As the pornography platform has exploded in popularity, a side industry has emerged: middlemen who encourage young women into the industry, then take a large cut of their earnings

Markuss Hussle wants his online students to understand one thing: he knows how to make money. There is no subtlety involved. He gives an hour-long presentation in one video, sitting next to his silver Lamborghini. In another, he splices his money-making tips with footage of a ski weekend with his friends in Courchevel, in the French Alps, including shots of private jets, helicopters and a girlfriend in a fur coat. He claims the trip cost $100,000 (£75,000). He shows off his watches and his swimming pool and talks about how his mother worked three jobs as a cleaner until he “retired her” and bought her a home by the sea.

If you were not paying close attention to the spreadsheets and presentations interspersed with the motivational lifestyle content, you might guess he was offering guidance on how to trade shares or invest in cryptocurrency. There are a lot of performance graphs and much discussion of account management, optimisation, scaling, working smart and tripling profits.

Goal against Croatia in his side’s World Cup opener was an angry one with a rising sense of inevitability

And breathe again. For the opening 45 minutes under the giant Victorian train station roof at the Dallas Stadium, England produced a performance that was a bit like watching one of those YouTube videos where an awkward and frightening Chinese robot has learned how to dance like Michael Jackson.

Dogged and occasionally convincing, but the kind of spectacle that does generally end with the robot falling off the stage. England didn’t just play like machines in that first half. They played like faulty machines, scared machines, contributing almost zero free-form football to a 2-2 half-time score that included two Harry Kane set-piece goals; the first a set piece from a set piece, a penalty after a corner, set piece squared.

Starmer’s EU reset is aimed at the conference room. Meanwhile Farage and the hard right mine ethnic resentment on the streets

What story does Britain tell itself about Brexit, 10 years after the vote that transformed the country? Watch TV or read the papers and you find one of two viewpoints: from the common room or the conference room.

The common room story is about chums and how they fall out. Friendships forged on hallowed playing fields and over Cotswold kitchen suppers, then dashed on the rocks of ambition. The new BBC documentary Brexit: A Very British Civil War is the latest in the genre, recounting what Dave said to Boris said to Michael said to Dom. It oohs at the deals struck over sets of tennis, and aahs at the then prime minister threatening dissenters with: “I will fuck you up for ever.” This is David Cameron as box office: the Scarface of the Bullingdon Club. And Brexit, you understand, was simply an Oxford fracas that got out of hand.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

We are told the natural world is ‘breaking down’. But forests don’t work like aeroplanes or human hearts

• A version of this piece was originally published on Aeon as Why we need to think again about ecosystem failure

The Amazon rainforest, according to a 2021 study, is losing its capacity as a carbon sink and now emits more than it absorbs. In the tropics, marine scientists are reporting that coral reefs are in decline, threatening fish stocks. Equally concerning is research into the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), a vast system of ocean currents that helps regulate the climate and is at risk of collapsing this century. The entire global ecosystem appears to be losing its ability to function.

We find this view in newspapers, magazines, technical reports and the journals of learned societies. But thinking about the environment in terms of its functions is also how many of us tend to understand the world. We may think that forests exist to produce oxygen, wetlands to filter water and bees to pollinate our crops.

Of special interest to humanity is the relationship of biodiversity to the variety of services provided by ecosystems and, in particular, to the stability of the flow of those services, such as the maintenance of the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, preservation of soils, recycling of nutrients and provision of food from the sea.

The Britart mavericks have now teamed up with an unlikely artist. Is their odd throuple an elaborate prank – or are the duo passing down their legacy?

‘Hello girls,” greets 82-year-old Gilbert Prousch, one half of art duo Gilbert & George, as he shakes my hand when I arrive at his house with a very important guest in tow. He kisses his other guest on the cheek. Gilbert is Italian after all.

“This way,” he says, ushering us into the four-storey, 18th-century Georgian townhouse in Fournier Street, Spitalfields, east London, where he and the other half of his duo, George Passmore, 84, have lived since the late 1960s. Back then, they rented the ground floor for £16 a month. Now, they own the whole house. I bet it costs a bit more now.

Veteran interviewees are forever trotting out the same anecdotes in response to unoriginal questions – until one fearless disruptor dared ask if ET had moist skin

For the most part, Steven Spielberg has avoided most of the indignities of the modern day press tour. He hasn’t had to subject himself to any spicy chicken wings, or summon any witticisms when presented with a cloche-covered sausage roll. Unlike many other celebrities, he hasn’t chosen to promote Disclosure Day by answering softball questions while simultaneously fashioning a Lionel Richie-style clay approximation of himself for YouTube. For this he should be applauded.

Instead, Spielberg has spent this promotional cycle on something more suited to his stature. A maestro tour, if you will, on which he gets to position Disclosure Day against a body of work that is second to none. Publications have run long oral histories about his entire career. He was a guest during the prestigious final week of Stephen Colbert’s talkshow. He was interviewed by the New York Times about the exact texture of ET’s skin.

Details of the 14-point agreement revealed as senior US officials claim ‘major win’ despite significant concessions to Tehran

• Reaction: Donald Trump’s Iran deal met with anger, relief and incredulity

• Analysis: Trump’s Iran deal is result of unrealistic ambitions for an untenable war

Donald Trump has signed a 14-point agreement with Iran, claiming it delivered a “major win” for the United States – even as it made significant political and financial concessions to Iran to reopen the strait of Hormuz and prevent a “worldwide depression”.

In extraordinary remarks on Wednesday, Donald Trump went from threatening Iran with a new wave of attacks to suggesting the country had basic rights to enrich uranium for civilian use, that he would not pressure Tehran to abandon its ballistic missiles programme and the US was “going to have to give back” billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets.

Andy Burnham hopes a successful byelection will mean he can encourage Keir Starmer to step aside as prime minister

Andy Burnham’s campaign has been forced to talk ministers out of resigning as early as this weekend to avoid Keir Starmer’s government descending into chaos amid fallout from the Makerfield byelection, the Guardian can reveal.

As they prepare for a potential change of leader in the event he beats Reform on Thursday, Burnham’s team is increasingly concerned a rapid collapse of Starmer’s administration would mean further instability for the country.

Filming in Las Vegas was suspended and Cain replaced as presenter after he appeared to be drunk, sources say

• BBC presenter Ashley Cain called women ‘slags’, ‘sluts’ and ‘bitches’

• Warning: this article contains sexually explicit, offensive language

The BBC made a second documentary series fronted by the presenter Ashley Cain just months after it was informed about an incident of alleged misconduct on a separate production in Las Vegas, which caused filming to be suspended and another presenter flown out at short notice to replace him.

The BBC’s decision to hire Cain, and promote him as a rare talent who could appeal to young men, is under scrutiny after the Guardian revealed his history of highly offensive and misogynistic social media posts, including jokes about hitting women and degrading sexual practices.

Employers wary of hiring permanent staff but unemployment eased to 4.9% in the three months to April

• Business live – latest updates

The number of UK job vacancies fell to its lowest level for five years as businesses cut back on recruitment, official figures show, despite signs the labour market has been more resilient to the Iran war than feared.

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed unemployment eased to 4.9% in the three months to April, from 5% in the three months to March.

⚽ All the latest news from day eight of the tournament
⚽ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Mail us

A fresh England line hot off the wires coming right up …

If by some bizarre chance you missed it, here’s a gallery of some of the best images from England 4-2 Croatia:

Scale of long range-attack catches Muscovites by surprise, prompting panicked messages on social media

• Europe live – latest updates

Ukrainian drones have hit several locations across Moscow in Kyiv’s biggest air raid on the city in two years, setting a major ⁠oil refinery on fire and forcing evacuations at the country’s largest airport. The Ukrainian president, Volodomyr Zelenskky, described the attack as a response to Russia’s striking of a historic Kyiv monastery complex earlier this week

The scale of the long-range attack, apparently designed to shut down operations at the key oil refinery in the Kapotno area, caught most Muscovites by surprise in a city that does not typically warn residents with air raid alarms, and prompted panicked messages on social media.

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said that US dues to the Nato budget will be contingent on other countries meeting defence spending targets

Hegseth makes it clear that the review will not be just a box-ticking exercise.

“It’s a review that some countries will fail and others will pass with flying colours. In the end, the review is intended to both improve US force posture and basing and strengthen Nato 3.0.”

“It will be designed to ensure that Nato is moving fast and irreversibly toward Europe leading, stepping up to take primary responsibility for the defence of Europe.”

“Where other allies do not spend with urgency, our dues, contributions will go down. Nato will be a two-way street.”

Exclusive: Muslim Council of Britain national guidance also urges mosques to strengthen police ties and improve CCTV

Mosques are being advised to carry out lockdown drills, strengthen ties with police and improve CCTV coverage under national guidance published amid growing concerns about anti-Muslim attacks.

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) released a new security and preparedness framework for mosques, trustees and volunteers, warning that places of worship and community centres faced an increasing threat from vandalism, intimidation, threats and targeted hostility.

Nottinghamshire tree, one of Europe’s oldest and largest, fails to produce leaves after being stressed by series of hot, dry summers

The Major oak, one of Europe’s oldest, largest and most celebrated ancient trees, has died.

The huge tree, which has grown in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, England, for at least 1,000 years, failed to produce any leaves this year, after becoming stressed by a series of hot, dry summers.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Nick Ames, Lucy Ward and Jacob Steinberg as England start their World Cup in style

More than half of Ayetoro – a Christian utopia founded in the 1940s – has been lost to the ocean, and its remaining people are running out of options

In the early hours of 15 February 2019, the Atlantic Ocean came for Arowo Victoria’s livelihood. The 60-year-old retired midwife was asleep when neighbours began banging on her door, shouting that the sea had started covering buildings along the nearby coastline.

By the time she got to her small shop, she discovered that the Atlantic had already swept it away, destroying the business she had built with borrowed money after retirement.

Kyiv is not taking any risks amid Moscow’s efforts to integrate Minsk ever more closely into its war

Russian spy drones flying into Ukraine from Belarusian airspace have sharply increased since the beginning of the year, as senior officials in Kyiv express mounting concern over Belarus’s involvement in the war.

Ukraine has stepped up by reinforcing fortifications on its northern border, including anti-tank ditches, concrete “dragons’ teeth” obstacles to block armoured vehicles and new areas of barbed wire. Troops operating along the border say they have noted a jump of about 20% in Russian intelligence drones since January.

Penelope worries this will teach her children it’s OK to trespass; Spencer sees no harm in them hopping over. No sitting on the fence – you decide who’s in the wrong

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

It doesn’t matter that it only takes five seconds. It’s a flagrant disregard for property rights

No harm was done to their garden. It’s just a lawn with a few shrubs. I don’t see the problem

Want to know what to look for in a pair of running shoes, or how to prepare for your first 10k – or even what underwear offers the best support? At 12pm BST on Thursday, running experts Kieran Alger and Sarah Marsh will be online to answer your questions. Post yours below the line now

• Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

The Filter’s running expert, Kieran Alger, and the Guardian’s consumer affair correspondent, Sarah Marsh (and personal trainer/runner), will be answering all your running questions on Thursday 18 June at midday BST.

No question is too detailed or too silly – from how to recover from a race to kit you don’t need to waste your money on. Or perhaps you’d like to know about how to manage post-partum running; which politician is the best photo-op jogger; or which, if any, AI training programmes are the best to set you up for success. Post your questions below now.

In an industry dominated by men, many women dedicate themselves to the craft of editing – as well as managing directors’ egos – to create some of the most celebrated and memorable big-screen classics

Behind every great director, to coin a phrase, is a great editor – and as the tributes paid earlier this month to the late Marcia Lucas, Oscar-winning editor of Star Wars: Episodes IV to VI, and former wife of creator George Lucas, reminded us, that editor is often a woman. In a historically male-dominated industry, this familiar Hollywood dynamic is a phenomenon that is worth investigating.

It goes back decades. During the supermacho Hollywood new wave era, Dede Allen worked with Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde) and Sidney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon), and Thelma Schoonmaker edited Raging Bull, The King of Comedy and GoodFellas for Martin Scorsese (and much else besides). David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia may have contained no female speaking characters, but it won Anne V Coates an editing Oscar. Anne Bauchens was nominated for Cleopatra in 1934, when the Oscars’ editing category was created, and became its first female winner in 1940 for Cecil B DeMille’s North West Mounted Police.

An indie star in his homeland, Mabandla’s fame is growing abroad – and his uplifting new album is full of existential insight after some of the toughest years of his life

As the camera pulls back from Bongeziwe Mabandla in the video for his recent single Yalwa, the true stars of the show reveal themselves: two women, dressed in a mix of crisp white and black traditional isiXhosa umbhaco garments and chic designer wear. Sure, Mabandla himself strikes a compelling figure in the centre of the frame in his own traditional apparel; the herd of cattle grazing around them are resplendent; and the forested ridges of South Africa’s Eastern Cape remain rapturous. But those stoic, confident, badass women! “Yeah, that’s my mom and aunt,” Mabandla says with a chuckle. The song, he says, is “all about heritage, going back and celebrating women in my lineage and in my family”.

Keeping that connection alive has become especially important to Mabandla now that the singer-songwriter – an indie icon in Johannesburg – has been living far away from them for the first time. After years of finding particular acclaim in France (including a nomination for the prestigious Radio France Internationale award early in his career), Mabandla has been settled in Paris for six months amid bouts of touring and travelling through Europe. “I’m everywhere these days, living between two countries,” he says, laughing again. “I wanted to see what doors would open for me living in a different culture, especially in a big place like Paris. It’s been life-changing, but I’ve been very careful I don’t abandon my South African side.”

Forever flimsy and ineffective at cleaning greasy fingers, the servilletas of the Iberian peninsula resist the relentless ‘optimisation’ of our age. A new photo book recognises them as cultural treasures in miniature

If you have ever eaten a meal in a bar, cafe or restaurant in Spain and grabbed a napkin from the ubiquitous small metal dispensers, you will be familiar with the most intriguing feature of the wafer-thin servilletas: how utterly functionally useless they are.

Don’t bother using them to mop up spilled liquid, as they are less likely to soak up the spillage than protect it with an impermeable barrier. Never make the mistake of blowing your nose in them when you have a cold or a hay fever attack: they’ll just spread the mess to your hands. Their papery texture – originally meant to keep your hands clean while picking up oily snacks – has somehow endured despite their most common purpose being to clean your fingers and lips. For this, they are far from effective, and you end up flying through half a dozen for every croqueta.

• Storming second-half display comes after coach’s speech

• Coach tells team to ‘show the world what we can be’

Harry Kane has revealed that a half-time speech from Thomas Tuchel when he told England “to show the world what we can be” inspired victory in their opening match of the 2026 World Cup.

Croatia equalised twice before half-time after Kane had equalled Gary Lineker’s record for goals scored by an England player at the World Cup finals with a penalty and a header from Declan Rice’s corner. But a much-improved performance in the second half saw Jude Bellingham re-establish England’s lead before Marcus Rashford came off the bench to wrap up the victory late on.

Covering a tournament, my smartwatch showed my heart rate was 10-20 beats above normal. How luxurious to half-watch

I fell asleep at some point during the Netherlands v Japan game. It had been a hot and drowsy day by the shores of Lake Annecy, a square and heavy heat, where the sun and the driving and the food and the boxed wine gently squeeze all the life from your body, like air being pressed out of a juice carton.

I remember Virgil van Dijk angling a header into the far corner, and when I came to it was 2-1, and everyone was heading to bed, drunk on tiredness, drunk on life, drunk on drink.

Some very good things have come from Croydon, the often overlooked town in south London. The film director David Lean was born there, as was Roy Hodgson, the actor Peggy Ashcroft and the sexologist Havelock Ellis. Amy Winehouse studied in Croydon. The Bill and Peep Show were filmed there, as was the title sequence of the 1980s sitcom Terry and June. For a long time it was a centre of brewing and leather production. It was on a suburban driveway there that Pickles found the Jules Rimet trophy after it had been stolen in 1966. And on Wednesday Croydon proved the crucible of Colombia’s victory over Uzbekistan.

Daniel Muñoz’s brilliant strike, created by Luis Díaz, set Colombia on heir way to a win that should never have been as edgy as it ended up being. But his Crystal Palace teammate Jefferson Lerma was a key figure in the centre of midfield, a controlling figure in Colombia’s domination of the majority of the game. “I’m living out my childhood dream of playing in a World Cup for my national team and for my country,” said a delighted Díaz after being named man of the match. “And what could be more beautiful than contributing with a goal and an assist?”

• Unclear if drone was spying or if arrests made

• South Korea say drone would not have spotted tactics

Mexican military forces intercepted and brought down a drone that flew near the South Korea team’s training camp ahead of its World Cup match against Mexico, a federal official told the Associated Press.

Military forces used specialised equipment to detect an “unregistered drone” near the South Korean camp, prompting them to “neutralise” it, the Mexican federal agent said.

The Socceroos and United States both made a fast start to their campaign – here is what the Group D rivals must do to maintain momentum in Seattle

Back Nestory Irankunda: the 20-year-old was expected to be an impact player at this World Cup, coming on as a substitute to affect matches against tiring opposition. A player of the match performance when starting against Turkey showed how Irankunda has become one of the Socceroos’ most important players. While still learning his wing-craft, his speed and determination without the ball are vital in a Socceroos outfit seemingly happy to give their opponents’ possession, and his ability to make the most of transition and direct opportunities – as seen for his opening goal against Turkey – can be a superpower.

If Burnham wins the Makerfield byelection, many are predicting an immediate and stormy showdown. But that could be bad for both men

One of the many problems with our politics now is that only the loudest or most discordant voices seem to get heard. And there’s certainly no shortage of people from rival Labour camps mouthing off about what happens next if Andy Burnham wins the Makerfield byelection today. An apparently well-placed source in his team says they are preparing to launch an “immediate leadership challenge” against Keir Starmer on Friday morning, while another briefs that Burnham will hold off – but only for 72 hours because they dare not risk losing momentum. At the very least, there will be a steady escalation of threats and ultimatums.

Meanwhile, the prime minister is said to be barricading himself into Downing Street, where he remains determined to contest a challenge and, according to some reports, will insist any member of the cabinet backing his rival must quit. For instance, some of his aides have been operating on the assumption that Ed Miliband, who has done little to conceal his desire for Starmer to go, will resign over the next week. Although this is vigorously denied by the energy secretary, along with claims that he is “ghosting” the prime minister’s calls, it has not stopped some hardline loyalists expressing unnecessary relish at the prospect of a more enforced cabinet departure for Miliband.

Tom Baldwin is a former adviser to Ed Miliband and the author of Keir Starmer: The Biography

It never occurred to me that I could opt out of checking my reflection, but a conversation I heard this week was a total revelation

Rats in labs eventually work out which behaviour stops the electric shocks, but I had to be taught by a podcast. Comedian Hannah Berner was a recent guest on Armchair Expert, and revealed she hardly ever looks in the mirror.

“It has information you don’t need about you,” she explained.

A leaked version of the agreement shows the US is in a weaker position than before the war

No one gets a Nobel peace prize for ending a war he started, let alone for a pointless war of aggression that set back the causes that supposedly prompted the conflict. No amount of Donald Trump’s spin can obscure the fact that his newly announced deal with Iran is one big lesson in why this war should never have been launched.

The text of the deal, a 14-point memorandum of understanding, underscores its emptiness. The tyrants of Tehran are undoubtedly celebrating.

The three-martini lunch allowed us to mix business and pleasure, a phenomenon that is missing during the AI boom

As a 46-year-old executive who now has both people and AI agents reporting to me on the org chart, I think corporate America needs to revive a much-mocked relic of mid-century American business life: the three-martini lunch.

In 1978, Gerald Ford called the ritual “the epitome of American efficiency”, asking: “Where else can you get an earful, a bellyful and a snootful at the same time?” He meant it as a joke, but in 2026, I think it should be our strategic plan.

A riot of joy and hugging and screaming followed the Knicks’ historic win. Britons can be jolly (Arsenal fans just were), but this was the gold standard

There was a moment on Sunday morning when, scrolling through pages of content celebrating the New York Knicks’ spectacular NBA championship win in the city – videos in which it seemed people of every age, race, background and zip code put aside their differences to hug and scream – I wondered how far the principle of sport-as-the-ultimate-leveller might stretch.

For example: given the joy on Saturday night was so intense, could you have sent the most hated figures in the US into the ecstatic Knicks viewing parties – those gatherings of thousands who came together to watch the game projected on to the sides of buildings – and witnessed the joy of the event transform them into regular humans? Greg Bovino, say, the loathed former US border tsar in his soldier-of-fortune Halloween costume – pop a jaunty Knicks cap on his head and might he elicit high fives? What about ICE agents in Knicks jerseys? I tried to imagine Elon Musk – a man who has surely never thrown, caught or enjoyed watching a ball in flight in his life – attending a Knicks party and experiencing, possibly for the first time, a group of people who appeared genuinely pleased to see him.

The royals were always popular, but Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s Epstein connections and her son’s rape convictions have profoundly shaken public trust

The Norwegian monarchy is in crisis. Not because its future queen is gravely ill, nor even because her son has this week been convicted of serious crimes, but because the institution’s greatest asset – public trust – has been eroded by a series of self-inflicted mistakes.

Yesterday, it was announced that Norway’s crown princess, Mette-Marit, underwent a successful lung transplant after reports of a dramatic deterioration of her pulmonary fibrosis. That initial news prompted an outpouring of sympathy and even a surge in organ donor registrations. Without jumping the queue, she was matched with a compatible set of lungs less than two weeks after being placed on the list.

Keir Starmer is a decent man but that is not enough for a party that wants a good communicator. Step forward Andy …

On days like these you can’t help feeling you’re living in a parallel universe. Either I’m going mad or Keir Starmer is. The third possibility that we’re both going mad is too disturbing to contemplate.

What to make of the prime minister’s Sky News interview at the G7 in Évian in which Starmer graciously offered Andy Burnham a “big role in government” if, as expected, he wins the Makerfield byelection on Thursday?

The Liberal Democrat leader’s call for more ambitious reintegration with Europe brings a necessary focus on economic and strategic reality

Membership of the European single market was at stake when the UK voted on Brexit, but it was not the decisive question in the campaign. The leave campaign dishonestly promised a cost-free severance of ties with Britain’s largest trading partner. As immigration came to dominate the debate, the requirement to allow free movement of people as a condition of seamless integration with European markets undermined the remainers’ most compelling argument.

Reluctance to advocate a liberal migration regime imposed a taboo on calls to reconsider the Brexit settlement, even as warnings about the cost of rupture were vindicated. Now, after a decade of forsaken growth, the mood is finally changing.

Member-run institutions offer a communal infrastructure to build on. Using national lottery money to boost their fortunes is money well spent

Regulars at the Stubshaw Cross Community and Sports Club may be looking forward to a return to business as usual. Since late May, the venue has doubled as Andy Burnham’s centre of operations, as he seeks to plot a path to Downing Street by winning Thursday’s byelection in the Makerfield constituency. But the back bar will soon be free of visiting ministers and attendant media, and the bingo, pizza nights and quizzes will again proceed undisturbed.

At their peak in the 1970s, working-class institutions such as these were an integral part of the fabric of social life in Britain. Since then, more than half have disappeared. Of the 1,800 or so that remain, a recent survey found that many were under severe financial strain. Deindustrialisation and the digital revolution have created a more atomised culture and weakened habits of association. At the same time, scholars such as the American academic Robert Putnam have diagnosed a crisis of belonging – or of not belonging – in western societies.

Readers respond to coverage of the row over the defence investment plan and resignations of John Healey and Al Carns

Your interview with Al Carns was welcome (‘Unbelievable’ waste and inefficiency at MoD, says ex-defence minister Al Carns, 16 June). Those of us who have visited the procurement headquarters at Abbey Wood in Bristol will recognise exactly what he is describing. But two questions went unasked.

First, given the £18bn defence funding gap, what ballpark contribution could genuinely reformed procurement make to closing it? A rough order of magnitude would sharpen the debate considerably.

Matthew Newman looks back on the late former MP’s writing for the Guardian. Plus, George Baugh on his role in history of the Chagos archipelago

My mother was an admirer of Roy Hattersley (Obituary, 14 June), and would regularly cut out his Endpiece column from the Guardian and post it to me when I was a student in the early 1990s. These articles were always witty and thought-provoking.

I’ve just found one of these clippings (from 1991) in my paperback copy of Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale, where he describes buying the same edition in a Bath bookshop, having been seduced by the cover, and then by the book itself. On this advice, I bought and read the book myself.

This myth, sustained by privileged alumni of Bristol University who barely ever stepped out of Clifton and its leafy surrounds, masks the city’s deprivation problems, says Jane Ghosh

The renaming of the SS Great Britain as Bristol Dockyards is not exactly exciting (Brunel’s SS Great Britain site drops historical name in ‘cool’ rebrand, 11 June), but what continually annoys me as a native and resident Bristolian is the persistence of the myth that this is “the UK’s coolest city”.

Bristol has several of the most deprived communities in the UK, a massive inequality problem, the biggest homelessness and van-dweller problem outside London, and a massive issue with litter and fly-tipping. Added to which we have no decent public transport, only hugely expensive buses, so the roads are gridlocked daily.

The eye-watering ticket prices, like the cost of housing, reflect the divide between rich people and others, writes Richard Eltringham

World Cup tickets now tell the same story as housing: priced so far beyond ordinary people that even Mexico’s president said she skipped the opening match because the seats were simply too expensive (‘Tickets are very expensive’: Mexican president Sheinbaum explains why she did not attend World Cup opener, 12 June). When a head of state publicly admits she can’t justify the cost, what chance does a normal supporter have?

Yet Fifa still insists the tournament is “for everyone”, even as vast sections of the stadium fill only with those who can absorb eye‑watering prices. Television pundits try to sound sympathetic, but it’s hard to take them seriously when they casually reference the fortunes they earned from the same industry that priced supporters out.

Updates from the second day’s play at the Oval
Day one report | Sign up for the Spin | Mail Taha

78th over: New Zealand 300-7 (Jamieson 6, Phillips 54) The sun has poked through at the Oval … as Baker goes short, the ball loose and swinging away to the ropes for byes. Short again with the next delivery – and Phillips gets something on it, top-edging as the ball flies over James Rew, evading the fingertips. And that’ll be his fifty too. Baker, in the high-80s, continues to angle the ball into Phillips, who gets a single to keep the strike.

Right then, it’ll be Sonny Baker to get us going, with Glenn Phillips on strike. Let’s play!

• Juddmonte International now the target for easy winner

• Victorious backed for Guineas after Queen Mary stroll

There was no room for doubt after the Prince of Wales’s Stakes here on Wednesday, and no need either for any debate about team tactics or riding instructions. Ombudsman’s sweeping charge down the outside to beat Minnie Hauk and Daryz, the winners of the Oaks and Arc respectively last season, was as decisive a winning move as favourite backers could ever hope to see, and William Buick was using only hands-and-heels through the final furlong as the 11-10 chance opened up a four-length lead at the line.

For a brief moment at the top of the straight, it seemed that the pacemakers might be a source of post-race discussion for the second day running. Mississippi River and Devil’s Advocate, one frontrunner apiece for Aidan O’Brien’s Minnie Hauk and the John and Thady Gosden-trained Ombudsman, tore into a long lead by halfway, and while Mississippi River was a spent force turning in, Devil’s Advocate still had a healthy lead at the two-furlong pole.

• Club triggered £34.5m release clause for Osasuna forward

• Head coach keen on player’s versatility and pace

The Osasuna winger Víctor Muñoz will become the first signing of Andoni Iraola’s reign at Liverpool after the club triggered a £34.5m release clause, beating Newcastle to his signature. Muñoz will sign a six-year contract after undergoing a medical on Wednesday in Atlanta, where he is part of the Spain squad at the World Cup.

Liverpool have been following Muñoz’s progress for an extensive period and sped up the deal after Iraola’s appointment because the head coach was eager to add his compatriot. Iraola spent most of his playing career at Athletic Bilbao, continues to closely monitor La Liga and Muñoz has impressed him.

• McInnes moves to his boyhood clubs from Hearts

• Röhl goes by mutual consent after less than a year

Rangers have confirmed the appointment of Derek McInnes as their manager on a three-year contract after Danny Röhl left for RB Salzburg by mutual agreement.

McInnes, a former Rangers player, joins from Hearts after leading them to second this season. He rejected the opportunity to manage Rangers in 2017 but said: “It is no secret that I grew up a Rangers supporter and I am convinced this is the right time to take on this prestigious role given the club’s structure and leadership.”

World No 1 has chance to join Rory McIlroy in exclusive club – but windswept course requires patience

Shinnecock Hills is a study in restraint and attrition that has spent more than a century bringing the world’s finest golfers to heel. When the US Open returns here for a sixth time on Thursday, the current crop will once again face a rugged coastal masterpiece where calamity lurks around every corner and mistakes are punished with uncommon severity.

The William Flynn-designed layout, one of the United States Golf Association’s five founding clubs, is a 7,440-yard track of rare beauty and menace revered as one of the purest tests in championship golf. Three distinct clusters of holes form a rough triangle across the property, exposing players to shifting winds from different directions throughout the round. With gusts forecast to exceed 40mph at times, even players who know Shinnecock well acknowledge that controlling trajectory and accepting adversity will be every bit as important as making birdies.

• Knicks owner Dolan is a longtime ally of US president

• No NBA team has visited White House under Trump

New York Knicks owner James Dolan says his team will become the first NBA champions to visit Donald Trump at the White House.

“We just did receive an invitation from the White House, which we accepted,” Dolan said during an appearance on WFAN New York on Wednesday. “We still have to figure out the details … but yes, of course. Look, I invited the president to come down for [last week’s Game 3 of the NBA finals]. He is a friend. I’ve known him for 30 years and I’m very proud to bring the team to the White House.”

• US runner reportedly lost pulse in medical incident

• Organizer thanks EMS and safety professionals

• Simpson won bronze in 1500m at 2016 Olympics

Jenny Simpson, a three-time Olympian and one of the most accomplished American female runners in history, was taken to hospital and is receiving treatment after collapsing at a track event on Tuesday in North Carolina.

The organizer of the event, Sir Walter Running, said there had been a “medical incident” involving Simpson while she paced a mile group at an event in Raleigh. Runner’s World and LetsRun reported that Simpson did not have a pulse for a period of time but said it was restored with CPR and an AED.

• Giving captain the summer off ‘would be the right thing to do’

• Van Rensburg set for England debut despite Test ineligibility

Steve Borthwick will rest the England captain, Maro Itoje, this summer unless injury strikes in the second row over the weekend.

Itoje is poised to be stood down for the Tests against South Africa, Fiji and Argentina next month following a year during which he led the British & Irish Lions to a series victory against Australia, played in the autumn and Six Nations campaigns, and mourned the death of his mother.

This week’s newsletter spends a day with the Italy midfielder as she continues to battle her way back to a peak physical condition

“It was accepting that I couldn’t play football because it was my life. It was everything that I knew.” For Everton’s Aurora Galli, the past 20 months have been anything but straightforward. Her return from a serious knee injury has been difficult, one beset with obstacles before, ultimately, a long-awaited comeback.

It was September 2024, 83 minutes and three seconds into the first game of the Women’s Super League season to be exact, when Galli went down in agony. Everton were losing 4-0 to Brighton and, in her eagerness to salvage something for her team, the midfielder attempted to challenge for the ball when her standing leg buckled. As expected, it was confirmed that she had ruptured an anterior cruciate ligament.

This is an extract from our free email about women’s football, Moving the Goalposts. To get the full edition, visit this page and follow the instructions. Moving the Goalposts will be sent out once a week, on Wednesdays, in the close season but will be back on Tuesdays and Thursdays from September.

Supply problems pose risk to health, with common painkillers, epilepsy medication and HRT affected

Britons are facing some of the “most severe” shortages of NHS medicines on record including common painkillers, epilepsy drugs and HRT, health leaders have warned, even forcing some patients with impaired digestive systems to skip meals.

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has warned that medicine shortages pose a “serious risk to patient safety”.

Church ‘profoundly sorry’ for pain caused to mothers and children separated at birth between 1940s and 1980s

The Church of England has made a long-awaited apology for its role in forced adoptions after the second world war.

Hundreds of thousands of children were forcibly separated from their mothers in the UK between the 1940s and the 1980s. Survivors testify to suffering abuse, neglect and lifelong trauma.

Exclusive: Ex-minister accuses Labour of ‘overcautiousness’ and says his proposal was cut from manifesto

Wes Streeting has said his plan to ban “private equity sharks” from the social care sector was removed from the Labour manifesto, as he accused the government of “overcautiousness” in reforming the industry.

In a Fabian Society report on how to create a national care service, Streeting said overhauling social care was “one of the defining challenges of our age” but an “absence of good political leadership” was holding back change.

Sellers of luxury villas have wiped tens of millions of pounds off asking prices, with sales down 19% in May from the previous month

Property sales in Dubai have fallen “off a cliff”, a leading market watcher has said, after war in the Middle East forced a dramatic slowdown in one of the world’s most expensive real estate markets.

Sales in the city dropped 19% in May compared with the previous month, accelerating from a 4% drop in April, the researcher ValuStrat found.

Wessex Archaeology suspect they have uncovered a prototype for world-famous Stonehenge site in Wiltshire

A 5,000-year-old monument that was aligned with the summer and winter solstices and may have served as a prototype for the later solar alignment at Stonehenge has been discovered close to the famous neolithic site, in what archaeologists have described as a “once in a lifetime” find.

The structure at Bulford, 5km (3 miles) from the world heritage site in Wiltshire, has been carbon dated to around 3000BC, the same time as the earliest phase of construction at Stonehenge and 500 years before its huge trilithon stones were carefully placed to line up with the midsummer and midwinter sun.

John Ray, 17th-century botanist who coined words petal and pollen, was a tutor at Cambridge when he created his first garden

He coined the terms petal and pollen, helped to lay the foundations of modern biology and is widely regarded as the greatest English naturalist of the 17th century.

But it was while he was a young college tutor at Cambridge in the 1650s that the botanist John Ray – also known as “the father of natural history” – created his first known garden and began to systematically study plants for the first time.

Generator’s shares rise as regulator finds no evidence of misleading statements about fuel’s sustainability

• Business live – latest updates

The City watchdog has closed an investigation into the power generator Drax after an almost 10-month review into the sourcing of wood pellets for its biomass station.

The Financial Conduct Authority said it had “reviewed thousands of pages” but that it “did not find evidence that justified any further action”.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an invaluable online archive of historic texts on species living and lost supplied by the world’s leading museums and universities. Now its future is in doubt

Some go there to read about the wood that Victorian manufacturers used to make walking sticks. Others want to see an illustration of a Tasmanian tiger or marvel at the field diary of one of the first known botanists to explore the Antarctic.

Over the past 20 years, more than 64m pages have been made freely available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) – a digital treasure trove for fans of the natural world. More than 680 museums, universities, libraries and scientific institutions from China, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand to Europe, Africa, Mexico, Canada and the US, have contributed to the library.

Manuscript on parchment from the Circa instans. Dating from about 1190, it is the oldest book in the digital library. Photograph: LuEsther T Mertz Library/New York Botanical Garden/Biodiversity Heritage Library

Paul Powlesland told he acted illegally after organising volunteers to remove litter, weed and silt from River Roding

A river campaigner who organised a cleanup of his local waterway is being threatened with prosecution by the Environment Agency for acting illegally.

Paul Powlesland, a lawyer and environmental campaigner, organised a team of volunteers to tackle the removal of litter, weed and silt from a section of the River Roding, after repeatedly asking the agency to act.

Refugee charity says decision to let riot police use water cannon, which are banned in Great Britain, is ‘sickening’

French riot police deployed in northern France under a £660m deal with the UK are authorised to use water cannon against asylum seekers, the Guardian has been told.

Two specialist policing units, including a 50-officer riot squad, have begun working to prevent asylum seekers and people smugglers from launching small boats under the UK-France deal in time for the summer months.

Information commissioner issues formal caution after London private hospital treating royal reported breach

A former healthcare worker at a private hospital in London has been formally cautioned by the UK privacy and data watchdog over the deliberate misuse of the Princess of Wales’s private medical records and offering to disclose them for financial gain.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) launched a criminal investigation into the unlawful obtaining and disclosure of medical information to a third party without the consent of the data controller after the London Clinic reported a breach in March 2024.

Government has announced a ban on social media for under-16s, including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube

The UK government has announced a social media ban for under-16s.

They will be blocked from accessing social media, including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and X, from next spring.

News programme broadcast every weekday evening is one of first victims of corporation’s drive to cut £500m in costs

BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight is to be axed after more than 50 years, as part of a first round of sweeping cuts that will result in other shows being cut and the departure of hundreds of staff.

The 45-minute news programme, broadcast every weekday evening on Radio 4, is one of the first victims of a savings drive that will also put entire BBC channels and radio stations under review.

US officials have revealed a preliminary memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran to end the costly 110-day conflict

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Senior US officials have revealed the contents of a preliminary memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Washington and Tehran to end the 110-day conflict which has cost thousands of lives and devastated the world economy.

The officials dictated the MOU to journalists on Wednesday, before it was signed by Donald Trump and Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian. Both sides have 60 days to negotiate the terms before a final agreement.

Directive aimed at government workers, but reports of wider implementation spark warnings of future Afghanistan-wide prohibition

The Taliban have ordered a sweeping ban on the use of smartphones by government officials – in what some analysts say could foreshadow broader, population-level restrictions.

In a directive issued by the Taliban’s military courts and reviewed by the Guardian, the ban was to take effect this week and prohibits “high rank, low rank, general mujahideen, or service staff” from using mobile phones.

YouGov survey of six countries shows respondents think crime is increasing – though most trust their national police

Western Europeans believe crime is rising in their country, according to a survey, despite long-term overall crime rates falling across the region since the mid-1990s.

The YouGov poll of Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain found most countries trusted their national police, led by Denmark where 74% of respondents said they had a lot or a fair amount of confidence in police nationally.

Ordinary Taiwanese, young and old, are joining courses to learn how to fly drones amid looming China military threat

In a small, crowded room in Taipei, Pan Chien-chin is trying to keep a drone hovering steadily. Imagining himself flying a plane, he gently nudges controller joysticks to guide the insect-like device as it hums through the air.

Cheers break out as Pan, who has never flown a drone before, steers it around a rectangular course marked by traffic cones without crashing. Around him are about two dozen fellow trainees, all signed up for the same course: Taiwan’s first civil defence drone training programme.

As companies integrate AI and hire fewer employees, a shift toward a ‘gig economy’ will commence

In 2024, the buy-now-pay-later company Klarna announced that it would cut hundreds of customer service roles and begin using an artificial intelligence chatbot instead. The move was expected to save the company millions. But a year later, after customers complained about the degraded quality of customer service, Klarna began to quietly recruit human customer service agents back.

At first glance, the reversal appeared to be a victory for human workers in the age of AI. The reality was more complex. Instead of bringing on full-time customer service agents, who Klarna contracts through an outside agency, it instead brought on workers in what Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has described as “an Uber type of set-up”. Now, an AI chatbot continues to handle most of customers’ basic queries, while a growing number of gig workers handle the more advanced ones. “Just like somebody can go and drive an Uber for a while, they can actually jump on and work for Klarna’s customer service,” Siemiatkowski said on a podcast in February.

Billionaire also tells summit land could be given to skilled Israelis to build ‘advanced war drones’, according to Hancock Prospecting notes

Gina Rinehart has proposed Australia should offer Elon Musk islands for free to build satellites and launch them into space in a bid to attract investment to northern Queensland.

Australia’s richest woman continued her battle against government regulation and high taxes in a speech delivered at News Corp’s bush summit in Townsville on Thursday.

Strong sales of canned cocktails and Irn-Bru help retailer beat forecasts – and sunshine made people spend

• Business live – latest updates

The weather will have more impact on grocery sales than home nation World Cup wins, according to the boss of Tesco, as it said UK sales growth more than halved during a rainy spring and the Middle East conflict.

Ken Murphy, the chief executive of the UK’s biggest retailer, said the rainy conditions for much of this spring – compared to a long spell of sunshine last year – had more impact on spending habits than the football or the Iran war, despite latter creating “ongoing uncertainty for many households”.

Drive to appeal to wealthy Americans is part of pivot away from previously announced all-electric strategy

Jaguar Land Rover has said it will make more hybrid cars as part of an effort to focus on growth in the US, as Britain’s largest carmaker further rowed back on the transition away from fossil fuels.

The manufacturer told investors on Wednesday it would offer petrol and hybrid versions of new models, including smaller SUVs that had previously been planned to shift to all-electric sales.

Locked out of his apartment, a cancer-stricken Parisian is caught in a race against time to freeze his sperm. The rising star who plays him explains how he tackled a very initimate quest

Just six months after the world rallied to defend poor Paul Dano, vulnerability may now be a hot commodity for an actor. What is “weak sauce” for Quentin Tarantino, who attacked Dano, can be mighty savoury for others. So it’s good timing that Théodore Pellerin, with his gangly frame and huge eyes, exudes that quality in the new French character study Nino. Gauche, hesitant and withholding, Pellerin is magnetic as a young Parisian locked out of his apartment for a weekend after a papillomavirus (HPV)-related cancer diagnosis.

Pellerin explains Nino’s predicament, his inability to be candid with his loved ones, almost down to the cellular level. “His throat cancer isn’t insignificant,” he says. “It’s the part that links the head to the body. There’s a dissociation from the body – a distancing of his emotions. And because it comes from a sexually transmitted disease, his sexuality – a strong life force – is stunted too. So his mission is to speak and to ejaculate.” Urgently in the case of the latter: Nino must freeze his sperm as his treatment will make him infertile. His odyssey around Paris is the gen Z answer to French New Wave classic Cléo de 5 à 7, which also revolved around a cancer diagnosis. Only this time, it’s about the impossibility of finding a good place to masturbate.

Now in it’s 25th year, the Polish city’s Fotofestiwal opens on 18 June with a series of exhibitions reflecting on the concept of a collective experience rather than a binary world of “us” and “them”

José Luis López Vázquez’s phone box nightmare is short and sharp but Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s TV fever dream overplays its hand

Two macabre Spanish TV plays from the 1970s are being released as a double bill: Antonio Mercero’s La Cabina (★★★★★) is a cult 1972 surreal short film lasting just 35 minutes but encompassing an entire dreamworld of anxiety. It was conceived for television in the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock Presents or Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected, but I can imagine it shown in cinemas as a curtain-raiser before Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel.

La Cabina is a black comic nightmare in which a fussy middle-aged man, played by veteran Spanish comedy actor José Luis López Vázquez, steps into a phone booth that has just appeared in a suburban sidestreet. But the phone doesn’t work and then he can’t get out; the door is jammed. What to do? There’s no mobile phone to reach for; in 1972, the phone booth was the mobile phone. He gesticulates and waves in panic through the glass, though seems mysteriously robbed of the power of speech and is clearly inhibited by how ridiculous he must look. Crowds cluster round and try ineffectually to help. A callous, carnivalesque atmosphere develops. The man sees himself reflected in a mirror that one onlooker is carrying: trapped, absurd, bourgeois homo sapiens as zoo animal.

This new series talks to the families of those who are serving prison sentences for crimes they believe they didn’t do. Plus, discover more about Britain’s first king, James I. Here’s what to watch this evening

10pm, Channel 4
“People are sitting in prison cells with life sentences when there is evidence that proves categorically they didn’t do it. And they call that justice.” This new series speaks to people fighting convictions they believe are miscarriages of justice. The first divisive case is that of a street fight in 2005, when Jason Moore was found guilty of murdering Robert Darby. But Moore’s family and friends are campaigning for him to be freed. Hollie Richardson

Spielberg’s sci-fi blockbuster starring Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor may be spectacular, but it misjudges how much humans are prepared to tolerate abuse of groups we see as ‘other’

Steven Spielberg has converted his longstanding fascination with the possible existence of aliens into considerable commercial and critical success and now, 49 years after Close Encounters and 44 after ET, the film-maker has returned to the subject for the sci-fi spectacular Disclosure Day.

The film follows cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) and weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) as they become state-secret whistleblowers, working with Hugo (Colman Domingo) to expose nearly eight decades’ worth of evidence that the US government has known about extraterrestrial life.

Haunting documentary tells how Syrian academic Annsar Shahoud created an online persona to contact the suspected perpetrator of the Tadamon massacre

Sam Benstead’s piercing documentary charts what you might call an act of noble catfishing: how Amsterdam-based Syrian academic Annsar Shahoud adopted the online identity of “Anna” to coax an al-Assad regime stooge into admitting his crimes. It’s not clear if she and her collaborator, genocide studies professor Uğur Ümit Üngör, are part of the European vigilante networks that inspired last year’s fictional feature Ghost Trail. But the courageous, haunted and psychologically smudgy nature of this work is plain to see here.

When they first watch a video of what became known as the Tadamon massacre, Üngör and Shahoud are appalled at what they see: a procession of Damascan civilians casually murdered and dumped into a tyre-lined pit. They are also exhilarated to finally have incontrovertible proof of al-Assad’s brutality. By combing Facebook they manage to track down the Cheshire Cat-grinned head killer: an intelligence agent called Amjad Youssef. Posing as Anna, a Syrian expat writing a sympathetic thesis about the regime, Shahoud makes tentative first contact with Youssef by video call. For a spook, it is surprising how a few well-chosen signifiers work wonders on him: the portraits of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad on Anna’s wall, the Shia sword pendant around her neck.

The pianist and bandleader, who has died aged 91, had an inimitable style where bright, guileless melody met a fearless improvisational impulse

• South African jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim dies aged 91

Scullery Department (from Jazz Epistle Verse 1, 1960)

Born Adolph Johannes Brand in Cape Town in 1934, Abdullah Ibrahim spent his six-decade career defining the heartfelt sound of South African jazz. Making his professional debut as a pianist at 15 under the name Dollar Brand, it was his co-founding of the group the Jazz Epistles in 1959 that laid the groundwork for his journeying career. South Africa’s first Black jazz group, featuring trumpeter Hugh Masekela who would go on to become a star bandleader in his own right, the Jazz Epistles’ first and only album Jazz Epistle Verse 1 is a sprightly document of the South African take on bebop. Although album opener Dollar’s Moods is named for Ibrahim, it’s the record’s closing number Scullery Department that highlights his nascent skills. Heavy-swinging over a bluesy motif, Ibrahim’s playing artfully skips through an opening polyrhythm before taking a solo that refigures Thelonious Monk’s wonky melodic motifs into an earthy sense of groove that would go on to feature throughout his hundreds of recordings to come.

Unpack the latest viral moments and the week’s celebrity whispers with Clara & Munroe. Plus, the grim story of a man cashing in on the rise in young suicides.

If the first episode is anything to go by, Clara Amfo (let loose from BBC broadcasting) and activist Munroe Bergdorf could well be your fun commute companions. The pair are passionate, incisive and just the right amount of gossipy as they unpack the latest pop culture moments – such as what the loud conversation around Olivia Rodrigo’s baby-doll dress says about women in music. Our one complaint? Half an hour isn’t long enough! Hollie Richardson
Widely available, episodes weekly

As the World Cup gets underway, we look at the music that has soundtracked the beautiful game – and the composers who have loved it

France ’98, when Scotland last faced Morocco at a World Cup – as they do this Friday – and lost a crucial game three-nil. (John McGinn’s winner against Haiti in Boston on Sunday rewrites all the recent records and sets the team on a path to almost certain glory this time around. Obviously.)

But you could have read the runes of Scottish doom in that World Cup by the tunes that Scotland fans had in their ears. Scotland’s song that year was Del Amitri’s masterpiece of melancholy, Don’t Come Home Too Soon, the most downbeat, honest, and lyrical World Cup song ever written – alas, the team didnae listen. And there was the BBC’s World Cup titles for 1998: Fauré’s Pavane, which lifted the moodometer from melancholic all the way to apathetic. (Not that England did much better, despite the surreal street party of Vindaloo, Engerland’s unofficial anthem, and the self-satisfaction of Three Lions, they went out in the round of 16, after David Beckham’s red-card against Argentina.)

(Geffen)
Gossips have rushed to the lyrics for details about her personal life, but the rest of us can just get on with luxuriating in Rodrigo’s funny, Cure-infused craft

With a certain crushing inevitability, the arrival of Olivia Rodrigo’s third album has been accompanied by a lot of frenzied decoding of its lyrics for references to Louis Partridge, the British actor whose relationship with the singer ended late last year. One magazine ran a 1,200 word essay, complete with annotations, panning its songs for nuggets of gossip: the fourth piece they’ve published on the subject in recent months. A British broadsheet plumped for a news story about the fact that Rodrigo had apparently changed the lyrics of a track called Purple, formerly a “very sweet and saccharine” love song, to reflect the end of their relationship. Over in New Delhi, The Hindustan Times was pondering rumours that the couple had actually got back together: “Interest in Partridge has grown after Rodrigo released her new album since fans believe the track Stupid Song has references to the singer’s relationship with him.”

Well, of course it has: for better or for worse, that kind of speculation seems to have become a major part of modern pop, and Oliva Rodrigo in particular has long been a beneficiary of the clickbait publicity it brings. Her breakthrough single Drivers Licence gained traction thanks to the rumour that its lyrics were about her former boyfriend Joshua Bassett’s dalliance with Sabrina Carpenter; Vampire, the lead single from 2023’s Guts invited yet more speculation about whether its subject was another ex or Taylor Swift. Indeed, she actively seems to encourage it: “I never talk about my personal life in interviews or in any public forum, so I guess the music is where people go to deduce things,” she recently told an interviewer, a line that seems to have a distinct hint of “go ahead, fill your boots” about it.

With its echoes of Miranda July’s All Fours, this tragicomic tale of an American woman’s illicit romance is also a gripping murder mystery

The plot of A Little Bit Bad sounds like the setup for a joke: “Like, this white lady lusting after her hot Chicano roofer?” Perdita Jungfrau, the narrator, is describing her own situation. “Yuck.”

It’s 2009 and Perdita is 39 when she meets 25-year-old Nando, who is working on next door’s roof. “Burned out” after a decade as a hospital social worker, she’s a stay-at-home mother to a toddler, and pregnant again (though she doesn’t know it yet). She isn’t happy. Her husband is critical of her for quitting her job, and won’t look after the children: “Babies scare me!” Perdita is out in her San Diego backyard on the day that Nando falls from a ladder propped up against the neighbour’s house. She sees it happen, calls an ambulance and sits beside him on the grass to wait.

In the latest autofictional instalment of his family saga, the French writer makes sense of his sibling’s violent homophobia and short life

At 33, the French writer Édouard Louis has already seen all seven of his slim novels translated into English. In his breakout debut, The End of Eddy (2017), and again in Change (2024), he wrote about being the promising child of a poor family, the bullied gay son who became a bestselling author. Several of his other books have offered sympathetic sociological portraits of his parents: a father destroyed by physical labour, a victim of French healthcare and housing subsidy cutbacks, and a mother who, after raising numerous children in poverty, fled first Louis’s father and then, in Monique Escapes, published earlier this year, his abusive successor. Now, in Collapse, translated by novelist Tash Aw, Louis describes his eldest brother’s death, at 38, from complications relating to alcoholism.

“I felt nothing at the announcement of the death of my brother,” he begins; “not sadness or despair or joy or pleasure.” The reasons for his coldness soon become clear. His brother was violently homophobic. His drinking at one point prevented Louis from sleeping ahead of a crucial exam. After The End of Eddy came out, his brother went looking for him with a baseball bat. So when Louis talks with his mother and sister about how to pay for his brother’s funeral and admits, “yes, I would have let him be buried like a dog”, we understand why.

Is Japan really full of centenarians? And what about ‘blue zones’? A brilliant skewering of ageing secrets and lies

There is a special place in hell reserved for doctors who trade on their authority, status and medical training to monetise public fear and gullibility. Every time I scroll past a qualified physician touting elixirs that promise youthful vigour, cellulite-free thighs or gut microbiome makeovers, I want to poke their fraudulent eyes out. At best, these charlatans have chosen lining their pockets over helping others. At worst, as in the case of the Covid deniers and anti-vaxxers, they are actively dangerous – something I witnessed first-hand on hospital wards in 2021 as unvaccinated patients succumbed to the disease.

Nowhere is human hope monetised more ruthlessly by medical grifters than in the anti-ageing industry. Our inescapable fate – decrepitude and death – makes us ripe for exploitation. Who doesn’t want to pop a pill or hook themselves up to an IV infusion that, for only £99.99 a month, will magically stave off the moment you turn into your grandparents? In Morbid, debut author Saul Justin Newman, a research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Institute of Population Ageing, sets out to topple the whole, sordid house of cards. His central argument is that our fear of frailty and dying has “created an opening for all manner of skullduggery in the science of ageing”, an area of research which is rife, he argues, with “misleading claims, mistaken assumptions, and outright chicanery. The world’s oldest man is a fake, hundreds of thousands of the world’s oldest people are actually dead, and five decades of research on human longevity is moot.”

After ‘bottling everything up for a long time’ the faithful pet, who has remained silent for many years, will spill the beans on the pair’s ‘pet hates and fur-vent passions’

Gromit, the canine star of the Wallace and Gromit animations, is “breaking his silence” and writing a memoir.

After “bottling everything up for a long time”, the moment has come for him to “spill the beans”, according to publisher Ebury.

After the billion-dollar company’s leaders sent staff a memo saying the brand had ‘over-extended’, game studios may be in the firing line

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In March 2000, Bill Gates stood onstage at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and, to a packed crowd, officially announced the company’s long-anticipated video game console. “We want Xbox to be the platform of choice for the best and most creative game developers in the world,” he told attenders – and that was indeed the intention of the small, dedicated team who put together the blueprints of that first machine.

The Xbox landscape seems very different 25 years later. Last week, mere days after a bullish summer showcase full of Gears of War revivals and promises of a renewed focus on Xbox’s gaming strengths, new CEO, Asha Sharma, and chief content officer, Matt Booty, wrote a memo to Xbox staff inviting them to brace for “hard truths”. “Excluding Activision Blizzard King, over the past five years, we have spent over $20bn on ongoing investments in our content, platform and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue,” it read.

PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S; EA Vancouver/Electronic Arts
Micromanaging your fighter is a little tedious, but the action is thrilling in this authentically detailed sporting simulation

Becoming a professional fighter takes years of repetition, drilling techniques and training footwork until everything is instinctual. Your body needs an automatic answer for every limb, from every angle. In MMA, which encompasses every martial art, it’s even harder.

EA Sports’ UFC 6 realistically captures the grind of this brutal discipline. Throw on Career Mode and you spend most of your time working on combos and techniques. It’s all about making the complex controls feel second nature, increasing the effectiveness of every strike thrown by your fighter. With simulated six-week-long training camps between bouts, you can sometimes spar 12 times before a fight that could be over in a matter of seconds.

Bart and co’s latest video game venture involved the show’s writers, animators and voice talent – plus a showdown between the two infamous tycoons. ‘It’s a true little Simpsons episode,’ say creators

Every generation gets its own Simpsons game. Them’s the rule-diddly-ules. For some, it was the arcade cabinets that swallowed pocket money throughout the 1990s. For others, it was The Simpsons: Cartoon Studio. For millennials like myself, it was The Simpsons: Hit & Run. Joe Zanetti, vice-president of operations at Monopoly Go! developer Scopely, traces his Simpsons gaming nostalgia back to Konami’s 1991 brawler, The Simpsons Arcade Game. “That’s the one that made such an impression on me,” he says.

It certainly did, because Springfield has just crash-landed in Monopoly Go! itself through a collaboration involving Simpsons writers, animators and voice talent alongside a new animated short starring Dan Castellaneta, Nancy Cartwright, Harry Shearer and Will Ferrell. While most licensed TV games have faded into obscurity, The Simpsons keeps finding new digital lives.

If you fancy roaring around Japan’s open roads, scaling impossible mountains and playing with post-apocalyptic Pokémon, this year’s highlights mean you can do so without leaving your chair

Utilita Arena, Newcastle
Expanding on her recent theatre tour, Allen’s one-woman performance of her zeitgeist-dominating album is full of catharsis and high camp

Lily Allen’s arena jaunt is a scaled-up version of the show she took into theatres last year, touring her acclaimed album West End Girl, which at least partly dramatises the real-life breakdown of her four-year marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour. Once again, the show opens with string ensemble the Dallas Minor Trio playing instrumental versions of her older hits, which warms up the crowd and provides a rare opportunity to cheerily bellow the likes of The Fear or Fuck You (“very much”) along with several thousand people.

The 41-year-old comes on for the second act, an hour-long one-woman show performing West End Girl with theatrical staging. Looking resplendent – like a modern Ronette – in a dress finished off with a giant bow, she cheerily bounds into the album’s title track. Then she takes a phone call, which leaves her tearful.

Òran Mór, Glasgow
Nay Dhanak’s clownish tale follows an odd couple struggling to live up to their roles passing news from royal power to the public

We are in a medieval world of portentous comets, fiery dragons and punitive taxes. For the average peasant, it is tough going, but even in this hierarchical society, two of them have uncommon access to power. One is the town crier, the mediator of news between monarch and serf. The other is the jester, employed by the court to tell it like it is. If anyone can quell a peasants’ revolt, it is these two.

Playwright Nay Dhanak is fascinated by this imbalance of power, reflected, they suggest, in today’s mismatch between tech overlords and everyone else. Cry/Laugh, their professional debut, is a speculation about two such privileged outsiders losing their jobs. Can no news really be good news?

At Òran Mór, Glasgow, until 20 June

Old Vic theatre, London
Patrick Marber’s perplexing revival of the salesmen classic amps up the comedy and the performance of masculinity but veers into Bugsy Malone territory

There are few more masterly portraits of 1980s caveman capitalism than David Mamet’s drama about fast-talking Chicago real estate salesmen. Mamet is arguably the premier playwright for capturing American masculinity of this era, so it is surprising to learn that the idea to stage an all-female version came from him.

This new production has the same director as last year’s all-male Broadway revival, Patrick Marber. The wardrobe underlines that the female ensemble are playing at being men, pitted against each other with unequal sales leads and driven to ever more unprincipled acts in the hope to come out on top.

Sadler’s Wells, London
The annual Flamenco festival kicks off in spectacular style, with a show of serpentine grace and rhythmic precision

There are lots of places in life where being full of yourself, or at least acting like it, is not the done thing. In the spotlight of a flamenco show is absolutely not one of them. Peacocking is essential for the flamenco bailaor, and there’s something awesome about seeing the magnetic power of a performer so in control of their instrument – and their audience.

Jesús Carmona opens his show, and the 21st annual Flamenco festival, posed in a square of light against a blacked-out stage, slowly unfurling an arm with serpentine grace and then snatching at the air in a sudden grasp. It’s this ability to play with tension and attack, to suddenly erupt or acquiesce, to shift the energy around him, that marks Carmona out as a great dancer. He’ll stamp out demons in a burst of wild limbs, his legs fly and flick like La Liga’s best midfielder, but he’s got a core of absolute composure (and beautifully tight spins to go with it).

Musician Michael Cloud Duguay’s new album was born from a mission to capture the sound of the majestic yet increasingly rare instruments

Michael Cloud Duguay and his band of collaborators were nearing the end of their pipe organ tour of Newfoundland when they encountered a hitch in Aguathuna, a town of about 400 people on a craggy peninsula that juts out from the Canadian island’s south-western edge. For the past week, they’d been showing up at old churches in remote communities like this one, preparing their solar-powered mobile studio, and recording instruments both humble and monumental, whose complex systems of keys, stops, hand cranks, foot pedals, bellows and reeds were designed to vibrate the air around them until it approximates the sound of God.

This was all in service of music that was still taking shape in Duguay’s mind. It would eventually form the basis of the Ontario composer’s new album, Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go, a collection of quietly elegiac pieces that doubles as a sort of audio documentary about Newfoundland’s organs and the congregations to which they belong. The music is collaged from recordings that Duguay made on that trip in July 2024, of the organs (which the team documented and will be available as Midi instruments later this summer) but also of church leaders and ordinary congregants talking about their lives, as well as saxophones, flutes and whatever other sounds happened to go by while the tape was rolling. Listening in headphones on a spring day can be mildly hallucinatory: are the bird calls, the rustling wind and the chattering people part of the music or the world outside?

‘I wanted to celebrate the women who are reinventing morris dancing. They took me to a pub and gave me a pickled egg mashed up in a packet of crisps. I felt like I’d entered a magical world’

Morris used to be a very male-dominated sport, but in 1975 the Morris Federation was created specifically to allow women to join sides. An older organisation, the Morris Ring, didn’t allow teams with women to be members until 2018, yet today women account for more than half of Britain’s Morris dancers. As soon as I heard about Boss Morris, the all-female side in this picture, I wanted to shoot a portrait of them. I was keen to celebrate the evolution of this traditional form of dance by focusing on young women who are both honouring and reinventing it.

When they appeared on stage at the Brits with the band Wet Leg, who I was working with at the time, I thought, “It’s meant to be! If I don’t do it now, someone else will.” It was really hard to pin the group down, as there are so many of them, but as we discussed ideas they all got excited by the idea of doing a summer solstice shoot on Rodborough Common during one of their practice evenings. It’s a great location – an amazing hilly green space right on their doorstep in Stroud.

Founding member of band with hits like If You Leave Me Now and Hard to Say I’m Sorry had Alzheimer’s disease

Walter Parazaider, a co-founding member of the rock band Chicago, has died at the age of 81 following a battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

His daughter confirmed the news in a Facebook post on Wednesday morning.

Musician says on Instagram he is ‘doing much better’ and receiving treatment and therapy after 2025 arrest

The musician Lil Nas X posted a moving video update to his Instagram on Wednesday morning. In the nearly three-minute clip, the artist – born Montero Lamar Hill – shared that he “has been in rehab for a few months” and since then, has returned home to Atlanta, where he is from and his family lives, and Los Angeles, where he resides.

The update comes in response to an event last summer in which the musician was charged with attacking Los Angeles police officers.

Shoko Kawata’s decision to take time off to have a baby – an unprecedented step for a mayor – has sparked weeks of debate inside Japan

In many other nations, no one would blink an eye. But when Japanese mayor Shoko Kawata announced she was taking maternity leave, her decision made headline news, spawned opinion polls and sparked a national debate.

And that debate is still unfolding in Japan, ever since she revealed her decision in May. On Monday, she told the assembly in the western city of Yawata she was confident her deputy could run things smoothly while she was away.

They claim to fix fine lines, blemishes and redness – but which stand up to scrutiny? We asked dermatologists and put them to the test to find out

• The best anti-ageing creams, serums and treatments

LED face masks are booming in popularity – despite being one of the most expensive at-home beauty products to hit the market. They claim to either reduce the appearance of fine lines, stop spots or calm redness, with some even combining different types of light to enhance the benefits.

However, it’s wise to be sceptical about new treatments that are costly and non-invasive, and to do your research before you buy. With this in mind, I interviewed doctors and dermatologists to find out whether these light therapy devices work.

Best LED face mask overall:
CurrentBody Series 2

Best budget LED face mask:
Silk’n LED face mask 100

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food, and the basic they scrimp on? The model and entrepreneur talks pants, lawnmowers and restoring classic cars with the Filter

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David Gandy is one of the most recognisable faces in fashion, starring in hundreds of campaigns for brands including Dolce & Gabbana, Burberry, Hugo Boss and many more. He was the first man nominated for model of the year by the British Fashion Council.

From 2014 to 2019 he designed a bestselling range for Marks & Spencer featuring underwear, sleepwear and more, and in 2021, he launched his own fashion and lifestyle brand, David Gandy Wellwear. A committed philanthropist, he has worked with several charities, from Save the Children to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, and backed the Centre for Social Justice’s Lost Boys report on the crisis facing boys and young men in the UK today. The David Gandy Wellwear summer collection is available now.

You told us the barbecue upgrades that make a big difference. Plus, we’ve got you covered for Father’s Day with 62 tried and tested gifts

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Lighter, drawn-out days, warmer nights, and World Cup watch parties can mean only one thing: alfresco dining. If you’re itching to get the barbecue out, we’ve rounded up reader tips and tricks – and some of our own – to help up your grill game.

If you need an upgrade to your setup, the Weber kettle barbecue “makes incredible food without any faff”, says Alex David, who gave it top spot in his test of the best barbecues. Or Argos’s affordable drum-shaped grill “has everything you need and a little more”, and was Alex’s budget favourite.

The very best double creams have a wildly complex taste, but which brands are a little scoop of sunshine and which are much of a muchness?

• The best supermarket natural yoghurts

This was a tricky taste test, not least because 70% of these creams tasted pretty much exactly the same, which is a clear reflection of how homogeneous our conventional food system has become (much of our cream is made from milk sourced from thousands of farms across the country and mixed together). Even the packaging is more or less identical, with a printed plastic tub and a peelable plastic lid.

British double cream is about 48% fat, which is higher than whipping cream (35%) and just below clotted (55% plus). This matters in practical terms because that’s why it whips more firmly, holds its shape longer and is less likely to split when added to a hot sauce. Conventional cream does the job well (it’s white, neutral in flavour and whips well), but really good cream is thick, gloopy and wildly fatty, with an unbelievably complex taste and remarkably nourishing effect; it’s also eminently whippable. Scooping a blob of cream like that straight from the tub can replenish energy and satiate in an almost alchemical way.

We’ve tried, tested and rounded up 62 thoughtful gifts – from gardening gloves to a cold brew coffee maker and a parkrun keyring – to make the father figure in your life feel special

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Whoever you’re celebrating this Father’s Day – your own dad or a father figure in your life – our bumper list of gift ideas should help you think beyond the norm (though we have included some sock options, because sometimes it’s OK to go classic).

Whatever their age or your budget, we’ve focused on sustainable products that stand the test of time. All of the products have either been tested by me or by our own brilliant testers on the Filter and should still be going strong on Father’s Day 2027 and beyond.

A family favourite transforms TV dinners into a summery event

It’s the time of year when the TV, balanced on the Ikea unit with castors, its feet supported by wooden splints, is wheeled between the kitchen doors so it faces out on to the terrace (flat roof). In the absence of a barbecue or outside shower, the TV is our seasonal shift; an inside object moved outside and, in the process, made (slightly) more exciting. As a result, TV dinners are also altered, as well as given another layer of soundtrack – birds shouting, people chatting in the bar below, the held-down horn of the articulated lorry that can’t reach the supermarket because a car is double parked – to the one coming out of the TV speakers. We also have a table outside, but that changes the nature of a TV dinner too much: the table is moved aside for wooden chairs, tea towels and plates on laps, with focaccia sandwiches with mortadella and parmesan cream for the meat eaters, and parmesan cream, tomato and a handful of green leaves for those who don’t.

Mortadella is considered an insaccati parzialmente cotti, or partly cooked sausage. Its origin is debated, with some suggesting it derives from the object it was pounded in, il mortaio (the mortar); others say the name can be linked back, as is so often the case, to the Romans, and a sausage flavoured with myrtle berries called farcimen murtatum. The dates around when it was first made are also debated, because of a mention of something called mortadella in 12th-century cookbooks, though that was likely made of veal or donkey. The 1600s are a better place to start, when a nobleman and agronomist called Vincenzo Tanara described meat: two-thirds lean from the pork shoulder and leg, cut into large cubes, then transformed through “sharp pounding”, stuffed and cooked at a moderate temperature. Alongside instructions for production, there were strict edicts regulating the labour-intensive processes involved in making luxury products for those who could afford them.

Is chocolate better served chilled? Do bananas go mushy? And won’t someone think of the avocados? Here is the final word on the fridge or cupboard conflict

If every summer has a trending drink, then 2026 promises to be the season of the chilled red. In news that our European neighbours, who have long been doing this, will roll their eyes at, Britons have discovered the delights of a cold glass of red wine. No more serving at room temperature, or warming it by the fire (or radiator) as if you’re the host of a country house gathering: this year if your pinot noir isn’t in an ice bucket, consider it social death. The Times reports that gen Z drinkers are driving the trend, with Ocado finding that 56% had drunk chilled red wine, or wine served over ice, in summer compared with 35% of the wider population.

“We tend to serve wine way too warm in this country, and red wine particularly,” says the wine expert Tom Gilbey. “It accentuates the alcohol and makes it taste like soup. Actually almost every wine is better served slightly cooler than we normally drink it, and some red wines are beautiful when they’re really quite cool.” The optimum temperature is around 10C (50F). “So 20 minutes in the fridge, or 10 to 15 minutes in an ice bucket. You don’t want to serve any wine too, too cold, but it’s really refreshing.

An almost-empty container can be a vessel for food alchemy

Using an almost-empty yoghurt pot to marinate meat and vegetables is one of my favourite ways to prepare dinner. It’s a really simple and tidy way to marinate food that not only saves on the washing-up, it also turns a few yoghurt scrapings that might otherwise be destined for the drain into a flavour-enhancing, tenderising, waste-saving hack.

Three ways with summer’s versatile vegetable: as a simple meal, a deliciously moist loaf and a South Asian achaar to spice up any cheese sandwich

Courgettes don’t have to be boring, thanks to their shapeshifting magic. Shave with a vegetable peeler, douse in olive oil and lemon juice and eat raw, or spiralise for noodles. Alternatively, grill until blackened, scoop out the creamy innards, and fold into tahini for a smoky dip. Courgettes are irresistible grated and turned into fritters, deep-fried or cut into thick rounds and roasted on a high heat so they caramelise, but don’t turn to mush. Finally, you can pickle them to enjoy their sunny flavour in the gloomier months.

I’d always wanted to represent my country at something, so when I learned about Mölkky, I got a team together

It was December 2023 and I was searching in the attic for Christmas decorations when my phone pinged. I pulled it out of my pocket and found a WhatsApp message from my son who was backpacking in Australia. The message read, simply: “You might want to take a look at this” – it was accompanied by a short video clip.

The footage was grainy – it was night-time somewhere in Queensland and the streetlights weren’t the brightest – but I could make out Louis and his travel companion Asher throwing what looked like a rolling pin at a collection of numbered wooden skittles.

Edward thinks of sex as playtime and has a vivid imagination, which Jane is happy to go along with despite being quite ‘vanilla’ herself

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

When I dreamed about Jane in a latex catsuit, we had one made

Brendan Maclean had never spoken with drag queen Karen from Finance in person, nor laid eyes on the man behind the makeup. Then came a chance encounter in Melbourne

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

I’d had a big, sparkly pop career in my 20s but by 2024 I was beyond my twink era, and getting by hopping from one weird gig to the next. Covid had really done a number on the music industry and, while my friend Paul Mac had kept me making music, I found myself drifting through a strange, boozy few years in Sydney. I’d been single since 2020 and my best friend was my cat.

Throughout that hazy time, I was as terminally online as ever. At 38 I was posting like a 20-year-old. One day, for no particular reason, I posted a track from the Dissociatives’ self-titled album from the mid-noughties. Paul, who I call my gay uncle, and Daniel Johns of Silverchair fame, had made just one LP together, and the obscure track, Thinking in Reverse, was one of my favourites.

Yusuf, 25, who works in finance, meets Hannah, 26, a PhD student

What were you hoping for?
Someone interesting, good chat is more important than anything. And a fun story. I like a random side quest.

The rules have changed and more taxpayers are being pulled into the net, not only the wealthy

Less generous rules have turned capital gains tax into a “cash machine” for the government, with income from the levy soaring by almost 80% to £24bn in the last tax year – equivalent to well over £800 a household.

A series of changes to the way the charge works means more people are being pulled into the capital gains tax (CGT) net, and not only the wealthy. And, given the scale of the change, this week experts were reminding consumers of legitimate ways to reduce a CGT bill.

Katie Kendrick, Cath Williams and Jo Darbyshire were subject to tens of thousands of pounds of hidden costs as their new-build freeholds soared in value, making their homes unsellable. Their campaign could finally end the ‘feudal’ system in England and Wales

When a leaflet about leasehold injustice landed on Cath Williams’ doorstep in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, nearly a decade ago, she barely gave it a second thought, tossing it straight into the bin. Had she given it more than a cursory glance, she’d have read about how residents on her new-build estate had found out the leaseholds for their homes had been sold without their knowledge, which could cost them all thousands of pounds. “Sometimes you get things through the door and you go, ‘what are they on about?’” recalls the 69-year-old retired university lecturer. It was of no interest to her. Or so she thought.

Williams hadn’t realised her home was leasehold when she decided to buy it. It was never mentioned in any promotional material, she says, and the word “leasehold” was only later added to her paperwork in pencil by an estate agent four weeks before her move in date – by then she had already paid her deposit and it was too late to back out. Her unease about what this would mean built over time and it soon became clear it would be a huge headache for her: any alterations to her home would require paying the freeholder an ever-increasing permission fee, the property would decrease in value as the lease got shorter, and the ground rent could increase drastically over time. Ultimately, it could leave her trapped and unable to sell her home.

Wuva staff’s kindness and empathy means we are able to plan more trips away

My husband has motor neurone disease (MND). For us to continue going away, we decided to buy a refurbished mobile hoist, which helps to get out of a bed, from the online mobility equipment company, Wuva.

It arrived quickly, but had been damaged in transit and didn’t work. I contacted Wuva out of hours via WhatsApp, and within five minutes I received an extensive apology and advised an engineer would call me shortly.

After falling for a scam call, ‘The Tech Chap’ host Tom Honeyands realised he’d given away vital details in social media posts

When Tom Honeyands realised he had been defrauded out of £70,000 he was furious and embarrassed – and left wondering if he had given away too many details on his social media videos.

Honeyands was on a work trip to Tokyo when he got a call from someone claiming to be from Lloyds bank. The caller asked if he had made a recent transaction in Singapore and when he said no, the scammer said his account had been compromised and that security details needed to be reset.

From doing chores to staying away from exes, some adults are buying sticker charts to help stick to their goals

• Tell us: is it OK to date a friend’s ex? We want to hear from you

There is a sticker chart on the kitchen cupboard in the Gray family home in Birmingham, England – the two Gray children, aged four and 10, get excited when it’s time to add another gold star. But they aren’t being rewarded for brushing their teeth or learning their spellings; this is someone else’s chart entirely.

“They know that mommy gets a gold star when she goes to the gym,” says Bek Gray, a 33-year-old healthcare professional who has been using sticker charts to motivate herself for one and a half years.

An increasing number of people are finding trail running relatively late in life – and they’re reaping the health benefits

Earlier this year, 62-year-old Karla Wagner placed second in the 100-mile division of the Grandmaster Ultras, an Arizona trail-running event designed for 50-and-over runners in the age group known as “grandmaster”.

For most of her adult life, Wagner, who is from Lander, Wyoming, avoided running because it triggered her asthma. But when asthma meds improved, she added trail running to her fitness mix and became completely hooked in her early fifties.

Many of us have reassured ourselves with the ‘five second rule’, but bacteria can transfer almost immediately – and sticks around for hours

You drop a piece of cucumber on the floor. Do you immediately throw it in the bin or reassure yourself of the age-old “five-second rule” and reckon it’s fine to pop it in your mouth after a quick rinse?

If you fall into the latter camp, John Tregoning, professor of vaccine immunology at Imperial College London, has some bad news. He refers to three studies into bacteria transfer that all point towards the rule being false.

Founded in 2004, the free weekly 5km event has grown into a global fixture of weekend life, taking place in parks, fields, seafronts and even prisons

An event to mark the millionth parkrun took place in west London on Saturday, acting as a celebration of the community cohesion and public health benefit that the charity has been aiming to achieve across the past two decades.

The former Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes joined thousands of locals and parkrun fanatics to mark the milestone in a west London park – the venue for the very first parkrun in 2004.

These tailored trousers are ideal for those sunny days when the forecast looks dodgy later on – or when there’s a heatwave but you still have to go to the office

I think we can probably agree that Audrey Hepburn would not have been seen dead in jorts. The baggy, grunge-adjacent knee-length denims that were everywhere last summer and are creeping back around are definitely cool. Totally a vibe. But elegant they are not.

The capri pant is an undeniably elegant solution to the problem of what to wear when jeans or tailored trousers are too hot and cumbersome, but you don’t want to wear shorts. For instance, when it is sunny while you are getting dressed, but you are going to be out all day and the forecast looks dodgy later on. Or when there is a heatwave but you still have to go to the office, so Daisy Dukes are not going to work.

Before choosing a stick to satisfy your Crayola makeup cravings, it’s wise to consider your skin type and tone

There’s something deeply satisfying about scribbling on your face with a makeup stick. Also, convenient. Solid sticks of foundation eliminate the risk of smashed or leaky bottles, are more compact and portable than liquids and creams, and can mostly be blended with fingertips, dispensing with brushes and sponges. They can be applied in a more localised way than other types of foundation and are particularly useful when someone – often with a deeper skin tone – benefits from two shades of foundation and doesn’t want them to merge into each other.

Sticks were all the rage for a few years, but fell from favour until Bobbi Brown’s excellent Skin Foundation Stick (£39) was practically the last one standing. Dior and Charlotte Tilbury recently revived the category and sticks are now enjoying a major comeback. Under the most scrutiny is Bobbi Brown herself, no longer a part of the eponymous brand, but helming the highly influential Jones Road. Her new Your Skin Foundation Stick (£36) is different from her groundbreaking Bobbi Brown formula, but exactly as I’ve come to expect from Jones Road – very moist, glowy and natural-looking. Although definitely not for everyone (including oily skins, and those who want full or matte coverage), it’s a sure-fire winner with devotees of Brown’s pared-back aesthetic. There are 30 shades in a selection of undertones. It spreads like butter, though if longevity is a priority, you’ll need a setting spray. But expect a comfortable ride and a pretty, non-caked finish.

Yves Saint Laurent saw the power of photography to push boundaries and take risks that had an impact in the fashion world and beyond. The new exhibition Yves Saint Laurent and Photography, at New York’s International Center of Photography, includes nearly 300 iconic photographs and archival objects with images by artists including Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn, Andy Warhol and others. Pairing photographs with contact sheets, campaign materials, magazines and personal images, the exhibit shows the vital role images played in legacy of the Yves Saint Laurent brand

Fashion house pays tribute to Chinese style with its 75th anniversary catwalk show in Shanghai

“New York may be the city that never sleeps, but Shanghai doesn’t even sit down.” For the British designer Ian Griffiths, who encountered this line in the New Yorker, it summed up why China’s biggest city was the right place to celebrate Max Mara’s 75th anniversary.

“Max Mara is a product for metropolitan women, and it would be patronising to assume that a metropolitan wardrobe should be western-centric,” Griffiths said.

This wetland south of Syracuse was saved from developers and preserved as an unspoilt haven for migratory birds

We rented Il Nido because we thought other people wouldn’t like it. Small and basic, without internet, the property was supposedly beside a beautiful national park famous for its coastline and migratory birds. The online picture suggested it was pressed up against one of those concrete pillars (common around Sicily) supporting a deserted and rotting motorway flyover. I was writing a thriller with mafia connections. My partner wanted to scrape off six months of fumes from her new job in London. Our daughter needed fun.

“This is a bomb,” said the hostess, opening a cupboard under the sink. “You turn it anticlockwise to go off.”

With Two Weeks in August and the return of The Four Seasons, TV dramas about nightmare getaways are having a moment. Here are Guardian readers’ tales of their own

In early 1969, my parents booked a holiday in Belfast for one week and a bed and breakfast in Dublin for one week. When we arrived at our Belfast destination, The Elsinore Hotel, there wasn’t another car in the parking lot and the hotel was empty except for the aged husband and wife owners. Being 12 years old, I didn’t think too much at the time about the quiet, empty place but the owners invited the whole family down to the dining room every evening and we enjoyed some great meals. Lots of pictures of JFK and the pope adorned many of the hotel walls and being a Catholic family ourselves, the hosts made a big fuss of us.

Britain’s Camping and Caravanning Club started as a cycle camping club 125 years ago. I cycle from its birthplace to one of its oldest campsites to see if its free-wheeling spirit survives

Skylarks call out a cascading trill as I pedal between the pink and white hawthorn blossoms that make my path look like a May Day parade. I’m on the outskirts of Oxford, a city I thought I knew well, yet as I follow the National Cycle Route 57 on the e-bike I’d picked up in Jericho, it feels as though I’ve discovered a secret passageway.

This year the Camping and Caravanning Club (CCC) turns 125 – and I’m celebrating with a 60-mile cycling and camping trip, leaving from the city where the organisation was born and heading to Walton-on-Thames to stay at one of the oldest campsites in the CCC network.

The French cities of Marseille, Aix, Avignon and Arles boast a wealth of museums and festivals showing work by contemporary artists. Here’s how to make the most of a dazzling cultural summer

My wife and I moved from London to Marseille a little over five years ago when our British passports still conferred “right to reside” in France. That first winter on the beach, in short sleeves, as our daughters played in the topaz-coloured Mediterranean and the sun set across an ever-clear blue sky, I understood why this part of southern France has always been popular with artists.

I was recently speaking about this with the painter Fanny Nushka and her sailor husband, Benoît Bouchet, on the terrace of Café la Muse in Marseille’s “coolest” neighbourhood. She said: “It took a long time to go back to blue. It’s like being in Paris and painting the Eiffel Tower. It’s dangerous to paint the Calanques [limestone coves] as an artist from here.”

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

Sparks have announced a new live album, which they claim was recorded on the moon. That somewhat ups the ante for other acts. Maybe Harry Styles will have to go to Mars for his next residency? Or Taylor Swift tour the asteroid belt? Regardless of all that, a lot of people have expressed the opinion that the Thursday news quiz reminds them of Uranus. Fifteen questions await you on topical news, general knowledge and pub culture. There are no prizes, but let us know how you get on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 252

‘Reading is having a moment,’ according to Tinder. But do its users actually appreciate books, or just talk about them to get dates?

Name: Booksmaxxing.

Age: The next big thing.

Once a year, Dutch kids, parents and teachers take part in a walking festival, heading out for four nights in a single week to explore their neighbourhoods, exercise and make friends. It’s a tradition that seems to be genuinely transformative

I shouldn’t have been surprised that the rain didn’t stop the Dutch kids. All day it had been thunderstorming, and the forecast didn’t look so great for the evening. And yet at 5pm, hundreds of kids started arriving – many by bike – with their parents to Amsterdam’s Westerpark, a beloved city park that caters to a more residential area of the capital. Today, it functions as a starting point: volunteers coordinate registration, and groups of children gather, decked out in raincoats and eager to embark on either a 5km or a 10km excursion around the surrounding neighbourhoods.

It’s the second night of Avondvierdaagse (which literally means “four-day evening walk”) , organised by a group of neighbourhood volunteers. It’s not a race, but if children complete every night, they get medals, a bouquet of flowers and, if they’re lucky, a lot of sweets. It’s not just Amsterdam; across villages, towns and cities in the Netherlands, hundreds of thousands of Dutch people are doing the same: every year, kids spend four evenings in early summer exploring their neighbourhoods with their school friends and parents as part of the Week van de Avond4daagse. Some places had celebrated earlier; others were walking the following week. A variation of the tradition has even made its way to Suriname, one of the Dutch former colonies. There are also four-day cycling and swimming events. According to the Royal Dutch Walking Association (KWbN), which helps coordinate the events, half a million people take part every year, in 700 locations across the country, powered by tens of thousands of volunteers.

Wharfedale, Yorkshire: On the trail of a wood warbler, I find a suite of woodland plants rising up from a fascinating land formation – limestone pavement

Grass Wood is a magnificent fragment of ancient woodland owned and exceptionally well managed by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. It is home to some lovely plants, including lily of the valley and herb paris. What became my defining revelation about the place and, in truth, about this whole area was down to a wood warbler.

It is among my favourite birds, so getting to see the individual singing just off the trail required me to enter the trees, rise up a short bank, and then sit for a long time on a rocky ledge. Slowly it dawned on me that the platform on which I rested, while carpeted in moss, was also incised into a tessellated pattern. From these narrow cracks in the limestone arose a suite of woodland plants. It was dense with ash seedlings, ferns and sedges, as well as linear thickets of dog’s mercury, but there – unmistakably where my hand rested – were strips of flowering herb paris.

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.

Last summer the St George’s cross was co-opted by anti-immigrant groups. Now, as the World Cup begins, some communities are reclaiming it as a symbol of a very different sort of pride

As I drove into London with my daughter a week ago, we passed a roadside pub festooned with dozens of England flags. Our eyes met in recognition: we were in one of those areas, we assumed. In the eyes of many, St George’s cross flags have become a kind of territorial marker in the English landscape, signifying a certain kind of identity, a certain kind of politics, not necessarily welcoming to all. As we got closer, though, we realised the pub was actually preparing for the start of the World Cup. Flags of other nations were also on display. We laughed at our mistake and relaxed a bit.

It’s a feeling many Britons might have experienced. We’re gearing up for a summer of both exciting international football and ugly far-right protests and riots, as recent events in Belfast and Southampton have shown. The England flag will be a prominent fixture of both – great news for flag sellers, but a confusing and anxious time for the rest of us. How did England’s national symbol come to evoke such mixed feelings and carry such contradictory meanings? Are we really at the stage of “good flags” and “bad flags”? What are we supposed to think when we see an England flag?

Jane and Alan Kelvey’s holiday yacht met a warship in the Channel – at a tense time for Anglo-Russian relations

“We actually had right of way,” said Jane Kelvey, a little crossly, though keeping it civil. “But we weren’t going to argue with a warship.”

The dramatic standoff in the Channel on Tuesday morning between Admiral Grigorovich, a 125-metre (409ft) battle-hardened Russian frigate, and Bright Future, a 12-metre (40ft) pleasure yacht owned and helmed by Jane, 69, and her husband, Alan, 71, has rather caught the nation’s imagination.

Descendants of Julia Kerr gather for recital at Einstein’s summer house near Berlin where revived opera was set

Albert Einstein throws a party at his lakeside house at which he presents to his guests his latest invention: a time machine.

So opens the opera Chronoplan, started in the late 1920s by the composer Julia Kerr, who took the score with her when she fled Nazi Germany with her family in early 1933, its planned premiere having been halted following Hitler’s takeover.

Did you visit the famed tree? Did you take photos of it? Please share them with us

The Major oak, one of Europe’s oldest, largest and most celebrated ancient trees, which has grown in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, England, for at least 1,000 years, has died.

The huge tree failed to produce any leaves this year, after becoming stressed by a series of hot, dry summers. Footfall from visitors admiring the oak and well-intentioned historical interventions have also not helped its longevity.

We’d like to hear from UK adult adoptees about they navigated their reunion with a birth parent

Guardian journalist David Batty has described the complex family trauma many adult adoptees have to navigate during reunion with their birth parents, often without professional support.

We would like other UK adult adoptees to share their experiences of adoption reunion. How challenging was it to forge relationships with birth relatives and to maintain them? What, if any, support did you receive? How did it impact your relationship with your adoptive family?

We would like to hear about the best film you have seen this year so far and why

The Guardian’s film writers have compiled their favourite films of the year so far – and we’d like to hear about yours, too.

Which films have captured your imagination this year? Are there any new releases from so far in 2025 that you would recommend watching?

We would like to hear about the best new podcasts you have listened to this year so far and why

Guardian writers have compiled the best podcasts of the year so far – and we’d like to hear about yours too.

Is there a podcast from this year that has you rapt? Are there any new releases that you would recommend?

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