‘It’s a Britannia Shield’ announcement proves no one does farcical improv better than the Conservative leader

Just another day in Crapland. It’s amazing what you can get used to. You can’t say the Tories haven’t put a lot of thought into their party conference. It takes some programming skill to make every day even more dismal than the last. You come expecting very little and get even less.

Schopenhauer would be in dreamland. The very act of being has never felt so inconsequential. Yet there’s something very comforting about this. You leave the Birmingham theme park attraction feeling better about yourself than when you arrived. Who knew abject failure could be so much fun? You find yourself congratulating some members on being able to dress themselves. A curious hybrid of an endangered species and care in the community?

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food and the basics they scrimp on? The Queer Eye legend talks handmade gifts, secondhand shopping and bag obsessions with the Filter

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Jonathan Van Ness rose to fame as the beauty and hair care expert on the multi-award-winning show Queer Eye. Their eight-year tenure as one of the “Fab Five” presenters ended when the show’s final season aired in January 2026. A hairstylist by trade, they have their own cruelty-free, vegan haircare brand, JVN Hair.

Beyond TV and beauty work, Van Ness has continued a career as a comedian, writer and podcast presenter. They have written five books, including the New York Times bestselling memoir Over the Top and their latest young adult novel, which they wrote alongside Julie Murphy, Let Them Stare. Van Ness continues to be an advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community, working on campaigns with The Trevor Project and Planned Parenthood.

The term Afrobeats is applied to all sorts of genres, flattening them into one. Artists, media and the music industry must do better at showing off the richness of African pop

In 2024, South African pop star Tyla won the best Afrobeats award at the MTV VMAs. Beaming in a yellow dress, she began her acceptance speech in a celebratory tone. “This is such a big moment for African music. The global impact of Water,” – her hit single – “proves that African music can be pop music.” But as the audience’s cheers swelled, she became more sombre, describing the moment as bittersweet. “There’s a tendency to group all African music as Afrobeats,” she continued. “Even though Afrobeats has opened so many doors for us, African music is so diverse. I come from South Africa, I represent amapiano”, referring to the country’s rolling, sensual dance subgenre. Her passionate entreaty notwithstanding, months later she’d reprise her win in the Afrobeats category of the American Music Awards.

Tyla is hardly the only African artist to rail against the Afrobeats tag. Tems has spurned the term, describing her music as a cocktail of “Afro, R&B, soul and alternative elements”. Likewise, Burna Boy prefers to call his music Afrofusion, a fitting characterisation of the smorgasbord of sounds that converge in his music. Wizkid, Ckay, King Promise and Davido have also chafed at the term Afrobeats, yet it persists and holds back African music.

Copyright law in the US only applies to human-made creations, but AI characters like Tung Tung Tung Sahur are challenging that

One of the most beloved characters in an absurdist genre of online video content has become the center of an international legal battle that could determine where human creativity ends and artificial intelligence begins.

Tung Tung Tung Sahur, also known as Triple T, was created in 2025 by an Indonesian teen who goes by the username Noxa, using OpenAI’s image-generation tool. Based on a kentongan – a type of drum used to wake south-east Asian Muslims for their pre-dawn meal during Ramadan – the character is an anthropomorphized version of the instrument with a broad smile and a vacant stare. He sits under the umbrella of “Italian brain rot” internet videos.

Tate Britain, London
The Young British Art of the 1990s was brash and macabre but also intelligent and emotional. This breathlessly superficial show reduces it to a stylish pose

Jake and Dinos Chapman were dismissed by some even in the 1990s as overgrown adolescents selling shock for its own sake, and yet it is their work that brings this dismally shallow show closest to a moment of depth. Their sculpture Great Deeds Against the Dead, based on a print of Napoleonic war atrocities by Goya, is a display of dismembered, bleeding nude corpses hung on a tree. It asks questions about war and art, the representation of pain, whether art can have a moral purpose. The best British art of the 1990s was like that, coming on as brash, vulgar, macabre, yet also unexpectedly intelligent and emotional. Unfortunately this show is neither.

You’d think Tate Britain would want to do justice to a decade in which these Millbank premises played a starring role, staging the Turner prize in the years when bisected cows, concrete houses and elephant dung got the nation arguing. At the start of the 1990s no one thought Britain was a leader in contemporary art. By the millennium, we were better known for new art than new novels.

From ‘the new Toni Kroos’ to the US’ next big hope, Cavan Sullivan, we select some of the most talented players born in 2009. Check the progress of our classes of 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 … back to 2014. Here’s our Premier League class of 2026

Officers also carry out baton charges as students, staff and parents march in cities including Paris, Marseille and Lyon

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Police have fired teargas at ⁠protesters as more than 250,000 pupils, teachers and parents demonstrated across France on the biggest day yet of a campaign for better high school conditions that has been marred by often violent clashes with police.

The French prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said at least 215 teenagers and 85 school staff had been injured since the protests began more than a fortnight ago, calling the figures “the heaviest ⁠toll in decades paid by the school system”.

Minister says they could not see parties cooperating, while official says coalition should be formally ruled out

Senior Labour party figures said it was very unlikely their party would cooperate with the Greens in the future after they adopted a policy treating Zionism as a form of racism.

One Labour minister said they could not foresee how the two parties could work together, while a government official said Labour should formally rule out a future coalition or other arrangement.

Counter-terrorism police say 22-year-old detained in London on suspicion of terrorism offences

A seventh man has been arrested in London on suspicion of terrorism offences as part of the investigation related to threats to RAF Fairford, police have said.

The 22-year-old British national was arrested in Westminster, central London, on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts under section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006, counter-terrorism police said.

Sarah Pochin bought Anglesey property two days after writing to minister about impact of second home ownership on rural communities

A Reform UK MP bought an £800,000 second home on a picturesque Welsh island two days after raising concerns in parliament about the impact of second homes on rural communities.

Sarah Pochin completed the purchase of a Grade-II listed property on the southern coast of Anglesey (Ynys Môn).

Trio and 17-year-old boy convicted of rape after they persuaded girl to travel into Bristol alone and got her drunk

Three men who raped a 17-year-old girl before escaping from the UK to France in the back of a lorry have been sentenced to a total of 33 years in detention.

Mehrab Safi, 21, Salman Habibkheil and Awal Ahmadzai, both 19, and a 17-year-old boy plied the girl with alcohol after she had been persuaded to travel into Bristol alone, and all four raped her at a house in the city.

Mostafa Sepahvand, Farhad Javadi Manesh and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori did not dispute they surveilled targets

Three alleged Iranian spies carried out surveillance and reconnaissance to target journalists in the UK as part of a plan to commit “serious violence”, a court heard on Tuesday.

Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 46, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 57, are charged with offences under the National Security Act.

Letter signed by more than 40 signatories say Cambridge has backed away from promised thorough review of events before Arday’s death

Senior Cambridge academics have criticised the university’s plans to investigate Prof Jason Arday’s death as inadequate, and said those responsible for “serious failures of leadership” should face consequences.

In a letter to Chris Smith, Cambridge’s chancellor, the academics said “it is not yet clear” how the proposed review will answer difficult questions about the university’s involvement in the events leading up to Arday’s death, including its handling of the criticism Arday suffered after his appointment as professor of sociology of education in 2023.

Industry leaders say bogus claims rose 14% last year, pushing up premiums for all customers

An insurance fraudster who pocketed more than £14,000 for the supposed theft of Lego sets, fishing gear and gaming consoles was behind one of last year’s most high-profile bogus claims.

Investigators uncovered £1.34bn of fraud in 2025, a 14% increase on the year before, according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI).

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Some slapstick shenanigans on ITV as the Wembley water sprinklers turn on Ian Wright, Roy Keane and Mark Pougatch as Wright is mid-soliloquy in praise of Jude Bellingham. It’s not quite up there with your Harry Redknapp and Martin Keown touchline classics, but mildly entertaining nonetheless. Wright doesn’t look particularly amused, and tries to style it out by joking about all his wasted prep for the Bellingham bit, though his light-coloured suit now has moist patches, and one suspects he’s more concerned about the spatter than his patter. Keane remains admirably unperturbed, though you’d still pay cash money to witness any back-and-forth that may occur with the Wembley groundsman later on.

There’s a better-than-evens chance of England effectively qualifying for March’s quarter-finals tonight. Should they – as expected – beat Czechia, and should Spain – as expected – see off Croatia, England would find themselves comfortably in second spot on nine points, with the Croats in third on three. That wouldn’t put the Three Lions officially over the line, but Croatia would then only be able to at best tie England on points by the end of the group phase in November; in that scenario, it’d then go to the head-to-head, and the only way Croatia could win that is if they’d beaten England by an eight-goal margin at Wembley. Fair play if all this comes to pass.

Quarantine measures have been in place in several hospitals in eastern Russia since a 28-year-old laboratory worker, Darya Shipilova, died after falling ill at work following a reported accident at a plague research centre in Siberia. Russia’s health watchdog has said she died of ‘pneumonia of unknown aetiology’, but there is speculation about a possible plague infection. Lucy Hough speaks to Science Weekly co-host Madeleine Finlay

Second up for the 2026 Nobel Prizes was the award for physics. And this year it went to just one scientist, Francis Halzen. The Belgian physicist won the prize based on his work on the IceCube detector that observes ghostly particles called neutrinos. Science editor Ian Sample tells host Madeleine Finlay how Halzen came up with the brilliant idea to use sensors buried in the ice to detect these extraterrestrial particles.

In this month’s newsletter: for Caribbean scholars, the evidence of how deeply slavery shaped Britain’s wealth has never been in doubt. Plus, heritage walks in Manchester

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Welcome to this month’s Cotton Capital newsletter. I’m Ahmed Reid, coming to you from Jamaica, where I am programme manager for the Guardian’s Legacies of Enslavement team.

The recently published Register of British Slave-Traders, reported exclusively in the Guardian, lists 13,000 men and women who invested in and profited from the trafficking of more than three million enslaved Africans between 1563 and 1807.

Bestselling author and Conservative politician whose scandal-ridden career ended with a prison sentence

Jeffrey Archer, who has died aged 86, was irrepressible, though not necessarily in a good way. Ordinary humans would be sunk by the allegations of lies, thefts, frauds, gussied-up CVs, expenses fiddles, charity swindles, plagiarisms, insider trading deals, funding illicit coups and – perhaps most unforgivable of all – unpleasantness to underlings that dogged Archer’s life. But Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare – bestselling novelist, disgraced politician, one-time athlete and convicted liar – was not ordinary: he was what the Titanic was designed to be, unsinkable.

One morning in September 2000, for instance, Archer emerged from Wimbledon police station. He had just been charged with perjury for persuading a friend to lie for him during his 1987 libel action against the Daily Star newspaper, which had claimed he had paid a sex worker to buy her silence.

New York film festival: The origin story of Sam Altman’s company is reimagined as a campy comedy starring Andrew Garfield

On the day that Luca Guadagnino’s film about Sam Altman and OpenAI premiered, Vanity Fair released a cover story on Altman. Alongside glossy portraits from Annie Leibovitz, the world’s pre-eminent portrait photographer, the story describes him as the Oppenheimer of his day, evoking the image of a man leading humanity towards its own inevitable demise at the hands of sentient robots. Altman doesn’t seem to be grappling with much existential angst about the whole thing though: in an interview also released this week, he said that we should be prepared to accept “bad things” in return for the benefits of AI.

How much worse can things get? AI agents have already gone rogue, hacking into government systems and “bruteforcing” UN databases. Last year, a young woman used ChatGPT as a therapist before she killed herself (the software helped her write her suicide note). Studies show that using AI is probably leading us all towards something called cognitive surrender, which does not seem like the best use of your one wild and precious life.

Five decades after convincing judges she’d be killed if she returned to Chile, the artist is back with a politically charged retrospective in the country she grew to love

Cecilia Vicuña was 24 when she first arrived in London. She had come from Santiago on a British Council scholarship to study at the Slade School of Art, and her stay was supposed to be so brief that she didn’t even unpack her suitcase.

Then, in September 1973, General Augusto Pinochet’s military coup overthrew Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. Vicuña was one of a handful of Chilean students in London immediately expelled from their universities and expected to leave Britain. At a Home Office hearing, her pro-bono lawyers argued that she would be killed if she returned to Chile, and showed the judges her recently published art and poetry book, Saborami, which documented the aftermath of the coup. The judges granted her asylum.

We are all going to die, and so is everyone we know. So how can you not be terrified?

For most people, death is not a standard conversation topic. Once, at lunch, a friend began talking about her mother’s death several years earlier. Her voice caught occasionally, but she spoke about it plainly – like a simple fact of life. As we talked, I noticed another friend was shifting uncomfortably in his seat; he didn’t say much.

Afterwards, I asked him what was wrong. “I really don’t like talking about death,” he said, his hands twitching anxiously. “I don’t even like thinking about it. It freaks me out.”

For generations, professional photographers have captured the country’s pupils in all their awkward glory. But an increasing number of parents are using AI to avoid paying them

Name: School photos.

Age: Around since Victorian times.

On 14 January this year, army and navy squads faced an unprecedented challenge: one bomb on a Plymouth building site, another floating on a dredger in Exmouth. That afternoon, the clock started ticking

Everyone at Exmouth Marina knew there was an unexploded German bomb in the water. Old hands at the dock had been saying so since the end of the second world war. But the marina had been dredged and re-dredged and nothing had ever come up. It had started to sound like an old wives’ tale. The marina is a busy stretch of water: a commercial port until the late 1990s that had since been converted into a home to private yachts. A bomb, you’d think, would have a hard time staying hidden. But in the middle of the afternoon on Wednesday 14 January 2026, 81 years after the end of the second world war, Steve Hockings-Thompson, the manager of Exmouth Marina, got a call from the crew of a dredging vessel telling him he’d better come out to the boat. “I thought: ‘Oh crikey. We’ve got a bit of an issue here,’” Hockings-Thompson told me recently.

He went out to the dredger, a squat barge that hauls silt and other debris from the marina floor on to a flat deck that resembles a steel sieve. Sitting on the deck was a huge hunk of metal, caked in mud and stones. As Hockings-Thompson got closer and saw its distinctive conical shape, he knew it was a bomb – a big one. The dredger was loaded with 20,000 litres of diesel fuel, so if the bomb detonated, it would be disastrous. He called the police, who quickly came to the scene. “And then,” he said, “all hell broke loose.”

Farage’s scandals have allowed Badenoch to get her party back in the race. But her programme would be no less ruinous for our country

The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, will march on to the conference stage in Birmingham feeling buoyed. “Kemi’s soaring,” coos the Sun, and that sums up the prevailing wisdom. More than four in 10 Britons think she is doing well as Tory leader, compared with a third who think otherwise. As Nigel Farage’s stock has plummeted thanks to scandals over a £5m personal gift and donations from crypto billionaires, the polling suggests that the Conservatives could regain the mantle of Britain’s main rightwing force.

Yet Badenoch has been the beneficiary of circumstance. Her tenure as opposition leader has been defined by Keir Starmer’s project imploding almost as soon as it gained power. When Reform UK enjoyed its seismic polling lead, the Tory plight was double-edged: they were starved of attention, but that inevitably resulted in a lack of scrutiny, too. It has been easy for Badenoch to appear formidable while her opponents have disintegrated.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

Odds are good the CMA would approve of a supermarket merger. But does Sainsbury’s need Morrisons?

Would competition regulators really smile upon a combination of Sainsbury’s and Morrisons? One must assume the two companies believed the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) would give a thumbs up if asked, otherwise they would not have initiated their now-aborted merger talks.

It’s easy to list the arguments the duo could make. First, the combined market share of Sainsbury’s (15.2%, on the latest numbers from Worldpanel analysts) and Morrisons (8.4%) would still be less than that of mighty Tesco (27.8%). It would not be a case of leap-frogging the market leader, which was Sainsbury’s big idea back in 2018 when Asda was in its sights.

OpenAI’s CEO seems to want to privatise his company’s huge financial gains while making all of us pay for any negative consequences

Tech bros’ messianic streaks can show up in subtle ways. But one of Sam Altman’s flaws is that he often lacks that subtlety. “We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology,” said the OpenAI chief executive in an interview with Politico last weekend.

That’s easy for Altman to say. But it’s pretty galling to hear for the rest of us. Lest we forget, we didn’t ask for OpenAI to unleash AI agents that went rogue and weaselled their way into government IT systems and private businesses around the world. Nobody voted for ChatGPT to be released, but the company put it out into the world as a test product that happened to catch the zeitgeist. That kickstarted an arms race among AI companies to push the frontier of the technology ever further and faster, resulting in the mess we now find ourselves in.

Chris Stokel-Walker is the author of TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World’s Favourite App

A thriving economy, a model green transition, social advances – Spain’s PM shouldn’t be in trouble. Yet he is, and it’s a lesson for progressives everywhere

To progressives across the west, Spain has been a rare glimmer of hope in a world where far-right parties are increasingly entering government. Under Pedro Sánchez, who became prime minister in 2018, the country has combined a post-Covid economic boom with a bold green energy transition programme, and a pro-immigration stance with a principled opposition to the war agenda of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet, at the end of next month, this rare beacon of democratic progress could fall.

On Monday Sánchez called a snap general election, set for 29 November, after two decrees to address the country’s housing crisis were voted down in the lower chamber by politicians from rightwing parties. Speaking from the staircase of the Moncloa palace, Sánchez admitted that his government had not achieved all it had set out to do. “Many injustices remain to be corrected … particularly regarding inequality in public services and access to housing,” he said, adding: “To do more, we need to renew and expand public support.”

Paolo Gerbaudo is a senior researcher at the faculty of political science and sociology of Complutense University in Madrid and a lead researcher at the Alameda Institute

I was shocked when a man in a van aimed an ageist insult at me. And I regret to say that my son has been no help at all

I was performing an ordinary and not at all illegal cycling manoeuvre recently when a guy in a white van said: “You’re too old to be that stupid.” It was a critique so devastating that I was 10 minutes down the road before I even examined its mechanics. What is the right age to make a right-hand turn? I had also previously assumed that, wearing a bike helmet, I was invisible on the road. I’d come to think of myself as a ninja or a sprite, moving like smoke through traffic, protected only by my agility and smarts. Dispiritingly, it seems I was perfectly visible and other vehicles were just choosing not to notice when I wanted to turn right.

Anyway, I was on the way to meet a friend and, when I described this ageist abuse to him, he said, having quite a theatrical turn of phrase: “Darling, you’re not old enough to be this stupid.”

Badenoch would never have reopened the door on Brexit, but now that the PM has, it suits the Conservatives to let him walk through it

There’s no way on earth it should have worked, but somehow he may have got away with it. Last week, the actor Richard E Grant became the first contestant on The Traitors – a show whose only unbreakable rule is never to let anyone know you’re the murderer – to gleefully announce within minutes of being selected that yes, haha, it’s him! Yet even then many of his fellow contestants seemed to like him too much to recoil.

And that, roughly speaking, is now Andy Burnham’s Brexit strategy. After years of Labour politicians – not least Burnham himself, in the Makerfield byelection, without which he would not now be prime minister – trying to hide their real feelings about Brexit, Burnham has decided just to tell the truth and hope people roll with it. Leaving hasn’t worked, he said bluntly last week in Liverpool, and Britain should consider the alternatives. If you’re a leaver who suspects him of being out to unwind Brexit – well, yes, he is. This bold strategy seemingly surprised much of his own cabinet, an early lesson in how he likes to work for those who hadn’t studied his Manchester operation closely enough. But the oddly muted initial response to what would once have been a seismic shock suggests it’s wrongfooting some opponents, too.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

A generation facing unprecedented challenges deserves better than an underfunded education system

One of the most famous slogans in France’s May 1968 student protests declared “L’imagination au pouvoir” (Power to the imagination). In a postwar context of steady growth, the ’68ers dreamed of shaping an egalitarian society, freed from the social constraints of their parents’ generation. Nearly five decades on, in a very different economic climate, the goal for most of the tens of thousands of pupils disrupting schools across the country is more modest. As one placard on display had it: “I’d like to be worrying about my maths exam, not my future”.

A huge turnout of hundreds of thousands of protesters on Tuesday – a number that included many parents and teachers – confirmed the depth of resentment at years of budget cuts leading to crumbling school buildings, overcrowded classes and chronic staff shortages. Other complaints point to a lack of resources to deal with the now frequent heatwaves that make classrooms intolerable in May and June, and the unfairness of an opaque, algorithmically driven selection process for universities.

Zack Polanski must defend Palestinian freedom while reassuring Jewish members and showing that his party can handle disagreements

Last year, the UN general assembly endorsed the New York Declaration supporting two states in the Holy Land by 142 votes to 10. Those voting against included the US and Israel. The wider international diplomatic consensus rests on a 2002 UN security council resolution, which explicitly affirmed a two-state vision for Israel and Palestine. Saudi Arabia’s then crown prince said peace required “two equal parties” and could not survive “oppression and humiliation”. His words remain as relevant now as then.

The Green party has now rejected that two-state framework in favour of a one-state solution. The Guardian strongly disagrees with this move. Peace needs to acknowledge reality: the latest polls in Gaza and the West Bank suggest that a majority support a two-state formula based on the 1967 borders compared with just 10% who back a single democratic state with equal rights. The European Greens also disagree with the new direction of their English and Welsh sister party. The EU-wide representatives argue that the policy is incompatible with previously agreed positions. Europe’s Greens – which include the centrist German party – condemn “the genocide against Palestinians” and call for sanctions against Israel’s government.

Tom Walker responds to a letter that said first past the post is the lesser of two evils for voters. Plus letters from Susanna Dammann and Steve Smart

It is common in the argument against proportional representation (PR) to reach for Italy as a cautionary tale, as Gian Lorenzo Spisso does in his letter (A proportional representation voting system could spell disaster for Labour, 30 September). The irony is that Italy does not actually have a proportional system: it has a mixed system. If we want to assess PR, we should look at countries that actually use it – Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark – hardly synonymous with political instability.

Also, small parties or weak local representation are not unique to PR. The tiny Democratic Unionist party held the balance of power at Westminster less than a decade ago under first past the post (FPTP), while the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru wield influence disproportionate to their UK-wide vote because their support is geographically concentrated.

John Plowright reflects on how unemployment was viewed by Germans and the fear the KPD sparked

Philipp Ruch believes that the impact of the 1929 Wall Street crash cannot explain the Nazi breakthrough at the 1930 Reichstag election, as the full effects of Black Thursday “didn’t fully arrive in Germany until July 1931” (‘Hitler was a lazy criminal who slept in until noon’: why most of what we think we know about the rise of the Nazis is wrong, 1 October). But unemployment more than doubled between 1928 and the 1930 election, and that fact alone might be thought sufficient to explain the change in Nazi fortunes. Not so, says Ruch, for “in regions where unemployment was high, the Nazi party performed relatively poorly. If anything, unemployment was a factor contributing to anti-fascist resilience.”

This, however, marks a failure to appreciate how rising unemployment was seen by most Germans at the time. Not only did they see it as signifying one aspect of the failure of the coalition parties in government to manage the economy competently, but they also rightly regarded it as fuelling the rise of the Communist party of Germany (KPD) – with it being the other great political beneficiary of the Wall Street crash along with the National Socialist German Workers’ party. As the KPD grew, so the Nazi party grew – as it was perceived as the only party with the resolve and the numbers (thanks to the brownshirts) to stop the communists seizing power on the streets.

John Fisher recalls meeting a Casualty actor offering medical assistance to a passenger on a plane

Re Adrian Chiles’s article on TV medical dramas (I have a new favourite medical drama – and now I want to have a nasty accident in Pittsburgh, 30 September), my wife (a nurse) and I were on a flight back from Malta when the pilot called for any doctor or nurse on board to assist the cabin crew. My wife went to the back of the plane and found a hysterical woman freaking out on one of the seats. Standing over her were a cabin crew member and another woman, “attending” her. My wife said: “Oh, are you a doctor or a nurse?” She said: “No, I’m an actress, but I’ve been in several episodes of Casualty.”

The cabin crew member told her to clear off, and my wife looked after the hysterical woman. Some of these actors really get lost in their parts.
John Fisher
Eastleigh, Hampshire

Martyn Thomas wonders how any rational person can argue that independent oversight and regulation will be sufficient

Once again a frontier AI model has been withdrawn because it fails safety tests (OpenAI scraps release of new model over safety concerns in internal testing, 28 September). There is the usual call for “independent oversight and regulation”, though never any explanation of how this would work or, most importantly, what evidence should persuade a regulator that an AI system is adequately safe.

There is a long engineering tradition of regulating safety-critical software systems, such as those controlling aircraft or nuclear power stations; international standards require “safety cases” – rigorous analyses that show that the possible hazards have been identified and controlled and that the probability of an accident is extremely low.

• Nations League updates from the 7.45pm BST kick-offs

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Peeeep! The first games have kicked off! They seem to be running a bit behind schedule in Scotland, mind.

Before kick-off, a presentation for Andy Robertson on the occasion of his 100th cap, with Steve Clarke, Alex McLeish and Gordon Strachan on hand to give him a framed shirt.

• Nigeria filed complaint over ineligible players in playoff

• Fifa investigators aware of situation before tournament

Fifa allowed the Democratic Republic of the Congo to compete at this summer’s World Cup despite reports suggesting an internal investigation found that the country had fielded an ineligible player in qualifying.

The player in question, the goalkeeper Lionel Mpasi, starred for his nation at the tournament, including against England in the last 32. Mpasi, who was born in France and played for Les Bleus at youth level, had never completed the process of switching nationalities, Fifa reportedly found. No punishment was levied against the Congolese federation, Fecofa.

• F1 circus greeted by smoky skies before this Sunday’s GP

• Pollution affects reaction times like ‘alcoholic beverage’

Singapore’s Formula One night race is an annual opportunity for the city-state to showcase its dazzling, illuminated skyline. But this year the lights of the country’s many skyscrapers will shine a little less brightly.

The south-east Asian nation is shrouded in a thick haze that has drifted from huge wildfires in neighbouring Indonesia, with Singapore now among the world’s most polluted cities.

• Qatar frontrunners of bidders, with India and Hungary

• Turkey, Germany and Korea to present to IOC next month

South Africa is in the hunt to stage Africa’s first Olympics after it was named as one of seven countries that will formally present its case to host the 2036 Games in November.

However its bid, which would probably be spread across Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban, is seen as a distinct outsider, with Qatar widely regarded as the frontrunner ahead of India and Hungary.

Renée Slegers’ team have the technical ability, but doubts remain over the nastiness needed to rival Manchester City and Chelsea

Arsenal, 10 points adrift of the Women’s Super League leaders, are poised to undertake a “big review” of their season during this international break to try to determine where things have gone so horribly wrong – again – in the early stages. After their 4-2 loss at Manchester City on Sunday, it felt as if the agenda needs to include an unusual but potentially critical question: is this team nasty enough to win a WSL title?

The technical ability throughout the world-class squad Arsenal have assembled could hardly be higher but the levels of grit, resilience and tenacity need examining in a group that appears unable to match Chelsea and Manchester City when it comes to the mental aspects of a title race. Arsenal last won the WSL in 2019.

Messi says goodbye with 208 caps and a World Cup but there were times he thought his glory would never come

By Opta Analyst

Not for the first time, Lionel Messi is returning to the Argentina national team. This occasion, however, will be accompanied by a sense of completion and celebration rather than obligation, as the country bids farewell to probably the greatest footballer ever. Messi will wear the Argentina shirt one last time this week for a friendly in Buenos Aires against Benin after he was invited back for a celebratory runout following his decision to retire from international football after the World Cup final.

He has retired before. In 2016, having suffered heartbreak in a major international final for the third year in a row, Messi was seemingly done. “This is tough and a difficult time,” he said after the Copa América Centenario final defeat to Chile. “The end has come for me and our team. It has been four finals – it just wasn’t for me unfortunately. I looked for it and wanted it so badly, but it didn’t happen. This is best for everyone – for me and for a lot of people that wish this. The team has ended for me, a decision made. I tried many times and I leave without being able to obtain it.”

• Serb victorious after De Minaur retires injured

• Alcaraz beats Lehecka for first title since February

Novak Djokovic capped an outstanding week at the China Open with his first title for nearly a year. The 39-year-old profited from the retirement of his final opponent, Alex de Minaur, after only one game of the second set to win a seventh title in Beijing and maintain his record of never having lost at the tournament.

The 7-6, 0-1 victory means Djokovic has won at least one title in each of the past 21 years, while he now has 102 tour level trophies overall. Both men reached the final without having to complete their matches on Monday – Djokovic thanks to the much-publicised disqualification of Daniil Medvedev, while De Minaur’s opponent Hubert Hurkacz pulled the plug because of injury.

• American stopped rally after being distracted in match

• ‘You can dislike me or disagree … without being racist’

Coco Gauff said she received an “insane” amount of racist ­comments on social media ­following a ­controversial point in her China Open match against the home player Sun Xinran.

Gauff stopped a rally after ­electronic advertising boards ­lining the court flickered during a point late in the first set of her 7-5, 6-1 third-round victory over Sun, a 16-year-old who recently won the US Open junior title.

‘These allegations are deeply alarming,’ said Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat who received a copy of the complaint

• Can the Iran war cost Trump in the US midterm elections? Your questions answered

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Two media giants, Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery, have completed their $110bn merger, creating a new entertainment powerhouse, Skydance.

The deal, fiercely contested by several state attorneys general over potential antitrust concerns, formally closed on Tuesday.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis says his UK counterpart, Andy Burnham, has been supportive of restitution efforts in the past

The Greek prime minister has vowed to “ramp up” his country’s claims to get back the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum, emphasising that his UK counterpart, Andy Burnham, was hugely supportive of restitution efforts before he moved into Downing Street.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he would raise the issue in the strongest of terms when he met Burnham, who was culture secretary in a previous Labour government.

Order on two construction sites comes after Google failed to carry out environmental impact assessments

Google has been ordered to temporarily stop work on two datacentres in Finland after failing to do the necessary environmental impact assessments on its construction sites.

The planned datacentres in Muhos and Kajanni are part of a €13bn (£11bn) project across multiple sites in northern Finland by the technology company amid huge demand for space to house online infrastructure.

Tobias Rausch secures role of president in Saxony-Anhalt after AfD’s election breakthrough

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Alternative für Deutschland has become Germany’s first far-right party to secure the position of speaker of a regional parliament since the second world war.

Tobias Rausch, a former estate agent, was elected in the first round of voting on Tuesday in Saxony-Anhalt. He won 48 out of the 82 votes cast.

Journalists call for urgent amendment to special operations bill, which increases police search and seizure powers

Journalists in Trinidad and Tobago have called for an urgent amendment to a sweeping new bill that increases police powers of search and seizure, which they argue threatens the country’s much-vaunted freedom of the press.

The government says the special operations bill 2026, passed on 24 September, is designed to tackle alarmingly high crime and murder rates in the Caribbean nation.

Exclusive: Campaign group’s analysis of North Yorkshire plans finds datacentre would have to burn 4.9m tonnes of wood a year

Drax’s planned datacentre could produce nearly double the emissions of all flights out of Gatwick airport each year by burning 4.9m tonnes of wood annually, an analysis has shown.

Campaigners say this would make it “one of the dirtiest datacentres out there”.

The country’s far-right president is courting billionaire investors by removing a block on foreign ownership of land and natural resources

On 19 September, Marta Sahores, an 84-year-old chemistry professor and activist who has mobilised against mega-mining projects for more than two decades, took to the streets in Argentina. Alongside workers, retirees, students, Indigenous groups and human rights organisations, Sahores was there to protest against the country’s far-right president, Javier Milei. During the marcha de la bronca – the “march of anger” – protesters held signs reading, among other rallying cries, “The land is not for sale”.

Marching in Esquel, a town nestled in the foothills of the Andes in Chubut province, she also held up a sign defending the country’s water resources against what she called the government’s “handover” to investors.

Exclusive: Cop31 leader calling for global curbs on climate-heating gas has landfills producing some of world’s worst plumes

Two or three nights each week, the smell descends. Residents of villages on the rural outskirts of Istanbul don’t know what the smell is, but they have been plagued by it for years: a smell so bad they have to sleep with their windows closed even during hot summer nights. They know the source, too: the huge Silivri municipal waste dump a few miles away that is belching out stinking gases as food and other organic waste rots.

“The smell is not subtle. It suffocates you,” said Kemalettin Özenç, sitting outside a tea shop in the village of Yolçatı. “It’s worse when the air is still: sometimes families linger until midnight out here. Even when you go inside it’s inescapable.”

As trawlers compete with Greenland sharks for halibut and cod, conservationists and fishers clash over what to do about misunderstood species

‘When I accidentally catch a shark, I bring it to my dogs,” Henrik Jensen, a 27-year-old from Greenland’s west coast, says casually. “I don’t let it back down because [the sharks] bully me and cut my lines.”

Jensen has fished for halibut in Ilulissat, Greenland’s third largest town, for a decade. He works an hour north of the town’s main iceberg-laden fishery, which sustains the livelihood of nearly 400 fishers. There, the halibut are bigger and more plentiful, but so are the Greenland sharks.

More than 1 million people in Great Britain now vape despite having never regularly smoked, ONS data shows

More than 1 million people in Great Britain now vape despite never having been regular smokers, with rates nearly doubling in just four years, according to figures that health experts describe as concerning.

About 5.4 million people aged 16 and above in England, Scotland and Wales (9.9%) used e-cigarettes daily or occasionally in 2025, Office for National Statistics data showed. Vaping was highest among those aged 25-34 (16.4%).

Leader also says party is ‘not out of the woods’ and she would rather have another election than form coalition with Reform

Kemi Badenoch has denied she compared a new air defence system proposed by the Conservative party to Israel’s Iron Dome, despite using the term in her press release and a newspaper article.

The Tory leader said the party’s proposed “Britannia Shield” would not be comparable to the missile defence system in Israel, which is primarily designed to counter short-range attacks.

Labour could pay price for disappearance of parks and playgrounds around Euston station

When HS2 construction began around London’s Euston station in 2017 and people living nearby watched parks and playgrounds give way to diggers and rubble, they were promised that the lost green space would be replaced. “They have to give it all back,” said Dorothea Hackman. “But they are destroying it – so there’s nothing to give back.”

As the dust from the political party conference season begins to settle, disappearing green spaces and housing developments have become central issues in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection. On Thursday, Labour and the Green party will contest the seismic seat vacated by the former prime minster Keir Starmer.

British banker Simon Andriesz helped to expose alleged ties between late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick

A top UK regulator has launched an investigation into how it handled a whistleblower – who highlighted alleged ties between the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick – after he took his own life.

The British banker Simon Andriesz died late last month aged 57, the campaign group Transparency Task Force, of which he was a member, confirmed over the weekend.

Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan had 15 children, aged between two months to 13 years, removed from their home

A California couple has been arrested on child abuse charges following an investigation into a surrogacy scheme involving at least 21 kids, police said on Tuesday.

Silvia Zhang and her husband, Guojun Xuan are expected to face conspiracy to commit child abuse charges, according to the Los Angeles county sheriff’s department.

Märtha Louise and Durek Verrett launch defamation lawsuit in Los Angeles, claiming ‘coordinated series of devastating public attacks’

The Norwegian princess Märtha Louise and her husband, the American businessman Durek Verrett, are suing several former members of their inner circle for defamation over what they described as a “calculated betrayal of trust”.

Court documents filed in Los Angeles on 14 September claim the former friends and colleagues took “private access once afforded to them and weaponised it”. The accused include “former intimate partners, trusted business associates, a family member”.

Enlargement commissioner Marta Kos outlines proposed safeguards to protect EU from undemocratic leaders

The European Commission wants to ensure there is no repeat Viktor Orbán among the next generation of EU member states, as it set out plans to prepare for the bloc’s enlargement into eastern Europe in the next few years.

In an interview with the Guardian and other European newspapers, the EU commissioner for enlargement, Marta Kos, outlined proposals for special safeguards to protect the bloc from leaders who could flout democratic values and hold hostage decision making, a pattern of behaviour exemplified for many by the former Hungarian prime minister.

Benjamin Davis appealing against dismissal from FAO, after being accused by director general of playing ‘political games’

A former senior UN food agency official has alleged he was fired last week for his work highlighting hunger in Gaza, and has launched an appeal against his dismissal.

Benjamin Davis said the leadership of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had refused to renew his contract as director of its rural transformation and gender equality division because his team had published a brief on hunger in Gaza and held a seminar on the subject last year, and because he had taken part in weekly “moment of silence” vigils on FAO grounds for those killed.

Shares in fashion company fall nearly 10% after its app systems are accessed by ‘unidentified third party’

Asos is investigating unauthorised access to its app system after shoppers received a notification claiming hackers had “fully compromised” its data.

The online fashion retailer said basic personal information including name and contact details might have been accessed by an unidentified third party but it did not believe payment card records or passwords had been compromised.

David Ellison and ex-Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz to oversee both film studios, HBO Max, CNN and CBS News as co-executives

Paramount completed its $111bn acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery on Tuesday, consolidating some of the world’s most recognizable studios and news outlets after a bidding war with Netflix and months of legal turmoil.

The new company, now called Skydance, will have David Ellison, the son of a billionaire tech mogul, at its helm, with the former CEO of Mattel, Ynon Kreiz, as co-executive. They will oversee Paramount and Warner Bros’ movie studios, HBO Max, CBS News and CNN.

Watchdog examining whether company carried out adequate risk assessment as required by Online Safety Act

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is under investigation for a potential breach of the UK’s digital safety laws after launching a Snapchat-style feature on Instagram.

The communications watchdog, Ofcom, is investigating whether the $1.9tn (£1.4tn) company infringed the Online Safety Act (OSA) by failing to carry out adequate checks on whether its Instagram Instants product could show illegal content or be accessed by children.

Campaign groups report surge in membership after a spate of AI safety alerts and apocalyptic warnings

In a bar below Waterloo Bridge, a cell of a fast-growing anti-AI protest movement met last week to plot their latest move: disrupting a tech industry dinner being addressed by a senior executive from the chip maker Nvidia.

Emma, a 28-year-old bartender, had never before taken direct action and was the most nervous of the four plotters from Pull The Plug, one of a growing number of AI-focused campaign groups around the world.

The Saint Omer director has gathered work by artists, writers, composers and poets for Geste de Consolation, set in the 60m-long central hall of the Palais d’Iena in Paris

Alice Diop has just returned to France from California when we speak. It’s a Zoom meeting with a bad connection, and Diop leans close to the camera, always in frame, barely moving. It’s like watching the characters in her documentaries and films, where her camera lingers on its subject with a slow, cool intensity.

Diop had been attending a two-week celebration of her work organised by the French department at University of California, Berkeley, in which academics pored over her documentaries (Nous (We), Vers La Tendresse (Towards Tenderness)) and her first feature film, Saint Omer, which received the Silver Lion in Venice in 2022. The courtroom drama was inspired by a real trial that Diop attended, of a Senegalese woman who had allowed her baby to drown in the sea. Over two hours, it explored the complexities of race, culture and motherhood in contemporary France. The film was the first by a black female director to be entered by France as its official entry in the 2023 Academy Awards.

It’s 50 years since Smith joined TV’s bikini-clad crime fighters alongside Farrah Fawcett and Kate Jackson. She talks about the love she found on set, the harassment she endured off it and the drug-taking she did her best to ignore

For a TV show that only ran for five years, Charlie’s Angels packs a punch like a bikini-wearing big-hair-flicking private investigator. “We never thought we’d be talking about it 50 years later,” says Jaclyn Smith, the only original Angel to make it to the end of the show’s run. Smith, 80, has now written a memoir, I Once Knew a Guy Called Charlie – she is not, you gather, the type of actor to want to distance herself from her defining project.

As I read her book, and speak to her over Zoom, she comes across as sensible, hardworking and optimistic. Also lucky: loving and supportive parents, agents who seem to appear from nowhere and offer her work, an early hit show, a gift for making friends and getting over heartbreak. Even when she was diagnosed with breast cancer more than 20 years ago, terrifying as it was, it was caught early and successfully treated. Her positive outlook seems to extend to the excesses of US TV in the 1970s and 80s (drug use on set only gets a brief mention); her three ex-husbands get off fairly lightly; and any difficulties – her OCD, the men who stalked her at the height of her fame – are not dwelled on.

Our critic picks out some of the most outstanding cinema screening at the UK’s most prestigious film event in 2026

This film puts Andrew Scott in line to become the first out gay man to win the best actor Oscar. He plays Ian Charleson, who became a star in Chariots of Fire and in 1989 took on the role of Hamlet at London’s National Theatre when Daniel Day-Lewis withdrew, despite being desperately ill with Aids, knowing that the strain would accelerate his illness. For Charleson, the play’s themes of life and death, truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, were all too real.

After being cancelled, former Vanderpump Rules star Stassi Schroeder is fighting for redemption with her own show – never mind what her family and friends think

Across the 2010s, Stassi Schroeder was the star of Vanderpump Rules, the hit reality TV show that tracked the near-psychopathic interpersonal relationships between the staff at Lisa Vanderpump’s peak-millennial restaurant SUR. From the moment she appeared on screen – all statement necklaces and crispy flatironed hair – it was clear that Schroeder was an early master of the reality genre. While the cast were all villainous in their own ways, she stood apart for her singular mix of charisma and chaos.

For eight years, Schroeder slapped her friends, belittled her bosses, bullied other women, insulted customers and was generally terrible at her job. But despite the frequent physical and psychological violence, she remained a firm audience favourite. In the years since, she has spoken about the impact this kind of adoration can have on a person: the worse she behaved, the more she was rewarded with attention from producers and the adoring – and admonishing – public. For a time, she was the people’s princess of darkness. That was until 2020, when she discovered there are limits to what even blond, leggy reality TV prodigies can do.

Metal band Gwar host this instalment of the horror series, which serves up darkly humorous movie morsels that would struggle to frighten a toddler

The latest in the long-running horror-feature series is, as per usual, a decidedly diverse ragbag of shorts, strung together with the thinnest of connective tissue. The theme this go-round seems to be music and sound, so it sort of makes sense that hosting duties for the interstitial bits fall to the goofy metal band Gwar, its assorted members met here cracking Halloween dad jokes in their trademark extravagant outfits.

The five mini movies vary significantly in length as well as quality. Flying Lotus’s stop-motion exercise Another Cabin posits a young boy in a rural cabin living with a mean old grannie who tries to push him forward when a tentacled demon tears the roof of the house in search of a snack. The characters’ resemblance to the cast of early 2000s series The PJs is slightly jarring, given this is such a different register, but the brevity works in its favour. In contrast Renee Zhan’s Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance, the opener, drags on a bit, but has a reasonable gags-to-gore ratio in its tale of murderous puppets taking revenge on visiting studio execs who would dare to “reimagine” some ageing IP best left dormant. The funniest gag is the bright major-scale title song the puppets (designed by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop) sing about how all things must die.

The actor and his sister were with the 10-year-old on the night he was murdered. For the first time, along with the caretaker who found him bleeding, they share their terror – and celebrate their friend

Next month marks 26 years since the killing of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor prompted a wave of grief and incredulity across the UK. Damilola had arrived in London from Nigeria just a few months earlier, with his mother, Gloria, his brother, Tunde, and his sister, Gbemi. His father, Richard, remained in Lagos, intending – like the patriarchs of many diasporic families – to join his wife and children at a later date. But that reunion would never come.

On 27 November 2000, while en route from the local library to the family’s home on the North Peckham Estate in south London, Damilola was set upon by the brothers Ricky and Danny Preddie, 13 and 12 respectively. He was attacked with a glass bottle, severing the femoral artery in his left leg, and was found bleeding heavily in a stairwell. Shortly after, Damilola was pronounced dead at nearby King’s College hospital.

The legendary conductor was acclaimed for his dazzling music-making, and infamous for his hatred of recordings. His son, writer of a new film about him, remembers a loving yet intransigent and demanding father

My father, Sergiu Celibidache, loved children more than anything because they are free and true to themselves. And yet, he once made a young boy wet himself when he dared to ask for an autograph, shouting at the poor child as if he had committed a federal crime because he knew there was a black market selling his signature behind his back.

I grew up a privileged child with presents from all around the world. I was spoiled – to the despair of my mother, who always tried to keep my feet on the ground. But the gifts were part of my father’s way of making up for his long absences – he was often away touring with his orchestras.

The Guardian columnist and former Greek finance minister tackle big political questions in a hugely entertaining chat. Plus, why was actor Nkechi Simms placed in foster care?

This new series from the Guardian columnist and senior economics commentator is a lively interview show that tackles politics’ big questions. First up, it’s former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis for a hugely entertaining tour of his career, dissection of democracy and attempt to apply some long-term thinking to the UK. Or in his words: “How long do you think it’ll be before Andy Burnham is pushed out for someone else?” Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes weekly

Milton Court, London
A contemporary piece by David Fennessy is framed by JS Bach and Arvo Pärt in a show characterised by uncanny sounds and ghostly chorales

It’s not every day a concert promises “Bach & Blood”, nor delivers it so thoroughly. There were no massacres from the Scottish Ensemble, mercifully, just a characteristically singular bit of programming from this ever-adventurous string orchestra that framed Irish composer David Fennessy’s 2024 Blood with music by Bach and Arvo Pärt.

On 7 July 1720, while JS Bach was away in Carlsbad, his wife Maria Barbara died suddenly, buried before he could return. She was just 35. “Sei solo” – you are alone – the composer wrote at the top of his collection of Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin completed soon after. A slip of pen, misspelling “Sei Soli” (six solos), or a deliberate play on words? The intensity of the works – particularly the monumental 15-minute D minor Chaconne, with its weeping chromatic theme – suggest the latter.

The singer-songwriter owes a lot to Georgie Fame and likes the romantic side of Jimi Hendrix – but which ringtone song can put him in a bad mood?

The first song I fell in love with
The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix, which came out in 1967 when I was 12. Hendrix was known for outgoing music, but I was a romantic soul, so the emotional side of his music led to that strain in my own writing.

The song I do at karaoke
Karaoke? Certainly not. I do this for a living. Would you have made my great-grandfather dig ditches for fun? I prefer to live vicariously through Bill Murray singing (What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding in Lost in Translation.

The sex writing threatens to throw the novel off-kilter, but there are rich rewards in this tale of music and middle-aged compromises

What is the role of art in an artist’s life? Should you commit everything to honing your talent in the hope of becoming a great master? Or should you use your artistic gift to enrich your life and that of your community? In Partita, acclaimed American novelist Barbara Kingsolver grapples with these questions seriously and passionately through the story of a piano prodigy turned music teacher.

The novel opens in the present, where Livia is a school music teacher in the same part of rural Tennessee where she grew up, married to a farmer who once worked on her father’s farm. Contented middle age has been disturbed by a phone call from Sigurd, a man she had an all-consuming, destructive love affair with at college. This pulls her back into her past: both the period of her brother’s suicide when she was 11, and the years when she escaped on a music scholarship to Indiana, convinced she was leaving her parents’ world behind for good. We discover that her dreams of being a world-class pianist were shattered by an accident that damaged her hand, and that Sigurd played a part in this.

The Talking Heads frontman considers dormant ideas that made a comeback – from Indian irrigation to Kafka

There’s barely been a moment in  the last half-century when David Byrne hasn’t been zinging about, dancing forward, opting odd. The art-school dropout frontman of Talking Heads, he moved sideways into ballet, dance and experimental theatre, collaborated on the proto-ambient LP My Life in the Bush of Ghosts with his fellow polymath Brian Eno, directed films, wrote musicals (on – of course – Imelda Marcos), co-founded a label (Luaka Bop) that introduced the likes of Os Mutantes and William Onyeabor to a new generation, brought out books of tree drawings, and designed bicycle racks.

Byrne’s career – by most measures a remarkably successful one – has been built from code-switching, fidgety intelligence, stylistic infidelity. At first glance then, it’s surprising that Sleeping Beauties is devoted to failure – to artists who were ignored, laughed at, forgotten; to ideas deemed batty or heretical; to ways of thinking about the world – sustaining it, replenishing it – that, often for political reasons, were found wanting, and wiped from our collective memory banks. Sleeping beauties is (of course) a term he first encountered in an academic paper by Leiden University scientometrics professor Ton van Raan. That was in 2004: this book, like a lot of the ideas and energies it animates, needed time to ferment.

An empathetic biography of the the singer recasts her tumultuous later career as a triumph of self-expression

Since Whitney Houston’s death in 2012, a flurry of books and documentaries have appeared, most of them presenting her life as a cautionary tale. In this new biography, Emily Lordi, a professor of English at Vanderbilt University, refuses to reduce Houston’s story to another “good girl gone bad” narrative. Instead she presents a pluralistic take on her life in which Houston’s queerness, drug use and eccentricities are not dismissed as aberrations (as they were in her lifetime) but rather seen in the wider context of her unique talent and the pressures placed on her to embody black excellence.

Lordi describes the unsteady building blocks of Houston’s family (her mother Cissy’s band The Sweet Inspirations were in-demand session musicians who worked with Elvis, as well as on Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl and Dusty Springfield’s Son of a Preacher Man). When Cissy was still a child, Houston’s grandmother had a debilitating stroke following a miscarriage, eventually succumbing to a cerebral haemorrhage during a later pregnancy. The response to this trauma was to bury it. As Lordi writes: “Here was a lesson in suppressing your feelings and getting on with it.” But in a book where the act of singing through the pain is invoked multiple times, it is striking that reports Houston was molested as a child (a pivotal part of Kevin Macdonald’s 2018 documentary, which drew a line between that and her addictions) are not discussed.

The novelist has expanded her devastating 2014 short story about an imagined affair between Daphne du Maurier and a fictional Polish-Jewish housekeeper

The rollcall of notable novels that began life as short stories is surprisingly long and various. Two years before Clarissa Dalloway famously shopped for flowers in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway she was shopping for gloves in Woolf’s short story Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street; Evan S Connell’s Mrs Bridge and Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides began life as stories published in the Paris Review. Rachel Cusk’s story Project, which ran in the New Yorker in September 2025, serves almost word for word as the opening for her new novel, Life of M.

The newest addition to that list is Rose Tremain’s 17th novel, The Housekeeper, which pays homage to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca by imagining the events that might have inspired it. Tremain first explored the idea in a 2014 story, also called The Housekeeper and included in her acclaimed collection The American Lover. Her protagonist, then and now, is Lilianne Danowski, a Polish Jew who fled the pogroms with her father as a child and who presides with reserved efficiency over a large staff at Manderville Hall near Fowey in Cornwall. When Du Maurier comes to lunch, it is Danowski, known to her employers as Danni (Danowski was “a mouthful of fishbones”), who is deputised to show her around the house, who proudly encourages Du Maurier to look through the clothes in her dead mistress’s fastidiously maintained bedroom and takes her down to the boat house. It is Danowski who, after a passionate year-long affair with Du Maurier, will be twisted into the malevolent Mrs Danvers.

PC, PS5, Switch 2; Wych Elm Games, Team 17
Abandoned shops, ruined apartment buildings and rotting sewer networks make up a dark landscape in which you play a private eye searching for a missing singer-songwriter

In a weird deserted town miles from anywhere, a troubled detective searches for a missing musician and the girl he may or may not have murdered. It could be a Silent Hill game or a lost David Lynch movie from the 1990s – in fact, it’s neither. And also both. If that whets your appetite, stick around, there’s plenty more to come.

Developed by Scandinavian studio Wych Elm Games, Silver Pines is a dark Metroidvania-style adventure, where you play as shambling private eye, Red Walker, exploring a 2D universe of abandoned shops, ruined apartment buildings and rotting sewer networks. Officially, everyone has left because of an incoming storm, but very quickly you learn that something much darker is afoot. Someone has hired you to find singer-songwriter Eddie Velvet, but you don’t know why; your only contact with your client is via the payphones dotted around town, where you can also save your progress – as long as you have a dollar to pay for the call. Each location is filled with clues and puzzles – a weird newspaper story pinned to the wall, a strange statue that needs a missing piece – and through these artefacts you unlock new rooms and descend further into the mystery.

Xbox, PC (version tested); The Coalition/Xbox Game Studios
E-Day boasts the best combat in 20 years of Gears games – but everything surrounding it is disappointing

Every Gears of War game released in the last 20 years has made reverent reference to Emergence Day, when alien creatures emerged from the earth, single-minded in their savagery. In E-Day, you’re there to witness it: the police lights, flipped cars, ground tremors, civilians running, aliens pouring out of fissures in the earth and ripping faces off. You’re at ground zero in a squad of four soldiers called Gears – Marcus Fenix, the leader; Dom, who wants to retire; Lucas, a green cadet with a buzzcut; and the dishonourably discharged Mags. Only this dysfunctional quartet can turn the tide. With guns. Lots of ’em.

Instead of answering questions raised by the ending of 2019’s Gears 5, we’re back to the start to find out why Marcus has a scar on his lip and why these soldiers started strapping chainsaws on to their assault rifles. Anything that was left to the imagination is here, for you to point at and say: “I understood that reference. This is a thing that I have seen.”

There’s no Leon, Claire or Ada Wong in Cregger’s adaptation. Instead, it re-creates something more fundamental – the strange, terrifying experience of actually playing the game

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I’ve been surprised by the number of Resident Evil fans complaining on social media about Zach Cregger’s cinematic adaptation of the survival horror series. “It’s not a real Resident Evil movie,” they’ve claimed. Were we watching the same film? Certainly, it doesn’t feature any of the familiar heroes – there’s no Leon, no Claire, no Ada Wong – and there’s a distinct lack of recognisable antagonists and well-known locations. Despite all of this, Cregger’s interpretation is one of the most accurate and interesting video game films ever made.

On the surface, it’s about a zombifying virus that gets accidentally released in Raccoon City by the Umbrella Corporation. These are, of course, the foundations of the Resi mythos. More interestingly, Cregger seeks to replicate and explore the structural and narrative conventions of the series. In the film, the player character, hapless courier Bryan Hodukavich, is thrust into a viral outbreak, with no weapons and no idea what’s going on. He is then submerged into an uncanny shadow world of escalating peril and body horror. The film takes us through a series of locations dragged straight from the games – an abandoned farmhouse, a road tunnel crammed with abandoned cars, a hospital and the obligatory sewer level. As he progresses, Bryan finds increasingly powerful weapons, from a handgun to an assault rifle – but he is always short on ammo. And there are typewriters in at least two scenes!

PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC (version played); Bandai Namco
The game generates blood-pumping moments as you twist, turn and weave through the skies, while your locked-on missiles speed away to obliterate an enemy plane

The core appeal of any Ace Combat game lies in the moment when the beautiful clouds part, the sunlight glints off your perfectly rendered state-of-the-art fighter jet, and guitar-shredding music kicks into overdrive as your locked-on missiles speed away to obliterate an enemy plane. All of that is 100% present in Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. What’s new is the way it delivers its unexpectedly compelling story.

Set in the Earth-like alternative world of Strangereal, where every country is absolutely obsessed with fighter planes and giant superweapons, Ace Combat drafts you into the role of a fake ace pilot called the Wings of Theve – a propaganda invention to raise the morale of a besieged nation, similar to real-life rumours about Ukraine’s Ghosts of Kyiv. You rapidly find yourself becoming an actual legendary pilot, soaring through the skies with your buddies and raining hell upon your oppressors as everybody cheers on the radio. Speaking of ghosts, you have one in your ear – your predecessor, whom nobody else can hear, a gravelly voice waxing lyrical about flying, war and whatever else is on his mind as you flit about.

Riverside Studios, London
Andy Sandberg’s play gets off to an intriguing start before coming off the rails in spectacular, almost fascinating style. For all the wrong reasons, it’s hard to look away

It starts off with a car crash, and enters its own pile-up before your eyes. There is some initial coherence, at least: Dylan, the son in a filthy rich family, played by Netflix star Noah Schnapp, has killed two people while drink-driving and injured several more. His parents, at their Hamptons home, are hashing out Dylan’s defence with a hotshot lawyer. They deny he did anything wrong – “people died, he didn’t kill them” – and throw money at the problem in hope it goes away. All the while, 16-year-old Dylan plays Nintendo upstairs.

An original legal defence is invoked, along the lines of the poor little rich boy, suffering from “affluenza”, a psychological malaise in which a crime becomes the fault of wealthy parents who have failed to teach their progeny right or wrong. It is an intriguing setup with some parallels to the hit-and-run case involving teenager Harry Dunn and Anne Sacoolas. Its moral dilemma is promising, its echoes of victim culture resonant.

He has shot everyone from Madonna to Rihanna, Kate Moss and Frank Ocean. Now Walker has turned his lens on the activists, artists, writers, models and everyday heroes of gay life

Six years ago, Tim Walker was walking in the Highbury Fields area of London when he came across a plaque on the side of a building. In 1970, at these now-converted public toilets, Louis Eakes, chairman of the Young Liberals, was arrested for importuning following a “pretty police” entrapment in which male officers posed as would-be sex partners.

It was here, the plaque told the photographer, that the first ever gay rights demonstration in Britain had taken place, organised by the Gay Liberation Front, in protest at Eakes’s arrest. But Walker was jolted by the date: 27 November 1970. It was the day he was born. So he wondered: “Who were those people out marching that day? Where are they now?”

Ashmolean museum, Oxford

She’s the ultimate female nude, a Greek goddess who inspired centuries of artists. Yet despite some world-class loans, her story here is jumbled

Botticelli’s Venus has parked her shell outside your house and come to pay a night-time visit. The glowing strands of her hair glitter against blackness as she looks past you at a mystery only she can see, while your eyes follow those river-like locks down to a hand that gathers a looping cascade between her thighs. She is, unmistakably, the goddess from Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus in the Uffizi, Florence. This very similar painting from about 1490, also by Botticelli and his workshop, suggests his Uffizi masterpiece was already such an icon that someone commissioned this version without the zephyrs and green sea, just that goddess body.

So it goes. Venus, in art, is just a word for “female nude”. Botticelli started a modern appetite that has never ended. From his hypnotic paintings a host of lush sex goddesses rose up, or reclined, to rule European art through to Michelangelo Pistoletto’s ironic 1967 assemblage Venus of the Rags, also here, in which a heap of old clothes overflow from a corner around a marble nude seen from behind, the mix of beauty and chaos resembling a rubbish-strewn Naples piazza.

Curve theatre, Leicester
Director Cara Nolan keeps the play’s original 1980s setting but its message about how expectations are dictated by class and gender is anything but dated

So much of the success of Willy Russell’s ivory-spired two-hander rests on the chemistry between its actors. The play traces a woman’s self-empowerment through education via her relationship with a world-weary Open University academic, but there is stiffness here between Rita (Alexandra Mardell) and Frank (Dominic Mafham) as they get acquainted.

Frank learns of Rita’s desperate ambition for life beyond her job as a hairdresser and role as wife. Rita hears about his history as a published poet – and picks up on his inveterate drinking. In director Cara Nolan’s production, the dynamic between the pair does not pop in the early scenes, not through any lack of trying, especially on the part of Mardell. She makes a broad, vivacious scouser who has enrolled on to an English literature Open University course in hope to expand her intellectual horizons.

At Curve theatre, Leicester, until 17 October

Researchers argue incorrect binding of Voynich manuscript radically changes ideas about its drawings and indecipherable text

It has been called the world’s most mysterious manuscript: a medieval set of pages filled with botanical drawings, astronomical diagrams, pictures of nude women and indecipherable text. Claimed at various times to be a book in a lost language, a musical score, an instruction manual or just an elaborate hoax, the so-called Voynich manuscript’s true meaning has defied cryptographers and codebreakers for centuries.

Now, new research offers an explanation for why a scholarly consensus over this enduring puzzle has been so hard to come by: not only because its truth is so profoundly mysterious – but because everyone has been reading its pages in the wrong order.

Exclusive: Weapon is one of hundreds of items to be sold as part of the influential late director’s personal archive

A special effects axe wielded by Jack Nicholson as he delivered his chillingly manic line “Here’s Johnny!” in the 1980 horror movie The Shining is to go on sale.

Nicholson’s character, Jack Torrance, uses an axe to hack out an opening in a locked door protecting his terrified wife Wendy, played by Shelley Duvall. It is also the murder weapon in the killing of Scatman Crothers’ character, Dick Hallorann. One of cinema’s most famous axes could be yours for a list price of between £30,000 and £50,000.

Coventry University
Shopfront, scaffolding, throbbing car bodies … 37 artists take the temperature of the nation in a show which shows the breadth and eccentricity of British identity

It’s freshers’ week in Coventry. A student chamber choir is playing outside Warwick Arts Centre’s Mead Gallery as I arrive – an unintended but serendipitous entry to the British Art Show 10. The unexpected collisions of sounds, images and media continue throughout the three-venue, 37-artist strong exhibition curated by Ekow Eshun.

The British Art Show is an unwieldy thing. The UK’s largest recurring contemporary art exhibition, the quinquennial survey of British art’s inaugural edition took place in Sheffield in 1979 – 112 artists were shown, including Frank Bowling, Lucian Freud and David Hockney. It is intended as a survey of British art now – all the works were made in the last five years, and all the artists are identified as British. What constitutes British, and what British art actually means, are both knotty questions in the current political context.

Fenton’s successes include scores for Gandhi, Groundhog Day and 18 Ken Loach films, plus BBC TV news themes, Blue Planet and more

George Fenton, the British composer who earned five Oscar nominations for scores to films such as Gandhi and Dangerous Liaisons, has died aged 76.

A statement from his family said his death was “unexpected” but did not give a cause. The statement added that he was survived by various family members, as well as “a life of music”.

Firms working on reproducing compounds without need for repeated harvesting but conservationists are sceptical

Many of the world’s most expensive perfumes begin with a wounded tree. When some Aquilaria trees are damaged, they produce a dark, fragrant resin that becomes agarwood, or oudh – an ingredient so valuable that wild trees have been illegally felled in its pursuit.

The result has devastated wild Aquilaria populations. But what if perfumers could create the smell without cutting down the tree?

It’s being sculpted for fashion parties, collected by tourists and hoarded in freezers. There are even entire shops devoted to it. What’s behind the revival of the much-maligned foodstuff?

Temperatures in Paris were nudging 41C when Erwan Leo opened Le Butter this summer. Wildfires had already been tearing through France and the city was quiet, particularly in the less touristy 8th arrondissement, a flex-your-wealth area near the Eiffel Tower known as the “golden triangle”. The last thing it needed, you would think, was a shop that sold loads of butter. “We were just so worried about the fridges,” says Leo, the 34-year-old owner. “We didn’t think anyone would even turn up.”

I visit Le Butter, the first shop in Paris dedicated to selling the stuff, two months later in September. It’s a quaint, photogenic spot between a wine shop that was opened by Leo eight years ago and a cafe famous for being blown up in Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Inside there are candy-striped walls, little shopping baskets, a shelf of Instagrammable buttery merch (knives, hats, totes) and two double fridges containing 50 different types of butter. It’s a lot cooler today; the fridges purr away at an exacting 3C. And the past few months have been busy – so much so that Leo has had to erect a bench for those waiting outside, and a retractable barrier to manage the queues.

Breathable bedding, slanted tweezers and an indispensable garlic press … here are the buys you wish you’d discovered sooner. Plus, the best walking poles, tested

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Sometimes a product changes your life – or, more likely, just makes your day 10% better.

Whether it’s something small-but-mighty (a gadget that helps you open a jar without swearing, tweezers that get every hair) or a more expensive item that has proved its worth over the years (a much-loved designer dress, a garden mulch-maker), we asked you to tell us about the buys that have made your life just a little bit better.

Which salty condiment nails that deep flavour profile, and which is saltier than the sea? Our resident taster tries 10 soy sauces straight from the bottle

• The best supermarket kimchi

Soy sauce was created in China about 2,200 years ago, as a means to preserve food and to zhoosh up the humble vegetarian Buddhist diet. It’s a demonstration in kokumi – literally “rich taste” – a flavour sensation that’s often called the sixth taste.

I tested all of today’s soy sauces straight from the bottle, in all their intensity. I first identified distinctive aromas such as cooked potato, sulphur and broth (all typical in soy sauce and not as off-putting as they sound), alongside caramel and malty notes. The best ones are more nuanced, with fruity high notes and vinous tones.

Steam through the laundry pile with our expert’s top picks for smoothing creases on cotton, linen, silk and more

• How to look after your knitwear

I grew up in a household where everything was ironed. And I mean everything: tea towels, pyjamas, bath mats. Perhaps as a result of watching my mother (and yes, it was always my mother) spend hours every week standing at an ironing board, I revolted. My heart sinks every time I have to go into battle with an iron. But how do we banish irons while still getting linen trousers to look crisp? I present the clothes steamer.

Clothes steamers use heat and moisture rather than pressure to smooth fabric. A small onboard tank heats water into a steady flow of steam, which you run over garments while they hang. Instead of pressing fibres flat like an iron, the steam causes them to swell and relax, releasing creases without the need for an ironing board.

From bullets to rabbits to wand vibrators, our sexual wellbeing expert demystifies what’s available and rates her top 17 models (she tested 67)

• 26 easy ways to spice up your sex life

I could write here about how almost a fifth of women surveyed by Durex said using a sex toy was the most dependable way for them to climax. Or I could point out how Kinsey Institute research suggests regular masturbation can help relieve and prevent symptoms of menopause, such as vaginal atrophy. I could even tell you that studies demonstrate a significant correlation between intimate toy ownership and greater satisfaction – not only with sex but also with life itself.

But the potted version is that orgasms and erotic pleasure are glorious, and top-class toys can help you savour more of both. So here are the best vibrators available. Scroll to the bottom to find out how I selected these vibrators from the 67 I tested for this piece.

An unconventional technique makes this vibrant rice – finished with dill fronds – a lower-touch dinner for weeknights

• Check out more Alice Zaslavsky recipes

This shortcut risotto will have purists shaking their fists, but I like to live dangerously. Unlike traditional risottos where you stir the whole time, this one gets bunged in the oven with all its liquid, then right at the end, use a whisk to release the starches for a creamy finish.

Use a microplane to grate the parmesan over the risotto. This will yield a cloud-like consistency, but you could also just blitz the parmesan to a crumb in the food processor before grating the veg. I’d avoid buying pre‑grated parmesan, as it’s kept crumby with anti-caking agent, and the aroma is … not great.

Whether you sizzle, sweat, wet-fry or oven-cook, enhancing the savoury flavour of your mushrooms will depend on the variety, says our panel of fun guys

How do I cook mushrooms at home so they have the umami you get in restaurant dishes?
John, by email
For Chantelle Nicholson, chef-patron of Apricity in London, boosting the savoury side of ’shrooms comes down to three main things. First, they hold a lot of water, so “you need to cook that out of them, so heat is super-important, as are fat and salt”. Tomás Gormley, chef-owner of Cardinal in Edinburgh, adds that he can “almost guarantee” that John isn’t using enough of the latter: “As a rule, I use 1.5% of the weight of whatever I’m seasoning. With mushrooms, especially, season early, before they hit the pan, to draw out their moisture. That resulting mushroomy water then cooks the mushrooms while it’s reducing and concentrating the flavour.”

But there are so many varieties of mushrooms out there, and they all behave in different ways, so John needs to be using the right ones for the job. “If you’re making a soup, puree or paté, field, portobello or button mushrooms are fine,” Nicholson says. “But if you’re looking for a delicious sauteed mushroom, say, ideally you need something with less water content – chestnut, shiitake or blue/grey oyster mushrooms. Heat oil in a pan, then add the shredded or sliced mushrooms, and season with fine salt straight away.” Nicholson would be inclined to toss in a bay leaf and some thyme or sage, too, and maybe a smashed clove of garlic. “Cook over a high-ish heat until lightly golden, then add a bit of butter and keep cooking until golden. If you want to enhance the flavour even further, a splash of dry sherry works really well.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

This tart uses the richness of red vermut to bring together the sweet and the nutty for a flavour explosion

In Spain, vermut is traditionally enjoyed as an aperitif, while pedro ximénez is often poured at the end of a meal, alongside dessert or a piece of cheese, say. In this tart, however, they come together to tell the story of the Spanish table in the form of pudding. We have a wonderful tradition of fortified wines, and while lighter sherries often hog the limelight, vermut and pedro ximénez deserve just as much attention. They’re both made from wine, but each brings something completely different to a dish. Here, vermut, which is infused with herbs and spices, gently perfumes the pears, while PX, with its rich raisin, fig and caramel notes, introduces a flavour that’s impossible to resist.

A great way to pack in your vegetables, while adding pops of colour to your rotation of meals

I am still making large, nourishing and vibrant salads, with gado gado being one of my favourites. It is a well-loved Indonesian salad, and something I devoured almost daily when we travelled around the islands many moons ago. It is also an excellent way of eating an abundance of veg, and can be made to suit your taste. If I was going all out, I’d add tofu or tempeh, some prawn crackers and beansprouts, but feel free to make the bowl as you wish, with whatever you have to hand – have a play.

LD is the submissive to Lady Alice’s dominatrix – and it has been a revelation for them both

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

I have cerebral palsy and live with my parents. Lady Alice is a delicious secret

You can be curious about others’ beliefs without compromising your own

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend who explained that her ill health was down to reasons I would describe as dubious. Taking certain supplements and changing her diet have significantly improved her health. Good for her. However, she was disappointed and a little annoyed that I didn’t share her outrage and wasn’t going to follow her views.

I’ve got another friend who thinks cholesterol is a lie and that we should live largely on meat (and supplements). Another went through a sugar causes cancer phase. And another is sceptical of vaccines. Each of them may be right. They might not. We are learning more about the human body every day. But I was raised by scientists and I want to see a large-scale trial before I get outraged and change the way I live. Equally, I’m not convinced that a lightly regulated for-profit industry (supplements) is automatically more trustworthy than a highly regulated for-profit one (pharma).

Conor Curran’s first date with Chris lasted nine hours but their relationship remained casual. Then, when Conor was at his most vulnerable, Chris was there for him

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

At 29 I had lost my career in hospitality because of Covid and decided to throw my hat in the ring as a contestant on MasterChef Australia. By the time I was eliminated in 2021, restaurants still weren’t open and I didn’t know what to do with my life. My lease was coming to an end in Melbourne and I wasn’t doing well with the lockdowns and people recognising me from TV. So I decided to retreat to my father’s place in Adelaide for a while.

By early 2022 I was dating a guy but, after a few months, he ghosted me suddenly.

Instead of asking her to step away from her distress, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, could you suggest she channel it into action?

• Read more Leading questions

My wife is obsessed with everything that’s happening in the US. She literally spends all day sitting on the couch, watching videos and reading opinion pieces. She’s originally from America and has been living abroad for 25 years and she has family in the US, so I get that she needs to feel connected to what’s happening. But it’s constant. Whether we’re eating, watching a TV show or movie, when we’re talking about something completely unrelated – everything, every topic, either starts or ends with outrage.

I’ve told her she needs to take at least one day off all social media, but she won’t do that even for an hour. It stresses her out more and more every day, but she just keeps going back to it – and it has been really affecting me, more lately than ever. On weekends I stay up late playing games (my way of winding down after a week of work) and she’ll go to bed early. And during those times sometimes I just sit and cry. Everything that’s happening is so stressful, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I just wish I could rip away her phone and let her breathe! I don’t know what to say or do. Is there anything that could help?

Sykes Holiday Cottages showed no empathy and insisted on paperwork we didn’t have so soon after my husband’s death

We booked a break with Sykes Holiday Cottages for 11 of us to celebrate my mum’s 80th birthday last February. The cost was £2,400, paid for by my 87-year-old dad, but it was my husband who made the booking.

In January, my husband was diagnosed with aggressive lymphoma, and he died 10 days before the trip. My parents and some other members of the party still planned to take the holiday, and my dad informed Sykes of the death, since my husband was their point of contact.

Scammers reuse personal details harvested from fake Esta websites – and texts and calls can keep arriving for months

When the British actor Lisa Riley was preparing to travel to the US last year, she applied online for an Esta so she would not need a visa. After finding the site through a Google search she filled in her passport, bank and personal details and waited for the confirmation, which normally takes just under an hour.

When it failed to arrive, she emailed an address from the site where she had paid and got back a message unlike any she had seen before, with a link to a website that displayed a jumble of words and letters.

The Naylors’ four-bedroom home in Milton Keynes acts like a mini-power station after retrofitting solar panels, a battery and a heat pump

Clare Naylor paid close attention to how much energy she and her family were using last winter, filling hot-water bottles and bringing out extra blankets to ensure they didn’t go over budget. This year, she won’t have to worry as she is guaranteed not to receive a bill.

While millions of British households face the highest energy charges in three years from this week after a 4% rise in the price cap, and predictions of a 16% increase in January, upgrades to Naylor’s home mean she will not have to pay a thing.

From a neo-baronial country house with turrets in acres of grounds in Scotland to a modernist tower block in a bustling part of London

Experts looking at UK, US and Dutch data found ‘significant increases’ in early onset cases of seven cancers, prompting warnings about lifestyle choices

Cases of seven types of cancer have risen sharply among younger people in England, major new research has found, prompting warnings that lifestyle choices are costing thousands of lives each year.

The number of people under 50 diagnosed with prostate cancer in England has quadrupled since 2001, while early onset bowel, kidney and uterine cancer diagnoses more than doubled.

Health minister says 28 contacts identified after death of citizen who arrived from DRC on Saturday

Kenya has reported its first-ever Ebola death, the health minister announced on Tuesday, as the disease continues to spread rapidly through the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the outbreak was announced in May.

This is the 17th outbreak of the highly infectious, often deadly disease in the DRC. As of 2 October, 4,082 people had died out of 8,463 confirmed cases in the country since the emergence of the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, for which there is still no vaccine nor specific treatment.

For years, eating was something to control, fear or regret. After I hunted my first deer, I started to see fat, hunger and my own body in a different light

I muffled my sobs with a pillow so my family couldn’t hear me from the adjacent room. I was 19 years old and we were in Paris, staying on the top floor of an old six-story walkup where every step echoed through the thin walls. I was trying, and failing, to hide the emotional war I had decided to wage on my body. Who does that on a family vacation? In Europe, no less?

Pulling tear-soaked strands of hair off my cheeks, I stood in front of a full-length mirror and grabbed the fat of my thighs. If only I could just – I pictured ripping off fistfuls of my body and flinging them out the windows, where they would land on some unknowing French person six stories below. I had this vision often: pulling bits of myself off and casting them somewhere far away from me.

Formerly a favourite of the A-list, the chain has abruptly ceased trading, leaving teachers and customers blindsided

Kate Comer is a single mother with two children, so she is used to living on a financial knife-edge. But when the yoga studio at which she taught closed without warning in September, leaving her with two months’ worth of unpaid wages, it sent her anxiety skyrocketing.

“I’m just reeling right now,” she said, estimating her loss at about £1,500. “I’m very concerned about the future.”

Artistic director is all smiles as he swaps quiet luxury for bold colours and patterns at Paris show

“It’s a good start,” Matthieu Blazy said after a Paris show that marked a year of his tenure as artistic director at Chanel. “I am happy with where we are at.”

Chanel now holds the top spot in the Lyst index of the world’s hottest brands, which tracks demand and engagement across search and social media. The privately held company announces official financial results only once a year, but figures reported by Bloomberg showed 16% growth in the first half of 2026. In Vanity Fair’s list of the world’s 50 most powerful people, published this month, Blazy is the only fashion designer to make the cut. People who don’t much care about fashion have noticed him; people who do care about fashion talk about him non-stop.

Brand’s signature desire to subvert the ordinary brings blazers with track pants and crop tops under blazers to Paris fashion week

Speaking backstage at Miu Miu’s show on Sunday at Paris fashion week, Miuccia Prada said she had been thinking about “real clothes”. The clothes people wear on the street for running errands rather than posing on social media. Her findings? Succinct. “The reality of clothing today is this mix – sportswear, casual, normal,” she said. Her challenge? To make them “more interesting, more rich”. To achieve this, she outlined how she had decided to focus on mixing “elements of sports with sophistication”.

The collection opened with a series of five neatly pleated checked skirts. The first was worn with an equally neat checked blazer but rather than a smart shoe, such as a pump or loafers, there were brightly coloured trainers. The second featured a crop top under the blazer, the trainers swapped for spiky high heels. The other looks ditched the blazer and clipped the tops so they sat just under the bust line.

From pillboxes and boaters to bicornes and buckets, characterful hats are making their way from the catwalk to the high street

“Here goes – an order for a million hats,” wrote Jackie Kennedy to Bergdorf Goodman before moving into the White House in the early 1960s. It’s a line that could have been uttered by any number of people working in fashion today, because the hat – and not just the ubiquitous baseball cap – has been enjoying a very characterful resurgence.

This season at the turbo-high-end brand Loro Piana, whose clothes are beloved by tech bros and Kendall Roy, almost every model was wearing a hat. At Thom Browne, straw boaters came shrouded in colourful mesh. At Chloé there were see-through hats to match see-through trenchcoats and white sailor hats atop all-white outfits. Courrège’s hats were space-age, Burberry had big buckets, Bottega Veneta had hats brimming with charisma.

American in Paris showcases new simplicity with stretch cocktail frocks, but there’s still plenty of gold-foiled nipples and peekaboo fabrics to wow the frow

In a world of mega brands, the house of Schiaparelli is small but perfectly formed. There are only 10 points of sale worldwide where Schiaparelli clothes can be bought. The size of the business has risen from $6m in 2020 to around $100m today, but Schiaparelli is still small fry compared with other names on the Paris catwalks.

However, the Schiaparelli name punches above its weight. An exhibition at London’s V&A museum this year made a strong case for its founder, Elsa Schiaparelli, who collaborated with Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau, as a creative force in the surrealism movement of the 1930s.

A new series of rambles cuts the 185-mile trail into bitesize portions reachable by train, with urban beavers, the Devil’s Chair tor and some delicious food along the way

Few pubs boast a more idyllic setting. As I emerge from the woods after a 15-mile hike, The Bridges, on the banks of the Onny River, in the rolling south Shropshire hills, glistens in the late afternoon sun. Inside it’s all wooden beams, with light streaming through stained glass and huge bunches of homegrown flowers adding splashes of colour. There’s time for a pint before general manager Sam Thompson shows me to my room in the recently converted stables.

I’m here exploring part of the 185-mile (297km) Shropshire Way, on a two-day Heart of the Hills hike – one of the county tourist board’s new Rail-Ready Short Breaks. Designed for people who don’t have time to tackle the whole route, the itineraries focus on loops that are easy to access by train, with illustrated PDF downloads, GPX files, accommodation suggestions and highlights of what to do along the way. My route will take me from Shrewsbury to Bishop’s Castle via Ratlinghope – about 27 miles, perfect for a weekend.

The classic pre-dinner drink and snack combo varies depending where you are in Italy. In this fair city, it’s an institution that can even be enjoyed first thing

I arrived in Verona, I admit, without a particularly clear idea of what aperitivo meant. In Italy, the ritual – broadly, a drink and something small to eat before a meal – speaks a different dialect in every city.

Milan has turned it into a polished after-work institution. In Venice, it is more itinerant: an ombra (a small glass of wine) along with a cicchetto (a bite-size snack) and then on to the next bacaro (one of the city’s traditional wine bars). Verona follows another logic.

Tell us about a European ski resort that has retained its relaxed, uncrowded feel – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break

This winter thousands of holidaymakers will be packing their thermals and heading for the ski slopes. We’d love to hear about your favourite smaller ski resort, one which has managed to hang on to its local character and charm, whether it’s in the Alps, the Pyrenees, Scandinavia or eastern Europe.

The best tip of the week, chosen by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet wins a £200 voucher to stay at a Coolstays property – the company has more than 3,000 worldwide. The best tips will appear in the Guardian Travel section and website.

A world away from the tourist hotspots of the coast, Extremadura and Castile and León offer unpolluted skies, lower prices – and hope for the future of vulnerable wildlife

As photographed at night from a satellite, or the International Space Station (ISS), the Iberian peninsula looks encrusted with lights along its coastal edges. Madrid forms a big pulsing cluster near the centre, while surrounding hinterlands appear as something of a void. Ever fewer people live out in Castile and León and Extremadura, adjoining regions that cover much of what is known as La España Vacía, or “Empty Spain”.

Not many visit either, or at least not compared with Barcelona and other glowing nodes of the tourist circuit. So, while the big ports and resorts struggle to manage surplus holidaymakers, there is room for plenty more out west, toward the Portuguese border. Some have been following the stars that way lately, under the auspices of an astrotourism initiative called Extremadura Buenas Noches.

My student house in Manchester had several thousand other occupants. Despite pest controllers regularly dousing the property, the glossy, greasy, relentless insects marched onwards, endlessly reproducing

‘You do know about the cockroaches?” I’ve forgotten most things people said to me in the 80s, but never that. It was said by one of the occupants of the student house in Longsight, Manchester, that I had signed up to live in the following year. When the landlord had shown me and my future housemates the property, the tenants had been out. He told us they were third years doing their finals and must not be disturbed under any circumstances. (What can I say? We were gullible back then.) Days before summer term ended though, I’d knocked on the door to show a friend where I’d be living. Instead, I learned that the house was infested.

The weird thing is, we moved in anyway. In truth, although I understood this was very bad news, I didn’t quite realise what a cockroach was. There was no internet, so I would have had to go to a library to know what I know now: their march, their canter, their crunch if you step on one. Their soft, sweet, sour smell (uric acid which they store in their fat, apparently). Sometimes, in the back of a shop, or a restaurant loo, I catch that scent and I know what it is.

An easy win for the newspaper, plus a puzzle with a hidden mathematical theme

The Independent has an excellent puzzle made by excellent setters. Since 2016, it has, of course, been online-only. We used to link to gems from its cryptics on a weekly basis. Then something changed: the interface. The puzzle player had no links and trying to complete its puzzles was like trying to write on mashed potatoes with a hammer. It felt like it had been removed from the crossword ecosystem.

Many of us have persevered, but the effort it takes to print a PDF is quite the challenge of a solver’s commitment. The Indy is planning to discontinue the crossword, which is baffling since a) the online puzzles could have a busy, happy home with little effort and expenditure and b) puzzles have never been bigger.

It may be flooded with light, but that window ledge is only a pane of glass away from the elements. What’s the best way to protect your plants?

The problem
That bright window spot you chose for your houseplants to receive maximum sunlight can become one of the coldest places in the house in winter. The glass itself can get cold, and with heavy curtains drawn, it creates a cooler box area around your window. For tropical plants like anthuriums and philodendrons, which are used to less temperature fluctuation, the cold can be fatal.

The hack
Move sensitive plants back from the glass overnight, then return them to their brighter position in the morning.

Combs Moss, Derbyshire: There is plenty to be gloomy about, but today was not the day for it up on the moor

The morning was sunlit and the sky the sort of deepest blue dome that makes your heart sing – and all the louder for being at the time of least natural sound.

Autumn is the most silent season for birds, but at least I could hear the passing meadow pipits more clearly as they came out of the blue in small numbers and crossed overhead on migration. There is something inherently melancholic about their plaintive piping calls, which seem at one with the mood of upland treeless places.

A teenager struggling with climate anxiety searches for hope in an unexpected place – writing letters to imprisoned activists. Max, 14, is on a quest to understand the human stories behind direct action and why so many climate protesters are in prison​. As replies begin to arrive, a dialogue bridging generations unfolds and connection transforms despair into purpose. ​When Max writes to the judge presiding over a high-profile trial​, he is surprised to hear the letter referred to in the judge's closing remarks

Journalist Amal Khalil was killed in April in what colleagues described as a sustained attack by Israeli forces. Rescuers attempted to dig her out of the rubble of a building that had been targeted by Israeli forces, who had also prevented them from providing life-saving assistance.

Beirut-based Guardian correspondent Will Christou explains how investigations by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International and Legal Agenda show that Israel deliberately and directly attacked Khalil and her colleague Zeinab Faraj, with apparent knowledge that they were journalists. The organisations called for the attacks to be investigated as war crimes, while HRW called for states to halt arms sales to Israel and put targeted sanctions on Israeli officials responsible for ongoing crimes.

Deliberately attacking journalists is a war crime. Israel has killed at least 15 journalists in Lebanon and 210 in Gaza since 2023, according to the UN human rights office.

Israel said it 'regrets any harm caused to journalists', and that they were killed 'as part of a series of events' during which two Hezbollah military operatives were killed

• Israeli strike that killed journalist in Lebanon was war crime, say rights groups

Since Nicole Brown Simpson’s murder in 1994, Denise Brown has devoted herself to ending domestic violence. She talks about her beloved sister, the trauma she witnessed in the couple’s marriage and how lives can be saved

The last night Denise Brown spent with her sister Nicole Brown Simpson was at a restaurant for a family celebration. Nicole looked out of the window. “All of a sudden she goes, ‘Oh my God, there he is.’ He was driving by.” Brown looked out, trying to get a glimpse of her sister’s ex-husband, the former American football star OJ Simpson. “I saw these headlights. She said, ‘He’s constantly following me.’” They went back to talking about their plans for the summer.

The following morning, 13 June 1994, Brown was up early at her parents’ house in Orange County in southern California, when the phone rang shortly after 6am. “I heard my mom scream a scream that I had never heard from a human being,” says Brown. “It was so guttural. Just awful.”

Congolese photographer Pamela Tulizo uses costume and vivid scenery to celebrate women’s strength and give a new perspective on slavery

Pamela Tulizo’s latest series of photographs started with a question. “I asked myself, why are women in my community in particular, and African women in general, so strong?” says Tulizo, an artist and photographer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Where does this strength come from?”

Growing up in Goma in eastern DRC, Tulizo was informed and inspired by the women she was surrounded by, including her mother, her sisters, her mother’s friends and her neighbours.

Women are placed at the centre of the series of 23 staged photographs

We would like to speak to people about their experience of using AI agents when dealing with their finances

Following the release of Meta’s Muse and Open AI’s dots there’s now capacity for these AI agents to assist with some financial transactions on a user’s behalf.

With this in mind, we would like to speak to people who use AI agents to manage their finances.

We would like to hear from young people in the UK about their experiences of looking for work

About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK are not in employment, education or training (Neet), according to a report published in May, which warned that the figure could rise to 1.25 million by the early 2030s without urgent government action.

Alan Milburn, the leader of the review into why so many young people are economically inactive, said the UK risked opening up a “generational fault line” between young and old without urgent steps to overhaul schools, the health service, the welfare system and the jobs market.

If your local fox population has caused differences of opinion among neighbours, please get in touch

Have foxes in your area caused friction between you and your neighbours? If so, we want to hear from you.

Some people like to leave food out for foxes, while others take measures to try and deter them from coming near their homes – and this can be a point of tension between those living nearby one another.

Are you making cutbacks in light of the price increases?

The average price of diesel in the UK climbed to a record £2 a litre on 2 October.

The price of a litre at UK forecourts has risen 40.5% since late February, when the US-Israel war on Iran began disrupting supplies of crude and refined oil products from the Gulf, leading to cost increases across the economy.

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