The writer made headlines when she accused the world’s wealthiest man of lacking joy, culture, a sense of beauty … Meanwhile, her own life has been an attempt to understand and explain the world. She talks us through her latest book

‘Many people, including myself, spend a lot of time thinking about the past. And if you’re living in the same house you were living in with a spouse, the spouse is all around. Nonetheless, it’s not healthy to live in the past; I think we all know that.” Joyce Carol Oates is speaking to me from a book-lined room – one that makes you finally understand what “den” means – at her home in Princeton, New Jersey. She teaches at Princeton University as well as teaching advanced creative writing at Rutgers, also in New Jersey.

The author turned 88 this month, but she looks little changed from the 1960s, when she came to prominence: weightless like a sprite, focused and serious like a librarian. She has been a prolific writer, with more than 60 novels and many volumes of short stories to her name, earning her five Pulitzer prize nominations and a National Book award, among others, since the start of her career. Blonde, a haunting, fictionalised account of the life of Marilyn Monroe, Them, part of the Wonderland quartet, and Zombie, loosely based on the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, are often name-checked as career highs, but her consistency is striking. When she wanted to write mysteries, she did so under the pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. Her works of nonfiction, mainly criticism and memoir, would constitute a career on their own.

Tournament could hold up a useful hand mirror to the isolationism and divisiveness of Trump’s joint-host nation

One of the best parts of following football across the world is the way it drags you into special places, local shrines, objects of profound cultural connection. The US, of course, has these holy spaces too.

The queue of pilgrims in Philadelphia on Thursday morning stretched down the sun-blasted steps to the plaza at the bottom. Edging forward, the people in their ritual colours approached the figure at the top, arms outstretched in supplication, in a state of hushed deference. Called finally for his moment of communion, the man at the front of this line straightened his Ronaldinho shirt, clenched his fists above his head for the ceremonial Insta pic and shouted: “Adrian! I did it.”

Ten years on, leaving the EU has made life more difficult and costly – here are some of the ways we’ve lost out

It is 10 years since voters in the UK chose to leave the EU, and our wallets have been feeling the effects ever since.

From paying more to take the dog on holidays in France – and making calls while you are there – to higher grocery bills and the headache of filling in customs forms for parcels, Brexit has made many simple tasks more complicated and expensive.

The influential role vacated by the new Makerfield MP will be fiercely contested by Labour, Reform and the Greens

As Andy Burnham maps out the final steps on his path to Downing Street, he may feel that his future is clear. But a look back over his shoulder reveals a cloudier outlook, inviting the question: what now happens to his former role as Greater Manchester’s mayor?

An election has been set for 30 July, and with the job widely seen as having grown under Burnham’s tenure to become one of the most influential in British politics outside Westminster, Labour is desperate to cling on to it – but parties to its right and left both see an opportunity.

In 1996, a blizzard in Everest’s notorious ‘death zone’ killed ‘Green Boots’. Now, a fresh expedition plans to retrieve his body, and establish his identity

Thirty years after he perished in a small limestone cave near the top of Mount Everest, the body of the climber known only as “Green Boots” may finally be heading home.

If successful, the mission into Everest’s notorious “death zone” will also lay to rest any doubts about the identity of Green Boots.

Opposition to plans for ‘small paradise’ island of Sazan becomes wave of dissent against establishment

For Ina Shkurti, like so many Albanians, the island of Sazan has played an outsized role. As a child she bathed in its “always calm and emerald green” waters, as a teenager it figured in her dreams and as an adult it was an indelible part of the memory and desire that drew her back, every summer, to Vlore, her home town across the sea.

What Shkurti never imagined was that plans to build a mega-resort on Sazan – one of two luxurious complexes on Albania’s southern coast backed by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner – would trigger a revolt, an uprising that has convulsed the Balkan state in a spasm of disgust over the perceived excesses of “a rotten oligarchic class” just as it hopes to complete accession talks with the EU.

The prime minister said a new leader will be in place before parliament returns in September

• Full report: Keir Starmer to step down as prime minister two years after historic election victory

This is from Tom Baldwin, Keir Starmer’s biographer, and head of communications for Ed Miliband when he was Labour leader.

We seem to be in a strange place where Keir Starmer is being told he must quit to prevent more uncertainty and chaos (by those who have caused much of it) but then stay on for a couple of months because the guy who has been desperate to take his job is not yet ready to do so…

Keir Starmer has a mandate from Labour members.

He stood on a manifesto and won a mandate from the British people

Modern politics:

Consumerisation

Labour leader bows to mounting pressure after Andy Burnham’s success against Reform UK in Makerfield

Keir Starmer has announced he will stand down as prime minister after days of intense pressure from Labour MPs, including cabinet ministers, following the return of Andy Burnham to Westminster.

Less than two years after a historic election victory, Starmer had faced calls from his MPs to set out a timeline for his departure, with many of them unnerved by the threat from Nigel Farage’s party before the next general election.

His government was directionless and confused, and from that murk emerged the Peter Mandelson scandal

On a bone-chillingly cold morning in January, it felt as if I had suddenly found at least part of the reason for Keir Starmer’s chronic unpopularity. I was in the Mancunian constituency of Gorton and Denton, where the prime minister and his people’s decision to block Andy Burnham from standing was about to hand victory to the Green party. More specifically, I was in a forlorn covered market about to be regenerated into a “food and drink cluster”, talking to a sixtysomething man nursing a mug of tea.

What, I wondered, did he think of the man at the top? He gave me roughly the same answer that I’d heard from a lot of my other interviewees: “I really don’t like him at all.” But like most other people I met that day, he couldn’t quite explain what fired his antipathy, which seemed to make it worse. His face scrunched into a mixture of scepticism and exasperation. “I don’t know why – I just don’t,” he said. The most specific answer I got from anyone else was: “He hasn’t done what he said he’d do.” So there it was: as well as a modern tendency to loathe politicians that regularly seems arbitrary, whipped-up and way over the top, a sense that Starmer’s sheer blankness – his painful lack of clarity and the absence of a halfway coherent story about his own government – was making a lot of people dislike and mistrust him all the more.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

Starmer appeared ruthless in banishing the influence of Jeremy Corbyn, and winning power – but far less certain on how to wield it

Few would describe him as a dramatic man, but Keir Starmer’s political career has been almost Shakespearean in its trajectory: a mere 11 years to enter parliament, lead Labour to an election win many assumed was impossible and then, inside the final two years, throw it all away.

His demise is, of course, a reflection of an unprecedented era, one in which voter loyalties were atomised, a two-party hegemony fractured into five, and for the first time ever Labour faced a coherent threat on its left as well as its right.

Insider indicates Ockenden inquiry has uncovered appalling behaviour including racism toward mothers

The report of the inquiry into the biggest maternity scandal in NHS history will outline “horrendous” failings in the care provided to women in Nottingham, the Guardian can reveal.

A catalogue of appalling behaviour over many years by staff at the city’s two hospitals – Queen’s Medical Centre and Nottingham City hospital – included racism towards mothers, it will say.

Mediators Pakistan and Qatar issue statement saying talks will run for rest of the week, as fighting in Lebanon continues to threaten deal

Iran’s foreign minister has declared “progress” after the first day of talks between high-ranking officials from Washington and Tehran ended in Switzerland, despite a tense opening marked by Donald Trump threats to restart attacks.

A joint statement from mediators Qatar and Pakistan said the ⁠US and Iran agreed to a roadmap towards⁠ a final deal within 60 days. Technical talks between lower-ranked officials ​will continue for the rest of the week, according to the statement, with fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon at the top of the agenda.

⚽ All the latest news from day 11 of the tournament
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Beiranvand, by the way, holds the world record for the longest throw in a competitive match – 61.0026m – and for the longest drop-kick, 78.014m. Not bad for someone who was once sleeping rough.

But let’s return to Iran for a moment. Their goalie, Alireza Beiranvand – or “The Wall of Persia” as he’s known – had to run away from home to become a footballer, his old fella less than enchanted by the ruse and cutting up his gloves. I wonder how he feels now his boy has been player of the match at a World Cup.

People smugglers have been using lorries to bring people deported to France under the deal back to the UK

The UK and France have been forced to rewrite the “one in, one out” deal because of concerns over the numbers of people re-entering the UK after being removed to the continent.

The original treaty said people arriving in small boats could be returned to France. But people smugglers have used lorries to bring people who had been deported to France under the deal back to the UK.

Head of Greater Manchester force refutes claims of anti-white bias but says he understands where it comes from

Policing in Britain has “adopted the language of activism” and official guidance has “over-corrected” to combat accusations of racism, one of the UK’s most senior officers has said.

Sir Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police, said he did not believe that “two-tier policing” existed or that forces were biased against white people.

Leftwing opponent alleges vote count irregularities after Trump-endorsed lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella secures narrow majority

The Trump-admiring far-right millionaire lawyer and self-styled “outsider” Abelardo de la Espriella has won Colombia’s presidential runoff, defeating the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda.

With 99.99% of ballots counted in the preliminary vote tally, De la Espriella had secured 12.96m votes, or 49.66%, just 250,830 more than Cepeda, who received 12.7m votes, or 48.7%. A further 1.6% of ballots were cast blank.

Company ‘extremely sorry’ for ‘unacceptable’ email urging customers to ‘Snap up these deals quicker than a croc can catch a kid!’

The discount voucher website Wowcher has apologised after appearing to make reference to a crocodile attack on a toddler at a zoo in an email promoting its offers.

A spokesperson for Wowcher said it was urgently reviewing its marketing content after the subject line of an email on Saturday urged customers to “Snap up these deals quicker than a croc can catch a kid!”

The Windrush Prize will award £10,000 to the writer of the winning play, which will receive a run at the Arcola theatre next year

The first prize dedicated to discovering and developing British Caribbean playwrights has been launched using compensation awarded to a Windrush victim who died before receiving it.

The Windrush Prize for British Caribbean Playwrights, believed to be the first major prize of its kind in 30 years, has been established by Shereener Browne, the founder and artistic director of Orísun Productions and a former barrister, in memory of her late father, Myron Brown.

At age 24, workers born in the late 1990s are paid more than any cohort since those born in the 1950s

Gen Z’s early careers are more financially rewarding than those of millennials, research suggests.

Those typically born between 1997 and 2012 are experiencing a mini-rebound in pay packets, according to the research by the Resolution Foundation, in a seeming contrast to how the previous generation entered the job market.

If war triggered a rare moment of solidarity in the divided country, many doubt it will be used for reform

The Islamic Republic regime in Iran may have survived the war, but it now faces an even greater challenge: making peace with its own population.

Iranians are reeling not just from the shock of the war but also the killing of thousands of protesters by the authorities at the start of the year, and an economy in free fall. Instead of removing the regime, an initial declared aim of Donald Trump and the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, the war showcased the Islamic Republic’s durability after its leader and layers of other top officials were killed.

A national heatwave plan has been activated to help people stay cool during the Netherlands’ increasingly hot summers

Households in Amsterdam are being urged to hang their curtains outside their windows as health experts recommend simple hacks to moderate the heatwave rolling across the Netherlands, where homes were built for old-fashioned damp and coldish northern European weather.

In a viral social media post last week, Eline Coolen, the heat coordinator at the city’s public health institute, urged sweaty city-dwellers to rig up temporary curtain rails or drape curtains or sheets outside to stop the sun’s rays reaching their large windows.

We were charged the wrong amount, but because the bank says we have no evidence it won’t do a chargeback

I went to Paris to recover from the grief of losing my dog.

All was going well until I took a taxi from a rank outside Musée d’Orsay to my hotel near Notre Dame – a 12-minute journey.

The latest in our series of writers highlighting their comfort films is a look at an endlessly quotable antidote to bro-focused comedies

At this year’s Oscars ceremony, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne and Ellie Kemper lined up on stage to celebrate 15 years of Bridesmaids. Frankly, as awards bits go it was a little hard to watch, and the lineup was missing Wendi McLendon-Covey (recovering from a neck lift, naturally), but I had a small thrill seeing them together anyway: Bridesmaids has been my comfort film for almost half my life.

Bridesmaids, written by Wiig and Annie Mumolo and directed by Paul Feig, arrived in a confetti shower in 2011. It follows Annie (Wiig) – already in a fragile state following the collapse of her bakery, her relationship and her living situation – as she navigates being maid of honour for her best friend Lillian (Rudolph). We don’t see much of Dougie, Lillian’s fiance: it’s Annie and Lillian’s relationship that takes centre stage here. They have the sort of friendship it seems impossible to break, built on years of love, shared tastes and endless inside jokes – that is, until the wedding planning begins, and Annie finds herself ill-equipped to lead the motley crew of bridesmaids Lillian has assembled in the run-up to the wedding. No one poses a greater threat to the friendship or Annie’s headspace than Helen (Byrne), the perfectly manicured wife of Dougie’s boss. Helen is everything Annie is not: pristine, well-connected and apparently excellent at organising bachelorette parties. They clash constantly, with increasingly messy results.

Come for the sun; stay for the seafood, jazz festival, galleries and coastal walking in this laid-back village within a city

South of the city centre, Le Mourillon is Toulon’s characterful and unpretentious seaside quarter. Once a fishing village, Le Mourillon is home to little shops selling Provençal produce such as huge garlic bulbs and tomatoes in vibrant shades, alongside lively bars and restaurants. It’s not as glamorous or polished as the likes of Antibes or Saint-Tropez – you won’t find designer brands – but it’s all the more charming for that.

A vivid and entertaining polemic on the economics of the tech revolution, filled with righteous ire

As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt  could tell you, AI is a hard sell these days. Last month, he tried talking up the AI revolution during a commencement address at the University of Arizona and was loudly booed by students about to enter an AI-ravaged job market. His discombobulation was telling.

Schmidt is not the only AI booster to crash out with students recently as the popular backlash grows. Every week brings a new story about some writer, publisher or academic who has torched their reputation by using an unreliable chatbot. Most US voters are opposed to the construction of vast, resource-guzzling new datacentres. A majority believe AI will negatively impact not just jobs but creativity and human relationships. In some quarters, saying that AI has any benefits at all is akin to saying that biological warfare gets a bad rap. As a New York Times column put it: “AI populism is here. And no one is ready.”

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jeff Rueter and Mark Langdon as Cape Verde claim yet another historic point and Spain finally look like a team worthy of the favourites tag.

Mohamed Salah inspired Egypt to their first-ever World Cup win as they came from a goal down ⁠to beat New Zealand 3-1 with a brilliant second-half display, moving top of Group G and boosting their hopes of reaching the knockout stage.

After ⁠a relatively quiet first ⁠half that saw ​them go in behind at the break, Egypt and Salah turned up the heat in the second period as the 34-year-old winger showed he ⁠is still capable of conjuring magic from his boots.

It is the 40th anniversary of Diego Maradona’s exploits against England. The scene is set for Lionel Messi to imbue the date with fresh significance

How do you build on perfection? It is the poser Argentina face before a match that, for all its prosaic appearance in the middle of a bloated group stage, may prove critical to their World Cup defence. Lionel Messi’s storybook entrance to the tournament set a near-impossibly high bar for football romantics; Austria may provide a sterner test than Algeria and perhaps progress, in this case, will simply be defined by getting the job done.

Messi will seek the goal that makes him this competition’s leading scorer of all time, a milestone he should reach in comfort over the coming days or weeks. The collective aim is clear enough, too. Argentina would rather not entertain finishing second in Group J, which would probably mean gritting their teeth for a last-32 meeting with Spain. Overcoming a ferocious, flawed Austria is the best way to postpone that level of test; Dallas, famed for its heady barbecue scene, is the perfect venue for an asado-loving nation to turn up the heat.

One of the finest players to grace the game no longer deserves his place in the team and should take it upon himself to stand down to serve their chances

At 41, Cristiano Ronaldo’s problem is not his age. It is that nobody seems willing to tell him to his face what everyone else can see. In Portugal, patience for the legend has run dry.

Ronaldo is not fit to be a Portugal starter any more. What would have sounded like a treasonous statement a few years ago now looks an obvious truth. At least to everyone except the national team manager, Roberto Martínez, and his coaching staff.

• Midfielder says schedule ‘obscene’ for club and country

• Ollie Watkins insists he is ready to be nastier on the pitch

Declan Rice has revealed he has been managing nerve pain in a hamstring since Christmas as he reflected on the “obscene” number of matches he has played this season.

The England midfielder sparked concern when he was forced off in the 72nd minute of the 4-2 World Cup win against Croatia last Wednesday. The problem relates to the upper hamstring, with the pain radiating into his lower back. But Rice described his substitution as “smart” and said he would be fighting fit for England’s second group game against Ghana in Boston on Tuesday.

As prime minister, he would have a unique chance to turn the world’s most bureaucratic health service into its most innovative one

If Andy Burnham moves from Manchester to No 10, he will be the first prime minister to have been health secretary in the history of the NHS. What might that mean for the troubled service? His commitment to social care is well known. But when the Treasury tells him there is no money, he is going to have to think hard about how to make his mark.

The UK now spends the fifth most of any OECD economy when it comes to government health spending as a proportion of GDP. That’s why health service insiders no longer say the issue is money but productivity. They have been puzzling over why, since 2020, the total number of staff across NHS England has grown by 20% but activity has only gone up by 10%. That’s part of the reason why waiting lists have remained stubbornly high and a significant part of the progress made in reducing them has come from “list cleaning” – removing people from lists who no longer need treatment – rather than actual increases in activity.

Jeremy Hunt served as secretary of state for health, later secretary of state for health and social care, from 2012 to 2018

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

With aid funding falling by 70%, a change to HIV response is needed. The continent must treat health as a matter of sovereignty rather than charity

The Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak now being fought across the region shows again what Africa already knows. When an emergency arrives, the continent cannot wait on distant supply chains or other people’s goodwill. It must make and move the things that keep its people alive. The fight to end Aids by 2030 runs on the same truth.

Africa has earned the right to set the terms of that fight. Over two decades the continent helped turn the epidemic around. Aids-related deaths have fallen by 59% since 2010 and new infections by 68%. Nearly 22 million Africans are alive today on daily treatment. Keeping them alive is a permanent commitment.

As the former Ofcom chair says extraordinary things about the rightwing channel and its critics, a factcheck would not go amiss

• Stewart Purvis is a former editor in chief of ITN; Chris Banatvala is a former Ofcom director of standards

During a review of his four years at Ofcom, the outgoing chair, Michael Grade, surprised his BBC Radio 4 interviewer. He had been asked by Katie Razzall whether Ofcom rules would allow a politician to present the Today programme apart from the news bulletins. She clearly did not expect him to answer: “Absolutely, absolutely, why not?” “Really?” replied a startled Media Show presenter. “Well, Nick Robinson might be out of a job. He might not be happy to hear that.” The Today presenter was listening and immediately posted: “Can anyone remind me when parliament, the public, licence fee payers or anyone else was asked their opinion on this?” None of the 204 people who commented on his post could offer any such reminder.

The argument about what the law does and doesn’t say about politicians presenting programmes has been a central thread of Lord Grade’s tenure, as Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, presents his 7pm weekday programme on GB News, covering the political news of the day. Even before Grade’s series of “free of the shackles” interviews became increasingly political with his views on the “white majority”, Ofcom felt compelled to distance itself. “Any personal views a former chairman has expressed do not represent Ofcom policy,” it said. The media regulator continues to stand by its handling of GB News, but has Grade accidentally exposed a central flaw during his tenure? And what should we make of his off-the-cuff comments since leaving.

On our side of the Irish Sea we have made the best of a bad job. But we saw the damage a reckless and reactionary British government could do

• To read more from the Brexit Vote: 10 Years On series, click here

For Brexit’s true believers, Ireland will always be the spoke in the wheel that set everything off course, the green tarnish that took the shine off the golden age. Without the vengeful and malicious obstructionism of the Irish, all the promises of freedom and prosperity would have been fulfilled.

To understand how nonsensical this is, it is necessary to go back five years before the referendum of 2016. Back, that is, to the sense of an ending. In May 2011, Queen Elizabeth made a four-day state visit to Ireland. This should not have been remarkable – the heads of state of neighbouring countries visit each other all the time. But no reigning British monarch had set foot in what is now the Republic for almost exactly a century.

Fintan O’Toole is a columnist with the Irish Times and the author of Heroic Failure: Brexit and the politics of pain

If the Makerfield MP is to be our next PM, he needs some immediate and memorable cost of living policies to avoid his predecessor’s fate

Pause here before we rush headlong into the turbulent future. Stop and inhale last week’s rare political triumph, revel in the sunshine of cheery optimism. It was a precious but unfamiliar sensation when life on the progressive side of politics in Britain is so often a litany of hopes dashed and disappointments.

Andy Burnham’s comprehensive victory in the Makerfield byelection, surpassing expectations, was a precious moment. He demolished £5m-Nigel Farage’s party of loathsome Reformers, whose every election candidate seems more repugnant than the last. Hostile hard-right politics in Britain needs defeating time and time again, every time nativists and hate-stirrers – from Enoch Powell to the BNP – erupt in our politics.

It’s a short step from laughing in the line for artisan pastries to grimly waiting to buy a loaf of sliced white. Are we just rehearsing for food shortages?

It’s hot – fancy a frozen yoghurt? Probably not, given that ice-cream exists, but a New York Times reporter recently queued for an hour to experience the city’s fro-yo craze with 74 other patient souls, long enough, she wrote, to “feel affection for my cluster of line, the kind of camaraderie you develop with fellow passengers on a delayed flight”. The yoghurt, while fine, was emphatically not worth the wait. That’s surely also true of the UK’s current slew of viral bakeries, pizza joints and, improbably, baked potato spots. Can carbs really be that good? Maybe, but I’ll never find out: reaching the head of an interminable queue only for the person in front of you to take the last treat is psychological violence I won’t put myself through, and queueing at a mayonnaise vending machine – another real NYC phenomenon – is my idea of hell.

But queues are everywhere now. Even in my hometown of York, where formerly the only people queueing were tourists waiting to enjoy the stench of rotting herring and latrine at the Jorvik Viking Centre (or to patronise our sui generis tearoom, Bettys), locals line up at brunch spots and bakeries. How and why have queues, previously an occasional annoyance, become ubiquitous?

Not every adult escapes their difficult childhood. And learning what a healthy relationship feels like takes time

• The modern mind is a column where experts discuss mental health issues they are seeing in their work

We inherit more than eye colour and bone structure from our parents. We inherit rules, silences, habits, beliefs. We inherit the shape of our parents’ presence or absence, the flavour of their neglect and the confusion of thinking this is love.

Every week in my therapy practice I meet people living out their inheritance, their family dysfunction: re-enacting childhoods, becoming the parents they despised, clinging to survival strategies that are slowly killing them. “I think I have a problem,” they tell me, “but I can’t see it.”

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

What has the Israeli PM’s whirlwind of violence achieved? His closest ally now turning against him – and an emboldened Iran

Benjamin Netanyahu, the biggest loser in last week’s preliminary deal to halt the US-Israel-Iran war, will be remembered – and reviled – as the man who put the Middle East to the sword. Whether the “problem” was Hamas in Gaza, illegal West Bank land seizures, supposed Israeli-Arab fifth columnists, peace campaigners’ aid flotillas, Hezbollah in Lebanon, hostile militias in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, or Tehran’s hardline Islamic regime, the Israeli leader’s “solution” was always the same: extreme, often lawless violence that invariably made matters worse.

The unprovoked, illegal war against Iran was the ultimate expression of the Netanyahu doctrine – the disproportionate application of brute force. Predictably, it too, has failed. Donald Trump is desperately arguing that the ceasefire memorandum he signed in Versailles (of all places!) is not the lame capitulation it so self-evidently is. But while the US president may survive this humiliation – despite global scepticism and mockery – the likely consequences of the debacle for Netanyahu, his brother-in-harms, are career-ending serious. In many respects, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is already yesterday’s man.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

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

Rocketing violence and an economic chokehold have been overshadowed by conflict elsewhere, but the UK and others must stop looking away

The “ceasefire” in Gaza is a “cruel and deadly illusion”, warned James Elder, the Unicef spokesman, on Friday. Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians since its declaration in October, says the Gaza health ministry, including 265 children – an average of one a day.

The killings and broader humanitarian crisis have been overshadowed by the war on Iran and have diverted attention from escalating violence in the occupied West Bank. Last week, former Israeli prime ministers, military chiefs and heads of security services were among the signatories of a letter accusing its government of “doing nothing to eradicate Jewish terror” there. Ehud Olmert, one of the former prime ministers, accused Israel of “an organized, systematic, state-funded campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”, with security forces assisting settler violence. Meanwhile, the army chief has reportedly described troops “killing like we haven’t killed since 1967”.

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

The UN is set to review the legal status of nicotine. An outright ban would go too far, but there is no case for its easy availability

The health case for banning cigarettes is ironclad. As the then head of the World Health Organization, Gro Harlem Brundtland, put it in 2000, “a cigarette is the only consumer product which when used as directed kills its consumer”. Smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. Many countries, including the UK, have taken strong measures to restrict and even ban cigarettes and other tobacco products. Over the past two decades, however, tobacco-free nicotine products such as vapes and nicotine pouches, which use a synthetic version of the addictive ingredient, have exploded in popularity.

Regulation has been slow. The nation of Palau has now tasked the WHO expert committee on drug dependence with reviewing nicotine, which will lead to a UN vote – likely to be in 2028 – on banning it worldwide. The case relies partly on deciding whether addiction and dependence themselves – in the absence of other major health consequences – are harmful. There is certainly an argument for that, and smoking taught us that it is often better to stamp out highly addictive habits if consequences may become obvious later. But there is also reason for caution.

Readers respond to the former Greater Manchester mayor’s defeat of Reform UK in Makerfield and his return to Westminster

I have long admired Andy Burnham (Cabinet loyalists tell Starmer he has the weekend to set out timetable for exit, 19 June). As mayor of Greater Manchester, he has been a powerful advocate for fairness, inclusion and regional investment. As someone who grew up in Manchester, I am proud of what he has achieved. That is precisely why I was disappointed to hear renewed speculation about a leadership challenge to Sir Keir Starmer.

Many of us voted Labour in 2024 because we wanted stability after years of political turmoil. We were not looking for a political celebrity; we were looking for someone serious, competent and resilient enough to govern in difficult circumstances.

Ignorance around hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is a public health catastrophe, say readers in response to an article on how sufferers have to wait 21 years for a diagnosis

Your coverage of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) is a vital start to addressing a systemic public health catastrophe (UK hypermobility sufferers wait up to 21 years for diagnosis, study suggests, 15 June). I am 34 and a former drama student who is unable to build any career as hEDS dismantled my life. The condition has made friendships and relationships very difficult.

My decline began at 19 with surgeries; by 24, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and Hashimoto’s, and had a Beighton score, which is used to assess hypermobility, of 9/9. My life has been defined by chronic pain and fatigue. For eight years, my nervous system has been so unstable that I have frequently been unable to read, watch TV or tolerate light. At my lowest, I could not spell basic words or speak in coherent sentences.

Readers respond to an article on the weirdest thing pets have eaten

On the strangest things eaten by dogs (‘She’d consumed a kilo of sand’: 11 Guardian readers on the weirdest things their dogs have ever eaten, 15 June), back in the 1960s, friends of mine in Hampshire had a dog, and they later got a kitten, which loved chasing marbles.

The dog became rather slow and poorly, so was taken to the vet. An operation released 100-plus marbles accumulated in her stomach.

Bruce Springsteen | Lunch on the buses | Tram stops | Growing runner beans | Cryptic clue

I always enjoy John Crace’s sketches. In fact, I usually turn to them first. I’ve noticed that he seems to be smuggling in Bruce Springsteen quotes and song titles. I think this is splendid, so I was really impressed that on Friday, he managed at least three. Namely, Glory Days, Reason to Believe and [The] Promised Land. Well done, John.
Steve Townsley
Wick, Vale of Glamorgan

• Re your bus banter letters (18 June), my bus conductor Uncle Fred, in 1950s Brighton, was parked at the station having his lunch when a “bloke in a bowler hat” gets on and asks “Eaton Place, conductor?” To which he replied: “No mate, just cheese sandwiches.” He got an official reprimand and, I believe, a cut in his wages.
Jennifer Jeater
Hassocks, West Sussex

• Several spectators removed from course over conduct

• ‘They definitely didn’t want me to win,’ says 32-year-old

Wyndham Clark spent much of Sunday afternoon hearing cheers for everyone but himself.

The grandstands and six-deep galleries packed around Shinnecock Hills revelled in his mistakes, groaned when he escaped trouble and reserved their loudest support for his playing partner, the world No 1, Scottie Scheffler. Several spectators were removed from the course after directing abusive comments at him, the United States Golf Association confirmed. By the time Clark finally tapped in on the 18th green to secure his second US Open championship in four years, the 32-year-old from Colorado felt he had won more than a golf tournament.

• Seven-time champion, now 44, continues on-court return

• She will also compete in doubles with sister Venus

Serena Williams will make a stunning return to singles competition at Wimbledon after being announced as the tournament’s final wildcard on Sunday.

Wimbledon will mark Williams’s first singles appearance in nearly four years after retiring from the sport at the 2022 US Open and it marks a dramatic escalation in her comeback.

• Lord’s could stage game in May before visit of Australia

• England to play two Tests in Bangladesh in February

England will prepare for the Ashes series next summer with a one-off Test against Bangladesh in late May.

The venue has yet to be determined and is contingent upon where the England and Wales Cricket Board decides to stage the final of the World Test Championship the following month.

• British 800m record holder pulls out of 400m final

• Georgia Hunter Bell breaks 800m championship record

Keely Hodgkinson’s camp moved swiftly to play down concerns after the Olympic 800m champion withdrew from the 400m start line in tears just seconds before she was due to race at the UK Athletics Championships.

Using the weekend in Birmingham as a speed-work opportunity, Hodgkinson emerged for the women’s 400m final and began the usual pre‑race strides in her lane, only to stop, grimace and slowly make her way to the side of the track. After a few seconds of thought, she crouched down and started to cry before she was led away, with the race going ahead in her absence.

Saints have fallen a long way since being crowned world champions in 2023 with coach vowing to fix things

With the midway point of the Super League season now passed the pressure is rising across the competition – but few, if any, clubs have the burden of expectation and history weighing upon them quite like St Helens.

This midsummer afternoon’s waltz in the sunshine against a woeful Huddersfield side at least released some of the strain which has been building on Saints and their head coach, Paul Rowley. Had they lost, it would have been almost unforgivable, but they were comfortable 38-6 victors.

• All the latest from around the grounds

• Mail Tanya or comment below with your thoughts

On the day the England and Wales Cricket Board whisked Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson away from County Championship action, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Hampshire and Derbyshire stole the show, tucking wins under their belt within three days.

At Grace Road, Leicestershire, without a win this summer, rolled over Yorkshire by an innings and 39 runs – their first victory in Division One since 2003. Dan Moriarty (51), with Dom Bess (40) and then Jack White (21), bashed 95 for the last two wickets, but it was too little, too late.

• Draper builds for Wimbledon using Murray’s expertise

• Briton confident in fitness after injuries ravage past year

Jack Draper believes his “very special” relationship with Andy Murray and the faith the Scot has in him will help him to find a way through the toughest period of his career as he returns to the circuit at Eastbourne after an injury-ravaged 11 months.

Draper is due to compete for the first time in two and a half months at the Eastbourne International on Monday after being sidelined for the vast majority of the past year due to chronic arm and knee injuries. As he tries to be ready for Wimbledon, which begins next a week on Monday, this will also be his first tournament since asking Murray, his childhood idol and a friend, to join his team as coach.

Attention switches to England’s tour squad announcement as the Northampton and Exeter players patch up and press on

Of all the celebratory snapshots of Northampton’s Prem final triumph, perhaps the best was the morning-after picture of Henry Pollock and Fin Smith in bed with the trophy accompanied by backing vocals from Frank Sinatra. “That’s life, that’s what all the people say. You’re riding high in April, shot down in May. But I know I’m going to change that tune, when I’m back on top, back on top in June …”

Talk about suitably perfect lyrics. Saints may have finished top of the regular-season table but when they were being smashed 41-17 at Leicester on 9 May they looked far from dead certs to collect a second title in three years. To have claimed it on the occasion of their captain, George Furbank, making his final Saints appearance made it all the sweeter for Pollock, Smith and all his other close compadres.

• Hughes family heartbroken at unexpected loss

• Father of two joined Mariners as recruitment lead in 2025

Grimsby have paid tribute to Alex Hughes after his death at the age of 38. Hughes, the son of the former Manchester United and Wales striker Mark Hughes, was player recruitment lead at the League Two club.

The Hughes family said in a statement released via the League Managers Association that they were “heartbroken” at the “sudden and unexpected loss” of Alex and that he would be “deeply missed”.

Russia intercepted 300 Ukrainian drones across the country and temporarily suspended operations from Moscow airport

Back to Ukraine, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has condemned the overnight Russian strikes on Ukraine, drawing on the importance of the Russian Day of Memory and Sorrow, the anniversary of the 1941 Nazi Germany invasion of the Soviet Union.

“Yet today, Russia began this day not by honoring those who fell in World War II, and not with signals that could help bring the current war – Russia’s war against Ukraine – closer to an end. Instead, it began with more completely unjustifiable killings,” he said.

“This Russian war has no justifiable cause. Putin was driven by exactly the same motives as the aggressors who came before him. He shows the same contempt for human life. He is just as delusional about this absurd ‘empire’ of his that nobody needs. This war must be brought to an end.”

Family of Shaun Burton, 60, say they are ‘devastated by his loss’ and their thoughts are ‘also with those affected’

• Does Bedford train crash raise wider questions about safety?

Police have named the driver killed in the Bedford train crash on Friday, as his family paid tribute to him.

British Transport police said Shaun Burton, 60, was the East Midlands Railway driver killed in the collision between two trains on the line between Bedford and Luton that also left 100 people injured.

Two-thirds of respondents support increasing the 2% digital services tax for multinationals

Taxpayers want the UK to increase levies on giant global technology companies such as Facebook owner Meta, Google and Amazon, a survey of Britons’ attitudes on corporate taxes suggests.

The polling released on Monday by the Fair Tax Foundation – abody providing businesses with certification around responsible tax conduct – found that 67% of respondents believe that the government should charge higher digital services taxes on multinational technology groups “to increase their overall tax contribution in the UK”.

Forced to stay home or switch jobs, working mothers are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis as classes go online for weeks or months at a time

Outside, the temperature has passed 41C (105.8F). Inside Sakshi Katyal’s city apartment, the air conditioner is blasting but it does little to relieve the stress of balancing housework and helping her five-year-old log in on a laptop to online classes. Her daughter’s school closed in May and Katyal is not clear when it will reopen. Probably not till the autumn.

Schools across Delhi and in about half of India’s 28 states have been ordered to close from mid-May until the end of June, when in many places the summer break starts. There is no official record of closures in past years but the Guardian has spoken to school officials who say the number of days schools are shut for because of the heat has risen sharply. The impact on families, especially on working women, has been huge.

UN’s World Food Programme and agriculture agency issue joint appeal for funds to avert global hunger crisis before it happens

Adugna Woyessa was a little boy the first time drought tore his country apart. As harvests failed in rain-starved regions of Ethiopia in the early 1970s, and his school turned a classroom into a grain store for farmers to send aid, he had no idea that scientists were beginning to connect the force parching its fields with cyclical shifts in trade winds that had long supercharged violent weather from South America to Australia.

The now notorious El Niño – Spanish for “little boy” – was named by fishers in the Pacific in the 1800s, but it was not until the 1970s that scientists understood its global nature and began to piece together the historical impact of the natural weather pattern characterised by hot years and brutal extremes.

Prison officers’ union calls for immediate end to practice at HMYOI Wetherby over fears for child and animal welfare

Pet ferrets kept as therapy animals at the UK’s largest children’s prison have been co-opted by managers to kill rats, resulting in a bloody incident and concerns over child and animal welfare.

The unorthodox method of vermin control was waved through last month at HMYOI Wetherby in West Yorkshire following a surge in rat numbers in prison offices and grounds.

Health alerts are in place as very high humidity adds to danger of heat stress for the most vulnerable

The Met Office has expanded its extreme heat warning for the UK, predicting record-breaking highs of 38C (100.4F) this week.

The Met Office forecasts that extremely high temperatures could last from Monday until Thursday, leading to health concerns for elderly and vulnerable people. The forecaster said there was “growing confidence” that this week may break the record for the hottest June temperature of 35.6C, which was set in 1976 in Southampton and Camden Square, London, in June 1957. It said there was a 25% chance of temperatures exceeding 40C.

Maps created as part of Defra-funded Slimers project allowed test growers to halve amount of slug pellets used

Farmers believe they have a new weapon in their age-old battle against the slugs that destroy their crops: modern technology.

Slug prediction maps, which have been created by computer models as part of a research project, are now helping growers to better target the use of pesticides, saving them money and reducing environmental harm.

Newsom declares state of emergency as crews continue to fight stubborn Boyle Heights fire that has raged for days

California’s governor has declared a state of emergency for the city of Los Angeles, as firefighters struggle to contain a stubborn warehouse blaze that has raged for days and blanketed parts of the city in smoke.

Gavin Newsom announced he was directing state agencies to provide “additional assistance and resources” to help battle the fire, located in the neighborhood of Boyle Heights in east Los Angeles.

Former Top Gear host urges others to get tested after revealing diagnosis in fifth season of Clarkson’s Farm

Jeremy Clarkson says he is officially in remission from prostate cancer, less than a week after revealing he had an “aggressive” form of the disease in the final episodes of Clarkson’s Farm’s fifth season, which were filmed in 2025.

“I am without a doubt, officially, the world’s luckiest man,” said the former Top Gear presenter in an interview with the Sunday Times.

White Scottish man, 38, charged after five men were injured in spate of attacks in city on Friday night

Witnesses to the alleged knife attacks on Muslims and others in Edinburgh on Friday have described seeing a taxi and an Uber bike courier being targeted in Leith.

The attacks, suspected of being directed against Muslims and people of colour, began near a mosque in the west of Edinburgh, followed by incidents on Leith Walk in the east of the city.

The Hoppings funfair is believed to be one of the largest travelling funfairs in Europe, comprising hundreds of attractions set up on Newcastle upon Tyne’s Town Moor. The event, which originally began as a temperance fair in 1882, runs until 28 June and is expected to attract 500,000 visitors

Archie Law, 15, sailed his own vessel to save men in distress, beating lifeboat service to the scene

A 15-year-old boy rescued two men who had fallen from an inflatable toy boat off the Isle of Skye by sailing his own vessel to save them, beating the lifeboat service to the scene.

Archie Law beat a volunteer crew of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) to the rescue on Saturday evening after the UK coastguard received reports of two males in difficulty in the water off Broadford Bay around 9pm.

Mayor says ‘violence has no place in our city’ as president criticizes governor for not accepting national guard troops

At least seven people have been killed and dozens injured in several shootings in Chicago since Friday, police said, with Donald Trump once again calling for military intervention in the midwestern city.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump questioned why Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, had not welcomed military deployment.

Algae blooms and peeling paint mar $14.2m renovation as president claims pool has been ‘seriously vandalized’

Repair work will begin “immediately” at the troubled Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in Washington DC, Donald Trump said on Sunday, after suggesting the pool would need to be drained and blaming alleged “vandals” for the disruption.

The reflecting pool has been plagued by algae blooms and peeling paint following the controversial recent renovation efforts for America’s 250th anniversary celebrations next month.

Industrial action is biggest escalation yet in months-long dispute with populist government of Andrej Babiš

Thousands of public service media employees in Czechia are holding a 24-hour strike after the government of the billionaire prime minister, Andrej Babiš, pushed ahead with controversial plans to change the way the country’s public broadcasters are funded.

Monday’s industrial action by staff at Czech Television and Czech Radio marks the biggest escalation yet in a months-long confrontation between the broadcasters and Babiš’s populist administration.

Applicants forced to retake one of the world’s toughest admission tests after claims questions sold on Telegram

More than 2 million aspiring Indian doctors have sat one of the world’s toughest entrance exams for a second time after an alleged question paper leak forced authorities to scrap the original test results.

Students arriving at test centres on Sunday were greeted by airport-style security. They were frisked, scanned, checked biometrically and made to pass through metal detectors while police and paramilitary personnel stood guard outside.

Investment company Castlelake made bid public for shareholders to evaluate but carrier describes offer as ‘cheap’

The US investment firm trying to buy easyJet has gone public with its latest £4.7bn takeover proposal for the budget airline, its third and latest offer to be rejected.

Castlelake said on Monday that an all-cash offer of 625p a share, valuing easyJet at just over £4.7bn, had been rejected by the airline’s board on Sunday, following previous offers at 560p and 600p.

Investigation finds AI content that purports to show genuine customers, prompting calls for greater transparency

Brands promoting their products online are quietly deploying AI-generated influencers on social media, an investigation has found, prompting calls for greater transparency.

The findings suggest companies are increasingly turning to AI-generated content that purports to show genuine customer experiences while giving no obvious indication that the people featured are not real.

Removal of Alan Latham’s firms means there is no longer an entity for creditors to make claims against

A prolific film producer, whose projects have starred Frasier’s Kelsey Grammer and Four Weddings and a Funeral’s Anna Chancellor, has had scores of his production businesses forcibly removed from the UK’s companies register, leaving workers unable to chase unpaid fees.

Alan Latham, whose low-budget films have previously raised questions over his use of tax credits, has seen 50 of his film businesses compulsorily struck off by Companies House, according to data compiled by the film workers’ union, Bectu.

Smaller, cheaper cars built for narrow city streets are becoming more stylish – but require careful design decisions

The winding backstreets of London, Paris and Rome are a large part of their charm. But they are also a problem for electric carmakers. For a long time, squeezing big batteries into smaller, cheaper cars to fit European streets was too much of a problem, so manufacturers focused on bloated SUVs instead.

But that is finally changing. Battery technology has improved and Europe’s carmakers havecut manufacturing costs enough that they can now sell cars that might have a chance of fitting down a medieval lane or two.

At 80, SF author M John Harrison is producing some of his best work. He talks about finding his voice, alien intelligence and the advice from Iain Banks that still spurs him on

Three years ago, in a greasy spoon on the fringes of the City of London, M John Harrison – Mike to his friends – told me about the novel he was working on. Rather than describing its plot or characters, he spoke purely about the challenge the book presented to him as a writer. With this one, he said, he wanted to push things as far as they could go.

Now that book, The End of Everything – his 13th novel – is about to be published. It describes a disintegrating Britain in which the iGhetti – monstrously sized, extremely powerful and strange lifeforms that look like powdery, slow-motion explosions – rule the country and possibly the world. Or do they? In its unwillingness to divulge any more than its characters know, which isn’t much, the novel is more alien evasion than invasion.

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London
A stream of high-profile guest stars included Johnny Marr, Little Simz, Shaun Ryder, Sparks, Yasiin Bey, Bootie Brown and Fatoumata Diawara

Gorillaz’s first stadium show is quite the event. It’s a staggering hi-tech spectacle, a two-and-a-half hour mini-festival with a seemingly endless stream of high-profile guest stars, and its audacious ambition and military precision all stem from the fecund imagination and magpie mind of one man.

Damon Albarn has never come across a genre of music that he doesn’t want to turn inside-out to see how it works. In recent years, he has turned Gorillaz from the mildly gimmicky virtual band he co-conceived with graphic artist Jamie Hewlett into a sprawling expression of his own musical curiosity and rampant eclecticism.

Prepare yourself for more epic battles in House of the Dragon. Plus: an art-inspired murderer is on the loose in French crime thriller Polar Park

9pm, Sky Atlantic
It’s easy to forget what last happened in the disappointingly dull Game of Thrones prequel two years ago. But the bloodiest naval battle in Westeros history – the Battle of the Gullet – actually kicks season three off with a bang. The Targaryen civil war finally gets into full gory swing, with Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) orchestrating their moves for the Iron Throne. Yes, there are still too many dislikable characters moping around, and it’s not a great sign when the only one you feel anything for is a fire-breathing dragon. But there’s no denying the wow factor of epic sword clashes like this one – and there are plenty more promised ahead. Plus added James Norton! Hollie Richardson

Two men’s romantic getaway turns creepy in a talky elevated chiller about escaping the binds of the past

The best elevated horror makes a metaphor out of its writhing emotional subtext, but writer-director Joe Fria sadly can’t make the leap in this low-budget debut that undoubtedly has issues on its mind: repressed homosexuality, compulsive hookups and generational trauma. For much of the film the horror elements abruptly waylay what is otherwise a fraught two-handed gay drama.

After meeting on the apps, middle-aged English teacher Albert (Bryan Bellomo) and lithe paramedic Devon (John Brodsky) are finally getting cosy at Willow Cabin – the former’s childhood summer getaway, named for a line in Twelfth Night. But secrets fester beneath this ostensibly horny hookup. In Albert’s case, he has a wife and son – and this spot, which once belonged to his uncle, is where he first explored the other side of his sexuality, with his cousin. As for Devon, Albert is the latest in a long line of unfulfilling liaisons with married men, thanks to the emotional damage inflicted by his abusive dad. While both of them are candid to a point, the sporadic phantom eruptions inside the cabin suggest they’ve not got everything out of their systems.

Alfredo Pourailly De La Plaza’s absorbing documentary about an ageing Chilean gold panner is meticulously detailed and doubles as its own act of visual prospecting

Out on the remote archipelago of Tierra del Fuego in Chile, Toto Gesell holds on to a profession that hails from bygone times: gold prospecting. Every day, come rain or shine, he puts on his rubber boots and heads to a local creek, where he searches for specks of gold the old-fashioned way: with a pan, a shovel and a homemade sluice. His daily routines are documented with great tenderness in Alfredo Pourailly De La Plaza’s absorbing documentary, shot over nearly a decade. The camera often lingers on Toto’s wrinkled hands, as he carefully handles tiny flecks of the precious metal, or writes down his hopes and dreams in a neatly kept diary. Despite his contentment with this simple way of life, his body is etched with the physical toil of the demanding work.

When Jorge, Toto’s worried son, decides to build a trommel from scratch to help automate his father’s work, the film acquires the fervour of a monumental quest. This colossal undertaking ends up taking years; through riveting editing, the documentary oscillates between two competing timelines: one of the trommel’s gradual completion, and another of Toto’s declining health, as the juxtaposition accentuates the urgency of Jorge’s mission. When Toto suffers a serious health crisis while prospecting, the preciousness of time feels as tangible as the gold dust that slips through his fingers.

The actor has a knack for playing characters that test viewers’ loyalties. As the Game of Thrones prequel returns, she talks problem fans, ‘boy mums’ and why the arts should be for everyone

House of the Dragon is a massive television series. Over two seasons, the prequel to Game of Thrones has seduced viewers with its plotting, backstabbing, candlelit meetings about war, and massive sheep-munching dragons. Olivia Cooke’s dad, however, did not get the memo.

We’re in London, on a stormy summer afternoon, and Cooke is sipping a bottle of neon juice (“Tell me if my teeth go purple”). Her dad texted her yesterday. She gets her phone and pulls up a photo of a television screen, with the first season of House of the Dragon loaded up and ready to go. “He said: ‘Raining outside, so starting a binge-watch.’” She laughs. “I was like, great, Dad, worked on it for six years, hope you like, kiss kiss.” What was his review? “Yes, I like it. Quite violent.” He was planning to watch another episode after he’d picked up Cooke’s nephew from school.

The 44th president’s latest podcast is a slick, excellently researched look at the post-slavery period in the US. Plus, a troubling foray into the world of swinging

Who would have thought, back in 2008, that Barack Obama (pictured above) would become one of podcasting’s biggest movers and shakers? The former president is front and centre of this series on the post-slavery period in the US, a collaboration with Malcolm Gladwell for Audible and the History Channel. It’s slick and excellently researched, but it’s the calibre of conversation and careful dot-joining that make it so compelling. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

The disco-pop great salutes the sexiness of Marvin Gaye and the spirituality of Amazing Grace. But which of her own hits does she sing at karaoke?

The first song I fell in love with
I grew up in Newark, New Jersey, with five brothers and one sister, so there was always music in the house. I remember my mom singing Willow Weep for Me when I was five or six. There was something about the sadness in it that really moved me.

The first single I bought
I heard Why Do Fools Fall in Love by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers on the radio and bought it from a local record store. I was singing in the hallway of our building when a neighbour leaned over and asked: “Gloria, was that you singing?” She thought it was the radio. That was the moment I decided I was going to be a singer.

Hearing their in-your-face banger was a turning point for me – and I’ve never looked back

At the end of 2011, party season was under way but I was in no mood for festivities. Two years into fertility treatment, my body was pumped full of synthetic hormones and felt like a pin cushion, while my head was filled with both the fragile hope of having a baby, and the exhaustion of failed clinical attempts to do so.

I was in my late 20s. I met my husband when I was 22; we got married when I was 25. “I want to have kids young,” I’d told him. It was a feeling I’d harboured since my teenage years. But I’d also had the nagging sense that it might not come easily to me. As it turned out, my intuition was right. Approaching 28, I was a regular on the infertility merry-go-round.

(Ibeyi)
Newly independent and proudly self-sufficient, Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Diaz mix ancient lore with heavy bass, and harmonies with distortion, to incantatory effect

Having ceded creative control to numerous collaborators on 2022’s Spell 31 (veteran pop songwriter Eg White; rappers Pa Salieu and Berwyn), Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Diaz return to first principles for their fourth album. Written mainly by the sisters themselves, Offering recentres Ibeyi in their own sonic universe: fusing the influences of their Cuban percussionist father and Parisian upbringing, the twins sing in multiple languages, summoning ancient lore over intricate beats, transcendent harmonies and brooding distortion.

Self-sufficiency crops up as a lyrical theme, too: “One thing is for sure, I’m who I was looking for,” goes the refrain of Baba, which matches incantatory vocals with an irresistibly grimy bassline. (Perhaps the fact this is being released on their own label rather than XL, the taste-making British indie they were previously signed to, is also relevant here.)

This bold debut about a woman finding healing after a late miscarriage is written with utter conviction

Birth. “A detaching, a loosening of something, then the pain of it.” A small, curled and crinkled creature is wrested from that pain. But then, instead of the long-awaited cry of a newborn: silence.

This is the background of Anna Goldreich’s highly accomplished, calmly devastating first novel The Leveret, a book that asks us to see late miscarriage as the death it feels like for many mothers. Since this miscarriage, six months ago, Clare has felt everyone, including her partner Phoebe, impatiently expecting her to get on with her life. But she remains floored by loss, stuck waiting for that first cry.

This study of the struggle for rights includes incredible personal stories that we should all be more familiar with

You could take two outwardly contradictory lessons from the historian David Turner’s new book on disability in the UK. First, that alarmingly little has changed for disabled people since the beginning of the modern age (the book’s first few stories, of 17th-century men and women having to prove they were disabled enough to receive parish support to avoid starvation, will be familiar to anyone who has tried to claim the personal independence payment). And second, that absolutely everything has changed - from the closing of asylums to the advent of prosthetics to the eventual, belated enshrining of disability rights in law.

But the central argument of Disability helps to reconcile these two narratives into a coherent whole. Turner, a professor at Swansea University, shows that while public and political attitudes to disability have remained poor, disabled people have challenged them at every stage, wresting progress out of even the most unpromising circumstances. This is not a story of rights and dignity bestowed from on high, but of the people and communities clawing them into being.

The Pinnacle by Abir Mukherjee; A Violent Masterpiece by Jordan Harper; Murder on the Red River by Marcie R Rendon; The Devoted by Catherine Cho; The Repentants by Kate Foster

The Pinnacle by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill, £16.99)
In the eponymous Mumbai apartment block, the immensely rich and those who serve them exist side by side but worlds apart. Fading American actor George Abercrombie, married to superstar Sweety Sahota, finds himself advertising Indian whiskey while his younger wife’s acting career continues its stellar trajectory. Waking on the sofa with a hangover and only hazy memories of the night before, George discovers Sweety stabbed to death in the marital bed and one of his shirts, blood-stained, in the laundry basket. He knows he will be the prime suspect, but not only have Sweety’s phone and laptop disappeared, so has his assistant, Amit … Told from the points of view of George, Amit and Sweety’s put-upon PA Gemma – with Amit and Gemma both having secrets of their own – and laced with dry humour and social commentary, this is a tense, fast-paced tale of class, power and corruption.

In the latest autofictional instalment of his family saga, the French writer makes sense of his sibling’s violent homophobia and short life

At 33, the French writer Édouard Louis has already seen all seven of his slim novels translated into English. In his breakout debut, The End of Eddy (2017), and again in Change (2024), he wrote about being the promising child of a poor family, the bullied gay son who became a bestselling author. Several of his other books have offered sympathetic sociological portraits of his parents: a father destroyed by physical labour, a victim of French healthcare and housing subsidy cutbacks, and a mother who, after raising numerous children in poverty, fled first Louis’s father and then, in Monique Escapes, published earlier this year, his abusive successor. Now, in Collapse, translated by novelist Tash Aw, Louis describes his eldest brother’s death, at 38, from complications relating to alcoholism.

“I felt nothing at the announcement of the death of my brother,” he begins; “not sadness or despair or joy or pleasure.” The reasons for his coldness soon become clear. His brother was violently homophobic. His drinking at one point prevented Louis from sleeping ahead of a crucial exam. After The End of Eddy came out, his brother went looking for him with a baseball bat. So when Louis talks with his mother and sister about how to pay for his brother’s funeral and admits, “yes, I would have let him be buried like a dog”, we understand why.

As phrases like easter eggs and looksmaxxing enter everyday language, what other words from the world of video games might soon be mainstream?

Twenty years ago, video games were seen as a niche hobby dominated by hardcore enthusiasts, tucked away in obscure online forums and gaming meet-ups. Back then, the idea that governments would use footage from Call of Duty and gaming terms such as “killstreaks” as war propaganda would have been absurd. Then the 2010s happened: nerd culture popularised, previously online-only spaces began to meld with the real world, and gaming went mainstream.

Now, gaming references have entered common parlance – at the end of 2024, video game terms including “cheat code” and “cutscene” were even added to the Oxford English Dictionary – and they increasingly crop up in politics, too. Earlier this year, the official White House X account posted footage of military strikes on Iran interspersed with footage from the video game Grand Theft Auto. Six days later, another video was posted, this time interspersing military footage with clips from Nintendo’s 2006 game Wii Sports. Video game references aren’t reserved for the political right, either: in February 2026, Democrat representative of New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quipped, “Why does this guy always talk like a World of Warcraft npc [non-player character]?” in response to a post on X by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff.

When a company decided to shut down an online game’s servers, there wasn’t much the players who had bought that title could do – until a group called Stop Killing Games began lobbying for new consumer protection laws

You can never be sure how long an online video game will last. Developer BioWare shut off sci-fi shooter Anthem’s servers in January, after seven years. Electronic Arts discontinued access to The Sims Mobile the same month. Wildlight Entertainment shuttered its Highguard servers in March, mere months after the game’s release. Activision Blizzard took Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile offline in April. Dozens more games have had their servers shut down in the first six months of 2026, adding to an already long list of video games that are no longer playable.

There is little that players can do when a company decides to stop supporting online play. Communities work hard to keep their favourite games online, sometimes keeping dead games running on private servers, though that may not necessarily be entirely legal. Generally, though, when a game goes offline it is dead and it’s not coming back.

PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2, PC; Team Asano/Square Enix
Upbeat, charmingly retro RPG full of treasure-hunting, temple-roaming, monster-slaying and princess-saving is an absolute blast to play

You can’t help but wonder if developer Team Asano is in a private competition with itself to come up with the most ridiculous name for a video game. Following Project Triangle Strategy and Bravely Default: Flying Fairy we have this mouthful: The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. It’s a playable love letter to the Zelda adventures of yesteryear rendered in the studio’s trademark glorious 2D-HD art style, melding evocative pixel sprites with modern visual effects.

From west Philabieldia, born and raised, our hero is adventurer Elliot. The antagonist making trouble in the neighbourhood is a king’s dastardly aide intent on summoning an ancient evil. The story is pure after-school-TV schlock, fully voice-acted but still unafraid to make you sit through reams and reams of text, and the action comprises treasure-hunting, temple-roaming and dispatching monsters. It’s part Chrono Trigger, part Oracle of Seasons as our almost obnoxiously upbeat hero journeys through the ages in order to solve puzzles, tip his fedora and of course, save a princess.

After the billion-dollar company’s leaders sent staff a memo saying the brand had ‘over-extended’, game studios may be in the firing line

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In March 2000, Bill Gates stood onstage at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and, to a packed crowd, officially announced the company’s long-anticipated video game console. “We want Xbox to be the platform of choice for the best and most creative game developers in the world,” he told attenders – and that was indeed the intention of the small, dedicated team who put together the blueprints of that first machine.

The Xbox landscape seems very different 25 years later. Last week, mere days after a bullish summer showcase full of Gears of War revivals and promises of a renewed focus on Xbox’s gaming strengths, new CEO, Asha Sharma, and chief content officer, Matt Booty, wrote a memo to Xbox staff inviting them to brace for “hard truths”. “Excluding Activision Blizzard King, over the past five years, we have spent over $20bn on ongoing investments in our content, platform and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue,” it read.

Opera Holland Park, London
Alice gets a musical-theatre belter, the ‘Drink Me’ Bottle performs soprano acrobatics and the Caterpillar smokes his hookah like Audrey Hepburn

Will Todd’s family-opera version of the Alice in Wonderland stories, premiered at Opera Holland Park in 2013 and well travelled since, has been something of a signature show for the company. For several years it was performed on mini-stages dotted around the lawn behind the theatre, with the audience following the musicians around. Now it has been brought into the main theatre, with Leslie Travers’s picture-postcard Victoriana set elements adapted by Ceci Calf, and with Martin Duncan reworking his original direction.

Todd and his librettist Maggie Gottlieb give us some of the most familiar characters and scenes from Lewis Carroll’s stories and nudge them into a gentle rescue-story scenario. Alice is sheltering in a pet shop with her horrid brothers when she releases the White Rabbit from his cage and sets her Wonderland adventure in motion. Eventually, having puzzled with the Cheshire Cat, witnessed the demise of an Ofsted-worthy Humpty Dumpty (“regular assessment’s a social investment”) and had tea with the Mad Hatter, she saves her new friends from penal servitude in the Queen of Hearts’s jam-tart factory and finds herself back in the pet shop – where, thanks to the Rabbit having magically acquired opposable thumbs, all ends happily. The singers take their bows and then chat with the children who have been watching from cushions at the front.

Soho theatre, London
Told through two overlapping monologues, Brianna and Armani prepare for a night that could change the course of their lives

All the nerves, hope and anticipation of getting ready for a date melt together in Tia-Renee Mullings’s coming-of-age play. Told through two separate, overlapping monologues, Brianna (Zakiyyah Dean) and Armani (Sheyi Cole) prepare for a night that could change the course of their lives for the better. Or it could go horribly wrong. Who knows? Set up on a blind date by mutual friends, they have only a photo of their prospective partner to go on.

It’s a premise that many searching for love in today’s dating app-fuelled world will recognise. But that anxiety isn’t enough to sustain momentum across the play’s 80-minute running time. For Brianna and Armani, nothing seems to be going to plan. Brianna’s younger sisters steal and destroy her carefully chosen outfit – a nightmare for a perfectionist like her – before an unfortunate encounter with water guns completely ruins her hair. Meanwhile, Armani misses his barber’s appointment and ends up with the worst trim of his life. After a while, though, the relentless string of mishaps becomes predictable, and things begin to feel as though they’re running in circles.

Globe theatre, London
With its gorgeous music, dance and costumes, this production is a sure summer blockbuster that avoids the problematic elements of Shakespeare’s play

This elegant, effervescent production of Shakespeare’s problem play has all the markings of a sure summer blockbuster. The testy flirtation and linguistic sparring between avowed singletons Beatrice (Pippa Nixon) and Benedick (Ken Nwosu) is full of romcom energy. The comical eavesdropping that leads to their gulling is such silly fun. The music and dance is simply gorgeous; so are the costumes with their warm palette of pinks, light greys and lemons. Even Dogberry (Richard Katz, wonderfully oddball-ish) and his team of security guards wring vigorous clowning out of protracted scenes that have, in other hands, sunk the pace of this play.

The production, under Chelsea Walker’s direction, is a riot of fine staging, big on comedy, beautiful in sound and optics, adept at shifting the atmosphere, often with the help of the excellent live band (drum-like disturbances and nervy violin).

Grange Park Opera, West Horsley, Surrey
With its aquatic opening, magic tricks and grand procession across a rainbow bridge, Charlie Edwards’s production manages to remain clear-sighted despite modest budgets

One hundred and fifty years on, Wagner’s Ring Cycle remains the most ambitious project an opera company can undertake. It doesn’t seem to have phased Grange Park Opera, however, as the company embarks on a five-year odyssey with full cycles in the diary for 2030.

With its aquatic opening, magic tricks and grand procession across a rainbow bridge, Das Rheingold poses a considerable technical challenge. All credit to Charlie Edwards’s clear-sighted production then that the storytelling remains comprehensible even if the special effects hint at modest budgets. His set designs, especially the scene where the Rhinemaidens appear to float behind a scrim, pay homage to the 1876 Bayreuth premiere, while Industrial Revolution references bring to mind Patrice Chéreau’s iconic centenary Ring.

In the second of our five museum quizzes, curators at Norwich castle set 10 fiendish questions to test your knowledge of their collections. So what do they have the biggest collection in the world of?

My father, Sam Dastor, who has died of cancer aged 84, was an actor whose career spanned seven decades.

He trained at Rada in London in the mid-1960s, and had spells in regional repertory theatres before joining Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre and then Granada TV’s experimental Stables company. For Leeds Playhouse in 1974, he was Ariel to Paul Scofield’s Prospero in The Tempest, which also enjoyed a long West End run.

Stalwart actor who was best known for playing Harry Crawford in the ITV comedy-drama series Boon

David Daker, who has died aged 90, was a character actor best known for his role in the popular ITV comedy-drama Boon as Harry Crawford, the entrepreneurial friend of Ken Boon, a fellow former firefighter played by Michael Elphick.

Elphick portrayed a self-styled modern-day Lone Ranger riding around on his motorcycle doing odd jobs and some private investigating, while Daker’s character was a less than successful businessman running hotels, a ballroom and a country club. The pair team up to establish CBS (Crawford Boon Security), and the bond formed between them brought the show audiences of up to 15 million over seven series (1986-92) and a final episode in 1995.

Spain’s leading festival of photography showcases the work of more than 300 visual artists in nearly 100 exhibitions across the country

PhotoEspaña, Spain’s leading festival of photography, held its official opening in Madrid this month and by September nearly 100 exhibitions will have showcased the work of more than 300 visual artists in the capital and across the country. Loosely corralled under the theme of reimagining, the exhibitions feature work by major figures in Spanish and international photography and less well-known emerging artists.

From the series Invisible Line. Photograph: Alejandro Cartagena

Fitness isn’t just about getting a six-pack or competing in a triathlon. These straightforward, low-intensity moves will improve your strength and mobility and make almost everything easier

There are lots of movements that make you stronger and more physically capable – press-ups, squats and kettlebell swings build strength and muscle that help in a huge variety of situations. But can you get more specific? Well, yes: there are exercises that target the challenges of everyday life, whether that’s playing on the floor with your kids or bringing in the big shop. Here are the moves you may want to consider, presented by a dozen movement coaches, personal trainers and strength specialists.

Meg was married to a man but had fantasised having sex with women for years. When she met Jess, her knees buckled

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

I’d spent so many years visualising having sex with a woman

We’ve rounded up stylish and comfy summer footwear for every occasion, whether you want beach perfection or office-ready

• The best sunglasses for every budget

I’m over clunky shoes the minute there’s a glimmer of sunshine in the sky. And because flip-flops will only get you so far (literally and figuratively), a range of sandals is constantly in rotation for me during the summer months.

Sandals have also become an unlikely favourite for men’s event dressing, with Alexander Skarsgård stepping out in a pair of Valentino Rockstud flip-flops on the Sundance red carpet earlier this year. And while thong sandals aren’t for everyone, plenty of more reserved options offer additional coverage.

We’re well into strawberry season now, but which punnets are the pick of the crop and which hit a sour note?

• The best supermarket strawberry jams, tasted and rated

Back in 1994, I used to pick strawberries in Dorset to earn extra pocket money. It was gruelling but delicious work. We’d shuffle on our hands and knees down furrowed rows of plants, picking those beautiful, fat red berries and trying not to eat too many along the way. We were paid by the punnet, which at my picking speed amounted to less than £1 an hour, unlike the impressively fast seasonal workers who came to our village every summer.

I scored the strawberries below on sweetness first, using a Brix refractometer, which measures the sugar content of fruit and veg (each Brix point represents 1% sucrose in the juice by mass). Sweetness isn’t everything, however, and some of these berries had a lovely, complex, honeyed or floral flavour. Tartness is important, too, for bringing balance and a refreshing quality to the eating experience. As a general rule of thumb, go for fruit with a bright red body, fresh green leaves and a powerful but fresh aroma.

Want to prolong the life of your TV? A wireless TV box could be the answer. Our expert put top devices – from Freely streamers to Sky and Amazon Fire – through their paces

• Do you really need a new TV? Simple ways to upgrade your current setup

TV is changing – and so is the way we watch it. Forget that dusty aerial or unsightly satellite dish, you can now stream mainstream channels such as the BBC, ITV and others via Freely, alongside premium services such as Sky Atlantic, over wifi – and it doesn’t need to cost the earth.

Freely comes from the creators of Freeview and Freesat. It’s backed by the UK’s main public service broadcasters and is supported by a growing list of TV providers. Scroll the Freely programme guide, and you’ll find familiar channels such as Dave, Yesterday and W. To watch them, you just need a wireless TV box and wifi.

Best Freely TV streamer:
Manhattan Aero

Best budget wireless TV stick:
Amazon Fire 4K Max

Our writer spent three months putting natural, recycled and bio-based leggings, sports bras and tops to the test

• How to make your clothes last longer

Most of us love to exercise in flattering, figure-hugging clothes, but they’re often unsustainable. Workout gear with stretch tends to be made from fossil-fuel-derived synthetics, which dominate global fibre production. They shed microplastics during every wash, have huge carbon footprints (polyester is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in fibre production) and can take hundreds of years to decompose in landfills, releasing harmful gases in the process. However, it can be difficult to find good workout clothes made from alternative, less-polluting fabrics.

So I set out to find the best workout gear made from materials that have a lower environmental impact but also don’t compromise on performance. I put a range of pieces, from leggings to shorts, tank tops to base layers, to the test, wearing them for different types of exercise to find out how they felt, and if they retained their stretch. I looked at the environmental impact of each item, and I’ve noted any take-back and recycling schemes.

Cooking for kids doesn’t have to be a chore: these three meals are quick, full of flavour and, crucially, fun both to make and to eat

Family meals don’t need to mean hours in the kitchen or a mountain of washing-up. These crisp chicken nuggets are a healthier homemade favourite that kids absolutely love, while the lamb lollipops are fun and surprisingly simple; the stuffed pitta pockets, meanwhile, are perfect for lunches, after-school dinners or eating on the go. Above all, all three dishes are built for real family life: quick, full of flavour and designed to make mealtimes a little easier and a lot more enjoyable.

High in fibre and polyphenols, popcorn has been touted as the perfect snack for the health-conscious. It’s also the ideal vehicle for salt, sugar, butter, bacon fat …

Popcorn became indelibly associated with cinema-going during the Great Depression (it was cheap and hugely profitable), but it also has an established reputation as a superfood – recently given a boost by longevity expert Dan Buettner, who described popcorn as the best snack to eat if you want to live to 100. “It’s very high in fibre, it’s very high in complex carbohydrates, and it even has more polyphenols than a lot of vegetables,” he said.

Popping corn has been consumed by humans for at least 4,000 years, but its widespread popularity as a snack probably dates to a single event: the Columbian Exposition of 1893, also known as the World’s Fair, held in Chicago.

If you’re craving a carby heap of fried spuds, these aren’t for you, but if you’re after crisp, juicy veg, they make the perfect snack alongside a punchy dip

These are not chips. If you’re hankering after a fluffy, carby heap of fried potato, I’ll be honest, these courgette numbers probably won’t cut the mustard. If, however, you like the idea of hot, crisp, juicy veg, then you’re in luck. As well as a vegetable side, these make a fantastic snack with drinks, particularly when paired with a hot sauce or punchy dip.

Prep 15 min
Salt 30 min+
Cook 15 min
Serves 8 as a side

This is what happens when a fledgling talent ages a little, and begins serving food with cool, clear, adult direction

The Golden Tooth, on Green Lanes in north London, sounds as if it could be a pirate’s watering hole in Penzance, filled with wooden-legged rascal seafarers. It is, however, a pub and restaurant 10 minutes from Canonbury station, serving Hereford wing-rib with smoked bone marrow bordelaise, hogget chops with hot mint and grilled radicchio, and lardy cake with Baron Bigod and mountain tea syrup.

This is the second official project from chef Matthew Scott and wine merchant Charlie Carr, the duo behind Papi in London Fields, which, though now defunct, is forever memorable. Papi was scrappy, slightly chaotic, archly cool, yet never pompous, and was famed for Scott’s penchant for going off at random tangents and Carr’s earnest adherence to old-fashioned hospitality. Scott is, very quietly, one of the most interesting cooks around right now, although he wouldn’t appreciate the attention: Papi’s social media was a glorious paean to visible discomfort as he sold his restaurant’s wares on Instagram, and his hangdog expression and weak enthusiasm were oddly joyous. In Scott’s earlier Hot 4 U pop-up era, he was known for the likes of garum Pom-Bears, foie gras mini Magnums and Nesquik daiquiris. Papi, with its iced rhubarb oysters and devilled cheese schnitzels, was a bit more reserved.

An academic and a medical student share concerns about ​extremes of wealth and poverty, but do they agree on the monarchy?

Anna, ‘in her 40s’, Exeter

Occupation Education academic at the University of Exeter

The standup and Big Boys creator on experiencing grief at a young age, his mischievous grandmother, and why he refuses to learn to drive

Born in Watford in 1993, Jack Rooke is a comedian, actor and writer. He studied journalism at the University of Westminster, and began his standup career in 2014. Rooke’s breakout show, Good Grief, was written with his grandmother, Sicely, and documented their experiences of bereavement following the death of Rooke’s father, Laurie, from cancer. His next show, Happy Hour, became the basis for his two-time Bafta-winning Channel 4 comedy, Big Boys. Rooke is taking an updated version of Good Grief on a UK tour, starting at the Roundhouse in London on 14 August. Rooke is an ambassador for the suicide prevention charity Calm.

I am three years old and being pushed by my nan on a swing. She’s in a lovely powder-blue two-piece while I am sporting an iconic all-in-one black-and-white striped mini boiler suit dungaree scenario. For reasons we will never know, I look rather unimpressed.

You may be projecting your own school experience on to your daughter, but her needs are different and she has you to support her

I have two children aged eight and four. My eight-year-old is very bright. She’s in year 3 and doing year 6 maths. Her state school has large classes and limited resources, so I challenge her by doing fun maths at home. I wanted to try getting her into a grammar school (our local state secondaries do not get good results), but lots of local parents pay for their children to have private tutors, which I can’t afford.

I fear my children will be penalised and stuck in a cycle of not fulfilling their potential. This hits personally because I was diagnosed with dyslexia in my 20s after underachieving and disciplinary issues at school. I could be projecting my baggage and putting unnecessary pressure on my children to do better than me. But I feel sad and hopeless at the unfairness of this issue in the education system, and the way the rich will always outrun the poor. Sometimes I wonder if there is any point in trying for something better.

At the beginning of her relationship with Dave, Barbara Reszke was sceptical. But when he joined her in Mexico, a wave of relief and excitement washed over her

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 1992, I travelled from Adelaide to Poland to reconnect with my extended family. One afternoon, I came across a newspaper advertisement for the Warsaw Summer Jazz Days festival. On a whim, I decided to go, hoping to see Jack Bruce perform songs from his Cream days.

It was a Sunday afternoon and I arrived early at the concert hall. As I made my way to the bar, I overheard an Englishman struggling to order hamburgers. I stepped in to help, placed the order in Polish, turned to him and said, “She’ll be right, mate. Just pay the money, the food will be ready in 10 minutes.”

Bank details at risk as criminals use AI to create fake sites and emails offering pre-release beta test version

Like millions of gamers around the world, you have been waiting years for Grand Theft Auto VI to be released. Now you have the opportunity to play the much-anticipated game before everyone else.

An email has arrived inviting you to play a pre-release “beta” version of the game so that you can alert the makers to any bugs before its official release later this year.

Government’s temporary VAT cut aims to ease cost of living for families this summer – here’s what’s on offer

From Thursday families can enjoy a cut-price trip to Legoland or the cinema to watch Toy Story 5 as the government’s school holiday discount scheme Great British summer savings gets under way.

Billed by Rachel Reeves as a way to “support families with the little treats in life”, the temporary VAT cut will reduce ticket prices at family attractions such as zoos and theme parks as well as the cost of children’s cinema tickets and restaurant meals.

The impact on petrol and food prices, energy bills and mortgages if the truce holds and strait of Hormuz reopens

Around the world, markets reacted with relief this week to news that Donald Trump had signed a draft peace deal with Iran that promised to reopen flows of oil and gas from the Gulf to global buyers.

There are already signs the truce could unravel, with Friday’s peace talks in Switzerland abruptly called off, but for now markets seem persuaded that commercial vessel traffic through the key waterway can start returning to normal.

The rules have changed and more taxpayers are being pulled into the net, not only the wealthy

Less generous rules have turned capital gains tax into a “cash machine” for the government, with income from the levy soaring by almost 80% to £24bn in the last tax year – equivalent to well over £800 a household.

A series of changes to the way the charge works means more people are being pulled into the capital gains tax (CGT) net, and not only the wealthy. And, given the scale of the change, this week experts were reminding consumers of legitimate ways to reduce a CGT bill.

People assume that those with facial hair are more likely to harbour bacteria on their faces than the clean-shaven – but the truth is more tangled

The idea that beards are dirtier than clean-shaven faces has been floating around for decades, says John Tregoning, professor of vaccine immunology at Imperial College London. There is even research that shows people perceive bearded men as less hygienic: one study found restaurant customers rated waiters with facial hair as dirtier. Science doesn’t necessarily back that up, though.

One of the earliest studies on the subject, published in 1967, looked at how much bacteria could be recovered from men’s faces after being artificially sprayed on to their skin. Researchers compared washed and unwashed faces, both with and without beards. The dirtiest combination wasn’t with a beard: most bacteria was recovered from unwashed clean-shaven faces, followed by unwashed bearded faces, washed bearded faces and finally washed clean-shaven faces.

Screenings can find treatable conditions before they’ve caused too much damage – but ‘overscreening’ can cause harm

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes when tech entrepreneur and longevity influencer Bryan Johnson posted about his girlfriend’s “vaginal microbiome report” in April. (He said it was in the “top 1% of vaginas”.) While the vaginal microbiome is genuinely interesting, most clinicians don’t routinely recommend this test to patients.

As medical technology has become more powerful – and more marketable – the line between helpful screening and unnecessary testing has blurred.

More walking and standing in the workplace also associated with higher risk, according to Danish research

Bending forwards and walking a lot at work in the early stages of pregnancy may increase the risk of miscarriage, a study suggests.

Miscarriage affects about 15% of women. Risk factors include parental age, smoking, night shift work and exposure to air pollution and various chemical compounds.

From doing chores to staying away from exes, some adults are buying sticker charts to help stick to their goals

• Tell us: is it OK to date a friend’s ex? We want to hear from you

There is a sticker chart on the kitchen cupboard in the Gray family home in Birmingham, England – the two Gray children, aged four and 10, get excited when it’s time to add another gold star. But they aren’t being rewarded for brushing their teeth or learning their spellings; this is someone else’s chart entirely.

“They know that mommy gets a gold star when she goes to the gym,” says Bek Gray, a 33-year-old healthcare professional who has been using sticker charts to motivate herself for one and a half years.

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons say Milan fashion week collection demonstrates rejection of ‘useless design’

Speaking backstage before the Prada show at Milan fashion week on Sunday, the co-designers Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons described their latest collection as “breaking the perception of what is perceived as typical luxury in high fashion right now”.

This was a purified version of Prada. The design duo called it a “rejection of experimental shapes, techniques and decoration” distilling the collection to pieces that are “intentional and meaningful”.

Move over Barbie, ‘electric fuchsia’ is now dominating football’s biggest stages. But why has the sport embraced the colour?

Any fashion-conscious England fan watching the World Cup this week would have appreciated the moment the attack reached the Croatian end – and not just for the potential goals.

It offered another glimpse of goalkeeper Dominik Livaković in hot pink, a shade fast becoming a visual signature this tournament. Forget Barbie pink – welcome to the World Cup’s hot pink summer.

As some shops toy with the idea of removing changing rooms, what does it mean for the future of the high street?

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Is the changing room dead? According to the teenage fashion mecca, Brandy Melville, it is. The brand has closed all its fitting rooms across stores in the UK, US and Canada, with shoppers taking to social media lamenting the change.

“Why does Brandy hate [its] customers?” one TikTok user questioned. “How am I supposed to know if it’s cute on me???!” another exclaimed.

These tailored trousers are ideal for those sunny days when the forecast looks dodgy later on – or when there’s a heatwave but you still have to go to the office

I think we can probably agree that Audrey Hepburn would not have been seen dead in jorts. The baggy, grunge-adjacent knee-length denims that were everywhere last summer and are creeping back around are definitely cool. Totally a vibe. But elegant they are not.

The capri pant is an undeniably elegant solution to the problem of what to wear when jeans or tailored trousers are too hot and cumbersome, but you don’t want to wear shorts. For instance, when it is sunny while you are getting dressed, but you are going to be out all day and the forecast looks dodgy later on. Or when there is a heatwave but you still have to go to the office, so Daisy Dukes are not going to work.

From a waterfront palace in Greece to a nonna’s house in Italy, these stylish boutique hotels offer character and comfort at a budget-friendly price

The vibrant port city offers a more relaxed and budget-friendly base for exploring this beautiful coastline by train and ferry

The ferry from Salerno to Amalfi town was set to take about 35 minutes, and we were debating whether to risk the windswept top deck, fearful our packed lunches might fly into the Tyrrhenian Sea. (My father and I were taking a pragmatic approach on our Italian holiday, opting for light midday meals to save space for the primo and secondo courses at dinner, and ample lemony desserts.)

As our ferry sped across glittering water, we admired the views as the Amalfi coast unfolded, incandescent with charm. But we could also see the crawling traffic on the narrow roads that cling to the cliffs. That could have been us, up there in one of those toy-sized rental cars, squeezed between a tourist coach and a fed-up local leaning on their horn. Thankfully, we were on a boat instead, sea breeze in hair and coffee in hand.

This wetland south of Syracuse was saved from developers and preserved as an unspoilt haven for migratory birds

We rented Il Nido because we thought other people wouldn’t like it. Small and basic, without internet, the property was supposedly beside a beautiful national park famous for its coastline and migratory birds. The online picture suggested it was pressed up against one of those concrete pillars (common around Sicily) supporting a deserted and rotting motorway flyover. I was writing a thriller with mafia connections. My partner wanted to scrape off six months of fumes from her new job in London. Our daughter needed fun.

“This is a bomb,” said the hostess, opening a cupboard under the sink. “You turn it anticlockwise to go off.”

With Two Weeks in August and the return of The Four Seasons, TV dramas about nightmare getaways are having a moment. Here are Guardian readers’ tales of their own

In early 1969, my parents booked a holiday in Belfast for one week and a bed and breakfast in Dublin for one week. When we arrived at our Belfast destination, The Elsinore Hotel, there wasn’t another car in the parking lot and the hotel was empty except for the aged husband and wife owners. Being 12 years old, I didn’t think too much at the time about the quiet, empty place but the owners invited the whole family down to the dining room every evening and we enjoyed some great meals. Lots of pictures of JFK and the pope adorned many of the hotel walls and being a Catholic family ourselves, the hosts made a big fuss of us.

For one day every June, South Africa’s searing racial inequality seems to melt away at Comrades race

In the early morning dark, thousands of runners waited, jostling with anticipation. South Africa’s national anthem rang out. Then the haunting swell of Shosholoza, first sung by Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa’s goldmines. Finally, that unmistakable, spine-tingling piano: Chariots of Fire.

Runners gather before the start of the marathon

When numbers and sounds are not what they seem

Today’s puzzles – and prize draw! – are about different types of deception.

1. Super syllabus

28 June 1951: The much-talked of state-owned experimental abattoirs have not been built

HEREFORD: With the departure of the high winds, rain has come again in a steady, dreary drizzle. To-day we should have been hay-making: it is as well that none is yet turned and that not much is cut. Rams are sitting each against the trunk of an apple tree: the sheltering branches form big green umbrellas. Nasty selfish creatures. Janice seems to think, so I have brought her back to her old nook against the house between two clipped bushes: she can keep dry there and eat a handful of crushed oats. The cats were already under another bush. Flossie has gone to her basket and grandmama cat sits behind me on my chair; it was her habit to treat a distinguished author like this and she got from him a quite unfair portion of chair.

The men are mucking-out buildings, masoning, and whitewashing. Farmers have done their best to produce good meat under difficult conditions, only to see waste and animals cruelly treated and left to wither away in congested areas outside the totally inadequate slaughterhouses. The much-talked of state-owned experimental slaughterhouses have not been built, and it is doubtful if even two will be ready this year. Up at Ardgay my cousin has found a rare bugle; it was sent to the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens and is being photographed there.

Whether its our careers, health or relationships, we often set the bar too high and end up feeling disappointed when it doesn’t work out. Try this new way of thinking … and you may just see some real results

Every January, millions of us sit down and write our goals for the year. By March, most of them have been abandoned. So we set new ones in spring, and when September rolls around, we do it again. New season, fresh start, same cycle – and plenty of beating ourselves up along the way. I lived this cycle for years. When I was working at Google as a digital health executive, I was a champion goal-setter with quarterly OKRs (objectives and key results) and a running list of personal goals I would review every week. On paper, it worked. I was successful by most external measures. But I had this persistent feeling that I was running just to stay in the same place, like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass.

After retraining as a neuroscientist and studying how the brain learns, I started to understand why. Goals work brilliantly under very specific conditions. You want to buy a car that fits three kids and costs under £25,000? Set a goal, do the research, buy the car. The destination is known and the path is clear.

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

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

Together my best friend Annabel Rook and I worked to support victims of gender-based violence – until she became one herself. Now I feel like a part of myself has been erased. Why aren’t more people outraged?

It is the summer of 2005, and we are staying on the sun-kissed shores of Busua, a coastal community in Ghana. The sand here is made of crushed pink shells. Annabel and I pick up handfuls and scrub our stained feet in the shallows. We’ve been wearing flip-flops for months, trailing through the rich red dust at the refugee settlement where we work. The Atlantic is rough and alive. Its tumbling motion and the wind are making me feel euphoric. Annabel is smiling to herself, too, and jumping in and out of waves.

“Mori,” she shouts, “it’s like being beaten up by an old friend!”

The animated sequel sets up a tug-of-war between physical and digital play for children but is still eager not to be an anti-tech screed

For more than 30 years, Pixar’s signature Toy Story series has been entertaining children while giving voice to their parents’ anxieties. This is especially pronounced in the film’s sequels, as the living toys who dedicate their lives to the happiness of their owner/child experience all different sorts of potential and parent-paralleled obsolescence, from physical wear-and-tear and a child reaching young adulthood to the toy equivalent of empty-nesting (still hanging around the playroom but no longer anyone’s favourite). It’s only natural – maybe even a little belated – that Toy Story 5 would address the encroachment of technology, which continues to make its way to children earlier and earlier. So many years after the tech breakthroughs that allowed Toy Story to become the first computer-animated feature, and Pixar to become a household name in family entertainment, has the formerly Steve Jobs-owned company turned against the kind of innovation that built its success?

Former party leaders reflect on the turbulence that followed the referendum in which most Scottish voters backed the losing side

The decision to quit the EU bolstered support for Scottish independence, which a decade after the Brexit referendum is at near record levels, according to Scottish Labour’s former leader Kezia Dugdale.

Dugdale said the Brexit vote “creates a frame around fairness” for many in Scotland because, unlike England, Scottish voters comprehensively backed remain in 2016, by 62% to 38%, yet found their country taken out of Europe.

A decade on, have you healed the rift, or is your relationship beyond repair?

With the 10th anniversary of the 2016 EU referendum result approaching, we would like to hear from people on how the vote affected their relationships with family and/or friends.

Perhaps you voted differently from a parent, child, sibling, partner, or friend, which caused tension and conflict. If so, a decade on, have you been able to heal the rift, move past your differences or has it damaged your relationship beyond repair? Tell us.

Our wildlife series Young Country Diary is looking for articles written by children, about their summer encounters with nature

Once again, the Young Country Diary series is open for submissions! Every three months we ask you to send us an article written by a child aged 8-14.

The article needs to be about a recent encounter they’ve had with nature – whether it’s a nesting bird, a beetle on the move, a field full of flowers.

Did you visit the famed tree? Did you take photos of it? Please share them with us

The Major oak, one of Europe’s oldest, largest and most celebrated ancient trees, which has grown in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, England, for at least 1,000 years, has died.

The huge tree failed to produce any leaves this year, after becoming stressed by a series of hot, dry summers. Footfall from visitors admiring the oak and well-intentioned historical interventions have also not helped its longevity.

We’d like to hear from people in the UK about how their local bird populations are faring, and what they mean to them

We’d like to find out about your experience of wild native birds where you live and whether there have been any changes over time.

Do you notice the same number of birds or less? What type of birds do you come into contact with? How has the soundscape changed? Do you ever use apps like Merlin to identify birds?

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