The president really has no power over elections – but that hasn’t stopped Trump from laying the groundwork to challenge results in November

When Donald Trump commandeered primetime US television last Friday, he delivered a familiar, but still extraordinary, message. The president argued once again that the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, were illegitimate.

US elections are “vulnerable to being rigged and stolen”, Trump alleged, claiming that “the trust of the American people was lost” when he was defeated.

You’ll leave fed, challenged and gastronomically punch-drunk

Nico Simeone is the Scottish-Italian chef behind the Six by Nico restaurant empire, and Lennox, in Spring Gardens, Manchester, is his new baby. If you are unfamiliar with Six by Nico, it’s a fever-dream version of fine dining: Simeone conjured up themes such as “The Chippie”, “Italian Road Trip” and “Ancient Rome”, then served six courses in homage to them. Tokyo! Mad Hatters! Childhood! At one point, the Six empire was growing like knotweed, and by 2025 there were 17 restaurants. You had more chance of eating at a Six by Nico than finding an NHS dentist.

Suffice to say, many adore the concept – overlooking its middling cooking skills – because it’s pocket-friendly, and the six-course format gives a night out with friends a sense of occasion not available at Pizza Express. Lennox, Simeone says, will be very different: à la carte, focused on dry-aged meat, but with the same playfulness and invention. There would be a fish finger with katsu curry and celeriac remoulade; a tempura oyster shell filled with dry-aged beef tartare and oyster emulsion; and gnocchi with deboned chicken wings and parmesan. Lennox would be personal, bespoke and absolutely unscalable. No rollout planned, no siree. But by August 2026, there will be three of them. Hang on, what? Yes, shortly after Manchester came Glasgow, and then Edinburgh. Simeone sleeps with one eye open; I salute his indefatigability.

From award-winning Julies to golfers who were nearly the best, test your knowledge with this bumper summer quiz

1 What is now the world’s most populous city, according to the UN?
2 Which two Julies won best actress Oscars in consecutive years?
3 What was thrown by the goddess Eris at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis?
4 Richard Nixon appeared a record 55 times on the cover of what?
5 What became Britain’s tallest structure in 1894?
6 Mojang Studios in Sweden is renowned for developing which video game?
7 Which golfer spent 270 weeks as world No 2, but never reached No 1?
8 Which “The” group, named after a Camus novel, went through over 65 members?
9 Who is the subject of Alberto Korda’s photograph Guerrillero Heroico?
10 What defines an Olimpico goal in football?
11 Who initiated the Fridays for Future school strikes?
12 Which British dynasty is commemorated by a monument in St Peter’s Basilica?
13 What type of souvenir was invented in Vienna in 1900?
14 Which Norwegian island gives its name to two shipping forecast areas?
15 Which art museum employs a colony of cats to protect it from rodents?
16 Millvina Dean, who died in 2009, was the last living survivor of what?
What links:
17 Arrival of spring; double portraits; swimming pools; Grand Canyon; Yorkshire landscape?
18 Mozart & Franz Süssmayr; Landseer & Millais; F Scott Fitzgerald & Edmund Wilson?
19 Cordelia, Goneril & Regan; Imogen; Marina?
20 Britannia (1717-1936); Golden Hind (1937-69); St Edward’s Crown (1971-84)?
21 Alba white truffles; Pule cheese; Wagyu beef; Yubari King melons?
22 Matt Damon; Robert Frost; Bill Gates; Bonnie Raitt; Mark Zuckerberg?
23 Horrible Histories; glucose; Gordon Brown’s neighbour; King-Smith’s swine; winter squash?
24 Mount Whitney in California and Mulhacén in Andalucía?
25 1991 defence of Baghdad; nacre; UK parliament; Virginia?
26 Carrying a double bass; missing a bus; walking two dogs; wearing a cowboy hat; winding a clock?
27 2 (1st); 29 (10th); 541 (100th); 7,919 (1,000th); 104,729 (10,000th)?
28 Ant; bull; cuckoo; eagle; shower of gold; swan?
29 Zlín, Czechoslovakia; Cohutta, US; Novo Mesto, Yugoslavia?
30 Drowned; large bread; pick me up; half cold?

Women aren’t being burnt at the stake any more, but there is still risk and violence implicit in the label ‘witch’

When Katherine Harrison’s husband passed away, she became the wealthiest woman in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Rather than wallow in her new status as a young widow she decided to run the farm she’d inherited on her own. She took up ranching and a slew of other hobbies including brewing ale, spinning yarn and beekeeping. She traded honey and beeswax for candles. She was by all accounts, headstrong, outspoken and clever.

In many corners of the internet, Harrison’s interests are having a moment. Craft brewers have been spruiking classic ales for years, urban beekeeping is surging in popularity, and people are looking to textile-based crafts as ways to practise mindfulness.

This show tries to grapple with the fact that three people associated with the reality juggernaut have killed themselves. But it forgets that the dating series doesn’t exist in a vacuum

In summer 2015, ITV revived its 00s reality format Celebrity Love Island, a show that was remembered mostly as a drunken, downmarket rival to Big Brother. Its new, slick, civilian Love Island was a slow-burn at first, but by 2017 it was one of British TV’s biggest hits. While it remains among ITV’s hottest properties, viewing figures are now more modest, with 600,000 people tuning in for its 2026 launch. Tastes have changed, but the fact that three people associated with the show – former contestants Mike Thalassitis and Sophie Gradon, and Caroline Flack, the presenter for five series – took their lives, may also have made viewers wary.

Timed to coincide with the finale of the latest series of Love Island on Monday, Prime Video has released this two-parter about the apparent “curse” that stalks the programme. It opens with former contestant Anton Danyluk, who appeared on the show in 2019, declaring that there is “no higher high than the summer you’re preparing for Love Island”. But a stint in the show’s Mallorcan villa proved less of a high for some. Luis Morrison – a 2015 Islander – says it feels “disgusting” and “embarrassing” to watch the show back. “Everyone was having sex and stuff,” he says. Malin Andersson, a 2016 contestant, says, looking back, the show feels “quite toxic … so superficial and artificial”. Watching footage of herself coming into the villa for a post-elimination row with her partner, Terry, Andersson alleges there was much meddling on the part of the programme-makers: “The producers are fucking with people who can feel deep things!”

In an exclusive extract from his memoir, Kiyoshi Tanimoto describes the terrifying trip across the city to locate his wife and child

• ‘I didn’t want to be a victim of the bomb’: read an interview with Tanimoto’s daughter Koko Kondo

Most of the people of Hiroshima had neither seen nor heard any plane. They heard no sound of explosion. They had seen only a strange flash in open daylight, or merely felt the reflection of the flash. However, there had been a tremendous explosion.

The parents of Mr Konda, one of our church members, had been waiting for a train at Yokogawa station, located 2km [one and a quarter miles] away from the centre of the bomb’s explosion. They saw a B-29 and a parachute dropping through the air. Before they had time to wonder at the sight, they fell unconscious. Afterward, they could not remember sensing any sound or light. When they regained consciousness, they found themselves lying on the ground, burned and without any clothing. The houses all around had been crushed to the ground. After getting to their feet, they ran toward the suburbs. Other people rushing along the Koi highway had the same experience.

Fires displace people on massive scale and trigger one of the largest peacetime civilian evacuation operations ever carried out in France

• More than 250,000 people flee wildfires in France and Spain

As my colleagues note in this story, scientists say climate breakdown is triggering more frequent and more extreme weather events, evaporating soils and waterways, fuelling wildfires and leading to thousands of excess deaths. Europe is heating at about twice the global average rate.

Spain’s environment ministry has said that 32 major forest fires have been recorded so far this year, compared with seven over the same period in 2025.

Authorities ask for help finding 21-year-old, identified only as Abdul B, after van ramming in German capital

German authorities have issued a wanted notice for a fugitive suspect in the van ramming near Berlin’s Pride festival that left one person dead and injured at least 16 others.

Police and prosecutors asked for help in finding the 21-year-old, whom they identified as Abdul B. They said he was believed to have injured several people with a moving vehicle on Saturday night, and that one or more people apparently then left that vehicle. Several people were also apparently stabbed, they added.

PM promises to ‘defend national interest before anything else’ in first big broadcast interview since entering No 10

Andy Burnham has promised to disagree with Donald Trump if necessary, including in public, in his first big broadcast interview since becoming prime minister.

Burnham’s comments came as Wes Streeting, the new defence secretary, said he did not believe the Trump administration was looking for allies who “suck up”, but rather those with the confidence to set out disagreements when needed.

Campaigners call for injunction against Raise the Colours, which is accused of spreading anti-immigration rhetoric

Birmingham residents have accused the local council and police of “dragging their heels” and giving “free rein” to a group responsible for erecting flags across the city.

Raise the Colours, which describes itself as a grassroots movement, has been placing union jack and St George’s cross flags on lamp-posts, roundabouts and other public infrastructure since last summer.

Spycops inquiry has revealed how Helen Steel was secretly monitored in her search for undercover officer who deceived her into relationship

At 2pm on 14 December 2002, Helen Steel, a well-known leftwing campaigner, and her parents landed at Auckland airport for a family holiday. It had been a tiring journey, so they were irritated when they were delayed leaving the airport for an hour.

What they did not know until recently is the reason for that delay. Their arrival had triggered a secret warning on Steel that had been put in place by police three weeks earlier. It prompted customs to carry out a discreet search of her luggage.

Government-backed investigation finds risks are normalised amid ‘a narrowing of the public conversation’

Journalists are self-censoring their reporting on rightwing protests, Donald Trump’s administration and trans issues because of growing concerns about their personal safety, with newsrooms accused of “normalising” the risks they face.

Hundreds of journalists from across the UK have anonymously disclosed increasing nervousness over their security. Some have reported avoiding or altering coverage on certain topics due to intimidation, leading to self-censorship and “a narrowing of the public conversation”.

Scotland Yard is looking at two £250,000 donations to the party by Britain Means Business before the 2024 election

Payments to Reform UK first revealed by the Guardian are now being investigated by the Metropolitan police.

The inquiry is scrutinising payments made to the party via a company controlled by its deputy leader, Richard Tice.

Allowing use of two neonicotinoids to combat crop-ruining disease will kill bees and reduce harvests, union says

Beekeepers and environmentalists in France have reacted furiously after parliament approved a bill reauthorising two banned pesticides scientists say can poison bees.

“There are no words to describe the frustration,” said Carolyn Bouguet, a beekeeper in Essonne, greater Paris. “Bee populations have already been badly compromised by climate change, new parasites and loss of habitat. And now this.”

Latest edition of one of world’s most influential fashion photography publications is also shot entirely in India

Against the ancient, weathered walls of Jaigarh fort, high on the hills above Jaipur, Bhavitha Mandava stood barefoot and draped in gold.

Just a few months earlier, the Indian model had been catapulted from a life of obscurity as a student at New York University to become one of the most recognisable and celebrated new faces of fashion. This year, she became the first Indian woman to open the Chanel catwalk at their Métiers d’Art show and her divisive Chanel outfit for the Met Gala, fashion’s most exclusive event, became an international talking point.

Adrian Howe’s family believe that fears his deal would be financially ruinous led him to kill himself

The family of a former mobile phone store manager who was found drowned days before his new Vodafone franchise was to open its doors is pressing the government to introduce a new franchising law in his name.

The call comes a week after Vodafone settled a long-running legal claim filed by 62 of its former franchisees who alleged that the company “unjustly enriched” itself at their expense by up to £85m.

England’s progress provides best football-related uplift of recent years, with one pub too packed to host its Dolly Parton tribute

Late opening hours and England’s progress to the semi-final of an expanded World Cup helped provide the best football-related uplift of recent years for pubs, figures suggest.

Pubs poured 30m extra pints over the course of the tournament compared with a normal trading period, with busy pumps delivering £150m in added sales, according to the British Beer & Pubs Association (BBPA).

President harks back to red scare of his childhood to attack US left – but will such language resonate beyond Maga base?

Perhaps above all else, Donald Trump is a child of the cold war.

Three months before the US president was born, Winston Churchill delivered a historic speech in Fulton, Missouri, that ushered in a generations-long existential struggle between western capitalism and Soviet communism.

Not even a grisly hand injury could halt the rise of the Saturday Night Live UK comedian. And soon he’ll get to parody the prime minister every week. So why can’t he enjoy the good times?

The day before I’m supposed to watch Paddy Young perform a work-in-progress version of his new show Will Sir Be Laughing Alone?, I’m told the gig has been cancelled; the standup has sliced his hand open and is about to have surgery. Soon after, Young shares a photo of himself on Instagram in a hospital gown, thanking the Australian comedian Sam Campbell for “bringing the sword to my home” – a post quickly rehashed by the tabloids (The Mirror: “SNL UK star Paddy Young hospitalised after samurai sword accident”). When I finally see him on stage a fortnight later, he’s dosed up on codeine, his arm is in a sling and he’s in the uncertain early stages of refashioning this bizarre anecdote into a routine.

“You’re getting an exclusive on the hand,” he tells me in an east London coffee shop the next day, after I’ve opened a bottle of water for him. Young and Campbell, who recently collaborated on the winningly madcap Channel 4 series Make That Movie, were preparing to host their occasional comedy night Floggers, which involves them dressing up as old men (fat suits, wigs, prosthetics) and helming a real daytime TV-style auction. Campbell had ordered the sword online as a prop, and when the pair’s Uber arrived Young hurriedly picked up the bag it was in. “Blood splattered up the wall like Kill Bill – we all laughed initially.” When his housemates removed the tea towel they’d wrapped around his hand “they could see yellow, which I think is tendon or muscle. Then I fainted.” He went to A&E for stitches but still did the show afterwards – “I cringe thinking about it because I was basically juggling [in the show]” – returning to hospital later to learn that one tendon was 90% lacerated and required an operation. Just before surgery, Young passed out again.

Will’s lack of self-worth is creating a barrier between him and Fi, but talking more could help them adjust to their mismatched libidos

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

I worry that Will sees me more as a mother figure than a sexual being

The hard-working character actor has over 400 screen credits, from The Thing to Platoon to Rick and Morty, and he isn’t slowing down any time soon

Keith David’s voice precedes him. Deep and resonant, with mellifluous notes that hark back to his boys’ choir days, it has spent decades inhabiting warriors, gods, rogues, fathers and a welter of cartoon oddballs. Before David appears in a Zoom window from his Los Angeles home office, his voice reverberates through my tinny laptop speakers like a foghorn. “Can you see me now?” he booms once our connection is established after fits and starts. “OK. Outside of technology, you know I’m … OK.”

He fizzes about the project he just wrapped: a dark buddy comedy called My Friend Jim, in which he stars opposite Rob Lowe. It’s the latest entry in a seemingly unstinting slew of productions that have kept him booked and busy since the late 1970s, from The Thing to Platoon to There’s Something About Mary to Nope.

For some, scorching days and humid nights are just the norm. So how do they stay chilled and comfortable?

Luis Pacherrez Antón is president of Agroperu Cooperative, a democratic collective of 102 small-scale farmers in the Chira River valley, Peru. He is based in Piura, known as “the city of eternal heat” because it stays hot and dry all year round. “The sun rays start to shine very early – from 9am,” he says. “So as people who work in cultivation, under a burning sun, we stay comfortable by starting much earlier and consuming the healthy foods that we produce, like bananas, oranges, lemons, grapes, papayas and avocados.”

You are stepping into a family system with its own history and loyalties; try to consider how you might set boundaries without rejecting his mum

I’m in my 30s and have been living in Spain for a decade. My partner is Spanish and we have lived together for a year.

The bond he has with his mum sometimes makes me feel angry, jealous and helpless. I’m aware that, culturally, Spanish people often have closer bonds with their families and I try to accept that. He is an only child and his father left his family when he was a teenager and started another. I feel my partner has developed an unhealthy and codependent relationship with his mum.

The country-pop superstar loves Abba and secretly listens to Lloyd Webber, but which British heartthrob’s single gets her out of bed in the morning?

The song that changed my life
There’s many critical songs on The Mission soundtrack, but Gabriel’s Oboe [by Ennio Morricone] hit me hard. I had to pull off the road, I cried like a baby. I didn’t realise how powerful music could be until that moment. I was 22.

The first single I bought
At Seventeen by Janis Ian. I reference it in my album Little Miss Twain and it says so much about the emotions of a teenage misfit. I felt like her, I related – but I was also thinking: “Wow, I have to some day write this well.” It gave me a goal; I was so in awe. I made very little money, babysitting, taking care of my neighbour’s horse, singing in bars. I would get like 20 bucks, that I would mostly give to my family, but I got that record for myself.

These unctuous rice-filled Japanese egg dishes are all over social media. But what does it cost to make them? A lot of eggs and a whole lot of pans ...

Among the endless videos of cute animals, influencer vlogs and celebrity content, something unusual has been going viral across social media recently: omelettes. A far cry from the usual solid egg slabs served in cafes, these bright yellow omelettes are a fluffy, oval-shaped treat filled with unctuous liquid curds, which are typically sliced open to unfurl across a mound of rice. Called omurice, the Japanese dish has been called “the world’s hardest omelette to make”.

London-based software engineer Jeremy Ocampo, who goes by the social media tag OmuricePapi, has spent the past six months documenting his journey to perfect the art of the omurice online. In the process he has amassed 110,000 followers on YouTube and more than 68,000 on Instagram. “I’m Filipino, so I grew up eating rice and eggs every day, but it took going to Japan for the first time in 2025 to have my mind blown by omurice,” he says. “I was hooked: the presentation of slicing it open over your rice makes it so alluring, while you can’t replicate that texture of egg in any other dish. It’s so unique that when I got home, I decided to teach myself how to do it.”

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

A woman is reincarnated as a vacuum cleaner in this Cannes prize-winning black comedy, and the uncompromising pop star hits the festival trail

A Useful Ghost
Out now
Winner of best film at Cannes Critics’ Week, this tale of a woman reincarnated as a vacuum cleaner takes you to plenty of unexpected places, even when you discount the sort of unexpectedness suggested by the premise. Part Marxist thriller, part supernatural romance, and taking in foul-mouthed monks and drama with the in-laws along the way, Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s directorial debut is an oddball treat.

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

The glitch-pop great is back with a banger-stuffed new album, and reality TV may have some new stars thanks to Channel 4. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Feathers are flying over the halal chicken chain Master Poulet opening a branch in gentrified Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine – it’s an issue of wealth and class we know only too well

How do you like your progressive politics? Are you net-zero left or anti-identity politics left? A “legalising drugs” kind of radical or someone whose public sector solidarity includes police? Nato or Nat-no? The reputation for infighting in lefty spaces – where policy disagreements harden into personal tests of morality – needs neither introduction nor encouragement.

But reading about the left-on-left battle at Master Poulet, a French chicken chain that just opened its first UK branch, I found myself mulling a question that felt more than a little personal: am I chicken shop left?

Coco Khan is a freelance writer and co-host of the politics podcast Pod Save the UK

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.

Artificial intelligence may not deliver on its promise of vast economic opportunity at a price that humanity is willing to pay

In March, Anthropic, the cutting-edge artificial intelligence business that gave us the chatbot Claude, published an analysis on the impact of AI on employment, to help us assess the claim that intelligent robots were about to redefine human existence, ending demand for human labor.

Last year in May, Anthropic’s co-founder, Dario Amodei, claimed AI could wipe out half of all entry-level jobs in one to five years. Last January, he told us AI would probably become a “general labor substitute for humans”. In June he said we risk “a world where the economic trade-off dial is stuck on the hypergrowth, hyper-inequality setting”.

There’s no denying the power of the film on the big screen. But how far should modern moral sensibilities influence adaptations of classics?

Everyone knows how dumb it is to be this person: the one who mourns the film adaptation of a favourite text because it misses out this scene, or misreads that particularly beloved character, or has a slightly “inauthentic” take on some detail. Of course I’m talking about Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of the Odyssey, a poem I have loved since I was a teenager. I enjoyed the movie, in common with a huge number of other people. It seems remarkable, even dizzying, that the adaptation of a nearly 3,000-year-old poem took $264m (£196m) at the box office over its opening weekend, has sent translations of the Odyssey surging up the bestseller charts, and is sold out (for instance) at London’s BFI Imax screen deep into September. We are living in an Odyssey time, amid an Odyssey frenzy.

There is no point trying to be a purist about a beloved classic text. Whoever reads the Odyssey, including Nolan, inescapably does so through the prism of their prejudices, informed by the conditions of their own place and time. Since the Odyssey is the result of decades, maybe centuries, of non-literate oral poets working with memory and improvisation, there’s no precise “original” place or time to return to, anyway. But what I can’t help doing is observe the choices Nolan has made and think about their consequences – because there are always divides in the road, paths not taken by any adapter.

If the prime minister wants to make the system fairer he will need to upset the professional classes with a land value tax

The professional classes act like a Praetorian Guard for the super-rich.

Having acquired some of the trappings of being rich, they defend the privileges of wealth – land, property and pensions. They do this as if they – company managers, lawyers, doctors, judges, senior civil servants, architects and chartered this and thats – were the main beneficiaries.

As Shemara Wikramanayake retires with shares worth hundreds of millions, the public is left counting the cost of high prices for utilities, roads and airports

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The recent retirement of the Macquarie Group CEO, Shemara Wikramanayake, marks the culmination of a highly successful career. She is leaving the company with shares worth hundreds of millions of dollars after nearly 40 years at the Sydney-based institution. Under her leadership, the “millionaires’ factory” has increased its annual revenue by about 80% and nearly doubled its profit.

Wikramanayake has also overseen and consolidated the group’s transition from a firm specialising in privatised infrastructure to a global merchant bank earning profits from commodity trading, specialist asset finance and wealth management.

Its demise is also the consequence of the relentless application of a neo-liberal political philosophy that for years has elevated financial engineering above real engineering; off-balance-sheet finance above paying for things openly; and lauded the private sector above the public sector.

President’s speech started well enough but quickly moved to the usual insults, taunts, jokes and grievances

This time, at least, everyone got to finish their dinner.

And any urge to hide under the table was driven not by the barking commands of Secret Service agents on alert against a marauding gunman, but by a desire to escape the tedium of a meandering speech from Donald Trump that strayed quickly and wildly from the matter at hand into the weeds of his normal stump addresses.

There’s no way I could get by on a bowl of Coco Pops – give me sliced tomatoes and cucumber every time

I recently got into a row on X about the unlikely subject of salad. I want to acknowledge that arguing with strangers on social media is definitely for babies and I should know better by now, but I’m a work in progress. And so I mentioned that I had enjoyed how readily available salads had been at breakfast buffets while I had been travelling in Denmark and Sweden this year compared with the UK. Salad has been a part of my breakfast for about a decade now, and I think a lot of people would benefit from it. It’s a pretty easy way of getting a couple of portions of fruit and veg before you have even left the house.

All hell broke loose. Salad for breakfast is “not normal in a northern European climate”, according to one agitated typer in a response to my post about its availability at breakfasts there. In one of the towns we visited, Luleå, we were just 100km south of the Arctic Circle and the sea was still frozen in April. The hotel had an excellent breakfast buffet – a rotating assortment of freshly prepared salad items with fruit that hadn’t even been poured from a can. Someone should alert the authorities.

Jacq Kelly is a Toronto-based writer and disability rights campaigner

A new report shows more Senate-confirmed staffers have left their jobs this time around than in his first term

Donald Trump loves a construction project. He’s building a ballroom, revamping a reflecting pool, and overseeing the construction of a skyline-altering arch in Washington DC. For his next real estate scheme, may I suggest a giant revolving door in the White House? It would certainly get a lot of use: senior officials are leaving Trump’s second administration at record rates.

According to a new report called Quiet Chaos by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, 27 Senate-confirmed officials have left their positions within cabinet departments to date. That’s nearly 150% higher than the 11 departures in the first 18 months of Trump’s first administration. Per the report, it is also “nearly two and a half times as many as Trump’s first administration (11) and over six times as many as the average between the George W Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations (4.3)”.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

With a flurry of cost-of-living measures and a day in Number 10 North, the new prime minister has hit the right early notes

Appropriately enough, Andy Burnham ended a week of political signalling and first impressions back in Manchester on Friday. At the offices of the new No 10 North – where the prime minister hopes to work at least one day a week – regional mayors sat alongside ministers in an example of Burnhamism at work. It was an early statement of intent, ahead of what Mr Burnham bills as “the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen”.

The same could be said of the series of cost of living measures fired out during the new government’s first few days in office. A £2 cap on bus fares, a cut in VAT on electricity, and some business rates relief for pubs, clubs and smaller music venues were all modest moves. But they were cleverly indicative ones, nodding empathetically to people’s need to have the chance to enjoy themselves as well as pay the bills.

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.

Small pools don’t get the same attention as polluted rivers or seas. But they have a vital role to play in boosting nature

Frogs; newts; small fish such as minnows and sticklebacks; dragonflies; water boatmen and water snails: these are just a few of the hundreds of animal species that make their homes in Britain’s ponds alongside diverse wetland plants, some of which are endangered. Yet while small bodies of water are cherished by hobbyists as well as scientists, they have startlingly few protections – even at a time when the polluted state of rivers, lakes and coastlines is a key focus of environmentalists.

With a clean water bill expected soon, this official neglect of ponds should soon be consigned to the past. While rewilding projects have overseen the rediscovery of older “ghost ponds” as well as the creation of new, and householders are encouraged to create miniature ones in their gardens, charities including the specialist Freshwater Habitats Trust point to the growing body of international research that testifies to their ecological importance. In 1996 the first-ever national survey estimated that there were 228,900 ponds in Britain. Thirty years on would be an apt moment to grant them enhanced status.

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

Readers advise the new prime minister and his party on how to turn Labour’s fortunes, and the country’s, around

Rafael Behr neatly summarises Andy Burnham’s strengths as a potential leader and he rightly emphasises that he needs a united party behind him (Andy Burnham is playing the long game in an age of short attention spans, 22 July).

He then accurately identifies what Burnham needs to do, but makes no reference to what the parliamentary Labour party needs to do. Leadership is interactional, and Labour MPs outside the government – particularly those (in Behr’s words) with hair triggers on the radical left and those aggrieved Starmer loyalists – have to realise that Labour is in the last-chance saloon here, and they have just as much a role as he does to ensure the success that leads to a second term.

Until migraines are recognised as a multi-system condition, sufferers will continue to be dismissed, writes Sarah Khan. Plus a letter from Rab Hallett

Thank you for your article about migraines – a maligned, misunderstood condition (The truth about migraines: what causes them – and how to find relief, 19 July). But framing it around the headache understates what it is: a systemic neurological event in which head pain is only one component.

For me, until perimenopause, the head pain was minor. The disabling symptoms were profound fatigue, body aches and cognitive fog, which dominated even the “prodrome”. This is why my migraines went undiagnosed for decades, blamed on a “poor immune system” rather than a neurological disorder.

Readers contribute words that describe how people feel in all weathers

I was interested to read some of the words that your letter writers associated with the weather and our reactions to it (Puggled, scumfished or utterly shrammed, 14 July). Unsurprisingly, the English language is redolent with words to do with harsh weather, with many of the longest-established terms tending towards the cold or inclement. Perhaps as hotter weather becomes the norm rather than the exception, we’ll start to talk less about dreich days that leave us shrammed or clumsed and more about blazers that are a bit of a pech and leave us feeling mooth. The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary has words to describe all weathers, including all of the above and many more.
Fiona McPherson
Executive editor, Oxford English Dictionary

• I can assure Jan Cooper (Letters, 21 July) that people in Yorkshire are still capable of feeling nithered, in very cold weather. On the other hand, in the recent spells of very hot weather, they are far more likely to have felt mafted, as opposed to feeling nithered.
Simon Green
Hull

Responding to a new exhibition that explores how children have experienced conflict, Arabella Dorman says they live with the consequences long after the fighting has ended

Your article on the Imperial War Museum’s forthcoming exhibition Childhood in War is a timely reminder that the deepest wounds of conflict are often carried by those who never chose it (‘There was absolutely no chance of being a kid’: new exhibition explores how war shapes children’s lives, 19 July). While wars are recorded through battles, borders and political decisions, children experience them very differently: through interrupted childhoods, fractured families and the loss of what should have been ordinary days.

Over many years working in war zones, I came to understand that children are not simply among the victims of war; they are its longest-lasting casualties. Long after the fighting has moved on, they continue to live with its consequences – in their bodies, their memories and the futures they must somehow rebuild.

• Action, news and reaction on opening weekend

• 10 things to look out for at Glasgow 2026 | Mail Daniel

I posted the Ramsay-Peaty report from last evening a few minutes ago, an d he’ll need to have recovered quickly, as he goes in the 50m breaststroke heats in this morning’s sesh. Back with the weightlifting final, meanwhile, Mboya goes for 115kg … and it’s up, but Chananbam of India just about gets there with 116 and takes the lead.

Our first netball match is over, Scotland beating Wales 56-47; they lost to NZ yesterday, but will hope to finish second in Pool B. In Pool A, England beat Norther Ireland 83-34, while Australia thumped Tonga 99-38.

• Host nation’s star athlete is latest big-name withdrawal

• 10,000m champion was due to defend title on Monday

The Commonwealth Games has suffered yet another blow after Eilish McColgan, Scotland’s star athlete at these championships, became the latest big name to pull out. McColgan was due to defend her 10,000m title on Monday, but on Saturday said: “Sadly, I won’t be competing at Glasgow 2026. After almost 10 weeks out following the London Marathon with my toe injury, it probably won’t come as a huge surprise.

“The good news is I’m back running. The bad news is I’ve simply run out of time to get myself, and my toe, back into spikes. Having started the year stronger than ever, I know the fitness is there but having only taken my first run outdoors a couple of weeks ago, the clock was always against me.

• England pip Wales to secure medal by just 0.900pts

• Gabriel Langton discharged from hospital after fall

England held their nerve to claim bronze in the women’s artistic gymnastics team final after a tense final rotation enabled them to edge Wales by less than a point in Glasgow. The defending champions finished with 154.300 points, just enough to snatch third place from Wales, while Australia delivered a dominant display to win gold ahead of Canada.

Australia set the tone from the opening rotation, with Kate McDonald posting the highest uneven bars score of the day at 14.200 as the silver medallists from Birmingham 2022 established an early lead they would never relinquish. England made a solid start on vault through Shantae-Eve Amankwaah, Ruby Stacey, Alia Leat and Abi Martin. However, the uneven bars proved costly. Amankwaah’s excellent 13.500 boosted England’s challenge, but Stacey fell during her routine and her score did not count, leaving England trailing Australia at the halfway stage.

Those who knew the South African, who died aged 25 not long after playing at the World Cup, describe a humble and hard-working man who cared about friends and family

For Jayden Adams, the South Africa midfielder who died this month at the age of 25, football was a “safe space”. Those words, used by Adams’s junior coach Steve Barker at his memorial service last Thursday, tell you everything you need to know about his life beyond the pitch.

Adams’s battles were bestowed on him almost from birth. Though he was born into newly democratic South Africa, by the early 2000s the revolution was well on its way to being betrayed. The vote was extended to all, but few could make full use of the freedoms available to them because socioeconomic circumstances in the country had barely changed. Stellenbosch, where the Adams family were based, is a perfect example.

• Briton on canvas inside 20 seconds and later in first

• Joshua recovers to blast out Albanian in second round

Anthony Joshua cleared his final hurdle in the ring, before he fights Tyson Fury in November, but he was knocked down twice, shockingly, in the first round of his wild and chaotic bout with Kristian Prenga. In the early hours of Sunday morning in Jeddah, a devastating knockout in the second left Prenga crumpled in a heap on the canvas, wrapped up in the ropes, and rescued Joshua from humiliation.

After the opening three minutes his extravaganza with Fury looked as if it was about to end in abject ruins but Joshua pulled himself out of a dark pit streaked with defeat to salvage his career – and his much-hyped fight with his British compatriot. This was a crazy firefight of a tune-up for Joshua, who was boxing for the first time since being injured in the car accident that took the lives of two of his closest friends, Sina Ghami and Latif Ayodele, last December.

• Four-time victor holds huge lead after Alpe d’Huez

• Final stage to be shortened due to wildfires elsewhere

Tadej Pogacar’s likely victory parade on the streets of Paris will come sooner on Sunday after the final stage of the Tour de France was shortened due to wildfires elsewhere in France. The stage will now be only 89km long and will start on the Champs-Élysées, where two laps of the avenue will be followed by the now traditional circuits of the Butte Montmartre.

In a joint statement with the prefecture police, the Tour organiser, ASO, said: “The ministry of the interior has decided to redeploy a portion of the internal security forces initially mobilised for the final stage of the Tour de France, in order to reinforce the response efforts in the areas affected by the wildfires.”

• Defending champion takes first pole of 2026 by 0.012sec

• Hamilton and Antonelli receive three-place penalties

The margins were tiny and for a moment it seemed Lewis Hamilton had finally found his edge in qualifying, only for the seven-time champion to be beaten by but a breath. The defending world champion, Lando Norris, pipped him to pole for the Hungarian Grand Prix in a thrilling, dramatic contest.

Worse was to follow for Hamilton as his very real chance of converting a front-row start to a win in his hugely competitive Ferrari took a severe blow as he was penalised three grid places for impeding McLaren’s Oscar Piastri during their final laps. Hamilton will start from fifth place.

• Liverpool defeat Sunderland 4-2 in friendly in Nashville

• When Gomez went down, central defence formed by two teenagers

The Andoni Iraola era at Liverpool opened with a victory over Sunderland in Nashville – and a deepening of concerns over the defensive options at his disposal. The sight of Joe Gomez hobbling off after 10 minutes of the new head coach’s first game and two teenagers forming a raw central defence partnership in his absence intensified the spotlight on a department in need of work.

Liverpool had few issues at the other end of the pitch against Regis Le Bris’s side, resplendent in pink in Tennessee, where second half finishes from Dominik Szoboszlai, Federico Chiesa and Lewis Koumas delivered an ultimately comfortable win.

Exclusive: CSI Aviation and GlobalX accused of violating civil rights as part of Trump immigration crackdown

Venezuelan men sent last year to a notorious Salvadorian terrorism prison by the Trump administration are suing the US aviation companies that transported them there.

A lawsuit filed this week in federal court in Washington DC accuses the companies CSI Aviation and GlobalX of violating the Venezuelans’ civil rights, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and other violations, for their role in flying the three planes that took the men to El Salvador.

Exclusive: Blunder at Rosebank, UK’s biggest undeveloped oilfield, comes as government considers granting licence

Production at Britain’s biggest undeveloped oil and gasfield could be delayed for months after equipment from a rig was accidentally dropped in the North Sea, the Guardian can reveal.

Andy Burnham’s new government is under pressure from the fossil fuel industry to allow oil to be retrieved from the Rosebank site despite opposition from climate campaigners and some Labour MPs.

Zelenskyy says Iran is using Russian satellite images to help direct strikes in Middle East. What we know on day 1,614

Iran’s foreign ministry on Saturday condemned what it called a ⁠Ukrainian attack on an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, saying it killed one sailor and ⁠injured another. Tehran called the apparent attack an act of aggression and said it would defend its national ​interests and security. Ukraine’s diplomatic representative to Iran was summoned, Iranian state media reported. Throughout ​the war in Ukraine, Kyiv has had to counter Iranian-designed drones deployed by Moscow, and it has offered its drone ⁠interception expertise to countries in the Middle East that have been attacked by Iran.

Iran and Russia are two of the five countries that border the Caspian Sea and Russia maintains a powerful naval force there, making the inland body of water a platform for long‑range power projection, and a vital strategic bridge to Iran. Iran’s denunciation of the Ukraine attack on the ship coincided with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s comments that Russia was passing its satellite observations in the Middle East to Iran to enable it ‌to direct strikes in the region. Zelenskyy on Saturday said on X that Ukraine had “achieved very strong results with long‑range strikes in the Caspian Sea – including vessels used in military cargo shipments involving Iran”.

Zelenskyy also said Russia wanted to bring ⁠in 30,000 ⁠North Korean ​troops to take part in its more than four-year-old conflict with Russia, and was ⁠already preparing to receive them. Under a mutual defence pact, North Korea sent an ⁠estimated 14,000 soldiers to Russia’s Kursk Region in ​2024 to help ‌Moscow beat back ‌a major incursion into the region by Ukrainian ‌forces. “Preparations have been under way in Russia’s ‌Voronezh region since June to receive [North Korean troops],” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, adding that the communist dictatorship was preparing ​to supply Russia with new launchers for ballistic missiles.

Twelve people were killed, including five children, in an drone attack ⁠on ​a holiday camp in a Russian-held part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, Russian-installed local authorities said on Saturday, ⁠accusing Ukraine of deliberately attacking civilians. Kyiv did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, the ⁠Ukrainian capital Kyiv came under attack from Russian forces ⁠early on ⁠Sunday, ​with falling debris triggering fires in at least three ⁠districts, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Ukraine’s air force said Russian ⁠forces had targeted the capital with ​ballistic missiles. ‌But an ‌air alert was lifted after about ‌50 minutes and the air force rescinded its warning of missile deployment. Klitschko said one blaze had broken out on the seventh ‌and eighth floors of a multi-storey apartment block in ​a central district. There were no immediate ⁠reports of casualties.

Kazakhstan’s ⁠president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, said on Saturday a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine might be ⁠reached if ⁠both sides froze the conflict and resumed negotiations. Tokayev made the remarks while meeting Vladimir Putin at a Russia-Kazakhstan forum ⁠in the Siberian city of Omsk. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, quoted by the state ​TASS news agency, said Putin outlined to Tokayev in detail the state of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine.

Noul is the strongest typhoon to make landfall in China so far this year, state media reported

Typhoon Noul made landfall early Sunday bringing strong winds and heavy rain to southern China, including Hong Kong, over the weekend.

It prompted the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people in Guangdong province with the region on high alert and hundreds of flights cancelled.

No press briefing has been held for months, as the defence department belatedly or inaccurately releases figures

The Pentagon is taking a “shameful approach” to releasing information about US casualties in the Iran war, Leon Panetta, a former defence secretary and CIA director, has told the Guardian.

The defence department has not held a press briefing for two and a half months. Officials have faced accusations that they are engaged in a cover-up designed to hide the true cost of Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran, fearing a public backlash before November’s midterm elections.

Campaigners urge government to introduce right of access to water, particularly as heatwaves become more common

Almost three-quarters of riverbanks in England have no public access, according to data released by the Right to Roam campaign.

Across the country, the public cannot use riverbanks or gain access to the rivers themselves in most of the river catchments from the west of Cornwall up to the Tweed, which flows through northern England and Scotland.

As temperatures dip, the puffer’s appeal inflates. But quality and filler are factors to consider before buying new

• Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint

• Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com

Whether you call it a parka, puffer or Tassie tuxedo, the insulated jacket has become a cold-weather closet staple.

A 1920s version by Australian mountaineer George Finch was constructed from hot air balloon fabric and eiderdown, but most modern designs are a mix of petroleum-based synthetics as well as animal and plant fibres, with varying environmental and ethical impacts.

Approach focuses on rebuilding soil health, increasing biodiversity and restoring natural ecosystems

For the last few decades, the nutrient content of our crops has been declining. In the late 90s, the US Department of Agriculture found the vitamin C content of lemons had decreased by almost a third over the previous 22 years. Calcium in carrots, an important source especially for non-meat eaters, had reduced, on average, by more than a quarter. Vitamin A in bananas was down by 57%. The mineral content of wheat has declined by between 20-30% since the 1960s.

A number of reasons have been suggested for this worrying decline, ranging from new varieties of crop that are bred to grow quicker and bigger to the higher carbon dioxide levels in the air causing plants to produce more sugars and starches (they grow faster but they produce fewer nutrients). A wide range of fixes have been suggested, from GM crops to synthetic soil amendments, or underground farms.

Black-crowned night heron one of many species thriving at Holnicote Estate where river ‘reset’ has transformed area into lush oasis

A rare black-crowned night heron has been spotted on an estate in the south-west of England where an innovative river “reset” is transforming the area into an oasis for birdlife.

The heron was caught on camera in a jungly corner of the Holnicote Estate, where conservation experts have been restoring the landscape by allowing a river to return to its natural course.

Polling puts close Burnham ally in lead as she aims to defeat Reform and draw back support from revitalised Greens

Bev Craig was mid-squat at the gym when she was recognised for the first time as the prospective heir to Andy Burnham’s throne. Until recently, the Manchester city council leader could happily have gone about her workout in peace.

But all that changed when Burnham, who DJ’ed at her 40th birthday party last year, won the Makerfield byelection and set up another big electoral contest on his way to becoming prime minister.

Scottish first minister thanks Nethy Bridge residents and aid workers after earlier requesting UK military aid to fight 10-day fire

Residents of Nethy Bridge have been told they can return to their homes after a large fire broke out in the Cairngorms national park.

Supt Judy Hill of Police Scotland said: “Thanks to the efforts of fire crews, gamekeepers, contractors, partners and many others over the past 24 hours, there is no longer the immediate threat which prompted the evacuation of properties in Nethy Bridge.

Comment follows news Axel Rudakubana was transferred from prison to psychiatric hospital

The lawyer for the families of Axel Rudakubana’s victims has said the Southport killer is “trying to retraumatise the families from his cell” after it emerged he had been transferred from prison to a psychiatric hospital.

Rudakubana, now 19, was given a life sentence for the murders of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and the attempted murder of eight other children and two adults.

Officials not satisfied Therese Abdallah is a ‘genuine visitor’ and believe she would not leave after visit to son in London

A Palestinian Jerusalemite who lives in London has been left devastated after a planned trip by his parents had to be cancelled when the Home Office ruled his mother was not a “genuine visitor” but granted his father a visa.

Karim Abdallah, who has lived in the UK since 2019, was looking forward to hosting his parents, Therese Abdallah, 69, a retired English teacher, and his father, Ghassan Abdallah, a psychologist, for a few weeks.

More than 330,000 Haitian immigrants in limbo as Trump administration seeks to end temporary protected status

More than 330,000 Haitian immigrants in the US are set to lose their ability to legally live and work in the country as the Trump administration seeks to terminate their temporary protected status. An estimated 13,000 are nursing assistants, who care for 65,000 patients every day.

“I get up at 5am every morning and I take two buses to work to clean the rooms of the residents. I give my heart,” said a nursing home housekeeper with TPS from Haiti, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “These residents are like my grandmother.”

Bollywood stars accused of ‘cowardice’ as hundreds of thousands of young Indians take to the streets to challenge government

Bollywood stars and other Indian celebrities have faced fierce criticism for staying silent in the face of some of the biggest protests India has seen in years.

Hundreds of thousands of young Indians took to the streets this week as part of a new youth movement that calls itself the Cockroach Janata party (CJP), demanding accountability over exam paper leaks in an unprecedented challenge to prime minister Narendra Modi’s government. Many vented their anger against what they saw as “cowardice” from India’s biggest celebrities.

Robot from company that acquired sex doll maker to be introduced in school with large Native American population

A humanoid robot is being introduced as part of a pilot program, along with an AI teaching assistant, at Salamanca high school in Salamanca, New York, located on the Allegany territory of the Seneca nation.

Teachers have criticized the program, deeming it “inappropriate” and claiming it dehumanizes the profession with the introduction of human-like robots. Some local Native American residents have also criticized the pilot program, citing its implementation as “culturally tone deaf”.

Thousands have fled amid months of anti-immigration protests as campaigners demand undocumented people leave the country

In Thembelihle, an informal settlement south of Johannesburg where thousands of breeze-block houses and metal shacks line dirt streets flooded with filthy water, Malawians had lived for years alongside South Africans without any problems.

But in the last few weeks, a series of armed robberies has shaken the community. On 29 June, several men broke into the compound of Eibraheem Hussein, a 60-year-old Malawian who has lived in South Africa since 2000. They beat him and stole valuable items.

Exclusive: Eight companies expect to be covered by the ban for 2025-26, the Guardian can reveal

Water company bosses’ total pay rose over the past year despite a government bonus ban and public outrage over pollution and bills, the Guardian can reveal.

One chief executive, Mark Thurston of Anglian Water, received £1.9m – including a £500,000 “retention payment”, despite the bonus ban.

Business owners in England say prioritising venues selling alcohol leaves vital community spaces behind

Ferdinand Geus is proud of the positive, global impact his small speciality coffee business is having.

“Around 3,000 small, family-owned farms in Yemen rely on us – we’ve persuaded many to stop growing khat, the drug, and start growing coffee instead,” said the business manager of Sheba Coffee, which supplies Yemeni coffee beans to independent cafes across the world, including the UK.

After Google fined €890m by EU, US president said Brussels was ‘robbing’ American companies and taxpayers

• What to know about Trump’s new tariffs on more than 80 countries

Donald Trump has threatened the European Union with additional and “substantial” tariffs after Brussels imposed a series of steep fines on US tech giants.

The US president accused Brussels of taking “direct aim” at several American companies including Apple, Meta Platforms, Amazon and Google, writing in a Truth Social post: “The United States of America is not a ‘PIGGYBANK’ for Europe, nor will we allow it to be!”

Streaming pioneer that transformed TV faces slowing growth and battle for viewers’ attention from YouTube

When Netflix offered viewers the chance to binge on an entire season of House of Cards it revolutionised the TV industry and started on a path to becoming the world’s most popular streaming service.

Almost 15 years on, however, the upstart’s strategy of pumping its service with an avalanche of content and an almost-as-rapid penchant for mercilessly cancelling shows has viewers reaching for the remote.

I was uncertain about expressing my queerness, until I saw the way Zendaya and Hunter Schafer’s characters opened up to each other in HBO’s drama

I don’t remember the exact moment when I started catching feelings for my friend Ellen. It might have been when she trusted me to cut her hair into a feathered bob, or when I noticed she’d taken to keeping my favourite tea at her parents’ house. But in the summer of 2019, a month before our final year of school together, I realised I was falling in love.

We were 17 at the time and had been best friends since our first year of high school, both of us part of the same tight-knit group of girls. Ellen and I knew each other well and were quick to make each other laugh, but we were also very different. Whereas Ellen is reserved and gentle, I’m loud and loquacious. So my sudden attraction to her was confusing – especially since neither of us was openly queer.

Ruth Jones and Iwan Rheon also star in this story about climate catastrophes and charismatic leaders. Plus: Andrew Lincoln narrates a nature series. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC One

The new detective series with Emmy Rossum and Quincy Tyler Bernstine chasing a female serial killer is a must-see for Killing Eve fans

A male friend recently attended a Lily Allen show, and shakily described the experience to me. “I felt like a vegetarian fox at an armed chicken convention,” he said. An overwhelmingly female crowd were experiencing powerful catharsis, united in their anger at men and joy of bangers. I told him chickens couldn’t handle firearms, but I don’t think he heard me. He had tinnitus from the screaming.

There isn’t much screaming in Furious, Disney+’s new detective series (from Monday, 27 July). Also missing are the standard tropes of murder dramas: mutilated female bodies, an absence of women’s agency generally. Furious is the cat and mouse story between junior FBI agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) and Catherine (Lola Petticrew), a serial killer who is bumping off male victims with calculated sadism. Catherine might be the least serial killer name imaginable, but that’s just one way this show rewrites the rule book. I’d say it’s the most feminist show I’ve ever seen – except that might lead some to write it off.

The Australian version of the sitcom is every bit as entertaining! Plus, get ready to belt out Bonnie Tyler’s best hits. Here’s what to watch this evening

10.30pm, BBC Three

The singer-songwriter and Water from Your Eyes guitarist was unstoppably prolific, despite a growing dependence on substances. Now sober, he reflects on his new album and the songs that helped him turn his life round

For most of his life, Nate Amos made music just to get through the day. There was plenty of it: dozens of self-produced albums and EPs uploaded – since his This Is Lorelei project launched in 2012 – to what was then a plucky, independent platform called Bandcamp. Now 35, he is perhaps the quintessential Bandcamp artist: part bedroom-pop whiz, part alt-country troubadour, part indie rock rascal with a big, heavy heart. His peers treat him like a lost folk hero from a bygone era.

Amos is sitting in the basement of a cafe in Camden Town, north London, cradling an iced matcha; coffee makes him “feel like shit”, he says, and he no longer indulges such foibles. The title of one of those Bandcamp albums, OK N8, is tattooed on his knuckles. A friend inked it a few years ago, soon after Amos got sober. “Exactly when you’re not supposed to be making decisions like getting a tattoo on your hand,” he jokes. His active blue eyes dance around behind a golden-brown fringe and an unruly, woodchip beard. In a tough spot he will swing back in his chair and search for answers that always seem to be hiding beneath the table. But each time he stumbles upon the truth, he looks up with a hungry smile.

(Atlantic)
How do you follow up the album that made you a star – and a caricature? In classic Charli style: with a pivot to guitar and a meta masterpiece about the instability of identity

After a decade spent trailblazing a unique kind of pop freedom from the genre’s fringes, A-list success seemed like the thing that might finally trap Charli xcx. Her 2024 club-rat opus Brat spawned memes, embarrassing political bandwagoning, Collins’ word of the year and possibly terminal damage to the bra industry. Its ludicrous cultural impact looked set to pickle her as a caricature of a Parliament-toting bad girl; the question of whether “Brat summer” could last – whether Charli could sustain the interest – was so rife she turned it into a mockumentary, The Moment. It made success look miserable: your creation turned cringe by execs wanting to milk their prize cow dry of every last acid-green drop.

Even for a pop star renowned for reinvention, it put a higher price on her next move. Pivot and risk losing new fans and looking wilfully contrarian. When Charli released the sub-two-minute single Rock Music, many heard it as a middle finger. “I think the dancefloor is dead,” she drawls over guitars that buzzed like speakers weathering interference from a Nokia 5110, “so now we’re making rock music.” There were boring thinkpieces about the dancefloor being very much alive, actually (as if Charli had ever ridden culture for clout then binned it off), and about whether she was trying to eject fair-weather new fans. But the key to this cheeky song is surprisingly earnest: “Jump off the stage / I hope they catch you today / But if they don’t it’s OK,” she sings naively, an affirmation to take creative leaps, and to come with Charli – or not, as you like – as she takes this one.

(RCA/Cult)
Allying the crackpot strangeness of Julian Casablancas’ side projects with his band’s gift for pop minimalism, the New Yorkers are on playful, joyous form

Here’s a sentence no old-head Strokes fan wants to hear: to understand Reality Awaits, the stalwart NYC group’s seventh album and first in six years, you first have to understand the Voidz. Julian Casablancas’s other band has been taking up more and more of his time in recent years, much to the chagrin of fans who may have dipped into the group’s painfully, awkwardly proggy 2014 debut Tyranny and decided to just let the old legend have his fun (away from their own speakers, of course). Anyone who decided to listen further will have found that the Voidz have turned into a great, crowd-pleasing, safely experimental zone for Casablancas to pull out some of the most energised, goofy work of his career. If you’re thinking I come to this guy for cool, not goof, I don’t know what to tell you: this is a man who spends interviews discussing his theories about ancient Sumerian culture.

The 2018 Voidz record Virtue is a high point of Casablancas’s entire catalogue: a gentle stylistic mixed bag that covers winsome pop-rock, yacht rock, bedroom pop and much more. That album seemed to clear the decks for the Strokes’ last record, 2020’s The New Abnormal, on which they sounded the most like their 2001 selves since Is This It. That album is now the definitive Strokes album for gen Z – go to any Strokes show and watch the younger contingent light up during The Adults Are Talking – but it didn’t presage a long-term back-to-basics route for Casablancas and co. On Reality Awaits, by sheer force of will, he fuses the crackpot strangeness and, ahem, fondness for AutoTune of the Voidz with the Strokes’ minimalism and pop melodicism.

The New Orleans country-punk duo are on a hot streak, about to release their third album in a year, and the crunchy, literate hooks keep coming

From New Orleans
Recommended if you like Parquet Courts, Sheer Mag, Royal Headache
Up next Holy Cross Tigers out later this year

Not one but two of the year’s best albums so far are authored by a ragtag, deeply charismatic band from Louisiana named Twisted Teens, who bear Pynchonian names – Caspian Hollywell and RJ “Razor Ramone” Santos – a console steel guitar and, in Hollywell’s case, one of rock’s greatest, most soulful voices in many years. Virtuosic when it counts, ramshackle when necessary, Twisted Teens feel like they could slot nicely on to a bill with Parquet Courts and the late, great Royal Headache – crunchy, literary rock bands who seemed to shyly conceal their music’s anthemic nature.

Twisted Teens broke through earlier this year with their second album Blame the Clown, a set of 12 country-punk tracks that’s hooky and effusive enough to give any major-label pop record released this year a run for its money. A couple of weeks ago, they released its followup, the rangier and slightly more introspective Florida Water Blues, and before the year’s out they’ll have dropped Holy Cross Tigers, a release schedule befitting a band on a hot streak.

The pair’s origin story is foggy – the most one can glean from interviews is “they were neighbours, then Santos travelled cross-country to buy a steel guitar” – which feels appropriate for this kind of grimy, mythic music, which is raw and self-consciously handmade. Part of that feeling can be put down to Hollywell’s voice, a gritty and pockmarked thing which he uses to great effect, interspersing deadpan meditations on life and love with a rich, almighty howl that’s ostentatious but unpretentious. In other words, Twisted Teens are two of 2026’s true originals – a breakout band whose kooky, ultra-clarified vision outstrips the hype. Shaad D’Souza

From a transporting historical saga to a tale of small-town betrayal, the authors of our favourite page-turners reveal the books they take on holiday – introduced by Jenny Colgan

It is important to follow a balanced diet on holiday. Too many “My Wife’s Sister’s Husband’s Psychopath”, and you’ll get confused and grumpy. Too much sugary romance and your teeth will fall out. Something too big and challenging you’ve been meaning to get round to for ages will make you feel guilty and more liable to give in to scrolling, and if you take too many supposedly upmarket “must reads” of the summer, you will simply prove to yourself just how much overhyped averageness there is out there, when all you want is something satisfying.

You need to be able to chop and change depending on your mood, which means fiction and nonfiction. And finally, you need to be able to throw all of these rules out of the window if you find a sandy old water-stained copy of, for example, James Herbert’s Domain in your holiday cottage and decide to devote yourself to 600 pages of post-nuclear mutant rat-strewn London, or choose to go for a full-on Maeve Binchy sesh.

The American novelist and screenwriter’s memoir covers sex work, Virginia Woolf and Hollywood success

As an eight-year-old in comfortable, solid, suburban California, Michael Cunningham felt compelled to make art before he quite understood what it was, or could do: a painting of souls ascending to heaven, for example, in which paradise resembled the Griffith Park Observatory and the dead were all depicted in profile because their creator felt unequal to the challenge of full faces. There was also a cigar box covered in gold-sprayed macaroni and a clay representation of the animals on Noah’s Ark – anything, in fact, that would challenge the painting of a placid white chicken that hung in a gilt frame on his parents’ wall.

If Cunningham moved on fairly rapidly from the visual arts, either sparing or denying us the fruits of a more fully formed talent, it wasn’t because the impulse to create had withered. Rather, it was that the experience of making material art had functioned as a temporary outlet, being less painful, less embarrassing – both emotions he ascribes to his young, sensitive self – than attempting to capture the world in words.

The author on the power of folktales, being inspired by Ulysses – and the book that every woman should read

My earliest reading memory
The summer my middle sister was born, my mum and I would walk to the shops at Cherryvalley, in east Belfast, to do her messages, and she’d buy me the latest issue of Storyteller, illustrated tales from around the world. It came with a cassette tape of actors reading the stories, a ding to tell you when to turn the page. My favourite was a Japanese folktale called The Goblin Rat. I was only just two, but I listened to it, entranced and terrified, until I could recite it by heart.

My favourite book growing up
Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series. I first read them aged 10 – I’ve read the title book every midwinter since, and read them last year with my own then-10-year-old son. They tell a haunting story of the age-old battle between the forces of dark and light, weaving in Arthurian legend, shot through with an adult melancholy that makes them as compelling now as then.

After my 22-month-old child died, music and poetry brought catharsis and comfort

The day Renzo had his aneurysm, in the afternoon before it happened, I distinctly remember telling him that it was going to be a pleasure to watch him grow up. It seems ridiculous to write that here, the foreshadowing so on the nose as to be unbelievable. But it’s true. To him and my wife Allegra, I said, “I love our little family.” After the struggles around his birth, job loss, the pandemic, it felt, finally, like we had made it to the other side. We had, I suppose, just not how I envisioned it.

My friends Jayson and Stacy recommended I get to know David Kessler’s work. According to Harvard Business Review, Kessler is “the world’s foremost expert on grief”. He’d worked closely with Elisabeth Kübler-­Ross, who was the reigning expert on grief before her own death in 2004. A large part of Kübler-­Ross’s legacy is her classification of what she calls the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, as described in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. After you experience a death, she wrote, these stages can occur in any order, with one or more possibly not occurring at all. Just weeks after Renzo’s death, I’d tricked myself into thinking I had jumped all the way to acceptance when really I was trying to outrun anger and depression. Bargaining hasn’t been a big one for me, nor has denial. The facts have been pretty hard to ignore.

Going by the mantra, if you want to make someone laugh, make them cry first, the game’s developers have created a lonely magpie who fills the void by wreaking havoc

Amid the gleeful anarchy of Bad Magpie’s debut trailer, there’s a striking note of melancholy. The game’s protagonist – a wounded corvid that creates havoc wherever she goes – calls out forlornly as a flock of her kind passes above, with a conspicuous gap in their formation.

Milktooth games designer and co-founder Daisy Fernandez has had this particular image in her head for years. Lying in the grass one afternoon during the 2020 lockdowns, she looked up and saw a V-shaped pattern in the sky, poignantly incomplete. “It really stuck with me,” she says. “I posted about it online and someone told me about a ‘missing man’ formation, which is an aerial salute to a fallen pilot.”

These days, I ‘collect’ birdsong and wild flowers, but it all started when my sons and I first set out to find Pikachu and pals

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Believe it or not, Pokémon Go is 10 years old this month. The wildly successful smartphone game, which allows you to track down lovable creatures in the real world using GPS and augmented-reality technologies, has reportedly been downloaded 800m times across 150 countries and regions. A trillion Pokémon have been caught so far – and I have been responsible for a modest percentage of that figure.

When the game was first released, my sons and I spent many happy hours wandering the streets and parks of Frome searching for Jigglypuffs and Charizards, and the game’s social element, which lets you take on gym battles with other players in your vicinity, offered my autistic son a route to communicate with other children in a way he’d never been able to before.

Renovate rooms, investigate the supernatural and watch people burst into song in this surreal British ghost story

A young American man arrives in a dilapidated British seaside town to take on the renovations of an equally run-down hotel, inherited from a mysteriously absent father he never knew. His power tools talk to him in a Scottish accent, the local people speak in baffling slang, and occasionally people burst into song. Oh, and there are ghosts.

There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is a novel mix of genres – no bad thing in these times of sequels and remakes – but, according to the creative director of independent developers Friday Sundae, Anil Glendinning, it grew organically from a single goal: to tell a very British ghost story.

Nintendo Switch 2
The single-player offshoot of the quirky and colourful multiplayer series is disappointingly run-of-the-mill

Splatoon is among Nintendo’s most ingenious inventions of the last decade: a series of shooting games whose paint-splattered turf war nature means being bad at shooting is just as valuable as – if not more so than – being good. It is also blessed with an abundance of personality, with vibrant characters, a richly imagined world, and a hipness that the competition can only dream of achieving. Unfortunately, Splatoon Raiders makes it difficult to remember all of this.

The first spinoff in the ink-soaked franchise, Splatoon Raiders is advertised as a single player-focused entry in this primarily multiplayer series. While this is true enough – one can play through the entire game solo just fine – Raiders is clearly best enjoyed cooperatively with up to three others. Players start each session on a hideout ship where they can upgrade their equipment and tweak their play style before heading out on bite-sized repeatable missions, and this structure is tailor-made for teaming up with friends or helping out strangers (the game lets you do either), as each person works towards creating their ultimate squid-kid avatar of chaos.

Splatoon Raiders is out 23 July; £41.99

Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh
Despite his humble persona, the highest-selling country artist of all time has the vocal firepower and hard-hitting hits to deliver two hours of crowd-pleasin’ pyrotechnics

The first we see of Luke Combs, the North Carolina-born megastar is walking through the stadium crowd. Cap pulled low, with a bashful look on his face, the stunt is less pap walk, more regular Joe dodging a flashmob on his way to work. Combs is now the highest-selling country artist of all time, but he wears his success with humility: when he finally reaches his saloon-themed stage, with near-70,000 screaming fans before him, he keeps that unassuming presence. “Normally I’d ask how you’re feeling tonight, but I know how you’re feeling tonight,” he smiles.

This week, Combs will perform to more than half a million fans across just seven dates in England, Scotland and Ireland: a remarkable coronation for an artist yet to have a Top 10 single here. Not that you’d know it, from the way the crowd screams every word to his 2016 hit Hurricane, a soft-rock heartacher about running into your ex in a bar, elevated by a cinematic chorus (“moon went hidin’, stars quit shinin’”) that’s closer to early-doors Taylor than any country-bro machismo.

The terrifying visions of Richard Dadd, UFOs, aliens and Van Gogh’s troubled peasant woman – all in your weekly dispatch

Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam
Terrifying creatures of the night and surreal dreamscapes galore – and those are just the “sane” canvases this Victorian artist painted before he was confined to Bedlam, where his visions became truly unsettling.
• Royal Academy, London, 25 July to 25 October

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Hofesh Shechter’s latest doesn’t break new ground, but its exceptional dancers throw themselves into a moody, pulse-quickening celebration of communal movement

It may be 38 years since the second summer of love, three decades since the dance music boom of the early 90s, but on the contemporary dance stage, rave is still peaking. In recent years, you’ve barely been able to move for dancers letting loose to repetitive beats, in tribal gatherings and transcendent ones.

Hofesh Shechter’s dance has always had that rhythmic pull of the dancefloor – he writes his own beat-driven music, after all – but while the early works were more angst-fuelled, now he seems happy to get lost in music. Shechter’s latest, In the Brain, has been developed from a piece called Cave made for Martha Graham Dance Company in 2022. It’s danced by his junior company, Shechter II, a collection of some of the best young dancers under 25, selected from around the world. They have that hungry energy of youth, and they lay it all out on the floor.

In the Brain is not an all-out party, though. It has its quiet moments, its slow build, its not-always-enlightening detours (into a brief swing dance, and a couples’ slow dance, to name two). The feel is subterranean, not least because of Tom Visser’s lighting. Visser is king of the dim glow in all its subtle shades – maximum atmosphere with minimum drama – and Shechter’s score is similarly dusky and moody, rather than party bangers. (There’s also additional music from German techno duo Âme.)

More than anything, In the Brain is recognisably Hofesh: the hunch of the shoulders, the arms raised to the sky, the ritualised groups moving as one – it’s a style that’s inspired many others. This piece isn’t rushing into new territory, but part of the appeal of Shechter’s choreography is that you can imagine it feels so good to dance it. There’s a tangible, visceral pleasure, whether that’s the thick, gloopy curves of movement or an almost violent exorcism, flinging out the body’s demons to a pounding bass. It’s dance that doesn’t seem drastically far from natural movement – so the viewer could feel themselves inside it – except there’s no way you could match the skill of these explosive performers. But the power is in the communal nature of the dance, the fellow-feeling, plugged into something bigger than oneself, surrendering to the universal heartbeat of the dancefloor.

• Until 25 July at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

The Yard theatre, London
Barbies, giant erections and exquisite craftsmanship combine in one of the year’s most outrageously funny and startingly original shows

Did someone say Jackie Collins, that doyenne of literary raunch and observer of human sexual dynamics? Fantastic! And an adaptation of her first novel, which revealed her formative interest in, and talent for, capturing the drama of love and sex within the bounds of patriarchy, and set in the world of showbusiness (albeit not in the Hollywood Hills but the leafy green film industry of swinging 60s Hampstead)? Great!

But played out in miniature, in a series of lit doll’s houses, and mainly acted by repurposed Barbie dolls. What? Who dreamed this up? An experimental adult Swedish company, Malmö Dockteater, and “adult” is quite the understatement. Directed by Erik Holmström, also puppet designer, the dolls come with pubic hair, gigantic erections and heavy, surround-sound breathing. In between the story of a marriage in the doldrums, infidelity and female ambition in an era of predatory film directors and savage casting couches (all conceived decades before Harvey Weinstein and #MeToo), there are eye-watering helpings of nudity, fellatio, cunnilingus, quickies and straight-up bonking. This is puppetry with balls in more ways than one, which makes the adult content in the current West End puppet production of Avenue Q look like The Muppet Christmas Carol.

Jewellery made from BC Iran worn at Odyssey photocall throws spotlight on the trade of rare archeological finds

The Odyssey has stormed cinemas, but while its take on the Homeric epic has created ripples among western classicists, it is an actor’s earrings that have made waves further afield.

Zendaya, who portrays the goddess Athena in the movie, provoked outrage when she appeared at a London photocall wearing earrings that were allegedly made from Iranian artefacts dating back to the 1st millennium BC.

As a stunning 4K restoration arrives in theaters, the director and cast reflect on creating the disturbing descent into a criminal underworld

Michael Mann has shown time and again in films like Thief, Heat, Miami Vice and Public Enemies that he is one of American film’s greatest explorers of the underworld. “It’s like a kind of cultural anthropology,” Mann tells me from his office in Los Angeles. “If you make films, you get to do that in a different place with a different subject every few years. For me, the exploration is the high.”

With its unsettling atmosphere and soaring beauty, Mann’s 1986 film Manhunter reimagined how a thriller could look, sound and feel in an early high point for the director. To commemorate its 40th anniversary Manhunter: The Final Cut, a 4K restoration and director’s cut with three minutes of new footage, will see a theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles this weekend with a nationwide US rollout to follow.

‘It’s good to be back,’ says the actor in a new trailer for the forthcoming Ebenezer. Has everyone forgotten about the ghosts of his past?

It is fair to say that, professionally speaking, Johnny Depp has had a quiet few years. Since he and Amber Heard sued each other amid a whirlwind of genuinely ugly accusations in 2019, and went to trial in 2022, Depp has struggled to reclaim his position in Hollywood.

His 2020 film Minimata made less than a million dollars at the box office. Jeanne du Barry fared better in 2023, although its Cannes premiere was marked by feminist demonstrations and an open letter signed by 100 members of the French film industry, furious that the festival appeared to be offering alleged abusers institutional protection. Aside from that, he voiced a Puffin called Johnny Puff in a cartoon series called Puffins, and that’s about it.

Stratospheric costs could prevent the fire-damaged landmark from returning to its former glory. Now, unless a wealthy patron is found, the building seems destined for ‘soulless’ facade retention or ‘curated decay’

Doubly destroyed by two fires, Scotland’s finest piece of architecture, the Mackintosh building at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA), cuts a lamentable sight.

A 12-year saga of destruction, rebuilding and yet more destruction, all underscored by an unedifying seam of political and institutional wrangling, reached an apologetic conclusion of sorts, with the recent announcement that Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s exquisite art nouveau creation is unlikely to be rebuilt in its original form because of stratospheric cost.

Sagre – the historic local events that pop up in villages across the country in summer – are the perfect way to get a taste of regional cuisine and culture

I cannot remember a summer when at least one evening hasn’t been spent following signs to a local sagra. Not quite a food market and not quite a village fete, a sagra is like a village moving its kitchen outdoors for a few nights.

When I think back to those nights from childhood, the first image that comes to mind is of a woman’s hand closed into a fist above a pan of hot oil. Through a tight circle formed between her thumb and forefinger, she would squeeze soft lumps of batter, one small ball at a time, into the oil. In a few seconds, each soft mass would become a pittula, a small Salento fritter: swollen, uneven, golden, too hot to eat straight away but too good to wait for.

In the 1960s, 19-year-old Anne Ring was set up with Ian and felt an immediate attraction

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

It was June 1961, I was 19, and innocently dating in the ways of that time – I’d had several boyfriends, had my heart broken once and had broken two.

A platonic friend decided I should meet Ian, as we both liked to talk. So he invited Ian – who was 20 – and me to dinner. It was at our friend’s family’s home with Beethoven’s violin concerto playing in the background, and he was right. From the outset Ian and I were totally immersed in our conversation, and I felt an immediate connection and attraction to him. Driving me home, he asked me out the following Saturday.

Who makes the smoothest, creamiest, chocolatiest tub? We have the inside scoop for you

• The best supermarket dark chocolate

There’s been a marked shift towards less-processed ice-cream since I tested vanilla ice-cream for this column last summer. Most ice-cream on the market used to be a cocktail of gums and emulsifiers, but now they’re of much higher quality and with fewer additives.

All today’s chocolate ice-creams are sophisticated, rich and complex, with deep, dark flavours, and I scored them on taste and texture first (I favour denser, French-style, custard-based ice-creams). I also prioritised smoothness and mouthfeel.

Whether you’re on PC or a console, level up your setup with our gaming expert’s pick of the best chairs

• The best games of 2026 so far

Comfort is crucial to the gaming experience. It’s hard to focus on blasting aliens or taking Stoke to the Champions League final if your bum has gone to sleep because you’ve been sitting on an old chair for three hours. We’re spending more time playing games than ever before, so good posture matters. If you have set up a dedicated gaming space, then a rickety seat just won’t cut it.

From luxurious ergonomic thrones to cheap-and-cheerful bucket seats, the options available are bewildering. So I set out on an epic quest: to find the most comfortable, durable and stylish gaming chairs. Here’s what I discovered.

Best gaming chair overall:
Secretlab Titan Evo

Best budget gaming chair:
ThunderX3 Solo 360

Supportive and surprisingly cool for memory foam, Panda’s flagship topper gave our reviewer some of the best sleep she’s had all summer

• The best mattress toppers – tested

When I was struggling to sleep in a heatwave, diving into a 6ft slab of memory foam didn’t exactly sound like the answer. Memory foam is renowned for trapping heat, and the more “sinky” the foam, the more heat you’d expect it to trap. Less comfort layer, more boiled marshmallow.

However, the foam used by Panda in its flagship mattress topper genuinely seems to break the mould. It has the cosy feel of conventional memory foam, but it eased my night sweats so well when I tested the best mattress toppers in summer 2025 that I named it the “best cooling topper”, beating rivals filled with airy wool and microfibre.

They’re the foundation of a good routine, but which face wash does our beauty expert rate for oily, dry, or normal skin?

• How to build the perfect skincare routine

Choosing a cleanser can feel like Goldilocks’ task of searching for the perfect bowl of porridge – finding one that’s just right is rarely straightforward. Add in that our skin is constantly changing, due to hormones, the seasons and environmental stressors, and it’s easy to see why finding the ideal formula can be challenging.

Cleansers are often overlooked, but the right one is the basis of a good skincare routine. To understand what we should be looking for, I spoke with Dr Ahmed El Muntasar, GP and founder of the Aesthetics Doctor, who explained that the ideal formula depends entirely on skin type. “If someone is acne-prone or oily, I would usually recommend something more gel-based, because it helps break through excess oil more effectively,” he says. “Ingredients such as salicylic acid and niacinamide can also be helpful for those skin types.”

Best overall and best budget cleanser:
Cetaphil gentle exfoliating salicylic acid cleanser

Best cleanser if you can afford it:
Sarah Chapman Skinesis Ultimate Cleanse

This globetrotting cold fusion dish boasts south-east Asian, Middle-Eastern and even Italian influences, producing sweet and sour notes and a chilli kick

Can a person in a heatwave ever have too many cold noodle dishes? I’d wager no – hence today’s recipe. It started life as one of my favourite meals, the mighty spaghetti pomodoro, but then packed its bags and travelled through the Middle East, picking up some tahini along the way, then on to Indonesia for some heat (sambal oelek), and then hopped over to Vietnam for a final hurrah of fresh lime, coriander and peanuts. The result is a creamy but perky tomato sauce that can live in the fridge for up to a week for the too-hot-to-cook days.

Orange wine and mezcal mingle in this smoky, Georgian-inspired drink

A smoky, refreshing highball inspired by Georgia’s amber wines and qvevri winemaking tradition (large clay vessels buried underground for fermentation). The mezcal works beautifully with the wine, which traditionally has structure and tannin from extended skin contact in those qvevri, and with the hint of citrus. The result is a cocktail that feels ancient and modern at the same time.

Jack Porter, DakaDaka, London W1

These bright, sharp Mexican iced treats are the perfect summer cooler – with a spiky kick

The first time I encountered paletas in Mexico, they felt strangely familiar. They reminded me of the iced treats of my Malaysian childhood: fruit-driven, brightly coloured and made less to indulge than to relieve the heat. What struck me most was the flavour logic shared by both countries, where sweetness is often enlivened with salt, chilli, tamarind or citrus, each sharpening the fruit in its own way and making it seem brighter, cooler and somehow more vivid. Paletas are rarely perfectly smooth; little pieces of fruit suspended in the ice give them texture and interest. These two paletas take different paths from the same base: pineapple – sharp, clean and bright with lime and ginger – and mango – sweeter, rounder and more indulgent, which I’ve spiked with chilli, lime and salt.

Iced tea doesn’t have to be the super sweet, sugar-packed mainstream brands – there are plenty of offerings ready to convert even the staunchest tea purist

As a very prescriptive tea drinker – piping hot “Stephen Fry” everyday Twinings, thank you, brewed strong with a dash of milk and no sugar under any circumstances – iced tea has always been lost on me. But there’s nothing like an unprecedented heatwave to encourage this sleepless mother to review her position on something as vital as tea.

Many of us associate iced tea with the American south, but legend has it that it was actually an English tea merchant who popularised it there. Richard Blechynden met countless visitors who were unwilling to drink hot tea in the summer heat of 1904’s Louisiana Purchase Exposition, so instead he served it over ice. With the American penchant for iced drinks being already well-documented (Mark Twain wrote that if there was one thing that could be called “American”, it was “the national devotion to ice-water”), it took off.

Jacob, 27, a volunteer manager, meets Sophie, 28, a journalist

What were you hoping for?
To meet someone who I could connect with and possibly go on further dates.

Prescribing doctors often warn of the medications’ potential side-effects – but unexpected impacts on romantic relationships are less understood

For Jennifer, obesity was the obvious culprit for most of her problems.

The litigation attorney told herself it was the reason why she wasn’t being invited to parties, and why she and her husband struggled with physical intimacy in their otherwise “solid” marriage.

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To stay open-hearted and optimistic, you need hope, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. That’s not the same as expectation

• Read more Leading questions

I’m nearly 30 and my first serious relationship just ended a month ago. It lasted eight months, she was my first girlfriend and first kiss, etc. She broke up with me in a very kind and respectful way, and I have been … OK, I guess.

The thing is, everyone has been saying to me, “But you must feel so much more confident now.” I don’t. My self-esteem and confidence wasn’t exactly soaring before I met her, but now I feel even less so. It just feels like most people are less tolerant or accepting of my shortcomings.

Fay likes to get a good spot and watch the support acts, but Odysseus would rather rock up for the main band. Who is hitting a false note? You decide

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

Fay likes to be on the front row but I think it’s overrated

Criminals send victims to a cloned site that collects login, personal and payment details

You have had a Spotify account for years and your credit card is linked for the monthly payments. When an email arrives telling you that your payment couldn’t be processed you are not surprised as the expiry date on the card is soon.

“We encountered an issue while processing your recent payment,” it says. “To keep your access active and avoid interruption, please review and update your information.”

Unclear terms and expensive extras can turn what seemed like a cheap rental into a costly one

It is not too late to get a good deal on your holiday car rental, even if you have booked already and are travelling soon. But there are many pitfalls to avoid so that you do not end up paying over the odds.

A survey from Which? found that one in eight people who had hired a car in the past two years had ended up paying more than they were first quoted.

Don’t delay in taking advantage of the competition that is pushing up interest rates and increasing choice, experts say

It is shaping up to be a decent summer for savers as fierce competition among providers pushes up interest rates and increases choice.

You can currently get instant- and easy-access accounts that pay up to 5% interest, and fixed-rate savings bonds that pay almost that much. Meanwhile, those looking for a regular savings account can now get up to 8%.

From an intricate bronze-like townhouse in Manchester to a sculptural property in the Essex countryside

Feel lethargic even after a full night’s sleep? From not enough fibre to too much sitting, experts explain why your get up and go has got up and gone

The very air you breathe could be an issue. “Close the door, shut the window, add a partner and a heater, and by 3am a typical bedroom sits at 1,500 to 2,500 parts per million of carbon dioxide,” says Dr Jemma King, author of Sleep First: Sleep Smarter, Think Sharper, Feel Better. “Research shows that above 1,000 ppm sleep efficiency drops, deep sleep reduces and salivary cortisol rises on waking. You’re sleeping, but your nervous system is mildly activated all night.” Luckily, it’s an easy fix: open a window – even 2cm will do the job, according to King.

‘Bulking’, or gaining weight on purpose to get stronger, challenged everything I was once taught to do with my body

• Tell us: what impact have GLP-1s had on your relationships?

I had been casually lifting weights for a few years when several things changed in quick succession.

First, my boyfriend proposed.

Experts weigh in on wellness culture’s obsession with natural fibers and the growing trend of people shunning plastic-based clothing

A few months ago, Lane Koch made a decision: she would purge her family’s closets of all plastic-based fabrics and replace them with natural fibers, such as cotton and linen.

Koch, a longtime Republican political strategist who was a senior staffer on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s presidential campaign, has long avoided processed foods and rid her kitchen of plastic cookware about a decade ago. But, for all that she cared about what she put in her body, she told me she had paid little attention to what she put on her body.

Pioneering study linking noise pollution to Parkinson’s finds 3% increase in risk for every 11.5dB rise in noise levels

Long-term exposure to road traffic noise is associated with a higher risk of Parkinson’s disease, the biggest study of its kind has found.

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive disorder in which parts of the brain become damaged over time, affecting movement and balance.

A physio, a tailor and a historian on the style trends that can put women in hospital and how to avoid the dangers

“Buyer beware” is one of the oldest principles in English law. Now, a pair of wide legged trousers from Zara is bringing the phrase back to the forefront of shoppers’ minds.

On social media the £25.99 wide-legged trousers from the high-street retailer have earned the moniker “Zara death pants” thanks to a slew of videos showing wearers tripping over the leg of the trousers and injuring themselves.

V&A event celebrates all shapes and sizes as wider fashion industry stalls on body diversity

Visitors to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum on Friday afternoon to watch Sinéad O’Dwyer’s Fashion in Motion show would have encountered something a little different. The cast of performers and models wore everything from underwear to skirt suits and sequins, and sometimes danced interpretively on the catwalk to a performance by the band Jeanie and The White Boys, but most notably came in all shapes and sizes.

O’Dwyer’s work has pushed against fashion’s insistence on a thin body type since she appeared at London fashion week in 2021. If most brands make the samples for clothes shown on the catwalk based on a size 4-8, she uses a size 18. She has won awards for her work, as well as celebrity fans including Cardi B and Björk.

Thanks to gen Z resellers and platforms like Depop, thrifting has lost its subcultural roots - and ballooned into a $350bn business

Vintage boutique owner Janelle Best has been rummaging in thrift shop bins since the 90s. When she started, she says, there was a stigma about it. “It was either you were a freak, or you were poor – and I was a freak.”

At first, she did it to source stage outfits while playing in psych-rock bands. Then, in 2005, she started “casually reselling” on eBay. Ten years later she was trading as Desert Stars Vintage at street markets, and by 2023 she had opened a showroom specializing in upmarket silk dresses in her Williamsburg apartment. Even just a few years ago, she says, she still put in the hours at places like Goodwill. The bins, she says, “were a field day. There were so many fucking bangers.” And then, thrifting became a social media craze, she says, “and the hell gates of high school students flooded in. Twelve people to each bin. Everyone fighting. Suddenly everyone’s a reseller, and instead of these kids intuitively knowing what’s good, they’re on their phones trying to figure out if it’s valuable.”

Whether you’re on a staycation or jetting away, drawstring trousers and clever layering will keep you cool

On a coastline brimming with seafood shacks, crab sandwiches and hyperlocal flavour, our food writer is happy to be distracted from the stunning scenery

If we take it as read that the better the view, the worse the cooking, then by rights south Wales’s Gower peninsula should be a culinary desert. The first time I visited almost 15 years ago, I was unprepared for its loveliness – back in 1956, Gower (never the Gower, as locals were quick to correct me) was the first place in the UK to be designated an area of outstanding natural beauty, and though the peninsula abuts the country’s second city, Swansea, it still feels profoundly rural. Crisscrossed by narrow lanes flanked by towering hedges and ancient churches, it’s a great place to cycle, to drive, and above all to walk up an appetite.

Indeed, it’s been a long-held ambition of mine to hike the 43 miles of the Welsh Coast Path from Mumbles to Loughor. Sadly, it remains just that because on this latest trip I spent considerably more time chomping than yomping … though in fairness I was on a research mission for a walking trip with a friend here later in the summer, because as a food writer and semi-professional glutton, I never like to head anywhere unprepared.

From being abused by staff and other travellers to being denied access to toilets, flying is an increasingly distressing and frustrating experience for many wheelchair users. Here, they share their stories

When Hannah Babalola boarded KLM flight 598 on 26 May, she was tired. A Paralympic athlete, she had been competing at an event in South Africa’s Cape Town, and was hoping there would be no hold ups on her journey back home to Chicago.

Babalola, 37, is well-travelled. A former wheelchair racer, she now competes in marathons and has flown to dozens of countries over the years without big problems.

From the Tiramisù World Cup in Italy to street food ‘battles’ in Newcastle, your culinary highlights range from the sublime to the delicious
• Tell us about a book that inspired you to travel – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break

The town of Menton on the French Riviera is beautiful at any time of the year but becomes even more of a treat during the annual Lemon festival (Fête du Citron, 10-28 February 2027). Its microclimate, courtesy of the Alps to the north blocking colder winds, gives Menton lemons a distinct fragrance, flavour and quality that set them apart. For me, the event transformed a damp cold UK winter into a fortnight of colour, taste and light. There were food tastings, salads made with lemons, tarts, cakes and pies all full of zesty colour and flavour at stalls and markets in the town. There are sculptures made from citrus fruit, parades and exhibitions in the Golden Garden of Light (Jardins Biovès). More than a food festival, it’s a celebration of what nature can give to the world.
April

‘Legends cling like barnacles to these shores,’ says our local writer, who reveals how the lore of these craggy cliffs and beaches resonates with the Homeric classic

The incoming tide has made a labyrinth of the beach. As silvery rivulets spread across Culbin Sands to meet the mudflats, my walk becomes increasingly circuitous: weaving inland towards the pine forest, backtracking closer to the waves, skirting tidal pools and scaling dunes constantly resculpted by the North Sea breeze.

In this shapeshifting stretch of north-east Scotland’s Moray coast, there’s not another soul in sight, nothing to anchor me to the modern day. It’s easy, then, to imagine a longship bringing weary warriors ashore, or a band of man-eating giants marauding from the woodland. Which is exactly what happens here – on screen – in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey.

The author on an encounter with the CIA, an embarrassing moment in church, and longing to hold hands with David Attenborough

Born in Glasgow, Andrew O’Hagan, 58, studied at the University of Strathclyde. In 1995, he published The Missing, a work of nonfiction. His debut novel, Our Fathers, was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1999; Be Near Me and The Illuminations were longlisted in 2006 and 2015. His recent novels are Caledonian Road and Mayflies. The latter was adapted for BBC television in 2022 and is now a play which will be performed at the Edinburgh fringe from 7 to 30 August. O’Hagan is editor at large for the London Review of Books; he lives in London with his wife and has a daughter.

What is your greatest fear?
I can’t say it.

There is nothing woolly about the sheep awareness training a Kent farmer subjects our dog to

It’s another scorching day, maybe the ninth or tenth in a row. Work is impossible – I spend the afternoon wandering the house in search of the coolest place to stand. I’m busy interrupting a faint breeze at the foot of the stairs when my wife rings.

“This is ridiculous,” she says. “I’m standing still.”

In the Warrington suburb of Culcheth, people are hopeful about what one of their own can achieve as the first northern PM in half a century

The Cherry Tree pub is an unassuming local. On a busy road in the Cheshire village of Culcheth, it is a chain-run pub where four shots cost £8, every burger comes with a soft drink, and sport is shown all day on the big screens. It is also a favourite of Andy Burnham, the new prime minister.

Many of the drinkers have a story about – arguably – Culcheth’s most famous son.

Avtar spent decades wondering what happened to the mother he never got to know. Thousands of miles away, Nicci was haunted by the story of a half-brother given away before she was born. How did a chatbot bring them together?

As a small boy growing up in Amritsar, India, in the 1960s, Avtar Singh used to hear whispers. Your mum isn’t really your mum, the rumours would say. Your mum lives abroad. Avtar didn’t really pay any attention to it. “I thought, the neighbours are just making up stories.” But the stories were true: the woman raising Avtar was actually his grandmother. When he was too young to remember it, his father had emigrated to Canada to work as a teacher, leaving Avtar in the care of his paternal grandparents. His grandfather, a police officer, was a fearsome authoritarian, but his grandmother brought him up with tenderness, as if he were her own son. She called him by his nickname, Titu. He felt loved.

When Avtar was around eight years old, he was told about his family in Canada: his dad, his mum and a little brother were waiting for him there, and he would soon travel to join them. Just after his ninth birthday, Avtar found himself sitting on a plane, dressed in a three‑piece suit and tie. He was travelling alone. He had never flown before. He didn’t speak a word of English. He landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Christmas Eve, 1968; his family met him at the airport and took him home. “I didn’t know what to think,” Avtar, now 66, tells me in a video call from his home in Abbotsford, British Columbia. “Before I knew it, it was the first week of January, and I was put in school.”

Wildfires are burning in parts of the UK and Europe, forcing people to leave their homes, disrupting travel and affecting communities. We would like to hear how the fires have impacted you

Wildfires are affecting communities in the UK and other parts of Europe, with people forced to evacuate their homes, travel disrupted and smoke affecting air quality in many areas.

In France, around 10,000 people have been evacuated from camping sites and other holiday accommodation near Bordeaux in the south-west on Thursday, as a wildfire ravaged a seaside pine forest, AFP news agency reported. The blaze in Le Porge had ripped through 2,400 hectares (5,900 acres) since Wednesday, officials said

With the cost of holiday childcare rising and many parents juggling work with looking after children, we’d like to hear how you’re managing this summer

The summer holidays have begun, bringing the annual challenge many parents face in balancing work and looking after school-aged children. New research suggests arranging six weeks of holiday childcare can cost working parents up to £1,145 per child, while almost three-quarters of parents say the summer childcare juggle damages their career.

Are you paying for holiday clubs or childminders, relying on family and friends or working from home while caring for children? Are you taking annual leave, reducing your hours or working early mornings and late evenings to fit everything in?

Whether you’re part of a volunteer group or go out on solo clean-ups in the UK, we’d like to hear from you

Across the UK, people are getting together to clean up their local environments. Whether it be maintaining parkland, beaches, waterways or roadsides, we want to hear from the volunteers who are getting involved in the maintenance and preservation of their local areas.

Do you take part in weekly litter picking outings? Are you part of a group taking on the responsibility of keeping our beaches or rivers clean?

We would like to hear about the highs and lows of university clubs and societies

As a new academic year approaches, we would like to hear from students and recent graduates (five years ago or less) about their experiences of university clubs and societies that freshers might find instructive.

What was your best experience of a university club or society? And what was your worst?

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Wildfires in Europe, Russian missile strikes in Kyiv, cockroach protests in New Delhi and the World Cup final – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Warning: this gallery contains images some readers may find distressing