave of the summer.

The regional government of Andalucía said the victims, four of whom are believed to be British, had died while trying to escape the flames near the village of Bédar in the municipality of Los Gallardos.

Brigg, Lincolnshire: It’ll take six weeks to cut it all, starting with barley and likely ending with beans. Thank goodness the combine has air-conditioning

The crops have managed to survive winter flooding (almost) and two heatwaves, but another hot spell of weather is on the way as we embark on the enormous task of harvesting our crops.

Winter barley for seed is usually first, followed by oilseed rape (OSR), then probably wheat. Beans are nearly always last to be cut, often in September, but even these are heading towards the exit now in early July. Harvest 20 years ago would start around the third week in July, but has crept forward by three weeks since then.

Thinktank urges prospective prime minister to reclaim UK’s role as an international leader on development

Influential backbenchers are calling on Andy Burnham to reclaim Labour’s leadership on international development and chart a course back to spending 0.7% of national income on overseas aid.

In a collection of essays to be published soon by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) thinktank, MPs lay out proposals for a Burnham-led government to rethink foreign policy.

Ndodana Mkhanyisi Tshuma was arrested in a Johannesburg suburb after an international manhunt

A man has been charged with murdering his wife and two young daughters after being arrested in South Africa following an international manhunt.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it had authorised three counts of murder against Ndodana Mkhanyisi Tshuma, 45, after he was arrested on Friday in Kensington, a suburb of Johannesburg.

Ex-presenter of BBC Radio 4 show complains in Guardian of ‘gratuitous gratitude’ and ‘gushing’ between host and guest

For more than three decades, John Humphrys delighted and infuriated listeners in equal measure as he confronted the nation’s politicians in his trademark, pointed style on the Today programme.

Now a listener himself, the former presenter of the BBC’s flagship radio news show is just as pointed in his assessment of the current incarnation of the programme. His verdict? It’s irritating.

Crowd of more than 22,000 people – and the musician himself – filled Hyde Park with the ‘largest gathering of people wearing bald caps’

A tight plastic cap is not an attractive option for protective headwear in 30C (86F) heat. Yet 22,141 people opted for just that – along with a white shirt, black tie and aviator sunglasses – in Hyde Park, London, on Friday afternoon. It was both a homage to the rapper Pitbull, the night’s headliner at the BST festival, and part of setting a Guinness World Record for the “largest gathering of people wearing bald caps”.

“I’m speechless. Who would have thought a first-generation Cuban would be record-breaking and record-making?” said the rapper, accepting the award in an all-black suit.

Presidential bid by leader of far-right National Rally has no shortage of supporters in scenic Montargis

In the small French town of Montargis, Jean-Antoine, a retired decorator, was pleased Marine Le Pen had again shaken up French politics by launching a bid for the presidency, despite her legal woes.

“Even the judges said she didn’t personally profit from the money, it was for her party,” he said of Le Pen’s newly upheld conviction for embezzlement. “All politicians in France have always been schemers, it’s just a fact of life.”

Vigilantes also took part in the fight that raged all night and the following morning, residents say

Nigerian soldiers killed more than 300 members of kidnapping and cattle bandit gangs in the north-western state of Zamfara this week, according to a government official.

Government troops targeted the gangs in Gummi district in a two-day operation that “led to the elimination of more than 300 terrorists”, Zamfara’s information commissioner, Mahmud Muhammad Dantawasa, said in a statement.

Plans specify tolls must not be compulsory as US officials urge Iran to make public guarantee of safe passage for shipping

Europe is studying proposals that could allow navigation fees to be charged in the strait of Hormuz, provided the payments are not compulsory and have the support of the UN agency that regulates maritime transport.

Britain’s deputy prime minister, David Lammy, said imposing mandatory tolls would be disastrous. But some cabinet colleagues said they recognised that payments for specific navigational services were permissible in many natural waterways, including the strait of Malacca and the English Channel.

Sculpture of Jewish army officer wrongly accused of treason has been moved around the city for decades

For 40 years, the statue of Capt Alfred Dreyfus has been moved around Paris, never finding a permanent home.

The French army twice refused to allow it to stand at l’École Militaire, where Dreyfus, a Jewish officer it had wrongly accused of treason in 1894, was stripped of his rank in one of the most notorious acts of antisemitism in France’s history.

Microsoft, Amazon and Google say they still aim to achieve net zero output despite construction boom

Microsoft, Amazon and Google’s collective carbon emissions have increased by nearly a fifth in the past year, driven largely by datacentre construction.

In the financial year ending March 2026, the three tech companies emitted 119m mTCO₂e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent), or about a third of those of France.

Meta was criticised for feature launched on Tuesday that automatically lets users generate images using content from public Instagram accounts

Meta has said ⁠it is discontinuing an AI feature launched this week that allowed users to generate images using public Instagram ⁠accounts, after drawing widespread ⁠criticism over ​privacy concerns, including from a Hollywood union.

“Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control ⁠over whether their public content could be referenced in this way,” Meta said in a statement.

Direct oversight of ‘critical third parties’ such as Oracle and Microsoft given to ensure resilient cyber-defences and help safeguard UK economy

The Bank of England has been handed powers to regulate important tech firms including Amazon and Google from next week, amid fears that system failures could threaten financial stability and harm consumers.

From Monday, the Bank and fellow City regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will be in charge of ensuring that four large-scale providers of cloud and tech services to banks are resilient and actively reducing the risk of cyber-attacks and major outages that could disrupt services for millions of people and businesses across the UK.

Suit claims OpenAI poached Apple workers, coaxing them to share confidential material in bid to create hardware

Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on Friday alleging the artificial intelligence firm stole company trade secrets in a move to create its own hardware device.

The suit claims OpenAI poached Apple employees, coaxing them to hand over confidential material, product designs and other tightly held information.

Three years ago, the pop star was riding high after a sellout tour. But then a slew of shocking accusations from her former dancers changed everything. Where does she go from here?

On 30 July 2023, Lizzo finished a 10-month world tour. She had played 80 shows across North America, Europe, Oceania and Asia, selling more than 853,000 tickets and grossing $86.3m. The rapper turned pop star was on top of the world. Then everything came crashing down.

Two days later, three of her former dancers alleged that they had been subject to sexual harassment, a hostile work environment, religious and racial discrimination and fat-shaming on the tour. Two had been sacked, and one resigned. After the accusations, there was a huge pile-on from mainstream media and social media. And it seems to have gone on ever since. Lizzo, whose real name is Melissa Viviane Jefferson, disappeared. We were told that she was busy recording the follow-up to her huge hit album Special. But there were also rumours that she’d had a terrible breakdown.

After years of one-sided commitment, revisiting her hit song Casual finally gave me a reality check

‘Sadie,” I say. “I would call our daughter Sadie. Or I like Leo for a boy.” I’ve been on the phone for two and a half hours, speaking about our hypothetical children to a man who has explicitly said that he does not want a relationship. At the same time, he’s said things like: “I told my mum about you. She wants to meet you.” When he makes those comments, I can’t help dreaming – in the words of a certain song – of us in a year: maybe we’ll have an apartment, and he’d show me off to his friends at the pier?

That’s the fantasy Chappell Roan imagines in her 2022 hit Casual. My own vision looks a little different: instead of a pier there is an apartment (where the now familiar sound of his key in the door still excites me), and his friends say things like: “I’ve never seen him act like this with anyone else before.” But crucially, in this fantasy, we’ve made a commitment to each other. The first time I heard Casual, I was in a committed relationship. I listened to it often, singing along loudly in the bedroom I shared with my boyfriend to “Knee deep in the passenger seat, and you’re eating me out”. (Roan was nervous about that line – “it’s crass,” she said – but fans loved it.) I also loved the song’s sense of unrequited yearning, but I couldn’t really relate to it. Not yet.

Leapfrogging the roofs of lorries, slipping in and out of different personae to evade capture, The Queen’s Gambit star is audacious in this reluctant last stand drama

This is a story about a girl named Lucky. Early morning, she wakes up – knock, knock, knock, on the door. It’s the FBI, and they’re pursuing her across the country because she’s stolen $10m. Don’t make the mistake I did, imagining this new Apple TV thriller (from Wednesday), starring Anya Taylor-Joy, to be a dramatisation of the song Lucky by Britney Spears. I’ve tried to find a connection between the two and, as you can see, it’s a stretch.

The seven-part show falls into the “one last heist” genre – but intriguingly, starts the morning after it. Our antiheroine stands on the roof of a Las Vegas casino hotel, having successfully stolen millions, toasting to a new, legitimate life. Within hours, Lucky appears to have been betrayed by the man she loves. She’s forced to run, penniless, from both the authorities and the murderous enforcers of a crime boss – who are collecting on a different debt incurred by her career criminal father. I guess what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay there.

His superpower has always been speaking his mind – and his majestic new BBC show aims to shatter our ideas about life itself. The presenter talks mass extinction, spiders who dream and why people get sick of him holding up rocks

It’s impossible to meet Chris Packham without getting into a good mood. This is largely down to his contagious enthusiasm for the natural world, but on this occasion may also be his canary yellow polo shirt and stand-up-as-if-electrocuted hair. His new five-parter, Evolution, tells the story of the single cell that is all living things’ first common ancestor. Known as Luca, it is the indivisible connection between you and your cat, me and an elephant. (That’s an acronym, not poetry, by the way – Last Universal Common Ancestor, the single-celled organism from 4.2bn years ago that branched into everything that now lives.) “There is still a physical connection between me and you, and a cell that existed billions of years ago,” he says. “I find that absolutely brilliant.”

The show seeks to shake up all our preconceptions: “We tend to stop at GCSE and are left with a legacy of thinking that evolution is laboriously slow, we are its be all and end all, and its story is over.” I mean, these aren’t all misconceptions – it is pretty slow, no? “There would have been billions of years when we just had cells floating in a broth in the sea,” he concedes. “We looked at it more as the turning points in evolution’s life, the periods when it moved very rapidly.” Evolution tells the story of different processes via specific animals. It explains breathing through the elephant, reproducing through the ostrich, eating through the bat, thinking through the dolphin, and running through the horse. “I don’t like to use the C word,” Packham says in the opener, watching a tree hyrax that is the improbably close genetic relative of the elephant, “but they are incredibly cute.”

As the classic courtroom comedy drama turns 25 meet the associates and attorneys who took Elle Woods’ pioneering spirit and ran with it

Angela McCarthy, senior associate at Lawrence Stephens, London

Alice Oseman’s LGBTQ+ romantic teen drama concludes with an intimate look at long-distance relationships, while Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Bean are two brothers surrounded by fear and generational pain

Submerge yourself, for the last time, in the warm bath of inclusivity that is Alice Oseman’s world-conquering LGBTQ+ romantic teen drama. Despite returning as a feature film, it’s intimate, suburban business as usual for Joe Locke’s Charlie, Kit Connor’s Nick and their tight-knit circle of queer friends. The principal conflict this time revolves round Nick’s looming departure for university and the pair’s worries about how – and if – a long-distance relationship could work. It’s also about navigating everyday coupledom, with Anna Maxwell Martin (replacing Olivia Colman) as Nick’s single mum and Derek Jacobi as an older gay man giving the boys pause for thought.
Friday 17 July, Netflix

After beating Leonard Cohen to Canada’s biggest music prize and splicing dembow with classical, the cross-cultural artist is now confronting Colombia’s new president

When I speak to the Colombian Canadian musician Lido Pimienta, it’s in the run-up to Colombia’s presidential election, and she is worried. One of the two remaining candidates, Abelardo de la Espriella, “is so rightwing he wants to open up our beautiful country to fracking and the influence of the US,” she says – and at one point in his campaign, De la Espriella said he wanted to “disembowel” the left. He later waved that away as a mere figure of speech, but Pimienta fears that leftwing artists like her “would be target number one” for a De la Espriella presidency. He ended up winning in a narrow victory that brought praise from Donald Trump and a promise of “a new era, a change of order”.

Despite the potential risks, the singer-songwriter has never shied away from speaking her mind. Since the release of her breakthrough second album, 2016’s La Papessa – which beat Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker, the last album released during his lifetime, to win Canada’s prestigious Polaris prize – 39-year-old Pimienta has made ebullient, genre-defying records that hiss with indignation at racism, colonialism, misogyny and music industry expectations.

Housesharing brought the south London trio’s sounds – classical vocals, violin, clubby production – together as they bled through the walls, to shapeshifting effect

From South London
Recommended if you like FKA twigs, James K, Anysia Kim
Up next Debut album Underlight out now

There are many ways to deconstruct club music. On Bristol label Illegal Data, releases might take explosive approaches to scary (Ship Sket) and whimsical (Mun Sing) extremes. More recently, the same label finds Stolen Velour, Floco and Aria SL filling the club chest-high with liquid: you hear elements sink, dissolve, or float past serenely on the surface.

(Wren Cathedral)
Inspired by communal Hebridean Gaelic song and ceremonial music, these reels and ballads reveal the fascinating proximity of post-rock and folk rock

A thick, distant rumble, the metallic sheen of an accordion drone and a woman singing a traditional Gaelic lament for the dead: these open Keening, the first track on the most fascinating folk-adjacent set of the summer. Wild Gods is a new project from Argyll’s Jamie Livingstone, a regular collaborator with the Scottish electronic producer Barry Can’t Swim. This release is inspired by the waulking songs of the Hebrides: communal songs traditionally sung by women as they beat and softened tweed before mechanisation transformed the industry’s rhythms.

With Gaelic archival recordings and melodies rooted in Celtic ceremonial music also being stirred into this bubbling brew, these eight tracks reveal the occasional, fascinating proximity between post-rock and folk-rock. After Keening, 10-minute Carlene’s Pin marries Susannah Stark’s gorgeous Gaelic vocals to clanging Bad Seeds guitars, folk fiddle, and a bassline recalling Godspeed You! Black Emperor at their most defiantly uncheery. Rest and Be Thankful, named after both a classic Scottish reel and a famous A83 viewpoint where couples are known to meet to have sex, is deliberately built up as a tender ballad, before moments of joyous folk dance strut and erupt; a shimmering interlude follows. Ortha, named after a Celtic incantation, reflects another of Livingstone’s inspirations: a transformative ayahuasca experience.

Rennert/Konradi/Peter/Keenlyside/Middleton
(Signum)
This collection of songs that the composer wrote as a young man is full of interest and emotion. Pianist Joseph Middleton brings sensitive support and an array of illustrative colours

The second volume in Signum’s survey of Mahler song focuses on the three books of Lieder und Gesänge that the composer worked on in his 20s, rounding off the album with his first vocal masterpiece, the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.

These early ditties are highly individual, often quirky and invariably full of interest. Joseph Middleton, whose instinctual pacing and sensitive support of the vocal line is matched by an array of illustrative colours drawn from the piano, has assembled a fine cast of singers. Sophie Rennert opens with Frühlingsmorgen, her full-bodied mezzo and expressive diction mining this lilting Viennese gem for textual nuance. She’s equally persuasive in Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald, one of Mahler’s most luminous songs. Ablösung im Sommer, a bizarre celebration of a cuckoo that has fallen off its perch, is given a deliciously theatrical workout by Katharina Konradi.

The actor and activist tells the story of her brutal childhood in the deep south with eloquence and defiance

When Laverne Cox was eight years old and growing up in Mobile, Alabama, she saved up her pocket money and bought herself a fan decorated with Japanese geishas. The fan became her favourite plaything, a prop to be used while dancing in imaginary music videos or recreating scenes from Gone With the Wind in which she cast herself as Scarlett O’Hara. “I lit up, animated, whenever that fan was in my hand,” she recalls in her memoir.

But when Cox, who was raised as a boy, began fanning herself with it at school, her teacher, Mrs Ridgeway, yanked her furiously out of the classroom, paraded her and her new accessory in front of the other teachers, and then phoned her mother, Gloria. When Gloria came home that evening, she exploded with fury. She said Mrs Ridgeway had told her she too had a son who had been an effeminate child who was now living on the streets of New Orleans and wearing a dress. “You want to be in a dress on the streets in New Orleans?” shouted Gloria, who would habitually call Cox a “sissy” and other homophobic slurs. She then signed her up for conversion therapy, which duly failed. It did, however, reinforce the message that there was something deeply wrong with Cox and that she was ultimately unlovable. Three years later, she tried to kill herself.

Sublimation by Isabel J Kim; Last Day of a Prior Life by Andrés Barba; Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay; The Carrier by Ruth Newton; Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd

Sublimation by Isabel J Kim (Picador, £18.99)
This debut novel from an award-winning Korean-American short fiction writer is a fantastical reimagining of the immigrant experience. Here, anyone who crosses a border not intending to return creates an “instance”: a duplicate self who continues life at home. Reintegration into one body is possible, but after years of separate experiences, Soyoung wonders if it might be the psychological equivalent of murder. This idea shocks her friend Yujin, who speaks with his instance in New York every day, waiting for him to be granted the dual citizenship that will allow them to share a privileged life between two countries. The story of these two pairs is told in the second person, a destabilising choice that gradually immerses the reader in a world of doppelgangers. As in our reality, travel is hedged around with bureaucratic systems designed to codify identity and control immigration. A brilliantly realised, imaginative and compelling work of literary speculative fiction.

Last Day of a Prior Life byAndrés Barba, translated by Lisa Dillman (Scribe, £10.99)
The latest novel by the Spanish author of Such Small Hands is a gentler, more unusual approach to the ghost story. An estate agent encounters a child in the empty house she’s trying to sell, and realises she’s met a ghost. The experience causes her to think about her closest relationships and to act in ways she never has before. Knowing it could be dangerous, she goes back to the house, determined to try to help the child from another time who is trapped there. A short, subtle, eerie tale that hides depths beneath a surface simplicity.

The Scottish author on loving The Hobbit, fairytales, Frankenstein and the shock of A Clockwork Orange

My earliest reading memory
Fairytales. I was obsessed. I took fairytales very seriously as moral lessons. I soon knew that I’d always help any old lady cross the road, it really is always best to do so.

My favourite book growing up
The Hobbit was my favourite book while growing up. It expanded my understanding of what could be achieved in fiction. I found JRR Tolkien’s world transformative. I felt as if I knew the hobbits, and I so wanted to see the elves. I could hear the crack of fireworks as they turned into dragons that flew overhead.

Riwoe’s commanding new book traces a Chinese Australian family across four generations – all connected by one old longan tree

It’s the year 2049 and Daniel Connelly is 75 years old. Eccentric and lonely after decades of self-imposed isolation, his existence is “spartan”, a “relentless searching, a yearning for pieces that fit together to make a new whole”. He spends his days making sculptures from broken pottery; the shards of his life.

During a warm winter’s day, Daniel steps outside to find that the longan tree in his garden has fallen during a storm. The tree was an heirloom of sorts – a family emblem of home and belonging for generations before him.

Introducing a new sadistic psychopath and a corrupt secret society of Gotham grandees would mean Harvey Dent takes a backseat to Victor Zsasz and the Court of Owls

Matt Reeves’ The Batman was a strange beast from the beginning. Perhaps not comic-book weird in the usual sense – no cosmic portals or rubber nipples here – but strange all the same. This was a Gotham where Bruce Wayne seemed to have been styled by the ghost of Kurt Cobain, the Riddler appeared to have escaped from a David Fincher evidence locker, and the whole city looked as if it had been left to soak overnight in rainwater and civic corruption. The expectation was that Reeves would begin rolling back the bizarre in part two, perhaps leaving us with a more orthodox Batverse populated with mobsters and corrupt lawyers. Sebastian Stan seemed central to this, with rumours suggesting he would portray Harvey Dent/Two-Face, perhaps alongside Scarlett Johansson as his wife, Gilda.

In the last week, however, there have been suggestions that the sequel might just be priming itself for something a fair bit freakier. Hollywood industry veteran Jeff Sneider is reporting that the main antagonist this time around could be the Court of Owls, a sinister secret society of Gotham grandees who look at first glance like a murder-bird upgrade on the League of Shadows, but are really something nastier: the city’s masked, devious ruling class, living out of secret rooms and exploiting a property portfolio that probably goes back to the Pilgrims.

PS5, PC, Xbox Series X/S; Ubisoft Singapore/Ubisoft
Ubisoft has removed all the boring parts of pirate life from its fantasy RPG, creating something more focused and fun

Edward Kenway isn’t your dad’s Assassin’s Creed protagonist. Neither sworn to ancient oaths nor given a noble destiny, he’s just a guy who likes coin, dislikes rules, and whose gold-chasing, rule-dodging lifestyle sees him embroiled in an ancient war between Templars and assassins quite by accident. After he’s shipwrecked with a man named Walpole who turns out to be a Templar, Edward assumes Walpole’s identity in the hopes of securing the bounty he mentioned.

Edward wears life lightly. The world around him is violent and chaotic, and those in his vicinity are more obsessed with double-crossings than a Mission:Impossible movie writers’ room. Ed just smiles, undeterred by it all, and gets on with plundering. It’s all just fun and games to him, and he is set on conquering the Caribbean on his own terms. He is a brilliant extension of the player, in that way, and that’s what this remake of the 2013 pirate-themed Assassin’s Creed does so well: the sense of freedom.

Sony’s announcement spells the end of a whole ecosystem built by superfan collectors – and signals a troubling shift in the industry

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Sony’s decision last week to quietly announce the end of physical games production for the PlayStation in 2028 is one of the most perfect PR disasters in recent gaming history – and considering what has been happening with Xbox, that’s saying something.

First, there was the timing. Sony posted the news of its decision on the PlayStation blog, less than a week after admitting that it would be deleting 550 movies from the digital libraries of PlayStation owners due to the end of a licensing deal – thereby perfectly illustrating the dangers of purchasing digital products. (Surprise! You never actually owned them!) The move is in stark contrast with the company’s stance on this very issue back in 2013. When Microsoft was attempting to push Xbox One as a digital-first console with strict controls on the sharing and reselling of its games, Sony brilliantly mocked its rival with a short video on how easy it was to lend physical games to pals on the PS4. Oh dear.

The massively multiplayer online role-playing game has grown into a virtual social space and part of daily life for thousands of players

In a small stone chapel, on the edgelands of a medieval wilderness, two women are getting married. The attenders are draped in rainbow capes, glowing armour and top hats. A scantily clad, muscular man with angel wings officiates the ceremony. Over the heads of the two brides hover the words “I do” in bright yellow text. This is RuneScape, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (or MMO) set in the Tolkienesque realm of Gielinor. Turning 25 this year, it has, over its lifetime, become a crucial virtual social space and part of daily life for thousands of players.

Lancashire-born Amelia, one of the pixelated newlyweds, met her wife on a dating app but first bonded through their love of the game. “Our first and second date was pretty much exclusively talking about RuneScape,” she recalls. Four years later they were married, shortly followed by their in-game ceremony. Morgan – a 26-year-old from the Midlands – is one of Amelia’s closest friends. They met through the game and run UWU Girls together, a RuneScape clan that Morgan founded in a bid to cater to players across the gender spectrum. “We do IRL meetups, and for a lot of these women, it’s been their first meetings with strangers online – and that’s the same for me.”

The playwright has long been considered one of the country’s most famous exports, but not an ‘Irish writer’. An ambitious new season of plays explores his complex relationship with his homeland – and tickets are already on sale for 2036

In 2036, the actor Samuel West will take to the stage to perform Krapp’s Last Tape – Samuel Beckett’s pensive monologue in which an old man, hunched over a reel-to-reel recorder, listens back to the voice of his younger self. West will be 69, the age of Krapp in the play. And remarkably, the tape he plays will feature the sound of himself as a younger man, recorded in 2006, when he was 39 – the age Krapp was on the night he made the recording. Two years later another actor, Richard Dormer, will do the same, using a similar recording that’s currently locked away in a BBC vault.

These are the most improbable commissions of the Samuel Beckett Biennale, which promises to deliver experimental “performed readings” of the playwright’s works in pockets of Ireland and Britain over the next 12 years. It is organised by Seán Doran and run through his cross-border organisation Arts Over Borders. Events will unfold at locations of significance to Beckett’s life and legacy – from Enniskillen, Belfast and Dublin to Folkestone, Reading and Snodland – tracing his footsteps across Britain and Ireland.

Bluecoat, Liverpool
Banerjee’s blend of British suburbia and ancient Bengali traditions is an imaginative portrayal of the artist’s dual heritage – and questions how we preserve culture today

The stories we are told shape the world in which we live. If your father had insisted you watch all 94 episodes of a television adaptation of the Mahabharatawhen it was screened on the BBC, as Debjani Banerjee’s did, it’s easy to imagine that your family’s Henry hoover might come to resemble Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu deity with a similarly long trunk. My own Irish mother meant that I was always hearing banshees at my bedroom window, as if she had brought them over to England with her. In a sense, she had. And so, Banerjee’s charming sculpture of a vacuum cleaner as the god of new beginnings, situated at the heart of this witty and moving exhibition, reflects an imagination shaped by 1980s British suburbia and an ancient Bengali literary tradition.

Sitting on a strip of garishly patterned carpet, Henry-Ganesha captures the double consciousness of anyone who grows up with more than one cultural inheritance. But the work also encapsulates a more general principle: that every generation must adapt the cultures they inherit to their own circumstances if those traditions are to survive. Banerjee’s collaborative art takes her Bengali heritage as a means through which to ask questions that will resonate with anyone living in Britain today: how do we preserve the cultures that bind us together when things are falling apart? How do we pass on knowledge to our children? What should we carry into a rapidly changing future, and what must we leave behind?

Pitlochry Festival theatre
Maureen Beattie leads a modern-dress version, which focuses on family dynamics rather than the decline of Shakespeare’s mighty ruler

You know when you walk into a room then forget why you came in? Maureen Beattie does that at the start of this gender-swapped version of Shakespeare’s tragedy. She strides on, catches herself, half wanders back, turns on her heels and goes out another way altogether. A little later, she needs a moment to remember the name of Goneril, her daughter. In the depths of the second half, she is slumped in a wheelchair, talking with painful deliberation and we know where it all started.

Yet this Queen Lear can be sharp, too. Dividing her kingdom between Goneril (Jenny Hulse), Regan (Lindsey Campbell) and Cordelia (Ailsa Davidson), she is an articulate woman who expects respect.

Tate Modern hosts a major exhibition of Ana Mendieta, Constable turns 250 and the accidental beauty captured by unattended online cameras – all in your weekly dispatch

Ana Mendieta
Neolithic monuments inspired this Cuban-born American artist to create her ephemeral, raw, poetic works that embrace nature in a truly original way.
• Tate Modern, London, from 15 July to 17 January

The photographer was looking for inspiration near his home in West Bengal when he spotted a girl lying near a tangle of fishing nets

In the Hooghly district of West Bengal, just a short walk from his home, photographer Soumayan Biswas found himself circling the edges of a large village pond, searching – as he often does – for “stories”. He remembers that the weather was “cloudy that day, and the wind was light”. It was the kind of muted afternoon when your attention is sharpened.

The story appeared in the form of Sabana, a 12-year-old student lying beside a tangle of fishing nets. Biswas had never met her before and, while spending some time around her, was struck by how absorbed she was in her phone.

With a standout role in The Odyssey, the Twilight idol turned leading man for arthouse auteurs has become one of the most charismatic and unpredictable actors of his generation

Today, former teen idols can no longer disown those projects, no matter how tacky, that turned them into stars. In an age in which even harrowing dramas are promoted by social media reels of actors competitively guzzling chicken wings or cuddling puppies, any mention of a cheesy breakout role must be gamely embraced, before thanks are again offered to the fans, and for the opportunity.

What A-listers angling for awards do not do, however, is actively raise such skeletons. Leonardo DiCaprio did not secure his Oscar for The Revenant through allusions to his late-80s sitcom Growing Pains. Likewise, Joaquin Phoenix rarely brings up SpaceCamp, and Jacob Elordi keeps pretty tight-lipped on The Kissing Booth 3.

It’s the world’s most prestigious photography show, but Les Rencontres de la Photographie really flies thanks to the jaw-dropping work of eccentrics, amateurs and complete unknowns
• The best of Arles 2026 – in pictures

On 16 June 1963, a mechanic from Albuquerque named Paul Villa was allegedly invited – via telepathic messages from an alien crew – to photograph their spaceship. The result was an image of the flying object in the sky. Villa’s account is similar to that of a Swiss man, Billy Meier, who saw his first flying saucer aged five, and has taken more than 1,400 photographs of them since. One of Meier’s flying saucer photographs features in the famous poster that hangs in Fox Mulder’s office in the X-Files. Added to Meier’s image are the words: I Want to Believe.

We Are Not Alone: Alien Images is one of the standout shows of Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles this year, the world’s most prestigious photography festival. The show draws on dozens of examples from private and public archives that present visual “documents” of UFOs, unexplained phenomena and close encounters with aliens. Most of the photographs were made between the 1960s and 1980s, when reports of UFO sightings were at a peak – and in the US, the place that boasted the highest number of UFO sightings in the last century. Of course, all of the pictures turn out to be the result of rudimentary tricks (dangling a dish on a string in front of the camera), cases of misidentification or uncanny accidents of the analogue film. They might be amateur and faked, but they still pull you in thanks to their fascinating, idiosyncratic storytelling.

Tate Modern, London
With this work, the choreographer changed the course of dance – and on its 60th anniversary, viewed by babies, tourists and passers-by, it’s as beguiling and hypnotic as ever

At the back of the Turbine Hall, three people are dancing. If it weren’t for the vinyl dancefloor and the white line separating it from the audience, however, you might not immediately realise it. You could be forgiven for thinking that they were performing some idiosyncratic form of Tai chi or, if this were a different dancefloor, that they had taken rather too many drugs: one rolls around on the ground, another stretches his arms out wide, a third sinks to her haunches and touches her toes. All appear so enthralled by the actions of their own bodies as to be oblivious both to their partners onstage and the audience in front of them.

This being Tate Modern on a Friday afternoon, that audience includes not only art school kids dressed in the same casual fashions as the performers onstage, but also babies screeching from pushchairs and mischievous schoolkids shouting heckles from the mezzanine. None of this seems to perturb the dancers. Having completed her routine, one walks away from the mat and disappears through a door at the back of the hall. The others follow in their own time, and the audience applauds. After a short interval, they are replaced on the stage by a new trio of performers, and the dance begins again.

Yvonne Rainer: Trio A is at Tate Modern, London, on Saturday 11 July between 2pm and 8pm

The Booker prize-winning novelist on the art of lying for a living, the cosmic force of love, and gargling loudly

Born in Minna, Nigeria, Ben Okri, 67, spent his childhood in Nigeria and London. He published his first novel Flowers and Shadows in 1980 and won the Booker prize in 1991 with The Famished Road. His subsequent work includes Astonishing the Gods, which in 2019 was selected as one of the BBC’s 100 novels “that shaped our world”. In 2023, he was knighted for services to literature. His latest novel, Waking the Warriors, is published on 16 July. He lives with his partner and their child in London.

When were you happiest?
On a train journey to Arcadia many years ago while making a TV documentary.

The country’s coastline is one of the shortest in Europe, but it packs a punch with unspoilt nature reserves, vibrant Venetian towns and a thriving foodie scene

I’m riding a salt-coloured horse through the Dragonja valley, deep in the green hills of Slovenian Istria. Electric-blue dragonflies zip over the river as we gallop past olive trees and vineyards. The landscape rises steeply in a series of grassy terraces, and at the top of the hill we rein in the sweating horses to take in the view. Far below, the huge grids of solinas (salt pans), glittery and light-blue in the early morning light, look strange and somehow elegant against the wild, expansive sea beyond.

The Istrian peninsula is the largest in the Adriatic Sea, with 90% of it in Croatia and smaller portions in Slovenia and Italy. I’ve come to explore the Slovenian section. At just 29 miles (47km), the country’s coastline is one of the shortest in Europe, from the Italian city of Trieste down to the Croatian border, but it boasts colourful seaside towns, hilltop villages and an emerging gastronomy scene.

Electric models are selling out fast, so keep cool like the fashion crowd with an old-school concertina hand fan

• How to sleep in a heatwave

You must have noticed that portable fans are everywhere right now: on sweaty commutes, in stuffy meetings, and at shadeless sporting events. As the hot weather continues, neck fans, handheld electronic fans, and fans that spritz water are selling out fast.

But even if you can get your hands on one, they come with drawbacks: electric designs consume energy; they can run out of battery. And most are made from plastic, with concerns over how many poor-quality models will end up in landfill once the summer’s over.

They promise smoother skin with less regrowth – but which of these tools are worth the money?

• The best epilators – tested

Tired of waxing, bored by shaving and fed up with ingrown hairs? In the past few years, a quiet revolution has been taking place in the hair removal market, promising to banish stubbly regrowth and take away the pain of waxing and epilation. I’m speaking of the growing number of IPL (intense pulsed light) and laser devices suitable for home use.

Put simply, IPL uses pulses of light to make the hair go into its resting phase (stop growing) and fall out. IPL isn’t a permanent hair-removal solution such as electrolysis, but you should see a significant reduction in hair regrowth over time. With the right device, it’s also simple to do at home, fairly quick and almost completely painless.

Best IPL device overall for face and body:
Philips Lumea 9900

Best budget IPL device:
Bondi Body v2 laser @home

From thermal blinds to putting your knickers in the fridge, here are the clever – and surprising – ways Filter readers are keeping cool as the UK swelters

• How to sleep in a heatwave

After record-breaking June temperatures, parts of the UK are in the throes of another heatwave. So with more uncomfortably hot days and sweaty, sleepless nights in store, we asked how you keep cool when the temperatures soar.

Some of you shared tips for keeping your homes cool, others on avoiding overheating on the go, and some on ways to exercise safely. From thermal blinds and fans to sunscreens and UV-protective hats, here are your, and our, favourite hacks to beat the heat – and some of them are free. (And no, none of you has any commercial links to these companies or products – we always check.)

The hot weather is back. Beat the heat while on the move with our tried and tested portable neck and handheld fans

• The best fans for your home, tested
• Shark ChillPill 3-in-1 fan review

Another month, another heatwave. The climate crisis means things are heating up year on year, and while we can hide in air-conditioned shops and offices, our homes can get uncomfortably – sometimes dangerously – hot.

We also have to go outside – or worse, pack ourselves like sweaty sardines on sweltering public transport. On those occasions, a portable fan can make all the difference between manageable discomfort and indulging in an inadvisable quantity of ice-cream. Their recent popularity has led to manufacturers churning out cheap-but-not-especially cheerful products that ultimately end up as clutter in your house – or worse, landfill, where an estimated 4.3m will end up this year alone.

Best handheld fan overall:
John Lewis handheld and foldable fan – currently out of stock

Best budget handheld fan:
Fine Elements folding rechargeable mini travel fan – click and collect only

These easy bakes are packed full of the good stuff, and will keep kids fuelled all summer long

My children are mostly vegetarian, which means that at home I’m always searching for what we call “rollercoaster foods” due to their obsession with being allowed on Mandrill Mayhem at Chessington World of Adventures. In other words, food that will help both of them reach the next level on the rollercoaster height chart – that is, food packed full of the good stuff (protein, wholegrains, healthy fats and nutrients). This muffin was created with that in mind: tasty (crucially) without tasting worthy, high in protein (9g per muffin), and mindful of sugar. It’s a mix-in-a-bowl job or, you could say, child’s play.

This spicy gin and citrus combo has a kick that belies its modest size

Gimlets may be on the small side, but they tend to make up for that by packing a pretty decent punch. This gently spiced, citrus-forward example is no exception, and makes for a gloriously summery aperitif.

Harneet Baweja, owner, Empire Empire, London W11

A touch of spice balances the sweet meringue and draws out the flavour of this fragrant and fruity dessert

British strawberry season barely needs embellishment, so I haven’t done anything wild here. This is essentially a classic rolled pavlova: crisp at the edges, marshmallow-soft within and filled with clouds of cream and strawberries. The small flourish here is sumac, which has a gentle tartness that somehow amplifies the berry flavour while balancing the sweetness of the meringue. Add a little lime zest, too, and the whole thing tastes bright, fragrant and unmistakably of summer.

As sales of sparkling wine continue to soar, one aromatic French fizz is worthy of particular appreciation

It was in the middle of the pandemic that I ceased stashing sparkling wine. There were no special occasions, or occasions at all, really, save for daily episodes of the BBC’s Baby Club with two cabin-fevered infants and the weekly thrill of a veg box. I might have been stockpiling chickpeas, but I was cracking bubbles open willy-nilly because, well, why not?

And I never stopped. The unrelentingly grim news agenda seems as good a reason as any to pop a cork these days, because sparkling wine invariably lifts my spirits. And I’m not alone in drinking more of it: according to a study by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine, sparkling wine sales have grown faster than any other style in recent years, rising in value from €2.3bn to €8.5bn over the past quarter-century. (That said, I might be an outlier on the timing front, because 2020 figures also point to a dip in sales)

Suli, 25, an animation graduate, meets Abigo, 26, a supervisor in retail

What were you hoping for?
To meet someone I felt comfortable around and easy to talk to.

Gary got a free festival ticket and agreed to go halves on a full-price one for Rita, but now he won’t stop going on about it. He says calling it a favour is simply a fact. You decide who the party pooper is

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

The way he presents it makes me feel as though I’m being a burden or that I now owe him something

You might hurt him terribly in the short term, Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes. But sometimes sparing people pain isn’t what’s good for them

• Read more Leading questions

I am deeply conflicted about whether to separate from my husband of 20 years, yet I am deeply burnt out from supporting him. He arrived as a refugee, spoke little English at the time, is from a very different culture to mine and has, as yet, untreated ADHD and PTSD. After much coaxing he agreed to couples counselling but we have now exhausted two therapists to no avail.

If I decide to separate I know that I will be far more supported by friends and family than he will be.

As a child, enduring break after break, I thought of myself as simply unlucky. Truth was, I needed to tune in to my aches, pains and well-founded fears

It was the first day of spring this year. I was topless, face-down on a foldaway travel table, as the masseuse uttered six words that brought my attempt at relaxation to an abrupt end: “I think your arm is haunted.”

I have broken my right arm seven times: seven breaks on seven separate occasions. Some years, my arm was in a sling more than it was out of one. The novelty of getting your mates to cover your cast in that 00s graffiti “S” and the relief of missing the bleep test at school quickly wore off.

The airfare for a baby on your lap could cost more than your own ticket. Here’s how airline charges and travel taxes can hit you

Ryanair recently stopped making parents pay to sit next to their children but depending on the airline the hidden extra costs involved in flying with children can be substantial. In some cases, you can even end up spending more for the baby on your lap than you paid for your own flight.

Your baby might not need a seat, but you are still likely to pay fees for them to travel. Some airlines offer discounts for children over two, while others whack families with the cost of a full-grown adult.

Nearly a quarter of market traders now hold master’s degree, PhD or medical doctorate, research shows

One in five young market traders now holds a master’s degree, PhD or medical doctorate, according to exclusive figures shared with the Guardian, in a sign of how Britain’s markets are attracting an unexpected new generation of highly educated entrepreneurs.

Separate data from Kerb, the street food collective behind some of London’s best-known food markets, points in the same direction. Almost three-quarters of its founders have university degrees, including one in four with postgraduate qualifications. About 95% work in their businesses full-time rather than treating them as weekend side hustles.

You can keep temperatures down without the cost – or environmental price – of air conditioning. Here’s some tips and tricks

• The best fans to keep you cool in 2026 – tried and tested

In the UK we are used to worrying about our homes being warm enough, but after struggling to cope with high temperatures in May and June the race is on to cool them down before the next heatwave hits.

And while it might be tempting to swap your desktop fan for a portable air conditioner, there are lots of low-cost, more sustainable ways to stop rooms overheating.

My elderly parents’ home was left uninhabitable, and they are owed £3,300 for repairs they had to fund themselves

My elderly parents spent much of last year dealing with what should have been a straightforward insurance claim after a dishwasher installation by John Lewis caused a leak.

Instead, it became a year-long ordeal, marked by repeated failures and an almost total absence of accountability.

Ministers consider bringing e-cigarette laws in line with tobacco as data shows 20% of teenagers have tried vaping

Vapes could be sold in plain packaging as part of a range of proposals to stop them being marketed to children.

The UK-wide plans also include limiting device colours to white, black or grey, and keeping vapes out of sight in shops, according to the Department of Health and Social Care.

Not everyone experiences heat the same way, and studies show aggression, violence and road rage increase on hotter days

Recently, my husband and I embarked on what should have been a pleasant spring errand: a stroll to the local farmer’s market. But a passing heatwave had made it unseasonably hot outside. I cut him off on the sidewalk and he snapped at me, so I snapped at him for snapping at me. We spent the rest of the excursion in sweaty, stony silence. When we were almost home, he said, miserably: “I’m sorry! It’s just so hot.”

Our grouchiness was not simply a weakness of spirit. “Heat doesn’t just affect your body,” said Dr Susan Albers, clinical psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic. “It affects your mood too.”

For young people, flaunting eye bags and bed rotting has become a cheeky rebuttal of body optimization culture

Picture a typical hangover: a morning spent curled under a comforter, chugging Gatorade and shame spiraling about what you might have said at the bar the night before.

Not so for the young people who are “romanticizing” their hangovers on TikTok and Instagram. Instead, they are flaunting their dark eye circles and raging headaches as the aftereffects of a good time, broadcasting their bad decisions to the world with a glowy sheen.

There are more than 3,000 conditions in dermatology, experts warn – and chatbots’ recommendations can be flaky

• Read more in the Antiviral series

Who among us has not, in a moment of panic or curiosity, consulted the internet in search of solutions to a medical ailment?

Increasingly, people are turning to AI for health advice, and skincare is no exception. Purpose-built apps promise to identify that rash, while people are sending selfies to AI chatbots seeking “full skincare analysis” and personalised regimens of treatments. On Reddit forums, people post before and after shots of the results from their AI-recommended skin routines.

The discomfort is no reason to give up sun protection, and is not uncommon – not everyone tolerates every formula well

No good deed goes unpunished, as they say. For instance, when you responsibly apply sunscreen to your exposed skin, it sometimes stings.

“Complaints of sunscreen stinging are not uncommon,” says Dr Aditi Senthilnathan, board certified dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. “We also hear about sunscreen causing burning or stinging around the eyes after sweating.”

With the singer sporting an array of ties on stage, fans have been customising, repurposing and even creating whole garments from the office neckwear staple

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When Harry Styles kicked off his Together, Together tour in Amsterdam in May, he bounded on to the stage in navy pleated trousers and a blue shirt, topped off with a colourful floral printed tie from Celine.

Four days later, Styles paused mid-set at the same stadium to take in the crowd. “There’s a lot of ties in the audience tonight. I see you queens, I see you,” he said.

Maria Grazia Chiuri returns to city of birth with haute couture inspired by kimono shapes and draping the body

“This is a cultural problem, and a political problem,” said Maria Grazia Chiuri before her first haute couture catwalk show for Fendi.

The problem, as the designer sees it, is Italy’s unwillingness to acknowledge fashion’s role in culture by giving it space in museums. To challenge this, Chiuri has bookended her Rome catwalk event with two fashion exhibitions in the city.

Reputation for frumpiness is over as M&S wins over younger audience with shows at Silverstone, Ibiza and now LFW

This autumn’s London fashion week boasts plenty of familiar labels, from Burberry to Alexander McQueen, ready to show off their wares. But on Wednesday there was an unexpected addition: Marks & Spencer is joining the luxury lineup.

The British high-street retailer will celebrate its 100th anniversary in the fashion industry by staging a catwalk show in September highlighting its latest women’s and menswear collections.

From the Fanad peninsula in Ireland to the forested beaches of Finland, these are your favourite escapes without the fear of getting frazzled
• Tell us about your favourite food festival – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Saulkrasti’s long beaches and scented pine forests are an hour from Riga on the frequent local train. The forests come right down to the long, long sandy beach and the relaxing and well-marked trail takes you the 4km from Saulkrasti station through the trees to the big dune and blue river at Balta Kapa. We enjoyed a July picnic in the forest and occasional dips in the Mediterranean-warm Baltic, before returning happy to Riga.
Bruce

I didn’t see being a couple of years away from technically qualifying for an 18-30s jaunt to be a problem. But the booze, humiliation and a ‘mystery pooer’ made me rethink my entire life

‘First the bad news,” yelled our lairy Irish club rep as the coach drove us from Ibiza airport to our hotel. “All the great clubs: Amnesia, Space, Pacha … they’re CLOSED!”

A confused silence descended. “But the good news?” he yelled. “We’re gonna have a fucking amazing time anyway!!!”

Bishop Auckland is abuzz with culture and family fun, thanks to the vision of Auckland Palace’s owners – and the new Kynren show featuring birds of prey, Viking raids and mythical beasts, which opens next week

Booming Hans Zimmer-style cinematic music reaches a crescendo, shaking my bones. Two turquoise macaws swoop within an inch of my hair and join a sky filled with nearly 250 birds. Hawks, kites, pelicans, and an owl soar and swoop around a pagan-looking wooden circle. Peacocks fuss at the makeshift river below, coaxed by two actors telling the story of humans’ relationship with nature. Grey clouds roll in, dark with rain. After all, we are risking an open-air performance in north-east England. I’m at a preview of Kynren: the Storied Lands, the latest gloriously unrestrained project in the market town of Bishop Auckland, 12 miles south of Durham.

I grew up near Bishop Auckland, which was once an important coal-mining and railway town. Last time I was here, its centre was dominated by discount stores. If, in 2003, you’d told teenage me that the high street would become an ode to art, history and culture, I would have laughed. Well, I would have grunted and turned up the Nu metal on my MP3 player.

The owners of Teffont House are aiming for modern rural hospitality that puts guests at the heart of village life

Walking into the Orangery at Teffont House during the golden hour, the restaurant is glowing. Sunlight falls across cocktails the colour of spun sugar, spills on to a terrace trailing constellations of fleabane, and bounces off spoons sinking into raspberry trifles. What really gives the room its sparkle is none of these things, however, but the fact it’s packed with local people. On a warm June evening this new hotel, 10 minutes’ drive from the Wiltshire village of Tisbury, already feels embedded in village life.

It’s the latest venture of the Beckford Group, which runs a small clutch of West Country inns and restaurants, including the Talbot Inn in Mells and the Beckford Canteen in Bath. The company has carved a niche in modern rural hospitality, teaming unflashy furnishings (all chalky pink and moss green paintwork framed by antiques and contemporary art) with menus designed for greedy locavores and pricing that delivers an unstuffy demographic. Underpinning all of this is an ability to tap into local communities to create soul. With this, the Beckford Group’s first hotel, it is making that connection more explicit by labelling it as a village, rather than a country house, hotel.

I do occasionally contemplate getting my toolbox out. But these are idle urges – I’m only too aware of the harm my past interventions have caused

It would be fair to say that none of the maintenance issues I’ve faced this year have fixed themselves. But many of them have become conveniently irrelevant – a testament to my DIY philosophy: First, Do Nothing.

The collapsed brick wall is now overgrown with ivy, and all but invisible. The partially collapsed pergola remains in the same condition, but the wisteria it was holding up died, so it can carry on collapsing for all I care.

From the Battle of Santiago and The Miracle of Bern to Nasa and Woman in the Moon, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which 90s duo only released three singles, all chart toppers?
2 Betsy Ross is traditionally credited with designing and making what?
3 Based in Cambridge, which geographical research organisation is the BAS?
4 Which wetland sedge is important in the history of writing?
5 What did Nasa borrow from the 1929 Fritz Lang film Woman in the Moon?
6 What 1,000-year-old Sherwood Forest resident died in 2026?
7 Which country’s national museum burned down in 2018?
8 Which magazine was named after the sound of a “guitar being struck with force”?
What links:
9 E, H, I and S; June Brown; Kendrick Lamar, formerly?
10 White (bow); red (sword); black (pair of scales); pale (nothing)?
11 Robert Mitchum, 1962; Robert De Niro, 1991; Javier Bardem, 2026?
12 Hetty Feather; Tom Jones; Oedipus; Oliver Twist; Superman?
13 Cadbury Castle; Danebury; Maiden Castle; Vespasian’s Camp?
14 Abhakshya; haram; tabu; treif?
15 Maracanaço; Miracle of Bern; Battle of Santiago; Disgrace of Gijón?

Maxxing trends – going all in on a particular trait, habit, quality or pastime – tend to burn brightly and briefly. But how many of the following are real?

It started more than a decade ago with looksmaxxing, a disturbing manosphere-based strategy for optimising personal appearance through diet, exercise, surgery or smashing your jawbone. Back then, “maxxing” carried with it an unwholesome sense of overkill for its own sake. Even that extra X – maxing out the word in a way that served no orthographic purpose – seemed to be a symptom.

Over time the -maxxing suffix has come to mean going all in on a particular trait, habit, quality or pastime, generally in a manner that misses the point. Booksmaxxing, for example, seems to be less about reading, and more about coming across as optimally bookish in your dating profile. Sleepmaxxing is about getting as much sleep as you can, rather than as much as you need.

From a warehouse conversion in London with views of the water, to a 17th-century barn with an annexe used as a yoga retreat

Aiden is an unforgettable young caregiver in Walthamstow, east London, who has been looking after his mum for over half his life. Every few weeks, Aiden and other young carers get a rare night off thanks to tenacious council worker Satvinder, who fights to improve the recognition of young carers in her borough. This film joins them as they reclaim a few hours of their teenage lives back.

Is Mum OK? is released during Carers Week in the UK, a campaign that celebrates unpaid carers across the country and calls for better recognition and support for them. There are more than one million young carers in the UK – with an average age of 12 – which is the equivalent of two kids in every school class.

The people of Bryne are proud of local hero’s rise to the top of world football as Norway prepare to face England

Surrounded by red hats, No 9 shirts and Erling Haaland action toys at her fabric shop in the small Norwegian town of Bryne, Olinda Haaland – no relation but proud to share the now world-famous name – said everybody in the striker’s home town was a football fan these days.

“It’s been pure joy,” she said of her namesake’s rise to the top of world football. “We all love him so much and he’s doing so much for Bryne.”

As they slim down, UK and US users of GLP-1 jabs and pills are changing their spending habits – and their wardrobes

• Tell us: what does the new weight-loss pill mean for you?

“I’m now at a point where I’m going to buy even more clothes,” says Hayley Grice, 50, from Shropshire, who has dropped seven sizes after starting on the GLP-1 weight loss jab Mounjaro two years ago. “I’m very happy with my physique right now.”

Grice, the financial director of a business she set up with her husband, tried gastric bypass surgery in 2009, but put most of the weight back on, and had been between UK dress sizes 26 and 28 (US sizes 22 and 24) all her adult life.

Child who ate smuggled-in homemade sandwich kicks off latest skirmish over private resorts

As lunchtime approaches at Il Tirreno, a private beach club in Montalto di Castro on the Lazio coast, Beatrice Bordo, sitting in the shade of a blue umbrella, unwraps a slice of pizza.

A pranzo al sacco, or packed lunch, has become the latest skirmish in Italy’s long-running beach disputes after a woman was confronted over the clandestine consumption of a homemade sandwich at a private establishment in Puglia.

Prediction markets have grown rapidly in popularity in recent years, particularly in the US. We’d like to hear confidentially from people in the UK who have used them

We’d like to find out more about how people in the UK are using prediction markets and what has attracted them to these platforms.

Prediction markets allow people to buy and sell contracts based on the outcome of future events, such as sporting tournaments, elections and financial markets. They have become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly in the US.

Has the pill format prompted you to consider GLP-1 medication for the first time? Have you already started taking it? Or has weight loss medication changed your lifestyle in other ways?

A once-daily Wegovy weight-loss pill has gone on sale at high street and online pharmacies in the UK, offering an alternative to injectable GLP-1 medications.

We’d like to hear from people who are considering taking a weight-loss pill, have recently started one, or are planning to switch from injections.

We would like to hear from young people in the north of England about their experiences of looking for work

About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK are not in employment, education or training (Neet), according to a report published in May, which warned that the figure could rise to 1.25 million by the early 2030s without urgent government action.

We are particularly keen to hear from young people living in northern England who are not currently in work or education, or who have been struggling to find a job.

How long did you have to wait? Perhaps you are in a queue now. Tell us your experience

The EU has rejected calls to suspend its biometric border checks despite warnings from airports, airlines and ports that the system could lead to long queues and delays during the peak summer holiday season. MPs in the UK have also warned of potential disruption at the Port of Dover as holiday traffic builds.

We would like to speak to people who have been affected by the new system. Tell us about your experience – has the new system worked well or have you experienced delays? How long did you have to wait? What did you do to pass the time? Or maybe you are in a queue now? Tell us your experience.

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The US’s 250th anniversary, the funeral of Ali Khamenei, another brutal heatwave in Europe and the World Cup – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists