This tonally uncertain revival mixes folk horror and little-England satire as an island lad seeks help for his sick mum on the undead-infested mainland

Here they are again, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s zombies – though unlike the usual stumbling slow-movers, of course, these things can sprint like Tom Cruise on steroids. Back in 2002, screenwriter Garland and director Boyle had a monster hit with their post-apocalyptic horror thriller 28 Days Later, about a “rage� virus that leaks from a lab and, turning people into aggressive zombies, causes a complete law-and-order breakdown in 28 days; Boyle famously made smart use of then-new lightweight digital tech which let him bring off miracles of unlicensed guerrilla shooting at dawn in the deserted London streets.

That was fierce, muscular film-making, though I have never been a fan of zombies whose massed presence (then as now) requires silly, gurning, ketchup-strewn extras who can’t be clearly looked at for any length of time without laughing. (For my money it was only Edgar Wright’s zombie horror comedy Shaun of the Dead, which came out two years afterwards, which fully explored the real, intimate horror of zombie-ism: the gap between being bitten and transforming.) In 2007, a lacklustre sequel, 28 Weeks Later, brought the franchise stumbling to a halt.

Anger is rarely thought of as positive – but the emotion itself exists to protect us, says author of Good Anger, Sam Parker

My friends and I sometimes rank the seven deadly sins in order of personal relevance. For me, “wrath� always comes last. (I shan’t say what’s first – too revealing.)

Anger doesn’t feature in my day-to-day life. I even struggle to feel wrathful when it’s appropriate. World events make me fatalistic and depressed; when my gym instructor says to “let loose� on the ski machine, my effort remains constant. The time I visited a rage room, my main takeaway was that the Metallica song I selected as the soundtrack sounded fantastic on big speakers.

Ange chalks up a win of sorts as Kemi’s last-minute substitute races downhill through his pet subjects

Thoughts and prayers with Alex Burghart. Not so long ago, the shadow chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster was allowed out by Kemi Badenoch to stand in for her at prime minister’s questions when Keir Starmer was otherwise engaged. Though this may be a memory Alex wishes to forget. It wasn’t his finest hour. Angela Rayner ran rings around him without even breaking sweat.

So, on Wednesday, Alex found himself sidelined. Not wanted on voyage. From time to time, he would check his phone for messages. Just in case he had missed something. Willing his phone to ping with a late call-up. Nothing. He just had to suck it up. Take his place on the opposition frontbench and cheer on some other poor sucker. Maybe it was for the best. Some men are born failures. Some achieve failure. Some have failure thrust upon them. Alex is unique. A combination of all three.

In the new Evita at the London Palladium, Rachel Zegler sings from the theatre’s actual balcony – meaning the big-paying audience doesn’t experience what passersby get for free. Could this gimmick catch on?

In the theatrical tactic “breaking the fourth wall�, characters acknowledge the presence of the audience. As when, in the current National Theatre production of Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, Here We Are, the performers, walking forward, stop in shock at seeing a big room full of strangers.

The director Jamie Lloyd, though, is pioneering a technique that might be called breaking the theatre wall. In his revival of Evita, previewing at the London Palladium, Rachel Zegler’s Eva Perón sings Don’t Cry For Me Argentina – supposedly delivered from the Casa Rosada presidential balcony in Buenos Aires – from the balcony outside the Palladium, while the audience inside has to settle for a video feed.

Chatbot tries to change subject after serving up unrelated user’s mobile to man asking for rail firm helpline

The Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, called it “the most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use�. But Barry Smethurst, 41, a record shop worker trying to travel by rail from Saddleworth to Manchester Piccadilly, did not agree.

Waiting on the platform for a morning train that was nowhere to be seen, he asked Meta’s WhatsApp AI assistant for a contact number for TransPennine Express. The chatbot confidently sent him a mobile phone number for customer services, but it turned out to be the private number of a completely unconnected WhatsApp user 170 miles away in Oxfordshire.

From Birkenstocks to ballet pumps, jelly shoes to slingbacks, here’s our expert’s pick of the most stylish summer footwear for men, women and kids

• Scared of shorts? Here are 53 perfect pairs for every occasion

It’s official. Boot season is finally over; it’s time to let your tootsies breathe for a bit. But if just the thought of getting your feet out brings you out in hives, fear not – summer footwear extends far beyond just a pair of full-feet exposing flip-flops.

From funky trainers, mules, plimsoles and chunky flatforms, to ballet pumps in bold colours, and this season’s trending fisher’s sandals, your options for summer feet coverage for the whole family are varied and wide. So whether you’re running errands, off to work, picnicking in the park or summer lounging with your nearest and dearest, we have the shoes that fit.

US president says that he will attend a meeting in an hour on the evacuation of US citizens from Israel, Reuters reports

• Trump undecided on joining war on Iran as Khamenei warns him not to attack

Iran said on Wednesday it had detained five suspected agents of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency on charges of “tarnishing� the country’s image online, Iranian news agencies reported.

“These mercenaries sought to sow fear among the public and tarnish the image of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran through their calculated activities online,� Tasnim and SNA news agencies quoted a statement from the Revolutionary Guards as saying.

America-first backers such as Steve Bannon urge restraint, while Republican hawks push for intervention

• US politics live – latest updates

The prospect of the US joining Israel’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear program risks splitting Donald Trump’s support base asunder, amid sharp divisions on military intervention between the president’s most avid America-first acolytes and traditional Republican foreign policy hawks.

Some leading figures in Trump’s “make America great again� (Maga) movement have warned that such a move would amount to a betrayal of past promises to avoid US involvement in long-running overseas wars and could even destroy his presidency.

Hackers known as Predatory Sparrow claim responsibility for rendering Nobitex exchange funds inaccessible

An Israel-linked hacking group has claimed responsibility for a $90m (£67m) heist on an Iranian cryptocurrency exchange.

The group known as Gonjeshke Darande, Farsi for Predatory Sparrow, said on Wednesday it had hacked the Nobitex exchange, a day after claiming it had destroyed data at Iran’s state-owned Bank Sepah.

Donald Trump initially appeared to discourage attacks but Israeli officials claim they always had his support

Along the Ayalon highway, in the centre of Tel Aviv, two huge illuminated signs have appeared, portraying Donald Trump against a billowing stars-and-stripes backdrop and bearing the blunt appeal: “Mr President, finish the job!�

Israel’s attack on Iran may have been carried out with Trump’s approval, as government officials in Israel claim, but it appears to have been unleashed only in the expectation – rather than any certainty – that the US will ultimately be drawn into the war.

‘We want freedom on our own terms,’ says one Tehran resident, while another writes, ‘Someone is helping us’

Despite a substantial internet blackout, news spread quickly in Iran on Tuesday night: the US was considering joining Israel in its war on Iran.

The US president, Donald Trump, wrote on Truth Social: “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now … Our patience is wearing thin.� Three minutes later, in a second post, he added: “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!�

When Mehnaz*, a 24-year-old student activist in east Tehran, heard the news, she did not think of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Instead, she thought of her fellow students who were detained, shot and executed by Iranian security forces during the “woman, life, liberty� protests in 2022.

Office for Students guidance urges ‘very strong’ approach to permitting lawful speech on campus

Universities in England will no longer be able to enforce blanket bans on student protests under sweeping new guidance that urges a “very strong� approach to permitting lawful speech on campus.

The detailed regulations set out for the first time how universities should deal with inflammatory disputes, such as those between the University of Cambridge and students over the war in Gaza, and rows over academics who hold controversial but legal opinions, such as the gender-critical professor Kathleen Stock.

The guidance issued by the Office for Students (OfS) will make it harder for universities to penalise students and staff for anything other than unlawful speech or harassment.

Academics should not be pressed to support particular views.

Protests should not be restricted for supporting legal viewpoints.

Students or staff should not be “encouraged to report others� for lawful speech.

Universities must “secure freedom of speech� for visiting speakers.

Breaching threshold would ramp up catastrophic weather events, further increasing human suffering

The planet’s remaining carbon budget to meet the international target of 1.5C has just two years left at the current rate of emissions, scientists have warned, showing how deep into the climate crisis the world has fallen.

Breaching the target would ramp up the extreme weather already devastating communities around the world. It would also require carbon dioxide to be sucked from the atmosphere in future to restore the stable climate in which the whole of civilisation developed over the past 10,000 years.

Campaign group accuses Holyrood of ‘intolerable’ delays to new policies required after landmark case

The Scottish government has been given a deadline to implement the UK supreme court’s ruling on biological sex across all public bodies or face further legal challenges.

Sex Matters, the UK-wide gender-critical campaign group, has threatened legal action in 14 days if ministers continue “intolerable� delays to new policies and guidance required by April’s landmark ruling that the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 does not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates.

Heidi Alexander says billions wasted in ‘litany of failure’ but vows ‘new era of leadership’ will turn project around

• Timeline: 16 years of high hopes and bruising reality

• Business live – latest updates

The high-speed rail network HS2 cannot be completed on its current schedule and budget and will be delayed beyond 2033, the government has said, blaming mismanagement by the previous Conservative administrations for the overruns.

The transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, told parliament there was “no reasonable way to deliver� on the 2033 target for the first trains to run between London and Birmingham, after receiving a bleak assessment from the new HS2 Ltd chief executive, Mark Wild.

Volatile weather patterns may be altering taste of juniper berries – a key botanical in the spirit – scientists say

The flavour of a gin and tonic may be impacted by climate change, scientists have found.

Volatile weather patterns, made more likely by climate breakdown, could change the taste of juniper berries, which are the key botanical that give gin its distinctive taste.

Hours before the decision, the president called the Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, ‘stupid’ for anticipated rate hold

The US Federal Reserve kept interest rates on hold, but signaled it might make two cuts this year, as Donald Trump continues to break with precedent and demand lower rates.

Policymakers at the American central bank lifted their projections for inflation this year, as the US president stands by his controversial tariff plans, and downgraded their estimates for economic growth.

Work and pensions secretary publishes her welfare reform bill, but concessions do little to placate angry Labour MPs

Britain’s benefits system faces collapse without cuts to disability payments, Liz Kendall has said, as the government published plans that put it on a collision course with dozens of angry Labour MPs.

Kendall published her welfare reform bill on Wednesday, confirming it would lead to benefit cuts for 950,000 people by 2030. She said the country’s £326bn social security net might cease to exist if costs continued to escalate.

ASA report finds many use negative stereotypes and highlights concerns about targeting of end-of-life services

An elderly man fires off a tirade at a child who has asked “grandad� to return a mud-covered football that has landed on his gleaming car. He is then seen eating a microwave dinner for one and chuckling, with the now-deflated ball pinned to the table next to him by a large kitchen knife.

The TV advert for the Scotland-based Strathmore Foods, maker of the McIntosh of Strathmore ready meals stocked by most big supermarket chains, has been identified in a report by the UK advertising watchdog as showing an “offensive� portrayal of older people – by stereotyping them as grumpy and intolerant, and implying many are lonely and isolated.

In letter to culture secretary, carnival’s chair says more money ‘essential’ to event’s future, but does not give a figure

The future of the Notting Hill carnival could be in jeopardy without “urgent funding� from the government, according to a leaked letter from its organisers.

The carnival’s chair, Ian Comfort, has written to the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, to request public money, the BBC reported on Wednesday.

Ellen Roome suspects her 14-year-old was taking part in a ‘blackout challenge’ when he died. But she can’t access his online accounts – so she has given up everything to take on the social media giants

The last day of Jools Sweeney’s life, 13 April 2022, was sunny and fun-filled. It was the Easter holidays and Jools, who was 14, had spent the day with a bunch of friends in Cheltenham, where he lived. They played football. They walked through fields to a lake and tried to reach the middle in a small wooden boat. Back home, he and a friend had pizza for dinner, then got the fire pit going and toasted marshmallows. At 8.46pm, his friend left, leaving Jools, an only child, on his own. Their laughter as they said goodbye was recorded on the Ring doorbell.

Jools’s mum, Ellen Roome, had been out all day but she had been in constant contact with her son. At 9.56pm she rang him to say she would be back soon – she rang three times but there was no answer. When she arrived home, less than 20 minutes later, with her then-partner, she went straight to Jools’s room, just to say hello, and for a moment, made no sense of what she saw. “I said: ‘What are you doing?’� says Roome. “I remember thinking he was messing around. Then I screamed and screamed.� Roome’s partner, a pilot trained in first aid, rushed upstairs and delivered CPR. The house filled with firefighters, paramedics, police officers, Jools’s dad who lived close by, and Roome’s dad, too. Jools was defibrillated. Eventually, a detective took the family aside and said they needed to stop treatment. “We were told that even if they brought him back, he’d be brain dead,� says Roome.

In the second episode of Along the Green Line, reporter Matthew Cassel heads north to the occupied West Bank, visiting Tulkarm, a Palestinian city under siege by Israeli forces. Tens of thousands of residents have been forced from their homes, but just over the border in Israel, residents here are experiencing a very different reality.

In this three-part series we're traveling along the 1949 Armistice line or ‘Green Line,’ - once seen as the best hope for a resolution - and meeting Palestinians and Israelis living just kilometres apart.

Labour MPs fighting Reform want action and a European renegotiation looks unappealing. How would the PM sell a third way?

• Mahmood says UK will seek reform of human rights convention

Can a lefty human rights lawyer be the one to take on Britain’s uneasy relationship with the European convention on human rights (ECHR)?

It is the most unlikely of causes for Keir Starmer. But there is a growing feeling in government that he should seize the initiative.

While some in Moscow have tried to put positive spin on Israel’s assault, Kremlin risks losing key strategic partner

When a group of Russian and Iranian foreign policy officials arranged to meet in Moscow for a conference titled “Russian-Iranian cooperation in a changing world�, they probably did not anticipate just how timely that phrase would turn out to be.

Seated around a table on Wednesday at the President hotel near the Kremlin, officials from both sides were forced to confront a stark new reality: Iran’s regime – a key ally of Moscow – is facing its most serious threat in decades.

The handmade posters of immigrants have become a symbol of quiet resistance. Their creators reveal the story behind the project

“Missing son.� “Missing father.� “Missing grandmother.�

The words are written in bright red letters at the top of posters hanging on lampposts and storefronts around Los Angeles. At first glance, they appear to be from worried relatives seeking help from neighbors.

Overwhelmed by stress and social media, young people are finding new language to describe the inevitable irritation and anger that ensue ...

Name: Crashing out.

Age: Psychologically ancient, lexically new.

How can anyone call Rubens’ sumptuous masterpiece Samson and Delilah a ‘fake’ and ‘a shoddy artefact’? The Flemish master is simply doing a superb job of copying his own favourite outlaw artist

Samson, a huge muscular hunk of a man, slumbers in the lap of his seducer Delilah, in a bedchamber sumptuously lit by candle. As Delilah looks down on the unconscious form of the great biblical hero, her accomplice is cutting the very tangled locks that hold his superhuman strength. Meanwhile, at the door, soldiers are waiting by torchlight. At the heart of it all is Samson’s rippled naked back, nestled on the woman’s pink silk skirts.

Is this a painting by the Flemish baroque master Peter Paul Rubens? Hell, yes. The wonder is that anyone would ever think otherwise. And yet some do. Michael Daley and his campaigning group ArtWatch UK, and the art historian Euphrosyne Doxiadis (among others), are getting traction with their claims that the National Gallery owns a “fake� or “modern copy� and is covering up that reality.

To soundtrack those long, lazy afternoons try Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s torrid love affair, a real-life pirate of the Caribbean or Peter Dinklage as Hercule Poirot
• UK audiobook revenue up by almost a third last year

A gloriously gossipy portrait of Hollywood power couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Roger Lewis’s twin biography is read with just the right amount of archness by actor Justin Avoth. The “erotic vagrancy� of the title refers to a statement issued by the pope during the pair’s brazen antics in Rome while filming Cleopatra when they frolicked on a yacht in full view of the paparazzi. Both were married, but not to each other.
• Available via Riverrun, 22hr 58min

Israel is the main source of terror and instability in the Middle East. But the west continually turns away from this reality

As the G7 issues a statement declaring that Israel has a “right to defend itself�, you have a right to ask if you are losing your mind. Israel launched an unprovoked onslaught on Iran. Its excuse – that Tehran may acquire a nuclear weapon – renders its attack illegal under the UN charter, which forbids wars justified by the claim of a future threat.

“Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror,� declares the G7 statement. Even though Donald Trump’s intelligence chief testified three months ago that the US intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon�. Even though it’s Israel that actually possesses nuclear weapons, while refusing to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and refusing International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. Even though, as progress was being made in nuclear talks between Iran and the US, Israel targeted Iran’s chief negotiator and proceeded to exterminate scientists, including their families, alongside countless other civilians, including children, an athlete, a teacher, a pilates instructor. Even though Israel’s leader is subject to an arrest warrant, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. And even though Israel has erased Gaza in a genocidal frenzy, and subjected the illegally occupied and colonised West Bank to an escalating pogrom, attacked southern Lebanon and Beirut, and invaded and occupied Syria. No country in the Middle East is as great a source of regional instability and terror as Israel: it’s not even close.

Owen Jones 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.

Visitors could be more sensitive, while the authorities should seek sustainable solutions for residents and tourists. But just staying at home is no answer

After coordinated protests across Europe last weekend, it’s easy for the ethically conscious tourist to feel uncertain. Across southern Europe – and particularly in Spain, Italy and Portugal – there are headlines blaming visitors for everything from overcrowding to housing shortages. In gentrifying neighbourhoods, slogans such as “Tourists go home� have appeared on walls and windows, with some angry residents grabbing headlines by squirting water pistols at tourists.

Does that mean a golden age of tourism is over? No. Does the complicated relationship between those who want to visit the world’s most interesting places and those who live in them need a reset? Probably.

The actor seems to have inspired a generation of young chaps to grow wispy caterpillars on their upper lips. When it comes to facial hair, I’ve learned it’s best to go big or go home

What is it with all these wispy moustaches suddenly decorating young men’s faces? These things, which have crawled their way on to so many upper lips, aren’t fully formed moustaches. There’s no depth to them. They’re straggly, patchy, with skin showing through them. They look as though their owners aren’t fully committed to them. Or, worse, that they are trying their best, but this apology of a moustache is all they can manage. It’s the kind of moustache you grow when puberty first makes it possible to do so, the debut facial hair with which you aim to convince publicans that you’re old enough to be served alcohol.

The only thing I can say in their favour is that they are at least equal opportunity moustaches, in that even those who can’t muster much in the way of facial hair can have a fair crack at producing one of these. But otherwise, my firm view on moustaches, for the infinitesimally little it’s worth, is to go big or go home. I’m working on a documentary about Sir Edward Elgar. Now that’s what I call a moustache. Full, bushy, yet neat. A veritable symphony of bristle. It may be that spending so much time with Sir Edward lately is what led me to suddenly start seeing these miserable creepy-crawlies sullying faces everywhere.

The oil shocks of the 1970s-90s had brutal economic impacts. As Israel attacks Iran, a moderate rise in oil prices rests on questionable assumptions

Financial markets picked up the clear message when Donald Trump cut short his stay at the G7 summit in the Canadian Rockies this week. Despite calls from fellow western leaders to de-escalate the crisis, the president’s early return to the White House was taken as a sign that the US is considering joining Israel in its military action against Iran. Trump says he wants Iran’s unconditional surrender.

This is where modern summitry came in half a century ago. In 1975, the first meeting of what eventually became the G7 was convened at Rambouillet in France in an attempt to work out a joint response to the oil shock that accompanied the Yom Kippur war between Israel and its neighbours.

Larry Elliott 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.

There have been many chances to avert this ‘appalling mess’, but, fuelled by political puff and short-termism, the project has become a farce

When was it obvious that HS2 was an economic turkey at risk of becoming “an appalling mess�, as the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, described today’s position?

A fair case can be made for 2013, a year of two neon-lit warnings of trouble ahead. One was a scathing report on HS2 from the National Audit Office (NAO), the first of many, when the project was still at the planning stage. The NAO concluded it was impossible to say whether the programme was likely to deliver value for money; the cost and benefit estimates were “uncertain�; there had been “past errors in the underlying model�; the Department for Transport had “poorly articulated� the strategic need for a transformation in rail capacity and how HS2 was supposed to rebalance economic growth. In short, there was “a weak foundation for securing and demonstrating success in the future�.

We won a high court case against Shropshire council’s plans for a new polluting poultry unit. Now a precedent has been set

• Charles Watson is chair and founder of River Action

The recent ecological collapse of the River Wye due to pollution from intensive agriculture has been well documented. But the slow-motion repetition of this ecocide on the neighbouring River Severn has largely unfolded out of sight.

For years, local authorities have been waving through industrial-scale livestock production units across the catchment of this iconic river. These toxic megafarms produce vast quantities of animal waste, which is spread on local land with minimal consideration for the cumulative environmental destruction it can cause.

Charles Watson is chair and founder of River Action

The anti-Mamdani mobilization is depressingly predictable, with a party that is allergic to fresh blood and new thinking

Who’s afraid of Zohran Mamdani? The answer, it would seem, is the entire establishment. The 33-year-old democratic socialist and New York City mayoral candidate has surged in the polls in recent weeks, netting endorsements not just from progressive voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders but also his fellow candidates for the mayoralty, with Brad Lander and Michael Blake taking advantage of the ranked-choice voting system in the primary and cross-endorsing Mamdani’s campaign.

With the primary just around the corner, polls have Mamdani closing the gap on Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York. This has spooked the establishment, which is now doing everything it can to stop Mamdani’s rise.

The age of disarmament is over. But military action only increases the dangers instead of ending the threat

Eighty years after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and 40 years after the US and Soviet Union pledged to reduce their arsenals, the threat of nuclear war has resurged with a vengeance. The age of disarmament is over, a prominent thinktank warned this week: “We see a clear trend of growing nuclear arsenals, sharpened nuclear rhetoric and the abandonment of arms control agreements,� said Hans M Kristensen of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The world’s nine nuclear-armed states have amassed the equivalent of 145,000 Hiroshima bombs. Israel’s illegal attack upon Iran is purportedly a last-ditch attempt to prevent it joining this club – as Israel did long ago, though does not admit it. While Tehran possesses the capacity to develop a nuclear weapon if it chose to, US intelligence believes it has not made that decision – and would still need up to three years to build and deploy one. Israel does not appear to be striking Iran because US nuclear diplomacy has failed, but because it fears it might succeed. Many of its targets are unrelated to the nuclear programme, and some even to Iran’s military. Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly invoked regime change: more honestly, regime collapse.

The botched London-Birmingham line is a symbol of malaise in British politics. Getting it done would signal renewal

One day there will be a high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham. Maybe. Not soon. When HS2 was first proposed, an opening date for the first phase was planned for December 2026. After multiple delays and cost overruns, a revised target of 2033 was set.

That is no longer realistic, according to Heidi Alexander. The transport secretary told MPs on Wednesday that two more years are likely to be required, blaming the last Conservative government for mismanaging the whole project and wasting billions of pounds in the process.

• Gp H: Real Madrid 1-1 Al-Hilal (G García 34; Neves 41pen)

• Federico Valverde’s 92nd-minute penalty saved

Xabi Alonso said in the buildup he was going to “ignite� his players at this Club World Cup, that Real Madrid were ready to rock’n’roll. In the event this was something more downbeat in Miami, 90 minutes of pub-rock, at times even a meandering shoe-gaze as a well-drilled Al-Hilal kept the new-era Madrid at arm’s length.

Madrid had a chance to win it at the death, but Federico Valverde missed a dubiously awarded 92nd-minute penalty. A 1-1 draw felt fair at the end of a Group H opener that flickered but never caught fire.

• Chelsea winger was provisionally suspended last year

• ‘Presence and/or use of a prohibited substance’ alleged

Chelsea’s Mykhailo Mudryk could face a lengthy ban after being charged by the Football Association with doping offences. Under FA regulations the winger could be banned for as long as four years after providing a positive A sample last year. It is believed the banned performance-enhancing substance meldonium was found in Mudryk’s system.

The Ukraine international has not played since last November and was provisionally suspended while he and Chelsea waited for the results of a B sample.

• Manchester City 2-0 Wydad AC (Foden 2, Doku 42)

• Lewis sent off after late VAR decision upheld

Pep Guardiola was pleased with the first three points and bemused at Rico Lewis’s 88th-minute straight red card for which the player will receive a one-match ban – at least.

Lewis protested yet the VAR upheld Ramon Abatti’s odd decision: City’s 20-year-old right-back swept the ball away and then – unluckily – booted Samuel Obeng’s face. Guardiola said: “

• England 1-2 Germany (Scott 76; Knauff 3 Weiper 33)

• Lee Carsley’s side face quarter-final against Spain

When Lee Carsley expressed his hope that England’s Under-21 players could give Thomas Tuchel “something to ponder� with their performances while defending their European title in Slovakia, their first-half showing against Germany’s second-string side probably wasn’t what he had in mind.

Needing a point to guarantee their place in the quarter-finals and trailing 2-0 at the break after goals from Ansgar Knauff and Nelson Weiper, Slovenia’s defeat to the Czech Republic in the night’s other match ensured they made it through anyway.

• Two Smiths and Alex Mitchell in XV for Dublin match

• Tadhg Furlong also has chance to prove his fitness

Maro Itoje will captain the British & Irish Lions for the first time against Argentina in Dublin on Friday after the head coach, Andy Farrell, included him and eight other Englishmen in the starting XV for the warm-up match for the upcoming tour of Australia.

England’s other starters include Marcus Smith at full‑back along with Alex Mitchell and Fin Smith at half‑backs. Ireland’s Tadhg ­Furlong will be given the chance to prove his fitness after struggling with a calf injury that ruled him out of Leinster’s United Rugby ^­Championship final win against the Bulls last weekend. Furlong is included on a bench that also features the hooker Ronan ­Kelleher, the only player to be involved against Argentina six days after taking part in the end-of-season finale.

• Team are in Washington DC for Club World Cup

• President asks if women could make Juve team

Juventus players and staff were involved in an awkward encounter at the White House on Wednesday when Donald Trump attempted to get them to enter into a debate on transgender women in sport.

The Italian football giants are in the US for the Club World Cup, and are due to play Al Ain of the UAE at Washington DC’s Audi Field on Wednesday night.

• British No 1 recovers to win 3-6, 6-2, 7-6 (5)

• Draper battles through but admits ‘I wasn’t my best’

In the final throes of a tense, uneasy tussle with one of the bigger servers in his sport, Jack Draper was fading. The British No 1, and second seed, had started poorly: he had struggled to find his range on his groundstrokes for much of the occasion and then two match points passed him by. Deep in the third-set tie break, he trailed 2-4.

Over the past year, though, a period during which he has established himself as one of the best players in the world, Draper has continually shown his ability to find a path to victory no matter what. In the first week of his grass-court homecoming, the 23-year-old offered a forceful demonstration of his supreme competitive spirit as he recovered to defeat Australia’s Alexei Popyrin, the world No 21, 3-6, 6-2, 7-6 (5) to reach the quarter-finals at Queen’s Club.

• William Buick on board in Prince of Wales’s Stakes win

• Royal family have second favourite beaten at meeting

The only British stable to wrest Royal Ascot’s top trainer award away from Aidan O’Brien over the course of the past decade continued its strong run through this year’s meeting here ­on Wednesday, as John and Thady ­Gosden’s Ombudsman, in the Group One Prince of Wales’s Stakes, ­followed up the success of Crimson Advocate, in the Duke Of Cambridge Stakes, for a 59‑1 double on the day.

The feature race, though, was not an easy watch for Ombudsman’s joint trainers or his backers at 7-1, at least until William Buick, his rider, finally managed to extract him and find ­running room with around a furlong to go, after being caught in a series of pockets. Buick was forced to switch twice in the straight, but when he did eventually take aim at the lead, Ombudsman’s response was ­immediate and overpowering.

• BBF has not endorsed Manchester for Champions League

• Lions, Eagles and Flyers also blocked from competing

The civil war engulfing British Basketball has intensified with the British Basketball Federation attempting to block four of the country’s leading clubs from competing in Europe next season.

The Guardian has learned that the BBF is refusing to endorse applications for European places made by Manchester Basketball, London Lions, Newcastle Eagles and Bristol Flyers, which has put their participation at risk.

Defense secretary had contentious hearing in which he sparred with Democratic senators over various issues

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, suggested on Wednesday that he would not obey a federal court ruling against the deployments of national guard troops and US marines to Los Angeles, the latest example of the Trump administration’s willingness to ignore judges it disagrees with.

The comments before the Senate armed services committee come as Donald Trump faces dozen of lawsuits over his policies, which his administration has responded to by avoiding compliance with orders it dislikes. In response, Democrats have claimed that Trump is sending the country into a constitutional crisis.

Investigators reportedly examining whether ‘last resort’ ram air turbine functioned after takeoff

The sole survivor of the Air India crash has helped carry his brother’s flower-heaped coffin to a crematorium in the western Indian coastal town of Diu, days after they plummeted into the ground shortly after takeoff.

With bandages still on his face and arm, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, who was discharged from hospital on Tuesday, broke into sobs and was consoled by relatives.

Head of monitoring boards urges justice secretary to suspend rollout of Pava in England and Wales

The rollout of synthetic pepper spray for use to incapacitate jailed children is “wholly irresponsible� while black and minority prisoners are more likely to be subjected to force than white inmates, a watchdog has said.

Elisabeth Davies, the national chair of the Independent Monitoring Boards, whose members operate in every prison in England and Wales, said the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, should pause the use of Pava spray in youth offending institutions (YOIs) until ministers had addressed the disproportionate use of force on minority prisoners.

Yvonne Ford, from Barnsley, had contact with stray animal while on holiday, UK Health Security Agency says

A woman from Yorkshire has died from rabies after contact with a stray dog while on holiday in Morocco, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has said.

Yvonne Ford, from Barnsley in South Yorkshire, was diagnosed in Yorkshire and Humber after returning from the north African country in February.

Exclusive: Whipps Cross hospital objected to fruit that is symbol of Palestine amid censorship of flag

A senior NHS nurse who says he was ordered to remove a background on his video calls that showed a fruit bowl containing a watermelon because it could be perceived as antisemitic has launched legal action against his employer.

Ahmad Baker, who is British-Palestinian and works at Whipps Cross hospital, north London, is one of three medical staff claiming Barts Health NHS trust’s ban on staff displaying symbols perceived as politically or nationally affiliated is disproportionate and discriminatory. Watermelons became symbols of Palestine amid censorship of the Palestinian flag because of its similar colours.

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Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project on the Burrup peninsula in Western Australia is one of the world’s largest liquified natural gas ventures.

In May the Labor government approved an extension for the project to run for an additional 40 years, from 2030 to 2070.

North West Shelf project extension emissions are scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions set out in the EPA application

Qantas domestic emissions are scope 1 and 2 emissions in 2023-24 as reported to the Clean Energy Regulator

Australian total agriculture emissions are the sum of agricultural emissions in the December 2024 National Greenhouse Gas Inventory

Emissions from all Australian gas plants derived from the primary fuel type in the 2023-24 electricity sector emissions data

Switzerland and Ireland total 2023 emissions sourced from Our World in Data

Apple’s emissions based on information from its 2024 environmental progress report, with more information about why renewable energy certificates and offsets are excluded here

Driving around Australia emissions estimated for doing the M1 “big lap� with a fuel consumption of 6.9L/100km

Production of staple crops projected to fall by as much as 120 calories per person per day for every 1C of heating

Some of our critical staple crops could suffer “substantial� production losses due to climate breakdown, a study has found, even if farmers adapt to worsening weather.

Maize, soy, rice, wheat, cassava and sorghum yields are projected to fall by as much as 120 calories per person per day for every 1C the planet heats up, according to new research in Nature, with average daily losses that could add up to the equivalent of not having breakfast.

British Antarctic Survey finds one breed of seal has declined by 54% since 1977

Antarctic seal populations are drastically declining as the sea ice melts around them, new research has shown.

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have been monitoring the seal population in the sub-Antarctic since the 1970s, looking in particular at three different seal species in the sub-Antarctic on Signy Island: Weddell seals, Antarctic fur seals and southern elephant seals.

How Kelcy Warren, one of Trump’s biggest industry backers, and his pipeline firm are likely to flourish in his second term

Kelcy Warren was among the top donors for Donald Trump’s 2024 White House bid, personally pouring at least $5m into the campaign and co-hosting a fundraiser for the then presidential hopeful in Houston.

Trump’s win appears to already be benefiting Warren and Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline and energy firm of which he is co-founder, executive chair and primary shareholder.

Jennifer Abbott, 69, was found dead in her Camden flat with tape on her mouth

A missing diamond-encrusted Rolex watch may be linked to the stabbing of a 69-year-old woman who was found dead in her north London flat, the Metropolitan police have said.

Jennifer Abbott, who was known professionally as Sarah Steinberg, was discovered fatally injured with tape on her mouth.

Known as Sam the Wheels, he filmed aspects of community life in south London, including Brixton riots of 1981

Clovis Salmon, regarded as the first black documentary film-maker in the UK, has died at the age of 98.

His family said he died at King’s College hospital in Camberwell on Wednesday morning.

Withdrawal from event follows string of appearances as Catherine seeks right balance after cancer treatment

The Princess of Wales has pulled out of attending Royal Ascot as she continues to seek the right balance of public engagements after her treatment for cancer.

Catherine was said to be disappointed not to attend the race meeting on Wednesday with her husband and King Charles and Queen Camilla.

Justice secretary says ‘public confidence in the rule of law is fraying’ but she wants to protect ECHR by changing it

• Echoes of Brexit as Starmer is pressed to seize initiative on human rights

The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has said Britain will pursue reform of the European convention on human rights (ECHR), both at home and in Strasbourg, saying “public confidence in the rule of law is fraying�.

Mahmood’s warning in her speech at the Council of Europe came as the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said she would undertake an examination of how the courts were applying the right to freedom from degrading treatment.

Supreme court ruled that Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming treatment did not discriminate on basis of sex

The US supreme court on Wednesday ruled to uphold a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for minors – a decision, legal analysts say, that is sure to have a sweeping impact not only on transgender and non-binary individuals across the US, but on anybody who wants to argue that they have been discriminated against on the basis of their sex.

Forty per cent of trans people between the ages of 13 and 17 live in the 27 states that have so far enacted bans or policies that restrict youths’ access to gender-affirming care. Although advocates have launched more than a dozen lawsuits over the bans, most remain in effect. Wednesday’s decision in the case, United States v Skrmetti, may pave the way for the rest to take effect.

Public spat reflects fracture among Trump’s coalition over whether US should join Israel’s escalating conflict with Iran

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Ted Cruz, the US senator from Texas, and conservative media personality Tucker Carlson have clashed over US military involvement in the Middle East, with the latter shouting: “You don’t know anything about Iran!� in a heated interview that exposes a sharp division within Donald Trump’s coalition as the president considers joining Israel in attacking Iran.

In the confrontation, a short excerpt released ahead of an approximately two-hour interview set to air today, Carlson – an acolyte of the Maga movement which generally argues for American isolationism from foreign wars – challenged Cruz’s knowledge of Iran, which the Republican hawk has advocated attacking.

Killing of Canadian national was ‘significant escalation in India’s repression efforts’ but leaders shake hands at G7

Canada’s spy agency has warned that the assassination in British Columbia of a prominent Sikh activist signaled a “significant escalation in India’s repression efforts� and reflects a broader, transnational campaign by the government in New Delhi to threaten dissidents.

The report was made public a day after Mark Carney shook hands with Narendra Modi at the G7 and pledged to restore diplomatic relations in a very public attempt to turn the page on the bitter diplomatic row unleashed by the murder of the Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

As many as 70 said to be planning to show solidarity at LGBTQ+ march after Hungary’s PM tried to ban it

Dozens of MEPs are expected to attend the Pride march in Budapest this month, in defiance of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who has tried to ban the event.

In a debate in the European parliament in Strasbourg, MEPs from liberal, left and green groups pledged to be in Budapest on 28 June for the parade to show solidarity with gay Hungarians.

‘He is one of the “invisible people� of Johannesburg. Many of them reclaim trash from its biggest landfill site, sell it to buy-back centres, then spend the money on heroin’

This was a tough assignment. I was making images around Johannesburg for World Environment Day 2018 and I thought I’d follow the trash to Robinson Deep, the oldest and biggest landfill in the city. I had a basic idea of where the things we throw away end up, but seeing our trash in real life, in that quantity, and not disintegrating, was eye-opening. The smell was overpowering. The sounds of tractors churned against the constant noise made by baby mice squeaking under the huge mounds of waste. I was probably stepping on them but I couldn’t see them, nor do anything differently. At one point I stepped on a cow’s head. Thank God I was wearing rubber boots that day – boots that the dozens of people eking out a living on the landfill didn’t have. They didn’t have any proper protective gear: no gloves, masks or proper shoes.

This image of a man carrying a giant bag that looks like a cape, with an ibis hovering over him, was made with a long lens. I was too far away to get to him in time to ask his name before he disappeared over the hill, but I spoke to many others there. They spoke of being ill from working on the landfill but not having a choice. Some of them cook and eat their meals on the site. Some even live there. I recall the moment when a truck arrived bearing a new load and everyone ran toward this waterfall of garbage to get whatever they could – the plastic or glass that could be taken to the buy-back centres and exchanged for a few rand. This scene is not particular to Johannesburg. It happens every day in landfills all over the world.

Equally at ease with making sex-playlist jams and socially conscious songs, the revered group are fretting about fascism – but are determined to find common ground for Americans

If you looked to the skies in the UK on 12 May, you’d have seen the flower moon, the name given to that month’s full moon. Also known in agricultural circles as the hare moon or the corn planting moon, it’s closely associated with new life and new beginnings.

“Happy flower moon day!� beams Durand Jones, leader of soul outfit Durand Jones and the Indications, whose forthcoming album Flowers – led by the single Flower Moon – also deals with the theme of fresh starts. We’re serendipitously speaking on 12 May, along with his bandmates Aaron Frazer and Blake Rhein.

In this powerful documentary, six former inmates revisit their old cells to reflect on the childhood trauma and domestic abuse that led them to prison

You can be told the statistics: 30% of women in prison spent time in care as children, and 70% have been the victim of domestic abuse. But what this powerful documentary from Sophie Compton and Daisy-May Hudson (the latter of whom is the director of just-released film Lollipop) does is to demonstrate the cruelty and injustice of a system that incarcerates the vulnerable.

Shot in 2021, it follows six women returning to HMP Holloway in London before demolition began a year later. In the first scenes, they walk back into the prison, some into their old cells. The building is abandoned, ivy creeps up through the floorboards, but it’s still Holloway: “Fuck, I remember this smell,� says one. During a week-long workshop the women – brave and unfailingly articulate – share their stories. All of them experienced trauma in childhood, most masked it with drugs or alcohol, or unhealthy relationships. Of the six, two are now charity CEOs: Aliyah Ali and Mandy Ogunmokun, who both work to support disadvantaged women. The poet Lady Unchained is also in the group.

Sympathetic docu-biography centres on the conceptual artist deemed ‘too shocking for punk’ who inadvertently spawned the industrial music genre

Genesis P-Orridge was the performance artist, shaman and lead singer of Throbbing Gristle who was born as Neil Megson in Manchester in 1950, but from the 90s lived in the US. P-Orridge challenged gender identity but it is clear from the interviewees that there were no wrong answers when it came to pronouns: “he�, “she� and “they� are all used. This is a sympathetic and amiable official docu-biography in which the subject comes across as a mix of Aleister Crowley, Charles Manson and Screaming Lord Sutch. The “P-Orridge� surname makes me suspect that Spike Milligan might have been an indirect influence, although there’s also a bit of Klaus Kinski in there as well.

Genesis P-Orridge, known to friends and family as Gen, started as a radical conceptual artist, rule-breaker, consciousness-expander and tabloid-baiter who with Throbbing Gristle influentially coined the term “industrial music�, a term later to be borrowed without acknowledgment by many. They were, in the words of Janet Street-Porter, shown here in archive footage, “too shocking for punk�. P-Orridge formed a new band, Psychic TV, in the 1980s, and then also formed a group of likeminded occultist provocateurs called Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. (The film tactfully passes over how very annoying that spelling is.)

The cherubic sixtysomething stars as a supercool old-school driver returning 30 years after a near-fatal crash to break all the rules of Formula One racing

With that amused-cowpoke face of his squashed into his safety helmet, making his sixtysomething cherubic chops bulge in towards his nose, Brad Pitt gets behind the wheel in this outrageously cheesy but fiercely and extravagantly shot Formula One melodrama. Along with a lot of enjoyable hokum about the old guy mentoring the rookie hothead (a plot it broadly shares with Pixar’s 2006 adventure Cars), F1 the Movie gives you the corporate sheen, real-life race footage with Brad as the star in an unreasonably priced car, the tech fetish of the cars themselves (almost making you forget how amazingly ugly they are) with brand names speckling every square inch of every surface, the simulation graphics writ large, and the bizarre occult spectacle of motor racing itself.

This is a movie which (like Barbie) has been licensed by the brand, with Lewis Hamilton credited as a producer; he gets a stately walk-on and plenty of big names are glimpsed. At one stage, Brad notices Max Verstappen out there on the track: “Damn, he’s good!� he mutters. Oh sure, yes, Max Verstappen is good, but is he a reckless, intuitive risk-taker and old-school motor race romantic who might get himself killed chasing some undefinable something out there on the burning, shimmering tarmac? We may never know.

Spielbergian twists and an aggressive, deal-oriented alien are among the familiar beats of the Inside Out animator’s latest, about a lonely boy who finds friendship in space

There are some sweet retro-Spielbergian thrills in Pixar’s amiable new family animation, whose release was delayed a year due to the strikes; it also has some touches of Douglas Adams as well as John Lasseter’s Toy Stories. There are co-director credits for Pixar stalwarts Adrian Molina (who was the co-director and co-screenwriter of Coco) and feature first-timer Madeline Sharafian, and Pixar will be hoping for a handsome return here to match the success of its recent box office champ Inside Out 2.

Elio may well indeed do the business. It has charm, likability and that potent ingredient: childhood loneliness and vulnerability. Its opening act is set aboard a military base where an ambitious young officer has postponed or even abandoned her dream of being astronaut to look after her orphaned nephew. But once the film leaves planet Earth and its recognisably real, lump-in-the-throat emotional world and inhabits the goofy multi-voiced arena of space aliens, it loses, for me, a little (though not all) of its charge. There is occasionally something a little formulaic, a bit programmatic and … well … which two letters of the alphabet sum it up?

Royal Albert Hall, London
After a cancelled arena tour, expectations are high for J Hus’s return – but for all his swagger and melody, he ends up falling short due to sound issues and a lack of vision

J Hus’s one-night-only show at the Royal Albert Hall, celebrating the five-year anniversary of his album Big Conspiracy, begins with the British rapper’s sister and collaborator iceè tgm reciting a poem in front of a black curtain. “It all starts with a question,� she posits. “What is the big conspiracy?� By the end, the show leaves even more unanswered questions.

When the curtain falls, it reveals a small symphony orchestra placed behind live band the Compozers. Hus opens with force: Helicopter, Triumph, Fight for Your Right, Fortune Teller, Reckless, and No Denying come in quick succession. He spits with braggadocious swagger, jumping from a protruding platform into the throes of the adoring crowd standing in the stalls. Even looking up towards the gallery, the venue’s grandeur feels entirely fitting for commemorating such a heavy-hitting UK No 1 album, which has become embedded in British rap, Afrobeats, dancehall, and general culture over the past five years.

As the musical world mourns the celebrated pianist, we assess his wide recording legacy and pick the 12 best, from Russian rarities to quickfire Beethoven

In the two decades before he retired from concert-performances in 2008 at the age of 77, Alfred Brendel was arguably the best known classical pianist in the world. Yet regard for his playing was never by any means universal; what his many admirers found as searching, considered and profound in his interpretations, others heard as colourless and lacking in spontaneity. But Brendel’s lasting popularity is evidenced by his recorded legacy, which is certainly extensive enough for generations to come to make their own assessment of his stature. In a recording career that stretched well over half a century, he made more than 100 albums, which included three complete cycles of the Beethoven sonatas.

As his career burgeoned, Beethoven, and the other great composers of the Austro-German tradition - Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms - were increasingly the focus of Brendel’s recital repertory, but a glance at a chronology of his recordings reveals how wide his musical interests really were. If it is Brendel’s discs of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert that will be treasured above all, there is much else to be discovered among the myriad recordings he left us. The recordings that follow, therefore, are very much a personal choice; another day, it might be entirely different.

Band’s ‘on the edge of kitsch’ aesthetic is still relevant three decades later as young people focus on vintage clothing

Thirty years ago this month Pulp played the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury and took their reputation to another level. If part of this was due to a storming set taking in their new hit Common People, debuts for their future hits Mis-Shapes and Disco 2000, and the star power of singer Jarvis Cocker, it was also down to their look.

There was Steve Mackay, bass guitarist, in a fitted shirt and kipper tie, Russell Senior on violin in a blue safari shirt, keyboardist Candida Doyle in sequins and – of course – Cocker, in his now signature secondhand 70s tailoring.

The Love Again singer expands her media empire with this new podcast. Plus, an astonishing cast of ex-MPs line up to see what might happen if Russia declared war against the UK

Not content with her Service95 newsletter and At Your Service podcast, the star expands her media empire. But don’t expect a vanity project: Lipa’s first guest is Jennifer Clement, author of the haunting Widow Basquiat, on the love affair between artist Jean-Michel and his muse Suzanne Mallouk. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

A young gay Black man escapes from grief into the hedonism of upper-echelon New York, in a lyrical tale of redemption

Lives can turn on one mistake. Smith’s comes when he is caught in the corner of a restaurant in the Hamptons on the last night of summer, snorting cocaine from a key. He walks calmly out with the two khaki-clad police officers, poses for a mugshot and posts his $500 bail.

Smith is Black, which won’t help, but he comes from wealth, which will. So he calls his sister, who calls his father in Atlanta, who tells his mother, who collapses on the floor in shock then starts calling lawyers. Smith prepares for his court date with a series of AA meetings and counselling sessions that will make it clear that this promising young man is on the road to redemption.

An ambitious meditation on the ability of narrative to shape our perceptions of one another and our experience of home

Marina Warner begins this dazzlingly protean book with a distinctly mundane memory. It is the 1950s, she is a young teen, and the highlight of her week is going to the Saturday morning “flicks� with a neighbour’s slightly older daughter. One particular movie scene has stayed with her: it involves a man dressed in a vaguely historical costume who is fleeing for his life. Face contorted with terror, he makes it as far as the door of a cathedral, whereupon he knocks loudly and cries “Sanctuary!� The door opens a crack, the man slides inside, and the Saturday morning audience breaths a collective sigh of relief. Even if the plot points remain hazy – is Robin Hood somehow involved? – the underlying principle needs no explaining. The fugitive has invoked the ancient right by gaining entrance to a designated sacred space. As long as he stays put his pursuers can’t touch him.

From these hyper-local beginnings, Warner sets out to explore and expand what “sanctuary� means in an age when millions are on the move around the world, chased out of their homes by environmental disaster, economic collapse, war and political oppression.

From buzzards in Oxfordshire to cranes in Kent – how once common birds left their mark in British place names

Old place names recall old ways of belonging. They often reference characteristics of the land or its use, the people who lived there, or the non-human lives they were enmeshed with. A great many of these vivifying genii loci are birds, although their identities aren’t always obvious because language evolves over time. We need a guide.

Enter Michael Warren: teacher of English, amateur ornithologist and a man who lives in a Britain different to the one most of us inhabit: a medieval one, which by some magic has “survived in another dimension parallel to our own�. The gift he bestows in this gorgeous book is that, by the end, we live there too, newly able to read the growth rings of place, and to perceive an alternative land shimmering over the one we already know.

In this page-turning romance, teenage sweethearts reunite as thirtysomething women

Sex is notoriously difficult to write. Some authors avoid it entirely; even those who have been called great can come a cropper. Which is why I want to start this review by saying that the sex scenes in Ordinary Love are some of the best I have read this year, and that Marie Rutkoski has a facility for writing physical intimacy that can elude even some of our most gifted authors. Her voice has been compared to that of Sally Rooney. I don’t see much of that in this novel beyond a Rooneyesque ability to write sex well, but that is a talent worth noting.

Ordinary Love is a queer romance that tells the story of Emily and Gen, teenage sweethearts who break up in college and reunite in their 30s, their paths having diverged dramatically. Emily marries Jack, who is wealthy and emotionally abusive. When she sees Gen again, she is in the process of leaving him for the second time (the novel opens with a scene vividly depicting the dealbreaker: it is violence against a child that finally does it). Gen, meanwhile, has become an Olympic athlete and serial womaniser. Both are carrying the wounds of their adolescent relationship, which is recounted in flashback, and the homophobia they faced, particularly from Emily’s father. In one particularly moving scene, Gen’s grandmother – who raised her after her mother died from opioid addiction – counters his bigotry by making a toast: “To my granddaughter. I love you. I love everything about you. I am so proud.�

Splitgate 2’s Ian Proulx thought his Musk gag was funny – but what it revealed was the major blind spots still in the business

One thing most game developers can agree on in the modern industry is that it’s hard to drum up any awareness for your latest project without a mammoth marketing budget. Last year, almost 20,000 new titles were released on the PC gaming platform Steam alone, the majority disappearing into the content blackhole that is the internet. So when a smaller studio is offered the chance to get on the stage at the Summer Games Fest, an event streamed live to a global audience of around 50 million people, it’s a big deal. Not something that you want to spectacularly misjudge.

Enter Ian Proulx, cofounder of 1047 Games. His short slot at the event earlier this month had him walking on stage with a baseball bat to promote the online shooter Splitgate 2 by announcing that he was “tired of playing the same Call of Duty every year�, while wearing a cap bearing the slogan “Make FPS great again�. It did not go well. Gamers and fellow developers criticised his decision to diss another studio’s game as well as his politically charged use of a Maga/Trump meme, especially with anti-ICE protesters being beaten and arrested just across town. Proulx defended his actions, denying that his use of the cap slogan was political, but four days later he made an apology via X explaining: “We needed something to grab attention, and the honest truth is, we tried to think of something and this is what we came up with.�

Nintendo has slept on new games for its new handheld but clockwork-puzzle murder missions, an RPG reborn and a beefed-up Yakuza 0 are the highlights from other developers

The Nintendo Switch 2 certainly makes a strong first impression, but once that gadget limerence begins to fade, it’s down to the games to stave off any creeping buyer’s remorse. We all know that Mario Kart World is undoubtedly a multiplayer masterpiece, and original Switch games from Pokémon Scarlet/Violet to Zelda have been updated to look amazing on the new console, but there’s otherwise a severe lack of Nintendo-made launch games for the Switch (beyond the £8 tech demo, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour).

Thankfully, other developers have stepped in to fill the gap, releasing a bunch of updated versions of games that have been out on other consoles for a while. What should you pick up when you’re tired of Mario Kart World?

Originally meant to release in 2022, Capcom’s futuristic game – featuring an astronaut and a mysterious blond-haired little girl – has just re-emerged from stasis; and it looks like it will be worth the wait

When Pragmata was first announced five years ago, it wasn’t clear exactly what Resident Evil publisher Capcom was making. The debut trailer featured eerie, futuristic imagery, an astronaut, and a blond-haired little girl, but there was nothing concrete or clear about its content. And when it missed its 2022 release window and was “paused indefinitely� in 2023, it wasn’t clear if Pragmata would ever come to be.

That all changed on 4 June, when a brand-new trailer was broadcast during a PlayStation showcase. The blond-haired little girl turns out to be a weaponised android, accompanying an astronaut called Hugh (of course) through space-station shootouts. I played about 20 minutes of the game during Summer Game Fest the following weekend. A lengthy, troubled development cycle is usually a bad omen, but my time with it was promising.

Pragmata will be out in 2026 for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.

PC (version tested), PlayStation 5, Xbox; Build a Rocket Boy/IOI Partners
A lot of work and ambition have gone into this strange, sometimes likable cover-shooter throwback

There’s a Sphere-alike in Redrock, MindsEye’s open-world version of Las Vegas. It’s pretty much a straight copy of the original: a huge soap bubble, half sunk into the desert floor, with its surface turned into a gigantic TV. Occasionally you’ll pull up near the Sphere while driving an electric vehicle made by Silva, the megacorp that controls this world. You’ll sometimes come to a stop just as an advert for an identical Silva EV plays out on the huge curved screen overhead. The doubling effect can be slightly vertigo-inducing.

At these moments, I truly get what MindsEye is trying to do. You’re stuck in the ultimate company town, where oligarchs and other crooks run everything, and there’s no hope of escaping the ecosystem they’ve built. MindsEye gets this all across through a chance encounter, and in a way that’s both light of touch and clever. The rest of the game tends towards the heavy-handed and silly, but it’s nice to glimpse a few instances where everything clicks.

National Portrait Gallery, London
Saville’s colossal canvases are filled with bloodied mouths, epically thrusting nipples and meaty legs – and her tender Degas-like drawings are truly lovely

The posters and grand title of Jenny Saville’s retrospective scream paint! – in red, pink and bruise colours – but you need to look at her exquisite drawings to get the measure of her. In Neck Study II a woman, eyes closed, holds up her head so we can study the curves and dips of flesh on her stretched neck. Saville notes these anatomical realities with a pencil in precise nuances of shading, also observing every contour of her face and the bones under her thin shoulders. It is beautiful. It is true.

So what the hell – I thought – was she doing in the adjacent gallery where massively enlarged faces, pummelled by life and her art, are lit as harshly as flash photographs? They include her portrait of a boy with a bloodied beaten face, lip twisted, eyes dazed, used for the cover of a Manic Street Preachers album that was banned from supermarkets for being too disturbing. That was just a small reproduction. Here you are confronted by the colossal real thing, faces that truly get in your face.

Stratford East, London
This show, based on a gone-viral Tinder date in which a woman tried to dispose of her poo unconventionally, tackles the perils of modern love with wit, humour and cracking songs

As bad dating stories go, this one from 2017 is a classic. During a Tinder date, a woman found herself in a pretty awkward situation: her poo wouldn’t flush, and in an attempt to discreetly dispose of it, she ended up wedged between two windows. The story was turned into a viral meme, and even made the headlines. Now, a musical by two of the creators of the hit podcast My Dad Wrote a Porno (Jamie Morton and James Cooper) has been spawned from the incident, too.

The central premise remains, but with a few creative tweaks. Lucy and Peter have been raised on Disney movies but are chronically unlucky in love. Misguided help arrives in the form of Lucy’s cutting anti-guardian-angel, Miseraie, and Peter’s insufferable finance bro flatmate, David. After matching on a dating app, they meet at a Mexican restaurant and do their best to keep up appearances. But, would you believe it – it turns out they might just be each other’s perfect match after all.

From the Ohio pussy who triggered a wild conspiracy theory to the Brexit ‘Leave’ votes piling up, the great American photographer has turned her lens on election excesses. But what are those fake eyelashes doing in there?

In 2016, almost by accident, the US artist Taryn Simon ended up making a video work about the most important moment in recent British political history. While scouting for a location for another work, she visited Alexandra Palace in London just as a rehearsal for the Brexit ballot-counting was taking place. “I immediately asked if I could come back and film the actual count,� says Simon, whose request was approved, making her the only person in the world permitted to record a Brexit count.

She’s speaking with me from Paris, where the video has just gone on show. Presented on two screens, it is at first unremarkable: one view shows a wide frame of the historic Great Hall of the palace, with count staff seated at tables covered with black tablecloths and scattered with paper. A second screen offers a closeup view of two count staff in their official burgundy T-shirts, sorting papers into “Leave� and “Remain�. The tension mounts as each stack grows, but no climax is reached.

Rather than retiring to Greece, 71-year-old Ruth Miller created ‘a sanctuary of hope and healing’ in a refugee camp

Where do you see yourself in your 70s? Perhaps on a Greek island, a long way from home with a good book or two.

That’s where Ruth Miller is right now, although there’s a twist to the usual tale.

Wilson bought Parks a Volvo when he’d barely met him – and together they brought sublime poetry to pop. He remembers the making of Smile, Surf’s Up and more

It was the Beatles’ publicist Derek Taylor – who I met backstage at their first concert at the Hollywood Bowl – who first declared “Brian Wilson is a genius� as part of a [1966] publicity campaign. I knew that word would come back to haunt Brian and it did: from then on he was competing in a world of heightened expectations, but he did that very bravely all his life. He was basically forever competing against a previous version of himself, but as the great American beat poet Lewis MacAdams said: “If it’s not impossible, I’m not interested.� As for lyrics, you can’t beat “I’m a cork on the ocean� [in Til I Die] for a redux of thought from a Beach Boy. I will call that genius and I think the word does apply to Brian.

He had so many gifts. One of them was mutual empowerment. He brought out the best in everyone around him. In the studio, under great tensile strength, the things he could do with a piano, bass, and maybe a couple of guitars were like him entering a dark room and breathing light and life into it. He was a celebratory spirit with a dark coda on his life: the burden of some psychosis. I don’t believe that was caused by drugs. I think it was in his genes, but he had the ability to dig deep. He had a disciplined spiritual force and had sat on church pews and had learned musical lingos, had loved and absorbed everything from barbershop quartets to calypso to composers to Gershwin, was growing up when they coined the expression “Americana� and configured all this into a new kind of pop.

Together with Sonia Friedman and Ian Rickson, the Hollywood star has helped to create a new initiative aiming to provide high-quality theater for a low price

One night last month in the West Village, I had the pleasure of being nervous for Hugh Jackman. On stage at the Minetta Lane Theatre, the 56-year-old movie star and Broadway veteran appeared startlingly undefended and vulnerable. In character as a middle-aged university professor infatuated with his 19-year-old pupil, Jackman addressed the audience for a play called Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes with the lights up, as if helming a lecture full of shy students put on the spot; when one viewer sneezed during Jackman’s monologue, he paused to say bless you.

I fretted a few rows from Wolverine, more aware of my fellow audience members’ faces and cellphones than I’ve ever been at a New York show and acutely attuned to the fact that this all could go awry at any moment. Theater is always a contract between audience and performer, but years attending big Broadway shows have inured me to its fragility. At the Minetta, with just the commanding presence of Jackman and the lit audience at his feet, that contract felt thrillingly, temporarily exposed.

A new exhibition looks back at the ‘anti-communist’ witch-hunt that affected many Americans, in particular the Hollywood Ten

There’s no shortage of comparisons with the second Trump administration to the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany, but perhaps the more apt comparison is to the Red Scare in postwar America. Blacklisted, a new show at New York Historical, profiles the lives of the so-called Hollywood Ten, who were creatives caught up in the communist witch-hunt – to disastrous consequences affecting their lives for decades thereafter. It brings to mind suggestive, and uncomfortable, parallels with politicized persecution in the US today.

“At this point, TV was just beginning to become influential,� said Anne Lessy, an assistant curator who coordinated the show. “There was a lot of anxiety around these mass entertainments and how much power they had, in part because the second world war effort had been so successful in propaganda. A lot of the blacklisted artists were important in those efforts.�

From Greek customs to a Kenyan returning home, this year’s winners of the OpenWalls Spotlight award show how migration shapes our culture – and the power of ancient rituals

Tinder is trialling a height filter, following in the footsteps of some other popular apps. What is behind the ‘6ft fixation’ in dating – and could it be scuppering the chance of true connection?

Height is often seen as a dealbreaker when it comes to romance, particularly within heterosexual relationships. But when Tinder recently said that it was trialling a feature that allows some premium users to filter potential matches by height, it quickly proved controversial. “Oh God. They added a height filter,� lamented one Reddit thread, while an X user claimed: “It’s over for short men.�

“I’ve experimented with not putting my height on my dating profile, or lying about it just to see, and the number of likes I get shoots up massively,� says Stuart, who is in his 50s and from the Midlands. “I know I get screened out by the majority of women from the off.� At 5ft 7in (170cm), Stuart is just two inches below the UK and US male average height of 5ft 9in, but a height filter would probably prevent him from receiving as many matches.

Brand known for no-nonsense style and camel coats channels the glamour and poverty of the city in Italian cinema

Max Mara is known for its deep-pile camel coats and conservative northern Italian style. But in tune with the times, this season’s show at the baroque Palace of Caserta outside Naples opened with a pair of very short shorts.

Tight and high-waisted, the vibe was Vogue but the inspiration was the 1949 Italian realist film Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice) and a 19-year-old Italian actor, Silvana Mangano, in a paddy field wearing damp shorts and stockings, which ended up on global billboards.

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.

Fans sell out when the mercury rises, so get ahead of the pack by ordering one in anticipation: there will always be another heatwave. Get a good fan, and you can also 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
_{£129 at AirCraft}

Best budget fan and best desk fan:
Devola desk fan
_{£49.99 at Devola}

Best tower fan:
Dreo Cruiser TF518
_{£89.99 at Amazon}

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

Best evaporative cooler:
Swan 5-litre Nordic air cooler
_{£69.99 at Amazon}

This week: hay fever cures that actually work; festival essentials; and the best SPFs, tested

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The best things in life are a … a … wait, it’s coming … a … Achoo! Ew, sorry. Where was I? The best things in life are itchy and explosively sneezy. Picnics in freshly cut grass, walks in the woods, burying your face in the cat. Full of the joys of summer, and guaranteed to send your body’s allergy responses wild.

If you’re in the 49% of British folk who suffer from seasonal hay fever, you probably envy me for being asked to test hay fever remedies for the Filter. Here was my chance to have all my symptoms blitzed by the best cures medical science and TikTok had to offer. Sadly, it didn’t quite work like that.

Are boxers the new beach dress? Are bermudas really back? And is wearing shorts to the office ever OK? Here’s how to prepare yourself for the great unveiling

Happy shorts season. Not happy for everyone, though, is it? It’s probably not a stretch to say that for many of us, wearing shorts is up there with getting into a swimsuit or showing your feet for the first time that year. A watershed moment of dread that, unlike most scary things – eating out alone, caring what other people think – only gets worse as you get older.

But it’s also summer, and sometimes only shorts will do. Plus, this year, there really is something for every leg. Culottes are back, except they’re structured and called bermuda shorts – and you can even wear them to work. So are 1970s sports shorts, if your summer reference is more Ridgemont High. It’s not unseemly to wear boxer shorts, especially if you’re on the beach, just try them in seersucker – or if you prefer the freedom of a skirt, how about a skort? Hate all shorts? Try jean-shorts or “jorts� – they’re better than they sound. Here is a foolproof guide to getting over shorts fear.

A tangy pea, potato and coconut curry, and a soupy, spicy delight from northern India – and both meat-free

The sweetness of fresh green peas works so well with Indian curries and spices, and June is the month to make the most of them, because they’re now at their peak. Even the empty pods have so much flavour and sweetness, which makes them perfect for a quick salad on the side (toss thinly sliced raw, blanched or even griddled pods with chopped tomato, sliced onion and coriander, drizzle over some fresh mint raita and sprinkle with chaat masala). Blanch the fresh peas without any seasoning before you make the curry, then add them to the simmering gravy near the end. You can swap them for frozen peas, too, if you like.

Stubbornly unripe stone fruit are common in UK supermarkets, but it turns out they’re just the thing to turn into a classic, Japanese-style ferment

Umeboshi is a puckeringly sour and umami-rich Japanese condiment made with ume, an Asian plum that’s closely related to the apricot. It’s usually made with ripe but firm fruit, which aren’t all that dissimilar to the under-ripe and slightly flavourless apricots and plums found in most UK supermarkets and which make a great British stand-in for ume.

Three new products, including a foie gras created from cultured Japanese quail cells, have been approved for sale

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For over a decade, lab-grown meat has been hailed as the food of tomorrow – a plate changing technological innovation that is right around the corner. Now, in Australia, tomorrow has finally come.

After a two-year-long approval process, Food Standards Australia New Zealand has given Australian food technology startup Vow foods the green light to sell three products made from cultured quail cells.

Give it a squish to remove the moisture, then hard-fry in a robust coating – these are among the solutions our expert culinary panel suggests to achieving addictively crisp tofu

I want to like tofu, but I don’t because of its rubbery texture. How do I make it nice and crisp?
Anne, by email
“Moisture is the enemy of crisp tofu,� says Emma Chung, author of Easy Chinese Food Anyone Can Make, so the quest for cubes of bean curd that are crisp on the outside and soft on the inside starts by getting rid of as much excess water as possible (and choosing a tofu labelled “firm� or “extra-firm� in the first place). “I usually do this by wrapping the tofu in tea towels, placing it between two large plates and putting a heavy pot or pan on top,� Chung says. After 10 minutes, you “should have a nice and firm tofu that will have a lovely texture, and it will be a lot easier to crisp up�.

Guardian columnist Ravinder Bhogal, meanwhile, pops her tofu on a wire rack set over a tray and covers it with kitchen paper or a clean cloth: “Put a weight on top and leave it for a couple of hours, and ideally overnight – that will squeeze out the excess moisture.� She then pats the tofu dry and coats it in corn, rice or potato flour before frying (or putting in an air fryer) for an “off-the-Richter crunch�. Chung is simpatico, coating her tofu pieces in a thin layer of cornflour to create a crust that “turns extra crisp when fried or baked�. Simply put the cubed tofu in a bowl, cover “generously� with cornflour and give everything a good toss. “If you’re using slices of tofu, dip them in a shallow plate of cornflour to make sure they’re evenly coated.�

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com