The star of Widow’s Bay is that rarest of talents – someone who can do whatever he wants and make it utterly believable. No wonder he just made TV history

On Monday night, Matthew Rhys made history. He is now officially the first actor ever to win Emmy awards for lead roles in all three categories: drama, comedy and limited series. To make things even more extraordinary, he won two of those awards in a single night.

In the comedy category, Rhys won best lead for Widow’s Bay, the superlative Apple comedy horror where he stars as an indecisive mayor whose island suddenly plays host to a supernatural haunting. He also won best lead actor in a limited series or anthology for The Beast in Me, the Netflix drama about a property developer who may (or may not, no spoilers) have murdered his wife. Add this to his 2018 win for The Americans and the trifecta is complete. In other words, the entire world belongs to Matthew Rhys, and we’re all just living in it.

Today it’s a silly sports betting ad, but I can’t see anything she’s done that’s worth this ire. She’s in her 20s: she does dumb things. Enjoy!

Would it be insanely unfashionable to defend Sydney Sweeney? You may or may not have heard that the Euphoria star has done an ad for a sports betting site. Sorry, I think we still have to call them “sports prediction markets” in the United States, which only recently popped its legalised sports betting cherry, and is behaving like a complete teenage boy about the whole thing. Anyway, among other poses, the ad features a naked Sydney holding a couple of American footballs over her breasts, which are – and I feel she would want us to acknowledge this – seriously among the very best in Hollywood. Maybe THE best. Listen, it is what it is. Life would be very boring if we couldn’t say so with a twinkle.

Forgive me. Life is, in fact, very, very boring, because yet another Sydney Sweeney-advertising-centred firestorm has been ignited by this ad. (Last year, some lunatic genuinely suggested her “good jeans” American Eagle ad was something to do with white supremacy and eugenics.) Her latest product endorsement has drawn the ire of a cascade of female athletes, who have described it variously as demeaning women’s sport, sexualised representation of athletes, and “a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft, [and] every woman who enjoys sports for what it really is – teamwork, friendship, dedication, excellence, unity”.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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What a Time to be Alive! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Capacity has been overwhelmed by heatwaves that have pushed white goods to breaking point

“In Oxfordshire, recycling centres are filling almost three articulated lorries with discarded fridges every week,” says Simon Perry of W&S Waste Management, which runs a recycling centre in Ardley.

Together, those fridges would cover an area just under half the size of a football pitch. But the space to store them – in Oxfordshire and beyond – has become a growing problem after the Local Government Association (LGA) warned that a mountain of broken fridges was rising in waste centres across England and Wales, as this year’s heatwaves push more white goods to breaking point, and a trend for second/backup refrigeration products keeps growing.

This idea has suddenly gained huge popularity online. But is it just a way to sell us more products – and could it potentially damage our skin?

Gone are the days of the speedy shower; a quick lather with a squirt of shower gel will, apparently, no longer cut it. Double cleansing – once the remit of facial skincare and shampoo routines – has steadily trickled into body-care, too. But should you simply stock up on twice as much shower gel? Is it any more hygienic? And how clean do we really need to be?

As always, TikTok – or rather, #ShowerTok – has a huge number of devotees to this new trend. “Double cleansing will change your life,” says self-care advocate Xara Beqele (@xarabeq) in a video that has almost 10,000 likes. “I think double cleansing is the most effective thing I have added for my shower. I just smell better, feel clean.” Likewise, digital creator Terree Ann (@terreetaughtme) calls double cleansing the body a “hygiene must”. “If you are only washing your body with a hydrating body wash, that’s like washing your body with lotion,” she says in a video that has been shared more than 6,000 times. “If you’re only going in with a scented body wash on top of unclean skin, that’s like spraying Febreze to try to mask the funk instead of properly removing it.” Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that recent research found gen Zs take longer showers than any other age group – despite being most anxious about the climate crisis.

Toronto film festival: riotous lead performance holds together third movie from actor turned film-maker, about a housewife who joins a local musical

Jesse Eisenberg’s last two directorial efforts – the prickly comedy When You Finish Saving the World and the slightly softer A Real Pain – are small films rooted in the real world. They have their little idiosyncrasies, their bits of cinematic flair, but they keep their feet grounded in the here and now. For his third film, Eisenberg has said goodbye to all that (or most of that) and run headlong at the surreal and the absurd, borrowing from Charlie Kaufman and other oddballs to tell a small story in a big way.

The Debut is about a repressed housewife, Mona (Julianne Moore), who decides to audition for a role in a community theater production of a musical called Nosy Neighbors, one of those gassy Manhattan trifles that were so ubiquitous on Broadway a half century ago. Mona’s kids are about to fly the nest, and her husband barely seems to notice her when she’s standing right next to him. So why not have a little creative adventure?

As a teenager, Edmonds had a three-year residency at the Royal Opera House. Her eclectic career – creating NFTs, adverts and films as well as for the stage – reveals a precarious industry moving in new directions

At the age of 18, Charlotte Edmonds was such a promising choreographer (“astonishing”, in the words of the Observer) that the Royal Ballet invented a whole new job for her. As the company’s “young choreographer”, she spent three years learning everything she could at one of the world’s biggest dance institutions. “It’s mad to think that happened,” she says, a decade on.

With that kind of start, you’d expect Edmonds’ career to have followed a predictable narrative, choreographing for the big ballet brands, maybe setting up her own company. But that’s not exactly how it’s gone. Her eclectic portfolio reflects how the dance industry has changed and become ever more precarious, but also expanded in uncharted directions. She has indeed made short works for a number of European ballet companies, but she’s spent more time recently making films, music videos and adverts for the likes of Budweiser and Nike, as well as advocating for artists with dyslexia and launching her own video series, Cameo, in which she interviews female and non-binary choreographers to counter a lack of representation.

Lady Justice Thirlwall condemns ‘complete failure’ to protect babies on neonatal unit at Countess of Chester hospital

• Lucy Letby public inquiry report published – latest updates

Three babies might have survived and seven others could have been protected if hospital bosses and doctors had taken action over concerns about the nurse Lucy Letby, an official inquiry into the deaths has concluded.

A public inquiry led by Lady Justice Thirlwall found a “complete failure” to protect babies on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England.

PM’s spokesperson says those whose only income is the state pension should not pay income tax in this parliament despite the expected rise to £13,000

The Liberal Democrats have said that they will try to introduce a cap on the amount people donate to political parties by amending the representation of the people bill as it goes through the Lords.

Lisa Smart, the Lib Dem Cabinet Office spokesperson, said:

We can’t keep playing whack-a-mole with each new attempt by Farage to sell out our democracy.

Labour’s residency requirements aren’t good enough and the Conservatives simply sat on their hands whilst in power. For decades governments of both colours have stood by and done nothing.

The scale of donations made to Reform in recent days is unprecedented in British politics and should deeply concern anyone who cares about the health and integrity of our democracy.

We cannot afford to see the Americanisation of our politics, with out of control political spending, funded by stratospheric sums of crypto and corporate cash. These donations show clearly whose side Reform are on, with crypto billionaires, foreign and powerful corporate interests lining up to pour in eye-watering sums of money to advance their agendas.

Analysts warn of an acceleration in high-risk arms race with Russia and China in Earth’s orbit

The US has deployed weapons in space, the US military has confirmed, in an extraordinary public announcement that analysts warn will accelerate a high-risk arms race with Russia and China in Earth’s orbit.

The US secretary of the air force, Troy Meink, said Washington had active “on-orbit” weapons, meaning they had been deployed and were circling the globe.

Kasim and Sulaiman Khan tell Guardian they believe ex-PM is being ‘slowly killed’ by harsh treatment, driven by Asim Munir

The sons of Imran Khan have accused Pakistan’s powerful army chief of a “personal vendetta” against the incarcerated former prime minister and expressed fears their father is being “slowly killed” in jail, as international pressure mounts over his prison conditions.

Kasim Khan, 27, and Sulaiman Khan, 29, have become strong advocates for the release of their father, who has been held in Adiala prison in Rawalpindi since his arrest in 2023, and is serving a 14-year sentence on corruption charges.

The European Commission’s president warned that recent actions in Denmark and Lithuania are ‘not isolated incidents’

• Russian warship fires flares at Danish helicopter as Nato jets shoot down drone over Lithuania

Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha responded to the incident in Denmark, declaring Kyiv’s “full support” after “unacceptable actions targeting a Danish helicopter.”

“Moscow continues its attempts to destabilise Europe, not just Denmark. Joint and decisive action is required and Ukraine is ready to contribute to all efforts aimed at strengthening the protection of Europe from Russian threats,” he said.

General secretaries say union funding is ‘cleanest money in politics’ and different to that from wealthy individual donors

• UK politics live – latest updates

Trade unions have stopped short of backing a cap on political donations but called for further action on big money in politics, in a joint statement after Reform UK was given an unprecedented £72m from two donors.

General secretaries have been split on a call for unions to back a specific cap on individual donors to political parties while protecting trade union donations, which the TUC said were the “cleanest money in politics” because it came from workers’ subscriptions.

Natalie Greenwood says surgery is no ‘magic fix’ for chronic pelvic pain – a view backed up by a new study

“It’s really frustrating to be in this cycle of continuous surgery. It makes you feel helpless,” says Natalie Greenwood, of a condition that affects her so badly she is “non-functioning most of the time because of the constant fatigue”.

Greenwood, 36, needs to have an operation every few years to limit the impact of the endometriosis that gives her chronic pelvic pain, as well as extreme tiredness and brain fog.

More than 130 sign letter to PM saying international law requires further measures to stop illegal settlements

More than 130 legal experts, including 18 king’s counsel (KCs), have written to Andy Burnham saying that sanctions on Israeli settlements “fall far short” of Britain’s obligations under the international court of justice’s (ICJ’s) finding that the occupation is unlawful.

The foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, last week announced an import ban on goods from illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine and other measures. Signatories to the letter to the prime minister, including the leading lawyers Michael Mansfield KC and Imran Khan KC, and the former lord justice of appeal Alan Moses, say it is not enough.

President has dismissed anxieties over AI’s dangerous potential even as Democrats and some Republicans acknowledge risks

• Analysis: Why a decade of doomsday warnings failed to slow AI race

Donald Trump is facing a rare backlash from the US Congress as Democrats and some Republicans push for guardrails on the world’s most powerful AI companies.

Concerns over the dangerous potential of AI reached fever pitch this week after tech leaders sounded the alarm over the rapid advancement of the technology and its potential threat to humanity.

Women used profits from trafficking of enslaved Africans to secure their families’ futures, research reveals

More than 1,000 women invested in the slave trade, challenging the conventional notion that they were passive beneficiaries and largely fought for its abolition.

Researchers found women bought, sold and brokered shares in the Royal African Company, South Sea Company, and other separate ventures, and used profits from the trafficking of enslaved Africans to secure financial independence and provide for their families.

After Jennifer Sellitti lost her partner Joe Mazraani, she thought everything was over. Then she inherited his ship

After Joe died, Jennifer Sellitti felt as though she were living underwater.

Other people became murky, their words muffled. She slept constantly; unconsciousness was a blessing. On the worst days, memories bowled her over.

Drive to save thousands of Afrikaners from false claims of ‘white genocide’ appears to show signs of slowing

When Donald Trump announced in February 2025 that the US would accept Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees, many white South Africans who believed that they were victims of racism in their country thought that their prayers had been answered.

However, in the past few months, dozens of applicants to the refugee programme have been rejected, with many left dismayed and confused as to why they would be left to face what Trump has falsely claimed is a “white genocide” in South Africa.

The rise of AI-generated tributes and bots for ‘talking’ to the dead has experts concerned more people will grieve in isolation

Tributes rolled in after the death of Dolly Parton last month. Jack White performed Jolene at a London gig. Kesha sang Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle to You), a single her mother wrote for the country music titan. Even Pitbull stopped his Madison Square Garden show to memorialize Parton and all the other “powerful women” in the crowd. But one of the strangest – and most viral – eulogies did not come from a celebrity. It did not even come from a person.

Run Jolene, at just under five minutes, is an earworm of a country song, containing all the cliches of the genre: twangy singer, banjo licks, corny lyrics. Those lyrics concern Jolene, the fictional romantic rival made infamous by Parton. “Somebody better warn Jolene / Dolly’s coming through those gates,” the voice croons. “Run Jolene / Girl you better move your feet.”

Grant applications in England surge as interest grows in habitat that captures carbon and helps reduce flood risk

The ancient craft of hedge laying is experiencing a strong revival as farmers use techniques that peaked in the 18th and 19th centuries to boost wildlife, capture carbon and help tackle flooding.

Hedge laying, which restores and revives mature hedges to keep them fresh, was among the four most popular categories of capital grants selected by farmers out of a total pot of £225m provided by the government this year to support practical environmental improvements on farms and across the countryside.

Once the preserve of the ultra-rich, supercars are finding new drivers through rentals, finance deals, influencer culture and the manosphere. But why would anyone want a 200mph vehicle?

‘The £600,000 Lamborghini; that was the first seizure of the operation,” says special chief inspector Geoff Tatman of the Metropolitan police, thinking back to the second weekend of August. “He was stopping at the red lights, revving his engine, waiting for the traffic to clear, then speeding. So on the third time we saw him do it, we stopped him and seized the vehicle.” The car has a top speed of 217mph (350kmh), but the limit on these London streets is 20mph. Over the same weekend, the Metropolitan police seized about 90 more cars with a combined value of more than £8m, an increase on last year’s tally of 72 cars. They were seized for various offences: driving without insurance, driving with incorrect licences or antisocial behaviour. Previously, the Met would have had to let such drivers off with a warning, but the law – section 59 of the Police Reform Act – was strengthened this year to enable the immediate confiscation of vehicles. The seized cars also included a Ferrari Monza worth about £3.4m (the driver only had a provisional UK licence). They were all put on display at Marble Arch, attracting a throng of camera-wielding onlookers (one attender did a seven-hour live blog of the occasion).

Many of the supercars apprehended by the Met in August bore Middle Eastern number plates. It has been a growing trend for car owners from the region to spend summer in London, bringing their cars with them (at a cost of £25,000 upwards). The orange Lamborghini that Tatman seized had Dubai plates. Most of the vehicle owners retrieved their cars the next day after paying fines and presenting the correct paperwork. The Lamborghini driver was subsequently seen driving respectfully and not revving his engine. Lessons were learned, although the question remains: why ship a 200mph car to London to drive in a 20mph zone?

The cost of living crisis hits students hard. Planning ahead and some self-discipline will help, alongside a sharp eye for a bargain and, if you’re eligible, a bursary

Like late-night study sessions and cramming into a student kitchen to cook up meals, being savvy with money has long been part of the university experience. But with the cost of living remaining high, students are more money-conscious than ever.

“It is one of the most difficult times to make ends meet as a student,” according to Tom Allingham, communications director at Save the Student (STS). He says soaring prices for essentials, such as food and energy bills, have “disproportionately affected” students, while maintenance loans (intended to help cover day-to-day costs) have failed to keep up with high rates of inflation.

Collagen powders, gummies and pills have boomed in popularity in recent years boosted by claims that they smooth wrinkles, promote glossy hair and help with joint pain. Amid the noise it can be hard to figure out whether there’s any actual science behind the promise of looking younger for longer. Luckily Dr Xand van Tulleken has spent the past three years writing Make me well: a quest to understand the confusing world of wellness, and his chapter on collagen dives deep into the evidence. He tells Madeleine Finlay what collagen does in the body, how we can get it without splashing out on expensive supplements, and why getting to the truth behind wellness claims can be so hard

Surely that’s the lesson the Reform polling furore should teach us. Politics should be about actually helping people, not mastering the line on a graph

Solemn faces all round. We will listen. We will learn. We will hone and improve. Yes, it’s time for the latest bout of profound soul-searching in the UK polling industry following the allegations raised by the recent Channel 4 investigation that a polling firm reportedly failed to declare that three polls it published before the local elections in May were commissioned by Reform. By now these reckonings are becoming a regular occurrence in the wake of big elections: pollsters gather in a room, nibble biscuits, ritually self-flagellate, and pledge to learn all the right lessons from the electorate they’ve just catastrophically misread.

Yet for all its very public ignominies, political polling is one of those rare and precious industries that somehow manages to keep failing upwards. You might think that after botching the 2015 and 2017 general elections, the 2016 Brexit vote and the 2021 London mayoral poll, we might have learned better than to trust in the mystical magic graph. In this parallel universe Keir Starmer is now sitting on a colossal 318-seat majority, as forecast by Survation in its final MRP poll on the eve of the 2024 general election, overstating the actual result by a mere 144 parliamentary seats.

Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist

Grievance politics has grown in the east of the country where I was born. But west Germans have hard questions to answer too

The fear that a fascist, far-right movement would rise to power again in Germany has been with me since my youth. On 6 September, the far-right, anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a landslide in Saxony-Anhalt, becoming the biggest party in the state parliament, with a shocking 44% of the vote, on a record turnout. If it finds a way to power it will be the first far-right party to govern a German state since the Nazi era.

The night before the vote, I sent a message to a friend, who, like myself, has an East German background. Was she as worried, scared even, about the vote as I was, I asked. I’d fallen into a loop for days, scrolling videos, reels, reports, interviews done on the ground. And I knew these AfD voters. They could have been relatives, friends of my parents, old teachers, former schoolmates. Why were they saying such incoherent stuff?

One of the biggest upheavals in a millennium is on its way, strengthened by the climate crisis. We need leaders who make things better not worse

If you think you have heard enough about the growing “super” El Niño, trust me, you are going to hear a lot more. What is happening in the equatorial Pacific is jaw-dropping and could well mark one of the biggest global weather upheavals in a millennium. It will spawn a string of weather catastrophes around our world in what remains of this year and in 2027, and there is no reason to think the UK will be immune.

To recap briefly, El Niño involves a heating of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific ocean. It happens every few years and is part of a natural cycle termed the El Niño southern oscillation, which switches between warm (El Niño) and cool (La Niña) phases. El Niños that see heating reach or exceed 2C are defined as “super” but this one, which is forecast to top-out at an astonishing 4C later this year, is so much bigger, the term “hyper” might be more appropriate.

Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL. His latest book is The Fate of the World: A History and Future of the Climate Crisis (HarperCollins Publishers, £20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

This misconceived Treasury pet project may have been foisted on the government, but it would have added to voters’ mistrust in politics

Shock reverberated through England’s councils last week. “Beggars belief!” “Shambolic!” council leaders protested to the Local Government Information Unit (LGIU), which says: “We’ve never before heard such expletives. They’re apoplectic, incandescent.” And they have every right to be.

The government has slammed the brakes on its unexpected reorganisation of local councils. This almost certainly ends the one-size-fits-all, politically damaging remapping of England’s councils, which was never forewarned in Labour’s manifesto.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Discussion has focused on behavioral outcomes. But Meta’s settlement shines a light on damage to young people’s emerging desires and identities

During the landmark social media addiction trial that led to Meta’s recent $17.1bn settlement, a therapist testified that she had once asked the plaintiff – a young woman named Kaley, who had been using social media since she was six – what her miracle day would look like: what she wished to come true, if anything were possible. Kaley replied that she would be prettier.

As a psychoanalyst, I find that exchange devastating in a particular way. A miracle day is an invitation to engage with the full range of human desire: with what one might accomplish or experience, whom one might encounter or love. Kaley’s answer contracted the world and all its possibility into a single preoccupation with her own image.

A piano wired to a tree might seem an unlikely crowd-puller. But in Ramsgate last weekend, an experimental musician reminded me how boundless creativity can be

‘I’ll just play for 12 to 15 minutes,” the composer and experimenter Chase Coley said, “and then I’ll take questions. People always have a lot of questions.” The scene was a square in Ramsgate for its annual festival of sound, with guitar wires strung from a piano at one end to a tree about 20 metres away. Coley covered his fingers in violin rosin (sticky resin) and walked up and down the wires, coaxing noises out of each one by stroking them; brass sounded different to steel, and none of it added up to a melody, exactly; it was more of an eerie soundscape. The piano acted as a resonator while the tree was playing itself, a tree. It’s called a “long-stringed instrument”, but considering the vanishingly small number of people who play it – the American musician who invented it in 1980, Ellen Fullman, an experimental luthier named Yuri Landman and Coley himself – there’s probably scope to rename it as the mood takes them. If he had more of an ego, he could call it the chase bass, but this really isn’t an ego instrument. It’s an instrument to flood every sense with bafflement, and bring out the part in everyone that doesn’t mind being baffled. So long-stringed is as good a name as any.

He was right: there were a lot of questions. What happens if you pluck the strings? (Nothing – because these aren’t transverse sound waves, they’re longitudinal.) Why does it sound a bit like the Star Wars intro music? (Because everything does, once it’s weird enough.) Is he really the only person in the UK who knows how to do this? (So far as we know, yes.) But really all the questions were a small-talk buildup to a gigantic “why?”. Why would anyone take a piano, turn it inside out and make it into an incredibly long, disembodied guitar? And that kind of answered itself in the performance, which was the pure spirit of “just to see what will happen”, rendered in sound. Whether it was music, science, low-key standup or installation art really depended on whether you listened to it for 10 minutes or 10 hours. “One more question,” a guy said. “Can you play Wonderwall?” Coley looked doubtful. “I could have a go at some kind of tune,” he offered. “No, it’s fine,” the guy said, “I was joking.” Only Coley could play the long-stringed instrument (it is apparently very hard), but in this symphony of curiosity, it turned out we all had some maracas.

The danger is that other parties just channel the far right – and that will make them vulnerable. Better to fully commit to a progressive agenda

After the previous Swedish general election, in 2022, the leaders of the two biggest Swedish parties made a risky decision. Jimmie Åkesson, the leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), chose to support the rightwing minority government of the Moderate party prime minister Ulf Kristersson, while Magdalena Andersson, the Social Democrats’ leader, decided to copy the “Danish model” in an attempt to regain power. In both cases, the strategy led to electoral loss but political success.

After the general election in the country on Sunday, the Social Democrats (often referred to as S or Sap), in common with its Danish counterparts, will probably lead the new government despite an electoral defeat, losing roughly 2%, its worst result since 1908. The party’s return to power is purely a result of Swedish bloc politics and the victories of its likely coalition partners: the Left party (V), the Green party and the Center party (C), which all increased their support by 1.5%, 1.7% and 0.4% respectively. Together, this left bloc has a majority of just three seats in the new parliament. So while Andersson will probably return to power, she is also in a very vulnerable position.

Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today

The vast sums given to Nigel Farage’s party in recent days must lead to action on political funding

The staggering sums gifted to Reform UK over the weekend have transformed the context for the representation of the people bill making its way through parliament. The announcement of two £36m donations from Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne, both crypto billionaires who have lived abroad, makes Andy Burnham’s decision not to impose a limit on political donations – a move he supported before becoming prime minister – look even more misguided. Fortunately the House of Lords still has the chance to amend the bill. It should take it by imposing meaningful limits on both political donations and party spending.

It is unclear whether either man meets the criteria set out in the Rycroft review into foreign influence in politics. It set a maximum of £100,000 per annum for people who have not been in the UK for at least a year. Mr Delo previously lived in Hong Kong while Mr Harborne is based partly in Thailand; Nigel Farage said on Monday that he does not know the details of their movements. While ministers will view the prospect of a legal fight over eligibility with trepidation, they must do what it takes to ensure rules are met.

Donald Trump’s blithe comments at the weekend were characteristically unhelpful. A careful and considered discussion on the subject has yet to begin

A decade ago, the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) viewed Brexit as a potential gamechanger in the struggle to resist future pressure for a united Ireland. As the author and journalist Fintan O’Toole wrote in an essay published last year, the DUP hoped that the 2016 referendum would deliver “a double exit. Brexit would not simply mean the UK’s departure from the EU. It would also be an act of separation from the Republic. It would reverse the slow drift towards integration.” That proved to be, to put it mildly, a deeply flawed judgment.

The direction of travel since 2016 has instead been the opposite. Rather than leading to a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, which would have disastrously undermined the Good Friday agreement, the UK’s divorce agreement from Brussels eventually placed one in the Irish Sea. The logic of further economic integration between north and south within the EU’s single market was reinforced.

Readers respond to an editorial on overcrowded jails and plans to convert parts of the women’s prison estate for use by men

Your editorial (The Guardian view on the prisons crisis: moving men into women’s jails is not the answer, 10 September) is right to argue that the prison capacity crisis cannot be solved through a series of short-term fixes. Victims need confidence that the government has a credible long-term strategy for the criminal justice system, not another piecemeal intervention designed to buy time.

I share your concern about the pressures facing probation services. There are also legitimate questions about the impact on policing, but we cannot discuss the prisons crisis without confronting the crisis in our courts.

We owe it to our young people to teach them how to do laundry and prepare food, writes Melissa Scallan, while Pippa Keech recalls her son’s university halls baptism of fire

Zoe Williams’ university-bound son won’t be the only one among his peers not to know how, or indeed why, bed sheets are laundered (I went to Ikea with my son – and was confronted with my parenting failures, 8 September).

Modern day, middle-class parenting tends to direct kids away from domestic pursuits, focusing instead on academic achievements and sporting prowess or music grades, scouting activities and Duke of Edinburgh awards. With their waking hours consumed by so many outside interests, there’s little time for learning life skills such as cooking, cleaning and laundering.

A new willingness to acknowledge the risk that some people with severe mental illnesses may become violent is welcomed by Prof John F Morgan

Your report of Sarah Hughes’s acknowledgment that mental health organisations have sometimes “softened the truth” about the relationship between serious mental illness and violence marks an important change in the public debate (Mental health groups have ‘failed to acknowledge’ risk of violence, says Mind chief, 5 September).

There is some historical irony here. Mind grew from the National Association for Mental Health, an organisation in which psychiatrists and other mental health professionals played an important part. From the 1970s onwards, Mind increasingly defined itself as an independent campaigning organisation and, at times, a vigorous critic of psychiatric practice and authority.

Default facial expressions | Coffee thermometer | Quitting Britain | Nominative determinism delights

Adrian Chiles is lucky that his face is merely “miserable” (I’ve spent my whole life looking miserable. It’s time for a change, 9 September). On the advice of my estimable wife, when I introduce myself to new colleagues I alert them to the fact that if I look as though I want to kill them, it’s my default expression and I am merely thinking, not judging.
Trevor Lawson
Haddenham, Buckinghamshire

• Since Oxford University, no less, tells us that it is now vital to know the temperature of hot drinks (Drinking very hot drinks could triple risk of oesophageal cancer, study finds, 9 September), I look forward to the delivery of my NHS coffee thermometer – and the award of next year’s Ig Nobel prizes.
Anne Archer
Oban, Argyll and Bute

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• Source in British bid ‘gutted’ at double disappointment

London’s bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships has ended in failure after it lost out to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital becoming the first African city to host the global championships.

At a press conference in Budapest the World Athletics president, Sebastian Coe, said the decision to go to Nairobi was historic and promised that it would stage a “groundbreading championships”.

With an incredible array of talent on show we select half a dozen players who could make the step up to the senior World Cup next year

The 2026 Under-20 Women’s World Cup is entering the knockout stage in Poland and, after an intriguing group stage, we pick some of the young stars who have stood out.

Celia Segura (Spain and Barcelona)
Segura is no stranger to knockout football having helped Spain to silver at the Under-17 World Cup two years ago and finishing with the Bronze Ball and Bronze Boot. She has picked up the mantleagain as La Roja eased through their group. Her four goals against New Caledonia were an illustration of her pure scoring instinct and she has also played a key role with her high technical skills and instinctive ability to both make space for and find her teammates. Her back-heel assist to set up Pau Comendador against China was a memorable one. A product of the Barcelona academy, the 19-year-old forward made her debut for the senior side back in February and will return to Atlético Madrid for a season-long loan at the conclusion of this tournament.

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• ‘I’ve never done anything for money,’ Bellamy says

• He was in intensive care last year after appendix rupture

Craig Bellamy said he rejected the chance to take charge of Burnley in the summer after deciding the Wales job is “the right place for me”. The 47-year-old was among the managers targeted by the Championship club, who appointed Nicky Hayen.

Bellamy is preparing to lead Wales in the Nations League, with the trip to Portugal on Thursday next week the first of four matches across the extended international break. Bellamy spent two years on the staff at Burnley, working as an assistant to Vincent Kompany and taking caretaker charge after Kompany left for Bayern Munich. Burnley were granted permission to hold talks with him after a triggering release clause in his Wales contract.

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Notts have made a last-minute addition to their side, seam bowler Mukesh Kumar who has taken 233 first-class wickets during a career played entirely in India.

He arrives on the back of helping East Zone win the Duleep Trophy.

While there’s a statistically significant chance it will all go south, KP’s mentorship could be a throwback to better days

At the end of his time as consultant to the England cricket setup Gilbert Enoka praised Brendon McCullum’s incredible work in healing the culture of his team. Enoka is best known as the architect of the no-dickheads policy in sport. This is basically Doctor Dickhead. Dickheads? He’s not having them.

“There wasn’t one dickhead in there,” Enoka announced, proudly. And history has shown this to be correct. All the evidence suggests the numerical value of dickheads in the England cricket team was something other than one. And yes, zero is not one. Fair point. But so are all the other numbers, the ones that go up the other way into plurals, multiples, an infinity of dickheads.

Michael Carrick’s side are 13th in the table after four games but, City mitigation aside, several areas need attention

Manchester United are 13th in the Premier League, having taken four points from their first four games: a 2-0 defeat at Hull, 5-2 win against Ipswich, 2-2 draw at Everton and the 1-0 defeat by Manchester City on Sunday. Mitigation regarding the City reverse can be found in the derby coming three days after the Champions League win against Sabah on Thursday, with Enzo Maresca’s side having 48 hours more rest after winning at Porto. So are United, who host Brighton in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday before visiting Fulham in the league on Sunday, as poor as the table suggests?

The Red Roses captain says nobody should have to choose between their career and having a family

The introduction of funding for egg freezing and wider fertility treatment in women’s football has started a wider discussion about fertility in women’s sport with the Red Roses captain, Meg Jones, shining a light on the topic in rugby. The Spanish football federation and Chelsea have both announced financial support around fertility recently and Jones has said it is something the Red Roses should “jump on too”.

On the Good, the Scaz and the Rugby podcast, Jones described those decisions made in football as “class” before revealing that she and her fiancee, former Trailfinders and sevens star Celia Quansah, have been to get their egg count checked. The admission prompted her England teammate Hannah Botterman to share that she and her partner, the Wales player Georgia Evans, had also been researching their IVF journey.

• Australian Joanna Wietrzyk went on to win fitness race in Beijing

• Hyrox admits making mistake by ‘not reacting immediately’

Organisers of the global indoor fitness competition Hyrox have apologised and pledged immediate rule changes after an Australian athlete was allowed to finish and win an event in Beijing despite soiling herself mid-race.

Footage of world record holder Joanna Wietrzyk competing on Saturday showed her continuing through demanding exercises and using communal equipment, with faecal matter visibly running down her legs. The incident went viral on social media and triggered debate about Hyrox’s health and safety standards, and athlete responsibility.

Rhys becomes first actor to win lead acting awards for different shows in the same night, while Hacks’ Smart is the first woman to win for every season of a show

• Emmys 2026: red carpet looks and outfits at TV’s biggest night – in pictures

• In the Hacks v Widow’s Bay Emmys battle, it’s we – the audience – who are the real winners

• Emmys live blog: as it happened

• Emmy winners: the full list

Matthew Rhys has become the first actor in 78 years of Emmys history to win multiple lead actor awards for performances in different shows in the same year, for Widow’s Bay and The Beast in Me.

The 51-year-old Welsh actor won outstanding lead actor in a comedy for Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay and outstanding lead actor in a limited series for his role in Netflix’s The Beast in Me at the ceremony on Monday night. With his 2018 win of outstanding lead actor in a drama for The Americans, he is the first male performer to win all three lead acting categories.

Consumer group says online shops routinely failed to reimburse delivery costs of unwanted purchases or cost of items

Leading retailers are breaking the law by failing to properly refund customers for returned goods, a Which? investigation has found.

Some of the UK’s biggest online shops routinely failed to reimburse delivery costs when customers returned unwanted purchases, while others failed to refund the cost of the goods themselves.

Firms manage $7.3tn in assets and could afford to transition away from fossil fuels yet invest in natural gas and coal-fired plants to power datacenters

The energy portfolios of 20 private equity firms produce 1.5bn tons of greenhouse gases a year, more than the annual emissions of any country except China, the US, India and Russia, according to a new report.

Together, these firms manage $7.3tn in assets of all kinds, affording them the ability to shape the pace of the transition away from fossil fuels. However their energy investments include significant fossil fuel assets including natural gas and coal-fired power plants to provide electricity to datacenters.

Health service faces exodus as almost four-fifths of BAME managers surveyed reported racism, exclusion and barriers to career progression

The NHS in England is facing an exodus of minority ethnic managers who have suffered racism, exclusion and discrimination during their working lives, a report has found.

Almost four-fifths of managers from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds have experienced racism, exclusion and obstacles to progressing in their careers, according to a survey carried out by the NHS Alliance.

Exclusive: Alzheimer’s blood tests should not be used on their own and risk leading people to believe they are inevitably going to develop dementia

Researchers have warned that social media may be misleading healthy people into taking Alzheimer’s blood tests, causing severe anxiety over biological markers that may never actually cause dementia.

Blood-based biomarker tests, such as p-tau217 and p-tau181, detect biological signs of changes in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease, which is a progressive brain disorder and the leading cause of dementia.

Labour should replace levy in 2027 rather than 2030 as energy bills are poised to surge over the winter, says lobby group

The North Sea oil and gas industry has called on Labour to scrap the windfall tax on fossil fuel firms three years early, as Britain heads into a winter with energy bills expected to reach their highest level since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), the industry’s trade body, wants the tax replaced in 2027, rather than in 2030, with a narrower levy that only applies during price spikes.

As human development and roads increasingly fragment their habitats, a study suggests traffic noise could be altering the animals’ wake-up call

Dawn has broken, and the air is cool and still. It’s at about this time that gibbons usually erupt into song, wa-oo-ing and wa-ing from the highest branches and filling the tree tops with rich melodies. But in this corner of Malaysian forest, bordered by housing and roads, the resident white-handed gibbons are quiet. All that can be heard is the hum of traffic from a nearby highway.

This isn’t a rare occurrence for this group of gibbons, according to research, which found these particular gibbons, named Mambang and Walinong, appeared to be producing far fewer morning songs than others that are not exposed to the same level of traffic noise.

Energy Transfer, whose CEO is a major Trump donor, named as biggest single methane producer in new rankings

Down a short gravel track in a largely nondescript corner of Louisiana sits a gas processing facility, operated by a company whose chief executive is a major donor to Donald Trump. It may be the largest emitter of methane in the US.

The Energy Transfer site, located near the city of Shreveport, is named as the biggest single “super emitter” in new rankings of US oil and gas operations for the largest releases of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that is rapidly overheating our planet, according to a new UCLA study, which is based on satellite data.

Big manufacturers planning to produce more of the forever chemicals to meet demand from datacentres

Pfas companies are launching a “tidal wave” of forever chemicals production to meet demand from the AI industry, a campaign organisation has warned.

Despite alarm over the chemicals, which have been linked to cancer, a survey of the 10 biggest manufacturers found most had plans to increase production.

More than 1,200 people, including Ben Fogle, sign letter saying domestic contracts will help preserve UK manufacturing

• Business live – latest updates

London fashion week is only days away, but one industry organisation has turned its attention to clothing that is a little less catwalk-worthy – the uniforms worn by British defence forces and NHS staff.

On Wednesday afternoon, the thinktank Fashion Roundtable will hand deliver a letter to Downing Street urging Andy Burnham to commit to manufacturing these uniforms in the UK.

Exclusive: Move is a big boost for Channel 4, days after it announced it is to cut 340 jobs

• Business live – latest updates

Channel 4 has poached the Channel 5 owner Paramount’s £300m-plus TV advertising sales business from Sky, in a huge boost days after the broadcaster announced it is to cut 340 jobs.

The win is a big win for Channel 4, which relies on advertising for about 90% of its £1bn in revenues.

The university is one of the big success stories in higher education, with soaring student satisfaction levels and exam results. What’s the secret of its success?

The Covid pandemic upended almost every corner of British life, and universities were no exception. But for the University of Birmingham, the turmoil became a turning point.

The pandemic made the university think long and hard about the type of education it was delivering for its students, says Deborah Longworth, Birmingham’s pro-vice-chancellor for education. This sparked an overhaul of its teaching and curriculum – which has been rewarded with impressive results.

New laws coming into force this week aim to streamline age checks although old-style plastic IDs will still be allowed

Younger drinkers in England and Wales will be able to prove their age with a digital ID starting this week as new laws give pubs, off-licences, nightclubs and restaurants the right to use biometric scanning technology to check customers are over 18.

Customers will be able to download software that scans their faces into their own phone to generate a QR code proving their age based on a stored proof of age. Other tech under consideration as part of the government push to digitise age verification for alcohol sales include a device which scans the veins in a drinker’s finger to verify their age. That system has not yet been approved for use.

Trump administration undermining rule of law at home and worldwide, according to intergovernmental report

Key indicators of democracy in the US have fallen to their lowest levels in 50 years, with the global rule of law significantly undermined by the Trump administration’s “threats and actions”, data from a leading thinktank shows.

Around the world, judicial independence, credible elections and freedom of expression, press freedom and access to justice are all at their lowest levels for at least 30 years, according to the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International Idea).

Tobacco investments raise new concerns about Dr Nicole Saphier ahead of confirmation hearing

Donald Trump’s nominee for US surgeon general reported more than $200,000 in business income from a company she owns that sells dietary supplements, a loosely regulated industry that health and consumer advocates say raises concerns about her record and which some critics allege are akin to “snake oil”.

Dr Nicole Saphier, who specializes in breast cancer as a radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New Jersey and was formerly a Fox News contributor, is facing a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday. She filed a financial disclosure and ethics agreement last week.

Comments come after court on Monday allowed states to send ballots under process followed for years in blow to Trump’s attempts to limit voter access

• Supreme court rejects Trump’s mail ballot restrictions for midterm elections

• Sign up for US Breaking News emails

Kash Patel, the FBI director, is now testifying before lawmakers on the Senate judiciary committee. A reminder that the last time he appeared before Congress was in May, when he sparred with senators on the appropriations committee and denied – under oath – allegations of excessive drinking and unexplained absences on the job, dismissing them as “baseless” during a fiery congressional hearing.

Today’s hearing is also expected to be full of heated exchanges. “Mr Patel is the least qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation’s history,” said Senator Dick Durbin, the judiciary committee’s top Democrat. “The bureau has been reshaped as a political weapon against President Trump’s political enemies and a shield to protect the president and his MAGA loyalists, not the American people.”

The businessman has spent the past decade moving through some of Russia’s most politically connected circles

Umar Kremlev, the Russian oligarch at the centre of reports that he helped pay for Donald Trump Jr’s wedding in the Bahamas, has spent the past decade moving through some of Russia’s most politically connected circles.

Born in 1982 in Serpukhov, an industrial town about 60 miles south of Moscow, he has said he boxed until the age of 19 but never turned professional, blaming what he later called a lack of discipline.

From Stephen Hawking to Jacob Coxon’s viral Anthropic resignation, fears that AI could threaten humanity have shaken the industry without stopping its pursuit

Before an Anthropic researcher resigned and declared human extinction imminent last week, tech leaders and scientists had sounded the alarm about a superintelligent AI ending humanity for over a decade.

The development of artificial intelligence “could spell the end of the human race”, warned professor and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in 2014 – a little less than a decade before the public got its hands on the generative AI features of the original version of ChatGPT.

Exclusive: George Osborne’s programme to reduce costs for first-time buyers delivered £25bn in social value in UK last year

George Osborne’s scheme to reduce costs for first-time buyers represented “very high value for money”, according to a government review, bolstering the case of senior government figures who have been arguing to resurrect the idea.

An official audit of the help-to-buy programme has calculated it provided £25bn of social value to the UK in the last financial year, despite criticisms it was overly expensive and only served to inflate house prices.

Carmaker builds on relationship with British armed forces by seeking to cash in on Europe’s rearmament drive

• Business live – latest updates

Jaguar Land Rover is in talks with Nato countries about selling them the newly revamped Defender military vehicle, as the UK-based carmaker seeks to tap into Europe’s defence spending boom.

It is also among carmakers bidding for a UK defence ministry contract worth £900m to replace an ageing fleet of Land Rovers that have been out of production since 2016, competing with General Motors and the UK’s Ineos Automotive, which builds the Grenadier 4x4 for the civilian market.

Central bank chief says continent’s AI dependency could give trade partners unprecedented leverage in negotiations

Europe must develop its own AI technology and build more datacentres in order to nullify the threat of being cut off by the US or China, according to the president of the European Central Bank.

Christine Lagarde said the continent needed AI models – the technology that powers AI tools such as chatbots – that were “good enough” to carry out most tasks and run from domestic datacentres. If Europe invests in its own AI tech, said Lagarde, “the threat of being cut off loses its force”.

From Obama’s chef to a big cat obsessive, the actor has gathered experts from all over the world for a film about how to heal our besieged planet. He talks about naysayers, elephant tusks – and the wonders of venison

Benedict Cumberbatch is dreading stepping outside. He’s speaking to me from his air-conditioned hotel room in Soho at the peak of the summer heat. Few doubt that climate breakdown was a major cause of those scorchers, with nature, farming and water supplies all placed under huge strain. By midsummer, according to a report co-authored by the Met Office, there were 2,700 excess deaths in England and Wales due to the searing heat.

But for Cumberbatch, in a bittersweet way, the record-breaking temperatures have come at a good time. The actor has been on a tour to promote his new documentary, How to Live on Earth. “The irony is not lost on anyone,” he says. “We’re living in the results of climate breakdown so stepping outside is – literally – a call to action.”

Playing a sound rooted in 80s bands such as Witchfinder General and Pagan Altar, metal bands are once again gravitating towards dark folklore – but in a ‘Glastonbury crystal shop’ kind of way

Behind Tom Templar’s shoulder as we talk over video call is a poster for The Wicker Man, the 1973 cult folk-horror film set on a remote Scottish island, whose sunniness conceals – inevitably – a dark secret. It’s fitting, because Templar is the singer of Green Lung, the breakout British metal band who immerse themselves in British mythology. The forthcoming Necropolitan, their fourth album devoted to the folklore of the isles, takes its inspiration from the “Magnificent Seven” London cemeteries built in the 1830s and 40s, and from the Necropolis railway, which transported the dead out of the city. No generic demons here: this is metal in the spirit of Fairport Convention as much as Black Sabbath.

“My big thesis is that heavy metal has become a form of folk music in the past couple of decades,” says Templar. “They’re both riff-based, circling around similar tropes, and about reinventing what has gone before. Metal even feels like a folk movement, in the way it’s full of festivals no one else has heard of. There’s such a thriving ecosystem.” Green Lung have certainly been nourished by it: at this year’s Desertfest in London, their T-shirts felt like an unofficial uniform.

The latest Exhibition on Screen documentary does a good job balancing the famous scandals with the subtle brilliance of his art

Timed to coincide with Tate Britain’s impressive gallery show – which closes at the end of September, so you haven’t long if you’ve missed it so far – this latest from the Exhibition on Screen strand does a fine job in outlining the ins and outs, and ups and downs of this still somewhat divisive artist who, Whistler’s Mother notwithstanding, is still probably most famous for winning a farthing in damages in his “flinging a pot of paint” libel action against John Ruskin. The film assembles the customary lineup of notables including the Tate’s Carol Jacobi, critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston and art historian Stephen Calloway, the latter of whom’s dandyish attire and Colonel Sanders goatee suggests he has very much bought into the Whistler aesthetic.

In fact, as all the interviewees are keen to point out, Whistler’s self-constructed persona, always with an eye to making a splash, is as significant an element of his artistic presence as the art itself – even if, as I can’t be alone in thinking, there’s something fundamentally irritating about his southern-genteel attudinising even at a century and a half’s distance. Be that as it may, the film gets to grips with Whistler’s instinctive brilliance as an artist, his natural flair for boundary-pushing and forward-thinking idealism. The big life episodes – his arrival in London, painting his mother, the brouhaha over the Peacock Room, the court case and subsequent bankruptcy – are recounted, but there is impressive detail on the actual art: from the dynamics behind his brooding Wapping picture to the temper tantrums (not his) that made Harmony in Grey and Green, his portrait of the eight-year-old Cicely Alexander so distinctive. And while Whistler’s dealings with the women in his life wouldn’t exactly pass modern-era scrutiny, his pictures of them are genuinely brilliant, with especial attention given to a wonderfully tender sketch of his wife Beatrix, terminally ill in a hotel bedroom.

Dismissed in Taiwan as simply propaganda, the Long Watch, or Jiaofeng, has proved a sensation across the strait with its references to real-life crises

After shaking off the people trailing her through a crowded market and emerging from a bathroom in disguise, the double agent appears to have escaped. But a sip of water on a plane eventually gets her. She is poisoned after Taiwan’s military intelligence service discovers that she has been working secretly for China.

The plot comes from a new Chinese spy drama co-produced by the Ministry of State Security. Since its premiere on 6 September, it has become a TV hit, with a fictionalised take on a subject rarely treated so directly: the modern history of tensions with Taiwan.

Eight years in the making, the innovative film uses painted still images – it’s like being read a graphic novel by a cast including Oscar Isaac, Evangeline Lilly and Elliott Gould

This Israeli animated film has been largely hanging around in limbo since it was finished in 2021 after taking eight years to complete – though this may or may not be due to the international opprobrium that Israel has attracted in the intervening period. It’s actually a rather fascinating film, if oddly told and a bit severe. Legend of Destruction isn’t about the current conflict, taking place as it does in the first century, 66 years after the birth of Christ – although of course, if you squint a bit, parallels with current events are there to be discerned. Revolutions fracture from within, hegemons topple due to their own greedy self-destruction, and in the end ordinary people are the ones who suffer and die as cities burn. Fill in the blanks as you see fit.

Cleaving pretty closely to the known facts as recorded by Flavius Josephus’ The Jewish War and the Talmud, the script by director Gidi Dar and Shuli Rand recounts how Jewish resistance rose up in Judea, particularly in Jerusalem, against the occupying Romans and the reigning Jewish elite, including the Temple’s high priests and queen Berenice of Cilicia (Evangeline Lilly), over excessive taxation. Our protagonist narrator is ordinary schlemiel Ben Batich (voiced in this English language version by Oscar Isaac), who becomes a leader of one faction after he snaps and can no longer agree with the pleas for patience and tolerance from his mother (Marilu Henner) and rabbi uncle Yohanan ben Zakkai (Elliott Gould).

With her new, semi-nude advert for sports site Novig, the actor cements her reputation as the anti-woke poster girl. But is it real – or just provocation with a soft porn gaze?

Bear with me here, but I’m beginning to suspect Sydney Sweeney is a very fine actor. It’s a skill she has been recognised for in the past, of course, winning nominations for Emmys for Euphoria and The White Lotus, but I mean it in a deeper sense, related to her work in advertising rather than drama – can she do more than play a role? Can she make you feel what she’s feeling?

In her “controversial” new ad for the sports prediction site Novig (the scare quotes are because, when you’re begging for controversy this hard, you shouldn’t just be handed it on a plate), she adopts the garb of various sports. Her face, body, aspect, gait and mien are all carefully configured to amp up the erotic overtones to the maximum degree, and yet the feeling that beams out of each image is: “This is really going to piss people off, and I couldn’t be more delighted.” Her expression is so speechful that you cannot help but share in some of her hellion joy.

(Iliad/Capitol)
On his first album in seven years, Beck keeps the quality control extremely high as he surveys mid-50s malaise in the wake of divorce

The last time Beck released an album it was 2019 and the singer-songwriter found himself in a strange and unenviable position. In some quarters, the arrival of Hyperspace was eagerly anticipated precisely because his personal life was in turmoil. Nine months before its release, his 15-year marriage to actor Marissa Ribisi had ended in divorce, an experience he understandably described as heartbreaking. Unfortunately for him, there exists a pervasive argument that Beck’s greatest work is born out of misery.

His beloved 2002 album Sea Change featured a set of disconsolate acoustic songs written in the wake of a break-up with his long-term girlfriend Leigh Limon that Beck had initially thought were too personal for public consumption. They were certainly very different from the knowing, postmodern approach with which he’d made his name, but no matter: Sea Change went on to become a huge critical and commercial success. It wasn’t entirely clear what prompted the gloomy mood of 2014’s Morning Phase, but it very much seemed to be cut from similar musical and lyrical cloth. Some critics suggested it was the best album of his career; it subsequently won three Grammys, including album of the year. Given the circumstances, there was much pre-release speculation that Hyperspace would be a companion piece.

Fans of the show will not want to miss this revealing new series with Dominic Chianese and his son. Plus, a political drama that’s as thrilling as a Bourne novel

The Sopranos star Dominic Chianese (95) and his son Dominic Chianese Jr (62) helm this new series – a cosy father-son catchup, and all the better for it. Choice cuts include Chianese Sr’s admission that he thought the show was a spoof at first, playing his first scene as crime boss Junior for laughs. As for “Jimmy” Gandolfini, he was “in the same stratosphere as Al Pacino ... acting with him was so easy because he was so real and so believable”. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

Royal Albert Hall, London
The evening features everything from a rendition of an inscrutable Samuel Barber concerto to a celebration of Dolly Parton, but the real star is tartan-clad tenor Nicky Spence

In Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, a wealthy man commissions an evening’s entertainment: a lofty new opera and a comic burlesque. But when time constraints force them to be performed simultaneously, surreal musical chaos ensues. One can only assume that the BBC was taking notes.

The Last Night of the Proms is the finale to eight weeks of concerts, and the BBC’s annual identity crisis. Is this the celebratory end to a season of serious music or a standalone party, whose first half is something to be endured before the real fun begins? It’s both, of course. And that’s where the trouble starts.

Royal Albert Hall, London
Penultimate Prom showcases antique brass and woodwind and humongous tubular bells in a magical mystery tour through an alien musical landscape

Other conductors and orchestras have taken a historically informed view of Mahler – Roger Norrington was among the first, and more recently Les Siècles – but the logical conclusion drawn by the Mahler Academy Orchestra at this penultimate Prom still had the power to shock an audience to its core. Their intention was to perform on – and push to the limits – the instruments the composer would have known, replicating period technique to explore what musicians of the day would have considered beautiful and what might have been thought vulgar (bearing in mind Mahler himself was frequently accused of questionable taste).

It’s the brainchild of conductor Philipp von Steinaecker who scoured auction rooms and attics seeking out antique Viennese brass and woodwind, French harps, Turkish cymbals (smaller than you might think) and the humongous tubular bells Mahler demanded but rarely got. Gut strings and minimal vibrato were expected, but the extremes of portamento and rubato deployed in this radical performance of the Ninth Symphony stretched an ear-opening interpretation almost to breaking point. The result, even for seasoned original instrument fans, was a magical mystery tour through an alien musical landscape.

The president’s former press secretary has learned all the right lessons, but how come it took him so long?

The most interesting chapter in Anthony Scaramucci’s All the Wrong Moves is the one where the hedge funder turned podcaster goes to work for Donald Trump. It’s summer 2017, and he’s been given the job of comms director, which he doesn’t know how to do, but he and Trump think it’ll work out because they’re both from New York. Or maybe he took it because he had “Potomac fever”, which afflicts Wall Street financiers who find themselves on the riverfront in Washington DC thinking they know how to run a country just because they’re “full of power and judgmental insight … about to fix everything”.

This appointment lasts only 11 days, not even enough time to be truly tainted by Trump’s first term, though it is enough time for Scaramucci to miss the birth of his son. The account is a mea culpa soup, with the author full of regrets for his hubris, his impulsivity, his “pride, egotism and asinine stupidity”, the fact that, despite the clear-sightedness bestowed by his humble beginnings, he’d come to assume the collective biases of the rich people he hung out with.

Twenty years in the writing, this paranormal epic of cold war espionage and family tragedy is a quantum leap in terms of ambition and moral seriousness

China Miéville’s epic new novel is presented as being “20 years in the making”. It is quite a testament to how extravagant – even Stakhanovite – his imagination is that during that period he also produced six novels (including The City & the City and The Book of Elsewhere, co-written with Keanu Reeves), two novellas, two series of graphic novels, a children’s book, a volume of short stories and two works of nonfiction, on the October Revolution and the Communist Manifesto.

It does not mean that these works were, as Graham Greene called The Third Man and Our Man in Havana, “entertainments” – Embassytown, to my mind, is the best translation of deconstructionist philosophy into science fiction – but certainly The Rouse is a quantum jump in terms of ambition, moral seriousness and stylistic bravado. It means that rather than classifying Miéville with “the new weird” or “speculative fantasy”, he ought to be compared to Roberto Bolaño or Mircea Cărtărescu. This new novel is equally maximalist, dense, disorienting and discomfiting, reflecting how surreal our reality seems to have become.

A sharp analysis of the damage wrought by the reckless super-rich, and a progressive toolkit for repairing it

The more power the radical rightwing nationalists of our age accrue, the greater the risk that their destructive brand of politics becomes normalised. We should not, for instance, regard it as normal that the man in charge of one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals casually promises “a whole civilisation will die tonight”. We should not accept that history’s first trillionaire is allowed to spread racist conspiracy theories to a hitherto unimaginable extent. We should be alarmed that, here in the UK, a party tipped to lead a potential future government is trying to cruise to power in the slipstream of this international movement.

In fact, we shouldn’t just be alarmed by such developments: we should stop them and urgently repair the damage already done. But how? And what is the nature of that damage? This bold, clarifying intervention from Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor provides some of the answers. “End times fascism” is their term for a convergence of interests that can broadly be understood as a response to the climate crisis. Faced with a world coming under unprecedented strain from environmental shocks and an unequal, resource-hungry economic system, today’s reactionaries are effectively saying: bring it on.

A returning British soldier is haunted by his time in Palestine in this panoramic epic set after the second world war

Sebastian Faulks’s latest book focuses on the most irreconcilable geopolitical struggle of our age, the Israel-Palestine conflict. While “the sound of mortar and machine gun, the collision of flesh and metal” are integral to Faulks’s best known works, such as Birdsong, in his 17th novel the military presence is a peacekeeping one. It’s 1946 and infantry officer Philip Deval, who saw action in Normandy, is deployed to the Holy Land to take part in maintaining Britain’s mandate in Palestine. Initially Philip is second in command of a battalion overseeing febrile relationships between Jewish and Arab communities. Britain’s profound failures and manipulation in the region, and the imminence of its disastrous departure from the territory, come under scrutiny.

While able to drum up motivation and cheer for the men in his battalions, privately Philip wrestles with inner melancholy. He is “shrouded” in a “loneliness … that insulates him from the world”. Experiences on the battlefield and other, slowly elucidated tragedies have led to his pessimistic bent. Much of what Philip observes in the Middle East, and his “foreboding” sense of its intractable problems, only confirms his despairing sense of human nature. It also underlines his ambivalence towards notions of divine benevolence.

The distinctively British RPG is returning courtesy of the makers of Forza Horizon – with comedy talent such as Richard Ayoade and Natasia Demetriou voicing sweary characters. We had our first play and spoke to its developer

When Playground Games was founded in 2010, its objective was straightforward: to make the best cars in video games. Operating out of an unassuming white building in Leamington Spa, the studio sought to challenge Gran Turismo with its critically acclaimed British racing alternative: the acclaimed free-roaming Forza Horizon series. Yet as the team grew, so did their ambitions. Now they are making the most intriguing British fantasy game we have seen in many years.

For those who have never ventured into Albion, Fable is a quintessentially British role playing game. Created by Lionhead Studios for the original Xbox in 2004, it boasted cheeky charm alongside world-altering player choices, and its droll writing was brought to life in later iterations by national treasures such as Stephen Fry and Simon Pegg. Thanks to its unique blend of farce and fantasy, Fable grew into a globally beloved franchise – before Microsoft unceremoniously shuttered Lionhead in 2016, after mandating that the studio turn its star series into a multiplayer game. The result, Fable Legends, was never released.

We have a first play of the forthcoming Tomb Raider remake and speak with its developers. Can they improve on the gameplay without losing what made the 1996 original such a classic?

We join Lara Croft in St Francis’ Folly – inspired by the Unesco-listed monasteries of Meteora in Greece – as the light shines through the cracked ceiling and a flock of bats glide across the vast ruins below. When Lara leaps down to the monastery’s crumbling pillared courtyard, it becomes clear that these screeching, leathery creatures aren’t just set dressing. As they lurch towards her with unpredictable movements, she dispatches the swarm with a flurry of gun fire and panicked punches.

It’s a suitably cinematic reintroduction to our heroine and her very first adventure. Co-developed by longtime Lara custodians Crystal Dynamics and Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, Legacy of Atlantis is a reimagining of the classic 1996 game Tomb Raider, and this familiar cliffside location is now brimming with new life and believable detail. Yet while our reunion gets off to an auspicious start, I have my concerns. It feels like reconnecting with an old friend at the pub, only for them to begin spouting conspiracy theories two pints in.

PlayStation 5; Insomniac Games
Logan is well realised by Liam McIntyre and some exquisite character art, but there are lapses in narrative and emotional arcs and some of the combat feels like a chore

It was always going to be difficult to follow Spider-Man. Insomniac’s three games based around the web-slinger are masterpieces of superhero wish fulfilment, allowing you to swoop above a depiction of Manhattan alive with graffiti artists, roving journalists and gun-toting gangsters. If anyone should be up to the task, it’s Wolverine. A beloved Marvel stalwart, his life much darker and bloodier than Peter Parker’s, he seems the ideal protagonist for a moody action adventure. Yet somehow this well-made game falls short of its potential.

Set years before the founding of the X-Men, Marvel’s Wolverine sees a disenfranchised Logan falling back in with Sabretooth and Mystique when their mentor Nathaniel Essex is kidnapped by mutant-hating billionaire Bolivar Trask. This archetypal tech bro has a disturbing plan for world domination and the X Team are out to stop him – but there is a secret buried in Wolverine’s past that’s about to cause an eruption. It’s a decent setup, filled with the sort of intrigue, violence and Freudian tension we expect from the X-Men.

Once hailed as the future, even the likes of Google, Sony and Microsoft have struggled to make streaming games fun, fast or affordable

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In August 2009, at the very first Gamescom expo, I sat in a small meeting room in Germany and played Mario Kart and World of Warcraft on a laptop, via technology that was then completely new: cloud gaming. It was a demonstration for a yet-to-be-launched service called Gaikai that promised to let you play any game in a browser window, without a console. (Here is an ancient video of that demonstration, featuring a very young Keza.) With a single click I could launch into any game, hosted on servers hundreds of miles away. It really did look like the future.

Since then, plenty of companies have tried to be the first to truly crack game streaming, vying to be the Netflix of games. Sony ended up buying Gaikai for $380m (£242m) in 2012; its technology now powers the streamable classic games library on PlayStation, and the PS5’s advanced game streaming. OnLive, Gaikai’s first competitor, launched in 2011 but shut down after less than a year, leaving Sony to acquire all its patents. Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service also imploded, launching in 2019 and shutting down three years later.

Linbury theatre, London
Directed by Natalie Abrahami and choreographed by Loughlan Prior, this is an evening of many parts that sometimes feels bolted together

It’s an evening of two halves and many, many parts, some that dovetail snugly, others more clunkily bolted together. And perhaps that’s because The McRae/Vassilev Project is just that: a project more than a piece.

Directed by Natalie Abrahami and choreographed by Loughlan Prior, it is essentially an encounter between two masterful performers with long careers at the Royal Opera House, dancer Steven McRae and violinist Vasko Vassilev, entwined with the near mythical figure of another virtuoso artist, Niccolò Paganini.

The first half opens with Vassilev centre stage playing Bach (for some reason); he backs off to cede space for a luxurious pas de deux by McRae and partner Sarah Lamb, all exquisite lines, spins and lifts. From this “front stage” scene, the set switches to a backstage studio, artists McRae, Vassilev, Lamb and pianist Pamela Tan Nicholson entering as if for rehearsal. The rest of this section is a light-touch show-and-tell of McRae and Vassilev’s backstories – one a homespun Australian who happened upon dance as a child, the other a Bulgarian prodigy hothoused within a musical family – illustrated with old photos and videos, supplemented by comments from Lamb and Nicholson, and interspersed with consummate yet seemingly off-the-cuff demonstrations of their skills in music and dance.

The scene is at once charming – personalising the figure of the professional performer – and contrived: even as you warm to the characters you feel the joins in the script (voice acting is not their forte) and the jolts between the attempted naturalism of their conversation and the executed artifices of classical performance.

The second half is a complete change of tack. Everyone returns as devilish Paganinis in tailcoats and cummerbunds, hair dyed dark and tastefully tousled. As well as flourishing a violin bow like a baton, sword or spear, McRae uses his tap dance training in fiendish zapateado and brilliant Cossack spins, sometimes melding his commanding footwork in partnership with Lamb’s airy pointe-work and lean lines. Still, it’s perhaps Vassilev who holds the stage most, simply by putting his body into playing Paganini; the laser focus is spellbinding.

Shame, then, that there are so many distracting effects, from back-projected dancers to billowing smoke and glaring lights, and a busy abstract animation that visualises the musical dynamics. With performers like these, it’s enough for them to just do their thing.

At the Linbury theatre, London, until 19 September.

SEC, Glasgow
Singer Courtney LaPlante’s delivery typifies the tension between hard and soft in a confident show that could do with more grit

At tonight’s Spiritbox show, vocalist Courtney LaPlante addresses the anxiety and isolation of the Canadian band’s origins: “We grew up on Vancouver Island, far away from our dreams.” Now touring Europe in support of their acclaimed 2025 album Tsunami Sea, Spiritbox show no trace of these early struggles, delivering a confident, polished performance of anthemic metal.

This UK tour follows a US run opening for nu-metal icons Evanescence, with whom they share a fascination with the musical tension between hard and soft – and in LaPlante, a compelling gothic frontperson. They share a flexible approach to genre with much contemporary metalcore, deftly incorporating elements of drum’n’bass, R&B and industrial music. Circle With Me has Running Up That Hill-esque drums and reverb-laden guitar. The EDM-inflected Crystal Roses doesn’t completely gel, but LaPlante’s Auto-Tuned vocals add an interesting new texture to the mix.

Spiritbox are touring the UK until 19 September.

Lyric Hammersmith, London
A catastrophic explosion forces retired nuclear engineers Syal and Declan Conlon to confront their past after a visit by Kerry Fox in this revival of Lucy Kirkwood’s debut

Ten years on from its powerful debut, Lucy Kirkwood’s clever and funny play feels just as potent – if not more so. There’s so much to admire and enjoy here: Kirkwood’s skilful and layered writing; Rachel O’Riordan’s precise and thoughtful direction; Gary McCann’s striking design and, above all, a trio of richly nuanced performances from three brilliant older actors: Meera Syal, Declan Conlon and Kerry Fox. For all the ideas about the legacy we leave behind for our children, I found myself reflecting on how much we still overlook our elders, and what a terrible failing and waste that is.

O’Riordan’s softly rumbling production unfolds sometime in the near future (although that supposed future feels horribly close these days). There has been a catastrophic explosion at a nuclear power plant. Exclusion zones have been established and lives redrawn. Husband and wife, Robin and Hazel (who are both nuclear engineers), have retired to a nearby crumbling cottage. When old friend and fellow engineer, Rose, turns up unannounced – determined to lure them back to work at the power plant – all three are forced to confront painful mistakes from their past and think deeply about their futures.

At Lyric Hammersmith, London, until 3 October.

Plenitude Arena, Paris
Dion wiped away tears and belted out the notes, giving an astounding performance despite her diagnosis of stiff person syndrome

In 2022, when Céline Dion shared that she had been diagnosed with a rare incurable neurological disorder called stiff person syndrome (SPS), there was no guarantee that the 58-year-old would ever tour again. Her condition, which resulted in muscle spasms so strong that it left her with broken ribs, had made it impossible to perform, and in a 2024 documentary, I Am: Céline Dion, fans saw how the disease had constricted her once seemingly infallible voice. Through it all, though, Dion was resolute that she would one day return to the stage. “If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl,” she said in the film. “But I won’t stop.”

Thankfully at the opening night of her sold out five-week residency in Paris, her first full-length concerts in six years, no crawling is needed: Céline Dion is back. She glides on to the stage in a black dress, an enormous diamond necklace clasped around her throat, and launches into On ne change pas. There are tears almost immediately: she struggles through the second verse, her voice cracking as she begins to cry. By the time the strum of Destin has kicked in, though, that emotion is replaced with sheer elation. “I made a promise to be back on stage. Singing for you. Singing for me,” she says. “Singing for life.”

Mathilde Arcel, who won the Volpi Cup on Saturday for her role in Golden Lion winner Woman Unknown, said job offers have now begun to arrive

The winner of this year’s best actress prize at the Venice film festival has revealed that she is on unemployment benefits and had to fly to back to Copenhagen to report to the job centre before receiving her award.

On Saturday night, Danish actor Mathilde Arcel won the prestigious Volpi Cup for her first leading role in a feature film, May el-Toukhy’s post-second world war drama Woman Unknown, which also won the Golden Lion award for best film.

Taking the women of the 1950s as her role models, Jo Ann Chaus shoots compelling self-portraits that exhibit both strength and vulnerability

Pioneer in the teaching of British Sign Language who devoted himself to improving accessibility and opportunity for deaf people

Peter Llewellyn-Jones, who has died aged 76, was an interpreter and teacher who helped to establish sign language interpreting as a recognised profession in Britain. Throughout his working life, alongside employment as an actor and writer, he devoted himself to improving accessibility and opportunity for deaf people.

He became a pioneer in the teaching of British Sign Language interpreting and linguistics, and wrote the UK’s first undergraduate degree course in the subject, for the University of Wolverhampton in 1992. Peter was also instrumental in developing sign-language interpreting for British television and in bringing it on to the stage; starting in the early 1980s, he worked on 600 professional theatre productions across the UK.

Noel Gallagher told fans ‘this is history’ but the paper opted to review support act the Charlatans instead, as that band returned from tragedy

• News: Oasis announce 2027 tour, including return to Knebworth 30 years after historic concerts

Over two days in August 1996, Oasis played to 250,000 people at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire. Riding high on two bestselling albums, the concerts were seen as the crowning moment in their career.

The Guardian covered the weekend but Caroline Sullivan’s review concentrated on the Charlatans, one of the support acts. There was a picture of the Knebworth crowds on page 7, but the main review that day was of folk-rock band Fairport Convention’s Cropredy festival. There was also a review of the “anti-Oasis” Divine Comedy.

Chirag Bahri was working on board a tanker when six men seized it. For almost eight months, he and his colleagues were held captive, an experience that would change his life for ever

It was at noon on 8 May 2010 when the pirates came. Chirag Bahri remembers the exact time and date because it marked the start of the seven months and 20 days he was held hostage by a gang of Somali pirates. Bahri was 28 at the time, and working as second engineer on a chemical tanker, Marida Marguerite. It was his 12th journey through the Gulf of Aden in the Indian Ocean. It had been a good job for a young man from landlocked Uttar Pradesh in India, and Bahri was about to be promoted. “But then, piracy,” he says.

The ship had been 120 miles off the coast of Oman, partway through a run taking benzene – a raw material used in petrochemicals – from Kandla Port in India to Antwerp in Belgium. The piracy problem in the Indian Ocean was well known; Somalis armed with AK-47s were setting out in fast skiffs and taking ships hostage. Yet commercial vessels, including the Marida Marguerite, remained undefended.

There was a rat army in my flatshare, gnawing through pipes, carpets and even a bedroom door. That’s not to mention the mice ...

We should have known we were in trouble when we saw that the garden of our new place backed on to a Chinese restaurant in Hackney, London, with terrible reviews. Before long, the rats started coming in through the pipes. It was ratmageddon, and every day it got more harrowing. They trooped over our kitchen, like the world’s worst sequel to Ratatouille. They calmly walked into rooms while we were watching telly. They gnawed through all the carpets to try to get into our bedrooms.

There was no stopping them. After sniffing out the remnants of an old snack in my housemate Simon’s bin, a pack of rats got to work one night gnawing through the wood at the bottom of his bedroom door. Like a rodent military exercise, they spent eight hours whittling a hole large enough to get through. I lay next door, 100% freaked out, panicking they’d try to get into my room next. I didn’t sleep a wink. Fairly soon after this, one of the rats died under the floorboards so we got a bottle-fly infestation to boot. Naturally, our landlord did nothing about any of this.

Craving cosiness, but too warm for blankets and baths? Try our autumn cheat sheet

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After a record-breaking summer of heat, temperatures aren’t set to drop enough for hot baths, warm tights and roast dinners just yet. But if the darker evenings and falling leaves have got you craving cosiness, here’s our recipe for achieving that comforting autumnal vibe while it’s still unseasonably warm out.

***

Want to know the essentials fashion insiders swear by? Whether it’s great T-shirts or forever trainers, Guardian writers and stylists reveal the pieces they rate

• Jess Cartner-Morley’s September style essentials

Whether it’s a great pair of pants or the perfect T-shirt, nailing the basics can make or break your wardrobe. “They have to work harder than anything else,” says British Vogue style editor Funmi Fetto.

I asked Fetto and other stylists and style writers, along with members of the Guardian fashion desk – who all spend more time than most thinking about this stuff – for their most-loved basics. And don’t worry, most of them won’t break the bank.

Tired of squashed sarnies and spilt dressing? From stainless steel to insulated to plastic-free, here are the lunch boxes for kids and adults we rate the most

• The best water bottles

If packed lunches are a high-stakes game in your household (as they are in mine), the right lunch box is crucial. There’s nothing worse than opening the lunch you’ve been looking forward to since 8am to find yoghurt has leaked on to your sandwich and your cucumbers have dried out.

A lunch box may look like a simple bit of kit, but keeping food contained from kitchen to school dinner hall or workplace desk is a surprisingly demanding job. And the humble lunch box has come a long way from the simple plastic tubs that used to contain our clingfilm-wrapped, squashed sandwiches at school. Today, you can find bento boxes with multiple compartments, stainless steel containers, silicone pouches and leakproof designs promising to keep everything from yoghurt to salad dressing safely contained.

Whether it’s soft serve or sorbet, gelato or fro-yo, the Ninja Creami Scoop and Swirl is a faff-free way of making all your favourite frozen treats

• The best ice-cream makers for your home

For me, ice-cream isn’t only for summer. It’s my dessert of choice all year round, and a good ice-cream maker ensures it’s always readily available. When I put more than a dozen models through their paces earlier this year, one thing became clear: the most important feature in any machine is ease of use.

On that front, the Ninja Creami really scored highly for me. I’ve used the original NC300 model for a few years, and I like its simplicity and that it’s easy to clean. Nowadays, though, we expect our appliances to do a little more – and when it comes to ice-cream, the current craze is soft serve.

It’s probably not a good idea to freeze cooked risotto rice, but if you must, we have three experts who can tell you how to minimise the mush

I have tried various ways to reheat risotto after freezing, but it always turns into a gloopy, starchy, unappetising mess. What am I doing wrong?
Jill, by email
“Freezing risotto will be a bit of a disaster,” says Theo Randall, chef/patron at Theo Randall Cucina Italiana at the Intercontinental in London, “and it doesn’t really work.” The reason for this is that the cooked rice absorbs all the moisture while it’s defrosting, resulting in, well, Jill’s gloopy mess.

It’s also possible her risotto was overcooked to begin with, says Sue Quinn, author of Cheese Please. “Softer grains mean more leached starch, which leaves less leeway for further cooking without it going sticky and pasty.” Then there’s the question of reheating that defrosted rice for too long: “That can over-soften the already-cooked rice,” adds Quinn, so you have to do it “quickly and only until it’s piping hot”.

The reality, however, is that “freezing, thawing and reheating rice will make it squishier whatever you do”, Quinn says, but “if that’s the way Jill rolls”, her best bet is to get that defrosted risotto in the microwave, sprinkle it with a little water or stock, cover loosely, then reheat on high in one-minute intervals, stirring in between, until it’s hot all the way through. “To do this on the hob, put the defrosted risotto in a pan with a splash of hot stock or water, and stir gently over a medium heat for just long enough to distribute the heat.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Comprised of smelly soya beans held together by strands of mucus, the ancient dish is appearing in health food shops across the world

It is smelly, slimy and contains bacteria – and a sizeable number of Japanese wouldn’t touch it with a pair of barge pole-length chopsticks. But after centuries as a breakfast food for Japanese diners with nerves of steel, natto is emerging as a global superfood to rival kimchi, kombucha and kefir.

Its exact origins are unknown. Some believe it was introduced to Japan from China by Buddhist monks during the Yayoi period (300BC-AD300), before becoming a staple among rural communities during the Edo period (1603-1868).

The love child of a cheese toastie and eggy bread, this fried sandwich makes for an elevated snack or kids’ tea – and the leftover crusts give you ‘bread rosti’ the next day

For an exceptionally luxe snack or kids’ tea, mozzarella in carrozza is your girl. It’s the love child of a cheese toastie and eggy bread – instead of toasting it, you dip the cheese sandwich in egg and fry it. In other words, it’s mozzarella in a fancy carriage. I like to use a combination of mozzarella and mature cheddar for flavour, and while it’s best eaten piping hot from the pan, it’s a good (and filling) lunchbox option for children, too.

Intimidated by the thought of midweek entertaining? Three simple rules make it simple…

Entertaining midweek can feel daunting, but if you employ a couple of tricks, things can very quickly go from mayhem to magic. First, choose a dish that goes perfectly with good bread, so your carb is covered. Second, choose a protein that is quick to cook and great for sharing – little lamb chops are perfect for this, while also being a treat. And, finally, use other ingredients that don’t need much help. Here, the walnuts just get cooked in butter and the lamb juices, the courgettes are simply boiled and dressed, and the yoghurt is, well, yoghurt. Suddenly you’ve conjured up a masterpiece ready for many hands to dig in.

Good Time Cooking: Show-Stopping Menus for Easy Entertaining, by Rosie Mackean, is published by Pavilion Books at £26. To order a copy for £23.40, visit guardianbookshop.com

We got her as a puppy and she became particularly close to Adam – a blessing when he went into cardiac arrest in the middle of the night

My husband, Adam, and I had always planned to have a big family and that journey began when we got our dog, Polly, five years ago. I’ve loved golden retrievers since I was a child because I grew up with one. We got Polly as a puppy and she was everything we’d hoped for: loving and smart.

She immediately connected with both of us, but became inseparable from Adam. They would go for morning runs together; Polly could always be found wagging her tail by his side. This bond proved to be lifesaving.

Conversations are supposed to be two-sided – but all too often we come up against someone who’s passionately, exclusively in love with the sound of their own voice. Time to fight back …

When I was in my early teens, I was often invited round to a schoolfriend’s house for dinner. Her family struck me as wildly progressive: they were Danish and indulged in all sorts of “out-there” activities – fondues, candle-making and, most terrifying of all, the talking stick.

Before the meal was served, someone would retrieve the sacred broom handle and it would be passed around the table. You could speak only if you had possession of the stick. Despite it being the most stressful thing ever (it meant being in the spotlight, and then remembering to keep quiet the rest of the time), I now frequently yearn for a more convenient version of that stick.

For example, I met a friend recently who I see infrequently but keep up with via voice notes. No sooner had we sat down than he launched into a long discourse about his new marathon training food plan. He only broke the flow to order an omelette: “Four egg whites, two yolks, is that possible?” (We were in my local greasy spoon, so the request was greeted with mirth.) When we left, 90 minutes later, he finally had the grace to turn to me and ask: “And how are things with you?”

Walking home, I felt a mixture of disappointment and irritation. Had he always been so self-absorbed? So uninterested in anyone else? I couldn’t help wondering if our one-sided virtual updates had played a part in the problem.

There is a name for this type of egocentric behaviour – “conversational narcissism”. Although it was coined by the sociologist Charles Derber in his 1979 book The Pursuit of Attention, the term seems more relevant than ever. “WhatsApp communication and voice notes are really a series of monologues,” says Charlotte Fox Weber, a psychotherapist. “In face-to-face situations, people are forgetting how to pause naturally, to make space to hear and listen. And people are chatting on the phone – an activity that at least requires turn-taking in a defined way – much less often.”

A lot of our communication online can feel weirdly transactional, focused on logistics or niche WhatsApp groups. According to Tamu Thomas, a life coach and author, this has damaged the art of improvised conversation. “People have less capacity for meandering conversations that don’t have a purpose,” she says. “A good dialogue is a back-and-forth between two people discovering new things about each other, even if they have known each other for years. Because there are now so many different channels available to stay in touch, some people are confusing communication with connection.”

Knowledge is power, though. If you can recognise the five types of common conversation hogger, it will be much easier to handle them.

My son was inconsolable and the back seat was an absolute mess. After a few minutes of trying to clean up, a stranger emerged from a nearby house

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

Kids always get sick at the worst possible time. For instance: in the middle of a busy motorway, one hour into a three-hour trip.

My husband was away for work and I was driving our two small children to see him, when one vomited in the back seat. I pulled into a slipway just off the motorway to try to clean up as best I could. The kids were too young to be trusted to sit there safely right next to a busy road, so I had to leave them strapped into the car seats while I tried to mop up the vomit with wet wipes. My son was inconsolable and the car was an absolute mess.

A Tory twentysomething and a lifelong leftwinger agreed on the need for more housing stock, but did they concur on welfare and net zero?

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

Oliver, 22, London

Occupation Journalist for ConservativeHome

He wanted to save money, but it insisted on selling costly packages and seemed not to accept ‘cancel’ as an option

I was helping my father, who has dementia and Parkinson’s disease, reduce his £113.50 Sky TV bill.

We explained to the Sky call centre agent that, as his eyesight and attention span have deteriorated, he wanted the cheapest available TV package to free up money for his care.

Your rating is vital when taking on debt, but you could be in for a surprise as a big player changes its rules

Your credit score is the magic number that helps lenders decide whether or not to approve a mortgage, loan or credit card application.

Typically, the higher the number, the better your borrowing prospects. But a shake-up of the scoring system at TransUnion, one of the UK’s three main credit reference agencies, could mean a shock next time you log in.

With the budget looming, arguments rage over whether ministers should scrap a pledge popular with millions

There were fresh calls this week for the state pension “triple lock” to be ditched as debate rages over whether the UK can afford it.

The triple lock guarantees that the state pension goes up each year in line with inflation or wage increases or 2.5% – whichever is the highest.

Criminals exploit demand for iPhone 18 Pro and foldable Duo to trick people eager to get their hands on one

Apple has just launched a range of new iPhones, including a foldable handset, just as you decide it is time to replace your own ageing mobile. But you balk at the £1,199 price tag for the cheapest of the new options.

Searching online for a better price with the words “cheap”, “iPhone” and “deal”, you come across a website which offers an iPhone 18 Pro for a couple of hundred pounds less than the Apple site. You pay for the new phone via a bank transfer and wait for it to arrive.

Handstands display a mastery of one’s physical form that I have never quite felt – and they look cool. Experts share their advice for building up strength and practicing

My aspirations in life are modest: I want to write, spend time with my loved ones, and someday find a lipstick that flatters my skintone. But perhaps my greatest ambition is this: I want to be able to do a handstand.

Why? It turns the world upside down. It seems fun. It displays a mastery of one’s physical form that I have never quite felt. And it looks cool! Maybe it has to do with that one time in third grade when all my friends could do a handstand and I couldn’t, but that’s for me and my therapist to sort out later.

No run-of-the-mill tech, ‘Curie’ operates at 10 times the resolution of conventional microscopy and could spur discoveries leading to new treatment

The number of young people living with debilitating and incurable bowel conditions worldwide is growing, but researchers now hope a one-of-a-kind microscope will help them understand such diseases and find new treatments.

According to the British Society of Gastroenterology, more than half a million people in the UK are living with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis the two main forms.

After his stroke in rough surf, Graham Russell embarked on an unexpected journey into fear. Three lessons helped him return to the joy of the ocean

Looking out over the ocean, I would watch the waves sparkling in the sunlight as they grew and spilled into a burst of froth. It was a fun way to relax, to breathe deep and enjoy an awesome display of energy. But lately it had become exhausting.

In winter last year I tore the lining of an artery in my neck during a rough ocean swim off the Central Coast of New South Wales. It caused a stroke while I was in the water, which saw me scrambling back to shore where a surfer noticed me and sounded the alarm. Six months later, the injury had healed, and my motor functions were all back to normal. But as I prepared for a dip in calm conditions on a sunny day in January, I paused. An unexpected journey into fear began.

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Do you gain weight once you stop using them? Do they make your face saggy? Can they improve your mental health? Experts explain whether 13 common beliefs about GLP-1s are true or false

FALSE “GLP-1 medications mimic Glucagon-like peptide-1 – one of the hormones involved in appetite regulation. It doesn’t completely suppress hunger, but it is powerful,” says Dr Federica Amati, nutrition lead at Imperial College School of Medicine and author of The Appetite Reset. “The medicine is about 1,000 times stronger than what we naturally produce from our gut,” she explains. As food passes through the gut, cells called L-cells sense the nutrients, which sparks the production of the GLP-1 hormone. Without the drugs, these bursts of GLP-1 production last a few minutes. “It’s a bit like a sparkler. In comparison, the drugs are like a bonfire that roars for a week,” says Amati. Because the GLP-1 hormone stays in your body for longer if you are on the drugs, you feel fuller faster and your appetite gets suppressed, but you will eventually get hungry.

Experts don’t know exactly what causes dandruff, but if you’re seeing light flakes on your scalp, over-the-counter products can help

You spy a scatter of white flakes on your collar. Or you’ve got an itch that won’t quit, no matter how much you wash your hair. Dandruff isn’t glamorous, but it’s common: about half the world’s population has it.

An itchy, flaking scalp is rarely dangerous, but it can be annoying. Here’s what you need to know about what might be causing your flakes, what you can do about it, and when it’s time to get help.

Georgia O’Keeffe inspires the latest Calvin Klein while Michael Kors feels indebted to Alexander Calder

Calvin Klein has taken a highbrow turn in the two years since Veronica Leoni took charge. The Italian designer, a philosophy graduate who was schooled in the chic design studios of Jil Sander and Celine, has shifted away from jeans, boxer shorts and logos, stripping the brand to its minimalist bones: slip dresses and simple coats, slim skirts and crisp T-shirts.

Leoni called this the “discipline of removal”. Her muse this season was Georgia O’Keeffe, an artist who the brand’s namesake founder admired. Klein bought O’Keeffe’s painting Summer Days in 1983 for $1m, subsequently donating it to the Whitney Museum. A checked pattern taken from O’Keeffe’s distinctive capsule wardrobe of utilitarian chic appeared on this catwalk as a wrap coat, hardware-free with a fabric belt and no buttons.

Vegan leathers are complicated by questions of commercial viability and sustainability. How do they compare to traditional leather?

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

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

In sustainable fashion, breathless promises about vegan leather have arrived thick and fast for over a decade. Innovations promise mushroom and cactus alternatives that look and feel like real leather – minus the negative associations with methane, deforestation, chemical pollution and animal welfare.

While these next-gen materials have absorbed billions of dollars in capital under an environmental banner, experts are concerned they remain a shiny distraction while the fashion industry’s emissions and reliance on fossil fuel-derived materials grows.

I’ve always cinched my outfits at the waist, but shifting to a looser silhouette has helped me keep my cool in more ways than one

This was the summer of the Great Untuck. The long hot summer of 2026 finally taught me to do what fashion has been nagging me about for years, which is to quit tucking in my shirts and T-shirts. To stop assuming that the top half of an outfit must be neatly cinched by the waistband of the skirt or trousers.

It wasn’t a style epiphany, to be fair. It was just too hot to do anything else. An extended run of hot weather at home changes how you dress. In the old-school type of British heatwave, which lasted about half a week, I was too giddy with excitement at not having to wear a cardigan to think more strategically. But this summer was different. And eventually I discovered what hot-climate cultures have always known, which is that loose, generously sized clothing that maximises sun protection while minimising skin contact is way more pleasant to wear in the heat than anything short and tight.

Hiking alone in the countryside can be joyous, but for women it can sometimes feel unnerving. Here’s how to enjoy it safely, plus four stunning routes to walk solo

I did my first solo hike during a sunny September, seven years ago. After a summer of feeding and ferrying four noisy teenagers (and their friends) around, I was exhausted. But despite being bone tired, I had barely moved. I yearned, above all, for time on my own, for the chance to walk without interruption (and at the pace I chose), and for the silence of some empty wilderness.

But I was nervous. Not of being on my own, but of what might happen to me with no one around to help (breaking a bone, encountering a psychopath, being chased by a bull, getting fatally lost). I could have found a companion or joined a group, but my need for silence and solitude outweighed my fears.

It’s the birthplace of the popular cheese, but the Barletta-Andria-Trani province in southern Italy has an array of local delicacies – from olive oil and yellow tomatoes to goat prosciutto

‘I don’t eat mozzarella outside Puglia,” says our friend Savio. “It’s not the same.” Savio is a very opinionated foodie, so I take his words with a pinch of good Puglian sea salt (see below). He was adamant about the superiority of the stretched-curd cheese from his home turf.

Puglia is also the birthplace of ingredient du jour burrata, which originated in Andria, a few miles from Savio’s home town of Barletta. Andria forms one part of the triangular Barletta-Andria-Trani (BAT) province, but despite the cheese connection and Barletta having miles of palm-backed, sandy beaches, it is often passed over for better-known parts of Puglia. So I asked Savio’s company, Unexpected Italy, an app that calls itself the antidote to overtourism, to organise a trip to the area.

Chefs in the east of the country are shunning imported produce for local ingredients, reinforcing how food is intertwined with a region and its people

‘It’s a magical place, and not just because of the hotel.” Standing outside the greenhouses at Högbo Brukshotell, two hours north of Stockholm, Stefan Johansson is talking about far more than hospitality. The former head chef, now responsible for sustainability at Högbo, has spent much of the past decade helping reshape the way this corner of Sweden grows, cooks and thinks about food.

The catalyst was disarmingly simple. Years ago, a journalist asked Johansson why he was cooking the food he was cooking. Like many ambitious Swedish chefs, Stefan trained in Stockholm’s top restaurants, where ingredients from around the world were only a phone call away. The question lingered long after the interview ended.

French champagne house Taittinger is helping produce a premium fizz in the Garden of England – and now visitors can visit the beautiful winery and sample it

The grapes are turning purple on tall green vines, which stretch down towards the distant flint-and-limestone tower of Chilham church. These rows of Pinot Meunier, destined for English sparkling wine, are 51% owned by French champagne house Taittinger. “England is now the most exciting wine region,” says host and sales executive Hilary Sharp as she leads me around Domaine Evremond vineyard, which opened its visitor centre last year to coincide with the launch of its first wine.

In his 2023 book Vines in a Cold Climate, drinks writer Henry Jeffreys charts the rise of English wine “from a joke to world-class in 30 years”. The book opens with an alcohol-fuelled scene of vine-planting at Domaine Evremond in May 2017: unseasonably cold, rainy, muddy, with rambling anecdotes from anglophile Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger about “English women encountered in his misspent youth”. The vineyard is named for the exiled French aristocrat Charles de Saint-Évremond, a symbol of hedonistic Anglo-French cooperation. The bon vivant introduced champagne to England and party-loving Charles II made him governor of Duck Island in St James’s Park.

It was the fastest-growing emoji in 2025 – but if you’re older than 16, it has probably passed you by. Now, just as twentysomethings are catching up, it’s over

In the 2025 hit Netflix show Adolescence, DI Luke Bascombe’s 13-year-old son, Adam, has to explain to his father the way his generation use heart emojis. “Red means love, purple: horny, yellow: ‘I’m interested, are you interested?’, pink: ‘I’m interested but not in sex,’ orange: ‘You’re going to be fine,’” he explains. “It all has a meaning. Everything has a meaning.”

And those meanings are constantly evolving. Take the skull (), for example, which has come to be used as a reaction for finding something funny – a visual shorthand for the slang phrase: “I’m dead.” Or the wilting rose () which was, according to Google data analysed by the New York Times, the fastest-growing emoji in terms of popularity in 2025 – and was the 93rd most used. That the previously obscure wilting rose is now in the top 100 emojis is thanks to generation Alpha (those born between 2010 and 2024), who use it in place of the broken heart emoji () to signify sadness, or ironically, to suggest mock-heartbreak.

The hormone-packed pothos plant might encourage healthy root growth in other cuttings – or it might not. But you’ve nothing to lose by trying

The problem
Propagation can provide never-ending plants, but sometimes you have to wait weeks for something to happen. Anything that speeds up those reluctant rooters is worth knowing about, especially if it’s free.

The hack
According to a popular plant hack, placing a pothos in the same water as other cuttings encourages them to root faster. This is often attributed to pothos releasing auxins – the plant hormones involved in root development – into the shared water.

Priestcliffe Lees, Derbyshire: What a sight – and sound – it was, this huge flock of juveniles, feeding as the wind thrashed the vegetation

Stands of tufted hair-grass, some over a metre tall, burned beige by the summer heat, were churned by strong autumn westerlies. Over and through the vegetation’s swaying lather roved a flock of about 200 goldfinches, most of them this year’s young. They were intent on the hanks of thistle and knapweed seed which lay below the hair-grass “canopy”.

These immature finches lack any of the red and black bands of the adult’s head. Instead of the smooth mocha buff on their parents’ underparts, the youngsters were dull and streaky. What they had to perfection were the semi-circular disks of yellow across each black wing, while every feather through that full fan was tipped with white.

After an agonising experience, I avoided checkups for four years. But a practice that assured a stress-free process for scared patients was transformative

I haven’t always been afraid of the dentist. If you had asked me a decade ago whether sitting in the dentist’s chair filled me with dread or made me break out in a cold sweat, I would have laughed and said no – what is there to be afraid of? It was only in 2021, after I had a filling without being properly numbed, that I understood why people are afraid of dental work. Despite telling him I was in excruciating pain, the dentist carried on with the procedure anyway, and I was left with a newfound and deep-seated fear.

At first, this was easily managed. I simply binned the reminders to book checkups, avoided their calls and carried on with my life. After a year, I told myself I’d see the dentist soon – just not yet. I firmly shoved the problem to the back of my mind.

A bloated ballroom, a six-storey military HQ, a helipad-cum-cocktail patio, a gilded angel on a giant arch honouring himself … our architecture critic deplores the decorator-in-chief’s mutilation of Washington

When you have a developer as US president, you might expect some zhooshing up of the capital. A few buildings renovated, maybe some parks replanted. But when you have a megalomaniac builder in charge, things can get out of hand. A decade ago, when Donald Trump was first elected, I asked what it might mean for the US to be led by a real estate tycoon whose career had left a trail of broken promises, angry buyers and endless lawsuits, with rules flouted, heritage trampled and the world pockmarked by a fleet of aspirational towers clad with a flimsy veneer of luxury. The answer is worse than I could have imagined.

With the air of a nightmarish Hollywood sequel, Trump 2 has seen the president’s true architectural ambitions unleashed: The Blingpire Strikes Back. As America’s self-styled decorator-in-chief, Trump has not only overseen the gilded mutilation of the White House, but embarked on the Mar-a-Lagofication of Washington DC itself, applying his gold paintbrush to statuary, daubing ponds with flaking pool liner, and brewing plans for a colossal triumphal arch – all procured in a blizzard of no-bid contracts. And, in true dodgy salesman style, this programme of bauble-building is turning out to be a high-profile decoy for deeper damage being wrought elsewhere.

Three little letters - bnb-side’s name is a play on the local b-side arts festival, but Silicon Valley colossus sees threat to global brand

In one corner is bnb-side, a six-room bed and breakfast on the Isle of Portland – a tiny wedge of limestone tied by a narrow ribbon of shingle to the Dorset coast – that was created to help secure the future of the rock’s much-loved arts festival, b-side.

On the other is Airbnb, the San Francisco-based booking colossus. The battle between them is over the three little letters they share.

An unholy alliance is working toward an apocalyptic future from which only a chosen few will emerge unscathed. It’s becoming clear how we stop them

• Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor: the future according to end times fascism – video

We would like to hear your experience of seeing the Bayeux tapestry exhibit at the British Museum

The British Museum’s Bayeux tapestry exhibit opened on Thursday 10 September, and has already broken the British Museum’s record for the number of tickets sold in one day.

Have you seen the Bayeux tapestry at the British Museum? How far did you travel to see it? Tell us all about your experience below.

From renting and troublesome landlords to buying or selling a home, send us your UK housing questions

Are you dealing with a problem with your landlord or tenancy, wondering about buying or selling a home, or facing another housing issue?

We’re planning to launch a new column answering readers’ questions about housing in the UK and helping them understand their options.

The Guardian is looking for single men of all ages to talk honestly about the experience of being unattached

The Guardian is looking for single men of all ages to talk honestly about the experience of being unattached. Whether you are 16 or 100, we want to hear the unvarnished truth about what it’s like to live as a single man today.

Are you trying to find love? Or are you happy living life as a bachelor? Do you find the experience of modern dating – with all its red flags and height requirements – to be a minefield? Or are you attracting more attention than ever before?

We’d like to hear from people in the UK who have accessed medical cannabis from a private health provider and find out about their experience

In 2018 Theresa May’s government changed the law to allow the NHS and private providers to prescribe cannabis-based medical products.

The NHS prescribes medical cannabis for a few conditions such as children and adults with rare, severe forms of epilepsy and people with muscle stiffness and spasms caused by multiple sclerosis (MS). However, the vast majority of prescriptions for medical cannabis are being issued through private healthcare.

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