There are 3,649 shows at the fringe this year, but how many embody its spirit of radical experimentation? I took a journey through foam, lube and gore to find out ...

Somewhere in Edinburgh, a man is drinking his own urine. Elsewhere, the story of a religious sect that commands its followers to use “butt plugs” plays out as a musical. In yet another room, a comedian sings the same song over and over for an hour.

It is shows like these that have sustained the welcomingly weird and ungovernable lore of the Edinburgh festival fringe. In recent years, though, the annual jamboree has been accused of becoming an increasingly commercially savvy entity. The radical experimentalism might just be intact, but does this now sit at the fringes of the fringe, rather than its centre?

Reverse decluttering is here, prompting a shudder from me and my fellow neat freaks. Why would you want to be surrounded by mementos when you could be perfectly tidy?

Older doesn’t always mean wiser. Jo Whiley has spoken about a home hack she picked up from – clang! – Dame Judi Dench, and I’m afraid I’m opposed to it with every fibre of my being. Whiley is in a new phase – her four children are grownup – so she recently began the most satisfying project of all: a decluttering spree. Hard even to type those words without a shiver of anticipation. Trigger warning for fellow neat freaks, though: this anecdote does not end well.

Whiley went to interview Dench for her RHS Roots podcast and found the actor’s house “packed with family photographs, children’s drawings and memories everywhere”. Mind-blowingly, she means this as a positive. “Seeing Judi’s reminded me that lived-in spaces are often the most beautiful because they reflect a lifetime of love, family and shared experiences,” she says. “I suddenly thought: ‘Why am I putting all these things away?’” As soon as I got home, I immediately put all the family photographs back out.” TLDR: I cleaned up and then I made it all messy again. Shudder.

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

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

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

Bruno Fernandes and Youri Tielemans will be key to Michael Carrick’s chances of success over a full season and of healing the rift between club and fans

Guardian writers’ predicted position: 5th (NB: this is not necessarily Jamie Jackson’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)

Last season’s position: 3rd

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

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

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

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

Name: Açaí.

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

Exclusive: Bridget Phillipson’s comments show her party feels voters have been alienated by Reform net zero attacks

Richard Tice should apologise to firefighters for his comments this week urging British people to “enjoy” this summer’s extreme heat, according to the Labour party chair.

Bridget Phillipson has called on Reform’s deputy leader to say sorry to those who, over the last few weeks, have battled wildfires across the country that have forced evacuations and destroyed homes.

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

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

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

Military orders criminal investigation into deaths of five-year-old and six family members in Gaza in 2024

The Israeli military admitted on Wednesday its troops had opened fire on a car carrying five-year-old Hind Rajab and six family members in Gaza in 2024, saying it had ordered a criminal investigation into the killing.

The killing of Hind and her family was one of the most high profile of a series of incidents involving civilian casualties during the first months of the Gaza conflict which prompted international outrage.

UCL researchers warn repeated exam attempts may dent students’ confidence and raise risk of dropping out

Forcing teenagers who fail GCSEs into multiple resits has a negative impact on their mental health, according to research to be published as pupils receive their grades on Thursday.

The study by academics at University College London (UCL) compared the mental wellbeing of students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who failed to reach a grade 4 or equivalent in maths or English GCSEs – and found that only those in England, where resits are mandatory, showed significantly lower wellbeing.

Aalim Ahmed, five, fell from 15th-floor window at tower block family had asked to be moved out of, court hears

An inquest into the death of a five-year-old boy who fell from a 15th-floor window has heard that more measures could have been taken to make it safer.

Aalim Ahmed, who was autistic, died when he fell from a kitchen window at a residential block in Plaistow, east London. His father, Makail Ahmed, rushed from the top floor temporary social housing flat and discovered his body shortly before 6am on 16 May 2024.

Officials say all seven people onboard killed, including Telemundo executive and Ecuador intelligence chief

Seven people, including five Americans, were killed when a safari helicopter crashed on Wednesday morning in a remote part of northern Kenya, according to local police and the state department.

Among the dead were an executive with Telemundo, the US-based Spanish-language network owned by NBC Universal, and the director of Ecuador’s national intelligence service.

Arturo Béjar, former Meta safety engineer, tells jury tech company was aware of products’ potential harm to children

Meta has taken a “don’t ask, don’t tell” strategy when it comes to the safety of children on its social media platforms, according to a whistleblower who testified during a landmark trial against the company on Tuesday. He is slated to continue his testimony on Wednesday.

Arturo Béjar, a former Meta safety engineer, told the jury that the company was aware of the harm its products caused children, which included its recommendations pushing content from sexual predators and violent and graphic images. He said he repeatedly raised the issue to various Facebook and Instagram executives but that they did little to resolve it.

Researchers laud return of giant tuna to North Sea after being fished almost to point of extinction

Researchers have lauded two giant bluefin tunas being caught off the coast of Yorkshire for the first time in more than six decades as a “success story” for marine conservation.

The tunas, which were caught a day apart off the coast of Whitby earlier this week, have mostly been absent along the north-east coast of Britain since the 1960s. While small numbers of the species have been spotted in the waters around Yorkshire in the previous years, the pair were the first to be caught for market from the North Sea since licences to catch the fish were issued in July.

Canadian contest sparked outrage from scores of frustrated runners online and in Canadian media

The organisers of the Edmonton Marathon have admitted the course was more than half a kilometre too long, after outrage from scores of runners who complained about the distance.

The error resulted in the upending of runners’ personal bests and potentially prevented some from breaking records.

PM wants to reduce department’s stranglehold on public purse and bring long-term thinking to economic policy

Andy Burnham is far from the first prime minister to dream of taming the power of the mighty Treasury.

Boris Johnson all but forced the resignation of Sajid Javid by handpicking his team; Margaret Thatcher favoured her economic adviser Alan Walters over Nigel Lawson, prompting the latter’s furious resignation; and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s power struggle was the stuff of Whitehall legend.

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

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

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

Senator Jon Ossoff, who is up for re-election, came up with arguably the standout line of the midterm elections so far

Jon Ossoff really struck a nerve. That much is clear.

The US senator for Georgia, running for re-election in November, came up with arguably the standout line of the midterm elections campaign so far when discussing Donald Trump at a rally on Sunday.

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
An unlikely relationship blossoms in Abigail Weinstock’s compelling and touching solo drama

It takes a brave writer/performer to make her character a sociopath. How to keep the audience on board with someone who is callous and indifferent?

In Abigail Weinstock’s sparkling one-woman show, 30-year-old Eliana has been caught making clandestine recordings in her neighbour’s bedroom and cannot deny it. A court summons follows. Even then, her first thought is how to game the system.

At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 31 August

All our Edinburgh festival reviews

The maker of indie classics Kids, Swoon and Poison on daring to have a temper in the 90s, what some producer credits mean – and what happened between her and Joaquin Phoenix

Trailblazing producer Christine Vachon bestrides the world of US independent film-making like a colossus. She has championed idiosyncratic American cinema for more than 35 years, scoring hits such as the romcom Materialists, which starred three superhero actors (Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans) and grossed $108m, alongside curiosities such as Zola, a strippers’ road-trip comedy based on a string of viral tweets.

Vachon got her start in the early 1990s. Her often scandalous movies – from Poison (gay prison sex) and Swoon (gay child killers) to Happiness (paedophile dad) and Kids (delinquent teens) – dominated the cultural conversation decades before boutique studio A24 had sold its first tote bag. Her production outfit Killer Films, which she founded in 1995 with Pamela Koffler, has as its logo a cartoon bunny with a target for a body, mischievously evoking the company’s blend of irreverence and danger. “I don’t think we’ve ever made a movie that somebody hasn’t been offended by,” Vachon said in 2000.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LBC’s Nick Ferrari can’t see what is stopping people buying a cheap toothbrush, but the grinding reality of living in poverty creates its own priorities

I don’t listen to Nick Ferrari on LBC very often. His antagonistic way of dealing with complex problems gets me screaming at the radio far too easily. Last month was a perfect example. Someone from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was on discussing research showing that about 7 million people are struggling to afford basic essentials, including toothpaste and toothbrushes, because of the cost of living crisis.

This did not strike me as a controversial finding. The cost of fuel, heating, food, school, clothes – everything – has gone up, while wages and benefits have not risen enough to keep pace. Ferrari, however, latched on to the toothbrushes. I found myself listening to him talk about the price of cheap toothbrushes in pound shops and at Asda. At times, it sounded like a price-comparison advert. At other times, it sounded like lazy journalism: take a complicated issue, strip it of all context and turn it into something that will generate outrage, clicks and applause.

Dr Katriona O’Sullivan is a psychologist, author and professor at Maynooth University. She is the author of the bestselling memoirs Poor and Hungry, and is a weekly columnist for the Irish Independent

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

The party’s deputy leader Richard Tice says we should stop worrying about extreme heat and enjoy it. This dangerous nonsense will wreck our finances and the planet

So now we know: the smart response to the UK’s summer of record temperatures is to do precisely nothing. According to Richard Tice, Reform UK’s deputy leader, the climate crisis is just one of those things. Nothing can be done about it, so we should simply bask in the sunshine.

It is reasonable to assume Tice would not have said anything quite as crass had he been addressing people in Stourbridge who have seen their homes burn to the ground. Or the farmers whose crops shrivel in parched fields. Or the firefighters exhausted from battling wildfires across Britain.

Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist

Nige’s gift, Dicky’s love of global heating and so much more – what fun it is watching the party implode

You would need to have a heart of stone not to fall about laughing. There was a time not so long ago when Reform could give a passable impression of a vaguely functional political party. One that knew its audience and had learned how to get its message across through the media. Admittedly this was largely because the party was a one-man band with all its MPs accepting that they owed their entire existence to Nige. They were satellites to his sun. Nigel Farage was Reform, and Reform was Nige.

In recent months, though, things have been falling apart and Reform now resembles an anarchic end-of-the-pier clown show. And chaos has seldom been this entertaining. The fun started when Nige had an uncharacteristic fit of humility and tried to pretend he was only a first among equals with the grandiose announcement of a “shadow cabinet” of four people. Largely because that’s about as many serious politicians as he had at his disposal.

Competition and Markets Authority on message with PM’s planned purge of hidden fees and add-on charges

• Trainline, Virgin Atlantic and Red Driving School face investigation

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is on-message with Andy Burnham’s declaration of war on the small – and sometimes not-so-small – hassles and expenses of everyday consumer life created by companies’ underhand and misleading pricing tactics. Trainline, Virgin Atlantic and Red Driving School found themselves under investigation on Wednesday for various forms of alleged “drip pricing” – not being upfront about mandatory add-on charges, in other words.

The prime minister had nothing to do with the CMA’s pursuit, it should be said. The watchdog’s “consumer protection drive” pre-dates his arrival and was encouraged by legislation under the last Tory government – the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act of 2024, which gave the regulator “direct enforcement” powers, meaning it no longer had to go to court under consumer protection laws. And it is using those powers: eight cases were opened last November and driving schools AA and BSM plus the ticketing site StubHub UK have already been fined.

Healthy women under 50 are now more at risk of the condition. What I didn’t know is that intense exercise could be to blame and the condition could cost me hundreds of dollars

If you’re in your 40s, I have a great trick for getting people to spontaneously tell you how young you are: develop shingles. Friends, acquaintances and medical professionals will rapidly inform you that the painful rash is an older person’s disease and, “You’re a bit young to get that, aren’t you?”

I say this because at the tender age of 43, I have come down with a horrible case of ocular shingles. When I first went to urgent care about a weird red spot on my nose, a swollen eye and a terrible headache, the nurse looked dubious when he told me it might be shingles. “You’re a bit young,” he said. When I then went to the ER as instructed – shingles near the eye is a medical emergency that can blind you – the ophthalmologist said the same thing. According to conventional medical wisdom, shingles is a disease you get if you’re elderly or immunocompromised.

Poll after poll shows the same thing. The American people know that the current economic system is rigged

The media pundits have written article after article desperately trying to understand why progressive candidates, despite being heavily outspent, keep defeating establishment Democrats in primaries around the country. Well, the answer is not complicated.

Whether it is a corrupt campaign finance system, unprecedented income and wealth inequality, a broken and wildly expensive healthcare system, the enormous threats posed by AI or an immoral and destructive foreign policy, progressives are talking about the real issues facing working families. And they are providing real solutions. Establishment Democrats are not.

Amid the grief and rage at a tragic loss, it’s right to differentiate between those who fought a culture war and others who just sought the truth

Even now it is very difficult to process the scale of tragedy that engulfed Jason Arday and those who loved him. The unbearable sadness at his death; the wretched knowledge that the very public onslaught against him began with the malign machinations of a self-defined “race realist” – who believes that, in an ideal world, black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”. The horror that a rightwing and far-right campaign seeking a victim to fuel its nativist prejudices can now crow that it found one.

There is wide and profound grief and of course there is rage, focused and unfocused. Both were on display as thousands joined a protest vigil in Trafalgar Square on Monday evening.

Hugh Muir is executive editor, Opinion

In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• First Test day one: Pakistan 171; England 112-2

• Root (37*) and Cox (23*) add 64 to leave deficit of 59

For all that Joe Root was playing his 167th Test match for England, and had led the side on 65 previous occasions, there will surely have been a few butterflies as he pulled on the blazer and walked out for the toss on his home ground.

Root was resuming what he once described as an “unhealthy relationship” with the captaincy, while a supposedly one-off return to the job earlier this summer ended in a crushing defeat to New Zealand. Aged 35, England’s premier batter could easily have said a polite “no thank you” when the vacancy came around again.

• USA striker missed no matches after sending-off

• ‘Far too often now decisions are viewed as corrupt’

Howard Webb was “really troubled” by the decision of Fifa’s disciplinary committee to suspend Folarin Balogun’s ban for a red card during the World Cup, warning of a growing belief in refereeing conspiracies among supporters. Webb, English football’s chief refereeing officer, was speaking before the new Premier League season, where, among a series of new measures, independent assessments of key refereeing decisions are to be made public for the first time.

“I was really troubled by it,” Webb said of the reprieve for the USA striker Balogun, which followed a direct appeal from the US president, Donald Trump. “What do we know? We know for sure that a red card was shown. I understand why it was given. We know that there was pressure placed by a politician on to Fifa, because that was admitted. And we know that the suspension was taken away for that particular tournament and suspended through a process which seemingly didn’t exist before the tournament started.”

• Defender to provide cover for injured Saliba and Timber

• Villa braced for fresh bid from Al-Hilal for Ollie Watkins

Arsenal have agreed a £51m deal to sign Ezri Konsa from Aston Villa. The Premier League champions have been keen to find defensive cover for William Saliba and Jurriën Timber, who are out with injuries. They have tracked Konsa throughout the summer and have made a breakthrough in the negotiations.

Mikel Arteta hopes Konsa, whose Villa contract has two years to run, can help make light of Saliba’s absence in central defence. The timeframe for the Frenchman’s return is unclear but he is not expected to play before mid-October, having sustained a back injuryin France’s World Cup semi-final defeat against Spain.

• Australian reveals ‘huge mistake’ in Instagram post

• Kyrgios tested positive at ATP 250 event in June

Nick Kyrgios has been suspended after testing positive for cocaine, with the 31-year-old Australian revealing on Instagram on Wednesday that he had “made a huge mistake”. The former Wimbledon finalist’s suspension was confirmed by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) shortly afterwards.

Kyrgios tested positive while playing at an ATP 250 event in Mallorca in June, with the presence of cocaine in his system confirmed by tests at a World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) laboratory last month. Under ITIA regulations, provisional suspensions are mandatory for positive tests for cocaine, although Kyrgios has the right of appeal.

Item, a 10-1 chance, ran down Almaqam to win the International Stakes at York with Constitution River and Ombudsman only third and fourth

It all went according to plan for the low-numbered stalls there, as Lexington Blitz fired out into the lead and gave the far side an advantage that they never surrendered.

The first four home were drawn five, nine, four and six.

• Homegrown star has been longstanding target for Italians

• Jones in the final year of his contract at Anfield

Inter have submitted an offer of €30m rising to €35m (£30m) for Curtis Jones, with the Liverpool midfielder expected to leave his boyhood club after a 16-year association. Jones has been a target for Inter since January and was the subject of a failed €25m bid from them in June.

Liverpool valued their homegrown midfielder closer to €40m but, with Jones in the final year of his contract and no sign of an agreement over an extension, that figure is unlikely to be reached.

• 27-year-old Dutch rider takes win in Cumbria

• GB’s Josie Nelson in third, Italy’s Chiara Consonni second

Lorena Wiebes took the victory in the first stage of this year’s Tour of Britain. The opening stage started and finished in Cockermouth on a circuit spanning 158.9km in Cumbria.

The Dutchwoman powered to victory in a thrilling sprint finish, where the Team SD Worx-Protime rider narrowly pipped her rivals over the line. Italy’s Chiara Consonni finished in second, while Great Britain’s Josie Nelson claimed third.

Justice department claims there’s ‘no dispute’ over whether ex-FBI head’s post could be read as a threat against Trump

The US Department of Justice has defended its prosecution of former FBI director James Comey, claiming in new court documents there is “no serious dispute” that his social media post last year featuring a photo of seashells arranged to read “8647” could be interpreted as a threat against Donald Trump.

“There is no serious dispute that an objective viewer of Comey’s post could read it to mean ‘Kill President Trump’,” prosecutors wrote in a document filed on Tuesday in response to efforts by Comey’s efforts to have the case dismissed.

PM says public money alone won’t solve problem but ‘we did it in the pandemic, we can do it again’

• ‘Burnham’s writing cheques, this one might bounce’: homeless people doubt PM’s plan

Andy Burnham has said government money alone may not be enough to get rough sleepers off the streets by Christmas, as experts called for more of a plan to deal with the problems that cause homelessness.

Speaking on a visit to the north-east of England, the prime minister said he felt “very passionately” about tackling rough sleeping and wanted the wider society to play a part in wiping it out.

People told they and their pets should keep out of river at Ham amid anger over Thames Water’s treated sewage plan

Swimmers are being warned not to enter the water at the first official bathing site on the River Thames, in south-west London, because of toxic blue-green algae in the water.

The blue-green algal blooms are rare in moving water but are likely to be caused by the extreme heat, low river flow, and nutrient pollution from sewage waste.

• Hungary’s Sandor Csanyi highly critical of Fifa president

• He cites dismissal of COO Kevin Lamour as ‘final straw’

Gianni Infantino has lost the support of another one of Fifa’s vice-presidents, with the Hungarian football federation chief, Sandor Csanyi, criticising the president’s “professional judgment, ethical standards and leadership”.

In an explosive letter sent to Infantino on Tuesday, which was first obtained by the news agency Agence France-Presse, Csanyi states that he has “lost the confidence I previously placed in you” and describes the “unexpected dismissal” of Fifa’s chief operating officer, Kevin Lamour, as the “final straw”.

Network Rail and Southern owner GTR apologise after investigators reveal picture of possible heat-buckled track

Rail operators have apologised after a report into last Thursday’s derailment in East Sussex found a track defect on the approach to where the train derailed on the hottest day of the year so far.

An interim report by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) said CCTV images showed the “track geometry irregularity” existed before the incident near Lewes injured 30 people.

Image captured in early June shows animal foraging in the waterway in first since early 1900s, signaling its recovery

An otter has been spotted in the Bronx River for the first time in more than 100 years, in a further sign that New York’s previously befouled waterways are recovering some of their ecological health.

The North American river otter was photographed by a motion-activated camera foraging near some vegetation in the Bronx River, a waterway that flows through New York’s Bronx and empties into the East River.

Discovery marks latest grim finding in lake as water levels in crucial reservoir outside Las Vegas continue to decline

Human remains have once again been discovered at Lake Mead outside Las Vegas, Nevada, marking the latest in a line of gruesome discoveries as water levels in the crucial reservoir continue to drop, authorities said.

These remains were discovered on 16 August, USA Today reported. The National Park Service (NPS) told the outlet there did not appear to be anything suspicious about the body.

Subsidies and a crackdown on armed groups are helping smallholders rebuild their lives, leaving behind decades of conflict and fear

Surrounded by towering oil palm trees on his farm in the small village of Caño Barbú, near San Pablo in northern Colombia, Yoger Payares uses a malayo – a pole-mounted iron tool with a hook – to hack at the fronds of one, freeing a bunch of its vibrant reddish-orange fruit so it falls to the ground.

Today, Payares proudly works in the oil palm industry. But for more than a decade, just yards away, he grew coca leaves, becoming embroiled in the illicit industry in 1990 after leaving his job as a cattle farmer.

Hottest periods this year in most sea regions would have been ‘virtually impossible’ in a preindustrial climate

Carbon pollution has fuelled a “massive expansion” of marine heatwaves in Europe this summer, research has found, with some waters recording temperatures 6C higher than normal.

The hottest fortnights of this year would have been “virtually impossible” in a preindustrial climate in three of the four sea regions studied, according to analysis by World Weather Attribution, while in the Celtic region, which covers much of the water around the British Isles, heat hit levels that used to strike just once a century.

Expected quarterly price cap rise of 4% likely to wipe out benefits of Andy Burnham’s VAT cut on electricity bills

Household energy bills across Great Britain are expected to climb to a three-year high this winter as the impact of the Middle East war wipes out Andy Burnham’s tax cut on electricity bills.

The government’s cap on energy prices is on track to rise by 4% from this October to the equivalent of £1,729 a year through the last three months of 2026, which could hit struggling households especially hard this winter, according to analysis by the energy consultancy Cornwall Insight.

Move by Years, which provides personalised meals in subscription-based service, follows recipe change

A dog food brand has recalled all of its fresh meals after reports that a recipe change may have caused some animals to develop an eye condition that, if left untreated, can lead to sight loss.

The brand Years said owners should stop feeding its fresh meals to their dogs “immediately” and also told them not to feed them to any other animal, or to donate or sell them.

In the late 1950s my friend and Guernsey neighbour John Hall, who has died aged 98, was part of an intrepid team of British test pilots. During the cold war they helped with the birth of the English Electric Lightning, the first – and last – entirely British-built supersonic jet fighter.

For years the Lightning was the RAF’s main interceptor, with a phenomenal rate of climb. American fighter pilots envied its performance; they called it “the pocket rocket”. To achieve such power, the prototypes required rigorous testing from John and his pals, who pushed them to their limits.

Migration minister asked how he intends to stop deportations of people ‘who had lived in Sweden for decades’

The deportation and removal of British citizens from Sweden over Brexit residency rights is damaging relations with the UK amid efforts to improve links with London, a Swedish MP has said.

Håkan Svenneling, representative for Värmland, where a 78-year-old British widow, Joyce Thomas, has been given four weeks to leave Sweden after 21 years of residency, has written to the migration minister, Johan Forssell, asking what he “intends to do to stop the deportations”.

Presidential deputy chief of staff Iryna Mudra dismissed day after former defence minister called for wartime election

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired a senior aide amid a fresh corruption investigation – one day after a former defence minister warned the country was facing “a crisis of governance” and needed to hold a wartime presidential election.

Iryna Mudra, a presidential deputy chief of staff, was dismissed by decree after multiple reports in Ukrainian media that her house was being searched by officials investigating an alleged money-laundering scheme.

President says he plans to meet dictator this year but Kim Yo-jong says Washington remains Pyongyang’s enemy

Donald Trump has said he is planning to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong-un later this year, though the reclusive leader’s younger sister cast doubt on their communications and dampened hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough between them.

Trump, who also claimed North Korea had 57 nuclear weapons, had suggested he and Kim were holding secret negotiations on Tuesday after announcing the US would downgrade its participation in military exercises held by South Korea, a US ally. Asked whether Kim had responded to his request for a conversation, Trump said: “Yeah, he has.”

Star’s extreme proximity to Sagittarius A* means it could open new window onto black hole’s fundamental properties

Astronomers have detected the fastest known star in the Milky Way, hurtling around the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy.

The star, called S301, travels at about 25,000km (15,500 miles) per second, 100,000 times faster than a commercial plane. It is also the closest known star to the Milky Way’s central black hole, Sagittarius A*, approaching it around the distance of Saturn to the Sun.

Madrid government changes stance after previously saying anyone who entered territory illegally would be sent back

• Europe live – latest updates

The Spanish government has U-turned and said it will allow 500 migrant children in Ceuta to relocate to the mainland.

The majority of the estimated 70,000 people who crossed into Ceuta – a Spanish territory on the coast of north Africa – on 30 July have returned to Morocco. However, under Spanish law, the state has a duty of care to young, unaccompanied migrants until they reach the age of 18.

Owner of firm behind ‘Temu Range Rover’ will open facility in Bedfordshire in autumn

The Chinese carmaker behind the irreverently nicknamed “Temu Range Rover” is plotting further UK expansion with a major research and development centre in England.

Chery, which makes the Jaecoo and Omoda car brands, said the launch of a new R&D site was “the next step in our long-term plan” for Britain as it also moves towards manufacturing its cars in the UK.

Company’s robots have gained global fame via videos of them performing martial arts and as dancers for pop stars

Unitree, the world’s biggest humanoid robot maker, has made a spectacular entry on to China’s stock market, with its shares surging by more than 600%.

The Chinese company’s robots have gained global fame via viral videos of them performing martial arts, running at Olympic speeds and serving as backup dancers for pop stars.

A rise in lawsuits over AI use in employment decisions is raising questions about how companies hire and fire

For the last four years, Erin Kistler has applied for thousands of jobs at companies like Paypal, Microsoft and Netflix, only to find her résumé disappear into a black hole. A product manager with nearly 20 years of experience, Kistler believes she was qualified for every role, yet she never received a single interview.

Now, Kistler is suing Eightfold AI, the Silicon Valley maker of hiring software used by hundreds of companies, including those where she applied, in a class-action lawsuit. The case, filed in January in California court, is one of the first to argue that automated screening functions as an undisclosed consumer report or applicant dossier, ranking job applicants on their likelihood of success without giving them the chance to see or challenge the results, according to Kistler’s legal team.

Twenty-nine US states are seeking huge damages, claiming Meta’s platforms were addictive by design

In 1994, more than 40 US states came together to sue one of the most powerful industries on Earth: big tobacco.

The suits brought together diverse claims centred on tobacco companies’ misleading advertising and contribution to a mounting public health crisis. They ended in a negotiated settlement with the US government, in which the companies agreed to pay more than any industry ever, and the states agreed to drop a large portion of their claims.

Three years ago, he won the Edinburgh comedy award with a work in progress. Now he’s back with a show inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Friedrich Nietzsche. Isn’t this all a bit grownup?

Among past winners of the Edinburgh comedy award, few seemed less likely when the starter’s pistol fired than Ahir Shah in 2023. Not because Shah wasn’t a contender: he had been nominated twice before. But that year he arrived on the fringe with a mere work in progress, not even eligible for the award. Shah’s director, the great Adam Brace, had recently died and the comic had just returned to the stage after a break from comedy. But then Ends, a tribute to the performer’s late grandfather and a hymn to multicultural Britain, began gathering steam. Shah reclassified it as a work-now-finished and, to a chorus of rapturous acclaim, it bagged the biggest prize in world comedy.

Three years on, he is returning with the follow-up: less uncut diamond this time and more, he hopes, a polished gem. But didn’t the success of Ends prove polish was unnecessary? “You can get very in your head approaching the fringe, thinking: ‘Well, it has to be absolutely locked in by August because x thousand pounds are on the line,’” Shah admits. So doing a work in progress allowed him to “quiet some of those voices – and have less of a panic attack about what you’re going to say”.

In 2022, Rory Kennedy exposed the aviation safety scandal in which 346 people died – but since then, a plane door has blown out mid-flight and more whistleblowers have come to the fore. Will anyone pay for this?

It is unfortunate that a sequel was required to Rory Kennedy’s 2022 documentary feature, which alleged that the profit-driven culture at a US aeronautics firm led to two plane crashes and the deaths of 346 people. But given the lack of corporate accountability evident at the end of Downfall: The Case Against Boeing – and the apparent complicity of regulatory body the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) – it was inevitable.

Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing opens with a rundown of a significant development in the story: the mysterious death in March 2024 of John Barnett, a former Boeing employee turned whistleblower. Barnett, a contributor in the first film, was in the middle of a deposition when he was found dead at his hotel, which investigators ruled a suicide. Is this another casualty to add to Boeing’s mounting death toll? And is the alarming aviation safety scandal – supposedly resolved in November 2020, when the FAA lifted its grounding order on the Boeing 737 Max – in fact still ongoing?

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

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

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

Uninteresting mythology and junky effects push a once-promising horror franchise further from what it once was

When the Insidious franchise started in 2010, it felt like a liberating moment for director James Wan and writer (and later director) Leigh Whannell, the Australian duo who captured the zeitgeist with the original Saw movie, which imported the gonzo energy of low-budget Ozploitation flicks. As the partners quietly ceded control to other film-makers, the Saw sequels sunk into gross, dreary exercises in mechanized murder, and they moved on to other projects. When they emerged with Insidious, another shoestring horror movie, it was a confident and wildly entertaining return to form, like a down-and-dirty fusion of 80s staples such as Poltergeist and Ghostbusters.

Now the pattern has repeated itself. Though Whannell stuck around longer than Wan – Wan directed the sequel, but Whannell directed the third film and has writing or story credits through the most recent sequel, Insidious: The Red Door – the creative returns have diminished over time, even if the cheap productions are still like a license to print money. Insidious: Out of the Further arrives as the sixth entry in the series, and the fun has almost completely evaporated, replaced by a dull mythology that would be hard to piece together even if the sequels hadn’t come out in scrambled chronology.

After being shelved as a tax-writeoff, this Looney Tunes reboot redraws the hapless hunter as the Erin Brockovich of the cartoon world

Here is a quirky, peculiar, yet strangely diverting live-action-toon hybrid of the kind that hasn’t been popular at the movies for many a day; it gives us a new twist on the surreal forever war between Wile E Coyote and the speedy Road Runner (catchphrase “beep beep”, pronounced “meep, meep”). The music over the closing credits will incidentally disappoint fans of this animated franchise; they’ve gone with the Clash’s I Fought the Law, but surely it should be Roadrunner from Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers?

Coyote Vs Acme is a comedy whose obsessive and hyperactive pedantry is exhausting, but arguably part of the point, aimed at America’s litigious culture, corporate arrogance and monopoly capitalism. So when producers Warner Bros initially decided to shelve the whole thing as a tax writeoff, that must have felt to director Dave Green like an ironic cartoon anvil to the head. Well, the film was rescued and it would be great therefore to discover that this is a masterpiece. Sadly it’s not, but there are some laughs and the pure fanatical oddity makes this watchable.

Dr Max Pemberton isn’t uncompassionate or especially radical, but he assembles a team of medics whose stance on the condition is clear from the off. This is a documentary that will incense and offend many

Presenter Max Pemberton, a psychiatrist in the NHS, Daily Mail columnist and author, and the experts he has assembled, waste no time in setting out their stall in The Great ADHD Myth?. This is a documentary that will incense and offend some of its viewers, and its scepticism regarding ADHD is clear from the outset. “It’s certainly not a medical condition as far as I’m concerned,” says the former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Dr Iona Heath. “We’re going to look back and think: did we actually put a chemical cosh on an entire developing generation of brains?” says a neurophysiological psychologist. “The industry around ADHD is about making money at the cost of the misery of others,” says a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

These represent the three main questions raised by Pemberton. The first is whether ADHD is a neuro-developmental disorder – ie do those diagnosed with the condition have different brains from those without – or whether it is a way of suppressing natural tendencies (especially those of children) and inducing behaviours that society deems acceptable. The second is how doctors should approach treatment, which most often involves amphetamines. “These are controlled drugs,” says consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Sami Timimi. “There’s good reason why we warn the rest of the population [about them].” The third question is – who benefits from the increase in diagnoses we have seen in the past decade or so? How has ADHD moved from a relatively unknown condition 10 years ago to affecting about 2.5 million people in the UK today (including a 200% increase in people being referred for diagnosis in the past five years)?

The maverick former Public Image Ltd bassist takes us on a typically picaresque journey through his ‘Kafka-esque’ days at Transport for London, being named by Sid Vicious and his spiritual learnings

Sometimes, on the top deck of a London bus, pension-age punks will politely disturb the concentration of a man on his iPad. “They’ll say: ‘Are you Jah Wobble?’” recounts the musician born John Wardle, his upbeat cockney accent ringing with delight. They will ask if he’s working on anything. “And I like to say: ‘Yes, I’m recording an album. I’m doing it right now.’”

In the 2020s, the 68-year-old bassist and bandleader has been revisiting the city of his birth and youth, composing and producing albums including the cosmic dub of The Bus Routes of South London, or the celestial electronica of Thames Symphony, while traversing London on public transport.

Scotland’s Thea Musgrave is still writing radical music with perambulatory soloists and a message of hopefulness. Her latest work, for bassoonist Amy Harman, comes to the Proms this weekend

Thea Musgrave is a phenomenon. Born in Scotland in 1928, the composer has lived in the US since the early 70s, but has lost none of her accent, her infectious optimism, and her drive to keep writing. As she told me from her home in California, with a joyfully rolling laugh, “I’ve got to this age, and from now on I’m going to do what the fuck I want to do”. That includes her latest opera, on Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando – Orlando: An Escapade – which will premiere at the Buxton festival next year, and a new bassoon concerto for Amy Harman, Out of the Darkness, which you can hear at the Proms this weekend, on 23 August.

The bassoon concerto develops one of the central innovations of Musgrave’s life and career, which she’s still intensifying and exploring in her 99th year: what she calls her “dramatic-abstract” approach to her orchestral compositions, in which the players aren’t a single collective told what to do by a conductor’s gestures, but instead are released as individual characters and identities.

Four years since their last album, the anthemic Australian band are back with a fresh sound and new music about finally being ‘overwhelmingly OK’

When tickets for the first Gang of Youths shows in Australia in four years went on sale last month, a one-off show in Thirroul sold out in 45 seconds; two shows at Sydney Opera House went in minutes. Though I have loved the band for years, I was surprised by how emotional it was to see them play on home soil again in Sydney. Dave Le’aupepe, who has a claim to being the country’s most charismatic frontman, seemed to sense the mood. “Thank you for loving me,” he told the audience. “I know it’s very difficult.”

As I left the show, bewildered and tearful, I locked eyes with a stranger in the foyer who was also crying. Without saying a word, we both burst out laughing; feeling a bit silly, perhaps, but also a sense of wonder at our shared reaction. I later heard there were two marriage proposals in that audience; I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more.

Royal Albert Hall, London
With Stravinsky and Copland also on the programme, this was a lively if uneven concert

In their different ways, both Stravinsky and Copland turned to the vernacular to lend authenticity and atmosphere to their ballet scores. Stravinsky incorporated folk tunes and popular song to depict the hurdy-gurdy players and wet nurses of St Petersburg’s bustling Shrovetide fair in Petrushka. For Billy the Kid, Copland used cowboy songs to paint a wild west settlement with its outlaws, saloons and gunfights. Fast-forward 80 years and Gabriel Kahane added a flavour of folk music, though without quoting anything specific, to spice up his clarinet concerto. Written for New York Philharmonic principal clarinet Anthony McGill, the work’s European premiere formed the centrepiece of a lively concert conducted with visible enthusiasm by Ryan Bancroft.

The concerto opened with McGill slipping in seamlessly over shimmering tuned percussion and string glissandi. Elegant scalar passages led into a songful section with a jazz-meets-klezmer vibe. This is immensely likable music, with McGill a confident and stylish soloist. Orchestral textures featured pianos – both grand and muted upright – as well as celesta and percussion, the latter more often than not played unconventionally. The slow movement with its drawn-out lyrical lines found McGill cucumber cool, before eerie bowed vibraphone and a hair-raising cadenza launched a finale with a touch of an Irish jig about it. Kahane himself added a nice personal touch, taking to the stage to sing and play piano for McGill’s silky smooth encore.

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

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

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

A vivid and hopeful study of how culture endures in the midst of extreme violence

Towards the end of her subtly piercing book about art in wartime, Charlotte Higgins recounts an autumn visit to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, in the north-east of the country, a short drive from the Russian border. In a tranquil park, she sees a man standing in a stream, making stones balance on top of each other in a teetering tower – “a metaphor of life in that city,” she writes, “that would have seemed too obvious for a novel”.

Still, as a good novelist would, Higgins doesn’t seem to beg telling details from a place so much as have them leap to her open eye and ear. The cartoons a boy is watching that fall silent in a power cut, allowing the distant boom of explosions on the frontline to be heard. A cityscape tattooed on a young poet’s arm that cuts off suddenly where skin from his leg was grafted after he was torn up by shrapnel. Cataracts of larkspur, as Higgins describes them, in a field in the frontline Donbas region, “pouring down the hill, pooling at the bottom into a great lake of blooms … Larkspur thrives on ground where there has been recent disturbance.”

A historian charts the emergence of a democracy-crushing dystopia that is – in some ways – already with us

Pulitzer prize-winning US historian Jill Lepore’s new book addresses the threat posed to liberal democracy by artificial intelligence. According to Lepore, the extraordinary power of private tech companies led by men whose priorities may not align with the wellbeing of the Earth or its inhabitants is set to destroy civilisation as we know it.

Lepore’s concept of the Artificial State is capacious. It includes both a fantasy desired by a select few and a reality that is already with us. The fantasy is of an atomised society in which an elite can transcend biological and planetary restrictions, “abandoning constitutional democracy, the liberal nation-state, and even humanity itself for rule by automation, government by machine, and replacement by artificial intelligence”. The reality is that of public discourse having shifted to privately owned platforms on which monetised attention is valued above all else.

Set across three interwoven timelines, this absorbing tale of an abandoned mining town explores courage, cowardice and how history is recorded

Téa Obreht’s novels teem with conflicting narratives, treacherous landscapes and speculative fictions. Her 2010 prizewinning debut, The Tiger’s Wife, examined themes of death, miracles and outsider status in the midst of a fictional Balkan war. Her fourth novel, Sunrise, returns to a western frontier haunted by ghosts and stalked by outlaws, a territory Obreht first explored in her second book, Inland.

It is August 2024. Nina Terzic has just jumped – or was she pushed? – from a crash-landing Cessna into a lake somewhere in the mountains of Wyoming. She manages to swim to shore. There is no sign of her boyfriend Ben, who was in the plane with her, and her phone – though miraculously intact – has no signal. Nina, a postgraduate student, was supposed to be on holiday from her job as a live-in nanny in New York. We get the feeling that her relationship with Ben might have a darker underside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Human by day, vampire by night, Coen has difficult choices to make – beginning here in the 1300s, his adventure could span centuries in upcoming sequels

The Blood of Dawnwalker could be the start of an epic saga. Created by some of the talent behind The Witcher 3, this dark fantasy role-playing game takes place in the 14th century in the fictional land of Vale Sangora, a Carpathian valley of wetlands, mountains and forests cut off from the rest of the world and under the rule of a vicious vampire clan.

The developers envisage Dawnwalker as a trilogy. And because protagonist Coen is half vampire himself, that trilogy can skip across time, culminating in the modern day.

Sonic’s creators explain how the speedy scamp has kept on running through generations as an enduring avatar of ‘attitude in the face of adversity’

One day in the early 1990s, I came home from university for the weekend and discovered that my dad had bought himself a Sega Mega Drive, bundled with a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I knew about Sega’s mascot of course. The launch of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game in 1991 was a landmark moment for the company, massively boosting the sales of its 16bit console in the west, ripping market share from the dominant Super Nintendo. While Mario was the family favourite, Sonic with his speed, attitude and brash visual energy encapsulated the edgy spirit of the early 1990s MTV culture. That weekend, Dad and I did little else but team up for daylong Sonic sessions, the game’s two-player mode letting us play cooperatively as we zoomed through those dense, beautiful play zones.

Thirty-five years later, I am still a Sonic fan. There have been plenty of rough times (Sonic 06, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic Free Riders – sorry, I can’t go on), but there have been plenty of good ones too. (Rush, Mania and Colors, and I have a soft spot for Sonic R, a racer developed by Traveller’s Tales, which went on to make the Lego games). Few people know this rollercoaster better than Takashi Iizuka, who worked on Sonic 3 as a designer and has been series producer for almost 20 years. When he joined Sega in 1992 he wanted to work for the company’s arcade division, but after playing the original Sonic – especially Sonic 2 – he was seduced.

With brute strength and beauty, party tricks and personal revelations, this year’s dance and circus programme has ambition and a spirit of togetherness

If you want to be wowed by technical prowess, I recommend taking a trip to see a couple of New York pole dancers, Donna Carnow and Gina Alm, in their Edinburgh fringe show Dusk/Night/Dawn. The pair are wildly impressive performers with just one piece of apparatus, a hanging pole suspended above the stage, on which they climb and spin and balance seemingly on thin air and origami their limbs into impossible shapes, swimming and spiralling through the shadows in mesmerising fashion.

What they demonstrate is absolute mastery of their art, Carnow especially – a former dancer and US Pole Art champion. The movement is utterly fluid, despite the brute strength required; the physics of it is so finely tuned but you’re unaware because you’re lost in the flow. That’s what a great performer does, and Dusk/Night/Dawn is in part about performance. At one point their two bodies are writhing under flashing red light, smeared with black paint, and then suddenly the lights come up and it’s like waking up, they’re wiping themselves down, the act’s over. There are all sorts of slippery questions about the dissolving line between person and performer, the nature of fantasy, the pleasure of discovering the power of your own body, and there’s also just the awesome talent.

St Paul’s Cathedral, London
Elemental roars and full-frontal vocal expressivity as the UFO focuses on a mission bigger than a good performance

There were climaxes in Verdi’s Requiem that would surely have registered on a seismometer as they gathered into a thrillingly elemental roar before dissipating as a series of echoed convulsions into the vast dome above. There were choral susurrations that swept over the orchestra, exhortations delivered in crisp consonants. There were sinuous woodwind lines that took a few seconds to wend their way out of the orchestral clamour, and vocal soloists – Natalya Romaniw, Natalie Lewis, René Barbera and Jongmin Park – who cut instantly through it in a shock of full-frontal expressivity from the very front of the stage.

Four years after making their UK debut with their second ever performance, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra is now on its fifth international summer tour. Founded by Canadian-Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson in response to the Russian invasion in February 2022, this orchestra has always had a mission bigger than producing a good performance. And what counts as “good” is always shaped by circumstance, after all. As the numerous speeches that preceded the music stressed, the UFO tour as “cultural ambassadors”, their work centred on hope and resilience, solidarity and justice at what one Ukrainian diplomat called “probably the most difficult moment in our modern history”. One of the orchestra’s percussionists is away at the frontline – so too is the son of composer Bohdana Frolyak, whose Gloria opened the concert, its smudgy chromaticism weighted with sadness.

Battersea Arts Centre, London
The staging is awkward and balance is an issue at points, but the singers of British Youth Opera are consistently impressive

Clapham – home to hundreds of young Londoners crammed into sticky-floored house-shares of a weeknight and the sweaty dancefloors of Infernos at the weekend. Where better to stage The Rake’s Progress, Stravinsky and WH Auden’s 1951 fairytale-cum-morality-play about a country innocent swallowed whole by the temptations and corruptions of the capital? Add a cast and creative team in their 20s, and you’ve got immersive theatre before you even open the doors.

We’ve seen Rakes before from British Youth Opera (2009’s starred a certain Nicky Spence, star attraction of this year’s Last Night of the Proms – this finishing-school for students and young professionals clearly works) but never one conceived, directed, designed and stage-managed entirely by the participants themselves. In terms of professional development it’s a gift, but it made for a bit of a bumpy show on opening night.

Festival theatre, Edinburgh
The choreographer combines a homophobic killing from 2012 with a remembrance for his father in an often rapturous show about healing

In 2019 at the Edinburgh international festival, the Swiss director Milo Rau staged an intense theatrical investigation, La Reprise: Histoire(s) du Theatre (I), recreating a homophobic killing in Belgium. The murder of Ihsane Jarfi, seven years earlier, had made headlines and the news disturbed choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui who was just a little older, also gay and had a Belgian mother and Moroccan father like Jarfi.

Cherkaoui now arrives at the same festival with his own act of remembrance, every bit as engrossing as Rau’s, yet more expansive. It pays tribute, too, to the choreographer’s father who died 30 years ago and whose past is interwoven with Jarfi’s death. If that raises any qualms, Cherkaoui’s larger point is about the interconnectedness of all lives and his characters morph into each other. He takes his cue from the victim’s first name, which essentially means “benevolence”, and counters the production’s disturbing flashes of violence with a floating lightness, whether in breakdance or traditional forms, and by presenting ideals of harmonious joy and kindness.

As her supergroup with Neko Case and Laura Veirs celebrates the 10th anniversary of its sublime album, the Ingénue herself will answer your questions

A decade ago, three of the finest voices in Americana got together to make a sublime supergroup record. Case/Lang/Veirs, in case the title didn’t make it plain, brought together Neko Case of the New Pornographers, stalwart Portland songwriter Laura Veirs and kd lang, the Grammy-winning Canadian country icon. Sadly, that glorious album has remained a one-off – though a new anniversary release includes a gorgeous never-before-heard song, Accidental Tattoo – but happily, lang is joining the Guardian for a very rare interview to answer your questions.

Maybe you’d like to know secrets from behind the scenes of making this record in lang’s loft and Veirs’ dining room, or about lang’s relationship with the late, great Tony Bennett, her animal rights advocacy, what the Edmonton country-swing scene was like in the mid-80s before lang became a country star and later mainstream icon, or what she and Cindy Crawford talked about when they posed for quite possibly the greatest magazine photoshoot of all time. What was Roy Orbison like to work with, is new music on the horizon, or what her contemporary constant cravings are? Or anything else indeed.

25-year-old band Demon Hunter says name of streamer’s hit movie creates ‘substantial confusion’ among consumers

Christian metal band Demon Hunter is suing Netflix, accusing the entertainment giant of trademark infringement and unfair competition tied to the blockbuster “KPop Demon Hunters” name.

The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday by Hyde Lane, the company behind Demon Hunter, and alleges that Netflix Studios and concert promoter AEG Presents have created “substantial confusion” among consumers.

In a year that’s seen the British actor star in the season’s two biggest blockbusters – and marry his co-star from both – he is reportedly earning a huge pay packet thanks to box-office bonuses

The British actor Tom Holland is expected to “make at least $100m” for starring in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, according to the Wrap.

Unnamed sources “with knowledge of Holland’s deal” say he was paid $20m (£15m) upfront, about double what he reportedly received for his previous Spider-Man film No Way Home in 2021. But the extraordinary success of Brand New Day at the global box office means the 30-year-old is expected to earn another $80m or more in backend bonuses.

Dulwich Picture Gallery show to feature British artist’s work hung next to paintings by Dutch and Flemish greats

The contemporary UK artist David Shrigley will apply his trademark arch humour and distinctive artistic practice “in dialogue” with old masters of Dutch and Flemish painting in a major new solo exhibition in London.

The celebrated visual artist will explore the 17th-century paintings with his own new works “responding to” and hung alongside original masterpieces by artists including Jan Steen, Adriaen Brouwer, David Teniers the Younger, Adriaen van Ostade, Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Rembrandt van Rijn.

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

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

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

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

“I don’t know why I’m so angry.”

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

• The best espresso machines, tested

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

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

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

• The best suitcases for your next holiday

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

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

From handheld to corded, self-emptying to stick models, these are our resident cleaner’s favourite vacuums for a spotless home

• The best cordless vacuum cleaners, tested
• How to make your vacuum cleaner last longer

Buying a vacuum cleaner isn’t as easy as you might think. With so many brands and models to choose from, it can be bewildering. Sticking with established brands isn’t necessarily a safe bet, with past performance being no guarantee that the latest models will be as good. Meanwhile, prices can be deceptive, with some affordable models now closing the gap on top-of-the-range brands when it comes to cleaning performance.

You can’t know all this by browsing through a department store or online. The ideal thing to do would be to take a few models home to try them out – but good luck persuading anyone to let you do that. Thankfully, you won’t have to try because I’ve tested an array of models for you. I’ve measured each one’s ability to perform a range of real-world cleaning jobs, so you can discover the best vacuum cleaner for you.

After three dozen eggs, 30 lemons and a concerning amount of unplanned butter, our tester learned the hard way how to make the perfect ice-cream. Plus, how to buy a bike

• Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

You probably know that song about ice-cream, and it’s been playing in my head non-stop for the past month. But since I tested 13 ice-cream machines at once during the hottest days of the year, it has taken on a slightly different meaning for me – particularly the screaming part.

Testing the best ice-cream makers for the Filter has deepened my appreciation for frozen desserts. After cracking more than three dozen eggs, zesting 30 lemons and running to the shops for several emergency pints of milk after an unplanned butter disaster, I feel as though I’ve finally mastered the art of making ice-cream at home.

Suri Core 1.0 electric toothbrush review: this new budget model is still sustainable – and the one I’d buy

The best electric toothbrushes for every budget – tested

How I Shop with Fred Sirieix: ‘It’s nice to buy stuff from people you know’

I spent 18 months testing the best video doorbells – here are my favourites

Do I really need air conditioning in the UK? Everything to know before you buy

‘The bar here is low’: the best (and worst) supermarket brioche burger buns, tasted and rated

A gazpacho is not only a great way to use up odds and ends in the crisper drawer, it will also surprise you with its flavour and versatility

Since reading How Not to Die, by Michael Greger, I’m always looking for ways to include greens in every meal. He regularly pops into my mind when I’m cooking, whispering in my ear: “Add some spinach to that risotto,” say, or “Moringa powder will make your porridge much more nutritious.” So I’m sure today’s green gazpacho would make him proud. It’s a great way to clear out your crisper drawer and pack a meal with all sorts of greens. Anything goes, but if any of your chosen ingredients (eg, basil or mint) has a particularly potent flavour, just add it in moderation or to taste. Incidentally, the key to a great gazpacho is the quality of the olive oil, as is a nice, bold-but-balanced acidity, which is easily achieved with a squeeze of lemon or your best vinegar.

Make the most of the season’s freshest produce with a light but richly flavoured tomato-dosed dinner and a booze-laced, New York-inspired dessert

At Toklas, ingredients such as datterini tomatoes and ripe peaches are taking centre stage. These recipes celebrate the simplicity of summer cooking, allowing produce to shine with minimal intervention. From a risotto layered with sweet tomatoes, pecorino and mint to roast peaches finished with amaretto and mascarpone, they capture the character of the season – fresh, generous and full of flavour.

When ovens and stovetops just won’t do, turn to loaded toasts, open sandwiches, cold noodles and smashed cucumbers, say our no-cook experts

It’s too hot to turn on the oven or stove. What can I make for dinner that’s still substantial?
Mark, via email
This sounds like a job for Lucy Carr-Ellison, of Tart London, who is fully functioning in a no-oven household. “We moved in last year and there’s an Aga, which was amazing in winter, but we can’t have it on in summer,” she says, so toast toppers have become a crucial category of cooking: “Try rubbing toasts with garlic, adding a bit of olive oil, some grated tomatoes, lots of salt and tinned anchovies.”

Otherwise, Mark could do away with the toaster and get some focaccia, suggests Jamie Pickles, chef/co-owner of Stow and The Trof, both in Manchester: “Mix picked brown crab meat with mayo, lemon juice and mustard, and spread that over the bread.” Next, combine the picked white meat with chopped chives and coriander, lemon juice, creme fraiche and black pepper. “Mix through some tinned sweetcorn, spread that over the brown crab mayo and finish with watercress.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Restaurant critic and award-winning food writer Jimi Famurewa travels from Belfast to Edinburgh and London to meet the inventive DIY chefs stretching US, Italian and British pizza styles to come up with delicious new flavour combos

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

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

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

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

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

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

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

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

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

Margaret, 22, London

Occupation Trainee accountant and part-time arts producer

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

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

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

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

• Students on their biggest financial shocks

• The best student deals and discounts

• An insider’s tips on student money

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An over-investment in people-pleasing can be emotionally costly. Here’s how I’m training myself to be OK with letting people down

A few months ago, my 10-year-old daughter and I went to our neighborhood cafe. At the counter, the owner greeted us with her typical effusion of warmth and welcome. Instead of greeting her in kind, my daughter looked on with a stony expression and ungiving eyes.

My face flushed. I was embarrassed and incensed by what I perceived as blatant rudeness. You could at least smile, I thought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Melissa Davey is Guardian Australia’s medical editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Name: Big-Ass Bags.

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

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

Andrew Geldart, 65, retired engineer, Cornwall

Daniel’s boyfriend thinks his youthful complexion is down to fancy skincare, and Jessica’s nearest and dearest still don’t know she’s had a breast enhancement …

Jessica was at a spa with her friends of more than 20 years when she noticed one stare at her bikini, lock eyes with her and laugh, before asking: “Wait, have you …?” The game was up – eight months after she’d had a secret breast enhancement, she’d been rumbled. Fearing judgment from even her closest circle, she had only spoken to two people who’d had the procedure, for advice, and told a neighbour in case she was unwell after the surgery. “My family still don’t know – most people don’t,” the 42-year-old from London says, including her two children who live between her and her ex-husband. “I’m not alone; I’ve since learned winter is the most popular time for people to get things done, then they can just hide under jumpers while everything settles in, so no one notices.”

For years, celebrities have endured public speculation about their tweakments and surgeries – but as procedures become more commonplace, “civilian” patients are facing the same questions from family and friends. And many of them are choosing to go incognito; some surgeons estimate up to 70% of their clients aren’t telling others about their aesthetic procedures. But what are the practicalities of disguising everything from breast augmentation to filler to hair transplants from your closest circle? And why are so many people spending thousands of pounds to alter their appearance – only to hope that no one notices?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Jura and Three Lakes region is often overlooked by visitors, but on a lake-hopping adventure I discovered its gentle beauty as well as great food and wine

The ferry cuts across the waters of Lake Biel, creating soft ripples, as if someone has taken a brushstroke to a blue canvas. To starboard, as we approach St Peter’s Island, are gentle mountains; to port side, lie golden fields. Straight ahead, the isle looks empty and Crusoe-esque.

On the jetty, Max Frey, a boatman, historian and guide, is waiting for me. He’s a man of dates and paperwork and pulls a handful from his satchel as he greets me, thrilled at the prospect of leading a tour; Switzerland’s Jura and Three Lakes region, this idyllic nook on the French border, is often overlooked by visitors.

From a 500-year-old inn in the Italian Dolomites to a log cabin in Finland’s lake district, these boltholes offer a tranquil and restorative getaway

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

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

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

Decades after being sexually abused, the author and doctor Frank Spinelli believed he had moved on emotionally. But alcohol destroyed his sense of security. He describes how he confronted his shame

Not so long ago, Frank Spinelli seemed to have sorted out his life. He was happily married, working as a doctor and had a sideline writing medical thrillers. He thought he had dealt with the sexual abuse he had suffered as a child – not only had he helped bring the man who groomed and abused him to justice, but also he had written a memoir about it. “I felt that I had closure,” he says. “I had the good fortune of working with some amazing therapists and I believed I had done the work and moved past it and I was a healed person.”

Little did he know that his recovery was fragile. The Covid pandemic took away his routine and structure: “All the external pillars that were tightly holding me together – the engagements at the office, the work trips.” Two years earlier, he and his husband had moved from Manhattan to a leafy suburb, from where he is speaking to me over a video call today. He was dealing with uncertainty and felt isolated. “We know one thing about shame: shame breeds in isolation.”

Any new addition to your collection can contain stowaways, so you’d be wise to deploy a little patience – but how long is long enough?

The problem
There is nothing quite like the joy of bringing home a new plant. You find the perfect spot, nestle it in among your others, and stand back to admire the new arrival. What you cannot see are its passengers: a few spider mites tucked under a leaf, mealybug eggs in a joint, or fungus gnat larvae in the compost. A fortnight later, plants that were perfectly healthy are speckled, sticky or swarming, and you have no idea how it happened.

The hack
Quarantining means keeping any new plant separated from the rest of your collection for a few weeks before letting it join the others. The logic is simple: if something is going to emerge, you want it to do so in isolation, where it can be dealt with before it spreads to the whole crew.

My favourite part was sitting with couples, talking about their lives and why they wanted to marry. But I’m equally happy to have left it behind

• Read more in this series here

I was in my mid-20s in the mid-2000s when I became a professional yapper. I’d had to bow out of a career in Auslan (Australian sign language) interpreting due to injury, but could still talk under wet concrete. Studying to become a civil marriage celebrant felt logical – I wanted to know what love was, and I knew it could show me.

Being appointed by the attorney general’s department involved a Certificate III and rigorous application process. I had to prove I was “of good standing” and “believed in the definition of marriage”. As a card-carrying homosexual, I wrote about my belief in all kinds of love, including marriage. It couldn’t take that long, I thought, for us to be recognised as having committed partnerships. Waiting a long, loathsome decade proved me wrong.

Does the description from a study ranking all of England’s 296 boroughs for friendliness ring true for people in the east London town?

Alice Fokuo is so friendly with her neighbour that they have exchanged keys to each other’s homes. The level of intimacy is such that “I call her mum, because she cooks for me”.

So the market trader was surprised to learn that her borough, Barking and Dagenham, ranked the least friendly in England in a new study drawing on government data from the community life survey. It measures how often people chat to neighbours, feelings of loneliness and belonging, local pride, and levels of participation in civic life in England’s 296 local authority areas.

Actor with a long career in theatre and on television who was known for the subtle quality of her work

Although she was perhaps best known as the mother of two outstanding actors, Emma and Sophie Thompson, Phyllida Law, who has died aged 94, was supremely gifted herself – as an actor, costume designer and writer.

She was not averse to appearing with either daughter: with Emma in her scabrously funny movie Nanny McPhee (2005); and with Sophie in Douglas McGrath’s fine television film of Jane Austen’s Emma in 1996, in which she played the mother of Sophie’s impoverished Miss Bates.

Many hoped that the march of technology would usher in an egalitarian utopia – but some foresaw the threat it would pose to liberal society. Why did nobody listen?

One of the stranger things about this dizzying, headlong moment in time is that it doesn’t have much of a past. Everything is about the future of this, the future of that: the future of work, the future of humanity, the future of the planet. It’s as if everyone is screaming (some ecstatically, most terror-stricken): robots are taking over the world! Meanwhile, you can’t put down your phone, unplug, delete your AI apps, tell Zoom to piss off; it feels as if you are racing toward something, and can’t stop, or look back, or think straight.

But of course this weird moment in history does have a past. It comes from somewhere. It wasn’t inevitable. Things could have turned out differently. They still can. And if you look back, one thing you’ll see is that a lot of people saw this all coming. They foresaw our present when it was still the future. They thought it might turn out fabulously, a computer utopia. And they worried it might turn out disastrously. Above all, they issued warning after warning about the rise of what I call the artificial state, the replacement of the liberal democratic nation-state, the consent of the governed, with the rule of people by machines. They warned of a future in which democratic deliberation would be replaced by prediction by calculation, the public sphere would be supplanted by data-driven commerce, and drones would take the place of the demos. Why didn’t anyone listen?

The new underworld is made up of innocent and well-intentioned people who work with slide rules and calculating machines and computers which can retain an almost infinite number of bits of information as well as sort, categorise, and reproduce this information at the press of a button. Most of these people are highly educated, many of them are PhDs, and none that I have met have malignant political designs on the American public. They may, however, radically reconstruct the American political system, build a new politics, and even modify revered and venerable American institutions – facts of which they are blissfully innocent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We would also like to speak to florists, groundskeepers, and professional gardeners about how they are planning for the future

The heatwaves and drought conditions across parts of Britain this summer have brought a series of challenges for food producers and those working on the land.

According to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, hot and dry weather has resulted in the earliest UK cereals harvest in at least 20 years.

We’re interested in hearing from people who have found themselves unexpectedly out of work in midlife and have struggled to get another job despite years of professional experience

For many people in their 50s and 60s, losing a job can be the start of a long and unexpected struggle to get back into work. Despite years – or even decades – of professional experience, some say they are applying for hundreds of roles without success, while others have had to take lower-paid work or claim benefits to make ends meet.

The number of people aged 50 to 64 receiving out-of-work benefits has reached 2.15 million, according to recent analysis by the Centre for Social Justice. We’d like to hear from people across the UK who have found it difficult to find work later in their careers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Warning: this gallery contains sensitive images