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

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

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

Hugh Muir is executive editor, Opinion

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

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Speculation about US president’s executive assistant sparks furious backlash from White House

Wearing shoulder-length blond hair, gold earrings and a red dress, cancer survivor Natalie Harp introduced herself to the 2020 Republican national convention as “a formerly forgotten American from California” and compared Donald Trump to George Bailey, the everyman hero played by James Stewart in the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life.

“George Bailey’s father was right,” smiled Harp, her voice echoing in the Andrew W Mellon auditorium in pandemic-hit Washington. “All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away. Mr President, that makes you the richest man in the world.”

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

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

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

Now that Jared Kushner and the Saudi Investment Fund have bought The Sims’ publisher, EA, it’s unlikely to remain a game celebrating diversity and inclusivity

Sometimes it feels as though horrific world events and the malicious entities behind them are reaching into every aspect of our lives, from heatwaves that keep me shut away indoors, to generative AI that makes it increasingly difficult to trust what I read online. I can no longer even retreat into my favourite video game without funding human rights abuses across the world.

I’ve been playing The Sims series of life-simulation games since its first release at the turn of the millennium, when I sat with my sister in the corner of the sitting room using money cheats to build mansions for our digital dolls. Over the years, these games have helped me make friends: from the schoolmate who taught me to play more efficiently with hot keys, to the local fan who watched me stream The Sims 4 online and now meets me for lunch every week. In the last quarter of a century I’ve sunk thousands of hours into these games.

Jordan Erica Webber is a freelance writer and presenter specialising in video games and digital culture

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

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson, Philippe Auclair for the first of our Premier League preview podcasts.

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

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

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

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

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

An interim report by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) said CCTV images showed the fault existed before the incident occurred near Lewes, injuring 30 people.

Accelerating price increases in July add to pressure on households, with chancellor saying ‘there is more to do to restore hope’

• Analysis: Rising inflation underlines scale of Burnham’s cost of living challenge

• Business live – latest updates

UK inflation rose to 2.9% in July as the impact of the Iran war on energy prices triggered a renewed cost of living squeeze for British households.

The Office for National Statistics said inflation rose from a 15-month low of 2.6% in June, driven by the rising price of gas and electricity. Matching City economists’ forecasts, it was the first rise in the annual rate as measured by the consumer prices index since March.

Parents and daughter died in incident in Shoreham-by-Sea, with girl from same family in critical condition

Andy Burnham has warned of the dangers of open-water swimming as he called the deaths of a mother, father and their teenage daughter who got into difficulty in water off Sussex “a terrible family tragedy”.

The prime minister expressed his sympathies as a young girl from the same family remained in a critical condition in hospital.

Greens say analysis shows government failure to take bold climate action could lead to big gains for party at election

• UK politics live – latest updates

Labour could lose dozens of seats to the Green party if the government allows new drilling in the North Sea, according to internal research shared with the Guardian.

Green party analysis suggests up to 50 Labour MPs, including Andy Burnham’s key ally Louise Haigh, could lose their seats at the next election if the government fails to make urgent climate action a priority or allows new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.

The Guardian’s climate forum 2026: On Tuesday 20 October, join Damian Carrington and our panel of experts, including Prof Andy Haines, Katie White, Asad Rehman, Shruti Suresh, Gareth Thomas and Amy Fairman, for a hopeful and solutions-focused evening. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

PM pledges to get rough sleepers off streets for Christmas but issues ‘rallying call’ for community and voluntary organisations to help with plan

Andy Burnham has admitted government funding “may not fully be enough” to achieve his aim of offering a place to stay to every rough sleeper by Christmas, as he made a “rallying call” for communities to get behind his plan.

Speaking on a visit to the north-east of England, the prime minister said:

The government money itself may not fully be enough. So I am saying, putting the call out to community and voluntary organisations – we’re at one here in Newcastle today, doing fantastic work.

But we’re saying to the wider community, voluntary, and faith sector: come on, let’s get behind this. Let’s show what Britain can do when we all pull in the same direction.

We did it in the pandemic, we can do it again, and it’s a rallying call, really, that I’m putting out there today with a lot of government money behind it.

We did bring the numbers right down, but because we were the only area providing a high level of support, more people started to travel and it became difficult.

Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies said they uncovered group responsible for money laundering $3.35m but did not name individuals involved

The rise in Germany’s ⁠borrowing costs to a 15-year high reflects the ⁠increased security challenges ⁠facing ​the country following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and ⁠the need to spend much more defence, the Finance Ministry ⁠said on Wednesday.

German 10- ​and 30-year ‌borrowing costs ‌hit a fresh 15-year high in Wednesday’s ‌session. Bond yields of other major Western economies including the US and Japan have also climbed to multi-decade highs this ‌week due to ballooning government debt and geopolitics, increasing borrowing ​costs for companies and households and complicating policy.

“I am grateful to the MPs for supporting Andrii Sybiha for the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and Yevhenii Khmara for the position of Minister of Defence of Ukraine.

The tasks for both ministers are absolutely clear: Ukraine needs more strength. And it will have it. Glory to Ukraine!”

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

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

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

• Australian reveals ‘huge mistake’ in Instagram post

• Kyrgios tested positive at ATP 250 event in June

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

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

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

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

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

Rightwing populist’s inconsistent positions on Europe and Russia suggest he is testing how far he can push partners and electorate

One evening nine years ago in the Bulgarian town of Balgari, a Brazilian tourist approached the casually dressed, middle-aged man surrounded by bodyguards, bystanders and photographers. “Why are you important?” she asked. “I’m not so important,” he replied. She repeated the question and he admitted: “I’m the president.”

Now, in 2026, the rightwing populist Rumen Radev is no longer the president, but the prime minister – the more powerful of the two positions – after his Progressive Bulgaria party secured an overwhelming majority in April’s election. While many in Europe breathed a sigh of relief that month at the demise of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, others wondered if Radev would become the EU’s next disruptor-in-chief.

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t know why I’m so angry.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The best espresso machines, tested

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahead of the Nordic nation’s EU referendum, the Icelandic flag has been co-opted by the far right

To enter Reykjavik’s Grafarvogur Lutheran church, worshippers and visitors are invited to make their way down 16 steps painted in the rainbow stripes and the white, pink, blue, brown and black chevrons of the Progress Pride flag. The artwork, which can even be seen on satellite pictures, was originally a project of former head pastor Guðrún Karls Helgudóttir, now the bishop of Iceland, and her colleagues. The point was to show support for the LGBTQ+ community’s “need to be visible and accepted”, the church’s current head pastor, Arna Sigurðardóttir, told me.

And then some time in between the barely faded midnight sun of 7 July and the early morning light of 8 July, someone painted over all those colours with just three: blue on the outside, and two thin strips of white encasing a thicker strip of red in the centre.

Critics said I was attacking motorists. It’s more important for me that the city’s children are no longer breathing dangerous levels of pollution

• Ulez led to better lung size and function among London children, study finds

When I introduced London’s clean air zone – the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) – more than seven years ago, no city had ever attempted anything quite like it. At the time, the scheme in central London provoked fierce opposition. When I decided to expand it – first in 2021, to inner London, and then again in 2023 to the whole city, making it the biggest clean-air zone in the world – my detractors were louder still. I had, they claimed, declared war on drivers in blind pursuit of a policy that may not even work. All the mainstream political parties, including my own, were opposed. In recent years, though, those critics have gone quiet.

There is now a mountain of evidence to show that the Ulez has slashed air pollution and improved air quality across London, and research published by Imperial College London earlier this year showed that this is already saving lives. Between 2019 (when I first introduced the Ulez) and 2024, estimated deaths associated with air pollution in the capital fell by around 40%. But a new, independent study published by Queen Mary University of London today goes further still, showing how – by helping to clean up the capital’s air – the Ulez is improving the lungs and lives of London’s children.

Sadiq Khan is mayor of London

Some restraint on Trump’s excesses might be accomplished if November’s midterm elections give Democrats more power

Donald Trump is essentially unrestrained when it comes to enriching himself during his second term, with no sign of stopping. If anything, he’s ramping things up.

The numbers so far are astonishing. He amassed $2.2bn in 2025 revenues, the Guardian and other news outlets have reported.

Today we begin our drive to get everyone in for Christmas. And it will be for local communities up and down the land to decide how best to do it

• Burnham launches ‘national drive’ to get rough sleepers off streets by Christmas

I’ve always thought you can tell something about a country by what it learns to walk past. And, somewhere along the way, we’ve got used to seeing people sleeping rough on our streets.

We see people bedded down in doorways and sat outside stations, carrying their lives in rucksacks and with sleeping bags on their backs. And I think most people have the same reaction: this isn’t right; it shouldn’t be happening here. But we’ve lived with it for so long that something that used to shock us now feels like part of the scenery.

Andy Burnham is prime minister of the United Kingdom

New York mayor Zohran Mamdani shows Britain’s Andy Burnham that confronting billionaires need not mean the end of cooperation with Donald Trump

In November, Californians will vote on a one-off 5% levy on residents worth more than $1bn. The union-backed plan could raise $100bn, more than enough to replace federal healthcare funding stripped away by Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. About 200 very rich people would pay. But the referendum is becoming a test of whether extreme wealth can buy the political power to defeat a popular redistributive policy. Google co-founder Sergey Brin has already spent $100m backing opposition to the tax – a fraction of the $13bn bill he could face. Other billionaires are joining him. Whether voters can impose costs on the super-rich once their fortunes are big enough to shape the political process is now an open question. That alone should trouble any democracy.

It’s a long way from Mr Brin’s west coast lair of Mountain View to Andy Burnham’s Makerfield constituency. But the prime minister should heed the call from prominent progressive academics – led by the Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz – urging Britain to join a new global push to tackle inequality. Prof Stiglitz wants help creating a new UN International Panel on Inequality (IPI). This stems from the G20’s first-ever inequality report, which warned that the yawning gap between rich and poor was a human-made crisis corroding democracy and social cohesion while blocking efforts to tackle the climate emergency.

The Wordsworth Trust has acquired a second home. Cherished authors including George Eliot don’t even have one

Interest in all things Jane Austen remains high, following the celebrations of her 250th anniversary. In September, the museum based in her former home in Chawton, Hampshire, will host a Persuasion festival. But a less obvious beneficiary of this spike in interest is a museum dedicated to two writers she never met: William and Dorothy Wordsworth. The success of the BBC television series The Other Bennet Sister – which portrayed Mary, a minor character in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, as a Wordsworth enthusiast – has led to an influx of visitors to Dove Cottage in Cumbria.

This has been a big year for the Wordsworth Trust, which owns the cottage, owing to its purchase of another house: Rydal Mount, two miles to the east. When this building is reopened, the poet will become one of a handful of authors, along with Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, to have more than one of his homes opened to visitors.

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

Nik Wood says the prime minister must be tough on the causes of crime, Henry Rossi calls for him to resolve the IPP crisis, while Janet Carter considers victims of domestic abuse

As you say in your editorial (The Guardian view on early prisoner release: don’t lose sight of systemic reform, 12 August), governments of all stripes have bowed to pressure for ever longer sentencing. For instance, the killers of PC Andrew Harper would now face mandatory life sentences, campaigned for across the board. It was the unlikely figure of Douglas Hurd, the Conservative home secretary, who said that prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse. That expense is always one that is tempting for governments demonstratively to minimise.

The result is a prison service that hasn’t got room for all those the courts convict, nor enough staff or scope to reform and rehabilitate them for the benefit of society. The assault that has been made on Parole Board and probation decision-making and capabilities compounds this.

Say the thing, mend the relationship, share the story – and then get on with living, says end-of-life doula Rebecca Jo-Rushdy, while Jane Andrew thinks EM Forster said it best

What struck me most about this article (What end-of-life experts know about living well: love your wrinkles, celebrate birthdays and don’t obsess over work, 13 August) is the idea that preparing for the end of life can actually help us live more fully now.

As an end-of-life doula, I have seen how a terminal diagnosis can suddenly bring clarity. The things that once felt urgent often fall away, while relationships, memories, unfinished conversations and the question of what we leave behind become profoundly important. But I don’t believe that we should have to wait for a diagnosis to begin that work.

Vanessa Scanlan says the constituency is desperately in need of a decent MP who would offer genuine support for the problems it faces. Plus letters from Leila Roberts and Richard Ellis

I live in the Clacton constituency, in one of the surrounding villages, some distance from the town, and I agree with Sarah Elizabeth Cox’s characterisation of the town (Farage has turned Clacton into a human zoo. Here’s the truth about what’s happening here, 12 August).

When I go to Clacton to take my kids to the beach or to the cinema, there is a sudden shift in the character of the area. The deprivation radiates in some streets. It is painful to see the residents so keenly in need of a decent MP to offer genuine support for a town with so many problems being exploited by Nigel Farage.

Machines that kill without distinction, answerable to no one, leave no one safe, writes military surgeon Dr Darren Mann

Stuart Russell is right that AI’s builders fear losing control of it (Experts are warning: our AI arms race is putting humanity at risk, 11 August). But it is not only a future superintelligence’s problem; it is already loaded into weapons, where a loss of control kills a civilian today, not humanity tomorrow.

An autonomous drone told to clear a “kill box” is the genie your other columnists described (How do we prevent AI agents from going rogue? It starts with a new kind of measurement, 18 July): it does what it is told, killing whatever is inside, combatant or child. The gap between a target and a lawful target is the principle of distinction, which no instruction closes, because the instruction was lawful.

Updates from Headingley; play starts 11am BST
Ali Martin on ‘El Dysfunctiono’ | The Spin

Warm applause as Joe Root leads England out at the start of his second spell as permanent captain. Are there any precedents for this, an experienced former captain returning to the job on a permanent basis years later? Bob Simpson is the name sitting at the top of my head. I guess Mike Brearley qualifies, though his situation was unique.

Last Friday was a glorious anniversary for Pakistani cricket, 10 years on from a 10-wicket win against England at the Oval. Younis Khan, their greatest run-scorer, hit a double hundred. Yasir Shah, a magical leggie and Lionel Messi lookalike, took a five-fer. Misbah-ul-Haq, their 42-year-old captain, led his men on a victory lap in south London and would have the ultimate reward a few days later. His side, unable to play at home since 2009 because of an attack on Sri Lanka’s team bus, moved up to No 1 in the Test rankings for the first time.

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

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

Last season’s position: 3rd

• Move could be confirmed along with $100m US Open pot

• Slams have been in dispute with players for 18 months

The grand slam tennis tournaments have agreed to establish a formal Player Advisory Council in a move aimed at defusing the row over prize money. The joint venture could be confirmed on Wednesday as part of US Tennis Association’s announcement of this year’s US Open prize money, which is expected to top $100m (£74m) for the first time.

The four slams have been in dispute for almost 18 months, with with leading players, including Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka, demanding a greater share of tournament revenues as part of a wider overhaul of the sport’s finances and operations that would also lead to the major tournaments making contributions to player welfare and offer meaningful player representation.

Two clubs are far ahead in wages and turnover, but London City Lionesses could be new force after big transfer moves

After reviewing eight seasons’ worth of Women’s Super League clubs’ financial accounts, it seems appropriate to start by offering a sincere apology to any reader who has become accustomed to seeing the phrase “the big four” in Women’s Super League coverage in reference to Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United. Financially speaking, that is a myth. There has actually been no such thing in recent times. There has, in fact, been a big two: Arsenal and Chelsea.

On the pitch that quartet have lifted every major domestic women’s trophy since 2014 but, off it, the two London clubs have left the rest of the pack in their dust in regard to wages and turnover, together recording more revenue in 2024-25 than the rest of the division combined.

Updates from the opening day’s card at York
Constitution River can fill Bow Echo void | Mail Greg

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

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

Mohamed Salah’s arrival made a splash, but the Turkish Super Lig will probably become the latest league to end up as a bailout fund for Europe’s powerhouses

Mohamed Salah plays in Turkey now. So do Romelu Lukaku and Leandro Trossard and Leroy Sané and Nathan Aké. Mason Greenwood and N’Golo Kanté and Dusan Vlahovic, too.

Bruno Fernandes and Gabriel Martinelli may yet follow them there, depending on negotiations and moods and whatever else compels a footballer to leave one club for another.

Plus: goalkeepers sent off far from their penalty area, and the fastest spot-kicks ever awarded

• Mail us with your all of your questions and answers

“Birmingham’s August Priske scored the only goal at Swansea in the League Cup on 8 August. Can you think of any other examples of players scoring in their namesake months?” wonders Paul Tiffen.

Our wonderful readers have managed to cover the entire year, pretty much, so let’s get going. The list below includes just some of the many examples you sent in.

Nixon bested Alexander Vindman to win Democratic nomination and now faces Republican Ashley Moody in November

• Trump-backed Byron Donalds wins Republican primary in race to succeed Florida governor DeSantis

In an upset for the Democratic establishment, progressive Angie Nixon won the party’s US Senate primary in Florida, beating former army intelligence officer Alexander Vindman.

Nixon, a state representative and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, had significantly less funding going into the primary – with $975,000 to Vindman’s $16.3m at the end of July, according to Florida Politics.

Fernando Cerimedo, 42, arrested on suspicion of ordering shooting of Bolivian lawyer Nadia Beller

A senior adviser to many of Latin America’s new wave of far-right leaders has been arrested for allegedly masterminding the attempted murder of his girlfriend.

The businessman and political consultant Fernando Cerimedo, 42, had been working as an adviser to the Bolivian president, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, and was one of the main strategists behind Javier Milei’s campaign in Argentina’s 2023 presidential election.

Beto Coral held up banners in Florida warning fellow Colombians to not vote for Abelardo de la Espriella

In the week before Colombia’s presidential election, Beto Coral, a well-known activist living in the United States, travelled to Florida to persuade fellow Colombians not to vote for the far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella.

Coral held banners outside polling stations in Miami warning that the millionaire lawyer, whose candidacy was endorsed by Donald Trump, would “help deport all of you”.

Trump administration put sanctions on the international criminal court’s president and a senior trial lawyer

The international criminal court on Wednesday condemned the latest US sanctions targeting senior ICC staff, including its president, as a “flagrant attack” on the global tribunal’s independence and vowed to continue seeking justice for atrocities around the world.

The state department announced on Tuesday that it had hit the ICC president, Tomoko Akane, a Japanese national, and ICC senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, who is from Senegal, with sanctions that freeze any assets they have in US jurisdictions or come into contact with the US financial system.

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

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

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

Study of long-clawed shrew skulls from Japan shows that while skulls get smaller in winter, snouts elongate

Humans turn to heated blankets and fluffy socks to cope with winter, but long-clawed shrews have a very different adaptation: they increase the size of their snouts.

Researchers have previously discovered that certain small mammals, including the common shrew and European mole, reversibly shrink their body mass, skull size and brain mass in winter, with regrowth seen in the spring – a strategy that has been named Dehnel’s phenomenon.

Woodland Trust says trees struggling in drought stress, with older ‘survivors’ disproportionately affected

England’s ancient oak trees are dying in the summer’s extreme heat and dry weather, according to the Woodland Trust, with trees and ecosystems unable to adapt fast enough to the changing climate.

The heatwaves across much of Europe this summer have had a notable impact on crop growth and plant health. To cope with the extreme conditions, many trees are undergoing “early autumn”, wilting and losing their leaves early.

Crow Leasow oak, Shropshire.

Tea Party oak, Suffolk.

King John oak, Devon.

Enmore oak, Somerset.

Lydham Manor oak, Shropshire.

Old Knobbley, Essex.

Pwllpriddog oak, Carmarthenshire.

‘First meaningful rain for a long time’ is forecast but water firms continue to ask customers to restrict use

Floods and drought could hit the UK at the same time this week, with heavy rain forecast to fall on hard, parched soil.

While some parts of the UK will have the “first meaningful rain for a long time” in the coming days, it will not reverse widespread drought conditions that have put pressure on wildlife, farmers, firefighters and water resources.

Scientists surprised to find all but two of 12 grizzlies were dead within a year of ‘feelgood’ release, unable to sustain their high-calorie diet and inclined to approach humans

The orphaned grizzly bear cubs were bulked up with a generous diet of roadkill, watermelon, dog food and snacks donated by the public. Their contact with carers was limited to two people. Then, after up to a year in rehabilitation, they returned home to the wilds of British Columbia.

“It’s a feelgood thing – people feel good when the cage opens,” says Dr Lana M Ciarniello, a bear specialist who tracked the Canadian yearlings in a recent study. There is a perception that bears will thrive in their natural habitat, she says. “The reality is they’re not followed up on.”

UK competition watchdog investigation is part of broader clampdown on illegal ‘drip pricing’

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The UK’s competition watchdog has launched investigations into Trainline, Virgin Atlantic and Red Driving School over concerns that all three companies displayed misleadingly low prices to their customers.

The Competition and Markets Authority’s investigations are part of a broader clampdown on “drip pricing”, an illegal practice that makes a product appear cheaper by not including all mandatory fees.

In video celebrating Maggie’s cancer charity, queen recalls ‘longing to let it out’ on visit to centre in 2024

The queen has spoken for the first time of how difficult she found it to keep King Charles’s cancer a secret before it was announced publicly.

Camilla found herself “longing to let it out” during an official visit to a Maggie’s cancer support centre in 2024, after Charles had received his diagnosis but before the news was released.

Advice and guidance services for doctors in England found to be creating risk of missed or late detection of illness

Cancer diagnoses have been missed or delayed because of a system designed for GPs to seek specialist advice before referring patients to hospital, according to an investigation.

The Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) identified patient risks linked to how advice and guidance (A+G) services have been implemented across England.

Fifteen fire engines tackling blaze at Landmann Way in Deptford involving 50 tonnes of household waste

About 100 firefighters are dealing with a fire that has broken out at a waste facility in London for the second time this summer.

Fifteen fire engines are at the incident in Deptford, south-east London, which involves about 50 tonnes of stored household waste.

Right to assisted dying established for patients with conditions assessed as incurable and causing unbearable pain

Legislation granting incurably ill adults the right to assisted dying has been formally adopted in France after the text was approved by the country’s highest constitutional authority and published in the official journal.

The law, known as a law on “end of life” or “aid in dying” rather than “assisted dying” or “euthanasia”, means France joins the small group of countries including the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada to have legalised the practice.

David Morens confessed to concealing government documents linked to grant research funding

A former adviser to infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to ​grant research funding and the Covid-19 pandemic.

David Morens, who had worked under Fauci ‌as a senior official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the pandemic, entered his plea, to a conspiracy charge during a hearing in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Alpine communities hit out after influencer videos draw huge queues to Friedrich August refuge in Dolomites

Hundreds of people overwhelmed a mountain hut in the Italian Dolomites, not for the panoramic views but in search of a creamy pastry, reigniting the debate about social-media-driven tourism.

The visitors ventured en masse to the Friedrich August refuge – perched at 2,300 metres (7,500ft) above sea level, between Col Rodella and Passo Sella in Val di Fassa – some reportedly waking up at dawn or camping overnight, just to ensure they could buy a freshly baked krapfen, a traditional German pastry similar to a doughnut, before they ran out.

Police report shows Brian Hickerson and his brother, Zach Hickerson, were at Greenville, South Carolina, residence

Hayden Panettiere’s on-and-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson and his brother, Zach Hickerson, were at the South Carolina apartment where the actor died over the weekend, according to a police report released on Tuesday.

A Greenville police officer who responded to the residence on Sunday afternoon was met by the brothers and then observed paramedics performing CPR on an unresponsive woman, the report states.

Manufacturer whose brands include Jaecoo and Omoda will open facility in Bedfordshire in autumn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s an astonishing naturalism about the two leads, navigating the ups and downs of adolescence, bodily changes and learning to use tampons

Practically any woman who had a best female friend in early adolescence will be able to relate to this fragile, thoughtful drama about two American children, Violet (Emajean Bullock) and Stella (Anastasia Veronica Lee), living through the ages of nine to 13, a time as packed with incident as it is simultaneously uneventful and reassuringly dull. Unlike Richard Linklater’s justly acclaimed Boyhood, which had the resources to film for over a decade and thus observe its central character grow up, this was clearly made over a more compact schedule. Violet and Stella age much more subtly here, gradually growing breasts and getting a little bit taller, but those tiny incremental changes mean so much to them. Just as in real life with girls this age, a little bit of makeup, different clothes and some flat-ironing on the hair can alter a kid’s whole presentation.

As the film starts, the two are nine-year-old besties, spending their summers together in New England where they go to camp, frolic in the surf (the title refers to a game they play with waves) and try to sleep over at each other’s houses. Unfortunately, Stella can’t yet cope with sleeping through the night at someone else’s place, and every time they try she must be collected by her parents after waking up frightened in the night. But it’s still something the girls yearn for. They even wish for it when they trap morning moths in jars, hoping fairies will grant them their hearts’ desires.

It’s impossible not be be enraged by this story of Indigenous children who were taken from their families. This heartbreaking show has been a hit in Canada – and it would be a crime for the rest of the world to miss it

Few dramas will enrage you as much as Little Bird. Not because it’s in any way hokey or problematic. On the contrary. Based on the real story of the Sixties Scoop – a period in Canada from the mid-1950s to the 1980s, when an estimated 20,000 First Nations children were forcibly removed from their families and adopted by non-Indigenous families – this heartbreaking tale is restrained and carefully measured. Melodrama is swerved, letting the injustice at this story’s core slowly metastasise.

Spread across six episodes, the series juggles two timelines – 1968 in Saskatchewan; 1985 in Montreal – tracking one family’s rupture; and the decades-long reckoning that follows. We meet Esther Rosenblum (Darla Contois), a first-year law student, at her engagement party, where her fiance David (Rowen Kahn), a doctor, mingles with his wealthy Jewish family. When his mother describes her as “exotic”, the word lodges like shrapnel. She was transplanted when she was five from the (fictional) Long Pine Reserve and raised in the Jewish faith by a Canadian family.

Little Bird aired on Sky Atlantic and is on Now in the UK and on Stan in Australia

A shocking documentary about a woman who pretended her child was terminally ill. Plus: isolation and horror in Australia’s desolate outback. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Channel 4
“He seemed to be allergic to the 21st century,” said journalist Paul Levie of Matthew Hayden-Johnson, a child from Torbay who, his mother, Lisa, claimed, was unable to walk, eat or breathe without medical assistance. However, as this jawdropping documentary series shows, Matthew’s litany of disability was a fantasy maintained by Lisa. With testimony from Matthew and Lisa themselves, it tracks a toxic fantasy as it took root, then fell apart. Phil Harrison

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Island)
Even a couple of bafflingly misguided social commentary songs can’t detract from the joys of Flowers’ classically full-throated commitment to the Nashville bit

Here are three immutable facts about Brandon Richard Flowers: he was born just outside Las Vegas, Nevada. He is 45 years old. And he never does anything by halves. When he and his band the Killers debuted in the early 2000s, as disaffected New York cool was on the rise, he was writing scream-along choruses sung in his upper register. When the Killers were searching for a sound even bigger and grander than the euphoric Springsteen pastiche of 2006’s Sam’s Town, they didn’t think twice before recruiting Stuart Price to produce the spangly 2008 disco-rock record Day & Age.

That’s how you get a record like Thrasher. Flowers’ third solo album finds Vegas’s chosen son decamping to Nashville for a full-throated exploration of country music – not subtle, trendy Americana, but rip-snorting, honky-tonking, Nudie suit-wearing country. In many ways, Thrasher is a stylistic follow-up to the Killers’ maudlin 2021 Pressure Machine, which saw Flowers explore windswept balladry and tasteful story-songs. But that record was as forgettable as Thrasher is a hoot; Flowers wilts when he doesn’t fully commit, as was the case on Pressure Machine, and he doesn’t make that mistake here. Thrasher features many of Nashville’s most revered country musicians, including pedal steel legend Bruce Bouton, 85-year-old harmonica player Charlie McCoy, Gillian Welch’s musical partner Dave Rawlings and lauded Americana musician Margo Price.

Royal Albert Hall, London
The ferociously dynamic SCO help Fröst drill down to the rhythmic essence of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony as well as works by contemporary composers

It’s a Sunday morning, and as the Royal Albert Hall darkens and the stage is suddenly back-lit, spotlighting a charismatic figure speaking sibilantly at its centre, you’d almost swear you’d wandered into an American megachurch. But the gospel preached by maverick clarinettist-conductor Martin Fröst is altogether more ancient and more primal: dance. What could be more fundamental, not just to music but life itself, he argues. And with the ferociously dynamic Swedish Chamber Orchestra helping him make his case, it’s hard to disagree.

Wagner famously declared Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony “the apotheosis of the dance”, and the SCO’s DNA project (“Dance Now Always”) transforms his description into a concert that drills down to the rhythmic essence of the symphony, seizing those cells and pulses that are its heartbeat and amplifying them into an ear-bending, time-warping sequence that suspends the work at the centre of its own musical genealogy – past and future.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Co-created by a developer and his sewing-obsessed partner, this design game is ‘the most technically challenging’ its lead programmer has ever made

When Jonathan Hau-Yoon wanted to make something as meaningful as the environmental strategy game Terra Nil, he turned for inspiration to his longtime partner. Sabrina Becker had worn a dress she made herself to their very first date, and would have studied costume design abroad had hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (a connective tissue disorder I also have) not put those plans on hold.

The pair developed a concept around the creative decisions involved in dressmaking, like trying to fit pattern pieces on to available fabric while observing the grain line (the direction of the thread in woven fabric). Other decisions followed: a 3D model on which to place garment pieces, buttons and trims with which to decorate them, clients with commissions as creative prompts.

PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, PC; Frogwares
Frogwares’ Lovecraftian action-horror is full of grim tenacity and pulp paperback charm, despite a few frayed edges

I’m standing in the prosthetics lab of a campy horror hospital, hunting for a preacher’s flayed face to wear so I can trick the world’s grisliest smart doorbell. Pinned to a board in the corner of the room are a dozen X-rays: shattered bones and metal splints in sepia negative, each with a note attached. It’s a stark, clinical intrusion on the theatrical gore elsewhere. It takes a beat to realise that I’m reading the stories of injuries sustained by soldiers fighting for Frogwares’ native Ukraine. Fingers amputated after severe burns. Limbs lost in mine explosions. Toes torn off by shell fire.

Like so many of my favourite PS3-era seven-out-of-tens, The Sinking City 2 is a pulpy action horror. It’s fuelled by scrappy ambition, Lovecraft fan fiction and wonderfully unhinged scenario design. A puzzle that has you determine which talking jarred brain is telling porkies. A scavenger hunt to fix a crane to move a rotting whale carcass. A gunfight amid the grisly results of a siren pop star’s fan meet-up turned battle royale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do you keep audiences gripped while cycling 27km per show? From the Australian recreating a Tour de France win to a ‘toxically positive’ spin queen, we meet the acts bringing Olympian fitness to Edinburgh

Blood and sweat drip to the floor. Tears are on their way. In a small room in Edinburgh, Megan Tomei is cleat-clipped into a stationary bike, yelling above the music as she leads a high-intensity spin class gone wrong. “We take the thing you’re running from,” Tomei shouts, pink lights bouncing off her gleaming shoulders, “and turn it into fuel!” This is SpinQueen™, one of a handful of shows at this year’s fringe demanding epic endurance from their performers through the use of jazzed-up gym equipment. Employing various bikes and a treadmill to authentically illustrate the struggle for success, the pain of failure, and the escape from reality, a profoundly fit group of actors are pushing themselves to their physical limits.

Across the city, Connor Delves’s calves are worth watching. The workout from his cycling-obsessed play, Cadel: Lungs on Legs, is so powerful that people have come up to him after, wanting to touch them. “To make sure they’re real,” says Delves, who cycles a whopping 27km per show. Does he mind this attention? He shrugs. “If they’re OK with getting their hands sweaty, go for it.”

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

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

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

From the early days of computers and the internet, Wendy McMurdo has let tech infuse her photography. Now, in her largest exhibition yet, she looks at its impact on the future generation

Murder trial of Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis, 63, former South Side Compton Crips gang leader, opens in Las Vegas

For nearly 30 years, the unsolved murder of 25-year-old rapper Tupac Shakur has sparked lawsuits, theories and conspiracies.

Now, decades after his death in a September 1996 drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, local prosecutors are finally offering a detailed official account of Shakur’s killing, accusing Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a 63-year-old former South Side Compton Crips gang leader, of being the “on-the-ground, on-site commander of the effort to kill Tupac”.

The director’s BBC hit opened the door to Hollywood action films including Hamburger Hill, The Dogs of War and Raw Deal

John Irvin, the British film-maker who directed the Bafta-winning BBC miniseries Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, as well as films including Hamburger Hill, The Dogs of War and Raw Deal, has died aged 86.

Irvin died “peacefully at home” on 11 August, surrounded by his family, his producer Claire Evans confirmed to the Guardian.

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

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

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

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

• The best suitcases for your next holiday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best electric toothbrushes for every budget – tested

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

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

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

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

We put 31 electric toothbrushes to the test, from oscillating Oral-B models to sustainable brands like Suri, to find the best for cleaning power and value for money

• How to make your toothbrush last longer

If you grew up using a conventional toothbrush – essentially a stick with bristles on the end – you may be surprised to learn just how long the electric toothbrush has been around. The first was designed in the late 1930s, but that model was a long way from the sleek, feature-packed and Bluetooth-enabled beasts you can buy today.

There are now dozens of ultra-advanced versions on the market, but which ones are worth your cash? To help answer that question, my teeth have become figurative guinea pigs. Over the past 20 months, I’ve put 31 electric toothbrushes from the likes of Oral-B, Philips, Suri, Ordo, Silk’n and Foreo through their paces to separate the best from the rest. Here are my conclusions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

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

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

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

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

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

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

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

Margaret, 22, London

Occupation Trainee accountant and part-time arts producer

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

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

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

Do you really want to date, or do you just feel you should? Be kind to yourself, and maybe try real-world dating and avoid the apps for now

I haven’t been on a date in eight years and want to start next year. How can I prepare for the storm?

I want to love and care for someone. I long for a supportive, funny life partner. Should I say that to a man? And is that too much in a dating profile?

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

• Students on their biggest financial shocks

• The best student deals and discounts

• An insider’s tips on student money

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Melissa Davey is Guardian Australia’s medical editor

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

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

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

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

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

Name: Big-Ass Bags.

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

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

Andrew Geldart, 65, retired engineer, Cornwall

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

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

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

Vintage classics from WH Smith, M&S and Tesco are being bought online, perhaps as part of a nostalgic return to owning tangible items

When it comes to everyday objects, a supermarket carrier bag could be the ultimate one – a thing we’re more accustomed to squeezing into a drawer or using until it falls apart than giving any special treatment.

But these most mundane items are now enjoying something of a new life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Read more in this series here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Creators of chase compilations reject any moral qualms and say they show ‘death is waiting’ for those who join war

To many observers they will appear dehumanising and offensive. To many Ukrainians, however, they are a brutal reminder of the fate that awaits Russian soldiers who take part in Vladimir Putin’s invasion, as well as a potent propaganda weapon.

Over the past year and a half, videos of kamikaze drones chasing Russian service personnel to their deaths have become a distinctive genre on social media. They are the brainchild of Robert Brovdi, the head of Ukraine’s unmanned systems forces and founder of “Magyar’s Birds”, named after his call sign.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We would like to hear from women who participate in the ‘looksmaxxing’ community

While “looksmaxxing” was once a predominantly male space, in recent years it has increasingly taken hold among women, with dedicated forums and apps where users have their individual features analysed and scored, with the aim of identifying areas for physical improvement.

If you’re a young woman who participates in the “looksmaxxing” community, and have been thinking about ways to optimise your appearance, we’d love to hear from you and learn more about your experience.

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