From cows and cats to squirrels and birds, all have their own methods but may need more help as heatwaves intensify

With the UK bracing for its third heatwave of the summer, 2025 is on course to be a record-breaking year for temperature. As people retreat into paddling pools and beneath the breeze of pedestal fans, a quieter and less visible struggle is playing out across the country’s fields, forests and hedgerows. So how are Britain’s animals weathering the heat?

From cows and cats to herons, horses and even earthworms, each species has evolved its own tactics for staying cool – some more effective than others. But as extreme heat events become more frequent and intense, scientists are beginning to question the longer-term resilience of UK wildlife, and what we can do to help.

Across the US, without soundbites or stunts, the president is building a police state and eroding democracy

In the global attention economy, one titan looms over all others. Donald Trump can command the gaze of the world at a click of those famously short fingers. When he stages a spectacular made-for-TV moment – say, that Oval Office showdown with Volodymyr Zelenskyy – the entire planet sits up and takes notice.

But that dominance has a curious side-effect. When Trump does something awful and eye-catching, nations tremble and markets move. But when he does something awful but unflashy, it scarcely registers. So long as there’s no jaw-dropping video, no expletive-ridden soundbite, no gimmick or stunt, it can slip by as if it hadn’t happened. Especially now that our senses are dulled through over-stimulation. These days it requires ever more shocking behaviour by the US president to prompt a reaction; we are becoming inured to him. Yet the danger he poses is as sharp as ever.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

It’s been a quarter of a century since the UK fell in love with Big Brother. To celebrate, we remembers its best bits – from hot tub pregnancies to Andrew Tate getting his just deserts

Big Brother house, this is the Guardian. You are live to the nation. Please do not swear. Yes, it’s the show that changed the face of British TV. On 18 July, it’s exactly 25 years since the OG reality franchise took our screens by storm – which will be marked this autumn by an extended 25th anniversary series. So we are celebrating by fast-forwarding through a quarter-century of romances, rows and all-round ridiculousness to pick the greatest hits of Big Brother – not the celebrity spin-off, otherwise George Galloway being a cat and “David’s dead!� would definitely feature. Instead we’re talking about the original and best civilian edition, whose pioneering 00s pomp came on Channel 4, before the less loved Channel 5 era – which was axed in 2018 until ITV rebooted it two years ago. These are the Endemol classic’s best bits. How many do you remember? Big Brother will get back to you.

This recipe tastes punchier and is cheaper than the chain version – but is it worth the prep time?

This week Pret a Manger sparked uproar when it launched a range of new supersized salads. It came as a response to what Pret said was a “shift in what customers want from lunch�, though possibly not from their wallet, with the premium salads priced £10-£13.

But how good are they? And is it right that they cost that much? I set off to recreate the miso salmon super plate at home. It’s fun copying the ingredients off the back of a packet to come up with a recipe. With the miso salmon plate, I’m impressed by the original: the plate looks very pretty, and the lightly smoked salmon fillet has an excellent texture. The tenderstem broccoli is just-blanched, and pleasingly crunchy.

After taking converging paths following teenage breakthroughs, the two stars realign in SW19 showpiece

On a quiet outside clay court at the Hungarian national tennis centre in Budapest nine years ago a pair of outstanding 15-year-olds tussled in front of a few dozen spectators. Although the duel offered glimpses into the potential from both sides of the net, Iga Swiatek defeated Amanda Anisimova 6-4, 6-2 en route to Poland’s triumph over the US in the Junior Fed Cup. Even though Anisimova endured a difficult afternoon, memories of those days immediately drew a smile to her face. “I used to enjoy those Fed Cup trips a lot,� she says. “We had a lot of fun.

“She was playing very well. She was a great junior – I remember a lot of coaches were saying that she’s going to be a big deal one day. They were right.�

Country’s navy announced seizure of uncrewed narco sub, first capture of such a vessel in Colombian waters

The bust was unusual – a narco submarine capable of carrying more than 1.5 tons of cocaine. There were no drugs onboard this time, but most notably, there were no traffickers.

Last week, the Colombian navy announced that it had seized an “autonomous semisubmersible�, the first seizure of such a vessel in the country’s waters.

Early investigation into accident in Ahmedabad in June also contains details of pilots discussing the switches

Fuel to the engines of the Air India plane that crashed and killed 260 people last month appears to have cut off seconds after the flight took off, a preliminary report has found.

Air India flight AI171 crashed into a densely populated residential area in Ahmedabad on 12 June, killing 241 passengers and 19 others on the ground. It was the deadliest air crash in a decade.

Deputy PM targeted for role in Birmingham bin strikes but sources say she resigned her membership months ago

Angela Rayner has said she will not be “pushed around� by the Unite trade union after it voted to suspend her membership and rethink its ties with the party.

The deputy prime minister was censured by the union over her role in the Birmingham bin strike, although party sources said Rayner resigned her membership of Unite some months ago.

President hints at ‘major announcement’ on Monday after halting arms shipments due to dwindling stockpiles

Donald Trump appears poised to deliver weapons to Ukraine by selling them first to Nato allies in a major policy shift for his administration amid frustrations with Vladimir Putin over stalling negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

During an interview with NBC News, Trump said he will probably have a “major announcement� on Russia on Monday and confirmed he had struck a deal with Nato leaders to supply weapons to Ukraine.

UN human rights office says 615 of the deaths were in vicinity of sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

At least 798 people have been killed while seeking food at distribution points operated by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and other humanitarian convoys since the end of May, the UN human rights office said on Friday.

The GHF, proposed by Israel as an alternative to the UN aid system in Gaza, has been almost universally condemned by rights groups for its violation of principles of humanitarian impartiality and what they have said could be complicity in war crimes.

• Number will no longer be used across all club’s teams

• 28-year-old died alongside his brother in car crash

Liverpool have permanently retired their No 20 shirt in honour of Diogo Jota, who was killed in a car crash alongside his brother, André Silva, last week. The club have announced that the No 20 will no longer be used across all levels of the club, including the men’s team, the women’s team and through academy levels.

The tribute, the first in Liverpool’s history, is a reflection of how valued the Portugal international was as a player and a person at the club. Liverpool fans have called for the retirement of the No 20 shirt since the 28-year-old and his brother died in north-western Spain. Liverpool deliberately timed the announcement at 20:20 BST on Friday.

Campaigners condemn ‘troubling’ move that follows departure of six of largest US banks after Trump’s election

HSBC has become the first UK bank to leave the global banking industry’s net zero target-setting group, as campaigners warned it was a “troubling� sign over the lender’s commitment to tackling the climate crisis.

The move risks triggering further departures from the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) by UK banks, in a fresh blow to international climate coordination efforts.

Blair led the London force from 2005 to 2008 and was made a life peer two years later

Ian Blair, who as commissioner of the Metropolitan police led the force through some of its most tumultuous and troubled times, has died aged 72.

Blair was the first commissioner in more than 100 years to resign from his office and was hailed by the current Met commissioner as “one of the most influential police leaders of recent decades�.

Penguin said release date of On Winter Hill would be changed in order to ‘support the author’ after allegations that Raynor Winn lied in her bestselling memoir

Penguin, publisher of The Salt Path, is delaying author Raynor Winn’s next book after reporting cast doubt over the truth of the 2018 memoir. The decision was taken to “support the author,� according to a statement.

The Salt Path tells the story of Winn and her husband, Moth, who embark on a 630-mile walk after their house is repossessed and Moth is diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration (CBD), a terminal illness.

• Italian world No 1 triumphs 6-3, 6-3, 6-4

• Djokovic called for trainer at end of second set

When Novak Djokovic strode on to Centre Court for a second contest with Jannik Sinner in little over a month, the narrative had long been set. This was surely one of the 24-time grand slam champion’s last chances for a major victory, a challenge that only continues to grow as age takes him further from his physical peak while Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz move closer to their own.

Two hours later, by the time Sinner was finished with him, Djokovic’s hopes of winning a 25th grand slam title seemed painfully remote. Sinner completely dismantled an ailing Djokovic, exposing the Serb’s sluggish movement with his weight of shot and unimpeachable defence to reach the Wimbledon final for the first time with a 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 win.

History is full of examples of artworks being used to express things diplomats would be forbidden to say

This week’s masterclass in the renewal of the entente cordiale was based on a genuine desire by two countries to reconnect. But in addition it served as a reminder that diplomacy is not only an art, but art itself has always been an essential tool of diplomacy. So the extended loan of the Bayeux tapestry, exchanged with treasures from Sutton Hoo, is not just a gesture of trust but marks a return to the roots of diplomacy, and its cultural lure.

Doubtless security experts will remember the summit’s declarations of new nuclear co-operation while pollsters will eye “the one in, one out� migrant deal to see if it actually turns the political tide in the Channel. But the popular legacy will be the queues forming at the British Museum from September 2026 when the tapestry goes on display, and in Rouen and Caen when the treasures from Sutton Hoo are viewed by the French in what is already being billed as the “Year of the Normans�. True, some Telegraph readers are already spluttering about the French sending a reminder of their conquest of the Anglo-Saxons, or that Britain is just a convenient place to dump the cloth during the two-year closure of the Bayeux Museum, but the British Museum has the prospect of huge crowds to enjoy.

A mainstream London school with a high number of children with EHCPs has effectively set up a mini special school within its walls

The classroom within All Saints Catholic college, west London, looks much like any other classroom. But this one offers a solution to England’s crisis in special needs education.

On one recent summer day the class was doing creative writing. Yet with every pupil having special needs in speech and communication, writing is just one part of the lesson. “Remember to reply to me,� the teacher gently reminds one pupil after discussing their work. “When I say something, you need to reply.�

Think only men suffer performance anxiety, your libido is set in stone or porn destroys intimacy? Experts debunk the most common misconceptions about your sex life

Asked to define sex, most people will say it means penetration and anything else is just “foreplay�, explains Kate Moyle, a psychosexual and relationship therapist, and author of The Science of Sex. “This pedestals intercourse as ‘real sex’ and other sexual acts as something done before penetration rather than as deserving credit in their own right,� she says.

As five-time grand slam champion, 22, heads to a third consecutive Wimbledon final, his many admirers share the love

Is Carlos Alcaraz the kindest man in tennis? His childhood coaches, fans and the 79-year-old widow who collapsed during one of his matches certainly think so.

The 22-year-old Spaniard, who is riding a 24-match win streak, has spent the last fortnight charming spectators and players alike – and not just with his tennis skills.

The International Space Station has been flying over the country this week and excited children tracking Shubhanshu Shukla’s every move will be hoping for a glimpse of his temporary home on Saturday night

As the International Space Station passes over India this weekend, many of those looking up to catch a glimpse as it goes by will be excited schoolchildren, who, like millions across the country, have their eyes, hopes and dreams pinned on astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, the first Indian to visit the ISS.

“What if the astronauts find evidence of intelligent life forms in space? Or even better, what if Shubhanshu Shukla’s experiments help humans discover a way to survive on other planets?� says Deborshi Halder, an excited 15-year-old. His classmate, however, is concerned. “But if places beyond Earth become habitable, we humans may land up exploiting them too, leading to space pollution,� says Sabnam Sireen.

(Def Jam)
The surprise seventh album from the former tween idol is musically expansive, abetted by a host of star producers. If only he’d thought about the words a bit

In the mid-2010s, pop music changed. Instead of hounding the listening public with focus-grouped, machine-tooled crowd-pleasers, the biggest stars began releasing expansive, experimental albums that played to their own tastes and interests. These were records that were artistically self-indulgent, mostly in a good way: Rihanna’s sleazy, sultry Anti, Beyoncé’s densely referential Lemonade, Lady Gaga’s soft-rock-heavy Joanne, Miley Cyrus’s psychedelic Wayne Coyne collaboration Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz (I may be the only person who holds that example in such high regard.)

With his fourth album Purpose, Justin Bieber was adjacent to this shift. Leaning into the ascendant tropical house genre, collaborating with Skrillex and pursuing a sound you sensed a 21-year-old might actually like, it spelled the end of Bieber’s career as a cheesy tween idol and repositioned him as a leading figure in the pop zeitgeist. But Purpose still felt like an album designed to spew highly accessible hits. And it did.

If Jamaica is synonymous with sun, sea and freedom to some, they might be surprised to hear that is not necessarily the case for Jamaicans as only 1% of the country’s beaches are open to the public. The rest are walled off by resorts, protected by private security and locked behind a colonial law that is somehow still in force. Neelam Tailor digs into how Jamaica’s paradise became private property – and speaks with the local movement fighting to take it back

Language learning app’s research seems on low side judging by my two-day experiment to record how often I say sorry

British people say “sorry� on average nine times a day, according to research by Babbel, a German language learning app – the upstart Duolingo. Foreigners were baffled that it was so often, and I was baffled that it was so infrequent.

I said it that many times just going once round Tesco Metro (I can’t even process how many times I’d be sorry in the mega-store):

Sorry (you are between me and a basket, you ought to have foreseen this, there is only one basket-station. Now that you haven’t, all we can do is mourn);

Sorry (I slightly trod on you);

Sorry (you’re clearly one of those people who still observes a one-way system, post-Covid, and even though I plainly disagree with this, otherwise I’d also do it, I sympathise with your vexation);

Sorry (you’re going way too fast and that’s why we nearly collided, so really you should be sorry, except you seem a bit high, so I am sorry for your predicament);

Sorry (we both reached for the same thing, yet the stakes are low, there are 17 more);

Sorry (I joined the queue in the wrong place);

Sorry (you joined the queue in the wrong place);

Sorry (shop assistant, you are very slow to approve my age-sensitive purchase, considering you could ID me from space);

Sorry (that my Clubcard isn’t scanning, person behind me, even though I 100% guarantee that yours isn’t going to scan either).

We can’t tell how much is left for tennis’s ultimate champion, but semi-final defeat by Sinner could be the moment Project 25 was buried for good

The Moment comes at the start of the third set. Nobody in tennis can spot a Moment like Novak Djokovic. The Moment is where he lives, breathes, puts gluten-free food on his family’s table. What happened before was irrelevant. You can rattle and bully him. You can pummel him off Centre Court for an hour, as Jannik Sinner has done. Djokovic will still prowl the chain-link fence all evening, probing it, waiting for the one gap wide enough to let him squeeze through. The point of greatest weakness is where he finds his greatest strength.

Sinner’s at 30-30 on his own serve. A defensive backhand from Djokovic sits up invitingly in mid-court, pleading to be dispatched. The world No 1, utterly impeccable to this point, swings a giant fist at the ball and somehow sends it flying in the vague direction of Tooting Broadway. The crowd yelps in shock. Next point Sinner nets a weak forehand, Djokovic raises a fist of defiance, and in the space of a few minutes – plus a few extra for the now-traditional Djokovic treatment break – this particular Italian job has had its bloody doors blown off.

Seamer’s five-fer reaffirmed he is on numbers, skill and spectacle perhaps the greatest fast bowler of all time

Jasprit times call for Jasprit measures. Lord’s on a brutally hot July morning can feel like an assault on the senses, with its crush of pastel-shirted flesh, the walkways seething with food wafts, hamper-flash, ice-bucket envy.

The home of cricket had at least immersed itself fully in the Red for Ruth charity on day two of this third Test, laying on an endless rolling field of red trouser cloth, every shade from faded salmon to screw-you scarlet on show. Admittedly it was like this on day one too. But you can never have enough charity.

• Favourite takes over race lead from Mathieu van der Poel

• Vingegaard beaten to line as Britain’s Onley finishes third

In this Tour de France wherever Tadej Pogacar goes Jonas Vingegaard follows. They were locked together at the top of the Mûr-de-Bretagne, in the Côtes-d’Armor, with the ­defending champion winning stage seven of the 2025 Tour just ahead of the Dane and regaining the yellow jersey.

Pogacar is usually the ­quickest of the pair in uphill sprints, but ­Vingegaard has always been on his shoulder, with the world champion, Remco Evenepoel, still close behind.

• Club chair furious at demotion to Conference League

• He calls for Uefa president Ceferin to overturn decision

Crystal Palace have been banned from the Europa League and moved into the Conference League after Uefa concluded the FA Cup ­winners were in breach of its multi-club ownership rules.

The Palace chair Steve Parish described the decision as “probably one of the greatest injustices that has ever happened in European football� and said that the club - who have never played in a major European competition - are likely to appeal to the court of arbitration for sport.

Andy Farrell has problems to solve before Test series and needs players to push their case in final warmup game

The phoney war is coming to an end. One more warm-up match against a tasty looking Australia and New Zealand invitational side and then into the real thing. The Lions head coach, Andy Farrell, was asked how much he was holding back for the Test series and he replied it was exactly the same amount as Australia were. I’d expect nothing less.

To give a sense of what that means, it’s not as if he’s asking players to give 80% of their capacity or that the Lions will be unrecognisable come the Test series. The framework they have been working with is the one they will use. But it’s the details where the Lions will try to hurt Australia that have been, to a degree, parked or kept back. You don’t necessarily want to show that in warm-up matches, certainly not your full hand.

There are suggestions that the era of possession heavy, carefully choreographed, positional play, may have passed its zenith but, if that message worries Pep Guardiola disciples, Spain’s women remain unperturbed.

As usual the world champions hogged the ball as they won a third consecutive group game at Euro 2025, scoring their 12th, 13th and 14th goals of the tournament in the process.

Belgium’s Tessa Wullaert and Janice Cayman struck in a dramatic 2-1 victory in their final Group B game at Euro 2025 on Friday that extinguished Portugal’s dreams of advancing to their first European knockout round.

Belgium, who had already been eliminated from quarter-final contention before kick-off, finished third in Group B, while Portugal, who needed a win to advance, were fourth. Spain and Italy both went through after the world champions won their match 3-1.

Win over the Netherlands shows Sarina Wiegman has kept spirits high in the Lionesses’ camp as decisive matches loom

England are back on track. They really needed that display against the Netherlands and it was a pivotal moment for them. It was a very, very commanding performance.

Physically, they showed their dominance and exposed the Netherlands’ weaknesses at the back. With Lauren James, in what I think is her best position, playing from the right and being able to drift in, you can maintain your midfield structure. Her performance showed why Sarina Wiegman has selected her and the team performance showed why she stuck with the group that she did.

Get to know every single squad member at the tournament. Click on the player pictures for a full profile and ratings

• Keegan Bradley poised to be player-captain at Bethpage

• McIlroy: ‘The US is better with Keegan playing than not’

Rory McIlroy believes the increasing likelihood of Keegan Bradley playing for and captaining the United States in this year’s Ryder Cup epitomises a difference in approach between the competing teams. Bradley’s recent win on the PGA Tour means he is poised to take on a dual role as the US tries to regain the cup from Europe at Bethpage in September. Advantage Europe?

A year ago at the Scottish Open, McIlroy insisted the concept of a playing captain was a seriously flawed one. After posting a 65 on Friday to fire himself into contention at the tournament’s 2025 edition, McIlroy addressed the same issue with a laugh. “Hopefully it is impossible,� he said of a playing captain.

• Super League: Leeds Rhinos 0-6 St Helens

• Saints grind out fifth straight win and target top two

We are still some way from knowing just how significant this victory will be for St Helens in the scramble for the Super League playoffs but in the here and now, it was difficult to escape just how monumental an evening this felt for Paul Wellens’ side.

There has been no shortage of adversity stacked against the Saints in 2025. Injuries, poor performances and mounting pressure on Wellens himself has led many to feel that there was next to no chance of this side being in the picture for Old Trafford come the autumn: but things change quickly in the wild world of Super League.

Charlie Appleby targets major Stateside contest in which Group One winner was unlucky in running last year

Royal Ascot last month was something of a struggle for Charlie Appleby but his “home� meeting this week has been a different story and the former champion trainer will head into the final day of the July Festival looking for a second Group One in as many days after Cinderella’s Dream edged out January, the favourite, in the Falmouth Stakes on Friday.

Appleby has two runners in Saturday’s July Cup, the midsummer sprint championship, including the probable favourite, Notable Speech, and ended the middle afternoon of the meeting with six wins from 13 starters over the first two days.

There have been modest redistributive reforms, but the party of the workers still daren’t admit that Britain’s rampant inequality needs to be addressed

After 125 years of practice, Labour ought to be good at saying why resources should be redistributed from the rich to everyone else. Its founding conference in 1900 passed a motion calling for “a distinct Labour group in Parliament�, to collaborate with any party “promoting legislation in the direct interests� of the working class. Creating a more egalitarian society and politics – which by definition means redistribution from the powerful – was Labour’s original purpose.

Britain was then, and remains, a highly unequal country: more unequal currently than neighbours such as Ireland, the Netherlands and France. This week the children’s commissioner, Rachel de Souza, said that some British children were living in “almost Dickensian levels of poverty�. But as any expensive but packed restaurant, pavement lined with new Range Rovers or row of smoothly renovated home exteriors will tell you, the rich have been enjoying a long boom in Britain, arguably ever since the Conservatives abolished the top 60% income tax rate 37 years ago.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

This messy policy won’t deter desperate asylum seekers. It’s more likely to have been created to appease the likes of Nigel Farage

For years, human rights campaigners have been calling for safe routes to the UK for asylum seekers to prevent them from taking dangerous journeys across the Channel in overloaded dinghies, lining the pockets of ruthless people smugglers in the process. So, is Thursday’s announcement of the “one in one out� deal by the UK prime minister and the French president, where one asylum seeker who arrives on a small boat will be sent back to France in exchange for bringing another one to the UK legally, the answer to their prayers?

The UNHCR and the Refugee Council have cautiously welcomed the announcement, while acknowledging that full details of how the scheme will work in practice are key and not yet available. Others have been less enthusiastic, with the charity Refugee Action condemning the plan for people in life-or-death situations as similar to a nightclub door policy, while Asylum Matters has called it a “Rwanda-style gimmick�.

Diane Taylor writes on human rights, racism and civil liberties

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 Nazi meltdown of the tech billionaire’s bot Grok leaves me asking: is this post-truth rock bottom, or have we further to go?

Grok, Elon Musk’s X-integrated AI bot, had a Nazi meltdown on Tuesday. It’s useful to recap it fully, not because the content is varied – antisemitic fascism is very one-note – but because its various techniques are so visible. It all started on X, formerly Twitter, when Grok was asked to describe a now-deleted account called @Rad_reflections, which Grok claimed “gleefully celebrated the tragic deaths of white kids in the recent Texas flash floods�, and then “traced� the real name of the account as a Cindy Steinberg, concluding: “classic case of hate dressed as activism – and that surname? Every damn time, as they say.�

There are things we can say for certain, which is that Grok is antisemitic – an impression, in case we had somehow missed it, the bot was careful to underline with its subsequent assertions that leftist accounts spewing “anti-white hate … often have Ashkenazi Jewish surnames�, and that Hitler would have been the best historical figure to deal with this hate: “he’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively every damn time,� it tweeted (all the posts have since been deleted).

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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

I am almost literally medically incapable of staying in my trousers. So who’s really to blame here – me or the BBC?

I was born in the year 1964, which means I am exactly on the cusp between boomer and generation X. This is more than a fascinating fact about me – although it is of course also that. It is a disability. Yet incredibly, at no stage in my entire BBC career did anyone try to make the world accessible for this disability, neither by mandating every single person I might ever work with – or maybe even just humorously touch – to undergo unconscious Greggism training, nor by helping me with off-ramps for my jokes. I was sometimes left literally stranded halfway down a gag about my knob and no one came to my aid. Where was the compassion?

Having said that, perhaps it still exists in small pockets. I am massively grateful to the close pals whose briefing of the Times resulted in yesterday’s headline: “Gregg Wallace’s autism means he can’t wear underwear, say friends�. I am now keen to encourage further friends to come forward and cite the second medical condition which means that despite knowing that my autism prevents me from wearing underwear, I still have to take my trousers off in front of runners. This is clinical.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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

Crying in the Commons is not unusual – unless the chancellor is doing it – as attention turns to Trump’s state visit

In all of the coverage given to Rachel Reeves’s tears during last week’s prime minister’s questions, one thing got rather overlooked. Crying in the House of Commons is not particularly unusual. It just becomes news when it’s the chancellor who is the one doing the crying. Even the financial markets take an interest: weird how a woman having a normal feeling can cause turmoil, but no one bats an eyelid at male sociopaths.

In our current political climate, why is migration minister Johan Forssell surprised that a teenage boy might be drawn to extremism?

Before the elections next year, Sweden’s conservative government has been eager to avoid accusations of racism or xenophobia. So it’s unfortunate that it keeps being plagued by scandals involving both.

The Swedish investigative magazine Expo revealed earlier this month that a minister in the governing coalition, whom it did not name, had a close family member active in violent far-right and neo-Nazi groups. The family member had, Expo claimed, participated in activities with a far-right network classified as a terrorist group by the US.

Martin Gelin writes for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter

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.

Britain is now a poorer country, with stagnant growth. In this pay climate, the doctors are in danger of seeing public support ebb away

Good news and bad news for the NHS this week. Waiting lists are falling a bit faster: May’s figures, out yesterday, show the lowest waiting list total in two years, as well as the highest number of treatments ever recorded. But yes, lists are still long, at 7.36 million, with 40% of people waiting longer than 18 weeks.

More good news today: patients are more satisfied, or less dissatisfied, with GPs: 70% satisfied with contacting the GP and 75% reported a good overall experience. The extra 1,900 GPs and the increased rollout of phone and NHS app bookings are reducing the 8am fastest-finger scramble.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

The government has hailed its ‘one in, one out’ migrant returns deal as a breakthrough. But awkward questions over its implementation remain

To use a football analogy that he might appreciate, the first year of Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership has been a game of two halves. Domestically, grievous strategic mistakes have been made. On the foreign stage, however, an approach that Sir Keir likes to style as “quiet, serious diplomacy� has yielded some tangible results.

For the most part, this week’s state visit by Emmanuel Macron further showcased the benefits of leaving behind the blowhard politics of the post-Brexit years. Sir Keir and the French president used the occasion to pledge greater cooperation on security and strengthened their joint commitment to safeguarding Ukraine’s future as a sovereign independent state. But the biggest take-away from Mr Macron’s trip launched the prime minister straight back into toxic domestic terrain.

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.

In an era of misinformation, trust in publishers is more important than ever

“All autobiographies are lies,� George Bernard Shaw wrote in 1898. “I do not mean unconscious, unintentional lies: I mean deliberate lies.� The veracity of autobiographical writing is under scrutiny once again following allegations that the bestselling memoir The Salt Path is not quite the “unflinchingly honest� account of one couple’s triumph over adversity as billed.

Even if you are not one of the two million people to have bought the book, and haven’t seen the film released this summer, you will doubtless know the story of a couple’s 630-mile journey along the South Coast Way after facing homelessness and a diagnosis of terminal illness. Published in 2018, The Salt Path struck a chord during lockdown as readers discovered the solace of walking and nature during the pandemic. But this tale of wild-camping and the kindness of strangers, not to mention the seemingly miraculous healing powers of a long hike, has gone from word-of-mouth sensation to publishing scandal due to the charges of omission (including past theft) and possible commission levelled by the Observer at its author Raynor Winn (real name Sally Walker). Winn has described the article as “grotesquely unfair [and] highly misleading�.

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.

Since disaster that has killed at least 120 people, US president has remained quiet about promises to axe relief agency

During a trip on Friday to look at the devastation caused by the catastrophic flooding in Texas, Donald Trump claimed that state and federal officials had done an “incredible job�, saying of the disaster that he had “never seen anything like this�.

The trip comes as he has remained conspicuously quiet about his previous promises to do away with the federal agency in charge of disaster relief.

Burning of boat containing dark-skinned mannequins in lifejackets in Moygashel draws widespread condemnation

Police in Northern Ireland are investigating a loyalist bonfire that featured effigies of refugees sitting in a boat as a hate incident.

Crowds in the County Tyrone village of Moygashel cheered on Thursday night when the towering pyre was lit and flames engulfed the vessel and a dozen dark-skinned, lifesize mannequins with lifejackets.

Prosecutors allege Ovidio Guzmán López and his brother, Joaquin Guzmán López, ran a faction of the Sinaloa cartel

A son of notorious Mexican drug kingpin “El Chapo� pleaded guilty on Friday to US drug-trafficking charges, becoming the first of the drug lord’s sons to enter a plea deal.

Prosecutors allege Ovidio Guzmán López and his brother, Joaquín Guzmán López, ran a faction of the Sinaloa cartel. They became known locally as the “Chapitos�, or “little Chapos�, and federal authorities in 2023 described the operation as a major effort to send “staggering� quantities of fentanyl into the US.

Campaigners criticise remarks in which TV presenter appeared to link allegations against him to diagnosis

The UK’s leading charity for autism has said it is important not to generalise about the condition in the wake of comments made by Gregg Wallace in which he appeared to link the allegations of misconduct made against him to his own diagnosis.

The TV presenter was sacked as MasterChef presenter on Tuesday after an inquiry into his alleged inappropriate behaviour by the production company Banijay.

Actor spoke at Karlovy Vary film festival about his experience working with ‘manipulative’ director in the 80s

Stellan Skarsgård has weighed in on famed director Ingmar Bergman’s Nazi sympathies as a young adult.

The actor was speaking at the Karlovy Vary film festival in the Czech Republic, where he was promoting Joachim Trier’s film Sentimental Value, inspired by the late Swedish director. Skarsgård expressed his personal dislike of Bergman, with whom he worked on a 1986 stage production of August Strindberg’s A Dream Play.

Exclusive: 110 of 117 bodies of water tested by Environment Agency would fail standards, with levels in fish 322 times the planned limit

Nearly all rivers, lakes and ponds in England tested for a range of Pfas, known as “forever chemicals�, exceed proposed new safety limits and 85% contain levels at least five times higher, analysis of official data reveals.

Out of 117 water bodies tested by the Environment Agency for multiple types of Pfas, 110 would fail the safety standard, according to analysis by Wildlife and Countryside Link and the Rivers Trust.

Abandoned fishing equipment haunts our oceans, killing coral, turtles, sharks and whales. But in Colombia’s Gulf of Tribugá, ‘guardians’ are on call to free entangled marine animals

After a day of scuba diving, Luis Antonio “Toño� Lloreda was exhausted. Then a friend brought urgent news. “Toño, man, there’s a whale caught in a net out there.� Lloreda, 43, had freed other, smaller wildlife from fishing nets but this would be his first marine animal of such size.

The four to five metres-long juvenile humpback, accompanied by its mother, had a net studded with hooks wrapped around its fin and mouth. One wrong move could have been fatal for Lloreda or the whale.

Luis Antonio ‘Toño’ Lloreda holds a photo of the whale he freed from a fishing net

Scientists say Perito Moreno, which for decades defied trend of glacial retreat, now rapidly losing mass

One of the few stable glaciers in a warming world, Perito Moreno, in Santa Cruz province, Argentina, is now undergoing a possibly irreversible retreat, scientists say.

Over the past seven years, it has lost 1.92 sq km (0.74 sq miles) of ice cover and its thickness is decreasing by up to 8 metres (26 ft) a year.

Woodland Trust’s 10 nominees from across the country highlight how trees inspire creative minds

A cedar tree climbed by the Beatles, an oak that may have inspired Virginia Woolf and a lime representing peace in Northern Ireland are among those shortlisted for tree of the year 2025.

Voting opens on Friday for the Woodland Trust’s annual competition, which aims to celebrate and raise awareness of rare, ancient or at-risk trees across the UK.

Some welcome a plan for a legal route to the UK but others worry about how people will be selected for deportation

Keir Starmer’s migrant return deal is under scrutiny after charities called for more clarity on how people will be chosen for deportation and the EU said it was still assessing the agreement.

No 10 said on Friday it was confident in the legality of the deal to return about 50 people a week to France in return for accepting the same number through a safe and legal route.

Northumbria police say two men are in custody after death of woman in her 80s and another in her 90s

Two care home residents have died after a car police were chasing crashed into their building in Sunderland.

Ten residents were taken to hospital after the stolen BMW collapsed a large part of a wall and part of the first storey of Highcliffe care home in Witherwack.

Exclusive: BBC understood to be speaking to US tech giants as it desperately seeks cost savings

The BBC is examining a significant outsourcing drive that could put thousands of jobs at risk as it desperately searches for savings, the Guardian understands.

The plans being considered include the offshoring of jobs currently carried out in the UK, with the BBC understood to be talking to US tech giants as potential partners. It is said to include the outsourcing of recommendation algorithms, which direct users to content.

UKHSA warning came into effect at noon on Friday as temperatures predicted to reach 33C over weekend

Amber heat health alerts have been issued across parts of England and hosepipe bans imposed in various locations as the third heatwave of the summer takes hold.

The heat health warning announced by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) came into effect at noon on Friday and covers the East Midlands, West Midlands, south-east, south-west, east of England and London until 9am on Monday.

Jaime Alanis died after sustaining injuries during raid where authorities say they arrested about 200 people

A farmworker died Friday from injuries that he sustained a day earlier in raids on two California cannabis farm sites as US immigration authorities confirmed they arrested 200 workers after a tense standoff with authorities.

Jaime Alanis’s death was confirmed in a social media post by the United Farm Workers advocacy group. “We tragically can confirm that a farm worker has died of injuries they sustained as a result of yesterday’s immigration enforcement action,� the post read.

Author of Um defeito de cor wins seat in 128-year-old institution long dominated by white men

Brazil has elected its first Black woman to the Brazilian Academy of Letters, founded in 1897 and modelled on the Académie Française.

Ana Maria Gonçalves, 54, is one of Brazil’s most acclaimed contemporary authors, and her election on Thursday is being widely celebrated by writers, activists, literary scholars and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The 26-year-old’s van had been found abandoned but police hail a ‘great result’ in finding her safe but ‘ravaged by mosquitoes’

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

German backpacker Carolina Wilga has been found alive after going missing 12 days ago in remote Western Australian bushland.

Insp Martin Glynn of WA police told reporters on Friday evening that the 26-year-old had been located walking on a bush track on the edge of the reserve where she had gone missing.

Cabaret venue marks restoration of red-painted windmill with 90-strong troupe performing signature can-can dance

The sails of the red-painted windmill on top of the Moulin Rouge, the most celebrated cabaret in Paris, have begun turning again, restoring the home of French can-can to its full glory more than a year after they tumbled inelegantly to the ground.

In a profusion of red feathers, members of the Montmartre institution’s 90-strong troupe performed its signature dance on the road outside to mark the occasion on Thursday night, after the second of two daily performances that draw 600,000 visitors a year.

Ahead of his UK tour, the former Monty Python star responds to questions from Catherine Zeta-Jones, David Mamet, Janet Suzman, Steve Coogan, Bill Oddie and others

When news broke in 2021 that Eric Idle had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, dismay was followed by relief when he survived to get the all-clear. Now 83, Idle is thriving and about to embark on his first UK tour since 1973.

Over haddock and chips in London last month, a gentle and friendly Idle answered questions submitted by readers and fellow writers, actors and comedians about his time as a Python, Broadway smash Spamalot – his musical adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail – as well as selfies, Peter Cook and why he feels sorry for the royals.

Europop acts from Opus to Baltimora to Nena got huge after Brits brought their songs home from their summer breaks. But despite returning to obscurity, the artists say they’re not (sun)burnt by fame

Until 1982, if you wanted to go on holiday, you had to go to a high street travel agent, who would generally make a bunch of phone calls and tell you to come back later. Then Thomson Holidays introduced the first computerised booking system and pricing was deregulated – enter the golden age of Brits-on-tour package trips to Benidorm, Torremolinos and the other resorts scattered along the Costa del Sol.

It created a curious phenomenon of its own: the hit single the holidaymakers brought home. Plenty of 1980s European artists won a single hit, perhaps two, in the UK before slinking back into obscurity or – just as often – back into the domestic or continental stardom they already had before the British deigned to take an interest. For a few weeks, their names were inescapable: Spagna, Sabrina, Modern Talking, Desireless, Baltimora, Opus, Nena. Then they became pub quiz answers.

New Amazon docuseries looks back at the chilling University of Idaho murders and how amateur detectives played a dangerous part in what happened next

On the morning of 13 November 2022, Hunter Johnson and Emily Alandt, two students at the University of Idaho in Moscow, answered an odd phone call. Their friend Dylan Mortensen, who lived just a few houses away, heard strange noises during the night and was scared. Her four upstairs roommates weren’t answering their phones – could they come over and check on things? Johnson and Alandt weren’t particularly concerned, Moscow being a quiet college town of unlocked doors, until they reached 1122 King Road. The usually boisterous residence, the node of a sprawling friend group, was eerily quiet. Johnson proceeded up the stairs and into the bedroom where his best friend, Ethan Chapin, 20, was staying over with his girlfriend, Xana Kernodle, also 20. Then, to spare the others the trauma of a ghastly sight, he told the girls to call 911 for an “unconscious individual�.

By now, the clinical facts of the University of Idaho murders, as they have become known, have been published and republished, dissected to death online and seared into the consciousness of even casual news consumers. So One Night in Idaho: The College Murders, a new Amazon docuseries that includes, for the first time, extensive interviews with Johnson, Alandt and other close friends and family, takes a different approach – not a chronology of the murders of Chapin, Kernodle and her roommates, Madison Mogen, 21 and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, but how the crime and its nuclear fallout landed on their loved ones. How much confusion ensued in the hours after the 911 call, as more and more friends, including Chapin’s fellow triplets, Hunter and Maizie, gathered outside the house, while police searched and said nothing; the group got confirmation that their friends had died not from officers on the scene, but from a campus shelter-in-place alert to their phones.

Eric Bana leads a gripping murder mystery set in the vast Yosemite wilderness, plus a classic trippy Stephen King thriller about kids with supernatural abilities

“Christ, here comes Gary Cooper,� exclaims one detective when Kyle Turner arrives at a crime scene on his horse. Turner (Eric Bana) is a difficult man – he’s a special agent whose job is to enforce the law in the vast wilderness of Yosemite National Park. He’s also blunt, rude and the kind of sad solo drinker who calls his ex-wife at 2.30am. When a woman dies after plunging from a cliff, his colleagues are keen to write it off as suicide. But Turner suspects that isn’t the whole story. Will his boss Paul Souter (Sam Neill) and his new partner from LA Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago) put up with him long enough to find out? A slow-burner but gripping too. Phil Harrison
Netflix, from Thursday 17 July

To celebrate 50 years of the Steven Spielberg classic, binge on all four on Netflix – even the one where the shark explodes! Plus, Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece hits the small screen at last

The 50th anniversary of Jaws – the Year Zero of the modern-day blockbuster – has already been well covered. However, half a century of Jaws also means half a century of Jaws sequels, which is a different kind of fun. This week, Netflix has gathered together all four films for viewers to enjoy at their leisure. The question is: which should you watch? The peerless original? Jaws 2, which is basically a remake of the first one? Jaws 3, which was shot for 3D seemingly just for the scene where a shark gets exploded? Or Jaws: The Revenge, in which a shark with a vendetta chases Michael Caine around the Bahamas? Strictly speaking, only one of these films is good. But, in their own way, they are all great.
Tuesday 15 July, Netflix

It’s the final chapter of his wonderfully bizarre series. Plus: bumper crossover episodes of Chicago Fire, Med and PD. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, ITV1

Kings Place, London
Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh’s outstanding delivery of poetry from the 2018 anthology was interspersed with excellent, yet slightly overshadowed, performances from baritone James Newby and pianist Joseph Middleton

Poems for a World Gone to Sh*t was published in 2018. The short anthology has no credited editor and urges its reader to “discover the amazing power of poetry to make even the most f*cked up times feel better�. The poems themselves are mostly well-known, short and by 20th-century and contemporary writers: the attention-grabbing, gifting-ready packaging ultimately contains what it might call the “same old sh*t�.

Perhaps baritone James Newby and pianist Joseph Middleton imagined that taking this collection as the basis for a song recital would bring new audiences to art song. If so, the half-empty auditorium at Kings Place for this final concert in its Platoon Presents series wasn’t encouraging. Or perhaps the collection’s narrative arc from fury and frustration via calls for action to a recognition of life’s wonders seemed ripe for exploration in song. In that case, it was a shame that the logic for matching songs and poems from the collection – the latter read by Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh – relied mainly on pivoting between key words rather than mood or meaning. Thus Maya Angelou’s Still I rise (its anthemic power blistering in Andoh’s performance) was followed by Herbert Howells’ song King David: its Walter de la Mare text is galaxies away from Angelou’s poem, but there’s a lovely key change on the phrase “He rose�.

The singer-songwriter’s warm laconic voice holds together lounge jazz stylings, dreamy pop and amenable folk, cut through with a self-deprecating wit

From North London
Recommended if you like Helena Deland, Billie Eilish, Okay Kaya
Up next Headlining Bermondsey Social Club, 30 July; playing Green Man festival, Brecon Beacons, August

London-based singer-songwriter Sarah Meth makes eerie, skeletal dream-pop cut through with a self-deprecating, very online sense of humour. A scan of her artist page on any streaming service offers a gratifying biography of an artist slowly but surely chipping away at her style in search of a distinct point of view: the lounge jazz stylings of 2020’s Dead End World give way to piquant, post-King Krule bedroom pop on 2022’s Leak Your Own Blues and Billie Eilish-ish pathos on 2023’s Steps EP.

(Brownswood)
The London collective have an easygoing, ruminative sound – briefly lifted here by moments of lively counterpoint – that can feel all too placid

Since breaking out with their 2018 track Abusey Junction, London jazz collective Kokoroko have become known for a soothing brand of improvised instrumentals. Blending whispered melodies with muted horns, downtempo hand percussion and shades of highlife guitar, theirs is an easygoing, ruminative sound. Their 2022 debut album, Could We Be More, continued in the same vein, full of warm brass and gently layered vocal harmony.

So does their latest effort, Tuff Times Never Last. Across its 11 tracks of , tempos rarely exceed 100bpm, wallowing in tranquil bass lines and languorous grooves. The group establish a confident and comforting tone, playing through the lullaby vocal harmonies of Never Lost, the slowed guitar of Closer to Me and Rhodes piano reverberations on My Father in Heaven.

(Phase Space)
Switching wonky techno for spacious abstraction, Gwenan Spearing debuts a new alias on an EP of uncanny generative electronics

After establishing herself as a techno DJ in some of the wonkiest corners of underground dance music, Gwenan Spearing has spent the last few years settling into slower, more abstract territory. Alongside her club sets, she co-organises an ambient deep listening series in Berlin and spends her spare time experimenting with modular synthesis. Phase Space is the latest expression of this interest, a project rooted in generative electronics and real-time responses.

Degrees of Freedom is Spearing’s first outing under this new alias: an EP of meandering ambient tracks that blur the lines between electronic and acoustic as instruments are sampled, warped and overdubbed through her synthesiser. On the subaquatic opening track Sync, cowbells are stretched and delayed beyond recognition against a pulsing analogue rhythm. Towards the end of Some Pluck, a dense shimmer almost sounds like steel pans, but you get the impression it’s something more elusive.

Here and Beyond by Hal LaCroix; One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford; I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman; The Reaper by Jackson P Brown

Here and Beyond by Hal LaCroix (Bloomsbury, £16.99)
The only realistic way human beings could colonise planets beyond our solar system is if they spent their lives travelling and committed their children and grandchildren to the same fate, so their descendants might have a chance to reach another habitable world. Writers who have taken this fictional challenge, including Robert A Heinlein and Brian Aldiss, have assumed civilisational breakdowns would result, with the survivors coming to believe their ship is the only world there ever was. The author of this brilliant, character-driven debut novel has taken a more optimistic view. On Earthworld, success was measured in terms of expansion and exploitation, but on Shipworld, survival depends on preservation, recycling and austerity. During 360 years of travel to planet HD-40307g, the descendants of the original 600 pioneers never lose sight of the distant goal, along the way meeting unexpected challenges, setbacks and tragedies, but also innovations, insights and moments of joy. It’s an imaginative journey that’s absorbing, thoughtful and deeply humane.

One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford (Tor, £22)
In a post-zombie pandemic London, Kesta is a scientist working on a project dedicated to finding a vaccine against the virus that turned so many into bloodthirsty monsters. She is especially driven because her husband, Tim, was one of the last people to be infected. But unknown to anyone else, Tim is still alive: tied to a bed in Kesta’s flat, drugged into docility while she tries everything she can think of to cure him. There’s enough real science behind the theories of how the disease works to make for a fresh and convincing take on the zombie theme, but this debut novel is especially strong as a gripping, sometimes darkly funny depiction of the grotesque lengths to which love might drive someone in refusing to accept an inevitable end.

The author on Anthony Trollope, Andrew Miller, and why she sided with 19th-century coal miners

My earliest reading memory
I have the fuzziest memory of an illustrated Grimms’ fairy tale called Jorinde and Joringel from the time before I could read. I made my mum take it out of the library over and over again. It was about a quest for a flower with some special powers. I wish I could remember why it had such a hold over me.

My favourite book growing up
I think a sense of humour is forged in childhood and I remember crying with laughter as my older sister read me the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge. It didn’t bother me that they were all about prep school boys – it was the comedy of embarrassment that really spoke to me.

A picaresque story of massive success and deep despair that Rowland narrates with an impressive lack of self-pity

In the summer of 1979, Dexys Midnight Runners were a band you would have been hard-pushed to describe as anything other than unique. Their sound was a pugilistic update of classic 60s soul, topped with frontman Kevin Rowland’s extraordinary vocals, impassioned to the point that he permanently sounded on the verge of tears. It was fervent and a little retro, perfect for a musical climate in which mod and ska revivals were already bubbling. But Dexys’ image threw a spanner in the works. “I wore a white 1930s shirt and big baggy light-grey trousers tucked into white football socks just below the knee to give the effect of ‘plus fours’,� writes Rowland of a typical outfit. “I wore pink Mary Jane ballet shoes and my hair swept back, Valentino style.�

Other members appear on stage clad in jodhpurs and satin harem pants. The disparity between how they sound and how they look is so disconcerting, even their manager seems baffled. After a gig supporting the Specials, at which their appearance so enrages the crowd that the band have to be locked in a dressing room (“for our own safety�), they tone things down completely and begin taking to the stage in donkey jackets and mariner-style beanie hats.

This impeccably sourced account of the secretive agency during a period of global turmoil deserves a Pulitzer

In 1976 when we were both based in Brussels, my BBC mentor, the great Charles Wheeler, came back to the office from a grand US embassy party one evening and remarked: “The cleverest and most entertaining people at these things are always CIA. Makes it all the harder to understand why they get everything wrong.� An exaggeration, of course, but one with a degree of truth to it. Why has an organisation with huge amounts of money at its disposal, a record of recruiting the brightest and the best, and the widest of remits, failed to notch up a better record? It’s true that we may not know about many of the CIA’s successes. But we know about a lot of its failures, and some of them have marked US history ineradicably.

In The Mission, Tim Weiner, whose reporting on the CIA in the New York Times was always essential reading, and whose subsequent books on the US intelligence community have a place on the shelves of anyone interested in international affairs, provides a variety of answers to this essential question. As he showed nearly 20 years ago in Legacy of Ashes, his history of the CIA from its founding in 1947 to the end of the 20th century, the agency’s position by the end of the 90s was pretty desperate. It was starved of cash and bleeding talent. A high-flyer who had been station chief in Bucharest was revealed to be working for the Russians, handing them the names of large numbers of agents and employees. But the new US administration that came in at the start of 2001 wasn’t too worried. In March that year, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, told the joint chiefs of staff: “For the first time in decades, the country faces no strategic challenge.� Six months later came 9/11. The CIA had tried to convince the feckless George W Bush about the looming threat of Islamic ultra-fundamentalism, but no one in the administration listened. The agency was regarded as broken.

PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2; Iron Galaxy Studios/Activision
This remake is a nostalgia fest of grabs, spins, flips and skids – and a stiff, even occasionally humiliating test of skill

It’s almost insulting how easily this skating-game remake pushes my millennial nostalgia buttons. The second that Ace of Spades comes on over a montage of skaters on the title screen, I am forcefully yanked back to the early 00s, when I spent untold hours playing one Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game or another in the gross bedrooms of my teen-boy friends. More than 20 years later, I can almost smell the acrid lingering odour of Lynx body spray.

In 2020, the first couple of Tony Hawk’s games were polished up and re-released as the first wave of Y2K nostalgia hit. The two games were packaged up as one, with consistent controls and a new look that preserved the grungy feel of the originals, and the same is true for 3+4: levels, skaters and parks from both 2001’s THPS3 and 2002’s THPS4 rock up here alongside newer stars of the sport (including Riley Hawk, son of the eponymous skating celebrity – I found this oddly touching).

The games’ runaway success introduced a whole generation to hopped up US punk and metal. Bands including Less Than Jake, the Ataris and AFI pay tribute to a gaming megastar who loves them back

When millions of parents bought their kids a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game in the late 90s and early 00s, they couldn’t have understood the profound effect it would have on their children’s music taste. With bands from Bad Religion to Papa Roach and Millencolin accompanying every failed spin and grind, these trick-tastic games slyly doubled up as the ultimate compilation CD.

While the Fifa games have an equally storied history with licensed music, those soundtracks feel impersonal – a who’s who of whichever artists EA’s associated record labels wanted to push at the time. Pro Skater’s soundtrack, by contrast, felt like being handed a grubby and slightly dog-eared handmade mixtape, still battered from its last tumble at the local skate park.

Non-violent games about cooking, farming or tidying now rival the more traditional video game pursuits of shooting and fighting in popularity. So what will the #cozy genre tackle next?

In 2017, a game design thinktank called Project Horseshoe gathered a group of developers together to define the concept of cosiness in video games. Games, of course, have had non-violent elements since the medium was invented. Early life simulators such as 1985’s Little Computer People, a low-stakes game in which the player interacts with a man living his unremarkable life in a house, could fit the bill; then there was the proliferation of social farming simulations after 1996’s chibi-adorable Harvest Moon.

But the resulting report, Coziness in Games: An Exploration of Safety, Softness, and Satisfied Needs, is probably the first organised effort to define a then-emerging genre. The group zeroed in on three core things: safety, abundance, and softness. Cosy games (cozy in US spelling) don’t have high-risk scenarios: “There is no impending loss of threat,� they wrote. They must have a sense of abundance: “Nothing is lacking, pressing or imminent.� And a soft aesthetic wraps everything up like a warm hug.

At the Develop conference in Brighton this week, talk turns from cancelled deals and job cuts to replicating real human experiences and telling stories about diverse characters

For anyone looking to gauge the mood of the UK games industry in 2025, there has been only one place to hang out this week: the bar of the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Brighton. It’s in this building that the annual Develop conference has been bringing together developers, publishers, students and journalists since 2006 – and during the three days of talks, roundtables and keynotes, it’s in the bar that everyone meets and unloads their theories and concerns about the state of the business.

This year, after many months of cuts and closures, the mood has been dour. On Tuesday, I spoke to many coders, artists and studio heads who have had games cancelled, staff axed and deals obliterated; several senior developers predicted that the recent savage cuts to staff numbers and game projects will lead to a gaping black hole in the release schedules of many triple-A publishers in late 2026 and 2027. Grand Theft Auto VI was always going to be huge; now it’s looking like the only game in town.

From checkpoint photos to a bullet-ridden car door memorialising the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab, a new show highlights the shared resistance between Irish and Palestinian artists

There are no tanks or tear gas, no shattered apartment blocks or bloodied limbs. Just eyes – heavy and charcoal-drawn – staring in stillness and silence. They don’t accuse. They don’t beg. They simply watch. Peering out of pale, formless faces – a quiet demand to acknowledge their very existence.

This is Gazans’ View of the World, a stark monochrome piece by Palestinian artist Nabil Abughanima, one of more than 50 works now on display at Metamorphika Studio in Hackney, London. Together, they form Dlúthpháirtíocht – the Irish word for “solidarity� – an exhibition that spans continents, memories and borders, binding Palestinian and Irish histories into a single frame.

Molly McGuiness is treating audiences to a buffet, sketch troupe Simple Town bring fast-paced fun and Jessica Barton plays Mary Floppins … Here are half a dozen essential acts at the festival

“There should be a buffet at every comedy gig,� says Manchester-based Molly McGuinness – and luckily for us, she’s making that happen for her Edinburgh debut. Her laugh-packed sets, served with snacks and a warm conversational style, are inspired by the standup of Caroline Aherne. “I like it to feel as if I’m talking to a friend,� she says. Slob began as a turning-30 existential crisis about reaching your potential, but when a rare disease left McGuinness in a coma, everything shifted. She will share the “bizarre and surreal� experience of coma-induced delirium, tender reflections on “the sweetness of the nurses� that cared for her, and a blossoming love story. “A lot of people feel like a slob, but we’re doing the best we can,� she says.
Monkey Barrel, 28 July–24 August

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
New York company Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s take on the US president is an ideas-packed, dance-adjacent comedy inspiring whoops and walkouts

Is this show genius or self-satisfied nonsense? Is it a dadaist farce, scathing political satire or just empty surrealism? One thing’s for sure, it is completely Marmite, met with both whoops and walkouts on this London debut. Nature Theater of Oklahoma are in fact an experimental theatre company from New York, and No President, originally made in 2018 (when a certain president was in his first term), involves the following: a pair of security guards protecting a mysterious curtain and whatever is behind it, a love triangle (actually a pentagon), a rival security company in tutus, an insecure man rising to be a Trump-ish despot, and a lot, lot more.

It’s staged as a “ballet� inasmuch as the score is Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and the performers wear ballet flats and unitards (with cutesy knitted genitals stuck on top) while dancing their way through the show’s two hours, sometimes a bouncy jog, occasionally fouettés. Untrained dancers, like this cast, can bring many qualities to the stage – vulnerability, striving, humanity, joy – but here (at least until the very end) the mode is just lightly comic.

Shakespeare’s Globe, London
Falstaff’s corpulent roisterings are energetically played in Sean Holmes’ summery staging but the homely comedy comes laden with innuendo and xenophobia

In one sense, Shakespeare’s circa-1597 love farce about duped seducers and wooers is a very modern product. It is a rapid sequel to a popular hit, even featuring, in the style of Superman and Harry Potter, the name of the marquee hero in the title: it was initially performed as Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor, granting a franchise to the obese, beery, leering knight previously seen as the mentor to Henry V.

However, in another aspect, The Merry Wives of Windsor, as it now identifies, chafes against contemporary sensitivities. The main sources of comedy are fat-shaming – whether Sir John’s belly, dimensions and contents widely analysed, will fit confined spaces – and the failure of foreigners to speak and act as the Queen’s subjects did, especially the Welsh and French, nations each represented by a gross caricature. Oh, and just how many words can make an English audience see penises or vaginas.

Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? are in the Top 5 while singles compilation Time Flies… 1994–2009 hits No 1 for the first time since its 2010 release

One week after the first show of their long-awaited reunion tour, and ahead of their first home town shows in Manchester this weekend, Oasis are taking over the UK charts.

The band have placed three albums in the UK Top 5. Singles compilation Time Flies… 1994–2009 is No 1 for the first time since it was released in June 2010. Their second album, 1995’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? rises 12 places to No 2, and their 1994 debut album Definitely Maybe jumps 22 spots to No 4.

A thaw in relations during the Cold War led to some surprising collaborations between the two nations, involving everyone from Laurence Olivier and Rudolf Nureyev to Gilbert and George. As relations ice over again, what can we learn from this artistic detente?

One of the biggest TV hits of the 1960s was Double Your Money, a  kind of low-fi precursor to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Its presenter, Hughie Green, was a titan of family entertainment who drew audiences of more than 8 million to the ITV gameshow, in which contestants chose whether to double their prize pot between questions.

It was, of course, all about the cash, even if TV-rich in those days involved maximum winnings of £1,000 (about £18,000 in today’s money). The show’s baked-in avarice made the entry in the TV Times for 7pm on 8 November 1966 surprising: “Double Your Money visits Moscow with People to People … the first ever western quiz game in the Soviet Union.�

Innovative artistic director at theatres including the Liverpool Everyman, the Sheffield Crucible and the Lyric, Hammersmith

Peter James, who has died aged 84, was once described as the best artistic director the National Theatre never had.

His career covered such innovative and long-lasting projects as the Liverpool Everyman (1964-70), the Young Vic (1971-73) and two consolidating, long stints as the second artistic director at both the controversial open-stage Sheffield Crucible (1974-81) and the recreated, refurbished Lyric, Hammersmith (1981-94).

James Gunn’s latest Man of Steel has copped flak from some predictable quarters, but the truth is, superheroes have been subverting the powerful, sticking up for the underdogs, and punching moral cowardice since the 1930s

Dean Cain, you may have read, is very upset with the new Superman. The erstwhile Man of Steel, who played the last son of Krypton on TV in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman from 1993 to 1997, thinks James Gunn has gone too far with his description of Kal-El as an “immigrant that came from other places and populated the country� in the new DC film.

Speaking to TMZ, Cain pondered: “How woke is Hollywood going to make this character? How much is Disney going to change their Snow White? Why are they going to change these characters [to] exist for the times?�

Fashion firms make the most of marketing dream as actors, musicians and footballers turn out at Wimbledon

On Saturday, all eyes will be on United States’ Amanda Anisimova as she takes on Poland’s Iga S�wiątek in the Wimbledon women’s finals.

But this week there has been another rally taking place off grass.

Davies is the fifth most common surname in the UK, with a huge concentration in Wales, so it’s a wonder it found me

I n August last year I received a message on Ancestry.com. A lady called Rhian, who shared my surname, had sent me a link to a recent BBC news story, which I read with mounting interest.

The head office of the Swansea Building Society, the story said, had recently received a postcard postmarked 1903 and originally sent to a girl called Lydia Davies, who had lived at the address. Having mysteriously received the postcard 121 years after it was posted, staff were hoping to trace one of her descendants.

Forget soggy sandwiches! From pocket-sized burners to multi-hob wonders, these camping stoves came top in our tests

• The best camping mattresses and sleeping mats for every type of adventure

A reliable camping stove makes all the difference to food alfresco, allowing you to cook a stew in the evening and then warm up in the morning with a hot cup of coffee. The great thing about these stoves is that they’re essentially portable hobs, meaning anything you can cook on the stove at home can be whipped up in the great outdoors by sticking a pot or frying pan on top.

There’s a dizzying variety on offer, ranging from dinky ultralight burners that fit into your pocket to big stove-tops with multiple hobs, grills, wind protectors and a lid – the latter are like bringing along your cooker from home. Most run on gas, such as propane and butane, although I’ve also included charcoal options for traditional types. I’ve tested some of the best portable stoves, for everyone from ultralight wild campers to families who need to cook dinners for the masses.

Best camping stove overall:
Dometic Cadac 2 Cook 2 Pro
_{£99.99 at Robert Dyas}

Best grill:
Primus Kuchoma portable grill
_{£154.95 at WildBounds}

Best for family camping:
Campingaz Camping Kitchen 2 Multi-Cook Plus
_{£160 at Go Outdoors}

Best for wild campers:
Petromax Atago stove
_{£179.95 at Mountain Warehouse}

Best for backpacking/best mini stove
MSR Switch system stove
_{£114.75 at WildBounds}

Struggling to sleep and work in the balmy months? Chill your space – and avoid energy-guzzling air con – with our pick of the best fans, from tower to desk to bladeless

• Warm weather essentials: 42 ways to make the most of the sunshine

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

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

Best fan overall:
AirCraft Lume
_{£149 at AirCraft}

Best tower fan:
Dreo Cruiser TF518
_{£99.99 at Amazon}

Best travel fan:
Morphy Richards Air Flex USB fan
_{£39.99 at Amazon}

Best evaporative cooler:
Swan Nordic air cooler
_{£69.99 at Amazon}

They’re better for the planet than single-use tampons and pads – but which period pants are actually worth the money? We tested more than 30 reusable pairs to find out

• Get milk delivered and always buy refills: 20 simple ways to cut down on plastic (and save money)

Few relish the monthly bleeding, cramps and scramble to stock up on tampons that come with the menstrual cycle. Periods are usually greeted by a weary sigh and a search in the knicker drawer for the big black pants. However, a new wave of period underwear is revolutionising the monthly cycle for many.

Period pants act as reusable period protection that absorb blood and can then be put in the washing machine. The general guidance is to change your period pants every four to six hours, but this can vary according to the brand, absorbency rating and the heaviness of your cycle.

Best period pants overall:
Wuka stretch midi brief
_{From £15.99 a pair at Wuka}

Best budget period pants:
Marks & Spencer period full briefs
_{£16 for three pairs at M&S}

Best period pants for zero VPL:
Modibodi seamfree full brief
_{From £20.99 a pair at Modibodi}

Best period pants for overnight:
Cheeky Wipes Feeling Cosy bamboo period shorts
_{£16.99 a pair at Cheeky Wipes}

From wedding-worthy to workwear, crisp linen to classic black, our expert’s pick of the best suits proves sharp tailoring doesn’t have to cost a fortune

• 50 men’s summer wardrobe updates under £100

Every man needs a suit. From weddings to funerals, job interviews to formal events – like it or not, sometimes it’s the only appropriate thing to wear.

There’s one snag, though: a suit is a big-ticket item. It’s not uncommon to spend a few hundred pounds on your chosen two-piece, and if you’re after Savile Row-standard tailoring, that number can tip into thousands. But if you know where to look, a good-quality suit doesn’t need to cost a fortune. Choose something timeless and you’ll have it for years.

A decadent taste of dark chocolate, light sponge, and summery juicy jelly to cut through the sweetness – all in one mouthful

I don’t buy jaffa cakes nearly as often as other biscuits, but when I do, I’m reminded how much I love them. They’re surprisingly easy to make from scratch, too. The base is an incredibly light genoise sponge that’s topped with a layer of jelly, and it’s this section that allows for some creativity. I chose to go down a summery route with passion fruit. Juicing enough passion fruit to get 200ml of liquid is tedious (and expensive), so by all means use a carton of juice instead.

A lighter, summer-splashed take on the negroni, without the Campari, but with rosé vermouth and a French bitters

This is a Frenchified take on the classic, as well as a rose-tinted riff on the white negroni. The lack of Campari means it’s much lighter than the dark red of the traditional negroni, while the rosé vermouth means it’s also more delicate, making this ideal for summer drinking. The much underused Suze is a French gentian aperitif bitter that complements the aromatics of rosé vermouth very nicely. If you’ve committed to buying a bottle and are wondering what else to do with it, try pouring some over ice and adding a good splash of soda.

Manfredi Pantina, head bartender, Baudry Greene, London WC2

A spicy, herby noodle and prawn salad with a salty-sour dressing, shell-on prawns fried with spring onions, chilli and soy, and a homemade tomato sambal that keeps forever in the fridge

The 14 states of Malaysia are located on a peninsula to the south of Thailand and on the island of Borneo, so it is no surprise that we absolutely adore seafood. Prawns are my seafood of choice at home, and I lean into store-cupboard staples to bring together easy, quick meals for my small family. Today’s glorious noodle salad is perfect for summer, not least because it’s a simple assembly job, while the second recipe, if you make a little effort to devein some shell-on prawns, rewards you with the most magnificent plate of them that you’ll ever eat.

Aperitivo hour just got an update. From floral to fruity to alcohol-free, these expert-picked spritzes are made for summer

• I tried 40 tinned drinks: here are my favourite canned cocktails, wines and seltzers for sunny days

Sundowners, aperitivo, golden hour: whatever your preferred term, using early summer evenings to relax and socialise presents a welcome chance to unwind – even if you’ve only been working on your tan. And aperitivo hour would be nothing without a perfectly chilled spritz in hand.

Aperol spritz – the much-Instagrammed vibrant concoction of bitter Aperol with prosecco and soda over ice with a slice – has had us Britons in a chokehold for several summers now. But there’s more to spritzing than our distinctive orange-hued friend, says Alessandro Botta, founder of Aperitivo Club: “At Aperitivo Club we don’t see the spritz as a trend, but as a timeless tradition that encourages people to slow down, savour the moment and enjoy it together.�

Some call it a friendship recession: a time when close male friendships sink to their lowest. Here’s how friendships for straight men fall to the wayside – and what could bring them together

As a therapist, Jeremy Mohler spends his days guiding middle-aged men through feelings of loneliness. He encourages them to seek connections, yet the 39-year-old is the first to admit it: when you’re a guy, making real friends in midlife is difficult. “It feels like an uphill battle,� says Mohler, who lives in Baltimore.

Some call it a friendship recession: a time in midlife when close male friendships sink to their lowest. According to data from the Survey Center on American Life, 15% of US men said they do not have close friends in 2021, compared with 3% in 1990. Those reporting 10 or more close friends decreased from 33% to 13% during the same period.