When your heart is breaking, and you are leaving the home where you and your ex were once so happy, it is hard to fight for the sofa you spent a fortune on. Then you find yourself in an empty flat, with nothing to sit on

When wandering around Ikea arm-in-arm, most newly cohabiting couples are too excited about their new sofa, or Billy bookcase, or the enormous house plant they are about to wrestle into an Uber, to think too deeply about what might happen to those items were their relationship to sour. But at a time when many young couples can’t afford to buy property or have children, furniture can end up being the only thing to fight over at the end of a relationship. And, as the cost of living rises, having to replace furniture after a breakup can have a huge impact on people’s finances.

“It took me a couple of years to recover financially,” says Becca of her 2022 breakup. The 35-year-old, who is based in Leeds, had been in a relationship for about a year when her then-girlfriend invited her to move in to her house. At the time, Becca was renting her own flat, which was “amazing: big garden, really bright and lovely”, she says. But being what she describes as “young, stupid and in love”, she left that behind to move in with her partner. Becca reluctantly agreed to get rid of all the furniture she had bought for her flat, since her girlfriend didn’t want any of it in her place.

Sirin Kale on the BBC Panorama investigation into Married at First Sight UK

Is it possible to make dating reality TV shows safe for their participants?

A BBC panorama investigation recently reported that two women alleged they were raped by their on-screen “husbands” during the filming of Married at First Sight UK. They have not been named. A third woman, who agreed to be identified, Shona Manderson, accused her on-screen husband of subjecting her to a non-consensual sex act. All the men deny the allegations.

Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Prospero is reimagined as a conductor in this superbly orchestrated version of Shakespeare’s tragicomedy

Kenneth Branagh is said to have played 35 Shakespearean parts, albeit back in the day. Seeing him speaking in verse these days is something of an event, all the more so when he is making a return to the Royal Shakespeare Company after more than 30 years to take on, for the first time, Shakespeare’s magician, deposed duke and tyrant occupier. Even the king turned up for it some days ago.

Branagh’s Prospero initially follows in the vein of his fast and feverish King Lear, performed in the West End in 2023. He seems to be speeding through the part rather than inhabiting it, too puckish, almost larky, rather underwhelming. It is the show itself that casts its spell through its enchanting sights, sounds and ensemble accomplishments. Richard Eyre, directing his first Shakespeare play at Stratford, does a stupendous job of bringing an overt sense of performance to the production.

After his death aged 95, we look back at a remarkable catalogue of work that stretches from vivacious mid-50s sets to his evocative performance after 9/11

• News: Sonny Rollins, colossus of jazz saxophone, dies aged 95

A 30-year-old Sonny Rollins had already made his unique mark with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk by the time this 1956 session was cut, just a year after bebop sax revolutionary Charlie Parker’s death – but hooking up with his contemporary and admirer John Coltrane happened by chance on the two-tenor blues chase of this album’s title. In a vivacious set with the Miles Davis rhythm section of the time (Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Philly Joe Jones on drums), the leader’s already unquenchable inventiveness is in full flow on Paul’s Pal, and The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.

Two penalty shootout triumphs in the playoffs sent the Czechs to a first World Cup in 20 years and an experienced side look capable of progress

This article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June.

A thrillingly unsanitised new photo book captures the liberating power of queer clubs in all their sexy, messy, kinky, cacophonous glory. ‘I wanted it to feel like a night out,’ says the woman behind it

These days, waking up after a big night out, no evidence can be good evidence. Perhaps the bar lights were too dim and the music so great that smartphones (and the outside world) were forgotten for a few blissful hours. Camera rolls: empty.

However, a new photo book called Sex, Clubs, Dissent: Visualising Queer Nightlife offers a striking defence of the culture-shaping role of cheeky snapshots taken inside and after the club. The anthology, edited by writer and London dancefloor regular Amelia Abraham, takes an expansive view of nightlife photography from the 1960s until today, embracing the tensions of documenting some of the most sexy, messy and politically charged moments of queer life. Contributions from artists such as Wolfgang Tillmans, Sunil Gupta and Kia LaBeija reinforce how the genre is not only a tool of community reportage and remembrance but also an art form in its own right.

In highly unusual intervention, ex-PM says his party’s ‘almost infinite capacity for self-delusion’ makes it likely to lose next election

• Analysis: Tony Blair’s essay on Labour failings gets full marks for being unhelpful

Tony Blair has accused Keir Starmer, Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting of putting Labour’s future at risk by abandoning the centre ground, warning that the party’s “almost infinite capacity for self-delusion” means it is likely to lose the next election.

In a scathing 5,700-word attack on the prime minister and his would-be successors published on Tuesday night, Blair argued for the government to crack down on welfare spending, abandon restrictions on oil and gas and smooth relations with Donald Trump.

Age limits and changes to allegedly addictive design features could be in place by the end of the year

Labour is expected to announce a social media crackdown within weeks as the prime minister, Keir Starmer, on Tuesday said he would act “very, very quickly” despite splits between campaigners and child safety experts on what the new rules should be.

New limits on social media access for children could be presented before the Makerfield byelection next month after an avalanche of responses to a public consultation have been analysed with the help of an AI system called Consult and an expert panel led by an eminent paediatrician. The consultation closes on Tuesday.

Anne Keast-Butler will also warn of narrowing window to stay ahead of China in ‘new era of radical uncertainty’

Russia is relentlessly targeting Britain’s infrastructure and democracy while there is only a narrowing technological window to stay ahead of a fast-developing China, the head of the spy agency GCHQ will warn in a lecture on Wednesday.

Anne Keast-Butler, giving an inaugural annual lecture, will say that the UK is caught in a “new era of radical uncertainty” and that “the risk of miscalculation” is as high as she has ever seen it as hacker attacks from the two states continue.

Analysis of party’s proposed cuts also suggests it would get rid of two-thirds of psychologists who support prison staff

A Reform UK plan to cut the size of the civil service would involve sacking more planning officers than exist and getting rid of at least two-thirds of the psychologists who support prison officers’ welfare, it has emerged.

The policy paper, led by the Reform MP Danny Kruger and published in December, promises to save more than £5bn a year by cutting civil service roles, with the full-time-equivalent (FTE) headcount falling by 13%.

Tehran condemns ‘definitive violation’ but announces no specific reprisals as negotiations near decisive stage

A proposed peace agreement between Iran and the US seemed to remain on the table on Tuesday despite US bombings of Iranian targets.

The Iranian foreign ministry denounced the US attack – aimed at missile launchers and efforts to lay fresh mines in the strait of Hormuz – as “an act of bad faith” and “a definitive violation of the ceasefire” and said it would not leave aggression unanswered. But it did not pull out of the talks that were continuing under the joint mediation of Pakistan and Qatar.

Experts say climate change linked to 10% rise in salmonella antibiotic resistance genes between 1940 and 2023

The climate crisis is accelerating a global increase in antibiotic resistance that poses a serious threat to human health, experts have said as figures show a rise in salmonella antibiotic resistant genes.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the fastest-growing threats to global health. It can affect people of any age in any country and already kills more than 1 million people a year, according to estimates.

Historical events like Spanish Inquisition show the ‘velocity’ at which rumours move to conviction, says Celebrity Traitors contestant

History might explain why Faithfuls find it so difficult to root out Traitors in the hit BBC show, suggests one member of the Celebrity Traitors cohort, who were record-breakingly bad at the game.

The roundtable – where contestants discuss who should be cast out – was somewhat “frightening” because of the “velocity in which something goes from a suspicion to belief, to faith, to condemnation”, said the broadcaster and historian David Olusoga.

‘Gender attractiveness gap’ appears across cultures and over centuries but difference fades away with age

Women’s faces are rated as more attractive than men’s, even by other women, but the perceived gap declines with age and all but vanishes by the time people reach their 80s, researchers have said.

The work appears to confirm the existence of a “gender attractiveness gap”, an observation reflected in centuries of language that present women as “the fairer sex”, “das schöne Geschlecht”, “le beau sexe”, and far more beyond Europe.

Fourth Paddington film will be written by Iannucci and Simon Blackwell, who wrote with Iannucci on The Thick of It, In The Loop and Veep

Paddington is about to develop a particularly hard stare, with The Thick of It and Veep creator Armando Iannucci set to write the bear’s next cinematic adventure.

Variety reported on Tuesday that the fourth Paddington film will be written by Iannucci and his longtime collaborator Simon Blackwell, who wrote with Iannucci on The Thick of It, In The Loop and Veep.

Researchers racing to document Oceania’s last tropical glaciers found the remaining ‘eternal snow’ in Indonesia’s West Papua region has lost almost all its ice

• Mapping the last glaciers in Oceania – in pictures

An expedition to document the end days of the last tropical glaciers in Oceania has revealed sombre footage of “planetary destruction on fast-forward”.

The once-mighty ice sheets on Puncak Jaya, a mountain surrounded by dense rainforests in West Papua, Indonesia, have survived beyond projections they would disappear by 2026 but have shrunk to a fraction of their original size.

While approval is due soon for $14bn deal, actual deliveries to Taiwan are years away – making ‘Operation Epic Fury’ in the Gulf an unlikely cause

The Trump administration’s war against Iran should have no impact on arms sales to Taiwan, experts have said, after a US official suggested a pause in the delivery of a key weapons package was due to the Gulf conflict.

Analysts told the Guardian that a $14bn arms package left in limbo after Donald Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping could take up to six years to process, and there was a “low likelihood” of any true connection between events in Iran and weapons delivery to Taiwan.

The US has launched fresh strikes on Iran despite suggestions that a peace deal could be within reach. Donald Trump faces growing criticism from Republicans over the proposed plan to end the war, which reportedly contained major concessions from Washington. But could an agreement still be imminent? Lucy Hough speaks to diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour

Their influence is evident in every corner of society, the imperial family owns some, and Tokyo even has its own ‘cat town’

Feline features stare out from the covers of umpteen novels, they have an officially designated day devoted to their mystique and popularity, and have outnumbered dogs as pets for a decade.

The influence of cats is evident across every corner of Japanese society, with a recent report crediting them with generating an expected ¥3tn ($18.8bn) in value to the Japanese economy this year – a phenomenon dubbed “catnomics”.

This 20-episode take on the second world war, helmed by the Saving Private Ryan star, is a vast creation. But it still manages to wind up feeling basic – despite its great archive footage

World War II with Tom Hanks opens with a sales pitch, for World War II, by Tom Hanks. “The second world war,” says he, eyeballing us in medium closeup with calm paternal authority, “is the largest event in human history. No part of the globe is unaffected. The second world war changed everything. For all of us.”

Hanks is the narrator and is at the beginning and end of each of the 20 instalments, the on-screen master of ceremonies for a series that is up there with the largest documentaries in human history. Its 20-episode run invites comparisons with ITV’s monumental 1973 classic The World at War, which sprawled across 26 episodes. The new series persists in telling us that we are, together, tackling the big one. After Hanks’s introductory spiel, there is a montage that recurs at the start of subsequent episodes, with contributors underlining how massive the war’s impact was.

World War II with Tom Hanks aired on Sky History and is available on Now in the UK, with an Australian airdate yet to be announced.

In a chaotic London childhood, Isaiah Sampson got drawn into drug dealing and worse before hauling himself into the charts. He opens up about his psychological scars and trust issues

In one of Pozer’s earliest memories, nearly two decades before he became one of the most talented rappers in the UK, he is six years old, running from his mum’s landlord. “He come knock the door, my mum’s acting like we’re not here, we skid out, go shop. When we’re walking back he’s clocked us, so me and her start running, we hop a gate and we’re now in the communal gardens of an estate. That guy booted open the ting. Me and my mum are pretend-playing with a ball. He picks it up – but all the little hoodlums in the area circle him: ‘What you doing?’”

The way he recounts his life – both in his music and in our conversation, which takes place at a west London recording studio – it seems as if he was always on the move like this, on alert. Born Isaiah Sampson and now 23 years old, he moved as a child around south London with his single mother, sometimes with his father when he was out of prison, or a family friend when his father was back on the run. In his teens, “I used to smoke weed with a couple of girls, and I’d say to them: ‘Every day I wake up, it feels like I’m actively tensing my muscles, and I’m not.’ You wish someone could tell you what’s going on.”

We picked Liverpool as champions, Chelsea as challengers and tipped Brentford and Sunderland to go down. Oh dear

What we predicted: Mikel Arteta vowed this would be a “big summer” after finishing as runners-up in the Premier League for a third season in succession and the new sporting director, Andrea Berta, has delivered on a number of signings in his first transfer window. The question now for Arsenal supporters is whether Martín Zubimendi, Christian Nørgaard, Noni Madueke, Viktor Gyökeres, Cristhian Mosquera and Kepa Arrizabalaga can help them take that elusive final step to becoming champions for the first time since the Invincibles in 2004.

His detractors say he shouldn’t be making pop music in times of war and destruction. His millions of fans say he has given them permission to celebrate their culture and their cause

The first time I heard a song by Saint Levant, only three years ago, was in a world that does not exist any more. Gaza’s buildings were intact, as were its schools and roads and markets and mosques. My home city of Khartoum in Sudan was standing, as it had for centuries. Back then, I could scroll for fun, not in dread. I could stumble, say, in late 2022, upon an arresting clip on TikTok of a song by an Arab artist with a pun for a name; Saint Levant, a play on Saint Laurent – the icon of western style had been Arabised in homage to the Middle East’s Levant region.

I began to see the same song all over my social media. In the video, Saint Levant, then 22, is in a white vest and brown trousers. A gold pendant chain dangles on his chest, a tattoo encircles his left arm. He starts by rapping in English, telling the woman he is wooing that “he’s not toxic, he’s broken baby”. And then, the twist, as he switches to Arabic, then French, then English again. Like a wholesome boy next door, he tells her to send his regards to her grandmother and her brother. Then says that he wants to make her forget about her ex, he wants her overthinking all her texts, he wants the neighbours to hear her yell. “Lover boy Levant is back in the building,” he declared.

Some say project Iran is a disaster, but as a get-out-of-jail-free card it’s a winner. He did say he was smart, didn’t he?

How far would you go for your son? For Donald Trump, the answer is simply: “The Bahamas? That is way too far! Why can’t you just get married on the golf course we buried your mother in? Or better still, the one I’m being carted to the second I get off the reinforced toilet I’m typing this on.” And so it was that the president cordially flaked on the latest marriage of his large adult son Don Jr, which took place somewhere in the Bahamas last weekend. If the world felt somehow different to you on Sunday morning, you were right. We now live in a post-troth society.

In other ways, though, the world would have felt quite samey. Those whose notional protest placard reads “IRAN DEAL WHEN?” remain fobbed off round the clock by a US administration that is always “close”, looking at a “pretty solid thing on the table” and debating “specific language in the initial document”. The Iranian government, meanwhile, is laying mines in the strait of Hormuz, expressing “resolute” support for Hezbollah and saying gnomically trolling things like how the two sides are both “very close and very far”. The president loves to imply that deals are always like this, once again confusing commercial Floridian real estate with the fanatical remnants of a dysfunctional regime in whose interest it is to play him.

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Supporters of deregulation want Europe to be more like the US. But that would serve only American interests

In July 2024, a European Union law came into force requiring plastic bottle caps to remain attached to their bottles. The regulation was widely mocked by social-media jokesters and Silicon Valley billionaires alike. This, people said, was Brussels at its worst: bureaucrats micromanaging, treating citizens like children who couldn’t be trusted to recycle a cap.

What went almost entirely unreported was the evidence behind it. Plastic bottle caps have been identified, across decades of coastal cleanup data, as among the top items found littering European beaches. Small, light and made from a different plastic than the bottle itself, the caps float independently once separated, travelling far longer distances than the bottles they came from. They are far more likely to be swallowed by seabirds, fish and marine turtles who mistake them for food.

The Green MP’s decision to take time out has angered some – but many more will see endemic stress and anxiety as a blight we must address

Carla Denyer is taking some time out.

The Bristol Central MP and former Green party co-leader says she is suffering from burnout after trying to juggle health issues on top of the job and has been advised by her doctor to take a break. In an ideal world, most people would just wish her a swift recovery and get on with their lives, as quite a lot of MPs from normally rival parties duly did, on the grounds that you never really know what is going on under the surface of someone else’s life. But Denyer’s call for an “open conversation” about burnout has inevitably also resulted in the usual spasm of online venom, snark and angry men on radio phone-ins asking why politicians can’t handle “a few emails” without needing a lie-down when nurses and teachers just have to soldier on regardless. (Though given that mental health issues are the most common cause of days off in the NHS in England, while teachers apparently claim the highest levels of work-related stress, depression and anxiety in Britain, Denyer might be right to suggest in her statement that they’re the ones most likely to understand.)

People sleep outside because their houses are too hot to inhabit, water is scarce and supermarkets are for the wealthy

If you think the temperature uncomfortable today, let me take you to the last day of July 2052, the rays of the climbing sun reveal a city still sweltering in the residual heat of the day before. From the air, London resembles a colossal refugee camp. Streets, gardens and parks are teeming with tents and cobbled-together shelters, within which the city’s residents have spent another uncomfortable night away from the heat traps that their houses and flats have become. After six days when the temperature peaked at about 40C, another scorcher is on the way.

Half-hearted attempts to upgrade insulation across the country’s housing stock ran out of steam and cash decades earlier, and most homes still have few barriers to the infiltrating heat. Almost all the country’s electricity is now from renewables, which has brought the cost down, but the relentless onslaught of extreme weather has driven an ever-deepening economic depression across the world. Many now have air conditioning, but can’t afford to run it.

While the event’s movers and shakers are rich and smart, they don’t come across as caring deeply about sport

I woke up in Las Vegas on Monday to an avalanche of messages from people across elite sport asking about the Enhanced Games. Some wanted to know what it was really like. Most, though, wanted to dance on its grave.

So much for the organisers’ promises that we would witness multiple world records. So much for their ridiculous claim to be the “Super Bowl of athletics, swimming and weightlifting!” Hubris meet nemesis.

I stared into the abyss, and the abyss stared back – mouldily. This is what happens when you forget basic hygiene

In my 20s, I cohabited with a man who thought you didn’t need to wash towels because you used them when you were clean. This was someone, I should add, who graduated from both Oxford and Cambridge and now has a very high-powered job. (Not that any of that means you have an ounce of common sense, of course.) Anyway, I obviously teased him mercilessly about this. What a nitwit, I thought.

But now I have a terrible confession to make. I too am a nitwit. You see, about a year ago, I replaced my trusty clear plastic water bottle, which was super easy to clean, with one of the trendy brands made of stainless steel and silicone that everyone in my gym has. What with the gasket and the straw and the various bits you couldn’t stick in a dishwasher, it was a faff to wash. So I wasn’t very diligent about cleaning it. After all, it was just water inside, right? And water’s clean, right? I had put flavoured electrolytes in it a couple of times, but I didn’t think much about the fact that they are a tasty meal for bacteria.

I never dreamed it would be so hard to put together a playlist for my friend’s 60th

For any birthday party with a zero at the end, the music is supposed to be very simple: you just pick a banger from the year the person was born and work towards to the present day on that basis. Some people are bound to be unlucky. I myself am the victim of a freak event as in 1973, no good songs were released anywhere in the world. But mostly it works on all kinds of levels, because it means that in the early part of the night it’ll be songs that your parents liked, as that’s how you came to be born in the first place, and for the music that was released last year and of which you are entirely unaware, it’ll be the end of the night, and you won’t care.

This is all great until you’re making a playlist for your dear friend who is 60. Even Claude AI was whining about the sheer size of this dataset. The parents would prefer a tea the day before and no longer want to go to a party, so the whole first two decades are playing to no one. (That’s actually unfair: everyone likes the Beatles. But the number of years in which the hit was something Ernie-the-Fastest-Milkman-in-the-West-adjacent is truly shocking.) Realistically, all your favourite songs were released in the same year, which is 1989. If you took a long, hard look in the mirror, you’d admit that you haven’t kept on top of the charts for roughly 20 years, and could no more distinguish early from late Beyoncé than you could correctly identify Mesolithic from Neolithic by looking at a stone tool. The songs you genuinely like definitely did not chart, and it would be antisocial to expect people to join you in knowing all the words; instead, looking for the crowd-pleasers, there’s a whole segment in the middle when you might as well be listening to Magic FM.

Regulator could do us all a favour with clear multi-year forecasts and breakdowns of electricity pricing

It is easy to predict where the energy regulator will set the next quarterly price cap on Wednesday. It’s just a matter of tracking wholesale prices in Ofgem’s relevant backward-looking “observation period”. Energy consultant Cornwall Insight thinks the typical household bill be £1,850, an increase of £209 from the previous quarter. It will be surprising if it is out by more than a few quid.

One can also make a fair guess at the regulator’s messaging. It will talk about the unavoidable impact from the surge in energy prices that followed the closure of the strait of Hormuz. It may also say the increase would be even greater than 13% without the additional wind and solar generation on the system these days. Fair enough. Gas sets the wholesale price of electricity only 60% of the time now, down from 90% not long ago.

The chancellor can point to growth and lower inflation, but weak job data, flat living standards and uncertain productivity are no reason to cheer

In October 1991, the then chancellor Norman Lamont said he thought he saw some “green shoots” of recovery. He was ridiculed, as Britain was in the midst of a deep recession that it would not clamber out of until the following summer. Insouciant in the face of the scorn heaped upon him, Mr Lamont defended himself robustly, even long after the event – not least by writing letters to this newspaper. Despite this valiant defence, “green shootism” became notorious because it suggested a ruling class that was congratulating itself well before ordinary people felt a recovery.

This has not stopped politicians since 2010 from claiming that Britain was bouncing back from the series of shocks it has experienced. After austerity had produced economic stagnation, George Osborne, the Tory chancellor in 2013, seized on a few quarters of growth to claim Britain was “turning a corner”. Just months before the 2024 general election, Rishi Sunak, the Conservative prime minister, said that the country was starting to see the “green shoots” of recovery. Voters resoundingly rejected that claim when Labour was elected in a landslide.

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.

With concerns about childhood obesity and screen use sky-high, cuts to primary PE are an unforced error

With remarkably poor timing, days before closing a consultation on children’s social media use, the government announced last week that it is cutting an annual £320m sports premium for primary schools in England. A new scheme worth £193m will cover secondaries too, and resurrect a previous model whereby outside clubs and coaches play a bigger role. But primary school leaders are understandably unhappy, particularly about the haste with which this is being done.

Bodies including Sport England are more supportive, unsurprisingly since their role is set to grow. There will be advantages, particularly for older pupils who do not already participate in a busy round of extracurricular activities, in having the chance to make links with outside teams or clubs. But the reduction in dedicated funding for primary-school sports seems wrong-headed at a time when childhood obesity is viewed by experts as one of biggest public health challenges facing the country, and concerns about the mental and physical impacts of screen use are sky-high.

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.

Guardian readers respond to an article by Zoe Williams which argued that cutting the welfare bill should start with pensions

Zoe Williams seeks to stimulate a debate about pensions and intergenerational inequality, but seems to have overlooked the issues surrounding the funding of public-sector defined-benefit (DB) pension schemes (All this talk about ‘difficult’ cuts, yet the largest part of Britain’s welfare bill is never mentioned. Why?, 21 May).

Such schemes place enormous pressure on public finances; they typically require a more significant employer contribution – often more than 25% – compared with private-sector defined-contribution (DC) schemes, where employer contributions of around 3%-8% are typical.

Our life expectancy is not simply our personal responsibility, writes Jennie Popay

Having spent several decades as a researcher in the health equity field, I was irritated to see that well-worn, misleading trope about personal responsibility for poor health being given the oxygen of publicity by the Guardian (At least 80% responsibility for ill health in old age down to individual, study says, 20 May).

The Oxford Longevity Project’s study gave the impression that the main cause of poor health and its unequal distribution is an open question. That is not the case. The weight of evidence accumulated over decades is clear: the primary causes of inequalities in health, driving poorer health for poorer groups, are the material conditions in which people are born, live, work and grow old. It is growing inequalities in access to material resources, power and privilege, not irresponsible behaviours, which have created a 20-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the most and least advantaged groups in the UK.

Jeremy Morgan KC describes an encounter between a drug pusher and the late Anthony Clarke

I was sad to read of the death of the senior judge Lord Clarke of Stone-cum-Ebony (Obituary, 27 April) and even sadder to learn that he had suffered from Alzheimer’s. Your readers might be interested in an incident that shows the essential humanity of the man.

When he was master of the rolls, he was invited to a dinner by the Manchester Law Society. On his way back to the hotel after the dinner, he was accosted by a man who emerged from the shadows and asked: “Would you like some speed, or some coke?”

Daunted by Proust or Joyce? Letters from Ian Arnott, Mike Bromberg and Andrew Keeley on giving up on a long read

Dave Patten says Proust’s In Search of Lost Time was unreadable (Letters 22 May). When I was a student of French in the 1970s I attempted to read it in French, but gave up after volume one. The only person I knew who had read it all in the original French was one of our lecturers who told us he had done it to pass the time one long summer vacation when he was laid up with gout. À chacun son gout, I suppose.
Ian Arnott
Peterborough

• I got no further than the first volume of In Search of Lost Time. It is surely no coincidence that the widely quoted incident with the madeleines occurs in that volume. Does anything of note happen later?
Mike Bromberg
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire

• Gauff was filmed letting off steam in private area

• French Open champion begins defence with 6-4, 6-0 win

Coco Gauff said she did not receive an apology or response from the Australian Open after she was broadcast letting off steam by breaking a racket in a private area after her quarter-final loss in January.

“I mean, I didn’t get anything from my email that I know of,” Gauff said, smiling. “I know that WTA sent something, but obviously they’re different from the grand slams, just them wanting to reiterate and that they are going to talk to the slams about different private areas and things like that.”

• Palace were demoted to Conference League by Uefa

• Wednesday night’s final in Leipzig is Glasner’s last game

Oliver Glasner has urged Crystal Palace to win the Conference League final so they can take up the Europa League place denied them this season after they fell foul of Uefa’s multi-club ownership rules.

Last year’s FA Cup winners were demoted to the Conference League after Uefa deemed John Textor had a controlling interest in Palace and Lyon, who had also qualified for the secondary competition. The south London club will face Rayo Vallecano in Leipzig on Wednesday night at the end of their first European campaign in Glasner’s last match.

Who was the best player, and why is it not Harry Kane? Which loanee is already a superstar? And who bottled it?

A hearty pat on the back to Hoffenheim, the unexpected and unfancied top-four gatecrashers who ultimately couldn’t quite hold on. This season has been all about Bayern, though, and not just in the normal they-always-win-it way. To call them the most beloved Bayern team in a generation would be overcooking it – the club will never be universally loved, and fair enough – but Vincent Kompany’s team were not just a behemoth but an absolute joy to watch, not only irresistible but endlessly entertaining, with Harry Kane and Michael Olise as ingenious as they were consistent. So much of the club’s change of image, as a team at least, is down to Kompany, a humble and emotionally intelligent coach who gives Bayern all the regal flow of their best teams down the years – but with added humility.

• ‘Not the version of Phil Foden we saw two years ago’

• Chief executive says game being damaged by demands

Phil Foden and Cole Palmer missed out on this summer’s World Cup because they have been overworked, according to the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association.

Maheta Molango was speaking as new data showed that seven of the 10 players involved in the most games across Europe’s top leagues this season were at English clubs.

• Two-time Ballon d’Or winner departs at end of contract

• London City one of many clubs interested in midfielder

Barcelona have announced the exit of their talismanic captain, Alexia Putellas, after the expiration of the two-time Ballon d’Or winner’s contract at the end of the season.

The 32-year-old, who was born in Mollet del Vallès, just north of Barcelona, spent 14 years at the Catalan club making 507 appearances and scoring a record 233 goals after joining from Levante in 2012 aged 18.

Our cartoonist reflects on the Gunners ending their 22-year existential crisis to become English champions again

• Buy a Squires cartoon | David’s favourite works of 2025

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• Dane collects fourth stage victory of this year’s race

• Gall comes in second, with Hindley in third place

Jonas Vingegaard underlined his dominance on uphill finishes at the Giro d’Italia, launching a solo attack on the climb to Carì to claim victory on stage 16. It was the Dane’s fourth stage win of the race and further tightened his hold on the leader’s jersey, with overall honours now looking increasingly assured.

On Monday’s rest day, Vingegaard declared his desire to win a stage while wearing the pink jersey, and quickly followed up that promise in Switzerland on the 113km ride from Bellinzona. His lead at the top is now more than four minutes.

Race had wide implications for Trump’s strength heading into midterms, where Paxton will face Democratic candidate James Talarico

Ken Paxton, the Donald Trump-backed Texas attorney general, triumphed over incumbent John Cornyn in the Republican primary runoff for senator. His victory signals that even a scandal-plagued candidate can win over the deep red state with the support of the president.

“After a public service career lasting more than four decades and 18 consecutive campaign wins, tonight we’ve come up short in this primary runoff,” Cornyn said shortly after the race was called. “I’ve always supported the GOP ticket. I intend to do so again this general election.”

Police officer in charge says budget could reach £19.3m and nearly 100 more investigators are needed

The police criminal inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal faces a five-year delay unless it is handed millions in extra funding and nearly 100 more staff, according to the chief officer in charge.

The Metropolitan police commander Stephen Clayman said he needed to nearly double the number of investigators to 210 to meet a deadline of late next year or early 2028 for submitting files to prosecutors.

Three people have been arrested on suspicion of murder after shooting outside One Four One in the city centre

A woman shot dead outside a bar in Sheffield was an innocent bystander, police say.

Officers were called to the scene outside the One Four One bar on West Street in in the city centre at 2.45am on Monday after reports of a shooting.

Russell Group university promises students, from chemical engineering to classics, ‘meaningful real-world experience’

A leading UK university is promising work placements to all undergraduates regardless of their degree, to better equip them for the challenges of the job market.

In what appears to be a first for a large Russell Group institution, the University of Manchester is planning to offer “meaningful real-world experience” to all students, in subjects from classics to chemical engineering.

Seamus Maguire believed to have been killed and buried in County Antrim by republican paramilitaries in 1976

Half a century after Seamus Maguire was abducted and became one of the “disappeared” of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, a search for his remains has begun in two acres of County Antrim farmland.

A team of forensic experts started the dig on Tuesday in the Derryclone townland where republican paramilitaries are believed to have killed and secretly buried the 29-year-old in 1976.

The country is positioning itself as Latin America’s next technology hub, but communities are pushing back

The Andes mountains frame what was once a wetland – now a stretch of dry, yellowed grass. Rodrigo Vallejos, a final-year law student, noticed the change five years ago while observing the Quilicura wetland, on the northern outskirts of Santiago. One of Chile’s largest swamps, spanning 468.4 hectares (about 1,200 acres) and partially protected, was drying up right before his eyes.

“What you see here is a wetland without water,” says Vallejos, who has investigated the causes alongside activists from the group Resistencia Socioambiental de Quilicura. “I discovered that Quilicura is home to the largest concentration of datacentres in Latin America.”

Campaign comes as Duchy of Cornwall announces plan to expand small pockets of ancient woodland at two sites

Along a steep-sided valley, with the West Okement River roaring at its floor, the woodland emerges like an oasis in a closely grazed bare landscape.

Squat, tightly clustered, with root systems heavily covered in thick lichens and mosses, the oak trees of Black-a-Tor copse are a tiny surviving cluster of European temperate rainforest dating back to the bronze age.

The EPA said it was cutting Biden-era regulations on Pfas in drinking water, but advocates say the move will harm public health and benefit industry

A new Trump administration plan to ditch Pfas drinking water regulations and instead attempt to destroy “forever chemicals” on a wide scale tears a page from the fossil fuel industry’s carbon capture playbook, and will benefit the industry while harming public health.

The US Environmental Protection Agency last week announced it is moving to kill strong Biden-era drinking water limits around four Pfas compounds, and delaying implementation for two more. It represented a blow to public health – advocates say strong limits and a dramatic cut in the production of the dangerous chemicals are imperative.

Trump campaign accelerating climate crisis as officials move migrants to detention jails and deport them from US

US immigration enforcement flights are producing hundreds of thousands of metric tonnes of climate-damaging carbon emissions as officials shuttle unprecedented numbers of people to detention centers far from home and deport them to countries across the world.

Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign has spurred at least an 80% increase in such flights year over year, accelerating the climate crisis by emitting massive amounts of carbon dioxide, according to data analysis shared exclusively with the Guardian.

Exclusive: Police data shows 21% of the 949 people detained in England and Northern Ireland were later accused of violence against intimate partner

One out of every five people arrested after their participation in the 2024 summer riots has since been reported to the police for domestic abuse, the Guardian can disclose.

Police data released under freedom of information (FoI) laws shows that 21% of 949 people arrested for taking part in the violent disorder have been reported for crimes associated with intimate partner violence since August 2024.

Exclusive: Party expected to focus on Greater Manchester mayoralty election if Burnham returned to parliament

The Greens have decided to devote only limited resources to next month’s Makerfield byelection, the Guardian has learned, in a potentially significant boost to Andy Burnham’s chances of winning the seat.

The party is instead expected to focus more on the byelection for the Greater Manchester mayoralty, which will be triggered if Burnham is returned to parliament, senior Green figures have said.

Scottish National party’s attempt to focus on call for independence referendum overshadowed by embezzlement scandal

The Scottish National party was accused of “embezzling” voters after opposition leaders highlighted the crisis over Peter Murrell’s misuse of £400,000 from party funds.

The scandal over Murrell’s guilty plea on Monday to embezzling £400,310.65 while he was the SNP’s chief executive overshadowed a Holyrood motion tabled by John Swinney to call for a second independence referendum.

South East Water says demand has jumped owing to extreme heat but stops short of compulsory measures

South East Water has asked members of the public to use water only for essential purposes after demand surged on Monday to 100m litres more than average.

After water outages for hundreds of homes across Kent and Sussex over the last three days during record temperatures, the company has asked customers to use water only for drinking, washing and cooking.

Lawsuit filed last year by the ACLU accused Ball State University of violating Suzanne Swierc’s free speech rights

A woman fired by an Indiana university over her Facebook post criticizing far-right commentator Charlie Kirk after he was killed will receive $225,000 to settle a lawsuit that accused her former employer of violating her free speech rights, the woman’s attorneys said on Tuesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union announced the settlement in a federal lawsuit it filed last year on behalf of Suzanne Swierc against the Ball State University president, Geoffrey Mearns.

Three lunar landings are planned for this year in preparation for the construction of a $20bn moon base

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Nasa announced on Tuesday ambitious plans for three uncrewed lunar missions this year to kickstart construction of a $20bn moon base, and said it had chosen the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to conduct the first.

The revelation by Nasa’s administrator, Jared Isaacman, at a press conference in Washington DC marked the first detailed public explanation of how and when the moon base will be built.

Water cannon also used at rally called by Özgür Özel days after court dismissed him as CHP leader

Riot police in Turkey have fired teargas and water cannon to break up a rally called by the ousted opposition leader Özgür Özel days after a court dismissed him from office.

On Sunday, riot police had battered their way into the main opposition CHP’s headquarters in the capital, Ankara, firing teargas and beating party members before throwing them out, Özel said.

Russia says arrest of Bishop Hilarion, who heads Orthodox congregation in Karlovy Vary, was politically motivated ‘setup’

Czech police have released a Russian Orthodox bishop who was detained on suspicion of drug possession, after Moscow condemned the arrest as a politically motivated setup.

Bishop Hilarion, also known by his secular name, Grigory Alfeyev, was stopped by police on Sunday in Karlovy Vary, a spa town in western Czechia popular with Russian tourists, after officers discovered containers of a white substance in the boot of his car.

Some analysts question whether design of Luce, starting at $640,000, lives up to sportscar brand’s heritage

Ferrari’s share price has dropped after it revealed a long-awaited first electric vehicle, with a minimalist look created by the former Apple design chief Jony Ive that departs from the Italian manufacturer’s petrol sportscars.

The Luce, starting at $640,000 (£545,000), has a range of 329 miles (530km) thanks to its battery capacity of 122 kilowatt hours, the company said, with four motors that can accelerate from 0 to 100km/h in 2.5 seconds, with a top speed of more than 310km/h (193mph).

Jonathan Andic says he is temporarily standing aside as vice-chair of fashion chain after being named a suspect in death of Isak Andic

Jonathan Andic, son of the Mango founder Isak Andic, is stepping down temporarily as the fashion group’s vice-chair after being named a suspect in the investigation into his father’s death.

In an open letter published on Tuesday, Andic strongly protested his innocence, saying the accusation bore “no relation to reality”, but that “dismantling it” would take a long time.

Oil company is FTSE’s biggest faller as chair departs immediately after only eight months in the role

BP has removed its chair, Albert Manifold, with the oil company’s board saying it had serious concerns about “important governance standards, oversight and conduct”.

The FTSE 100 company announced Manifold’s departure with immediate effect on Tuesday, without giving further details. He had lasted only eight months in the role.

Prediction sites, which allow bets on all topics from weather to politics, may be in breach of country’s rules

Spain’s ministry of consumer rights has blocked access to Polymarket and Kalshi while it investigates whether the leading prediction market sites are violating Spanish law by operating without a gambling licence.

On Tuesday the ministry said it had launched disciplinary proceedings against the two platforms, which allow users to bet on everything from the weather to political events, amid allegations that they lacked the “necessary administrative authorisation” to operate in Spain.

Now in residence at the Madrid Prado, the author talks about its dark, inspirational Goyas, the clandestine nature of her writing – and why she finally wrote about her jailed then posthumously exonerated father

It is a bright, chilly spring morning in Madrid, and the Museo del Prado doesn’t open to the public for another hour. Without the crowds, the museum is amorphous and eerily silent. A pale light pools in the corners and casts long shadows around the paintings, as if the figures inside them have slipped quietly into the room. It is here that I meet the French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, who has spent the past two weeks using the space as inspiration for her work.

With quick strides, Slimani leads us to a basement gallery housing some of her favourite works: Francisco Goya’s dark and haunting Black Paintings, created later in life when the Spanish artist had adopted a particularly bleak outlook on humanity. Among them are Saturn Devouring His Son, a violent depiction of the god biting into his own child; The Fates, with its three ominous figures spinning the thread of life; and Witches’ Sabbath (The Great He-Goat), in which the devil appears as a goat presiding over a coven.

Penises, vaginas and breasts abound in the Indian painter’s work. As the son of a Hindu priest, he says his orgasmic scenes give us a way to consider religion

T Venkanna’s paintings land like a sucker-punch. At the centre of his first institutional solo show is an overbearing altarpiece, modified by two squat side panels to take the overall shape of a juvenile dick drawing. Perched at the bottom, on either side, are Adam and Eve. Their backs are turned as they look out on an orgasmic thicket of desire. A female figure is pleasured by another’s nose, someone copulates with the hindquarters of an animal and others fondle in a kaleidoscopic blur of colours and styles that make Hieronymus Bosch look restrained.

But carnal enjoyment is merely the footnote. “It is a way to consider many things, including the myth of religions,” says Venkanna. Scattered within this longing landscape are stony figures redolent of India’s pantheon of gods and goddesses. Women worship a topiary lingam – the aniconic depiction of Shiva – and a man caresses a statuesque woman’s breast (while drinking from her vagina). Graphic? “That is what you see in ancient temples,” says Venkanna. “People touch the breasts of sculptures so that over time they become very smooth and shiny.”

All smoke, shady dames and black and white cinematography, Marvel’s latest Spidey offering is fast, witty and confident

As is increasingly, wearyingly, the case as the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to expand/bloat/chase the dollar in an ever-more unseemly and less rewarding manner – delete according to taste – Prime Video’s new series, Spider-Noir, requires you to set aside some lore while retaining other bits. Thus I should point out that the arachno-inflected human being brought to you here is played by Nicolas Cage but is not the spider character that he played in 2018’s Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse, although he sounds a lot alike. That one was called Peter Parker, as is traditional. This one’s called Ben Reilly. Why you would still cast one of the most divisively idiosyncratic performers in modern cinematic history – who can no more be dissociated from any of his previous parts by the average human brain than the concept of sourness can be uncoupled from a lemon, sweetness from honey, or Nigel Farage’s face from that of a melting frog’s – is beyond me, but I guess … that’s Hollywood?

As the title suggests, Spider-Noir has been conceived as a homage to the hard-boiled films and fictions of the 1940s. The whole thing was filmed in black and white and digitally colourised thereafter, so that viewers can choose in which form they want to watch it. I look forward to online wars breaking out over this issue, upon which I shall remain Switzerland. Except to say that the decision to colourise a noir homage was a craven one in the first place – never give the people what they want! – and the decision to watch such a version is worse.

In the documentary Ask E Jean, the journalist and author provides an unflinching account of her life, career and groundbreaking legal victories

“If you were concerned about being dragged through the mud,” asks lawyer Alina Habba, “Why would you choose to sue Donald Trump?”

Calm and composed, E Jean Carroll removes her glasses and replies firmly: “Because he called me a liar. He called me a liar. And I couldn’t let it stand.”

This Razzie-nominated romcom contains genuine movie magic, with its star delivering a restrained performance as an affable man who inherits $40bn

Adam Sandler has long been the Razzies’ punching bag. In 2012 he famously swept every category at the 32nd Golden Raspberry awards for Jack and Jill, in which Sandler plays both eponymous characters. Almost a decade earlier, at the 2003 ceremony, the director Steven Brill’s Mr Deeds – starring Sandler – was nominated for worst remake or sequel. Though it ultimately lost to Guy Ritchie’s Swept Away, the nomination suggested a dim view of the film’s attempts to renovate the original – the 1936 Mr Deeds Goes to Town, directed by the indomitable, six-time Oscar-winning Frank Capra – as well as Sandler’s performance in it.

Though Mr Deeds isn’t Sandler’s most popular or critically acclaimed film, it is an endearing watch, and not so far removed from the hallowed image of Capra’s original.

A behind-the-scenes second world war drama focused on the importance of weather is too stodgy and repetitive to work as anything but a so-so TV movie

In a world of increasingly segmented audiences, the new movie Pressure cleverly brings together two adjacent demographics: weather dads and history dads. Those designations are honorifics, not gender-essentialist; spiritually dad-curious people of all ages (but, let’s be real: mostly over 50) may be interested in a behind-the-scenes story set in the last few days leading up to the allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Because this is the largest-scale seaborne invasion ever mounted, weather is a major factor, and the movie follows military higher-ups as they work around the clock trying to figure out whether a possible incoming storm will create unfavorable or impossible conditions.

To put it in contemporary terms, this is essentially a movie about Dwight Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) nervously refreshing his weather app to see if he needs to change his upcoming plans. The weather app is played by Andrew Scott. Scott’s actual character is James Stagg, a somewhat brusque and chilly Scotsman brought in to the D-day planning as the operation’s chief meteorological officer. Stagg quickly clashes with the American Irving Krick (Chris Messina), who knows that D-day is crucial and time is of the essence – and is therefore bullish about (selectively) using past data to “predict” that the storms will quickly pass. Stagg’s analysis is far less optimistic. Anyone who has held tickets to a forecast-dependent outdoor concert will relate.

The presenter meets remarkable public figures, starting with a lovely talk with writer-actor Meera Syal. Plus, a vital deep dive into US supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch

(Warp)
The Scottish electronic duo remain hugely influential – but their new album’s interrogation of religion is dubious, and the drum programming is worse still

This is the first album in 13 years from Boards of Canada, and from the opening notes – an analogue synth rising and falling like a sound effect in a forgotten 1960s radio play – you’re thrust back into one of the most instantly recognisable worlds in electronic music.

From 1995 debut EP Twoism onward, across four LPs and four more EPs, the Scottish duo – brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin – used the heavy gait of classic hip-hop beats to trudge through spectral ambient vistas, like spacemen sent through a time portal while still being tethered to the present. By grabbing samples from old public television and other vintage sources, they looked back at the utopian promise of the mid-20th century, while teasing out the latent kitsch and creepiness of these sounds.

In a collapsing world, artists like Slayyyter and Cobrah are chasing extreme highs with hyperactive music and debauched lyrics. Is their trashy vibe emancipating – or a bit contrived?

If any year demanded a soundtrack of self-aggrandising female mayhem, it’s 2026. Amid the terrors of war, AI and the climate crisis, women are expected to be symbolic vessels of order and stability: thin, beautiful and perpetually 25 – a state of perfection newly available for purchase thanks to weight-loss drugs and the deep plane facelift.

Covered unironically in leopard print and rhinestones, a cohort of young female pop stars are defying this familiar con with brash electronic pop, shamelessly hedonistic lyrics, anarchic sexuality and an obsession with what was once dismissed as “white trash”. It’s an aesthetic embraced by performers such as Slayyyter, Kim Petras, Cobrah, Demi Lovato, Snow Strippers’ Tatiana Schwaninger, Tove Lo and returning scene godmother Kesha.

The five-piece combine traditional musical styles with mountains of synths and hurried drums – rejecting computerised production in a pointed anti-AI statement

From João Pessoa, Brazil
Recommended if you like Hermeto Pascoal, Mr Bungle, King Crimson
Up next Celestial album released 7 August, touring the UK and Europe from 15 August

Thanks in part to its famed music department at the local Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa – the easternmost city in South America – is a hotbed of artists playing different folk styles from all over the continent. Papangu sound like all of them at the same time. The five-piece blend a long list of genres: bossa nova, the circle-dance song ciranda and forró, with its dry-tuned accordion and pulsing rhythm section, plus the more ubiquitous progressive rock and extreme metal. The band’s virtuoso chops and intensity keep their songs from buckling under the weight of those ideas, from the hurried drums to the mountains of synthesisers and pianos.

The polarising translator of the Odyssey and the Iliad sets out her philosophy in this fascinating collection

Emily Wilson’s translations of the Odyssey in 2017 and the Iliad in 2023 are now the standard English-language versions, acclaimed for their conciseness and fluency. Her infatuation with Homer began at the age of eight, when her primary school put on a production of the Odyssey, with her in the role of Athena, and the excitement hasn’t worn off. You can question some of the choices she makes in her translations (she questions them herself), but you can’t doubt the months and years she has spent finding the “least bad” compromises.

Her new book is a series of essays on the challenges of translation and the pleasures and insights to be gained from reading the classics. She is fascinated by how far the ancient world intersects with the modern. Aeschylus, Demosthenes, Catullus and Aristophanes are here but so are Spike Lee, Erica Jong, PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves (a last link to the clever servants in Roman comedy) and Boris Johnson (“an incompetent drunkard” who somehow passed as an intellectual “on the basis of his ability to parrot a few garbled lines of Homeric Greek”). Wealthy white men in Silicon Valley get a look-in, too, for embracing Stoicism (not to be confused with stoicism) in “a watered-down form”. Continuities between then and now pile up: war, cruelty and political turmoil. But there are also important contrasts and she scolds those who look back on antiquity as “a mirror in which we always find ourselves”, even when we’re not there.

Williams follows her prize-winning debut with a gothically overstuffed tale of a cynical young woman in a crumbling university town

Missouri Williams’s darkly absurd and wilfully grotesque debut novel, The Doloriad, concerned itself with the aftermath of a world-shattering catastrophe. Her second takes place in what feels like the beginning of one. The Vivisectors is set in an ancient and unnamed university town – we could call it Oxford or Cambridge, but let’s not – which is rapidly being overwhelmed by vegetation: avenues lined with “orange columns of flamevine and purple bougainvillea”, arches “dripping with wisteria”, the inescapable “stink of a distant magnolia”. A fraternity of mysterious gardeners seek to keep the chaotic foliage in check, but they are hamstrung by a bitter dispute with university officials. Power games and proxy battles ensue. It is a hot summer and decay is rampant: revolution is in the air.

As in recent work by Sophie Mackintosh or Julia Armfield, this verdant backdrop casts an ominous glow over the action, though Williams writes with a singular brand of Ballardian ferocity – she revels in the wretched and the craven. The locus of the novel’s intensity is its narrator, Agathe, an alarmingly cynical young woman. She views everyone she meets as a tragic case, and knows that nothing lies between her and the same sad designation but her ability to see through the stories they’re telling themselves. She rejects self-expression and desire, refusing anything that might compromise her sense of separation and superiority. Her judgments are swift, conclusive and brutal.

A psychologist wades into controversial territory in this counterintuitive study of nature, nurture and gender

According to the evolutionary psychologist Steve Stewart-Williams, almost everyone gets sex wrong. Traditionalists tend to exaggerate the natural differences between men and women. Progressives tend to minimise them, and to assume that nurture and socialisation play a decisive role. He wants to promote a more nuanced, scientifically rigorous public conversation about why and how men and women differ to guide better policymaking.

Some sex differences are relatively pronounced, he claims, such as whether you’re primarily attracted to men or women, upper body strength, height, the likelihood you’ll murder someone and occupational interests. Many, such as ability in maths, or conscientiousness, are much more modest. Such differences are best visualised as two overlapping bell curves. To illustrate this, consider height: the shortest humans are almost all women, the tallest are men, the average man is taller than the average woman, but there is considerable common ground. Knowing that someone is 5ft 8in won’t enable you to guess with any confidence whether they are a man or a woman, for instance.

After visiting an island brothel in Bangladesh, the novelist was inspired to write an imagined uprising. She explores the radical fictional worlds where women have the power

In the spring of 2024, I am finally able to visit Banishanta, the island in southern Bangladesh that has been haunting my dreams. When I arrive I find it is little more than a long patch of grey mud, with a string of flimsy huts lining a craggy shore. Thirteen years earlier, I was on a boat on my way to the Sundarban mangrove forest when a guide casually pointed out the island and told me it was a state-licensed brothel that had been there since the time of the British.

When I went home, I didn’t want to think about Banishanta, because if I did, I would have to imagine the terrible things the women there were enduring while I lived a life of casual entitlements many thousands of miles away. Yet the women squatted in my imagination, refusing to leave. I resolved to never write about them, because it would say things about the world I didn’t want to know. It was only when I decided I could write a novel, set on a fictional island, about a rebellion of women, that I allowed them in.

PC, Xbox, PlayStation 5; IO Interactive
The stealth masters behind Hitman go loud for this game about Bond’s brilliant beginnings

Given that we’ve not had a great James Bond video game in decades – or any Bond film at all in five years – there’s a lot of pressure on 007 First Light to reinvigorate a British cinematic hero. But developer IO Interactive has been auditioning for this role for some time. It’s there in the globetrotting nature of its Hitman assassination games, starring a besuited hero who knows how to turn a soiree to his deadly purpose; then there’s the developer’s evident eye for corporate opulence and brutalist architecture. Even their in-house game engine, Glacier, sounds like a secret codename cooked up in a Bond villain’s lair. All it would take is a slight shift in Hitman’s moral compass – more old boys club, fewer old boys clubbed – to turn IO’s familiar series into a Bond game with minimal fuss.

007 First Light refuses that easy route. We join young Bond in his pre-00 days, as a petulant, belligerent rule-breaking trainee. Actor Patrick Gibson begins as a cookie-cutter insubordinate, but warms to the role once he’s bouncing off M (herself a green leader looking to make her mark), and an enjoyably urbane Q who drops the frustrated quartermaster routine and introduces Bond to the wonders of vinyl. A scene where he teaches our agent to tie a bow tie is a perfect bit of prequelcraft: arriving at an iconic look through a lovely character touch.

Driving sims were overtaken by open world fantasy adventures, but new upgrades show how much joy there is in the genre

I have spent the last week careening around Japan in a Porsche 911, seeing the sights, racing other cars and occasionally veering off the road to plummet through an ancient bamboo forest. You all know what’s coming next … this wasn’t in real life, folks – it was in Forza Horizon 6, the latest instalment in Microsoft’s series of open world driving games set in authentic-looking, real-world locations.

Reviewing this game (which is out now on Xbox and PC, and coming to PS5 later in the year) has reminded me of the sheer fun and exhilaration that driving games can provide. It’s easy to forget, but this was the biggest genre in town from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Consoles were sold on how good their racing games were: the original PlayStation had Ridge Racer, the Sega Saturn had Daytona USA. Later came the dirt-track thrills of Colin McRae Rally, the chaotic destruction of Burnout, the sophisticated realism of Gran Turismo. They were the bestsellers of the era, showcasing the future of real-time 3D visuals.

Why are Nintendo releasing a straight-up remake of the space-flight shooter – with many of its original limitations – rather than a fresh new take?

The Nintendo 64 was not my first video game console, but it was my formative one. Getting to grips with 3D movement in Super Mario 64 with that weird three-pronged controller is one of my most visceral childhood memories; the long, long wait for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the background noise to a huge chunk of my youth. But back in the 1990s (in the UK at least), it felt as if nobody had an N64. When everybody had a PlayStation instead, I felt I was the only kid in my whole city who cared more about Banjo-Kazooie than Crash Bandicoot.

If even Zelda seemed comparatively niche in Europe in the 90s, Lylat Wars (known elsewhere as Star Fox 64) was a real deep cut. It’s a 1997 space-flight shooter starring Fox McCloud and his squad of animal pilots laser-blasting across different planets in nimble crafts called Arwings. I played this game to absolute death in 1998, when I got it for my birthday alongside the fabled Rumble Pak, which made your controller vibrate and shudder whenever something cool was happening on screen (fun fact: Lylat Wars was the first console game to feature controller rumble). But I really hadn’t thought about it much since. Then, last week, Nintendo announced a Switch 2 remake.

Microsoft; PC, Xbox Series X/S (PS5 due later)
Dreamy vistas of the country’s natural beauties are stunningly delivered – but won’t distract from thrilling high-end driving adventures

The Forza Horizon games have always been about drama. Not just the tension and excitement of racing, but also the sensory impact of the natural environment – the sun rising over a dense city, rain clouds hovering above a valley floor. There are moments in this game – perhaps after emerging from a dense forest, or coming up from an underpass – where Mount Fuji briefly appears in the distance, hazy yet majestic, the Platonic ideal of a volcano – and it almost takes your breath away. Fans of this series have been waiting years for Japan and now here it is, the whole country, reduced, remixed and repackaged as a driving paradise.

In many ways, Forza Horizon 6 is a continuation of what this series has always been about. You enter a festival-style driving competition then drive around a vast map splattered with various races and challenges, earning reputation by competing well and buying new vehicles for your extensive garage. There are slight changes this time – you start as a rookie not an established legend, so you have to qualify to enter the festival, and Playground has re-introduced the need to unlock successive levels of competition bringing back the sense of progression from the earliest titles in the series. You start out clattering about in slower C-class vehicles on easier circuits and have to work hard to start lining up against super cars such as the Ferrari J50 or Lamborghini Huracán.

Wigmore Hall, London
The veteran chamber music venue kicked off a celebratory two-week festival with a starry lineup of performers playing works that had featured on the first ever programme

In May 1901, Wigmore Hall’s inaugural concert began, of course, with God Save the King – the words sounding novel to an audience who, until a few months earlier, had been singing it for Queen Victoria. The programme continued with a starry lineup including the composer and piano virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni performing Beethoven and the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe playing unaccompanied Bach. A partial recreation of that evening kicked off the hall’s fortnight of celebrations of its 125th birthday, and once the national anthem was out of the way - dispatched from the platform by soprano Louise Alder and pianist Joseph Middleton – it felt less like a historical exercise than a celebration of what this venue has always been good at.

The concert was billed as a gala but was less formal, shorter and tighter than that might have suggested, partly thanks to being broadcast live: no indulgent speeches, just short links from Radio 3’s Ian Skelly filling us in on the venue’s history. The hall was originally built in 1901 by Bechstein, the piano manufacturer, whose showrooms were next door on Wigmore Street, and was intended as a place where audiences could hear the finest pianists of the day showcasing the company’s instruments.

Sadler’s Wells, London
The late choreographer heightens Ophelia and Gertrude’s stories yet squanders some speeches in an intense hour

Words, words, words. Can Hamlet retain its tragic force without using most of them? This hour-long dance-theatre remix by the late South African choreographer Dada Masilo preserves few speeches and its opening is not auspicious, crashing straight into “To be, or not to be” shorn of context and characterisation.

There follows, as is customary, a meeting between the prince and Ophelia, but Masilo replaces the usual cruel encounter with stolen moments amid a ceremony, as if they are meeting anew like Romeo and Juliet at the Capulet ball. Matching each other’s movements, amid clapped hands, thrusting shoulders and rippling chests, they grow closer with a hint of tango footwork. From this flashback, Masilo practically fast-forwards their choreography with a sense of doom.

Mercury theatre, Colchester
This musical from the company behind The Play That Goes Wrong unearths the invention of acting in ancient Greece – and finds little has changed

The Mischief theatre company has been making fun of actors’ foibles for years, especially in the deliriously amusing Goes Wrong series. Its first musical asks if all those rampaging egos, heated rivalries, creative differences and hammy activities can be dated back to the world’s very first acting troupe. Did the proto-thespians in ancient Greece contend with one-star reviews and attract superfans? Maybe they even played Zip, Zap, Boing and over-dwelled on their motivations?

Little is known about the real Thespis, father of tragedy in the sixth century BC. Co-writers and lyricists Jonathan Sayer and Ed Zanders introduce him on the drought-plighted island of Ikaria and chart his odyssey to Athens, where he competes in a Eurovision-style prayer competition at the whim of a merciless tyrant and ends up founding the art of acting with his pals. Opa!

Touring until 18 July

Museum of Homelessness, London
This mostly alfresco exhibition expertly unpicks how homeless and nomadic people have been persecuted over the centuries

A trim caravan sits in an idyllic garden in the grounds of a former gatehouse. Its cosy interior is decked with a cornucopia of crafts: pastel-coloured bunting, felt embroidery, a bright rag rug, plumply immaculate cushions. On the sideboard is a small display of pristine china. It feels like a glamping retreat or a chi-chi refuge from the Chelsea flower show.

But look more closely at the china, and you’ll see that it’s decorated with Sun newspaper headlines venomously fulminating against Gypsy and Traveller encampments. “STAMP ON THE CAMPS” screams one. Another depicts a blazing caravan from the infamous 2011 Dale Farm eviction, which ended a 10-year standoff between Basildon council and Traveller families, who had bought a former scrap yard on green belt land and set up their caravans on it.

Classic starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing will include footage censors decided was too gruesome

Hammer Films’ horror masterpiece Dracula is to be rereleased in UK cinemas in October, including footage believed to have been lost for more than six decades after it was deemed too gruesome for audiences.

The 1958 movie starring Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing as Doctor Van Helsing has been fully restored in 4K.

Rafe Spall will play Conan Doyle’s super sleuth in a huge new drama next year. While some fans fear ‘Sherlock fatigue’, others – including Stephen Moffat – insist he will always make great telly

In 1893, in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes’s older brother, Mycroft. Meeting Dr Watson for the first time, Mycroft shakes his hand and sighs: “I hear of Sherlock everywhere since you became his chronicler.”

Spare a thought for the rest of us, Mycroft. More than a century later, Sherlock Holmes has achieved a level of near-ubiquity that would alarm even the great detective himself – spawning ever more elaborate spin-offs that stretch his life backwards, forwards and sideways.

The British-born maestro will replace Gustavo Dudamel as the orchestra’s chief conductor

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has announced that Daniel Harding is to be its next music director.

The UK-born Harding, 50, will begin his tenure in the 2027/28 season, with an initial contract for six years. Gustavo Dudamel, the orchestra’s music director since 2009, leaves the role in August 2026 – the Venezuelan conductor is heading east to become music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, but he will retain close connections with the Los Angeles orchestra as its artistic and cultural laureate.

A lack of confidence can prevent us from trying new things or going after what we want – but it’s never too late to change our beliefs

When I was in middle school, my father told me 80% of how people see you is how you see yourself. This was terrible news at the time, because I was deep in the depths of puberty, self-loathing and figuring out how to part my hair.

Though he pulled that number out of thin air, in the intervening years I’ve found he was on to something – projecting confidence can sometimes be the key to success, professionally and personally. But how does one actually cultivate confidence? And what if our understanding of what confidence is skewed?

From South Carolina to Dorset, Australia to the Costa del Sol, beachgoers are complaining that oversized canopies, parasols and gazebos are spoiling their day out. And they’re not going to take it lying down

Name: Shade wars.

Age: In this instance, quite new.

Whether it’s giving florals a twist or wearing a rented number, here are our top tips for decoding the dress code

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The invitation thumps on to your doormat – or, as likely, into your inbox – and rather than feel excitement for the ensuing nuptials, you feel dread. What on earth to wear?

Weddings are full of sartorial pitfalls. If there’s no dress code, the limitless options can feel daunting; if there is, it can feel a different kind of daunting, but with a useful guide to prevent you from feeling overwhelmed.

As temperatures soar across the UK, chill your space – and avoid energy-guzzling aircon – with our pick of the best fans, from tower to desk to bladeless

• The best portable neck and handheld fans

Our world is getting hotter. Summer heatwaves are so frequent, they’re stretching the bounds of what we think of as summer. Hot-and-bothered home working and sweaty, sleepless nights are now alarmingly common.

Get a good fan and you can dodge the temptation of air conditioning. Aircon is incredibly effective, but it uses a lot of electricity … and burning fossil fuels is how we got into this mess in the first place. Save money and carbon by opting for a great fan instead.

Best fan overall:
AirCraft Lume

Best budget fan and best desk fan:
Devola desk fan – stock expected at end of May

Secateurs, pizza ovens and sparkling rose in a tin … whatever your plans for the long weekend, here’s how to make the most of it

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Reasons to be cheerful #271: a warm, sunny bank holiday weekend. Here at the Filter, we need no excuse to kick off our shoes, grab a cold drink (and some SPF) and head outside.

To help you make the most of the long weekend, we’ve rounded up some of our favourite things. Whether it’s tools to spruce up your outdoor space, tipples to sip in the garden, a fake tan to jump-start your summer skin or fashion for warmer weather, summer starts here.

From luxury Simba and Otty mattresses to brilliant budget buys, here’s what we recommend – and how to know if you’ve found a good deal

• The best mattresses for back pain
• The best mattress toppers, tested

A good mattress improves your sleep, say mattress makers – and they would, wouldn’t they? But they’re right. The older I get, the more I know it. When I was 20, I could sleep anywhere: a friend’s floor, a sofa – even a phone box one night. These days, I won’t get a single one of 40 winks if I’m not lying on a decent mattress. Comfy but firm, cosy but breathable, and with lots of cool spots for my feet.

Today’s best mattresses promise all this and more. Pocket springs are still around, but they face stiff – well, medium-firm – competition from hybrid mattresses that combine springs and memory foam for the ideal balance of comfort and support.

Best mattress overall:
Otty Original Hybrid

Well, maybe not quite a thousand, but when life gives you bald lemons, make lemon ice cubes or indeed any of these super suggestions from our panel of lemonheads

I regularly use lemon zest, but the result is that I often have two or three bald lemons hanging around going mouldy. What can I do with them?
Bel, by email
“We use a lot of zest and peel in our cooking at the restaurant,” sympathises Chris Shaw of Toklas in London, “so we also end up with a load of peeled lemons.” Not that that’s a hardship, mind, because no matter what you’re making, you’re almost always going to need acid in some shape or form. As Jad Youssef, author of Lebnani, says: “If something’s flat, lemon juice is usually the fix. In Lebanon, we always have cut lemons on the table, ready to squeeze over pretty much every meal.”

To be a bit more specific, though, Bel’s first port of call might be dressings, particularly at prime salad time. “Whisk the juice with olive oil, a pinch of salt, maybe a bit of garlic, and a drizzle of pomegranate molasses,” Youssef says. That would then mingle nicely with all manner of things: tomatoes, radishes, cucumber, or grilled courgette or aubergine.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

A fresh, fragrant tart and a vibrant, crunchy salad to accompany it – flavours of the season, and of home

The first taste of English asparagus always feels like a quiet celebration, and those fresh, green spears snap with promise after the long winter. That same thrill echoes in the hills of Palestine, where foraging for wild asparagus becomes a small adventure. Eyes scan the ground for slender shoots hiding among thorns, and each find is a victory. At home in the UK, however, I’m obsessed with encasing them in pastry and turning the season’s simplest treasure into a showstopper. I like to serve that with fattoush, and I can’t help but groan whenever I think of my mum’s one; nothing quite matches that comforting bowl with its tangy buttermilk dressing. It’s the version I grew up on, and it’s the one still made across our family. This take has its own charm, though: vibrant, crunchy, herby, and full of tomatoes, cucumbers and toasted pitta.

Simple and spicy, this dish is adaptable enough to become a firm favourite with all the family – and it will fill lunchboxes the next day, too

This is one of those rare dishes that I can make both for us and for the children – reserving the kimchi topping and chilli peanuts for the adults, of course. I also like to add the kimchi just before serving for freshness (this helps to keep all the good stuff in it from deactivating, too). Leftovers are excellent in lunchboxes the next day, so it’s well worth making the full quantity and popping the excess in the fridge.

Two recipes that transform lunch or dinner from simple pleasures into magic moments

Every day, no matter what it brings with it, gives us at least three opportunities to clock out and have a moment of pure bliss. We’re talking about breakfast, lunch and dinner, of course, and we’re not factoring in snacks and tea time, either, because those are bonus opportunities. It doesn’t need to be complicated, it doesn’t need to be a big ceremony; in fact, most days, it’s the humble little treats, the simple, delicious things, that bring us the most happiness. Honey & Co. Daily is our cafe in Bloomsbury, central London, and now also the name of our latest cookbook, and we want both of them to be a haven, a place where you can go to get a simple, delicious moment.

The practice is not entirely serious – but it raises awareness of the many sexist tropes built into everyday life

When Tori Dunlap writes a letter or email to a heterosexual couple, she puts the woman’s name first in the greeting. When her good friend got married, Dunlap waited until the name-change documents were officially signed to update her surname in her phone contact. These tiny rebellions are not activism. They are “microfeminisms”, or what Dunlap, 31, describes as “little actions for women’s equality, as opposed to going to a protest or donating to a cause you believe in”.

Dunlap, a Seattle-based author and podcast host who focuses on promoting women’s financial literacy, posted on TikTok last year asking her 2.4 million followers: “Tell me your most unhinged way that you practice microfeminism.” The comments section filled with niche – and not entirely serious – answers, such as starting every work presentation by saying “hello ladies and sons of ladies” and “immediately assuming men are talking about women’s sports instead of men’s”.

Mindfully curated possessions evoke the most potent memories of those who have gone. Two specific objects bring me particular comfort – though I never stop too much to ponder why

Sometimes it seems like my world is inhabited by ghosts, such are the remnants and reminders of past lives all around me.

The dead dogs are everywhere. On a coatrack on the hallway wall just near the front door outside my study hang their sun-bleached and harbour-rusted collars and leads, memorial stalactites to much-loved animals who’ve never really left us. Their tags are clipped on the fridge and one is screwed into the tree in the back yard under which its wearer is buried.

This fluffy menace was harder work than either of our babies. But she did show us how to nurture a creature you can’t reason with

Tilly wasn’t our first choice: my wife and I had fallen for a grey lop-eared charmer in a local shop who was unexpectedly pulled from sale. But we were now determined to acquire a rabbit, so we traipsed from store to store around south-west London, until we saw this tiny ball of brown and white fluff. Suddenly we could imagine no other bunny.

Tilly was many things. When our landlord was around, she was at a friend’s. To the kale producers of Britain, she was a lifeline. To us, she was affectionate, but with a strong sense of personal space – you could tell when she wanted to be touched and when she did not.

When Lucia’s libido dropped, she found imaginative ways to reignite her spark with Edwin

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

I felt guilty because I love him and want to make him happy

Finance podcaster Jannese Torres says even finding an extra $50 to $100 a month can put kids on a path to future financial stability

• A finance coach unpacks how she retired at 40 – and the money advice she finds ‘irresponsible’

Growing up, Jannese Torres only saw the men in her family making financial decisions.

“The women managed the day-to-day budget and made sure all the bills got paid, but the men were the ones who had the ‘grown-up’ conversations,” she said. Financial products were something to be feared – her parents had gone into credit card debt in their 20s, forcing them to file for bankruptcy.

The tax office is quick to demand money owed and threatens fines, but is slow when giving refunds

When my mother died, there was a four-year delay in achieving probate owing to financial complexities. During this time my father paid inheritance tax (IHT) on the advice of his solicitor, to prevent interest accruing.

It turned out that the solicitor’s estimate of the amount was wildly out.

Errors and delays in tracing accounts at the trusted savings institution have compounded the stress of relatives losing loved ones

“It has been more than a year of hell,” says Kate Constable about the time it took to claim £46,000 in premium bonds belonging to her late mother.

The process was drawn out because National Savings and Investments (NS&I) rules mean anyone claiming a savings pot of more than £5,000 must obtain probate first.

The uncertain interest rate outlook is making tracker deals popular again. We look at the pros and cons of both types of loan

With some experts warning that we may have to brace ourselves for interest rate rises later this year, it might seem odd to suggest considering a tracker mortgage.

But, amid the economic chaos caused by the Iran war, for some people looking for a home loan or to remortgage, a tracker – where the rate you pay moves up or down in line with the Bank of England base rate – could be a good bet.

Without strong evidence, or at least one decent trial, we cannot know whether shining red lights on to your skin does anything

• Read more in the Antiviral series

The world of wellness is constantly expanding. There are new fads coming out almost every week, from the weird new mushroom powders that are suddenly essential for everyone’s health to the newest diet that is supposed to shave kilograms off your figure. It’s a quagmire of unproven, disproven and almost certainly ineffective things that grows every day.

But one mainstay is red light therapy. While red lights are seeing a massive renewed surge in popularity – it’s hard to go on TikTok or Instagram without being assaulted by at least one very confusing video of a person wearing what appears to be a horror mask shining red light on their face – they’ve been around for quite some time. You can find people discussing red light and its possible benefits all the way back to the 1990s.

The supplement is a proven sports performance enhancer, but research is ongoing and for most people it’s an optional extra, not an essential

Once the preserve of bodybuilders and sprinters, creatine is now being touted as everything from a brain booster to a healthy-ageing essential. But should we all be taking it? Not quite.

“There’s really substantial evidence of creatine being effective,” says Bethan Crouse, a sports nutritionist at Loughborough University. “From a sport perspective, it’s probably one of the more well-researched supplements in terms of actually having a performance impact.”

If I’d been taught this way of thinking as a child, I can’t begin to imagine how much easier things could have been

In 1981 the CD was born and so was I. Both arrivals were surprising and have drifted in and out of fashion ever since. As a baby, my majestic “chonk lord” status was cause for celebration and an indication of prosperity. But from a young age I noticed that my presence seemed to offend other people. When I was seven, I remember asking to have a go at skipping, after having turned the rope for everyone else. One child enlightened me on why I couldn’t: I was too fat to skip.

Children learn hierarchy from adults and then their peers. Who belongs, who doesn’t and why. My classmates learned from adults to see me as something to mock and despise. Even my own well-meaning father once sat me down and told me that nobody would love, trust or employ me due to my body shape. This didn’t shock me; I’d already picked up what everyone was putting down.

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Guardian Australia joins ultrarunner Joanne Walker in an excruciating race through the Blue Mountains, where men outnumber women four to one

Somewhere before the finish line the body starts to break down, Joanne Walker says.

“The pain starts in your feet but before long it moves up to your knees and eventually you feel like you just can’t move your legs any more.”

After 30 hours with no sleep, running alone through the cold darkness of the Megalong Valley, the brain can break as well.

“At one point, I did not even know where I was going; I was swerving all over the shop,” she says.

As La Croisette closes for another year, here are the most memorable looks from its final week

Growing numbers of people are seeking improbable cosmetic surgery based on chatbots’ recommendations

Plastic surgeons are increasingly concerned about the rise of “AI face”, as more and more clients arrive in their offices with unrealistic AI-generated visions of what they want to look like.

Dr Nora Nugent, a cosmetic surgeon from Tunbridge Wells, has seen this first hand. Clients have started coming to her office with photos of themselves beautified by AI and a false expectation that those results are achievable with surgery. She is also the president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, and says many colleagues are having similar experiences.

Does Puerto Rican star’s debut collection for Zara spell the end of short shorts?

Men can breathe a huge sigh of relief this week, thanks to Bad Bunny, whose debut collection for fast fashion company Zara includes a pair of shockingly normal mid-thigh shorts.

While for the last few years, short-shorts have threatened to make every day a leg day, the sight of the Puerto Rican star wearing shorts that come comfortably to within a few inches of the knee will signal a welcome shift for many.

Take your lead from Harry Styles and go for short shorts, or dig out your favourite knee-length pair

Forget queuing at the Louvre or the Uffizi. You’ll find a fresh perspective on everything from medieval to modern art in places like Lille, Verona and Zurich

Zurich may be known as a financial centre, but it has a creative side, too. The Kunsthaus Zürich became the biggest art gallery in the country when its David Chipperfield-designed extension opened in 2021. Its collection spans 800 years of art, and includes old masters, Swiss artists such as Giacometti, works by Monet, Cézanne, Picasso, Van Gogh and Warhol, and contemporary artists.

Travellers warned to beware of debit card cons after one was charged £1,500 for a kebab and another £3,000 for corn on the cob

When Lisa Selby* used her debit card to pay for two slices of barbecued cheese from a beach vendor in Rio de Janeiro, she expected to pay 40 reais (£5.90) for the snack.

But shortly after the payment had gone through, she realised that she had been charged 4,000 reais (£590) after the vendor added two extra zeros to the card reader.

The reopened Train de Merveilles route takes passengers from the glamour of Nice to a grandiose alpine landscape

Nine-thirty on a sunny Tuesday morning, and the platforms at Nice-Ville station are buzzing. Office workers nudge their way past backpackers, passengers clamber on to trains heading east to Monaco and Italy, or west to Antibes and Cannes. My husband and I, however, are heading away from the glittering coastline and boarding the Train des Merveilles (Train of Wonders) into the Alpes-Azur mountains.

Back on track last December after a programme of major works closed the line for a year, it’s one of the most spectacular train routes in Europe, a two-hour journey that climbs 1,000 metres in 100km, linking Nice with the medieval town of Tende, surrounded by the soaring peaks of the Mercantour national park.

Woman argued water was a universal human right but court ruled no law obliged hoteliers to serve it from taps

A tourist’s simple request for a glass of tap water at a hotel restaurant in the Italian Dolomites has culminated in Italy’s top court ruling that being served water from the tap is not a consumer right, after a lengthy and costly legal saga.

The case dates back to 2019 when the woman spent a week at the five-star hotel in the ski resort of Corvara, in Badia, over Christmas and new year. She was on a half-board deal with the evening meal included, except for drinks.

Biebrza marshes, Poland: It’s not just the abundance of elks, orchids and eagles that sets the mind racing, it’s the wild interactions between the ‘exotic’ and the familiar

Have I made a mistake in visiting Biebrza national park? Not that I mind encountering more bird species in a day than I do in a year at home. Nor do I regret meeting a young elk, all gangle and improbable proportions; or kneeling before a clump of lady’s slipper orchid in jaw-droppingly ostentatious bloom among Solomon’s seal and a carpet of lily of the valley. I definitely appreciate the homely clatter of the neighbourhood white storks, and the constant soundtrack of cuckoos and golden orioles. I certainly have no objection to watching the sunset from a wood-fired hot tub, listening to corncrakes as bats emerge and a beaver cruises past.

But something shifts in me when, in the space of a few minutes in an observation tower, we watch three species of marsh tern hanging like precision-engineered angels to tweezer insects from the water’s surface, and a white-tailed eagle hunting greylag geese then settling with its mate in a dead tree to watch a train of common cranes in the field below meeting a lone fox, all leaping as if in mock surprise, before going unconcernedly on their way.

Like so many Britons, I usually consult a weather app before venturing out of the house – and often cancel plans if I don’t like what I see. Here’s what happened when I went cold turkey for a week

When I heard on the radio that more than half of British people would consider cancelling an outing if they saw a 40% chance of rain all day on their weather app, I felt seen. I, too, am a slave to my app. Not that I would ever make a decision based on one whole-day percentage. I pore over three-hourly breakdowns for chances of rain versus minutes of sunshine. If rain is on the cards, I check the probable millimetres. Less than one? I may well throw caution to the wind. Speaking of which, wind speed and direction must also be considered, along with overall and “feels like” temperatures. For the cherry on top, I’ll compare notes with a loved one’s app if they use a different one, quietly mistrusting theirs, and simmering in silent rage if theirs wins.

I’ll admit, though, that my compulsion to check my app (I long ago chose WeatherPro, which I knew nothing about, but liked its layout and name) is borderline neurotic; I fret over probabilities and outfit appropriateness, when I could simply step outside for real-time hyper-local accuracy. I can lose procrastinatory hours consulting long-range forecasts, or checking the weather in Melbourne (where my sister lives) and holiday destinations I have no immediate plans to visit.

I tried everything from gong baths to junk food and intermittent crying as I attempted to deal with my grief. Nothing helped – until I started tuning in to what my body was telling me

I didn’t think I could survive the death of my husband, Graham. We met at university when I was 18, and for 35 years we made a great team. We both worked full-time and, while I organised our many marathon and backpacking trips abroad, and pursued my ambition of becoming an author and hypnotherapist, he supported me by taking care of most of the domestic chores and DIY. When he was seconded to Bahrain for eight months in 2003, he left me a typed, two-page instruction manual explaining how to operate the dishwasher, washing machine and TV (in fairness, it wasn’t simply a matter of pressing “on”).

When, in 2017, Graham was diagnosed with asbestos-related lung cancer and given between 18 months and five years to live, the shock was profound. But, once the initial terror had subsided, we made a choice: to live in hope, not fear. We vowed to make the most of whatever time Graham had left, rather than mentally rehearse or fear his death. We both continued working, travelling, running half marathons and seeing friends as much as we could.

After years of procrastination, even the most trivial task felt like climbing a mountain. Then I discovered the pomodoro technique – and how much I could achieve in just 25 minutes

Long before I knew what a 9 to 5 was, I struggled to get things done. When I was a child, I avoided showers for as long as possible and put off brushing my waist-length hair. My mum ended up cutting it into a bob to help me manage it.

During my degree, this tendency to procrastinate meant I was regularly pulling all-nighters in the library, writing 3,000-word essays in single evenings, fuelled by energy drinks and snacks. I told myself that I worked better under pressure – and in a way I did, since it always got done. But the relief of submitting work was always overshadowed by the same question – why had I put myself through that again?

High unemployment and a lack of support mean life can be tough in Grimsby, but 19-year-old Cohen is determined to make the best of life in this coastal town

It’s mid-afternoon in the Lincolnshire seaside town of Cleethorpes and Cohen is sitting in the back seat of a car putting on an Easter bunny outfit. A group of teenagers nearby stare in amusement. Cohen isn’t fazed. He is hoping we can take some new photographs that he can use to advertise his mascot business for the upcoming holidays.

Cohen, 19, lives with his parents a couple of miles down the road in neighbouring Grimsby and set up Co Co Mascots last year as one of his many attempts to find work. People can hire him in one of the outfits for birthday parties, events and doorstep surprises for children. He’s done a few paid gigs so far, which has been a boost for his confidence, he says, but what he really wants is a permanent job.

Cohen, who is looking for a permanent job, makes money as a mascot at birthday parties and events

The content creators behind channels like Chloe VS History are using AI tools to ‘bring history to life in a really visceral way’

“I have just arrived in Tudor London, 1536,” a young woman in a green puffer jacket tells the camera. “I’m going to check in at my room in the inn, get into the market. Then, later I am meeting the actual king – yep, Henry VIII – in person.”

On YouTube and other social platforms, users are flocking to watch AI-generated “history influencers”, characters that vlog their travels to historical settings.

Stretching 1,365km across the remote Australian outback, the unique challenge of the Nullarbor Links takes a week to complete and inspires devotion among the players

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About 15,600km from St Andrews in Scotland and about 17,000km from Mar-a-Lago in Florida sits Eucla, Western Australia, where on a fine sunny day the players from an extraordinary golf tournament pose for a photo.

They’re playing the Nullarbor Links, the world’s longest golf course, which runs for 1,365km (850 miles) across ancient, arid desert in outback Australia. Other than the game itself, it has nothing whatever in common with its famous counterparts – or any other golf course in the world.

We want to hear how people are dealing with the hottest May temperatures on record

The UK recorded its hottest ever day in May on Monday, with an all-time high of 34.8C recorded at London’s Kew Gardens.

Temperatures above 33C were recorded across the south-east of England, while Wales also provisionally broke its May temperature record. The heat is expected to persist through the week, with a 35C peak forecast on Tuesday.

We would like to hear about what you love about the great outdoors

As summer comes and our gardens, parks and woodlands burst into life, many of us are heading outdoors.

Scientific evidence shows how vitally important greenery and the natural world are for our mental and physical wellbeing.

Wherever you’re planning to watch the matches – we’d like to hear from you

The men’s World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada is nearly upon us, kicking off on 11 June.

Amid the excitement around the tournament, there has been controversy over Fifa’s ticketing process, the cost of travel, and security concerns for fans travelling to the US.

The Pensions Commission said 15 million people were currently not saving adequately for their retirement

Fifteen million people are currently not saving enough for their retirement, according to the Pensions Commission, who have warned this could rise to as many as 19 million without action.

The independent group of experts warned as many as 45% of working-age adults were not saving into a pension at all, despite nearly half of them being in work.

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