As a kid, I did my best to avoid exercise. As an adult, I endured it for the sake of my health. Then I set myself a clear goal – and motivation was no longer an issue

It’s fair to say I don’t come from a long line of athletes. When I was growing up in the 1990s, sport was something other people did; we were not a family who cycled, much less jogged. In PE I was the wheezing child hiding behind the bins, pretending I’d twisted an ankle. When I contemplated working out – not often – I had the vague idea it was supposed to turn my body into something other people might find attractive.

I evolved from an unsporty child into an unsporty adult. Occasionally, mostly in an attempt to lose weight without having to stop eating croissants, I would attempt something like Couch to 5K, which I’d either abandon after a couple of sessions or see through to the bitter end out of the perverse determination to prove I’d been right all along: exercise was a mug’s game and endorphins an invention of Big Wellness.

From gritty criminals to teens coming to terms with their identity, pride month sees Guardian writers on their most beloved queer characters

Forget about dimly lit period dramas where miserable women with no access to electricity gently sob in their heaving corsets and accidentally-on-purpose brush hands in the trembling candlelight; overblown, bombastic heist-capers and brooding, butch anti-heroes are far more up my street when it comes to lesbian cinema. What, after all, could be more intensely gay than immediately committing to a life of crime with someone you’ve only just set eyes on? My favourite of the entire bunch has to be the swaggering ex-con turned plumber Corky, who helps to save Violet from the clutches of her mob boss husband in 1996’s cult classic Bound. Though we first meet Corky trussed up in a literal closet, the metaphor doesn’t play out how you might expect: unapologetic and visible in a time when few films explored queerness full stop, she flexes a labrys tattoo, spends her down time swigging beer in grotty dive bars, and eventually drives off into the sunset, her new partner-in-crime in tow, in a beaten-up Chevy pick-up. The sheer simplicity of Corky as a queer heartthrob was, somehow, ridiculously ahead of its time, and her magnetic influence has played out everywhere from Bottoms to Love Lies Bleeding. El Hunt

From frontline reporting to a trailblazing comic novel and a prophetic dystopia, which of Eric Blair’s books is the best?

Imagination was not George Orwell’s forte. In each novel the protagonist is to some extent an Orwell surrogate doing things that Orwell did in places where Orwell had been. Here, somewhat unconvincingly, the author’s representative is a repressed young woman, Dorothy Hare, who loses her memory, identity and faith. Orwell considered it “tripe” except for the dream-like, polyphonic chapter where Dorothy sleeps rough in Trafalgar Square – a fascinating legacy of his youthful infatuation with James Joyce.

An emotional Keir Starmer announced his resignation as prime minister and Labour leader on Monday morning, less than two years after he won a huge majority at the general election. The question now is who will replace him: will Andy Burnham sweep into No 10 uncontested? And can he make a difference where Starmer failed?

The writer made headlines when she accused the world’s wealthiest man of lacking joy, culture, a sense of beauty … Meanwhile, her own life has been an attempt to understand and explain the world. She talks us through her latest book

‘Many people, including myself, spend a lot of time thinking about the past. And if you’re living in the same house you were living in with a spouse, the spouse is all around. Nonetheless, it’s not healthy to live in the past; I think we all know that.” Joyce Carol Oates is speaking to me from a book-lined room – one that makes you finally understand what “den” means – at her home in Princeton, New Jersey. She teaches at Princeton University as well as teaching advanced creative writing at Rutgers, also in New Jersey.

The author turned 88 this month, but she looks little changed from the 1960s, when she came to prominence: weightless like a sprite, focused and serious like a librarian. She has been a prolific writer, with more than 60 novels and many volumes of short stories to her name, earning her five Pulitzer prize nominations and a National Book award, among others, since the start of her career. Blonde, a haunting, fictionalised account of the life of Marilyn Monroe, Them, part of the Wonderland quartet, and Zombie, loosely based on the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, are often name-checked as career highs, but her consistency is striking. When she wanted to write mysteries, she did so under the pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. Her works of nonfiction, mainly criticism and memoir, would constitute a career on their own.

From north-east Scotland to Romford, London, what do those who spoke to the Guardian during the referendum campaign make of how it all panned out?

The Guardian has revisited five bellwether constituencies we reported on during the 2016 EU referendum campaign, and asked those we spoke to at the time how they now feel about Brexit a decade on from the vote.

The prime minister said a new leader will be in place before parliament returns in September

• Full report: Keir Starmer to step down as prime minister two years after historic election victory

• Wes Streeting backs Andy Burnham to become Labour leader and PM

This is from Tom Baldwin, Keir Starmer’s biographer, and head of communications for Ed Miliband when he was Labour leader.

We seem to be in a strange place where Keir Starmer is being told he must quit to prevent more uncertainty and chaos (by those who have caused much of it) but then stay on for a couple of months because the guy who has been desperate to take his job is not yet ready to do so…

Keir Starmer has a mandate from Labour members.

He stood on a manifesto and won a mandate from the British people

Modern politics:

Consumerisation

Former health secretary decides not to run, making Burnham overwhelming favourite to succeed Keir Starmer as soon as July

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Wes Streeting has said he will back Andy Burnham to become the next Labour leader, making it highly likely that Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor, will replace Keir Starmer as prime minister in July.

In a post on X, Burnham, who will be sworn in as an MP later on Monday after winning last week’s Makerfield byelection, said Starmer’s announcement on Monday that he would stand down as prime minister “marks the beginning of a transition and it is important that this process is conducted in an orderly and responsible way”, adding: “I will put myself forward as part of this process.”

Keir Starmer has announced he will stand down as prime minister after days of intense pressure from Labour MPs, including cabinet ministers, as Andy Burnham prepares to return to Westminster. Less than two years after a historic general election victory, Londoners react to his departure

• Keir Starmer to step down as prime minister two years after historic election victory

• UK politics live – latest updates

PM’s demise after landslide victory two years ago points to an increasingly volatile and impatient electorate

Historians will puzzle over this one. Of the six prime ministers that have led Britain over the last decade, with a seventh now on the way, it will be the fall of Keir Starmer that will most perplex the political analysts of the future.

They will ponder a man who won a landslide victory in July 2024 only to be pushed out less than two years later, having started no illegal wars, having triggered no grave economic crises, having been accused of no scandalous act of corruption.

Where did it go wrong for the outgoing PM? And how much – if at all – did it threaten to go right?

Keir Starmer pitched himself as a leader for “stability and moderation” who would rebuild Britain, after Labour’s landslide victory in the 2024 general election.

But after two years which have seen unforced errors, economic headwinds, scandals and, most recently, a disastrous set of devolved, mayoral and local election results the UK is set to have its sixth prime minister in seven years.

Prime minister was forced to row back on some policies despite strong support among voters for climate action

Keir Starmer has faced a problem no Labour government has needed to deal with before. His energy and climate policies – core to solving the cost of living crisis – have come under attack from opposition parties, which have made dismantling the agenda one of their top priorities, second only to immigration, in their pitch to voters.

This is new in British politics, where a cross-party consensus on the climate and environment has held at least since the days of Margaret Thatcher. She warned the UN of the climate crisis in 1988; David Cameron in 2006 urged voters to “vote blue, go green”; Theresa May enshrined in law the requirement to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; Boris Johnson championed the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021; even Rishi Sunak only tried a partial rollback of green policies as a last desperate throw before calling an election.

As prime minister, Starmer acted with dignity. What a pity that those Labour colleagues who ousted him could not do the same

The toppling by his colleagues of Britain’s prime minister is humiliating, not only for Keir Starmer but for parliamentary democracy. It is a rejection of the electorate, which chose a party with Starmer at its head, and of Labour’s manifesto of less than two years ago, all in favour someone who, until last week, had not been an MP since 2017. Andy Burnham’s sole claim to Downing Street is that he is currently preferred by most Labour MPs. Two years ago, the same was true of Starmer. What has gone so wrong?

The reason Britain is now about to have its seventh prime minister in 10 years is rooted in the House of Commons’ behaviour as a frequently whimsical appointments board. Those sent to Westminster are entitled to do as they choose, but in recent history they have undertaken to honour the pledges given to their voters at election time. Starmer in 2024 presented a moderate Labour programme and has been struggling to enact it, often against a backdrop of hostile economic forces and declining public services. He could at least reasonably expect loyalty from his MPs.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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The PM is another butterfly broken on the wheel of the public gaze, not quite ready to accept his own limitations

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They think it’s all over. It is now … It was all done with comparatively little fuss. No operational note sent out to the media. No timings given to the broadcasters. Just a small flurry of activity in the street outside No 10. Microphones and loudspeakers set up. Then the Podium of Doom. It was almost as if Keir Starmer was a little embarrassed about what was happening. Wanted as few people as possible to witness his departure.

Shortly before 9.30am, Downing Street staffers and a handful of cabinet ministers assembled to say goodbye. The Unhappy Few. The last remaining loyalists. David Lammy, Darren Jones, Richard Hermer and Douglas Alexander. No sign of Rachel Reeves. Maybe she had headed up to Manchester the night before so she could come back down with Andy Burnham on Monday morning. “What are the chances of meeting like this?”

Former DUP leader convicted of 18 offences against two victims after high-profile trial that gripped Northern Ireland

Jeffrey Donaldson has been found guilty of 18 sexual offences against two victims who were children at the time of the abuse more than 30 years ago.

The former Democratic Unionist party (DUP) leader was remanded into immediate custody after a jury at Newry crown court on Monday convicted him of 18 offences including rape, indecent assault and gross indecency. The judge, Paul Ramsey, said a “lengthy” prison sentence was inevitable.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

UK Health Security Agency also issues red heat alert for six English regions, indicating risk to life even for the healthy

Met Office forecasters have issued a rare red weather warning for Wednesday and Thursday in the face of extreme heat and humidity, while a red heat health alert has been issued in England indicating “a risk to life for even the healthy population”.

The weather warning covers southern Wales as far west as Swansea, and an area of England that includes London and runs from the inland areas of Kent across to Somerset, as far north-west as Birmingham, and as far north-east as southern Cambridgeshire.

Arrests are part of Operation Perth investigation into failures in NHS trust’s maternity services

Two men have been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in the running of a mortuary service at a hospital trust at the centre of the NHS’s largest inquiry into maternity services.

Nottingham University hospitals (NUH) NHS trust will be the focus of a major report on Wednesday into how failings led to the deaths of babies and serious harm to families.

The vice president said the move represented a ‘major milestone’ in ending Iran’s nuclear programme

According to Palestinian news agency Wafa, a high school student was killed and several other civilians were injured earlier today in an Israeli attack on a civilian vehicle in Gaza City. The Gaza health ministry says at least 1,021 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since the ‘ceasefire’ between Israel and Hamas came into effect in October 2025.

In a post on X, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said US-Iran talks have concluded “successfully” ⁠in Switzerland, adding that discussions produced agreement on the establishment of a “high-level committee” to provide “political oversight” of the talks which are now entering a more “technical” phase.

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Beiranvand, by the way, holds the world record for the longest throw in a competitive match – 61.0026m – and for the longest drop-kick, 78.014m. Not bad for someone who was once sleeping rough.

But let’s return to Iran for a moment. Their goalie, Alireza Beiranvand – or “The Wall of Persia” as he’s known – had to run away from home to become a footballer, his old fella less than enchanted by the ruse and cutting up his gloves. I wonder how he feels now his boy has been player of the match at a World Cup.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says strikes on oil facilities part of ‘long-range sanctions’ intended to isolate the territory

Ukraine has stepped up its strikes on Crimea as part of a strategy to isolate the occupied peninsula from mainland Russia and raise the cost of the occupation.

On Sunday, Russian-installed authorities suspended civilian fuel sales until at least Wednesday, a move that underscored Ukraine’s growing ability to disrupt supply lines linking Crimea to Russia.

Guilty pleas span three-year period, including sexually assaulting her with another man in 2024

A man accused of conspiring with others to drug and rape his unconscious wife has admitted sexually assaulting her over a period of three years.

The man, in his 60s, pleaded guilty to two counts of rape and 10 sexual offences at Minshull Street crown court in Manchester on Monday.

Signal agencies in Australia, the US, the UK, New Zealand and Canada sound alarm after Trump blocks foreign nationals from Anthropic’s Fable AI model

Powerful AI models capable of taking down governments and businesses are mere months away, cyber intelligence agencies for the Five Eyes have warned in a rare joint statement, urging leaders to “act now”.

The surprising public intervention by signals agencies for Australia, the US, the UK, New Zealand and Canada comes after the Trump administration earlier this month decided to block “foreign nationals” from using a much-hyped AI model built by tech company Anthropic, called Fable.

Christie’s sale in London in September carries estimates up to £150,000, with some instruments also used by Noel Gallagher and Bernard Sumner

Johnny Marr is preparing to auction off about 80 of his guitars, including the Rickenbacker heard on This Charming Man.

Marr has partnered with Christie’s for the auction, which will take place on 17 September in London, with the collection – including amps and other equipment – available for the public to view in London and New York prior to the sale.

People trained to experience world as otters, salmon and other River Tone creatures for pioneering research

What does a kestrel make of the dog sniffing in the long grass below? Why does an exhausted salmon pause before a weir? How will an otter experience the rumble of a passing train?

Eighteen people have spent six weeks swimming, slithering and soaring as otters, salmon, earthworms, red deer and kestrels in an attempt to better document the risks for wild animals in our human-dominated landscape.

Norway is supposedly one of world’s most gender-equal countries, yet sexual violence remains prevalent across society

In many ways, the case of Marius Borg Høiby, who was sentenced to four years in prison last week after being found guilty of offences including domestic violence and two counts of rape, was exceptional.

The king’s 29-year-old step-grandson grew up in the public eye alongside the royal family, mixing in Oslo’s wealthiest circles, partying at exclusive nightclubs and having afterparties at his family’s official royal residence.

Rapping in Spanish used to be a hard sell to Britons – but the Puerto Rican star is making the Latin American community visible

At the Seven Sisters Latin Village in north London, construction is under way.

The market, which has become a centre for the British Latino community and has fought off a long battle against redevelopment, is paying homage to the biggest Latino star on the planet: Bad Bunny (real name Benito Martínez Ocasio).

Tate Modern, London
Frida Kahlo took self-portraiture to new levels of interior revelation and her work takes you deep into her mystery. So why is this show padded out with responses by lesser artists?

Charisma is something you can’t fake and Frida Kahlo had it before she became an artist, let alone a modern hero. In photographs, the teenaged Frida appears both in a silk dress staring boldly from beneath her already colliding black eyebrows, and posing as a man in suit and tie. In a home movie her husband, the Marxist mural painter Diego Rivera, woos her and they cuddle. Those were the good times. Rivera is so fat and ugly next to his wife, you’d think he would have appreciated his luck more.

Every image of Kahlo is interesting but nobody could portray her like she portrayed herself. She took self-portraiture to new levels of interior revelation, psychological and physical. Inspired partly by the surrealists and partly by Catholic traditions of depicting pain, Kahlo took herself apart and put herself back together in images of suffering, survival and triumph. In her 1937 painting The Heart, she stands neat and calm while a sword pierces her chest and her disembodied arms reappear in two floating, otherwise empty outfits. The most complete of the Fridas has a brace on her left foot which could be a Freudian symbol except it’s a factual reference to the physical challenges she suffered all her life after she was severely injured in a bus crash when she was 18.

‘I thought I could regain some power by writing a celebration of debauchery that was so brazenly sexual it would infuriate the people who insulted me’

Nancy Boy was about reclaiming the homophobic insults that were hurled at me every time I went out because I had long hair and wore eyeliner and nail polish. I’d walk into a bar and people would react vociferously, or guys would think I was a girl then get really aggressive when they found out my name was Brian. I thought I could regain some power by writing a celebration of debauchery that was so brazenly sexual it would piss off the people who insulted me even more.

The president posted a picture of a blond woman on Truth Social – but it wasn’t Ivanka or Tiffany

Name: Donald Trump’s great daughter.

Age: Unknown.

Whether it’s a casserole dish or art inspired by the city they studied in, these are the gifts recent graduates told us they loved the most

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There’s considerable pride to be taken from graduating, and it’s a moment friends and family are often eager to mark with a gift. But what presents best cement this major milestone? As leaving celebrations of all stripes approach, we asked recent graduates to tell us about what they loved receiving, from the sentimental to the practical.

“When I graduated from York, my parents treated me to a meal at a restaurant I’d had my eye on since starting my course,” says reader Toby Beer, a biology graduate. “It was a brilliant send-off to celebrate my time in Yorkshire.”

Roundhouse, London
In her first European jaunt outside of her headbanging band, the singer uses humour to turn angsty songs into rowdy collective catharsis

Hayley Williams swaggers on stage with a guitar and begins gleefully raging about her antidepressant of choice. Mirtazapine, a pop-punk ode to the drug that “makes me eat” and “makes me sleep”, swiftly rouses the audience into a boisterous singalong. Her chemistry with the crowd is so potent that it’s easy to forget this is Williams’s first London gig since supporting Taylor Swift on The Eras Tour with her band Paramore in 2024, and her first ever European tour as a solo artist. “I remember so many of you,” she says, beaming at the crowd. She points at someone in the front row: “You came on stage [for] Misery Business.”

For years, Williams had vowed to never pursue solo music. In fact, when she landed a deal with Atlantic Records at 14, it was on her insistence that she’d make music as part of a band. Now finally released from the contract she signed as a teenager, the 37-year-old’s third solo record, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, was a grief-stricken reflection on lost loves and lost innocence. On stage, she appears to heal those wounds with soulful artistry. A daring cover of Nina Simone’s Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood leaves the room in silence; a brief snippet of Didn’t Cha Know by Erykah Badu prefaces her viral hit Good Ol’ Days.

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Austria’s rivalry with Germany is such that they may not be too upset if Messi scores today … as he will surpass Miroslav Klose’s World Cup scoring record. Then-again, there is a big German flavour to this Austrian side with Rangnick in charge and of course many of their players based in the German Bundesliga.

Aside from conceding a sloppy goal to tournament debutants Jordan, Austria were fairly impressive in their first group outing. Defeat today. however, would set up a nervy final game against Algeria, where qualification for the knockout rounds will likely be on the line. The two other Group J teams meet in several hours’ time in San Francisco.

There are twice as many teams from Caf at this World Cup than in 2022, but their results so far have been hit and miss

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On Monday evening local time at New York New Jersey Stadium, Senegal will face Norway in a game that is not only crucial in terms of who qualifies from Group I, but will go a long way in determining how African performance at this World Cup is viewed. This is not entirely fair – nobody can seriously doubt that Senegal are an extremely adept side, and it may be that the court of arbitration for sport decides that they are indeed the reigning African champions – but there is a sense that Africa could do with a big performance.

No region benefited as much from the expansion of the World Cup as Africa. In Qatar in 2022, five of the 32 slots (16% of the field) went to the Confederation of African Football (Caf). Of the 48 slots this time around, nine went automatically to Caf, and they secured a 10th when DR Congo beat Jamaica in an interconfederational playoff in March. Caf had lobbied for years for more representation, arguing it was unfair that it had only five slots for its 54 members, while Conmebol, the South American confederation, had four plus a playoff for 10 members (21% of the field). The response was that Conmebol sides had won the World Cup nine times, while Caf sides had only made the quarter-finals on three occasions. By the end of the last World Cup, Conmebol were up to 10 victories and Caf had its first semi-finalist.

This is an extract from Soccer Desk: World Cup edition, a newsletter from the Guardian US that will run regularly during the tournament. Subscribe for free here.

Miguel Almirón’s dismissal was unusual but there’s nothing new about players losing their cool on the biggest stage

After a fairly pedestrian first half of the opening match of the 2026 World Cup, the game burst into life in the second period. South Africa midfielder Sphephelo Sithole, who had been at fault for Mexico’s opening goal, compounded his error by being sent off in the 49th minute for denying a goalscoring opportunity. When Themba Zwane was dismissed, South Africa became the 15th team to have two players sent off in the same World Cup match.

There was time for one more red card before full-time, the Mexico centre-back César Montes seeing red in stoppage time and following in the footsteps of his manager, Javier Aguirre, who was sent off while playing for Mexico in the 1986 quarter-final against West Germany in Monterrey.

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Anyone brave enough to predict the Geopolitics World Cup knockout bracket before the tournament would have clocked that Argentina could meet Marcelo Bielsa’s Uruguay in the last 32 and thought: “Cor, that’ll be fun”. But nothing seems to be very fun for the two-time winners at the moment. After narrowly avoiding defeat by Saudi Arabia in their opener in Miami, Uruguay were held again by Cape Verde at Hard [Luck] Stadium, meaning Bielsa-ball might not go beyond the group stage after all. “I think that the problem or greatest issue is that we started the second half with the ball and with the victory,” Bielsa sniffed after climbing down from his upturned water bucket. “We lacked a finishing touch,” he added.

Greetings from the Houston area! We’ve watched most of the GWC matches on Telemundo (Football Daily letters passim). My Spanish-speaking sister translates for us, and she agrees that the commentators are ‘unabashedly’ biased toward the Spanish-speaking teams. We switch to Fox between matches to hear what Henry, Zlatan, and Rebecca Lowe have to say, but we all agree: Alexi Lalas is just a blowhard. He gets muted frequently. And in case y’all missed it” – Jennifer Jones.

Interesting debate about watching football in English or Spanish. I choose to watch most matches in the same way that I read Football Daily – with the sound completely off. And, from time to time, in a very dark room” – Mike Wilner.

I was playing on Football Manager earlier when I was offered the job of coaching Tunisia. I politely declined, hung up the phone, and resumed playing my game” – James Vortkamp-Tong.

Has anyone else noticed that there are two former managers of Swansea City at the GWC [and a minority stakeholder – Football Daily Ed]? This must mean something: not sure what, though” – Peter Phillips (and no others).

How Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil giant is embedding fossil fuels as a crucial part of the world’s biggest sport

If you have watched the World Cup, you may have seen the big signs announcing Aramco as the tournament’s “energy partner”. This Saudi Arabian fossil fuel company also happens to be the world’s single largest corporate polluter while Saudi Arabia has, for decades, been the greatest stumbling block in international climate change negotiations. Aramco’s sponsorship is one aspect of Fifa’s increasing sportswashing that has angered fans around the world.

This cosy relationship between modern football and the polluting industries has a long history that can be divided into three periods. First was when the game grew in British society as a tool to order and discipline workers and then became a cultural export of the British empire and capitalism. In the Factory Act of 1850, workers won the right to have Saturday afternoons free from work from 2pm, which is why the traditional kick-off is 3pm.

The story of the therapy ferret used to kill rats at Wetherby young offenders institution raises question after question. Not least: is this any place for humans, whatever they have done?

‘Concerns over therapy ferrets used to kill rats at UK’s largest children’s prison” was how the Guardian’s own headline reported recent events at Wetherby young offenders institution in West Yorkshire. “Concerns” felt pretty mild, and I’d have preferred to hear it was a panic or at least a flat spin.

I hoped that it had happened out of sight, since it is no small thing to watch one animal kill another, but that hope was immediately dashed by the detail that not only did the ferret attack the rat in front of its young inmate handler, according to a complaint from the Prison Officers’ Association, but it didn’t even finish the job. The grim scene ended with a prison officer stomping on the injured rat, prompting the National Ferret Welfare Society to side with both rat and ferret, in the statement: “We cannot condone the stamping to death of any animal in any situation.”

His government was directionless and confused, and from that murk emerged the Peter Mandelson scandal

On a bone-chillingly cold morning in January, it felt as if I had suddenly found at least part of the reason for Keir Starmer’s chronic unpopularity. I was in the Mancunian constituency of Gorton and Denton, where the prime minister and his people’s decision to block Andy Burnham from standing was about to hand victory to the Green party. More specifically, I was in a forlorn covered market about to be regenerated into a “food and drink cluster”, talking to a sixtysomething man nursing a mug of tea.

What, I wondered, did he think of the man at the top? He gave me roughly the same answer that I’d heard from a lot of my other interviewees: “I really don’t like him at all.” But like most other people I met that day, he couldn’t quite explain what fired his antipathy, which seemed to make it worse. His face scrunched into a mixture of scepticism and exasperation. “I don’t know why – I just don’t,” he said. The most specific answer I got from anyone else was: “He hasn’t done what he said he’d do.” So there it was: as well as a modern tendency to loathe politicians that regularly seems arbitrary, whipped-up and way over the top, a sense that Starmer’s sheer blankness – his painful lack of clarity and the absence of a halfway coherent story about his own government – was making a lot of people dislike and mistrust him all the more.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

Negotiations with Reykjavík risk being bogged down by rigid accession rules. For strategic reasons, Brussels has to learn how to bend a little

Iceland is preparing for a referendum this summer on whether to restart negotiations with the EU about joining the bloc. If voters approve, the government in Reykjavík could complete talks for the country to become the EU’s 28th member state. Iceland is already part of the Schengen passport-free area, and has access to the EU single market through the European Economic Area, meaning that much of the regulatory groundwork for its integration is already done.

Yet the conversation about a possible Icelandic application for EU membership reveals a deeper issue: the European Union must rethink its own future admission of like-minded democracies as a geopolitical necessity.

Valérie Hayer is a French MEP and leader of the Renew Europe parliamentary group

As prime minister, he would have a unique chance to turn the world’s most bureaucratic health service into its most innovative one

If Andy Burnham moves from Manchester to No 10, he will be the first prime minister to have been health secretary in the history of the NHS. What might that mean for the troubled service? His commitment to social care is well known. But when the Treasury tells him there is no money, he is going to have to think hard about how to make his mark.

The UK now spends the fifth most of any OECD economy when it comes to government health spending as a proportion of GDP. That’s why health service insiders no longer say the issue is money but productivity. They have been puzzling over why, since 2020, the total number of staff across NHS England has grown by 20% but activity has only gone up by 10%. That’s part of the reason why waiting lists have remained stubbornly high and a significant part of the progress made in reducing them has come from “list cleaning” – removing people from lists who no longer need treatment – rather than actual increases in activity.

Jeremy Hunt served as secretary of state for health, later secretary of state for health and social care, from 2012 to 2018

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With aid funding falling by 70%, a change to HIV response is needed. The continent must treat health as a matter of sovereignty rather than charity

The Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak now being fought across the region shows again what Africa already knows. When an emergency arrives, the continent cannot wait on distant supply chains or other people’s goodwill. It must make and move the things that keep its people alive. The fight to end Aids by 2030 runs on the same truth.

Africa has earned the right to set the terms of that fight. Over two decades the continent helped turn the epidemic around. Aids-related deaths have fallen by 59% since 2010 and new infections by 68%. Nearly 22 million Africans are alive today on daily treatment. Keeping them alive is a permanent commitment.

On our side of the Irish Sea we have made the best of a bad job. But we saw the damage a reckless and reactionary British government could do

• To read more from the Brexit Vote: 10 Years On series, click here

For Brexit’s true believers, Ireland will always be the spoke in the wheel that set everything off course, the green tarnish that took the shine off the golden age. Without the vengeful and malicious obstructionism of the Irish, all the promises of freedom and prosperity would have been fulfilled.

To understand how nonsensical this is, it is necessary to go back five years before the referendum of 2016. Back, that is, to the sense of an ending. In May 2011, Queen Elizabeth made a four-day state visit to Ireland. This should not have been remarkable – the heads of state of neighbouring countries visit each other all the time. But no reigning British monarch had set foot in what is now the Republic for almost exactly a century.

Fintan O’Toole is a columnist with the Irish Times and the author of Heroic Failure: Brexit and the politics of pain

As the former Ofcom chair says extraordinary things about the rightwing channel and its critics, a factcheck would not go amiss

• Stewart Purvis is a former editor in chief of ITN; Chris Banatvala is a former Ofcom director of standards

During a review of his four years at Ofcom, the outgoing chair, Michael Grade, surprised his BBC Radio 4 interviewer. He had been asked by Katie Razzall whether Ofcom rules would allow a politician to present the Today programme apart from the news bulletins. She clearly did not expect him to answer: “Absolutely, absolutely, why not?” “Really?” replied a startled Media Show presenter. “Well, Nick Robinson might be out of a job. He might not be happy to hear that.” The Today presenter was listening and immediately posted: “Can anyone remind me when parliament, the public, licence fee payers or anyone else was asked their opinion on this?” None of the 204 people who commented on his post could offer any such reminder.

The argument about what the law does and doesn’t say about politicians presenting programmes has been a central thread of Lord Grade’s tenure, as Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, presents his 7pm weekday programme on GB News, covering the political news of the day. Even before Grade’s series of “free of the shackles” interviews became increasingly political with his views on the “white majority”, Ofcom felt compelled to distance itself. “Any personal views a former chairman has expressed do not represent Ofcom policy,” it said. The media regulator continues to stand by its handling of GB News, but has Grade accidentally exposed a central flaw during his tenure? And what should we make of his off-the-cuff comments since leaving.

Take off your shirt on a Narbonne street and it will cost you €150. Could it happen in the UK? I sincerely hope not

Watch out if you’re heading to France this summer: dozens of towns have started fining men for walking around with their tops off. Actually, it’s not specific to men; I just assume they’re more likely to strip off. Narbonne, near the Mediterranean coast, has joined at least 30 other municipalities in banning anyone from wandering around town bare-chested, in swimwear or even barefoot, with a €150 (£130) fine for those flashing excess flesh (according to France Télévision, about 15 people were fined when Narbonne started enforcing its “please stay dressed” code last summer).

Could it happen in Britain? Quite apart from the police resourcing crisis, I’m struggling to imagine officers getting people to cover up in Glasgow, where stripping down at the first glimpse of the weakest rays of sunshine is a venerable civic tradition, and a public-spirited website tracks whether it’s “taps-aff” or “taps-oan” weather (a windless, clear, 17C is the threshold for taps-aff according to site creator Colin Waddell, if you’re wondering).

Rocketing violence and an economic chokehold have been overshadowed by conflict elsewhere, but the UK and others must stop looking away

The “ceasefire” in Gaza is a “cruel and deadly illusion”, warned James Elder, the Unicef spokesman, on Friday. Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians since its declaration in October, says the Gaza health ministry, including 265 children – an average of one a day.

The killings and broader humanitarian crisis have been overshadowed by the war on Iran and have diverted attention from escalating violence in the occupied West Bank. Last week, former Israeli prime ministers, military chiefs and heads of security services were among the signatories of a letter accusing its government of “doing nothing to eradicate Jewish terror” there. Ehud Olmert, one of the former prime ministers, accused Israel of “an organized, systematic, state-funded campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”, with security forces assisting settler violence. Meanwhile, the army chief has reportedly described troops “killing like we haven’t killed since 1967”.

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The UN is set to review the legal status of nicotine. An outright ban would go too far, but there is no case for its easy availability

The health case for banning cigarettes is ironclad. As the then head of the World Health Organization, Gro Harlem Brundtland, put it in 2000, “a cigarette is the only consumer product which when used as directed kills its consumer”. Smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. Many countries, including the UK, have taken strong measures to restrict and even ban cigarettes and other tobacco products. Over the past two decades, however, tobacco-free nicotine products such as vapes and nicotine pouches, which use a synthetic version of the addictive ingredient, have exploded in popularity.

Regulation has been slow. The nation of Palau has now tasked the WHO expert committee on drug dependence with reviewing nicotine, which will lead to a UN vote – likely to be in 2028 – on banning it worldwide. The case relies partly on deciding whether addiction and dependence themselves – in the absence of other major health consequences – are harmful. There is certainly an argument for that, and smoking taught us that it is often better to stamp out highly addictive habits if consequences may become obvious later. But there is also reason for caution.

Readers respond to the former Greater Manchester mayor’s defeat of Reform UK in Makerfield and his return to Westminster

I have long admired Andy Burnham (Cabinet loyalists tell Starmer he has the weekend to set out timetable for exit, 19 June). As mayor of Greater Manchester, he has been a powerful advocate for fairness, inclusion and regional investment. As someone who grew up in Manchester, I am proud of what he has achieved. That is precisely why I was disappointed to hear renewed speculation about a leadership challenge to Sir Keir Starmer.

Many of us voted Labour in 2024 because we wanted stability after years of political turmoil. We were not looking for a political celebrity; we were looking for someone serious, competent and resilient enough to govern in difficult circumstances.

Ignorance around hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is a public health catastrophe, say readers in response to an article on how sufferers have to wait 21 years for a diagnosis

Your coverage of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) is a vital start to addressing a systemic public health catastrophe (UK hypermobility sufferers wait up to 21 years for diagnosis, study suggests, 15 June). I am 34 and a former drama student who is unable to build any career as hEDS dismantled my life. The condition has made friendships and relationships very difficult.

My decline began at 19 with surgeries; by 24, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and Hashimoto’s, and had a Beighton score, which is used to assess hypermobility, of 9/9. My life has been defined by chronic pain and fatigue. For eight years, my nervous system has been so unstable that I have frequently been unable to read, watch TV or tolerate light. At my lowest, I could not spell basic words or speak in coherent sentences.

Readers respond to an article on the weirdest thing pets have eaten

On the strangest things eaten by dogs (‘She’d consumed a kilo of sand’: 11 Guardian readers on the weirdest things their dogs have ever eaten, 15 June), back in the 1960s, friends of mine in Hampshire had a dog, and they later got a kitten, which loved chasing marbles.

The dog became rather slow and poorly, so was taken to the vet. An operation released 100-plus marbles accumulated in her stomach.

Bruce Springsteen | Lunch on the buses | Tram stops | Growing runner beans | Cryptic clue

I always enjoy John Crace’s sketches. In fact, I usually turn to them first. I’ve noticed that he seems to be smuggling in Bruce Springsteen quotes and song titles. I think this is splendid, so I was really impressed that on Friday, he managed at least three. Namely, Glory Days, Reason to Believe and [The] Promised Land. Well done, John.
Steve Townsley
Wick, Vale of Glamorgan

• Re your bus banter letters (18 June), my bus conductor Uncle Fred, in 1950s Brighton, was parked at the station having his lunch when a “bloke in a bowler hat” gets on and asks “Eaton Place, conductor?” To which he replied: “No mate, just cheese sandwiches.” He got an official reprimand and, I believe, a cut in his wages.
Jennifer Jeater
Hassocks, West Sussex

• ‘No compelling justification’ for not submitting a sample

• ‘Unpredictable testing is essential to protect clean sport’

The 2023 Wimbledon singles champion Marketa Vondrousova has been suspended from tennis for four years for refusing an anti-doping test.

An independent tribunal concluded that there was “no compelling justification” for the 26-year-old Czech to have not submitted a sample when notified by a doping control officer, out of competition and at her home, on the night of 3 December, 2025.

The major winner has rebuilt both his swing and confidence and learned to function without the approval of the masses

On the evening before he won the US Open for a second time in four years, Wyndham Clark marched up the 18th fairway at Shinnecock Hills to put the finishing touches on a third round that would leave him six shots clear of the field. He had spent the past three days patiently defanging one of the crown jewels of American golf, building the third-largest 54-hole advantage held by a US Open leader since the second world war. The title was his to lose.

Yet when Clark arrived at the final green on Saturday bathed in golden-hour light, one thing was conspicuously absent: the crowd. Most of the spectators had left or were leaving and the grandstands around the green were only thinly populated. It was a remarkably muted backdrop for America’s once-and-future champion golfer as he stood on the doorstep of a rare wire-to-wire US Open victory.

With Stokes now 35, the ECB needs to identify rising talents with the capacity to be serious people, not just young men having fun with their mates

If we learned one thing at the Oval last week, it is that this England team really needs Ben Stokes. So it came as a relief when, a couple of hours after the second Test against New Zealand ended in heavy defeat, he and Gus Atkinson were exonerated by the England and Wales Cricket Board after an investigation into their celebrations following victory in the first. But the governing body found themselves in a process with no perfect outcome, and if the one they’ve ended up with is not the disaster they flirted with a week ago when Stokes was apparently considering retirement, it is still embarrassing.

Their handling of the incident was understandable, given the public drunkenness that marked the players’ trip to Noosa during the Ashes, and Harry Brook’s altercation with a nightclub bouncer in Wellington before that. There was a real lack of transparency around Brook’s incident, which was not revealed to the public until a newspaper discovered and reported it, and that led to a kneejerk reaction when the ECB thought there had been a repeat. All three incidents could have been handled better – they just keep finding different ways of getting it wrong. At least no one can accuse them of not taking this one seriously, and if it hasn’t truly established their competence it has established that all players are accountable, which will help to set a standard of acceptable behaviour.

• Leagues’ regulations altered after positive test period

• Clubs will not be obliged to offer option to supporters

Women’s Super League and WSL2 clubs can permit supporters to drink alcohol in view of the pitch from next season, the Guardian can reveal, after a change to the leagues’ regulations on the back of a successful trial over the past 18 months.

Not all clubs will necessarily take up the opportunity, but it is understood WSL Football’s shareholders have approved the change. Clubs will be expected to inform their fans whether they will allow the practice, and in which areas of stadiums it will be permitted.

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And, oh, what is that? Horrendous running. Billy Root called for the run, Tribe started, but then went back and somehow they both ended up at the non-striker’s end. A furious Root stalks off, run out 0. Glamorgan 0-1.

I was going to say it was weird how Tom Lawes was allowed to swap for Atkinson despite being a much better batter but in fact they average almost exactly the same, 19.something. This game is skipping away from Glamorgan – the lead 189. It should be enough but….The last pair have now added 99 – the lead 189 over Surrey.

Jeanine Pirro threatens anyone accused of vandalizing Washington monument after CBS News report says administration official told her arrests were made

• Trump says repair work to begin ‘immediately’ on beleaguered reflecting pool

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio will begin a trip to three Gulf countries tomorrow amid negotiations with Iran to end the war, his spokesperson said.

Visiting the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain, Rubio will discuss “the memorandum of understanding with Iran, efforts to secure full and free safe transit through the strait of Hormuz, and the importance of peace and stability in the region,” state department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement.

Leftwing opponent alleges vote count irregularities after Trump-endorsed lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella secures narrow majority

A Trump-admiring far-right millionaire lawyer and self-styled “outsider” has defeated a leftwing senator by a razor-thin margin to win Colombia’s presidential runoff, in an election that promises to mark a dramatic shift in the country’s decades-long armed conflict.

With 99.99% of ballots counted in the preliminary vote tally, the far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella had secured 12.96m votes, or 49.66%, just 250,830 more than the leftist senator Iván Cepeda, who received 12.7m votes, or 48.7%. A further 1.6% of ballots were cast blank.

Opposition to plans for ‘small paradise’ island of Sazan becomes wave of dissent against establishment

For Ina Shkurti, like so many Albanians, the island of Sazan has played an outsized role. As a child she bathed in its “always calm and emerald green” waters, as a teenager it figured in her dreams and as an adult it was an indelible part of the memory and desire that drew her back, every summer, to Vlore, her home town across the sea.

What Shkurti never imagined was that plans to build a mega-resort on Sazan – one of two luxurious complexes on Albania’s southern coast backed by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner – would trigger a revolt, an uprising that has convulsed the Balkan state in a spasm of disgust over the perceived excesses of “a rotten oligarchic class” just as it hopes to complete accession talks with the EU.

Military evades sanctions by using hobbyists’ motorised aircraft to bomb civilians in opposition-held territory

They appear after midnight, slowly crossing Myanmar’s skies. The motorised paragliders are improvised aircraft, suspending small metal frames from brightly coloured sails. They drift over a patchwork of villages, farmland, forests and winding rivers.

Each “paramotor” has two or three soldiers strapped in – one piloting, the others holding the bombs. Their craft are powered through the sky by small, rattling engine propellers, heading towards the lowland villages. Finally, switching their engines off to glide low and near silently through the dark, the men throw their explosives.

Head of Greater Manchester force rejects claims of anti-white bias but says he understands where it comes from

Policing in Britain has “adopted the language of activism” and official guidance has “over-corrected” to combat accusations of racism, one of the UK’s most senior officers has said.

Sir Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police, said he did not believe that “two-tier policing” existed or that forces were biased against white people.

Forced to stay home or switch jobs, working mothers are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis as classes go online for weeks or months at a time

Outside, the temperature has passed 41C (105.8F). Inside Sakshi Katyal’s city apartment, the air conditioner is blasting but it does little to relieve the stress of balancing housework and helping her five-year-old log in on a laptop to online classes. Her daughter’s school closed in May and Katyal is not clear when it will reopen. Probably not till the autumn.

Schools across Delhi and in about half of India’s 28 states have been ordered to close from mid-May until the end of June, when in many places the summer break starts. There is no official record of closures in past years but the Guardian has spoken to school officials who say the number of days schools are shut for because of the heat has risen sharply. The impact on families, especially on working women, has been huge.

A national heatwave plan has been activated to help people stay cool during the Netherlands’ increasingly hot summers

Households in Amsterdam are being urged to hang their curtains outside their windows as health experts recommend simple hacks to moderate the heatwave rolling across the Netherlands, where homes were built for old-fashioned damp and coldish northern European weather.

In a viral social media post last week, Eline Coolen, the heat coordinator at the city’s public health institute, urged sweaty city-dwellers to rig up temporary curtain rails or drape curtains or sheets outside to stop the sun’s rays reaching their large windows.

UN’s World Food Programme and agriculture agency issue joint appeal for funds to avert global hunger crisis before it happens

Adugna Woyessa was a little boy the first time drought tore his country apart. As harvests failed in rain-starved regions of Ethiopia in the early 1970s, and his school turned a classroom into a grain store for farmers to send aid, he had no idea that scientists were beginning to connect the force parching its fields with cyclical shifts in trade winds that had long supercharged violent weather from South America to Australia.

The now notorious El Niño – Spanish for “little boy” – was named by fishers in the Pacific in the 1800s, but it was not until the 1970s that scientists understood its global nature and began to piece together the historical impact of the natural weather pattern characterised by hot years and brutal extremes.

Prison officers’ union calls for immediate end to practice at HMYOI Wetherby over fears for child and animal welfare

Pet ferrets kept as therapy animals at the UK’s largest children’s prison have been co-opted by managers to kill rats, resulting in a bloody incident and concerns over child and animal welfare.

The unorthodox method of vermin control was waved through last month at HMYOI Wetherby in West Yorkshire following a surge in rat numbers in prison offices and grounds.

People smugglers have been using lorries to bring people deported to France under the deal back to the UK

The UK and France have been forced to rewrite the “one in, one out” deal because of concerns over the numbers of people re-entering the UK after being removed to the continent.

The original treaty said people arriving in small boats could be returned to France. But people smugglers have used lorries to bring people who had been deported to France under the deal back to the UK.

The influential role vacated by the new Makerfield MP will be fiercely contested by Labour, Reform and the Greens

As Andy Burnham maps out the final steps on his path to Downing Street, he may feel that his future is clear. But a look back over his shoulder reveals a cloudier outlook, inviting the question: what now happens to his former role as Greater Manchester’s mayor?

An election has been set for 30 July, and with the job widely seen as having grown under Burnham’s tenure to become one of the most influential in British politics outside Westminster, Labour is desperate to cling on to it – but parties to its right and left both see an opportunity.

Pair pictured ‘laughing and singing’ at Welsh seaside town’s Saltwater Inn, for post-funeral scene in film by British film-maker Jamie Adams

Quentin Tarantino and Kylie Minogue have been spotted in Welsh seaside town Porthcawl as they film a new movie for prolific British film-maker Jamie Adams.

A report in Nation.Cymru carried a picture of the pair on location at Porthcawl’s Saltwater Inn, where they reportedly “laughed and sang together” for a scene set during a wake. The pair were also reported to have filmed a funeral scene at a church in the nearby village of Newton.

The Windrush Prize will award £10,000 to the writer of the winning play, which will receive a run at the Arcola theatre next year

The first prize dedicated to discovering and developing British Caribbean playwrights has been launched using compensation awarded to a Windrush victim who died before receiving it.

The Windrush Prize for British Caribbean Playwrights, believed to be the first major prize of its kind in 30 years, has been established by Shereener Browne, the founder and artistic director of Orísun Productions and a former barrister, in memory of her late father, Myron Brown.

In 1996, a blizzard in Everest’s notorious ‘death zone’ killed ‘Green Boots’. Now, a fresh expedition plans to retrieve his body, and establish his identity

Thirty years after he perished in a small limestone cave near the top of Mount Everest, the body of the climber known only as “Green Boots” may finally be heading home.

If successful, the mission into Everest’s notorious “death zone” will also lay to rest any doubts about the identity of Green Boots.

Mayor says ‘violence has no place in our city’ as president criticizes governor for not accepting national guard troops

At least seven people have been killed and dozens injured in several shootings in Chicago since Friday, police said, with Donald Trump once again calling for military intervention in the midwestern city.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump questioned why Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, had not welcomed military deployment.

Algae blooms and peeling paint mar $14.2m renovation as president claims pool has been ‘seriously vandalized’

Repair work will begin “immediately” at the troubled Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in Washington DC, Donald Trump said on Sunday, after suggesting the pool would need to be drained and blaming alleged “vandals” for the disruption.

The reflecting pool has been plagued by algae blooms and peeling paint following the controversial recent renovation efforts for America’s 250th anniversary celebrations next month.

Industrial action is biggest escalation yet in months-long dispute with populist government of Andrej Babiš

Thousands of public service media employees in Czechia are holding a 24-hour strike after the government of the billionaire prime minister, Andrej Babiš, pushed ahead with controversial plans to change the way the country’s public broadcasters are funded.

Monday’s industrial action by staff at Czech Television and Czech Radio marks the biggest escalation yet in a months-long confrontation between the broadcasters and Babiš’s populist administration.

Investment company Castlelake made bid public for shareholders to evaluate but carrier describes offer as ‘cheap’

• Business live – latest updates

The US investment firm trying to buy easyJet has gone public with its latest £4.7bn takeover proposal for the budget airline, its third and latest offer to be rejected.

Castlelake said on Monday that an all-cash offer of 625p a share, valuing easyJet at just over £4.7bn, had been rejected by the airline’s board on Sunday, after previous offers at 560p and 600p.

Babcock reports underlying operating profits down 19%, with frigate-building programme making a loss

• Business live – latest updates

One of the UK’s biggest defence contractors has blamed Brexit and Covid among a catalogue of problems to beset an important contract for the Royal Navy, which led its annual profits to plunge.

Profits at Babcock International fell by almost a fifth in the year to the end of March, as the firm reported a £140m charge on its contract to build five Type 31 frigates for the Royal Navy.

Investigation finds AI content that purports to show genuine customers, prompting calls for greater transparency

Brands promoting their products online are quietly deploying AI-generated influencers on social media, an investigation has found, prompting calls for greater transparency.

The findings suggest companies are increasingly turning to AI-generated content that purports to show genuine customer experiences while giving no obvious indication that the people featured are not real.

Smaller, cheaper cars built for narrow city streets are becoming more stylish – but require careful design decisions

The winding backstreets of London, Paris and Rome are a large part of their charm. But they are also a problem for electric carmakers. For a long time, squeezing big batteries into smaller, cheaper cars to fit European streets was too much of a problem, so manufacturers focused on bloated SUVs instead.

But that is finally changing. Battery technology has improved and Europe’s carmakers havecut manufacturing costs enough that they can now sell cars that might have a chance of fitting down a medieval lane or two.

Laborious and bombastic thriller set in a forest where a maniacal woodsman and a cast of irritating victims converge with gory results

No low-budget horror movie can apparently now be greenlighted without featuring the obligatory posse of supremely irritating victims ripe for the culling. Pitfall director James Kondelik is evidently unbothered that this might make his bloody agenda too blatant; even his “sympathetic” characters – a pair of grieving siblings on a wilderness trip to commemorate their parents – bleat out their issues at such length that it’s sweet relief when a maniac woodsman (played by former UFC fighter Randy Couture) arrives to shut them up in a laborious and bombastic survival horror.

Pitfall plays a bit as if the cast of Friends had strayed into Deliverance. Ashley (Alexandra Essoe) and her brother Scott (Marshall Williams) are returning several years later to the forest location where their parents died in a car accident after hitting a deer. Their respective other halves, Charlie (Matt Hamilton) and Gwen (Jordan Claire Robbins), are in tow – as well as carping spare wheel Lars (Richard Harmon). But Scott and Charlie’s credentials as outdoorsmen are rumbled when, fleeing from wolves, the former falls into a spiked hunting pit of the type he’d warned everyone to avoid a few hours earlier.

After Benita Raphan took her own life in 2021, director and friend Berliner spent years poring over her unfinished work to create a documentary unlike anything else

This is a one-of-a-kind documentary that has been coaxed and cut together by veteran film-maker Alan Berliner (Intimate Stranger, First Cousin Once Removed), who also serves as its narrator – but most of its graphics, footage and imagery were made by film-maker Benita Raphan, also the subject of the film. As such, it’s not exactly a collaboration since Raphan took her own life in 2021, for reasons the film gently tries to untangle. Nevertheless, Berliner commits to creating in this film something that limns the fragile spirit, startling originality and dogged, and indeed doggy, kindness of his canine-loving late friend.

In the process, Berliner has completed the unfinished film she was worrying over when she died but at the same time makes something entirely new; it might be called a tribute perhaps, or a bio-pastiche, or maybe a found-footage cinematic seance. Any way you slice and dice it, it’s a strangely entrancing work, an “irregular verb” like its subject, as she was described by her mother Roslyn in her New York Times obituary.

The latest in our series of writers highlighting their comfort films is a look at an endlessly quotable antidote to bro-focused comedies

At this year’s Oscars ceremony, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne and Ellie Kemper lined up on stage to celebrate 15 years of Bridesmaids. Frankly, as awards bits go it was a little hard to watch, and the lineup was missing Wendi McLendon-Covey (recovering from a neck lift, naturally), but I had a small thrill seeing them together anyway: Bridesmaids has been my comfort film for almost half my life.

Bridesmaids, written by Wiig and Annie Mumolo and directed by Paul Feig, arrived in a confetti shower in 2011. It follows Annie (Wiig) – already in a fragile state following the collapse of her bakery, her relationship and her living situation – as she navigates being maid of honour for her best friend Lillian (Rudolph). We don’t see much of Dougie, Lillian’s fiance: it’s Annie and Lillian’s relationship that takes centre stage here. They have the sort of friendship it seems impossible to break, built on years of love, shared tastes and endless inside jokes – that is, until the wedding planning begins, and Annie finds herself ill-equipped to lead the motley crew of bridesmaids Lillian has assembled in the run-up to the wedding. No one poses a greater threat to the friendship or Annie’s headspace than Helen (Byrne), the perfectly manicured wife of Dougie’s boss. Helen is everything Annie is not: pristine, well-connected and apparently excellent at organising bachelorette parties. They clash constantly, with increasingly messy results.

Prepare yourself for more epic battles in House of the Dragon. Plus: an art-inspired murderer is on the loose in French crime thriller Polar Park

9pm, Sky Atlantic
It’s easy to forget what last happened in the disappointingly dull Game of Thrones prequel two years ago. But the bloodiest naval battle in Westeros history – the Battle of the Gullet – actually kicks season three off with a bang. The Targaryen civil war finally gets into full gory swing, with Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) orchestrating their moves for the Iron Throne. Yes, there are still too many dislikable characters moping around, and it’s not a great sign when the only one you feel anything for is a fire-breathing dragon. But there’s no denying the wow factor of epic sword clashes like this one – and there are plenty more promised ahead. Plus added James Norton! Hollie Richardson

Various venues, Suffolk
The second weekend boasted brand new music by Davies and Waley-Cohen, the premiere of Alex Ho and Rockey Sun Keting’s Chronicle, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales with Kevin Edusei on exhilarating form

Percussionists are classical music’s original multitaskers. But even by their standards, Colin Currie is a virtuosic outlier. For portions of the world premiere of Tansy Davies’s percussion concerto Earth Works, Currie sat almost motionless at the kit except from the elbow down, as he sent a complex, glitchy weave of cymbal and drum skittering across an orchestral texture that ran on an altogether more monumental timescale. An arm shot out from behind a screen of tubular bells to reach a hi-hat cymbal amid an invisible juggling act dominated by what sounded like cowbells. There was a passage centred on an upturned dustbin and a tiny gong that might have been a small dangling frying pan. There were multiple just-in-time dashes back to a drumkit.

Behind Currie, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales looped melodic cells and exposed strata of flutter-tongued brass and delicate veils of strings, thick wodges of double bass, searing woodwind and elemental rumbles of orchestral percussion rolling across the stage.

The 44th president’s latest podcast is a slick, excellently researched look at the post-slavery period in the US. Plus, a troubling foray into the world of swinging

Who would have thought, back in 2008, that Barack Obama (pictured above) would become one of podcasting’s biggest movers and shakers? The former president is front and centre of this series on the post-slavery period in the US, a collaboration with Malcolm Gladwell for Audible and the History Channel. It’s slick and excellently researched, but it’s the calibre of conversation and careful dot-joining that make it so compelling. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

The disco-pop great salutes the sexiness of Marvin Gaye and the spirituality of Amazing Grace. But which of her own hits does she sing at karaoke?

The first song I fell in love with
I grew up in Newark, New Jersey, with five brothers and one sister, so there was always music in the house. I remember my mom singing Willow Weep for Me when I was five or six. There was something about the sadness in it that really moved me.

The first single I bought
I heard Why Do Fools Fall in Love by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers on the radio and bought it from a local record store. I was singing in the hallway of our building when a neighbour leaned over and asked: “Gloria, was that you singing?” She thought it was the radio. That was the moment I decided I was going to be a singer.

Hearing their in-your-face banger was a turning point for me – and I’ve never looked back

At the end of 2011, party season was under way but I was in no mood for festivities. Two years into fertility treatment, my body was pumped full of synthetic hormones and felt like a pin cushion, while my head was filled with both the fragile hope of having a baby, and the exhaustion of failed clinical attempts to do so.

I was in my late 20s. I met my husband when I was 22; we got married when I was 25. “I want to have kids young,” I’d told him. It was a feeling I’d harboured since my teenage years. But I’d also had the nagging sense that it might not come easily to me. As it turned out, my intuition was right. Approaching 28, I was a regular on the infertility merry-go-round.

A vivid and entertaining polemic on the economics of the tech revolution, filled with righteous ire

As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt  could tell you, AI is a hard sell these days. Last month, he tried talking up the AI revolution during a commencement address at the University of Arizona and was loudly booed by students about to enter an AI-ravaged job market. His discombobulation was telling.

Schmidt is not the only AI booster to crash out with students recently as the popular backlash grows. Every week brings a new story about some writer, publisher or academic who has torched their reputation by using an unreliable chatbot. Most US voters are opposed to the construction of vast, resource-guzzling new datacentres. A majority believe AI will negatively impact not just jobs but creativity and human relationships. In some quarters, saying that AI has any benefits at all is akin to saying that biological warfare gets a bad rap. As a New York Times column put it: “AI populism is here. And no one is ready.”

At 80, SF author M John Harrison is producing some of his best work. He talks about finding his voice, alien intelligence and the advice from Iain Banks that still spurs him on

Three years ago, in a greasy spoon on the fringes of the City of London, M John Harrison – Mike to his friends – told me about the novel he was working on. Rather than describing its plot or characters, he spoke purely about the challenge the book presented to him as a writer. With this one, he said, he wanted to push things as far as they could go.

Now that book, The End of Everything – his 13th novel – is about to be published. It describes a disintegrating Britain in which the iGhetti – monstrously sized, extremely powerful and strange lifeforms that look like powdery, slow-motion explosions – rule the country and possibly the world. Or do they? In its unwillingness to divulge any more than its characters know, which isn’t much, the novel is more alien evasion than invasion.

This bold debut about a woman finding healing after a late miscarriage is written with utter conviction

Birth. “A detaching, a loosening of something, then the pain of it.” A small, curled and crinkled creature is wrested from that pain. But then, instead of the long-awaited cry of a newborn: silence.

This is the background of Anna Goldreich’s highly accomplished, calmly devastating first novel The Leveret, a book that asks us to see late miscarriage as the death it feels like for many mothers. Since this miscarriage, six months ago, Clare has felt everyone, including her partner Phoebe, impatiently expecting her to get on with her life. But she remains floored by loss, stuck waiting for that first cry.

This study of the struggle for rights includes incredible personal stories that we should all be more familiar with

You could take two outwardly contradictory lessons from the historian David Turner’s new book on disability in the UK. First, that alarmingly little has changed for disabled people since the beginning of the modern age (the book’s first few stories, of 17th-century men and women having to prove they were disabled enough to receive parish support to avoid starvation, will be familiar to anyone who has tried to claim the personal independence payment). And second, that absolutely everything has changed - from the closing of asylums to the advent of prosthetics to the eventual, belated enshrining of disability rights in law.

But the central argument of Disability helps to reconcile these two narratives into a coherent whole. Turner, a professor at Swansea University, shows that while public and political attitudes to disability have remained poor, disabled people have challenged them at every stage, wresting progress out of even the most unpromising circumstances. This is not a story of rights and dignity bestowed from on high, but of the people and communities clawing them into being.

As phrases like easter eggs and looksmaxxing enter everyday language, what other words from the world of video games might soon be mainstream?

Twenty years ago, video games were seen as a niche hobby dominated by hardcore enthusiasts, tucked away in obscure online forums and gaming meet-ups. Back then, the idea that governments would use footage from Call of Duty and gaming terms such as “killstreaks” as war propaganda would have been absurd. Then the 2010s happened: nerd culture popularised, previously online-only spaces began to meld with the real world, and gaming went mainstream.

Now, gaming references have entered common parlance – at the end of 2024, video game terms including “cheat code” and “cutscene” were even added to the Oxford English Dictionary – and they increasingly crop up in politics, too. Earlier this year, the official White House X account posted footage of military strikes on Iran interspersed with footage from the video game Grand Theft Auto. Six days later, another video was posted, this time interspersing military footage with clips from Nintendo’s 2006 game Wii Sports. Video game references aren’t reserved for the political right, either: in February 2026, Democrat representative of New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quipped, “Why does this guy always talk like a World of Warcraft npc [non-player character]?” in response to a post on X by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff.

When a company decided to shut down an online game’s servers, there wasn’t much the players who had bought that title could do – until a group called Stop Killing Games began lobbying for new consumer protection laws

You can never be sure how long an online video game will last. Developer BioWare shut off sci-fi shooter Anthem’s servers in January, after seven years. Electronic Arts discontinued access to The Sims Mobile the same month. Wildlight Entertainment shuttered its Highguard servers in March, mere months after the game’s release. Activision Blizzard took Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile offline in April. Dozens more games have had their servers shut down in the first six months of 2026, adding to an already long list of video games that are no longer playable.

There is little that players can do when a company decides to stop supporting online play. Communities work hard to keep their favourite games online, sometimes keeping dead games running on private servers, though that may not necessarily be entirely legal. Generally, though, when a game goes offline it is dead and it’s not coming back.

PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2, PC; Team Asano/Square Enix
Upbeat, charmingly retro RPG full of treasure-hunting, temple-roaming, monster-slaying and princess-saving is an absolute blast to play

You can’t help but wonder if developer Team Asano is in a private competition with itself to come up with the most ridiculous name for a video game. Following Project Triangle Strategy and Bravely Default: Flying Fairy we have this mouthful: The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. It’s a playable love letter to the Zelda adventures of yesteryear rendered in the studio’s trademark glorious 2D-HD art style, melding evocative pixel sprites with modern visual effects.

From west Philabieldia, born and raised, our hero is adventurer Elliot. The antagonist making trouble in the neighbourhood is a king’s dastardly aide intent on summoning an ancient evil. The story is pure after-school-TV schlock, fully voice-acted but still unafraid to make you sit through reams and reams of text, and the action comprises treasure-hunting, temple-roaming and dispatching monsters. It’s part Chrono Trigger, part Oracle of Seasons as our almost obnoxiously upbeat hero journeys through the ages in order to solve puzzles, tip his fedora and of course, save a princess.

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

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

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

Japan House, London
This darkly atmospheric exhibition pairs the revolutionary Hiroshima images of revered photographer Kikuji with Ai’s glittering but deeply melancholy visions of cherry blossom

Japan House’s first, free photography exhibition, Kyotographie: Kawada Kikuji x Iwane Ai begins with slow-burning suggestions of fire: a box of Lucky Strike cigarettes, its surface crackling and curled; Coca-Cola bottles sinking into a dark bed of crushed ashes. Kawada took the photographs with a 4x5 plate camera; here they’re reprinted on washi paper, the textures and density of the blackness making them even more evocative of obliteration. They are vestiges of American culture in the wake of American violence – images found in the wreckage of Hiroshima in the aftermath of atomic destruction.

Kawada, now 93, is a photo geek’s photographer; people have paid up to £25,000 for a copy of Chizu (The Map), the photobook that collects together his tense, ruminative Hiroshima impressions, made when he was in his 20s. A series of seemingly abstract images depicts the stains on the wall – all that remained of bodies in the Genbaku (A-Bomb) Dome. Kawada was 12 when the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima. His approach to capturing one of the worst scenes of mass destruction in human history was to tell it with a kind of detachment, indirect and impressionistic, fragmented. It’s a story about proximity to trauma and surviving it. His photographs veer away from truth. The reality is impossible to comprehend – for both Kawada standing there, and us viewing the images. These were revolutionary photographs at the time – and they still feel new in their search to express the inexpressible.

Underbelly Boulevard, London
Audience members become unsuspecting mind-readers, and numbers disappear from their memory, in this hugely entertaining show

An audience member is on stage, their feet hypnotically glued to the floor. Under the influence of magician and mentalist James Phelan, we’ve just seen them unable to count to 10, or remember their own name. Now Phelan has a finger to their brow, to channel into their head the unspoken thoughts of another punter sat in the auditorium. A woman in the back row is invited to summon to mind what she wished to be when she was younger. A pause while she does so, and then: “she wanted to be the Woolworths pick’n’mix lady,” pipes up the mesmerised individual. And the woman in the back row exclaims: “Holy shit!”

Give or take banal speculation about plants in the audience, I have not a scooby how such tricks are accomplished. The mind reels. Phelan, the nephew of TV conjuring stalwart Paul Daniels, occupies most of his set, Showman, with this stuff, and – no matter how many times you’ve seen mind-benders and “neuro-linguistic programmers” do it all before – it’s absorbing to watch an innocent member of the public have the number seven seemingly wiped from her mind, or another one select the very figure between nought and 200 that Phelan requires for his dramatic climax to work.

Opera Holland Park, London
Alice gets a musical-theatre belter, the ‘Drink Me’ Bottle performs soprano acrobatics and the Caterpillar smokes his hookah like Audrey Hepburn

Will Todd’s family-opera version of the Alice in Wonderland stories, premiered at Opera Holland Park in 2013 and well travelled since, has been something of a signature show for the company. For several years it was performed on mini-stages dotted around the lawn behind the theatre, with the audience following the musicians around. Now it has been brought into the main theatre, with Leslie Travers’s picture-postcard Victoriana set elements adapted by Ceci Calf, and with Martin Duncan reworking his original direction.

Todd and his librettist Maggie Gottlieb give us some of the most familiar characters and scenes from Lewis Carroll’s stories and nudge them into a gentle rescue-story scenario. Alice is sheltering in a pet shop with her horrid brothers when she releases the White Rabbit from his cage and sets her Wonderland adventure in motion. Eventually, having puzzled with the Cheshire Cat, witnessed the demise of an Ofsted-worthy Humpty Dumpty (“regular assessment’s a social investment”) and had tea with the Mad Hatter, she saves her new friends from penal servitude in the Queen of Hearts’s jam-tart factory and finds herself back in the pet shop – where, thanks to the Rabbit having magically acquired opposable thumbs, all ends happily. The singers take their bows and then chat with the children who have been watching from cushions at the front.

Soho theatre, London
Told through two overlapping monologues, Brianna and Armani prepare for a night that could change the course of their lives

All the nerves, hope and anticipation of getting ready for a date melt together in Tia-Renee Mullings’s coming-of-age play. Told through two separate, overlapping monologues, Brianna (Zakiyyah Dean) and Armani (Sheyi Cole) prepare for a night that could change the course of their lives for the better. Or it could go horribly wrong. Who knows? Set up on a blind date by mutual friends, they have only a photo of their prospective partner to go on.

It’s a premise that many searching for love in today’s dating app-fuelled world will recognise. But that anxiety isn’t enough to sustain momentum across the play’s 80-minute running time. For Brianna and Armani, nothing seems to be going to plan. Brianna’s younger sisters steal and destroy her carefully chosen outfit – a nightmare for a perfectionist like her – before an unfortunate encounter with water guns completely ruins her hair. Meanwhile, Armani misses his barber’s appointment and ends up with the worst trim of his life. After a while, though, the relentless string of mishaps becomes predictable, and things begin to feel as though they’re running in circles.

Supernatural horror Saccharine and melodramatic comedy Maddie’s Secret are the latest films on body-image anxieties served up by Hollywood

Saccharine is soundtracked by a rumbling stomach. Ping-ponging between binge eating and regimented workout routines, first-year medical student Hana Hitching (Midori Francis) considers how she could drop down to her ideal weight. For someone whose body-image issues appear longstanding – a brief shot reveals the diet books stashed away in her drawer – a quick fix appears irresistible. Hana begins taking an illicit supplement guaranteed to make the weight just “melt off”. The secret ingredient? Human ash.

Soon she begins to be stalked by the ghostly presence of the woman whose cremated last remains she has been consuming. “It’s kind of worth it, right?” says a formerly overweight friend, who once took the same pills and experienced the same ensuing anxiety and audio hallucinations, in a scene that encapsulates the cruel motto central to extreme diet culture: nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

The Grange festival, Northington, Hampshire
David Alden’s blackly comic Kafkaesque production has a strong cast whose lively performances were not always matched by the Early Opera Company in the pit

The year 1724 found Handel at the very height of his popularity. Giulio Cesare, written for a handpicked cast of the finest singers, may lack the psychological depth of Tamerlano, the year’s other premiere, but rarely had the composer come up with such an infectious score. A gung-ho tale of colonial conquest, it is ripe for sending up politicians with a hankering for foreign intervention. Here, however, David Alden resists the temptation to skewer the likes of Trump in a Kafkaesque production that takes quite a different tack.

For an opera often staged as a comedic romp, Alden’s nightmarish world of body bags and refugees is about as dark as it gets. Cesare initially seems more interested in his military memoirs than sleeping with the enemy. Cleopatra is unhealthily fixated on asps while her servant, in a brilliantly absurdist twist, is a bona fide mummy. Tolomeo’s general urinates in the toilet while his master lounges in the nearby bath and Cornelia, widow of the brutally beheaded Pompey the Great, is battered and bewildered until she finally turns to the bottle.

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London
A stream of high-profile guest stars included Johnny Marr, Little Simz, Shaun Ryder, Sparks, Yasiin Bey, Bootie Brown and Fatoumata Diawara

Gorillaz’s first stadium show is quite the event. It’s a staggering hi-tech spectacle, a two-and-a-half hour mini-festival with a seemingly endless stream of high-profile guest stars, and its audacious ambition and military precision all stem from the fecund imagination and magpie mind of one man.

Damon Albarn has never come across a genre of music that he doesn’t want to turn inside-out to see how it works. In recent years, he has turned Gorillaz from the mildly gimmicky virtual band he co-conceived with graphic artist Jamie Hewlett into a sprawling expression of his own musical curiosity and rampant eclecticism.

In the second of our five museum quizzes, curators at Norwich castle set 10 fiendish questions to test your knowledge of their collections. So what do they have the biggest collection in the world of?

Ten years on, leaving the EU has made life more difficult and costly – here are some of the ways we’ve lost out

It is 10 years since voters in the UK chose to leave the EU, and our wallets have been feeling the effects ever since.

From paying more to take the dog on holidays in France – and making calls while you are there – to higher grocery bills and the headache of filling in customs forms for parcels, Brexit has made many simple tasks more complicated and expensive.

We were charged the wrong amount, but because the bank says we have no evidence it won’t do a chargeback

I went to Paris to recover from the grief of losing my dog.

All was going well until I took a taxi from a rank outside Musée d’Orsay to my hotel near Notre Dame – a 12-minute journey.

We’ve rounded up stylish and comfy summer footwear for every occasion, whether you want beach perfection or office-ready

• The best sunglasses for every budget

I’m over clunky shoes the minute there’s a glimmer of sunshine in the sky. And because flip-flops will only get you so far (literally and figuratively), a range of sandals is constantly in rotation for me during the summer months.

Sandals have also become an unlikely favourite for men’s event dressing, with Alexander Skarsgård stepping out in a pair of Valentino Rockstud flip-flops on the Sundance red carpet earlier this year. And while thong sandals aren’t for everyone, plenty of more reserved options offer additional coverage.

We’re well into strawberry season now, but which punnets are the pick of the crop and which hit a sour note?

• The best supermarket strawberry jams, tasted and rated

Back in 1994, I used to pick strawberries in Dorset to earn extra pocket money. It was gruelling but delicious work. We’d shuffle on our hands and knees down furrowed rows of plants, picking those beautiful, fat red berries and trying not to eat too many along the way. We were paid by the punnet, which at my picking speed amounted to less than £1 an hour, unlike the impressively fast seasonal workers who came to our village every summer.

I scored the strawberries below on sweetness first, using a Brix refractometer, which measures the sugar content of fruit and veg (each Brix point represents 1% sucrose in the juice by mass). Sweetness isn’t everything, however, and some of these berries had a lovely, complex, honeyed or floral flavour. Tartness is important, too, for bringing balance and a refreshing quality to the eating experience. As a general rule of thumb, go for fruit with a bright red body, fresh green leaves and a powerful but fresh aroma.

Want to prolong the life of your TV? A wireless TV box could be the answer. Our expert put top devices – from Freely streamers to Sky and Amazon Fire – through their paces

• Do you really need a new TV? Simple ways to upgrade your current setup

TV is changing – and so is the way we watch it. Forget that dusty aerial or unsightly satellite dish, you can now stream mainstream channels such as the BBC, ITV and others via Freely, alongside premium services such as Sky Atlantic, over wifi – and it doesn’t need to cost the earth.

Freely comes from the creators of Freeview and Freesat. It’s backed by the UK’s main public service broadcasters and is supported by a growing list of TV providers. Scroll the Freely programme guide, and you’ll find familiar channels such as Dave, Yesterday and W. To watch them, you just need a wireless TV box and wifi.

Best Freely TV streamer:
Manhattan Aero

Best budget wireless TV stick:
Amazon Fire 4K Max

Our writer spent three months putting natural, recycled and bio-based leggings, sports bras and tops to the test

• How to make your clothes last longer

Most of us love to exercise in flattering, figure-hugging clothes, but they’re often unsustainable. Workout gear with stretch tends to be made from fossil-fuel-derived synthetics, which dominate global fibre production. They shed microplastics during every wash, have huge carbon footprints (polyester is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in fibre production) and can take hundreds of years to decompose in landfills, releasing harmful gases in the process. However, it can be difficult to find good workout clothes made from alternative, less-polluting fabrics.

So I set out to find the best workout gear made from materials that have a lower environmental impact but also don’t compromise on performance. I put a range of pieces, from leggings to shorts, tank tops to base layers, to the test, wearing them for different types of exercise to find out how they felt, and if they retained their stretch. I looked at the environmental impact of each item, and I’ve noted any take-back and recycling schemes.

This one-pan. 30-minute stir-fry will be just as delightful if you swap out the cheese for tofu

This is such a gorgeous one-pot rice dish, though it deviates from my usual microwave method and goes back to cooking rice the good old-fashioned, stove-top absorption way. If you’re vegan, you can easily substitute tofu for the paneer cubes. In fact, I told my tofu-mad children that the paneer was tofu, and they were none the wiser.

Barron Trump has a new yerba mate and Kai Trump a ‘bold’ energy drink – would their offerings pass the taste test?

Do you like sugary soft drinks? Do you like Donald Trump and his family? Do you want to support nepotism?

If the answer is yes to all these questions, then have I got the products for you: a pineapple yerba mate co-founded by Trump’s son, and a syrupy, energy-drink-thing developed by his granddaughter.

Cooking for kids doesn’t have to be a chore: these three meals are quick, full of flavour and, crucially, fun both to make and to eat

Family meals don’t need to mean hours in the kitchen or a mountain of washing-up. These crisp chicken nuggets are a healthier homemade favourite that kids absolutely love, while the lamb lollipops are fun and surprisingly simple; the stuffed pitta pockets, meanwhile, are perfect for lunches, after-school dinners or eating on the go. Above all, all three dishes are built for real family life: quick, full of flavour and designed to make mealtimes a little easier and a lot more enjoyable.

High in fibre and polyphenols, popcorn has been touted as the perfect snack for the health-conscious. It’s also the ideal vehicle for salt, sugar, butter, bacon fat …

Popcorn became indelibly associated with cinema-going during the Great Depression (it was cheap and hugely profitable), but it also has an established reputation as a superfood – recently given a boost by longevity expert Dan Buettner, who described popcorn as the best snack to eat if you want to live to 100. “It’s very high in fibre, it’s very high in complex carbohydrates, and it even has more polyphenols than a lot of vegetables,” he said.

Popping corn has been consumed by humans for at least 4,000 years, but its widespread popularity as a snack probably dates to a single event: the Columbian Exposition of 1893, also known as the World’s Fair, held in Chicago.

Puff Puff, AKA Puffy, came to us aged 13 with no teeth, a broken ear and a cold – but was always there in tough times

Three of our cats had died of old age, leaving my family heartbroken. So Brandy, my wife, looked at our local animal shelter website and saw it had a 13-year-old stray cat with no teeth, a broken ear and a cold. Betty, as the staff had named her, had one day left to live before the shelter was going to put her down.

Brandy sent me along to see her. The warden said no one had visited Betty, but as soon as they opened the cage a Himalayan cat catapulted out of her blanket straight at me. I picked her up and knew I had to take her home.

Meg was married to a man but had fantasised having sex with women for years. When she met Jess, her knees buckled

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

I’d spent so many years visualising having sex with a woman

An academic and a medical student share concerns about ​extremes of wealth and poverty, but do they agree on the monarchy?

Anna, ‘in her 40s’, Exeter

Occupation Education academic at the University of Exeter

The standup and Big Boys creator on experiencing grief at a young age, his mischievous grandmother, and why he refuses to learn to drive

Born in Watford in 1993, Jack Rooke is a comedian, actor and writer. He studied journalism at the University of Westminster, and began his standup career in 2014. Rooke’s breakout show, Good Grief, was written with his grandmother, Sicely, and documented their experiences of bereavement following the death of Rooke’s father, Laurie, from cancer. His next show, Happy Hour, became the basis for his two-time Bafta-winning Channel 4 comedy, Big Boys. Rooke is taking an updated version of Good Grief on a UK tour, starting at the Roundhouse in London on 14 August. Rooke is an ambassador for the suicide prevention charity Calm.

I am three years old and being pushed by my nan on a swing. She’s in a lovely powder-blue two-piece while I am sporting an iconic all-in-one black-and-white striped mini boiler suit dungaree scenario. For reasons we will never know, I look rather unimpressed.

Bank details at risk as criminals use AI to create fake sites and emails offering pre-release beta test version

Like millions of gamers around the world, you have been waiting years for Grand Theft Auto VI to be released. Now you have the opportunity to play the much-anticipated game before everyone else.

An email has arrived inviting you to play a pre-release “beta” version of the game so that you can alert the makers to any bugs before its official release later this year.

Government’s temporary VAT cut aims to ease cost of living for families this summer – here’s what’s on offer

From Thursday families can enjoy a cut-price trip to Legoland or the cinema to watch Toy Story 5 as the government’s school holiday discount scheme Great British summer savings gets under way.

Billed by Rachel Reeves as a way to “support families with the little treats in life”, the temporary VAT cut will reduce ticket prices at family attractions such as zoos and theme parks as well as the cost of children’s cinema tickets and restaurant meals.

The impact on petrol and food prices, energy bills and mortgages if the truce holds and strait of Hormuz reopens

Around the world, markets reacted with relief this week to news that Donald Trump had signed a draft peace deal with Iran that promised to reopen flows of oil and gas from the Gulf to global buyers.

There are already signs the truce could unravel, with Friday’s peace talks in Switzerland abruptly called off, but for now markets seem persuaded that commercial vessel traffic through the key waterway can start returning to normal.

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

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

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

Fitness isn’t just about getting a six-pack or competing in a triathlon. These straightforward, low-intensity moves will improve your strength and mobility and make almost everything easier

There are lots of movements that make you stronger and more physically capable – press-ups, squats and kettlebell swings build strength and muscle that help in a huge variety of situations. But can you get more specific? Well, yes: there are exercises that target the challenges of everyday life, whether that’s playing on the floor with your kids or bringing in the big shop. Here are the moves you may want to consider, presented by a dozen movement coaches, personal trainers and strength specialists.

People assume that those with facial hair are more likely to harbour bacteria on their faces than the clean-shaven – but the truth is more tangled

The idea that beards are dirtier than clean-shaven faces has been floating around for decades, says John Tregoning, professor of vaccine immunology at Imperial College London. There is even research that shows people perceive bearded men as less hygienic: one study found restaurant customers rated waiters with facial hair as dirtier. Science doesn’t necessarily back that up, though.

One of the earliest studies on the subject, published in 1967, looked at how much bacteria could be recovered from men’s faces after being artificially sprayed on to their skin. Researchers compared washed and unwashed faces, both with and without beards. The dirtiest combination wasn’t with a beard: most bacteria was recovered from unwashed clean-shaven faces, followed by unwashed bearded faces, washed bearded faces and finally washed clean-shaven faces.

Screenings can find treatable conditions before they’ve caused too much damage – but ‘overscreening’ can cause harm

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes when tech entrepreneur and longevity influencer Bryan Johnson posted about his girlfriend’s “vaginal microbiome report” in April. (He said it was in the “top 1% of vaginas”.) While the vaginal microbiome is genuinely interesting, most clinicians don’t routinely recommend this test to patients.

As medical technology has become more powerful – and more marketable – the line between helpful screening and unnecessary testing has blurred.

More walking and standing in the workplace also associated with higher risk, according to Danish research

Bending forwards and walking a lot at work in the early stages of pregnancy may increase the risk of miscarriage, a study suggests.

Miscarriage affects about 15% of women. Risk factors include parental age, smoking, night shift work and exposure to air pollution and various chemical compounds.

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons say Milan fashion week collection demonstrates rejection of ‘useless design’

Speaking backstage before the Prada show at Milan fashion week on Sunday, the co-designers Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons described their latest collection as “breaking the perception of what is perceived as typical luxury in high fashion right now”.

This was a purified version of Prada. The design duo called it a “rejection of experimental shapes, techniques and decoration” distilling the collection to pieces that are “intentional and meaningful”.

Move over Barbie, ‘electric fuchsia’ is now dominating football’s biggest stages. But why has the sport embraced the colour?

Any fashion-conscious England fan watching the World Cup this week would have appreciated the moment the attack reached the Croatian end – and not just for the potential goals.

It offered another glimpse of goalkeeper Dominik Livaković in hot pink, a shade fast becoming a visual signature this tournament. Forget Barbie pink – welcome to the World Cup’s hot pink summer.

As some shops toy with the idea of removing changing rooms, what does it mean for the future of the high street?

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Is the changing room dead? According to the teenage fashion mecca, Brandy Melville, it is. The brand has closed all its fitting rooms across stores in the UK, US and Canada, with shoppers taking to social media lamenting the change.

“Why does Brandy hate [its] customers?” one TikTok user questioned. “How am I supposed to know if it’s cute on me???!” another exclaimed.

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

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

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

Come for the sun; stay for the seafood, jazz festival, galleries and coastal walking in this laid-back village within a city

South of the city centre, Le Mourillon is Toulon’s characterful and unpretentious seaside quarter. Once a fishing village, Le Mourillon is home to little shops selling Provençal produce such as huge garlic bulbs and tomatoes in vibrant shades, alongside lively bars and restaurants. It’s not as glamorous or polished as the likes of Antibes or Saint-Tropez – you won’t find designer brands – but it’s all the more charming for that.

From a waterfront palace in Greece to a nonna’s house in Italy, these stylish boutique hotels offer character and comfort at a budget-friendly price

The vibrant port city offers a more relaxed and budget-friendly base for exploring this beautiful coastline by train and ferry

The ferry from Salerno to Amalfi town was set to take about 35 minutes, and we were debating whether to risk the windswept top deck, fearful our packed lunches might fly into the Tyrrhenian Sea. (My father and I were taking a pragmatic approach on our Italian holiday, opting for light midday meals to save space for the primo and secondo courses at dinner, and ample lemony desserts.)

As our ferry sped across glittering water, we admired the views as the Amalfi coast unfolded, incandescent with charm. But we could also see the crawling traffic on the narrow roads that cling to the cliffs. That could have been us, up there in one of those toy-sized rental cars, squeezed between a tourist coach and a fed-up local leaning on their horn. Thankfully, we were on a boat instead, sea breeze in hair and coffee in hand.

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

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

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

For one day every June, South Africa’s searing racial inequality seems to melt away at Comrades race

In the early morning dark, thousands of runners waited, jostling with anticipation. South Africa’s national anthem rang out. Then the haunting swell of Shosholoza, first sung by Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa’s goldmines. Finally, that unmistakable, spine-tingling piano: Chariots of Fire.

Runners gather before the start of the marathon

When numbers and sounds are not what they seem

Today’s puzzles – and prize draw! – are about different types of deception.

1. Super syllabus

28 June 1951: The much-talked of state-owned experimental abattoirs have not been built

HEREFORD: With the departure of the high winds, rain has come again in a steady, dreary drizzle. To-day we should have been hay-making: it is as well that none is yet turned and that not much is cut. Rams are sitting each against the trunk of an apple tree: the sheltering branches form big green umbrellas. Nasty selfish creatures. Janice seems to think, so I have brought her back to her old nook against the house between two clipped bushes: she can keep dry there and eat a handful of crushed oats. The cats were already under another bush. Flossie has gone to her basket and grandmama cat sits behind me on my chair; it was her habit to treat a distinguished author like this and she got from him a quite unfair portion of chair.

The men are mucking-out buildings, masoning, and whitewashing. Farmers have done their best to produce good meat under difficult conditions, only to see waste and animals cruelly treated and left to wither away in congested areas outside the totally inadequate slaughterhouses. The much-talked of state-owned experimental slaughterhouses have not been built, and it is doubtful if even two will be ready this year. Up at Ardgay my cousin has found a rare bugle; it was sent to the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens and is being photographed there.

Whether its our careers, health or relationships, we often set the bar too high and end up feeling disappointed when it doesn’t work out. Try this new way of thinking … and you may just see some real results

Every January, millions of us sit down and write our goals for the year. By March, most of them have been abandoned. So we set new ones in spring, and when September rolls around, we do it again. New season, fresh start, same cycle – and plenty of beating ourselves up along the way. I lived this cycle for years. When I was working at Google as a digital health executive, I was a champion goal-setter with quarterly OKRs (objectives and key results) and a running list of personal goals I would review every week. On paper, it worked. I was successful by most external measures. But I had this persistent feeling that I was running just to stay in the same place, like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass.

After retraining as a neuroscientist and studying how the brain learns, I started to understand why. Goals work brilliantly under very specific conditions. You want to buy a car that fits three kids and costs under £25,000? Set a goal, do the research, buy the car. The destination is known and the path is clear.

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

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

Together my best friend Annabel Rook and I worked to support victims of gender-based violence – until she became one herself. Now I feel like a part of myself has been erased. Why aren’t more people outraged?

It is the summer of 2005, and we are staying on the sun-kissed shores of Busua, a coastal community in Ghana. The sand here is made of crushed pink shells. Annabel and I pick up handfuls and scrub our stained feet in the shallows. We’ve been wearing flip-flops for months, trailing through the rich red dust at the refugee settlement where we work. The Atlantic is rough and alive. Its tumbling motion and the wind are making me feel euphoric. Annabel is smiling to herself, too, and jumping in and out of waves.

“Mori,” she shouts, “it’s like being beaten up by an old friend!”

The animated sequel sets up a tug-of-war between physical and digital play for children but is still eager not to be an anti-tech screed

For more than 30 years, Pixar’s signature Toy Story series has been entertaining children while giving voice to their parents’ anxieties. This is especially pronounced in the film’s sequels, as the living toys who dedicate their lives to the happiness of their owner/child experience all different sorts of potential and parent-paralleled obsolescence, from physical wear-and-tear and a child reaching young adulthood to the toy equivalent of empty-nesting (still hanging around the playroom but no longer anyone’s favourite). It’s only natural – maybe even a little belated – that Toy Story 5 would address the encroachment of technology, which continues to make its way to children earlier and earlier. So many years after the tech breakthroughs that allowed Toy Story to become the first computer-animated feature, and Pixar to become a household name in family entertainment, has the formerly Steve Jobs-owned company turned against the kind of innovation that built its success?

Former party leaders reflect on the turbulence that followed the referendum in which most Scottish voters backed the losing side

The decision to quit the EU bolstered support for Scottish independence, which a decade after the Brexit referendum is at near record levels, according to Scottish Labour’s former leader Kezia Dugdale.

Dugdale said the Brexit vote “creates a frame around fairness” for many in Scotland because, unlike England, Scottish voters comprehensively backed remain in 2016, by 62% to 38%, yet found their country taken out of Europe.

We would like to hear from Cape Verdeans in the UK and across the globe on the team’s progress in the tournament

Cape Verde is enjoying a fairytale World Cup, with their performance becoming the story of the tournament.

There was the shock 0-0 draw with Spain in their tournament debut. Then on Sunday, there was another when they drew 2-2 with two-time champions Uruguay in Miami. This now puts them in serious contention for a place in the knockouts.

How has the shortage affected you? How are you coping?

Health leaders have warned Britons are facing some of the “most severe” shortages of NHS medicines on record, including common painkillers, epilepsy drugs and HRT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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