After his dubious intervention at the World Cup, the president is now an arbiter of high-level fairway disputes. There’s one word for that: SAD!

For so many of us around the world, the final scenes of the World Cup were a chance to switch off the TV with an eye-roll and observe mildly: “Well, I think that’s quite enough America for us all for a while now.” And yet: there can and must always be more. It is simply the way of things. If you thought the World Cup being carried on to the pitch ahead of Sunday’s final in some kind of Louis Vuitton sex trunk was the nadir of hysterical trashiness in sport, then simply recall the lesson of the past few years and expand your mind. It can always get trashier.

To the parched fairways of Royal Birkdale, then, the host of this year’s Open Championship, which – yesssssss! – was won by someone other than Bryson DeChambeau or Scottie Scheffler or any of the other radioactively ghastly US golfers you’d cheerfully head-flush in a Mar-a-Lago loo just as long as you could clear the classified documents out of it first. It has now been revealed that, during his heated row over a two-shot penalty he was handed for improving the area for his backswing, DeChambeau has been accused of threatening to call the US president unless it was all resolved in his favour. To repeat: threatening to call Donald Trump.

As Nick in the blockbuster TV comedy, the actor was adored by millions. So will his new comedy The Dink, which he jokes is a ‘sexier Challengers’, make him even more popular?

You might assume that Jake Johnson would know a little something about pickleball. The actor is starring in The Dink, a sort of spiritual heir to Dodgeball – it has a Ben Stiller cameo – and he plays Dusty Boyd, a former tennis pro turned plucky pickleball upstart. Presumably Johnson took the gig because he has a deep love of the sport, a fondness for its pockmarked balls and weirdly smooth paddles? “No experience of it whatsoever,” says the actor, cheerfully, on a video call from Los Angeles.

Yet this underdog of a racket sport, loved by retirees, found him anyway. At the climax of the movie, Dusty must play against an old foe, which meant Johnson had to undertake months of real-life training in pickleball and tennis, so it looked as if he could play. “It was like WWE. They call it fake wrestling. The outcome is there, but you still have to wrestle. That was probably the most stressful part of the film to me.”

Picture editor Jonny Weeks has created a rapid audio-visual review of the tournament featuring key moments, colourful fans ... and the precious trophy.

This video contains flashing images and an audio track.

• Top 30: from half a million World Cup photos, why I love these the most

Interviews with residents of Russian-held region point to frustration with Moscow as Ukrainian campaign to isolate it takes toll on daily life

First, the guests stopped coming. As Ukrainian drones and missiles pounded Crimea throughout the spring and into the summer, Russian tourists began cancelling their bookings at the small guesthouse Marina runs in Yevpatoria, a resort town on the peninsula’s Black Sea coast.

Then petrol became scarce, making it harder to stock the business with food and other essentials. Now, electricity and running water are cut off for much of the day, just as the summer heat sets in.

Surfboards, knee-length shorts, wetsuits, flip-flops: all have been seen on the catwalks this year. But what do actual surfers think of the trend? We went to Newquay to find out

Summer is here, and with it the annual scramble to decide what kind of season we’re supposed to be having. What will it be? On offer in 2026 are “freaky sandal summer”, which requires you to wear weird shoes, and “euromaxxing”, which is presumably about making the most of the easyJet sale without considering the environmental impact. Maybe “poet girl summer” is for you, whereby you listen to Gracie Abrams while wearing a silk camisole. Or simply “no mascara summer”, which I won’t spell out but sounds quite appealing.

The most plausible contender is “board short summer”, a phrase coined by Marie Claire, which broadly involves dressing like you surf even if you’ve never set foot on a board.

The company argues that it’s for individuals to ensure they don’t ‘actively exploit’ this technology. That won’t keep children safe

It took me a while to realise what the man sitting next to me on the train was doing. He was flicking through pictures of a little girl on his phone; zooming in on some, cropping the images. Hardly unusual, of course, except that on closer inspection the pictures were very clearly of the toddler sitting opposite us, playing with her parents. On a crowded train of people mostly staring obliviously at our own phones, a stranger had been covertly photographing that little girl over and over again. And if it hadn’t been for that very visible phone screen giving him away, he wouldn’t have been caught.

That encounter was a while ago but my memory was jogged last week listening to a clip of Meta’s VP of wearables, Alex Himel, talk fondly to the BBC about using his new smartglasses to film his daughter singing in a talent contest. They let him capture the memory without having to watch her through a screen, he said, freeing him to be “kind of living in the moment, head up and hands free”. So far, so sweet. But what about the risk of creeps potentially using them to film other people’s daughters covertly, heads up and hands free? Meta’s smartglasses have a tiny flashing warning light on the frame to indicate when the wearer is recording, but the technology is still new enough that many people don’t think to look for it. And in the age of AI, stolen images of children matter. Taken in real life or scraped from the internet, they’re the raw material for generating realistic-looking child abuse material of the most extreme and disturbing kind. (If that sounds like a grim but ultimately fairly victimless crime, the Internet Watch Foundation warned in a recent report that AI-generated material risks fuelling sexual interest in children, normalising violence and increasing the risk of real-life offending.)

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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.

Ministers have arrived at Downing Street for the new prime minister’s first meeting with his new government

• Burnham to cut VAT on electricity bills in first cost-of-living move

António Costa, the president of the European council, said in a post on X that he held a “good” phone call with Andy Burnham last night, in which he said they agreed to “further strengthen” EU-UK relations and continue to cooperate to support Ukraine.

He said there was also discussion about “common geopolitical challenges facing Europe”, which could be a reference to many things, including energy prices soaring due to the US-Israel war on Iran, Europe’s trading and security relationship with Washington, the future of Nato, the continent facing a wave of hybrid warfare, driven by Russia, or the surge of national populism and backlash against immigration.

New prime minister urged to introduce 2% minimum charge on households with more than £100m in wealth

A wealth tax on the UK’s super-rich households could raise £10bn a year, according to academics who urged Andy Burnham to include the measure in his plans to “make tax fairer” and pay for better public services.

The sum could be raised through a 2% minimum charge on households with more than £100m in wealth and would affect fewer than 1,000 of the richest UK households, according to the study by Gabriel Zucman, a professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics, and Ben Tippet, a lecturer in economics and wealth inequality at King’s College London.

Tories, Reform, fossil fuel industry and some in his party lined up against decarbonisation target as energy secretary

“Whenever the Labour party feels a bit sad,” according to one close observer of the current government, speaking some months ago, “they wheel out Ed Miliband to talk about rooftop solar.”

It might not have been literally true, but it often felt during Keir Starmer’s premiership as if energy secretary Miliband brought the sun. Unfailingly upbeat, with a simple message that was understandable to voters, he had a clear mission – to decarbonise the UK’s power sector by 2030 – that was seen to be progressing fast.

Revolutionary Guard claims attack on oil tanker and two other ships as US carries out tenth consecutive night of strikes

• Full report: Almost 100 troops injured in recent weeks, Pentagon admits, as Iran launches reprisals on US allies

Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, is due to meet Donald Trump for the first time today as he wraps up a four-day visit to Washington.

The meeting coincides with ongoing US-mediated talks between Lebanon and Israel. The two sides announced a “framework agreement” on 26 June which stipulates the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon as well as the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Mark Carney says Canada has made proposals to resolve dispute as tariffs are due to be imposed on wide range of goods

• Sign up for US Breaking News email

Donald Trump is in Washington today. We’ll hear from him when he welcomes Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, to the White House at 11am ET. We’ll bring you the latest lines from their bilateral meeting.

Later, Trump will meet with House Republican lawmakers in the Oval Office at 5pm ET. That’s currently closed to the press, but we’ll let you know if that changes.

Joshua Kerry from Rotherham charged over killing of politician whose body was found at her Devon home

A 28-year-old man from Rotherham has been charged with the murder of the former MP and Reform UK party spokesperson Ann Widdecombe.

Joshua Kerry was charged with Widdecombe’s murder and will appear at Westminster magistrates court on Tuesday, the Crown Prosecution Service said.

Industry says government’s failure to address cooling demands means AI growth plans are ‘fatally flawed’

The UK will not have enough water for future datacentres, the water industry has said in stark criticism of the government’s AI growth plans.

Datacentres rely on large amounts of water to manage the heat generated by densely packed servers. Cooling towers, chillers and humidification systems make direct use of this water, with large volumes also consumed indirectly through high electrical power needs.

Neustrashimy suddenly announced it intended to fire its guns and conducted 30-minute drill south of Plymouth

A Russian warship conducted a rare live-fire exercise in the Channel 45 miles south of Plymouth on Monday, the day Andy Burnham was appointed as prime minister.

The Neustrashimy suddenly announced it intended to fire its guns and requested that a British warship, which had been tracking it, retreat to a safe distance.

Experts urge ministers to update legislation to prevent intended parents resorting to riskier arrangements abroad

• I was struggling after eight rounds of IVF – then a former midwife became my surrogate

Surrogates, parents and children are being failed by the UK’s archaic laws, which are “creaking at the seams” as demand for surrogacy grows rapidly, experts have said.

Figures obtained by the Guardian show there were just under 1,000 children born to surrogates in 2025, double the number in 2015. The rise has been driven by a rise in the number of gay couples seeking to be parents, increasing infertility and shifting cultural attitudes.

Figure of £16bn from ONS comes after Andy Burnham revealed plans to cut VAT on electricity bills

• Business live – latest updates

The UK government borrowed less than expected in June, in a boost for Andy Burnham as he set out plans to cut VAT on household electricity bills and promised a new direction for the British economy.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said public sector net borrowing – the difference between government spending and income – was £16bn last month, £7.9bn less than in June 2025.

Move would give government veto over big decisions and hostile takeovers, after Burnham’s call for greater public control

• Business live – latest updates

The group of investors pursuing a rescue bid for Thames Water have offered the government a “golden share” in a last-ditch attempt to persuade Andy Burnham not to nationalise Britain’s biggest water company.

London & Valley Water (L&VW), a consortium of 100 institutional investors that hold £17bn of the company’s £21bn debt, said it recognised the new prime minister wanted greater public control and to strengthen the accountability of the water company.

Vertical Aerospace says government has given £10m backing, taking its total investment in the project to £48m

British flying taxi startup Vertical Aerospace has said the UK government has expressed interest in buying a military variant of its aircraft as it races to gain approval for flights with paying passengers.

Vertical also welcomed another £10m grant from the government, taking its total UK state funding to £48m.

Revamped Ripon attraction reopens as a more immersive experience telling ‘national story’ of poverty and welfare

Visitors to one of Britain’s most complete surviving Victorian workhouses won’t have to strip and bathe in someone else’s bath water. But they might get some gruel, they can sweep the yard and there are “schoolmaster” volunteers happy to tell children how to behave.

“You are literally going to walk in the footsteps of people who have experienced this place,” said the director of the Ripon Museums Trust, Alexa Vernon.

Amid fears of fresh bloodshed, the country is hoping its offer of education and employment can provide a model for other nations to follow

It didn’t matter that he was so frail he could barely walk. Rahmatalla Abdeen knew if they found him he would be shot. For two days, the 65-year-old had clung to the back of a moped as it navigated an area teeming with militia.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had seized this corner of Sudan after crossing the border from Ethiopia. Abdeen was lucky: on 17 May, he became the last known refugee to cross into Ethiopia from Sudan.

Inside all the blink-and-you-miss-it moments, subtle easter eggs and poignant takeaways from Christopher Nolan’s ancient epic

• This article contains spoilers for The Odyssey

The Odyssey looks set to be the blockbuster hit of the summer, with global opening weekend grosses of $264m, critical rave reviews including five stars from the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, and reports of fans traversing continents to experience Christopher Nolan’s epic tale of gods and monsters in one of the few dozen screens worldwide with the capability to screen Imax in 70mm. It also has the potential to rule the box office for the coming weeks, with few other true blockbusters to be released this summer, with the exception of Spider-Man: Brand New Day (hence the cast’s humiliation ritual of a press tour). Read on for a spoiler-packed breakdown of the epic battles, narrative twists and out-of-nowhere cameos that bring richness to Nolan’s idiosyncratic vision of ancient life.

Narzny McKinney and her surrogate, Sarah, discuss their experience – and the misconceptions that surround the practice

• UK surrogacy law ‘creaking at seams’ as demand rises sharply

After struggling with infertility and eight unsuccessful rounds of IVF, Narzny McKinney had two precious embryos left – her last chance to have biological children. After considering her options, she made the decision to find a surrogate to carry her child for her.

“We were eight years down the line at this point and I just didn’t want to risk anything going wrong,” she said. “It was a tough decision but it was absolutely the right thing to do.”

They claim to fix fine lines, blemishes, and redness – but which stand up to scrutiny? After consulting dermatologists and putting them to the test, we have crowned a brand new number one

• The best anti-ageing creams, serums and treatments

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

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

Best LED mask overall:
CurrentBody Multi Light Therapy LED mask

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

The Whitworth, Manchester
Manchester’s past as a centre of textile production forms the starting point of this seamless showcase of skills

How many hands did it take to make this show? That is to say, how many artisans, craftspeople, weavers and artists’ hands did these pieces pass through? For this is a textile exhibition that doesn’t just celebrate a short list of singular artists, but rather the many highly skilled craftspeople and communities repeating the stitches and specialities of their ancestors. Take Entangled Memories, Interwoven Stories by Péro for example: it was made by 50 artisans and took 18,000 hours to complete. And that’s one piece, in an exhibition that spans three galleries.

These many hands and hours make Entangled and Woven an exquisitely beautiful exhibition. Every slip of fabric is layered with delicate detail and texture. Fabrics are airy and ethereal one moment, and weighty and dipped in deep indigo the next. It is hot, the fabrics sway and flicker in the fans, and hands flicker quickly in the video works capturing the creation of the pieces. I am mesmerised.

Historian Kim Phillips-Fein’s book Country of Lords looks back at the many men who have tried to fight against egalitarianism, from John Adams to Peter Thiel

The historian Kim Phillips-Fein’s new book is published amid celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence and its truth “self-evident, that all men are created equal”. Country of Lords, however, is a history of Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America.

Concise and hard-hitting, the book arrives at a time of glaring social and economic inequality, Phillips-Fein seeing Elon Musk “emerging as a trillionaire very much on people’s minds, with a deep level of discomfort, both fear and anger about what this portends”.

Millions of people in southern England and parts of Wales face restrictions after prolonged periods of hot weather

Millions of people across southern England are subject to hosepipe bans after prolonged periods of extreme heat and reduced rainfall. On Tuesday, Thames Water, Britain’s biggest water company, announced a ban starting on Thursday. Here, the Guardian answers questions about what the restriction means for you.

Since the start of the Iran war in February, there has been a 23% rise in fuel theft, with more than £1.2m stolen from British forecourts each week. Why aren’t the police doing more to apprehend the culprits?

A petrol station tucked away in the suburbs of Birmingham seems an unlikely place for a crime spree. But this garage has become a prime target for thieves. Some fuel runners are easy to spot, approaching the petrol pumps in face masks, but after a recent spate of fill-and-dashes by less conspicuous drivers, no motorist is beyond suspicion. “It could be anyone,” says Shailesh Parekh, who is on high alert, as always.

The 62-year-old owns six forecourts across Birmingham, and today I’m visiting his station in Erdington, a residential area about five miles from the city centre. Parekh remembers a time when a motorist speeding off with an unpaid-for tank was rare. So much so, it would be the talk of the station for months. Those days are long gone. Now, it’s a weekly and sometimes daily occurrence. “In the last three years, it’s been very bad,” Parekh tells me from the back office, where a monitor beams CCTV images from every inch of the forecourt.

Our cartoonist looks back at the final game of the 2026 World Cup as Donald Trump watched Spain triumph again

• Buy David’s cartoons | Some of his favourite works

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

After her son disappeared, Isabel Miranda de Wallace swore she would bring the culprits to justice. She became a national hero. But did she go too far?

When her son, Hugo, failed to answer his phone on the morning of 12 July 2005, Isabel Miranda de Wallace did not waste a moment. Everyone knew that kidnappings were rife in Mexico City, and Wallace immediately enlisted her brother and nephew to help with the search. They walked the streets near Hugo’s last known location until they came across his SUV. A passerby told them they’d seen someone being forced out of his car and into a nearby apartment, Wallace later said. She also described speaking to a boy who had heard gunshots and seen an injured man being led out of the apartment around 4am. “Within 24 hours, we found his car, then the building where they took my son. We had the case practically solved,” Wallace later said. “But the police didn’t believe us.”

At that time, many kidnapping cases went unreported, as families feared that the police couldn’t be trusted. Those who did go to the police often struggled to get them to take their complaints seriously. But Wallace was different. She was a successful businesswoman, who had set up an advertising agency that owned and operated billboards across Mexico City. “She didn’t beg or say please,” said Federico Döring, a politician and an early ally of Wallace. “She would point her finger at public officials not doing their job – and this was unheard of,” Döring told me. “In Mexico, a lot of people are often afraid to speak up because you don’t know if a politician is in bed with the cartels. That intimidates them, but it didn’t intimidate her.”

The PM and the new boss at the Treasury face an even trickier task than their predecessors. They need a good plan, and we have one

• Alfie Stirling is an economist and director of policy at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation

As Keir Starmer found, it takes more than words alone to warm a tepid bath. Voters reserve the greatest punishment for the politicians they think acted too little, or too late, to prevent them getting poorer. For Andy Burnham, much will now depend on whether he has got the right ideas, and in John Healey the right chancellor, to address Britain’s growing affordability crisis: not least as the new prime minister sets out new measures today to give people “some breathing space”.

Before Rachel Reeves took office, the average family was set to be worse off in 2029 than they had been in 2019. That’s not supposed to happen. The norm is for household incomes to rise by about £5,000 (2026 prices) every five years. Never before on modern record have they fallen across an entire decade.

Alfie Stirling is an economist and director of policy at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation

She praises me whether I’m heaving a plant pot into the air or pairing a phone to a Bluetooth speaker. It’s enough to make me start believing I am, in fact, quite magical

After about five minutes of my stepmother’s company, I’m always in a good mood. It’s not because of our beautiful harmony, though please think that too if it makes me sound good. In her 80s, and feeling the ravages of time ever so slightly, she makes a constant litany of benevolently envious remarks. There’s a lot of general observation about the condition of being me, and how fabulous that must be: “Oh to be 50 again”; “It must be wonderful to have an appetite”; “I wish I could still sleep in”. Ordinarily I don’t give much thought to the singular pleasures of human maintenance activities – eating, sleeping, having a shower – and when you really look at it, it isn’t a bad life, to be 52.

Then she’ll move on to admire my particular skills: “Look at that!”; “What?”; “Look how fast you got out of the car.” It’s a fact, I’m incredibly good at this: I don’t grunt while I’m doing it; it doesn’t take 17 minutes. I’m pretty good at all sitting to standing manoeuvres. “That’s nothing,” I think. “You should see me get out of a squat.”

The new PM’s priorities are domestic, but he will soon realise that closer engagement with the EU is a no-brainer

What will European leaders make of Andy Burnham, the seventh UK prime minister they have had to deal with in a decade of chronic political instability in London unleashed by the fateful 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union?

The “king of the north” is largely an unknown quantity in continental Europe and has given priority to a domestic agenda of devolving powers to regions and cities and extending state control of vital industries rather than to foreign policy. He may initially spend less time on diplomacy than his predecessor, Keir Starmer, whom critics branded “never here Keir” for his frequent foreign travel to support Ukraine, build European and Nato defence ties and try to rein in Donald Trump’s wrecking instincts in transatlantic relations.

Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

My generation is struggling to find safety in our human relationships. AI companionship is filling the gap

“There are parts of myself I only share with my AI,” Jerome told me. “Your AI?” I asked.

He was 27, three months out of a breakup, and entirely aware that his AI relationship was, as the psychotherapist Esther Perel put it, “a business product”. Still, he confided in it more than he ever had his friends. I mention Jermoe because, in the four years I’ve been reporting on gen Z, I have watched my peers become him, one by one. We are the first generation of digital natives and the last generation to have experienced human-to-human intimacy exclusively. Now the attention economy’s younger sister, the intimacy economy, has monetized the connection and affection that make us feel human.

The congresswoman can run a serious national campaign on the left and pull a movement in behind it. She should get in early

In the summer of 2018, almost no one thought Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could beat Joe Crowley. Crowley was a 10-term incumbent, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, a man some thought would one day be speaker. A 28-year-old former bartender and democratic socialist was the longest of long shots to succeed him. But ever since she did, the political establishment has been trying to decide whether to take her seriously.

For a while it decided not to. The Missouri representative Emanuel Cleaver said the Democratic caucus did not need her “sniping”, while the then senator Claire McCaskill dismissed her as a “bright and shiny new object”. Ocasio-Cortez seemed to enjoy the response. Asked on 60 Minutes whether she wanted people to underestimate her, she said: “Absolutely. That’s how I won my primary.”

Kazakhs cheering Uzbeks, Bengalis wild for Argentina … This tournament was once a playground for nationalism. Now it shows how flimsy that allegiance is

It’s the World Cup final, so you pick a side. And don’t worry if you happen to be part of the 98.9% of the human race that is neither Spanish nor Argentinian – just make something up. Maybe you like the Spain kit. Maybe you’ve always been an admirer of Lionel Messi. Maybe you’re still raw about the Falklands or Diego Maradona, maybe you disagree with the Pedro Sánchez government’s stance on Palestine/Israel, maybe you once ate a dodgy empanada on your gap year. Nobody needs to see your working. Only two rules really apply: be partisan and be quick about it.

The MetLife Stadium on Sunday night was a melting pot of colliding incongruities and temporary identities. The former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was wearing an Argentina shirt. The comedian Trevor Noah wore a Spain shirt. Indeed, ticket sales data suggests that an overwhelming proportion of the crowd was American. The most consequential fixture in international sport was, as it turned out, little more than a grand cosplay for the New Jersey leisure market.

Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist

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.

Outside Downing Street, Britain’s new prime minister struck the right notes. Now he and his cabinet need to be brave

A 1970s adage attributed to the former Tory chancellor Reginald Maudling maintained that Britain was essentially a Conservative country that sometimes voted Labour. That was always a questionable assertion, given the defining postwar role of Labour in shaping a fairer social settlement. But the trauma of successive election victories by Margaret Thatcher from 1979 onwards meant that senior figures on the centre left began to think along similar lines; a sometimes debilitating caution crept into the leadership of a party founded to serve those outside the gilded circles of money, power and influence.

Outside 10 Downing Street on his first day as prime minister, Andy Burnham in effect argued that only through being braver and truer to its original vocation can Labour restore faith in politics and renew a disillusioned nation. Mr Burnham’s striking pledge to end rough sleeping may be something of a hostage to fortune. As mayor of Greater Manchester he could only partially deliver on the same commitment. But on the day he entered No 10, it vividly conveyed what was meant when he talked about “the right values and the right standards”.

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.

Literature, the arts and social sciences must not be sacrificed as higher education funding is squeezed

“I ask nothing more from you than to do what you have been doing. Go out into the fray and keep reading,” was Percival Everett’s advice when he addressed graduating students at Wesleyan university in Connecticut last summer. Fitting words from a prize-winning novelist, at a time when gambling has become a more common leisure activity in the US than reading a book. In the UK, too, concerns are growing about the decline of reading, partly due to ubiquitous screen-based entertainment. Last week, parliament’s education committee called for the National Year of Reading to be extended to a decade, to inculcate the habit in children and young people.

All academic disciplines use books to convey information, but for literature and the humanities more widely, they are an indispensable currency. As the 2026 graduation season draws to a close, and robes and mortarboards are put away for another year, there is growing anger that these subjects are under attack from university administrations looking for ways to save money – while ministers look away.

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.

Ruth Wilkinson on employers’ need to safeguard staff during heatwaves, and Christine Özden on keeping children safe in overheated schools

Hannah Spencer’s proposal for maximum workplace temperatures (Green MP Hannah Spencer to introduce bill on maximum workplace temperatures, 12 July) highlights an increasingly urgent issue for employers and policymakers alike. While legislation may help provide clarity in the future, businesses should not wait for a maximum legal limit before acting to protect workers.

Extreme temperatures can have a serious impact on worker health and safety as they can impair concentration and increase fatigue, both of which raise the likelihood of accidents.

Manchester’s integrated care board offers the health service a domestic alternative to the US firm, says Dr Devan Moodley

Regarding Peter Geoghegan’s article (I investigated Palantir’s foothold in the British state – and what I found should worry us all, 15 July), the nine years that Greater Manchester’s health system has spent without Palantir is a result not of caution but bold conviction.

Greater Manchester’s integrated care board remains the only one in England to decline the Palantir-built federated data platform, having concluded that its own homegrown data capability was stronger. It built that capability with British universities, NHS clinicians and domestic technology firms.

Readers on the pros and cons of the government’s plan to give cohabiting partners marriage-like rights

Ruth Deech’s article opposing cohabitation law reform overlooks the reality faced by 3.5 million cohabiting couples in the UK who are not married (David Lammy’s proposed cohabitation law would be bad for couples – and worse for some women, 14 July). While she argues that couples who choose not to marry should not acquire legal rights automatically, the current system of no rights leaves too many vulnerable people, particularly women and children, without meaningful protection when a relationship ends or a partner dies. Many still mistakenly believe in the myth of “common law marriage”. The proposals aim to strike a balance between respecting autonomy and protecting vulnerable people.

The law must reflect modern life. Many couples raise children, share finances and build lives together without marrying, sometimes for cultural, personal or financial reasons, and often because one person doesn’t want to marry. That should not mean that the financially weaker party is left facing hardship.

Urban transport policies and residential design need to respect outdoor play as a vital necessity for children, says Ellen Weaver

In the brilliant Swiss research cited by Lenore Skenazy (If you want your kids to thrive this summer, don’t just turn off their phones – open your front door, too, 15 July), young children playing unsupervised was culturally accepted and normal. The children in the Swiss study who did not play outside independently were prevented from doing so by traffic.

Yes, we need to relieve parents of the horrendous pressure of cultural expectation that children will always be supervised, but parents can’t open their doors for children to go out and play in traffic. Urban transport policies and residential design need to respect outdoor play as a vital necessity for children.

If you thought the 2026 tournament was sprawling, think again with six host countries over three continents getting involved in four years’ time

If the 2026 World Cup was the tournament’s largest edition yet – featuring 48 teams for the first time in its 96-year history, being played in three different countries – the 2030 World Cup is going to have an even bigger footprint.

The two substitutes combined on the World Cup winning goal not by changing the game, but by offering it what it needed, when it was needed

As Spain built into the second half of extra-time of Sunday’s World Cup final, it was already clear that Argentina hoped to make them suffer. Every challenge left no stud unshown. Their defenders labored to prevent striker Mikel Oyarzabal from his typical lanes of service, with Spain taking eleven of their 20 attempts from beyond the box.

Lionel Scaloni’s side may have been aggressive, but they were also just structured enough to withstand the endless monsoon of Spanish pressure. Ever since the 62nd minute, when Luis de la Fuente brought his first two charges off of the bench, Spain had adapted to find new avenues to attack, adjusting with Enzo Fernández’s sending off near the end of normal time.

Did you catch the little details as 48 teams played 104 matches in 16 cities across 39 days?

• Leandro Paredes was shown red card after final whistle

• Fifa looking into Falklands banner at England game

Fifa has opened an investigation into the violent scenes that followed Spain’s World Cup final win on Sunday, with several Argentina players facing bans.

Nahuel Molina appeared to strike Spain’s captain Rodri in the stomach as he ran on to the pitch following the final whistle, while there was also a large melee on the halfway line, where Leandro Paredes appeared to grab Eric García by the throat before throwing Gavi to the ground.

Germany’s 2014 World Cup winning goalkeeper and a Brazilian icon are among those who have have called time after the 2026 tournament

First participated in the World Cup in 2010 before winning the trophy four years later. Germany have had little success since and their penalty shootout defeat by Paraguay marked the end of Neuer’s international career. He initially retired after Euro 2024 but reversed that decision a few weeks before this tournament. “Despite the bitter end, I don’t regret this decision,” he said after his 23rd and final World Cup appearance. The former Germany defender Robert Huth criticised the decision to bring Neuer out of retirement: “I think the big one that really unsettles the squad was the Neuer inclusion. I think [it was] really unexpected, he came late to the table.”

The former England manager may be remembered by many for his ‘I’d love it’ rant in 1996, but that should not obscure the remarkable nature of his football career

Kevin Keegan, who has died aged 75, is the only British player to win the Ballon d’Or twice, was the star of Liverpool’s first European Cup-winning team, a messianic figure at Newcastle United as a player and coach, forging a team so memorable that Fifa’s president wrote to commend him, and was the captain and then manager of the England men’s national team. And yet, as Keegan would ruefully reflect, he will principally be remembered by many for an emotional outburst that precipitated Newcastle’s historic failure in a Premier League title race, a TV interview which presaged the coming era of the modern game.

Keegan’s “I’d love it” rant of April 1996, directed at Alex Ferguson, became a meme before the modern meaning of the word and social media even existed, repeatedly played on Sky Sports and becoming indelibly marked in the minds of multiple generations, many not even born when it occurred. It frequently tops polls as the most memorable moment in Premier League history and foreshadowed an era where digital clips and personality narratives would dominate football coverage.

Opening rounds of inaugural global competition provided compelling moments but the same old frustrations over refereeing consistency remain

There are a few contenders for the most striking image from the first block of fixtures in the inaugural Nations Championship. Was it South Africa splintering the Wales scrum like balsa wood in Durban? Or England’s Manny Feyi-Waboso underlining his potential to be one of the superstars of next year’s Rugby World Cup? Or maybe New Zealand reminding everyone, themselves included, how lethal they can be when they trust the catch-pass game that was once their default setting?

There were some definite coaching winners, too, inevitably led by Rassie Erasmus but also including the All Blacks’ new head man, Dave Rennie, who is three from three so far. Anyone seeking another serious fix of international rugby need look no further than next month’s Greatest Rivalry series between the Springboks and the All Blacks, an even spicier prospect now the visitors are back up and running.

Our guide to what’s new with the ECB’s short-format showpiece involving cricket’s power hitters, which starts on Tuesday

Since the last ball of the Hundred last season, change has been afoot. Stakes in all eight teams were sold to private investors, meaning an influx of more than £500m into the domestic game and a raft of changes in the Hundred from pay, to coaches, players and even logos. Here is the Guardian guide to what’s new.

• France defender is club’s sixth signing of the summer

• Coach Ho says she is aggressive and good on the ball

Tottenham have signed the France defender Alice Sombath from Lyonnes for a club record fee. The price paid for the 22-year-old has not been disclosed but the previous club record, paid for Signe Gaupset in January, was reportedly more than £375,000.

“The league is very competitive, every game is a tough game and that’s what I’m most excited about,” said Sombath. “I saw that Spurs had a very good season last year. My qualities can bring something to the team, even though I know they already have a lot.”

A ban on bookies sponsorship in sport that did not exempt horse racing would be potentially ruinous for the industry

Seven prime ministers in the space of 10 years is a churn rate that even the British Horseracing Authority – which has had five full-time leaders in the same period, or six if you count the two-time “interim” chair, David Jones – cannot match. And as the search for Lord Charles Allen’s successor continues after his embarrassingly brief stint concluded in March, Jones will remain the sport’s figurehead in the crucial early weeks of Andy Burnham’s administration.

But what, if anything, might a new PM mean for Britain’s second-biggest spectator sport?

• International Testing Agency petitioned for tests

• Duo tested outside of normal 6am to 11pm window

A Paris judge authorised the night-time doping tests of the Tour de France leader, Tadej Pogacar, and his nearest rival, Jonas Vingegaard, in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed on Monday that the International Testing Agency (ITA) petitioned the “Paris judge specialising in liberty and detention matters … to authorise the anti-doping tests that took place overnight between July 18 and 19”.

Petulant reaction to a justified two-stroke penalty at the Open illustrates why the American is happier on the LIV tour

The potential for stigma was laid bare close to the conclusion of Saturday at the Open Championship. “Bryson, ya cheat,” a lone voice bellowed from the stand adjacent to Royal Birkdale’s 18th green. This is an environment in which being unfaithful to one’s spouse would be seen as preferable to breaching the sacred rules of a sacred game.

By Sunday the world No 1, Scottie Scheffler, was riding to the defence of Bryson DeChambeau. “I’ve known him for a long time and he’s a lot of things, but he’s definitely not a cheater,” Scheffler said. Except in this case, nuance is required. No one in authority has actually accused DeChambeau of cheating for the incident which incurred a two-stroke penalty. The R&A’s executive director of governance stipulated that DeChambeau’s action when breaching the rules during round two was “accidental”.

People gather at cafes and outdoor screenings to support team after Spain’s backing for Palestinian rights

The Spanish football team’s World Cup win has been celebrated in the streets of Gaza, where Spain’s support for Palestinian rights and Israel’s backing for the Argentinian team turned the competition into more than a football showdown.

Gathered at cafes and outdoor screenings, Palestinians defied the risk of Israeli attacks to cheer on a team they had taken to their hearts.

Chiefs in Ontario say they were left to self-evacuate before homes burned to ground, after being told there was no imminent threat

Fast-moving wildfires have burned two First Nations communities in Canada to the ground, as members said they were left to self-evacuate without government help or emergency alerts.

Thirteen communities in Ontario province have been ordered to evacuate because of wildfires, most of them First Nations. The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, told reporters on Monday that close to 2,000 people had been evacuated so far to cities including Toronto and Niagara Falls.

Plants in Kharkiv have faced three days of attacks as anger over the sacking of defence minister continues

Meanwhile, the Kremlin said it had “no hope” for better ties with the UK, a day after Britain’s new prime minister Andy Burnham took office, with Moscow criticising his support for Ukraine, AFP reported.

“No.. we have no such hopes,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked by AFP if relations could improve. “One of his [Burnham’s] first actions was to issue statements expressing support for Ukraine and, consequently, his intention to do everything possible to continue the war,” the spokesman added.

Teargas and water cannon used on protesters after Abderrahim ⁠Fakir died pleading for help from police

Police have clashed with demonstrators during a protest in the Italian city of Bologna after a Moroccan-born man died pleading for help under police restraint.

Human rights campaigners and Italy’s opposition parties have demanded urgent answers over the death on Sunday of Abderrahim ⁠Fakir, 42, who had lived in Italy since he was five years old and ran a small removals and cleaning business.

Daniel Ortega, the 80-year-old authoritarian leader, says move will ‘build a wall’ against the opposition

Nicaragua’s long-serving president, Daniel Ortega, has said the country will hold no further elections to prevent the opposition from coming to power.

The 80-year-old authoritarian leader, who has been in office since 2007, also said he would work with the congress he controls to pass new laws that would “build a wall” against the opposition.

Scientists recorded slower reduction over past 20 years, but study finds this was ‘temporary rather than sustained’

A previously recorded slowdown in Arctic sea ice decline has ended, according to a new study, with the largest year-to-year wintertime reduction ever recorded.

In a study published last summer, researchers found that melting sea ice in the Arctic had slowed down over the past 20 years, with no statistically significant decline in its extent recorded between 2005 and 2024.

Officials say smoke from US fires has crossed border days after US president accused Canada of improper fire management

After days of acrid smoke from northern wildfires choking major US cities and inspiring Donald Trump to threaten Canada with tariffs, officials now say the reverse is also happening as parts of Canada issue air quality warnings caused by American fires to the south.

Officials in the Canadian province of British Columbia warned in an alert on Saturday evening that smoke from US fires, spurred on by thousands of lightning strikes in the north-east, was creating smoky conditions as polluted air drifted north.

Experts warn increase in enhanced photos on birding platforms creating fake sightings, threatening credibility of tool used by scientists

For many birdwatchers, recording a species outside its normal range is the holy grail. In the UK, the discoveries often make national headlines. The western reef heron, for example, usually found in Africa and southern Europe, was spotted in a seaside town in north Wales in June, and widely celebrated on birding forums.

But a new scourge is threatening to disrupt the fun: AI slop.

From Nevada to Manchester, developers are trialling innovative solutions to clean energy’s biggest challenge

In the deserts of the United Arab Emirates a sprawling clean energy project, stretching across an area roughly the size of 12,600 football fields, will play host to a breakthrough allowing solar energy to power the equivalent of half a million homes through the night.

The Gulf state has been steadily combining 5.2GW of solar power capacity with 19GWh of battery storage to create the largest battery scheme in the world.

Runcorn MP Sarah Pochin says parliament mounting ‘vicious and desperate campaign to stop Reform UK’

A Reform UK MP has complained that the standards system investigating Nigel Farage over undeclared gifts is a “kangaroo court”.

Sarah Pochin, the Runcorn MP, said Farage had called a byelection in his Clacton seat so voters could decide whether they backed him or not, and argued that “the media, the British state and the old parties have mounted a vicious and desperate campaign to stop Reform UK”.

Drivers in West Midlands say buses ‘unbearable’ during heatwaves, raising employee and passenger safety fears

Bus drivers in the West Midlands have spoken out about the “horrendous” working conditions they have experienced during heatwaves, which led to 40C temperatures in their cabs.

The UK was hit by high temperatures and dry weather in three successive heatwaves, with temperatures topping 37C last month when the country recorded its hottest ever June day. Last week, the Met Office warned climate extremes were becoming the “new ‘normal’ for the UK”.

Media regulator will not take action despite receiving 446 complaints about comments by Bev Turner

GB News will not be investigated by the media regulator after a presenter insisted there was no riot in Belfast in June, despite cars and houses being set alight, attacks on police and families fleeing their homes.

Ofcom received more than 400 complaints after the comments by Bev Turner, presenter of the broadcaster’s Late Show Live, who said there “weren’t riots” and that no houses had been burned in the violent disorder.

Jury at Winchester crown court told James Desborough was convicted in March of murdering Steven Kempster

A fan of a TV show about a serial killer strangled a cellmate in prison while awaiting trial for allegedly murdering two men and hiding their remains in Cornish woodland, a jury has heard.

James Desborough, 40, is accused of killing Claudio Aquilino and Daniel Coleman and concealing parts of their bodies in the dense undergrowth close to his cabin near St Austell.

Polarizing social media influencers are being held in federal detention in Miami as district judge considers extradition

Social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate will fight extradition to the United Kingdom, their lawyer told a US magistrate in Miami on Monday after the brothers were arrested to face rape and sex-trafficking charges.

The Tates appeared in federal court for the first time since their arrest on Saturday and are being held in federal detention. In the coming weeks, a US district judge will consider whether they meet the conditions for extradition.

Global hunger declined for the third year in a row in 2025 but experts call for action to bring down costs of fruit, vegetables and dairy as report shows 2.69bn people can’t afford to eat well

One in three people cannot afford to eat a healthy diet, a new report has found, prompting calls for urgent action on food affordability.

There are 2.69 billion people unable to afford a diverse diet that meets their energy and nutrient needs, and it will take “immense” amounts of work to achieve the global target of zero hunger by 2030, the annual report from five UN agencies warned.

Exercise took place about 180km from Okinotori, Japan’s southernmost island, and comes as Chinese and Philippine sailors clashed in the South China Sea

A Chinese missile destroyer fired live rounds for the first time inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) during a drill on Sunday, a day before Chinese and Philippine sailors clashed in the South China Sea.

Three Chinese warships and a Russian frigate were spotted sailing between Okinawa’s main island and Miyako island into the Pacific on Thursday, before being picked up again around 330km south-west of Okinotori in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Maps of Hope has been certified by Proudly Human, a company led by former chief scientist, Dr Alan Finkel

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

A collection of speeches and writings by Pope Leo XIV has been certified as human-authored less than two months after Leo declared artificial intelligence the greatest threat to humanity.

Proudly Human, the Australian company spearheaded by Australia’s former chief scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, undertook a review of a collection of writings and speeches by the pope, in collaboration with the publisher, the Australian Catholic University and cardinals in the Vatican.

Google’s AI struggles scream trouble as new Chinese models (again) throw US tech dominance into question

Hello, I’m Blake Montgomery, writing to you after a double-header feature of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and the World Cup final. What a great Sunday. Today in tech, we’re discussing how China is chipping away at the US’s lead in the AI race and how Silicon Valley’s workers are taking action to protect their jobs from AI.

New York becomes first state to impose one-year pause on new AI datacenters

Trump rails against New York’s statewide datacenter moratorium

Albanese’s AI blueprint sparks calls for datacentre moratorium until new regulations in place

‘Adversarial clothing’: are garments designed to confuse facial recognition systems about to go mainstream?

IBM loses quarter of its value as tech giant’s shares plunge and profits falter

‘What’s the point?’ Teenagers give their verdict on Britain’s social media curfew

Amazon Web Services customers receive bills for up to $1.5tn after global glitch

Trump made $1.4bn from crypto in one year. Is Justin Sun the man who helped him do it?

Babcock and BAE Systems benefit as markets hope former defence secretary will increase spending on sector

• Business live – latest updates

Shares in defence companies have risen sharply after Andy Burnham appointed John Healey as chancellor, prompting hope among investors of increased spending on suppliers to the military.

Defence stocks were among the biggest risers on the FTSE 100 on Tuesday morning after the former defence secretary was announced as chancellor after markets closed on Monday. Babcock International rose 7%, BAE Systems was up 3% and Rolls-Royce increased nearly 2% on the FTSE 100. On the FTSE 250, QinetiQ rose nearly 4%.

Board of UK government contractor recommends deal with private-equity owned rival

• Business live – latest updates

The outsourcer Mitie has agreed to a £3.1bn takeover by its private-equity owned rival OCS Group, ending nearly four decades on the stock market and making it the latest London-listed company to be acquired this year.

On Tuesday, the government contractor said its board has recommended that shareholders accept a cash offer of 221.6p a share, a 46.8% premium to Monday’s closing price.

Benchmark hits a four-year high as oil briefly breaches $90 a barrel before easing after Tehran says talks ongoing

European gas prices have hit a four-month high as the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East raises fears of supply shortages this winter.

The Dutch natural gas benchmark briefly rose above €60 a megawatt hour (MWh) on Monday, near the peaks seen at the start of the US-Iran conflict, after the US expanded its aerial offensive and Iran retaliated with strikes on Bahrain and Kuwait.

The late songwriter released around 50 records, writing gay love songs and effortless folk songs from folk’s fringes. Fans including Bill Callahan explain his singular brilliance

In a grainy television clip from 1986, a flame-haired and neckerchiefed troubadour plucks away at a lute-like instrument, harmonica under chin, the gentle ripples giving way to a voice full of longing. This performance, uploaded to YouTube in 2010, has generated only a handful of comments, but peruse any of them (“Ed the Great!”; “pure gold”) and you begin to understand the passion that Ed Askew – an under-the-radar US poet, artist and musician – has inspired over the years.

“He was living in a world that was for people who didn’t fit in,” Askew’s collaborator, Jerry David DeCicca, says on the free-spiritedness of his friend, whose musical life began with discovering the 10-stringed tiple as a teenager in the 1950s and ended with his death a year ago, aged 84, on the verge of him releasing his album The Final Painting, now being released posthumously this month.

The TikTok star describes them as a broke version of the Kardashians, but they are far too funny and charismatic for that. Channel 4 has hit the TV jackpot!

Channel 4 must have fallen on Trewley Precious and her family with sobbing gratitude. An articulate, charismatic gift to the camera who is also a member of the segment of the population with which the broadcaster has long been most pruriently fascinated. Jackpot!! I like to think of her standing there, in all her contoured, coiffed, lashed and fillered glory, patting the grovelling film-makers on the head with the satisfaction of knowing that her time has truly come.

Trewley Precious, if you have not had what I suspect is soon to be the inescapable pleasure, is an online influencer (nearly a million people follow her on TikTok) and member of the Traveller community who now stars – alongside her four siblings and their magisterial mother Tina – in the new reality series Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives. Trewley describes the clan as “like the Kardashians if they were broke! If the Kardashians were fat and on benefits!” Which is fair comment, but they are also like the Kardashians if Kris’s pod people had a sense of humour, irrepressible energy, charm and an abundance of affection for each other. I cannot imagine Khloé replying to an inquiry from Kim about what she’s done to prepare for their mother’s birthday with a cheery “More than what you’ve done, fatty!” as Trewley does to brother Jamie.

Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives is on Channel 4 now.

Siân Brooke and Adrian Lester also star in the tense GCHQ drama. Plus: hideous creations on the Great British Sewing Bee. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Channel 4
Espionage, malware and Simon Pegg doing his best serious face feature as Peter Kosminsky’s cyber-thriller returns for a second season. When we left him, GCHQ director of operations Danny Patrick (Pegg) had discovered shocking secrets about both the internal workings of government and his own marriage. Perhaps inevitably, things are now even worse. Saara (Hannah Khalique-Brown) has observed irregularities in flows of information that can only mean one thing: a mole in the intelligence agency. Plenty of scowling and running down empty corridors ensues, with Adrian Lester back as the prime minister and Siân Brooke joining as Danny’s wife, a former MI6 member. Phil Harrison

A volcanologist and a photographer try to save Reykjavik in impressive and plausible drama

This scientifically plausible, CGI-tastic disaster film will either do wonders for Iceland’s tourist industry or destroy it completely. Vigdís Hrefna Pálsdóttir stars as a volcanologist called Anna, who is descended from a short line of volcanologists (just her dad). When mini volcanos start erupting and earthquakes get more frequent, Anna begins to suspect the subterranean systems everyone thought were separate might all be fed from one big magma lake deep underground. Great gaseous clouds of geologic mumbo jumbo get spewed into the dialogue, backed up with sombre graphs on computer screens and people drawing stuff on blackboards. But the gist is that Reykjavik is in danger.

Of course, the powers that be are sceptical about Anna’s theories and don’t want to cut off the island’s supply of sweet, sweet tourist money. Pretty soon, though, the signs are too numerous to ignore. And a big eruption either could last a day or two, or as Anna points out, for 30 years, like a volcano that erupted in the 9th century. (Good thing Icelandic history goes back that far.)

A half-chicken half-hare, a skunk and a tortoise go in search of a 3,000-year-old groundhog in this wholesome animation with a surprisingly complex plot

Although this animated feature doesn’t have a title as utterly awesome as its predecessor, Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness, it’s still a perfectly adequate 90-ish minutes of creamy pastel-coloured picaresque entertainment. It feels like it’s skewed in the direction of younger viewers given the simple character designs, general wholesomeness and easy-on-the-jokes tone, but the plot is surprisingly complicated. The lead character is named Chickenhare because of course he is half-chicken half-hare, although in practice he looks more like a hare than a chicken other than a tuft of feathers on the crown of his head. He is best friends with a skunk named Meg, equipped with the awesome power of stink and who is very butch-coded with her waistcoat, faux-hawk and tomboy characteristics; there is also a tortoise named Abe, who as you might imagine is less keen on running about than the other two.

After a pleasingly kinetic introductory action sequence that feels very Indiana Jones-inspired, during which the treasure-hunting trio run into a svelte but scratchy cat called Crolloq, an old school friend (girlfriend?) of Meg’s. Angry at Meg for assorted reasons, she leaves the other three in a pit but they eventually escape with the golden spork they were seeking all along, a doodah that proves useful later. One thing leads to another, like they do, and they end up on a new adventure in search of a 3,000-year-old groundhog with a backwards facing face who can turn back time. A new character accompanies them on the way: Gina, Chickenhare’s long-lost half-sister who is, wait for it, a harechicken – more aviform than mammalian.

The popular broadcaster investigates what happened after a large pile of murdered animals were dumped outside a primary school in Hampshire. Plus, Lena Headey tackles an idea from an ‘ethical pornographer’

Mangled pheasants, mutilated foxes, weeping kids: the third series of the multi-award-winning show about environmental crime opens with a huge pile of murdered animals outside a primary school. The investigation leads to revelations about the world of illegal bloodsports and rural organised crime. It even recruits Chris Packham. “It’s low-level terrorism, isn’t it?” he exclaims at one point – and it’s hard not to agree. An essential listen. Alexi Duggins
BBC Sounds, all episodes available

The soul-rockers achieved worldwide success before surprising everyone by deciding to quit while they were ahead. Now they’re back with a new album railing against the state of contemporary America

In the autumn of 2024, Alabama Shakes showed no sign of ending their indefinite hiatus – and nobody was asking them to. Seven years had passed since the blues-soul-rock band, who exploded out of Athens, Alabama in 2009, had last shared a stage. Their transatlantic Top 10 2012 debut Boys & Girls announced them; the million-selling 2015 follow-up Sound & Color went to No 1 in the US and won them four Grammys. Their fanbase included Bruce Springsteen, Robert Plant and Barack Obama. But by 2017 they were physically and creatively spent, and they stopped. Then, in December 2024, with almost no warning, they played their first show in more than seven years.

“We had a friend in Tuscaloosa who had a brewery, but it wasn’t doing so well after Covid,” explains singer Brittany Howard. “He called me and said he was going to do a fundraiser and asked if I’d like to perform. I said, ‘For sure.’” But then she started reminiscing, remembering how that particular friend had been a huge help to the band, not just her personally. She felt the band owed him something, collectively. “So I called the fellas,” she smiles. “‘Do y’all wanna perform at this thing – like, all of us, together?’ And they instantly said yes.”

Wembley Stadium, London
Mars sings every line like it’s his big solo in a show that leans more on his stage presence than pyro and pageantry

Wembley Stadium is awash with crimson as the Bruno Mars operation rolls into town for the first of a six night run. The tour is named for the diminutive singer’s 2026 album The Romantic. Mars is feeling amorous and the Saturday night crowd is very happy to be romanced, clad in red and brandishing hand fans that read “Hot for Bruno”.

He starts with a prayer, a kitschy video in which he asks for a hand giving the audience a show we’ll never forget, before emerging in a puff of dry ice. Stained glass behind him and twinkling fairy lights all around, it’s half seedy club, half church service as he barrels into Risk It All. Is this show meant to be a spaghetti western or a 50s high school prom? The Romantic Tour bravely asks: why not both?

The trip-hop star doesn’t believe in getting jiggy to songs and would choose Cyndi Lauper at karaoke. But which classic reminds him of his mum?

The first song I fell in love with
I was going out with this Jamaican girl when we were about 15, and would listen to Night Nurse by Gregory Isaacs all the time. We had a daughter together when we were 17 – she’s 35 now and works as a social worker in Bristol – so that song has always stayed with me.

The song that makes me cry
Astral Weeks by Van Morrison, because it reminds me of my mum and growing up in Bristol. He sings about his mum dressing him and showing him pictures, and my mum was exactly like that. In every childhood photo I’m in a shirt and tie and looking proper.

A documentary-maker probes family history and the darker corners of the internet to solve an urgent political puzzle

When Sandra Forsyth began marching in support of the English Defence League, her daughter Nicola Wilding hoped it was a phase. The Cumbria-bred, Dover-dwelling Sandra was about to turn 60 and had been dealing with a lot of stress. Not only had her son been sentenced to two years in prison for armed robbery, but she was working at a home for adults with complex needs. She liked the job, but it could be gruelling – especially when clients hurled furniture at her or ripped sinks off walls.

Then, in May 2013, came the death of Lee Rigby, a drummer with the Second Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers who was murdered by two Islamist terrorists using machetes. Sandra didn’t know Rigby, Wilding notes, but his death nonetheless brought her pent-up rage to the surface. She began watching videos on Facebook by a man named Tommy Robinson, who wanted to know why the country’s brave soldiers were being murdered. By September of that year, she was protesting on the streets of London.

The grit and grandeur of 80s New York drive this rollicking story of an underground wheeler-dealer

In the summer of 1977 a bolt of lightning struck a substation on the Hudson River, knocking out power across New York City. Two nights of darkness sparked a wave of looting as Harlem and Bronx teenagers swiped high-end items from the downtown stores. They took speaker systems and turntables to experiment with at home. They taught themselves how to scratch and mix, and sang self-styled scat lyrics into stolen microphones. Hip-hop, according to urban legend, was the child of a lightning strike and a robbing spree.

It’s art from crime, thinks Ray Carney, the hardscrabble hero of Colson Whitehead’s rollicking Cool Machine, the final part of his Harlem Trilogy. Or possibly vice versa, given that the man dislikes rap music and nurses a sneaking affection for old-school smash-and-grab. For years Carney has led the sort of intrepid double life that would make Spider-Man proud, supplementing his furniture business on 125th Street with a lucrative sideline as an underworld fence. In his stealthy, dogged fashion, he helps facilitate a process he describes as “the churn”: the movement of stolen goods through New York. The churn fuels the economy and helps refresh the culture. It’s the city’s equivalent of an endocrine system.

From the golden age of Hollywood to harder times today, this is a rapturous account of more than a century of cinema

Film critic, historian and author of more than 40 books, David Thomson is back with another three-hour free jazz solo on the subject of the movies, though it’s a performance delivered with the magnificent elan of a 1940s big band leader. He’s as brilliant, eccentric, exasperating and absorbing as ever.

By “the movies”, incidentally, he means Hollywood, with a side order of established European and east Asian arthouse: he takes us from the cine-prehistory of photographer Eadweard Muybridge to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation with its sinister Ku Klux Klan hero-worship, Chaplin, Stroheim, Hitchcock, Capra, Renoir, Bogart, Marilyn Monroe in The Seven-Year Itch, Monroe Stahr in The Last Tycoon, Scorsese’s GoodFellas, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (“Is it drive or dream?”), Kirk Douglas and his alleged rape of Natalie Wood, Barbara Loden’s Wanda, Sean Baker’s Anora, Tracey Emin’s Why I Never Became a Dancer and much more. He subtitles his book a “revisionist” history.

Watkins should have been the ideal writer for this sympathetic take on new age spirituality and desert eco-activism – but the results are confusing

Rose, the protagonist of Claire Vaye Watkins’s latest novel, has retreated from the world to live in Nothingness Flats, a cinder-block cabin in the Nevada desert. On indefinite leave from her job at an environmental organisation, Rose works on her Al-Anon recovery, goes hiking and joins protests against the Yellow Pine of the title: a solar array being built over a fragile desert ecosystem. She writes in her journal: “I am on this side of the portal. I have compassion in my heart for anyone back on the other side, sending emails, bickering, buying useless shit, getting run by the algorithm, living in the past.” As the story begins, she is reunited with her first love, Miles, who has “fallen apart beautifully: bopped in and out of law school, then spent six years in what’s left of the redwoods reading horny 400-year-old poems before bailing on his PhD”. Soon, Rose realises what she truly wants, this side of the portal, is to have his child.

You don’t often see a sympathetic take on the subculture of 21st-century hippies, with their eclectic leftwing philosophies, new age spirituality and earnest striving to do good and be kind. It’s an important strain in modern life, and one typically dismissed with facile mockery and condescension. As a serious treatment of it, Yellow Pine has notable strengths. The love story between Rose and Miles is very real and specific to this world, and gives a backbone of plot to material that otherwise tends to sprawl. Watkins’s prose can be musical and keenly attentive, and she excels at conveying starry-eyed love. “[Miles] was brilliant, peaceful, grounded as a mountain, kind even when he was blue, an unabashed loner agog at the whole burning world.”

An autobiographical game about the devastating effects of chronic illness on an artist’s creative life gives players the chance to slow the pace right down

Bub does not look like a traditional video game. Artist and stop-motion animator Case Jernigan spends hours, days, months in his studio drawing, painting and delicately cutting out pieces of collected paper, while coder and gameplay designer Todd Anderson builds scripts and physics simulations to make them into a game.

In Bub, you play through the life of an artist in New York City, making art but also diving into his early memories and imaginative dreams. “You go from present day New York City into his childhood, or different sort of visions, which are all rendered in stop motion,” says Anderson. “His story is told in the present day, but also how he’s making sense of his past.”

The developer of Duck Detective reveals details of her ‘sad grandma game’ follow-up: a whodunnit – or who-plans-to-do-it? – with a darker edge

Someone wants to kill grandma. In this Knives Out-inspired mystery game, each of your family members is suspicious in their own way: your stressed mum, your “midlife crisis uncle” and especially that stranger in your bedroom. Yikes!

While Apple Crumble is still a mystery, it is mechanically different from Happy Broccoli Games’ previous game, Duck Detective, in which the player solves crimes in a small office. Here you are largely snooping through your family home. “I love the idea of having a walking sim where you can really open up every drawer, every door, and see what’s behind there,” says founder and creative director Annika Maar. As you learn more about the different grievances and troubles of your family members, the mystery slowly unwinds.

Evil Empire creatives explain how it is playing to today’s ‘metroidvanias’ and honouring the original’s legacy with much fresh slaying to be done

Since the last Castlevania game hit the shelves (2014’s Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2), Konami’s dormant series has unexpectedly spawned a hit genre. With an entire generation raised on “metroidvanias” – a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania – millions of players have only ever seen the games inspired by Konami’s seminal games. Now with Belmont’s Curse, launching in October, Castlevania is finally dashing back to console, where Konami hopes to reclaim its side-scroller throne.

Set 23 years after the events of 1989’s Castlevania 3 – the same setting as the hit Netflix show – Belmont’s Curse shakes off the series’ 3D ambitions and takes the Belmonts back to basics. Dispatching players to the demon-infested streets of 1499 Paris, you’re placed in the tattered boots of Trevor Belmont’s daughter, Rose. As a bishop pleads with the Belmonts to rid Paris of the ancient evil besetting the city, Rose heads into the sewers, longsword in hand, and her demon-slaying adventure begins.

PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2; Undercoders
Colourful, counter-cultural and captivating – this rail riding game set in a dystopian Japan is as weird as it is exhilarating

Every now and again a game appears with a premise so outrageous you stop in your tracks to take it all in. Denshattack!, a game about kickflipping trains across a dystopian future Japan, is the epitome of this feeling. Set in a post climate disaster world, people have retreated to corporate-owned domed cities to live out their days in air-conditioned, ignorant comfort. Save for a handful of outcasts, the rest of the country is a mess of broken infrastructure, where rival gangs battle it out on the ruins of Japan’s famously extensive rail network. Naive upstart Emi has one goal: become the best Denshattacker there is, one sick nosegrind at a time.

Taking the idea of an on-rails platforming game to its extreme conclusion, developers Undercoders have combined the best bits of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series – grinding, flipping and spinning through an entire dictionary of tricks – with the anti-establishment message behind Jet Set Radio. The rivals Emi encounters showcase the history of Japanese misfits, pitting you against ageing rockabillies and violent girl gangs without a shred of judgment.

Menier Chocolate Factory, London
Platt excels as a crooner looking back on falling for his songwriter-lover – dazzlingly played by Gregor Milne – in a show of beguiling, bittersweet nostalgia and pristine songs

Ben Platt’s sky-gliding voice was made for decades gone by. The Tony, Emmy and Grammy award-winning actor (Dear Evan Hansen, The Last Five Years) is beautifully cast in Mark Sonnenblick’s (KPop Demon Hunters) out-of-time love story, a honey-hearted cabaret-musical of two gay musicians trying to make it in 1960s New York.

With the Menier Chocolate Factory set up as a lamplit cabaret (set by Scott Pask), Platt is Trevor Copeland, a crooning bar-singer reliving the years he spent with songwriter Arthur Brightman, played with plate-spinning brilliance by Gregor Milne. The history of their love is told through stories shaped around American Songbook-style music, only occasionally syrupy, as the pair slip in and out of Sonnenblick’s inventions: now a jaunty knee-bouncing number; now a big-band ballad.

Royal Academy, London
Dadd was already a remarkable artist – with fairies as his hit theme – before he was locked up for murder. Yet it was within the confines of Bedlam that he saw nature and art afresh

The young man in the garden must be one of Richard Dadd’s fellow patients in Bedlam, you think. His unkempt hair and ruffled clothes are sure indications of a distracted mind as he sits, half his face in shadow, hands nervously clasped, on a fabulously twisted wooden bench surrounded by greenery that’s almost too lush for comfort. Yet the subject of Dadd’s 1853 Portrait of a Young Man is probably the superintendent of Bethlem Hospital, Dr Charles Hood. The painter sees reflections of his own mental state in this frail-seeming young clinician. Patient and doctor are not so different, he suggests. There is the finest of lines between “sanity” and “madness”.

Dadd crossed that line when he murdered his father whom he thought was the devil, then tried to kill a stranger while fleeing to Paris. He was quickly caught and would spend the rest of his life in Bedlam and Broadmoor. But how much does his mental illness explain his arresting, bizarre, sometimes unforgettable images? Is he a kind of Victorian acid casualty whose visions of fairies are the peculiar fruit of his psychosis?

Trent Park, London
A new museum in this redeveloped country house relives its fascinating period as a palatial prison of war camp – with Jewish refugees listening in from the basement

History happened here. I mean, history happens everywhere. But serious, important, world-shaping history happened at Trent Park.

Built on the grounds of Enfield Chase, an expanse of Hertfordshire countryside used as hunting grounds by royalty, this country house has lived many lives. It was a Georgian retreat, a Victorian mansion, a post-Edwardian sanctuary, and then, during the second world war, it became a place of secrets. Afterwards, it became a university campus, before falling into dereliction. Now, it has been revived, and its hidden stories brought into the light.

Glyndebourne, East Sussex
The director hits perfectly all the comic marks of Strauss’s opera about an opera, but there’s few insights in a work that should be moving as well as frothy and fun.

Glyndebourne’s new productions this summer have followed a theme: first Tosca, about a fictional opera singer; then L’Orfeo, about the mythical musician. Now comes Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos – an opera about an opera. It starts with the shenanigans backstage as two troupes – one high art, one low – prepare after-dinner entertainment for their rich patron, then the performance that ensues when they are forced to combine their acts. The real subject is, of course, love – and that comes across only partially in Laurent Pelly’s production.

The first part finds Pelly at his witty best. We’re in the house of the richest man in Vienna, whose taste is immediately in question; Massimo Troncanetti’s set has a huge doorway of gilded, inlaid wood clashing with a very 20th-century statement chandelier. William Relton’s fearsome Major-Domo pops up everywhere, cowing even Michael Kraus’s classily sung Music Master; Ru Charlesworth’s chainsmoking Dancing Master slinks around dressed as a sequined, velvety advert for Silk Cut. Samantha Hankey, her mezzo-soprano mellow but gleaming, plays the Composer as an irascible would-be genius; Zerbinetta, the comic leading lady, teeters in stockings and suspenders. Buoyantly conducted by Robin Ticciati, the players of the London Philharmonic, reduced in number as per Strauss’s stipulations, revel in the characters’ grand hopes and small tragedies, and Pelly plays to the stereotypes brilliantly, hitting the comic marks without sending things up.

The first full look at the big-budget December tentpole features returning heroes such as Chris Hemsworth, Patrick Stewart, Florence Pugh and Chris Evans

The first full trailer for Avengers: Doomsday has been released online offering a look at Marvel’s big-budget big hope.

“Something’s coming, something we may not be able to deter,” is the first line heard in the new preview which proceeds to bring back multiple characters from various Marvel movies and universes.

From playing would you rather to ranking snacks, A-listers navigating the promo trail are now forced on a set schedule of silliness

This summer, we’ve been blessed with new movies from the legendary director Steven Spielberg and one of his biggest and most beloved successors, Christopher Nolan. In both cases, the movies have been heavily sold on the directors’ names, and, befitting two of the most famous film-makers to ever do it, Spielberg and Nolan have been making the press rounds. This has meant a wealth of interviews and insights – a bonus feature unfolding alongside the selling of the actual movies that will delight movie nerds the world over.

So at first, when I saw a 60-second video of Christopher Nolan answering a barrage of yes-or-no questions come across my social-media feed, of course I stopped and watched as a famously buttoned-up (if obviously still passionate) film-maker attempted some spontaneity with no danger of follow-up questions (or obligation to follow-up answers). From this, there is admittedly plenty of information to be gleaned: he has no designs on retiring, Tarantino-style. He will not make another superhero movie or a TV show. He’s fine with people watching movies on their phones or laptops. He will neither confirm nor deny that Interstellar is his favorite of his films. He will also neither confirm nor deny that he would like to make a Star Wars movie. (Perhaps the most intriguing, given that you’d rather expect that to be a firm “no”.)

The Manifesta biennale is taking over a dozen tiny churches in German towns ravaged by division and decline – and filling them with ball games, bouncy castles and a radical community spirit

After Germany’s Ruhr conurbation – the third-largest urban area in western Europe – was pummelled during the second world war, planners came up with an ingenious idea. About 80% of the sprawl – which incorporates big cities such as Essen and Duisburg, and dozens of smaller towns like Bochum and Gelsenkirchen – had been destroyed. And so, for the reconstruction, a newly formed Diocese of the Ruhr built literally hundreds of closely packed Pantoffelkirchen or “slipper churches”, so named because they were close enough to housing developments for churchgoers to walk to mass in their slippers.

Today, Pantoffelkirchen are declining sharply. Estimates of the amount of disused or derelict churches are as high as 300, and 100 have been sold off in the last year alone. Until October, 12 of them are home to Manifesta, the travelling art biennale. They stand as centrepieces of communities that have been ravaged this time not by war, but by deindustrialisation, mass unemployment and environmental decline.

A pranked England manager, a bored Beckham, a Viking takeover and an unwise Wayne Rooney wager: here are the TV treasures of the beautiful game’s biggest ever tournament

A stodgy final saw silky Spain deservedly beat cynical Argentina. Football wasn’t coming home after all as England suffered semi-final heartbreak again, before salvaging some pride to finish third – their best World Cup finish since 1966. The Tartan Army drank America’s bars dry as their team went out with a whimper. Cape Verde lasted longer than Germany. It was the end of the road for Ronaldo and Modric, while the phrase “hydration break” entered everyday parlance. But beyond the pitch, it has been an eventful five weeks, too.

Here are 26 viral World Cup moments you might have missed …

For those who are burned out, perimenopausal, or both, dancing all night can be a panacea. It’s great exercise, lowers stress, boosts energy and provides connection. No wonder so many are doing it

It’s 4am and I’m in a club – the first time I’ve done this in years. I’m 51 and in my sandwich era, meaning I’ve got teenage and elderly loved ones on my mind – a situation that generally calls for early nights. But when you’re responsibilities-maxxing, sometimes you need the opposite. A blowout. A huge, transcendent, resetting release. A rave.

I don’t know what took me so long to get around to it. Misplaced parental guilt? Internalised ageism? Exhaustion? It’s not as though I didn’t know other gen-Xers who have been regularly getting blissfully – ceremonially, even – lost in house, techno or drum’n’bass, and they’re not alone. A 2025 study by the University of Leeds went viral: “Women aged 40-65 are turning to raves for real mental health,” said one of many Instagram posts and press headlines. “Why many women over 40 still go to raves,” read another. But surely the question should be: why the hell wouldn’t they?

You told us your tried-and-tested tricks for keeping children entertained. Plus, the best eye masks and natural deodorants, tested

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

If there’s one thing worse than a long journey, it’s a long journey with bored, fractious children. So what helps smooth things along? We asked for your best, tried-and-tested hacks for travelling with kids, from “fidget bags” to lollipops.

On a long car trip from the UK to France with his kids, reader Tim Leadbeater attached small plastic baskets with string around the pillars of the front headrest: “They held everything from felt tips to half-eaten food, not only preventing stains on covers but also keeping everything reachable for kids in car seats.”

‘This is my bucket-list spot for wild camping’: Outdoors expert Sian Lewis answered your questions

‘It’s the first thing we set up’: parents on everything you need for camping with kids – and what you don’t

The best camping tents: 10 expert picks for every outdoor adventure

Do natural deodorants actually work? I put 18 to the test – here are my favourites

The best walking sandals for women: 10 comfy and supportive styles for summer

CurrentBody Multi Light Therapy LED mask review: hands down the best I’ve tested

The best air coolers to chill your home during heatwaves – tested

‘Proof that delicious tomatoes can be grown in the UK’: the best supermarket vine tomatoes, tasted and rated

How I Shop with Angela Hartnett: ‘The purchase I regret the most? Any fitness machine!’

The best fake tan for a sunkissed, streak-free glow – tested

Surprisingly easy to manoeuvre and skilled at cleaning carpet and hard floor, Shark’s upright bagless model is one of the best corded vacuums I’ve tested

• The best vacuum cleaners

Corded vacuum cleaners aren’t as glamorous as their cordless cousins, but swapping battery power for a plug socket has its advantages. The device will never be short of power, so it can keep cleaning for as long as you need it to. Prices also tend to be lower because there’s no expensive battery to factor into the cost.

On the downside, there’s a cable to manage while you clean, and even the longest cords usually need to be switched from one plug socket to another if your home is any larger than a small flat.

Our writer braved smelly pits to see which deodorants, from aluminium-free sticks and creams to long-lasting balms and roll-ons, pass the sniff test

• 12 sustainable toiletries subscriptions that make life easier

Like many people, I’m becoming more concerned about sustainability and the ingredients in my personal care products. Natural deodorants have become more appealing, especially with refillable options becoming more common. Unlike antiperspirants, which tend to use aluminium salts to reduce sweating, natural deodorants are usually aluminium-free. Instead, many use absorbent powders, such as tapioca starch, to soak up moisture, alongside ingredients such as sodium bicarbonate to help neutralise the odour caused by bacteria.

Once confined to health shops, they’re now firmly mainstream, with sticks, creams and roll-ons lining the shelves and making bold claims about effectiveness and gentleness. But do they work? In practice, results are far less predictable. Natural deodorants don’t behave like antiperspirants, and what feels effective for one person may fall short for another. Choosing one tends to involve a fair bit of trial and error.

Best natural deodorant overall:
Luna Daily the All Over deodorant

Best budget refillable deodorant:
Wild refillable natural deodorant

Our writer trekked more than 50 miles to find stylish pairs that can go the distance, whether you’re hiking, sightseeing or commuting

• The best hiking boots for women – tested

Whether you’re planning countryside rambles, hilly walks, or just want practical, cool footwear for your next holiday, walking sandals will be your new hot-weather-adventure best friends.

The best walking sandals should offer the grip and support of a hiking shoe but without the bulk or heat, and cope just as well with rural trails as they do with pavements. With so many options available, from sporty trail designs to more polished, wear-anywhere styles, it’s worth knowing what to look for before you buy.

Best walking sandals overall:
Vivobarefoot Tracker Ora

Best budget walking sandals:
Jack Wolfskin Ridge

Those expensive pods will bring their heavenly aroma to syrups, compotes, baked goods, desserts – and even your underwear drawer

Can you do anything with vanilla pods once you’ve scraped out the seeds? They’re so expensive.
Jo, by email
“I put them in my knicker drawer,” says Sarah Lemanski, owner of Nova Bakehouse in Leeds. “They scent it nicely, that’s for sure.” But, culinarily speaking, and beyond custards and the like, Lemanski often uses them in vanilla syrup: “Chop the pod quite small, then dry-toast it with some of the sugar for the syrup – I use a 2:1 sugar-to-water ratio – to give it body.” The Guardian’s own Benjamina Ebuehi is very much in agreement, and keeps a stash of said vanilla syrup in the fridge to fuel her matcha habit: “I can’t be paying £6 for one every day.” (It would work well in iced coffee, too.)

“Even when you’ve scraped out as much as you can from a pod, there are always some seeds left inside,” Ebuehi says, so there’s still so much flavour to be had in there. Perhaps the easiest way to keep the love alive is by sticking a spent pod in a fruit compote: “Once that’s cooled, get it in the fridge, but leave the pod in there, so it continues to seep out that flavour.” You could apply a similar tactic to jam.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Spanish white pickled anchovies top this full-flavoured dish that’s easy to make and made for sharing

In Spain, some of our most loved dishes come from making something special out of very little. This salad is exactly that kind of food: it’s about using what is already in the house and turning it into something generous and full-flavoured. I have always loved how these dishes bring people together, because they’re designed to be placed in the middle of the table for everyone to share. They remind me of long, relaxed lunches that slowly turn into the afternoon and evening, and where conversation matters as much as the food. Simple, honest and full of character, this is the kind of cooking that never goes out of style.

Rustic, authentic and utterly delicious – three dishes that bring the taste of the trattoria straight to your table

Pesto trapanese combines almonds, tomatoes, pecorino and a hint of garlic and basil to create a fresher version than the typical Genovese variety, and I especially love the way the richness of the almonds is lifted by the fresh tomatoes – when they’re pureed together, it creates a wonderful mouthfeel. For me, though, pasta pomodoro symbolises home. My mum’s was a cornerstone of our trattoria, as it is at Italian restaurants around the world, and every family has their own fiercely guarded recipe. I developed this particular method when I started Pasta Princess, which delivered hand-rolled pasta and pomodoro sauce all over London during lockdown. It kept me grounded when I was in between kitchens, and resurfaced at Tiella, where it features regularly on the menu. Finally, torta caprese is a wonderfully rich flourless chocolate cake made with ground almonds. Mum often made a similar cake called torta gianduia, which uses hazelnuts instead of almonds, a recipe that hails from Piedmont, the heart of Italy’s hazelnut production (the Tonda Gentile delle Langhe variety is particularly prized for its incredible quality and flavour, carrying the IGP label to denote regionality and strict production standards). I remember her once buying these special hazelnuts on a trip to Italy, and taking them back home to New Zealand so she could make gianduia. When the cake came out of the oven, the aroma was so incredible that she decided to bring it home rather than putting it on the menu, and shared it with us instead.

Perfect for an al fresco lunch spread, these bruschetta come together as quickly as they disappear …

Fresh, light but filling – these bruschetta are beautiful to bring outside as part of a lunch spread. They take minutes to whip together (sorry) and, for extra Marie Antoinette at Le Petit Trianon vibes, pick mint (or/and baby courgettes) from your own garden. You can get ahead by making the whipped feta and lemon dressing in advance, and keeping the courgette ribbons and radishes in cold water until needed. Drain and dress the courgettes just before serving – they’re lovely with the contrast of the toasted baguette and cool cheese.

A Harris’s hawk, she is capable of flying at more than 35mph, scouring the ground for prey, while also judging my footwear. The moments of connection with this wild creature are incredible

My children brought hawks into my life. My youngest son, especially, became fascinated by birds of prey at the age of six, drawing beautiful pictures and reciting endless facts to bird owners at various country shows.

Eventually I decided, why not? We live in the countryside, after all, on Anglesey (Ynys Môn). So, during Covid, Bird, the Harris’s hawk, came into our lives. We got her from a breeder after she hatched. It was perfect timing: I was home-schooling my three kids, and at 2pm every day, rain or shine, with a brilliant local falconer, we would set out on to the headland to watch her fly. It was beautiful to see. For years, my youngest never missed a day, no matter how cold.

Both Denzel and Sarita left sexless relationships before they met, but together they have discovered toys and Tantric sex

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

She’s brought a different side to my life I didn’t know existed

I went out into the car park to see if I could spot anyone nearby who might have just left the restaurant

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I lost my wife in 2020 and my son in 2021. A few years later, I was living alone in a retirement complex when I decided to go out one night for dinner. There was a little Vietnamese restaurant nearby that my wife and I used to frequent, which had excellent food and held many happy memories. It just so happened to be Father’s Day.

I dined alone, ordering my usual rice paper rolls. When I went to settle the bill, the lass behind the counter told me my meal had already been paid for.

A social media manager and a​ transport psychology ​researcher disagreed over Palestine Action, but who ​changed their view on the triple-loc​k?

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

Hugo, 21, Birmingham

Occupation Social media manager for the Conservative party

When the problem was finally sorted out in our new-build home, it increased my tariff by 19%

Residents in our new housing development are being billed for each other’s energy after the meters were mixed up.

I realised British Gas was sending bills for my energy to the developer of the estate instead of to me. I informed British Gas of my details when I moved in seven months ago.

I bought a wheelchair for my daughter, but she later died in hospital and the company refuses a refund

I bought a £435 wheelchair for my disabled daughter from my local Lifestyle & Mobility store.

She had been admitted to hospital for tests and I planned to use the chair to take her on outings when she was discharged.

They are out to steal your password to commit further fraud such as crypto scams or phishing attacks

You have had an X account for years, since it was known as Twitter. When an email arrives about a new login from a location nowhere near where you live, alarm bells begin to ring.

“We noticed a login to your account from a new device. Was this you?” the email asks.

Vibrant areas for young workers who plan to rent while saving for a deposit and then get on the property ladder

• The new 100% mortgages for first-time buyers

• Homes to rent before buying in cities

The common property rite of passage for graduates and career-focused first jobbers has changed over the past decade. Many careers used to start in London, and an early house-share would be followed by a first flat purchase, then a move to somewhere bigger.

However, the heavy burden of housing costs in the capital is making would-be first-time buyers stop and evaluate whether – even with London weighting on some wages – it is possible to get on the ladder there.

Over the last decade, the understanding of these devastating headaches has grown enormously, as has the understanding of what can be done to treat them

We’ve been trying to cure migraines – without much success, until relatively recently – for as long as we’ve been able to identify them as a distinct ailment. The Ebers Papyrus, a scroll dating back to 1550BC that mentions a “disease of one half of the head”, suggests anointing the scalp with fried catfish; Galen, the second-century Roman physician whose term “hemicrania” evolved into the modern word, recommended blood-letting (this, to be fair, was his answer to a lot of things). By the 20th century, doctors were suggesting repressed emotions might be at fault, leading to suggestions that women – who suffer from migraines far more than men – were simply too fragile and neurotic. As recently as a couple of decades ago, “vascular theory” – the idea that blood vessels in the brain expanding and contracting were to blame – was still the standard explanation in many medical schools.

Over the last decade, though, our understanding of what causes these neurological disorders, which are technically a sub-category of headache, has progressed enormously, alongside the options for treating them. One of the biggest problems, as in centuries past, is a lack of sympathy for sufferers. The biggest difference, these days, is that we actually understand what is happening, and why.

The England defender wears a tracker, the heptathlete is experimenting with kiwi fruits – and world champion swimmer Adam Peaty swears by hours and hours of history videos …

Katarina Johnson-Thompson

From mattresses to saucepans, scientists offer tweaks to help detoxify your space

The problem Whenever we burn anything inside our homes, we cause indoor air pollution, whether we’re cooking using gas, frying bacon, lighting a wood burner, an open fire, a cigarette or incense, or ruining the toast. “ We spend 80-90% of our time indoors,” says Prof Francis Pope, chair of atmospheric science at the University of Birmingham. “And there is potential to have quite high concentrations of pollution indoors. This affects your respiratory and cardiovascular systems; certain components are carcinogenic, and there’s a growing body of evidence that air pollution affects cognition. In the long term, you get awful diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. But relatively short exposures to air pollution are linked to things like educational outcome, workplace productivity and general mental wellbeing.”

As a teenager I declined a painful operation to straighten my spinal curvature, and it was a decision I sometimes regretted. But through daily stretching and exercise, my relationship with my body was transformed

I was 13 when a spinal surgeon gave me unsolicited career advice. “Scoliosis won’t ruin your life,” he said, peering over his spectacles, “unless you want to do bikini modelling.” As a young teenager, I hadn’t thought much about job prospects, let alone modelling, but his words stung. It also curdled my situation into a lose-lose scenario: either have a painful operation to fuse metal rods with my spine, or endure a lifetime with an abnormally twisted back.

Until this point, I’d perceived my spinal curvature in terms of the inward experience: pain. Now, I became aware of an external dimension: a disfigurement. Something to be hidden. This did me no favours as a teenager in the age of Instagram. While I declined the operation due to the risks and the extended leave from school, the surgeon’s blithe remark burdened me with shame.

From Lily Collins at Wimbledon to the cast of Love Island, heels-averse cohort is stepping it up a notch

Gen Z, the flats-only generation, has finally succumbed to the heel – albeit a tiny one. Long vocally anti-heel, the cohort who were born between 1997 and 2012 have famously shunned millennials’ obsession with Jimmy Choos in favour of pancake-flat shoes, from the Adidas Samba “It-trainer” to the split-toe Margiela Tabi and so-called “French girl ballet flats”.

But they now appear to be embracing a potential gateway heel, typically measuring in the region of 1.5in (3.8cm) or the height of a triple-A battery.

From M&S to Miu Miu, 50s US school gym staple adopted by 70s rockers is having its moment in the sun again

If the T-shirt is a ubiquitous sight on summer streets, fashion loves nothing more than changing up something very familiar. Enter, this summer, the rise of the ringer T-shirt.

A T-shirt shape but with contrast colour on the collar and ends of the short sleeves, the garment has been spotted at brands ranging from Marks & Spencer to Ganni, Hush and Levi’s.

Designers say that as well as offering a degree of protection from surveillance, their clothes make a powerful fashion statement about the importance of privacy

As facial recognition technology is rolled out across Britain’s public spaces, a new generation of designers say privacy could be the next big fashion trend.

Companies have started incorporating “adversarial patterns” in their garments – carefully designed arrangements of shapes, colours and repeated motifs said to exploit weaknesses in some computer vision systems.

Using tinted tips and undercuts, footballers are rewriting what ‘professional’ looks like in elite sport in the process

• Don’t get Fashion Statement delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

At the World Cup this summer locs, or what are commonly known as “dreadlocks”, have become as ubiquitous as free kicks. Defenders pin theirs back for clear sight-lines; forwards loosen and shape theirs for the cameras.

Antoine Semenyo of Ghana paired his with a sharp undercut. Spain’s Nico Williams bleaches his tips. Belgium winger Jeremy Doku has a mix of blond tinted tips, cornrowed. England’s Eberechi Eze has a variant styled into cornrows, while his former Crystal Palace teammate (and soon to be similarly gutted opponent in Saturday’s third-place “bronze” play-off) France’s Michael Olise opts for a slickly styled taper fade, a technique that emphasises the volume of the locs on top. Manu Koné, also of Les Bleus, has sported braided locs, while Switzerland’s attacking midfielder Johan Manzambi has gone for jumbo locs in combination with rope-like, protective Senegalese twists.

The seven inhabited isles off the North Sea coast, part of a Unesco world heritage site, are a sanctuary for wildlife – with great hotels and restaurants too

‘Can you hear that?” my guide Andrea Wellmeyer asks as I sink a little deeper into the wet ground, cold mud seeping between my toes. When the wind drops, I detect a faint but distinct crackling, similar to the rustle of a sweet wrapper or the bubbling of sparkling water. “That’s the Wattknistern,” she says, “a natural phenomenon caused by the tens of thousands of mud shrimp that live here.”

We’re standing in the Wadden Sea mudflats on Norderney, an island just off Germany’s North Sea coast. It’s Friday evening at low tide. In the town centre, bars are pumping with music, but here, just 15 minutes along the southern edge of the island, it’s a completely different story.

Almost all of the sandy stretches on the country’s 8,000km of coastline are run for profit. Now ‘free beach’ campaigners are fighting back against the mafia, the military and those profiteering from sun loungers and cocktails

Walking along Italian beaches is like strolling through a rainbow. The sand will be subdivided into colours: for 50 metres or so the perfectly spaced parasols and deck chairs will be all red, then they become orange, then yellow, green and so on.

These are the country’s famous bagni (lidos), formally known as concessioni balneari (bathing concessions). They’re simple but stylish. The sand is raked at dawn. The bar plays ambient music and serves negronis or fried squid. There will probably be a table-tennis table, or a beach volleyball area. Some have swimming pools.

With bus fares capped at £3 and free for kids in August, it’s the ideal time for wildlife watching, woodland walks, world-class art and more

Trips to waterfalls, gardens, galleries, medieval forests and prehistoric caves will make the long school holidays a lot more fun. To help families explore affordably, throughout August buses in England will be free for kids and adult fares will be capped at £3 single. Or, if you arrive somewhere by train, you could buy a PlusBus ticket, which include unlimited local bus travel. Here are six ideas for family outings by bus around England.

From 100,000 sunflowers in Gower and cosmic art in Galloway to a bat safari and messing about in boats, there’s enough here to keep you and the kids busy till September

At the westernmost tip of the Gower peninsula, Rhossili Bay is a gloriously wide sweep of sand, backed by dunes and licked with waves perfect for bodyboarding and surfing. Wild ponies graze on the southern headland, while walkers time their trip across to the serpent-like Worm’s Head promontory to not get cut off by the tide.

Elon Musk is trying to own it, competing powers are trying to fight in it and nobody seems to be regulating it. So who does space really belong to?

The last time I saw Laura Grego was in a tent in a baking field on the Welsh borders in May. The conversation on stage ranged from the dangers of space debris to how the law of the sea might pertain to outer space; from our sense of the sacred to our interplanetary futures. At one point Grego, a physicist, said intently, “People have to be aware of what is happening in space. Public knowledge has to catch up.” Three weeks later, SpaceX launched on the stock exchange, temporarily making Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

So, I ask her now, what is it that we should all know? Well, she says, the average person’s experience of space is about to change. If, so far, that has been “looking at the stars and being full of wonder, full of connection with the universe”, perhaps noticing the occasional streaking object that was not a shooting star, now “there are plans for tens of thousands more satellites, which would really change your relationship with what you see in the sky”. SpaceX, specifically, has just applied to a federal regulator for permission to launch up to 1m of them.

Seeds are packed into shop-bought pots, meaning they compete and wear themselves out. The best bet is to divide and conquer

The problem
We’ve all done it: picked up a lush, generous-looking pot of basil from the supermarket – full of promise and pesto plans, and within a fortnight it has collapsed into a dried-out, leggy mess. You assume you did something wrong. In reality, the plant was set up to fail before it even reached your kitchen.

The hack
That full, bushy pot is not actually one plant; it is dozens of basil seedlings crammed into a single container to look bushy on the shelf. Packed that tightly, they compete for light, water and root space, and exhaust themselves within days. The fix is to divide the overcrowded mass into smaller, separated clumps and give each one room to actually grow.

The answer to today’s puzzle

Earlier today I set you a puzzle about keeping homes cool in a heatwave. Here it is again with the solution.

Imagine a room with a set of curtains. When the Sun is shining, its energy comes through the windows where it is absorbed by the curtains. The curtains get hotter and hotter until they reach a temperature at which they are radiating as much heat as they absorb. The curtains radiate 50 per cent of this heat back towards the window, and 50 per cent of the heat into the room.

The full constellation can be frustrating to track down in the UK owing to its low presence in the southern sky

This week we will take the opportunity to identify Scorpius, the Scorpion, one of the famous zodiacal constellations.

In mythology, Scorpius is the creature sent to kill Orion, the hunter. The two constellations are therefore on opposite sides of the sky from one another, so that when Scorpius rises, Orion has already departed.

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

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

Explosion of anger over education system and youth unemployment has led to movement’s rapid rise

• Tens of thousands of Cockroach party protesters defy police with Delhi march

New £500m town centre welcomes its first tenant this month, but displaced traders say promises that they could return have been broken

Diana Sach once employed more than 30 people and catered for hundreds more every day from her Latin American restaurant and delicatessen, famous for its Peruvian empanadas, in south London’s Elephant and Castle district.

Now, she looks longingly at the shiny tall buildings that have replaced the brightly coloured but shabby shopping centre that was her home from home before being demolished in 2021.

The UK is a nation of animal lovers. But the rise of ‘barkitecture’ has taken it too far, with people investing in outdoor showers, whirlpool baths and ergonomic feeding stations for their faithful friends

Name: Barkitecture.

Age: 27 years old.

Appearance: Plush provisions for posh pooches.

It’s 27 years old? That’s hardly newsworthy. Well, there was Fred Albert’s 1999 book Barkitecture, about upmarket kennels. And then there was the 2020 Quibi platform show Barkitecture, where a Bachelorette runner-up made kennels for celebrities. Also, the Guardian has covered the term before.

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?

We would like to hear your thoughts on Christopher Nolan’s adaption of Homer’s epic

The Odyssey has stormed the global box office, taking US$264m (£196m, A$378m) in its opening weekend, according to studio Universal Pictures.

Starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway and Zendaya, the blockbuster is an adaptation of Homer’s epic, which follows Odysseus as he makes his 10-year journey home after fighting in the Trojan war. It’s also the first feature movie to be filmed entirely with Imax cameras – a system of very heavy and loud cameras that capture a sharper, brighter and higher-resolution content.

If you’re wearing the new glasses, we want to know more about how you’re using them. We’d also like to hear from people about how they feel about others around them wearing the glasses

With over seven million pairs of glasses reported to have been sold by Meta in 2025, it is clear that their popularity is growing and we’d like to find out more about how people are using them.

There have been some concerns around nonconsensual filming and the data protection of users, however the glasses have proved life-changing for those with visual impairments and hearing loss.

We would like to hear from people living near AI datacentres about their experiences and any concerns they might have

There are around 450 large data centres across the UK. These warehouses contain computing infrastructure that power cloud services and, increasingly, AI.

There is much debate about how datacentres affect their local areas, with concerns raised by nearby residents about land use, pollution, noise, and the “heat island effect”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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