Former president implores Christian supports to vote ‘just this time’, then says he’s not Christian

Donald Trump has ignited alarm among his critics after telling a crowd of supporters that they won’t “have to vote again” if they return him to the presidency in November’s election.

“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it any more,” the Republican former president said on Friday night at a rally hosted in West Palm Beach, Florida, by the far-right advocacy group Turning Point Action.

Palestinian officials say at least 30 killed in strike on school in Deir al-Balah where thousands were seeking shelter

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

A wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting central and southern Gaza have killed at least 50 and injured an estimated 200 people, with one strike hitting a school where thousands were seeking shelter.

Palestinian health ministry officials said that at least 30 people were killed in an airstrike on the Khadija school in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, resulting in a wave of critical injuries.

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• Day-by-day guide | Live schedule, medal table, results
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We’re now just 15 minutes away from the start of the action on day one of the Paris Olympics. And that action is badminton.

If you don’t know your back alley from your shuttlecock, fear not, because here’s one we made earlier.

The pool is shallower than the 3m standard, at 2.30m and there have been some questions raised over the effect this will have. The starting platforms have fins that allow swimmers to really push off at the gun. And one of France’s faces of the Games, swimmer Léon Marchand, believes it will live up to expectations.

“The pool is superb,” he said. “I loved the feeling I had in the water, the depth which is the same along the entire length. So you feel like you’re swimming fast and that’s cool. It’s a beautiful pool.” If swimmers are feeling fast in the pool at La Défense, we could yet see some new world records.

Public health adviser says higher temperatures caused by climate crisis pose danger for visitors not used to them

The climate emergency poses a “real risk” to Spain’s traditional mass tourist model as rising temperatures and more frequent heatwaves hit the country’s most popular coastal destinations, a senior public health adviser has warned.

Héctor Tejero, the head of health and climate change at Spain’s health ministry, said the increasingly apparent physical impacts of the climate emergency had already led the ministry to begin talks with the British embassy on how best to educate “vulnerable” tourists about coping with the heat.

A new edition of his theories on dreams argues that he used ‘sexuality’ to described any purely pleasureable activity

For a psychiatrist, so the joke goes, any object that crops up within a dream must represent a phallus. But it seems even Sigmund Freud did not really think all our sleeping fantasies are suppressed erotica. It was just a basic misunderstanding of the pioneering psychoanalyst’s work, according to an eminent new version of his influential theories.

A revised English edition of Freud’s key work, The Interpretation of Dreams, by scholar Mark Solms will correct several errors of translation and aim to definitively challenge the common misconception that Freud believed the erotic drive was behind much of human behaviour.

Firms accused of putting profits over safety as EU group weighs cutting minimum number of pilots from two to one

Aerospace giants have been accused of putting profits ahead of safety as officials consider cutting the minimum number of pilots required on commercial flight decks from two to one.

The move, which is currently being evaluated by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), would weaken standards to the “lowest common denominator”, the world’s largest union of airline pilots has warned.

Singer says she feels honoured to have been part of event, her first live on-stage performance since 2020

• Céline Dion at the Paris Olympics review – a dazzling and emotional return

Céline Dion has said she is “so full of joy” after making a triumphant return to the stage in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

The star, who has been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a neurological disorder, sang Édith Piaf’s Hymne à l’amour on the Eiffel Tower for a global audience of millions in her first live onstage performance since early 2020.

People with head and neck cancers are said to have better outcomes if fusobacterium is found with their cancer

Scientists have discovered that a common type of mouth bacteria can make certain cancers “melt”.

Researchers at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College London said they had been “brutally surprised” to find that fusobacterium – a type of bacteria commonly found in the mouth – appears to have the ability to kill certain cancers.

Court urges federal and Ontario governments to make payouts after ‘dishonourably’ neglecting 174-year-old deal

• The Crown promised riches to First Nations in Canada – over 150 years on, they could finally get billions

An “egregious” refusal by successive Canadian governments to honor a key treaty signed with Indigenous nations made a “mockery” of the deal and deprived generations of fair compensation for their resources, Canada’s top court has ruled.

But while the closely watched decision will likely yield billions in payouts, First Nation chiefs say the ruling adds yet another hurdle in the multi-decade battle for justice.

The film-maker has been accused of acting inappropriately on the set of his self-funded sci-fi epic Megalopolis

Videos have emerged of director Francis Ford Coppola trying to kiss female extras on the set of his new film Megalopolis.

Variety obtained footage of the film-maker taken by a crew member during a nightclub scene on set last year. The Guardian had originally reported that the 85-year-old was seen as “old school” in his behaviour around women while shooting, pulling women to sit on his lap and kissing extras to get “them in the mood”.

Singer, who hasn’t performed onstage since 2020 as a result of her health, brought down the house with a breathtaking take on an Edith Piaf classic

The casual sports fans of the world endured four hours of rambling, chaotic, rainy pomp and circumstance along the Seine on Friday evening for one reason: to possibly see Céline Dion return to the stage. The 56-year-old French-Canadian singer has not performed in over four years, owing to a rare, incurable neurological disorder called stiff person syndrome. Despite struggling with uncontrollable muscle spasms extreme enough to break ribs, Dion, a true-blue born performer, promised to one day return. “If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl,” she said in her recent documentary I Am: Céline Dion. “And I won’t stop. I won’t stop.”

On a soggy Friday night in Paris, at the tail end of the Olympic opening ceremonies, Dion did more than just return – she triumphed. Bedecked in silver sparkles, accompanied by a rain-soaked piano on the steps of the Eiffel Tower, she not only sang Edith Piaf’s Hymne a l’amour – which, truly, would have been more than enough – but performed it with the gusto of someone who, by her own admission, longs to resume touring more than her fans. If you have seen the documentary, then you know it is nearly impossible to fathom the amount of medicine and therapy, on top of bottomless grit and determination, required for Dion to retake the stage, let alone be the capstone performance at Paris’s Olympics, let alone do it well, with palpable, distinctive vocal power and without seeming to miss a note. She is, as pop singer Kelly Clarkson put it on the American NBC broadcast, a “vocal athlete”.

This time Kamala Harris will be the target for the social media platforms that promote prejudice

In 2016, a historically unprecedented incident took place. And yet, barely anyone even noticed. Even years later, we’ve failed to acknowledge it or to have begun the process of understanding it. Because we still can’t even see it.

And that’s because this incident involved a woman. And she was asking for it.

Given barely any warning, many people fled with nothing as bombs fell and bullets flew around them

The evacuation order jolted Munadil Abu Younes one morning earlier this week as he scrolled on his phone reading the news. Israeli forces ordered thousands to flee, including from the area where he was sheltering. His eighth displacement was like nothing that had come before.

“Israeli forces told us about the evacuation order as they entered the area,” he said. “We barely had time to collect our things, most people fled without taking anything. During previous evacuation orders they gave us a day or two, but this time we didn’t even have half an hour.”

For Emily and her husband, Matthew, everything changed when the police knocked on the door at 6.20am one morning. Could their family survive?

Emily, 35
In the 15 years I’ve been with my husband, Matthew, I never imagined opening the front door to the police. As far as I was concerned, we had an ordinary marriage – we met at university, went travelling after graduation and returned home to build our careers. I trained in safeguarding, while he studied to be an engineer. I thought we were so lucky. Ours was a comfortable, middle-class life in an affluent English market town in the south – we enjoyed holidays and had a busy social life, with lots of friends. I’m a bit of an introvert, but my husband’s more popular – the sort who goes out of his way to help other people who might be struggling.

Most French newspapers praise the Olympics spectacle but far-right commentators reject ‘woke propaganda’

They had waited 100 years for it and the French, mostly, were determined to love their kitsch, crazy, subversive, waterborne and very rain-drenched Olympics opening ceremony. Less happy were far-right figures, who spied “wokeist” propaganda.

A thoroughly unscientific poll on the rue de Rochechouart in Paris – where the far right have never had so much as a look-in – found plenty of enthusiasm.

Caleb’s never felt attractive but after two years with Jen – and buying a book that rejected the normal sex agenda – his self-confidence is growing

Jen had been widowed, and was lonely at the time. We connected immediately

From bubble tea and corn dogs to K-pop and plushies, Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese brands have captured the pocket-money market

Ayla and Edie, both aged 12, are hanging out in Westfield Stratford City, a shopping centre next to London’s former Olympic Park, on a Saturday afternoon. They first go to T4, a Taiwanese outlet that sells bubble tea – a sweet, multicoloured cold drink with chewy, or exploding, tapioca balls at the bottom. Ayla went for a rose tea; Edie for strawberry flavour. They cost £6 each. “It is quite expensive,” says Ayla, “but I earn money from doing chores like unloading the dishwasher, hanging up the laundry.”

They head a few metres down the centre to Kenji, a gift, homeware, snack and stationery shop that describes itself as an “east Asian-influenced brand”. As a birthday present for a friend, Ayla buys a £10 “sushi cat” plushie – a squidgy stuffed animal with a pillow strapped to its back as if it were a bed of rice topped with tuna. “My friend brings in sushi to school every day. She’s really into it,” Ayla says.

The comedian, 41, talks about parents, children, her hot blonde cheerleader days and not lying about her love of money

I was an anxious child. I wanted to please everyone and do everything perfectly. My mother pretty much treated me as an equal and I had a lot of really cool feminist women to look up to. The men were not so impressive.

My childhood was very happy. My parents had full-time jobs and my dad also had golf, so my two younger sisters and I were left to our own devices a lot of the time, which was a good thing. We didn’t have screens, so we’d come up with our own little games.

My parents divorced when I was 15. It was acrimonious and they’ve never been in the same room together since. It helped me when I left the father of my eldest daughter, Violet. I knew from experience there’s a peaceful and kind way to split.

I got the message early on that the best thing you could be as a young woman was pretty, because all the female role models in my family were glamorous. But I wasn’t pretty: I was awkward and said the wrong things. So I changed gears as a teenager: I decided to become a hot blonde cheerleader who prioritised boys and partying. There were poor choices.

I have not had surgery on my face, but I think I will have a facelift in the next 10 years. I acknowledge that I am poisoned by my culture. I do still value being pretty and I do get rewarded for looking glamorous.

Biology pulled me into having two more children [with husband and former high school sweetheart Bobby Kootstra] by saying, “You’re 35. Do you want to have more kids or not?” So that’s the road I went down, but I think I’d be equally fulfilled had I continued on my previous path: Violet and I could be living in New York City. I could be on a jet right now.

My love language is intimacy. I want to tell people about my life and I want them to tell me about theirs. That’s what my comedy is about. I don’t have a choice, but to be authentic. That is what people are attracted to.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love money. It makes me feel safe and accomplished. I feel very lucky to be offered huge sums, comparatively, to go and have fun. It seems rude to say no.

Any time I’ve stuck my head above the parapet, I’ve done it unknowingly – almost. If I think something is unfair and it’s happening right in front of me, then I do what I think is right in the moment. I don’t properly consider the outcomes of things. Maybe that’s the best way to be.

I am very mentally robust. It makes me impervious to criticism. I’m not trying to anticipate how people might want me to behave. Some of that comes with age. I go to bed every night and there are no voices in my head giving me anxiety about anything, because every day I do myself as honestly proud as I can.

Battleaxe, Katherine Ryan’s new tour, will be in venues across the UK from September (livenation.co.uk)

For some owners, animals are part of the family. But for their friends and lovers, they can present a serious problem

The dog was already on the scene when Jane and her partner got together – this was a man-plus-dog package. But Jane, a Brit living in Barcelona, didn’t foresee the problems. “I’m not a dog person, but I’m not averse to them,” she says, speaking to me from Catalonia. “I innocently thought they were a cute addition to one’s life, not something that would take priority over holidays, nights out, plans to live together as a couple, or where that could be. His dog was the source of all our tensions.”

The dog – medium-sized, female, part husky, part something else – was a prickly, difficult character. She barked a lot, couldn’t be left with others, and would destroy soft furnishings, and so wasn’t welcome in Jane’s tastefully furnished apartment. “It mattered less with his crappy sofa, but I paid €2,000 for mine, I did not want it ripped to pieces.”

Tales of poor mental health are forcing change on the legal profession as recruits fight back against competitive culture, with some even abandoning the long-enshrined ambition to ‘make partner’

When Leah Steele was working as a lawyer she had a gruelling schedule – putting in as many as 50 hours in four days – and often felt anxious.

Matters came to a head in 2014 after she suffered a bereavement. She remembers constantly checking and rechecking letters, and waking up in the early hours troubled about an email she thought she had sent to a client.

Birgit, 42, an academic, meets Solomon, 44, a healthcare professional

What were you hoping for?
A fun evening with someone interesting. I chose to not think about it too much beforehand and to just let things happen.

• Brown wins individual time trial ahead of GB rider Anna Henderson
• Rain causes treacherous conditions on course around streets of Paris

Cyclist Grace Brown has won Australia’s first medal at the 2024 Olympics on the opening day of competition, taking gold with a dominant performance in the individual time trial held on the slippery city streets of a rainy Paris.

The 32-year-old completed the 32.4km course, starting close to the Eiffel Tower before a loop around the city’s east, in 39min 38secs, 1min 31sec ahead of silver medallist Anna Henderson of Great Britain and US rider Chloé Dygert in third

• World champions overcome heat to edge out South Korea
• Team GB shooters upbeat despite early elimination

The biggest threat to anybody’s medal hopes in shooting disciplines is not the exceptional talent of the Chinese. It is, instead, perspiration.

China’s glory in the 10m mixed air rifle team event was as straightforward as one could anticipate for the world champions and pre-competition favourites, Huang Yuting and Sheng Lihao. Here was the rarest of things; a Chinese Olympic success apparently free from the whiff of controversy.

Three-time grand slam winner’s opponents recall how a switch flicked and a humble teenager became a tennis great

Over the past 20 years, Andy Murray has built one of the greatest tennis careers. As he prepares to hang up his racket at the Paris Olympics, those who know him well reflect on the early days of his career and his legacy.

Jamie Murray, Andy’s elder brother and a former doubles No 1 At our tennis club, we were probably the youngest ones that were playing there. We’d always muck in with the older kids. Our mum was the club coach at the time and had a ton of junior players. Not necessarily amazing players, but it was a thriving club. There was a lot of atmosphere about the place and I think that’s where we grew to love the game.

• ‘You want to be around people who live by same values’
• Peaty second in heats; Ledecky fastest in 400m freestyle

Adam Peaty has called for a “fair game” as anti-doping concern lingered on the opening morning of swimming in Paris. After months of controversy, heated allegations and vitriolic counter-claims, sparked by anti-doping revelations involving 23 Chinese swimmers, on Saturday it was at last time for some actual action in the pool.

While the morning began without incident, politics and controversy were never far from the surface. “It’s always in the back of your mind as an athlete,” said Peaty, the three-time Olympic gold medallist, after qualifying second-fastest in the men’s 100m breaststroke heats. “You definitely want a fair game, you want to win fair and be around people who do the same and live by the same values.”

US fencing was rocked by internal strife at the Tokyo Games. The lead-up to Paris 2024 hasn’t been much better

Just when it appeared as if these Olympics couldn’t get any more scandalous, between the poison in the pool and the security issues, the fencing starts this weekend.

A fixture on the program since the 1896 Summer Games, which kicked off the modern Olympiad, fencing is the sport where old-world tradition meets new-world technology. Referees actually say “en garde” before the swordplay, and points are scored electronically to keep pace with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it touches of steel. The rules of engagement are complicated, and it’s down to the referee to determine which strikes are legal. That’s a lot of room for interpretation. And, some would have us believe, corruption.

• Eventer says Team GB squad are ‘110% behind welfare’
• ‘These horses are looked after as kings and queens’

In the heart of the Palace of Versailles, the residence built by Louis XIV, Team GB’s Tom McEwen reached for a royal analogy when the question duly came about the horse abuse scandal that has rocked his sport.

“I would invite any single one of you to come round and have a look at my yard for an hour, a week, or whatever it took,” said McEwen, who won an Olympic eventing team gold and individual silver medal in Tokyo. “What you see here is the beauty of what happens every single day at home. These horses are looked after as kings and queens.”

The Californian made enough money from his basketball career to retire in comfort. But he was called back to the sport he loved as a high schooler

When Chase Budinger was named in the US men’s beach volleyball team for the Paris Olympics, it seemed as if the selection panel had got its wires crossed.

Budinger – a tall, blond, California cliche (and in case it is unclear, his is a hard g) – isn’t just any sand-sprinkled leviathan. He’s a 36-year-old NBA retiree. Really, the 6ft 7in swingman wouldn’t look out of place among the motley crew of journeymen who carry the US basketball team through the Olympic qualifiers while the likes of LeBron James and Steph Curry are otherwise occupied. Instead, he’s poised to become a rare human who has logged minutes in the NBA and competed in the Olympics in a sport other than basketball.

The Parisian rain showed there is a good reason why Olympic opening ceremonies are held in stadiums

Avant: le deluge. There was a moment, about an hour into Paris 2024’s Grand Opening Spectacular, as the rain soaked through shoes, trousers, socks and eventually skin, hair and bone; as yet more boats of waving people chugged down the Seine, like watching an endless series of weirdly nationalistic office parties; as some men did some dancing in a place, for reasons that frankly seemed quite remote at that point, where a thought occurred.

Maybe this wasn’t just the worst Olympic opening ceremony ever. Maybe this wasn’t the worst outdoor event ever. Maybe this was the worst thing ever.

• Play gets under way at Edgbaston at 11am (BST)
• England refine Bazball approach to play smarter

Pope chops on! England lose another one early and are in some strife.

10th over: England 43-3 (Pope 6, Root 7) Seales is full and at the stumps, pinning Root on the pad in front of all three. That looks close?! Seales implores but the umpire is not having it and neither are his teammates. What do you know – the DRS shows three reds and Root would have been on his way with a review. Next ball he pounces on a half volley and drives down the ground for four.

Red Bull driver, who launched tirade at team after car underperformed and handled badly in Budapest, struggling to handle threat of resurgent McLaren team

Formula One wants gladiatorial drivers, sportspeople set apart, racing on the edge in the heat of battle, so it might be considered a little rich when the sport clutches at its pearls in distaste over Max Verstappen’s vehement swearing at last week’s Hungarian Grand Prix. It is impossible not to sense that the affront at his bad language is rather missing the point.

When Verstappen launched a tirade at his Red Bull team’s poor performance in Budapest, at one point including one “bullshit” and two “fucks” in the same breathless exposition of distaste, the team radio bleeper operative would have struggled to mash his button fast enough.

• Manchester City striker says players looked tired at Euros
• ‘I don’t think we can be sharp in every single game’

The Manchester City striker Erling Haaland has warned that players cannot be “sharp” if they are made to play 70 games a year. The Norway international has enjoyed a summer break, but some of those who were on duty in Germany struggled to reproduce their best form at the end of a long campaign.

Haaland, in New York on City’s pre-season tour, said: “We all saw in the Euros as well in general how tired people were. You could see the level, you could see even in people’s faces how tired they were of football, if you can say it that way.

• Quarterback gets market-topping deal after 20 starts
• Deal matches record for average salary at $55m a year

Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love has agreed to terms on a four-year contract extension worth $220m, a person familiar with the deal said on Friday.

Love’s new deal includes a $75m signing bonus and $155m in new guarantees.

The new deal comes after Love led the NFL’s youngest team to a 10-9 record and playoff berth last season in his first year as a starter while stepping up to the challenge of replacing four-time MVP Aaron Rodgers, who was traded to the New York Jets in April 2023.

NFL Network first reported Love’s deal. ESPN first reported the amount of the signing bonus and guaranteed money.

Reports of Love’s extension came the same day that Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa agreed on a four-year extension worth $212.4m. Detroit’s Jared Goff signed a four-year, $212m extension with $170m guaranteed, and Jacksonville’s Trevor Lawrence agreed to a five-year, $275m extension with $142m guaranteed earlier in the offseason.

Love’s extension ties him with Lawrence and Joe Burrow for the highest average paid salary ($55M) in NFL history. However, with the NFL’s salary cap booming this offseason, Love’s contract represents a smaller slice of the cap (21.5%) compared to when Burrow signed his extension with the Bengals under the terms of the old cap (25%) in 2023, according to Spotrac.

The 25-year-old Love hadn’t been practicing with the Packers in training camp this week while the contract talks were unresolved, though he had been attending workouts and was participating in all other team activities. Love’s contract had been set to expire at the end of the upcoming season.

The 2024 FA Cup winners have lost several big names but have added the Norway striker who sparkled for Brighton

Elisabeth Terland’s first taste of English football was one of sour defeat. She came on in the 84th minute to make her tournament debut at the 2022 European Championship for a hopeless Norway side who went on to lose 8-0 against England, the eventual winners, in their Group A encounter.

That humiliation took place at the Amex Stadium and, as such, Terland could have been forgiven for never wanting to step inside the venue again. Instead, however, she made it her home that summer, moving from Brann to Brighton in August 2022 and subsequently scoring 23 goals in 50 appearances for the club. Of those goals, 13 came in 22 Women’s Super League appearances last season, leading to her finishing joint-second in the race for the golden boot.

Claims that drone use was not a one-off cast doubt over Bev Priestman’s future in women’s game and team’s 2021 glory

The reputation of one of the most respected coaches in the women’s game lay in tatters on Friday after the spying scandal engulfing the Canada team led to Bev Priestman being sent home from the Paris Olympics in disgrace.

Three years ago Priestman, who is from County Durham in England, oversaw one of Canada’s proudest modern-day sporting achievements, as her side upset the odds to win a historic first gold in women’s football. Back-to-back nominations for the Best Fifa coach of the year award followed for Priestman, who had been Phil Neville’s assistant with England at the 2019 World Cup. Such was her standing in the game that, when Neville announced in April 2020 that he would leave the England head coach role, Priestman was initially installed as the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed him.

• Dutchman fears repeat of last season’s injury woes
• Leny Yoro and Joshua Zirkzee have joined this summer

Erik ten Hag is concerned that Manchester United need to “catch up on squad depth” with the manager worried that the 60-plus injuries his side suffered last season could happen again due to the load on players.

United have already signed the defender Leny Yoro and forward Joshua Zirkzee this summer. The manager is also pursuing a full-back – Bayern Munich’s Noussair Mazraoui is a target – plus a defensive midfielder, with Paris Saint-Germain’s Manuel Ugarte of interest.

• Quarterback led NFL in passing yards last season
• Deal is a record for a Dolphins player

The Miami Dolphins signed quarterback Tua Tagovailoa to a four-year contract extension valued at a franchise-record $212.4m, according to media reports on Monday.

At an average of $53.1m per year, Tagovailoa will rank third in the NFL in quarterback pay behind Jacksonville’s Trevor Lawrence and Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow. The deal includes $167m guaranteed, eighth most among quarterbacks.

ESPN first reported the extension, attributing the terms to the agency that represents Tagovailoa, Athletes First. The Dolphins did not announce the extension, though the team did post a video of Tagovailoa on social media Friday afternoon.

Tagovailoa was still playing under the contract he signed when the Dolphins made him the fifth overall selection of the 2020 draft. Tagovailoa was looking for a contract similar to those signed by Burrow and Justin Herbert, who were drafted the same year. After their rookie deals, Burrow and Herbert signed multiyear contracts in excess of $200m.

Throughout negotiations, Tagovailoa participated in the team’s offseason workouts and parts of the first few days of training camp. He was a full participant on Friday.

Tagovailoa, who sustained multiple concussions his first three NFL seasons, positioned himself for a big pay bump with an injury-free and productive 2023. He threw for 29 touchdowns and a league-best 4,624 yards.

The Dolphins reached the postseason but were eliminated in the first round by eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City, extending to 24 years Miami’s stretch without a playoff win.

The contract extension will keep Tagovailoa with Miami through 2028.

Company after company is swallowing the hype, only to be forced into embarrassing walkbacks by anti-AI backlash

Earlier this month, a popular lifestyle magazine introduced a new “fashion and lifestyle editor” to its huge social media following. “Reem”, who on first glance looked like a twentysomething woman who understood both fashion and lifestyle, was proudly announced as an “AI enhanced team member”. That is, a fake person, generated by artificial intelligence. Reem would be making product recommendations to SheerLuxe’s followers – or, to put it another way, doing what SheerLuxe would otherwise pay a person to do. The reaction was entirely predictable: outrage, followed by a hastily issued apology. One suspects Reem may not become a staple of its editorial team.

This is just the latest in a long line of walkbacks of “exciting AI projects” that have been met with fury by the people they’re meant to excite. The Prince Charles Cinema in Soho, London, cancelled a screening of an AI-written film in June, because its regulars vehemently objected. Lego was pressured to take down a series of AI-generated images it published on its website. Doctor Who started experimenting with generative AI, but quickly stopped after a wave of complaints. A company swallows the AI hype, thinks jumping on board will paint it as innovative, and entirely fails to understand the growing anti-AI sentiment taking hold among many of its customers.

On Thursday, the billionaire went on a disturbing anti-trans rant about Vivian Wilson, who legally dropped Musk’s name in 2022

Would you like to do some Muskian mathematics? Here we go: there are 24 hours in a day and even the most superhuman among us need to spend a few of those hours asleep. Elon Musk, unless he has figured out a way to clone himself, is just one person. He has at least 12 kids with multiple women. His first child tragically died as a baby and a couple of his offspring are adults now, but he has six kids under the age of five. He also runs six companies and oversees more than 130,000 people around the world. And he spends an inordinate amount of his life tweeting. Bearing this busy existence in mind, how on earth does the billionaire spend any significant amount of time with his kids?

Noisy devices are making public transport hell. But do passengers realise the pain they inflict?

Earlier in the summer I started a social experiment – one you might consider ingenious or insufferable, depending on how much you prioritise a peaceful life. It began with a fragmented journey from north to south London, during which at each section of the journey (bus, overground, bus), someone was playing content on their phone, loudly.

First there was a woman flicking impatiently through TikTok videos: four-second assaults of traditional Chinese medicine tutorials, girls pranking their boyfriends and self-help tips. The woman next to her put in her earbuds, but said nothing. Next, there was a woman listening to a nearly 20-minute long voice note from a friend out loud that all of us could hear. This is the life of the passenger in our new ambient hell.

Hannah Ewens is a freelance editor and writer, and the author of Fangirls: Scenes From Modern Music Culture

Under Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, there has been an open spigot for the settlements. This needs to end

There are two wars going on between Israelis and the Palestinians. The one with the global spotlight is of course between Israel and Hamas raging in Gaza. But, there is a second, longterm, lethal war – as Israel continues to hold on to the occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank.

No mention was made of this second war in his preening speech to the US Congress by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, but it is an ongoing battle that will determine the future of Israeli democracy along with the future of the Palestinian people.

Jo-Ann Mort is co-author of Our Hearts Invented a Place: Can Kibbutzim Survive in Today’s Israel? She writes frequently about Israel for US, UK and Israeli publications

From Berlin’s techno scene to Oktoberfest, a revolution in drinking culture is taking place, and it’s led by young people

The first cliche that comes to mind when many think of Germany is thigh-slapping oompah music, embroidered lederhosen and, above all, litre-sized mugs of beer. And Deutschland’s beer culture is best epitomised by Munich’s Oktoberfest. Millions of revellers descend on the Bavarian capital each September for 16 days of booze, bretzel and bratwurst. But it’s a cliche out of sync with modern Germany, where abstinence is on the up – and boozing is in decline.

One example is Die Null (The Zero). Before the world-famous beer festival kicks off this year on 21 September, a new alcohol-free beer garden has opened in the heart of the city, inaugurated by the mayor of Munich himself. The venue serves a variety of non-alcoholic beverages, from mocktails to alcohol-free lager.

Fate has swung wildly in her favour, with everything from the Democrat establishment to memes on her side. Will we finally see a Madam President?

A week has always been a long time in politics, but this might have been the longest week in Kamala Harris’s life. While Joe Biden is still technically the US president, he already feels irrelevant. All eyes are on Harris now. The speed with which she has gone from being one of the most unpopular vice-presidents in modern history to sitting at the top of the Democratic ticket, with an army of enthusiastic fans behind her, is astounding. Biden’s trajectory has been widely compared to a Shakespearean tragedy; Harris’s sudden reversal of fortune, meanwhile, is like something out of a fairytale.

A quick recap: Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris on Sunday. The Democratic establishment then threw its weight behind her on Monday. So did hundreds of thousands of donors; Harris’s campaign raked in a record-breaking $81m in just 24 hours. By Tuesday, she had earned enough support from delegates to win the Democratic nomination for president next month. On Wednesday, Democrats approved rules meaning that any Democrat who wants to compete against Harris for the nomination only has days to do so. Then, on Friday, Barack Obama endorsed the vice-president. Her coronation is almost complete.

Woodside’s designs on the country’s largest untapped gas basin around Scott Reef are, some say, just another example of fossil fuel companies getting their way in what has become a petrostate

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Australia’s next wave of fossil fuel expansion is planned for environments far from where most people will ever see it. Places like Scott Reef.

Once part of an interconnected coral ecosystem that rivalled the Great Barrier Reef in scale, Scott Reef now sits in a remnant group of atolls near the edge of the Australian continental shelf, nearly 300km from its sparsely populated north-west coast.

Wind turbines are among changes being considered by heir to the Duchy of Cornwall estate to tackle the climate crisis

His father thinks windfarms are a blot on the landscape, once saying he feared Britain would end up like Denmark “knee deep in these damn things”. But now Prince William is considering overturning their effective ban on royal land.

The Prince of Wales has ordered a major review of renewable energy on his 130,000-acre Duchy of Cornwall estate, which is expected to change the face of his hereditary property empire stretching across 20 counties in England.

The state’s wildfires have already torched more than 1m acres. Experts say heat, dry conditions and lightning are to blame

Oregon’s wildfire season is off to an explosive start with more than 1m acres charred in less than a month, as experts warn that extreme heat and unusual lightning strikes are creating “catastrophic conditions” for fires to ignite and spread.

The state is currently home to the largest wildfire burning in the US. By Friday afternoon, the Durkee fire had burned nearly 290,000 acres (117,000 hectares) and was only 20% contained. The fire had forced evacuations, shut down a major interstate highway and even produced its own weather system.

Defining nature as separate from people perpetuates troubled relationship with the natural world, say campaigners

It was last year, during a conference at the Eden Project, the botanic garden and conservation centre in Cornwall, that Frieda Gormley first heard the dictionary definition of nature.

The businesswoman and environmental activist was answering questions about her plans to appoint a representative of nature to the board of her company, House of Hackney, when a member of the audience read it out.

Visitors will need to pay up to €15 to stroll – and take photos – along romantic 900-metre walkway in Liguria, Italy

Stifling though the crowds of tourists can be at the height of summer, a hint of love is in the air across the five villages of Italy’s Cinque Terre as a Ligurian riviera coastal path famed as a meeting point for courting couples reopens after an almost 12-year closure.

Sculpted into the steep cliffs wedged between the villages of Riomaggiore and Manarola, the Via dell’Amore (Path of Love) had been closed since being damaged by a September 2012 landslide that injured four Australian tourists.

Research exposes flaws of older, often industry-funded studies and finds lowest mortality risk in lifelong abstainers

Humans have been drawn to the idea that alcohol may have health benefits for almost as long as they have been drinking it. In ancient China, rice wine was widely used for medicinal purposes, while Hippocrates, the ancient Greek “Father of Medicine”, advocated moderate amounts of alcohol for the mind, body and soul.

Later, proponents of the temperance movement, who urged 19th century workers to quit booze, were met with resistance by those who thought beer was necessary for good health.

Three members of group among seven people who died in Wyoming crash on Friday

Three members of the US family gospel group the Nelons have been killed in a plane crash, their management announced.

Jason Clark, Kelly Nelon Clark and their daughter Amber Kistler died on Friday while taking a flight to perform on a cruise ship.

Märtha Louise is not allowed to use her title commercially after renouncing her royal duties two years ago

A letter has claimed that the Norwegian princess Märtha Louise was more deeply involved with a gin launched to mark her forthcoming wedding than previously stated, amid growing questions over the use of her name on the bottle.

The royal, who will marry the American businessman Durek Verrett in a four-day fjord-side wedding in Geiranger, Norway, next month, is not permitted to use her princess title in commercial contexts.

Irish singer’s brother speaks of shock at ‘hideous’ figure which ‘looked nothing like her’

Dublin’s wax museum is withdrawing a figure of Sinéad O’Connor amid criticism from her family and members of the public that it looked “nothing like her”.

Many reacted with shock when the waxwork figure was unveiled on Thursday.

VP nominee pushed baseless warning in 2022 that George Soros would pack planes of Black women to get abortions

JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, promoted a baseless rightwing talking point in 2022 when he warned of George Soros-funded planes transporting Black women across state lines for abortions.

“I’m sympathetic to the view that like, okay, look here, here’s a situation – let’s say Roe v Wade is overruled,” Vance said in a recently resurfaced podcast interview. “Ohio bans abortion in 2022, or let’s say 2024. And then, you know, every day George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California. And of course, the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity – uh, that’s kind of creepy.”

MPs and candidates who faced abuse discuss polling station buffer zones and action to tackle social media

• ‘Constant abuse’: three UK candidates on their election experience

MPs and candidates who faced abuse on the campaign trail have pressed ministers to act over intimidation around polling stations and via social media algorithms that push incendiary material.

Half a dozen MPs and candidates attended a roundtable meeting with Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, Dan Jarvis, the security minister, and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, on Wednesday.

Kai McKenzie, 23, expresses gratitude for outpouring of support in first public comments after attack by ‘biggest shark I’ve ever seen’

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An Australian surfer whose leg was bitten off by a shark has promised he’ll be “back in that water in no time” as he recovers from surgery.

Kai McKenzie, 23, was surfing off North Shore beach on the mid-north coast of New South Wales on Tuesday morning when a suspected three-metre great white shark bit him.

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US announces arrest of two leaders of organised crime group as Mexican authorities say they were in the dark

The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has called for “transparency” after the sudden and secretive arrests by US authorities of two top leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful organised crime groups.

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, 76, founded the Sinaloa cartel with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, and has been a top target of US law enforcement for decades, with a $15m bounty on his head.

Rico Krieger admits role in Ukrainian plot and pleads for German chancellor to save him during broadcast

A German man sentenced to death in Belarus has appeared on state television in the country, in tears and begging the German government to intervene in his case.

“Mr Scholz, please, I am still alive … it is not yet too late,” said Rico Krieger, who was pictured handcuffed inside a cell, appealing to the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

From a rugby great to a former MP, LGBTQ stars spill the beans on the shows, songs and films that made them understand their identity

Bronski Beat – Smalltown Boy

His spy series became the TV hit Slow Horses, and now his earlier novels are being adapted for screen, starring Emma Thompson. Mick Herron talks about finding recognition

“Let me guess,” says a woman exiting a private detective’s office and finding another one coming in. “You’ve got a husband, he’s got a secretary. Am I getting warm?” So far, so Raymond Chandler, and, indeed, Zoë Boehm, first glimpsed storming out of a row with her husband, fellow gumshoe Joe Silverman, has more than a touch of hard-boiled noir about her: sardonic eyes and laughter lines, cigarette jammed into mouth, a handbag from whose depths she can produce not only vodka but a small silver gun. “I read once that you should take salt on a long journey,” she later declares. “To liven up what you catch and eat.”

But Zoë is not in the canyons and boulevards of Philip Marlowe’s Los Angeles, she is in pre-millennial Oxford, the setting for Mick Herron’s first novel, Down Cemetery Road, now being reissued and adapted by Apple TV+, the makers of the award-winning Slow Horses series. Emma Thompson will play Zoë, with Ruth Wilson taking the role of Sarah Tucker, a woman whose problem is not her husband’s secretary, but the fact that one of her neighbour’s houses has just been blown up. There are four Boehm books, all to make a reappearance, providing plenty for the screenwriters to get their teeth into.

Female comics will confront body dysmorphia by turning the mirror on themselves and then back on society

Solo performers on Edinburgh’s fringe are jointly confronting one of the most personally undermining ailments – body dysmorphia. Next weekend a range of female comedians – from self-confessed users of weight-loss drugs, to obsessive dieters and serial cosmetic surgery customers – will be fighting back against the damage caused by the pressure to look thin. In a string of shows they will turn the mirror first on themselves and then on wider society.

“Like many people, I thought life would start when I got to the right weight. Then you lose weight and think, how come I still don’t feel right?” said Michelle Shaughnessy, 40, an acclaimed Canadian comic who has written an unflinching new show, Too Late, Baby, revealing her reliance on semaglutide, the controversial weight-loss drug. “I never wanted to talk about it at my age. I thought, people are going to think it is a younger woman’s issue, and that I should have bigger things on my mind. But I still can’t get a handle on this.”

Royal Opera House, London
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe deliver hits and new songs with their trademark bittersweet ambivalence, theatrical staging and imperviousness to fashion

“We could make five times more money playing the O2 arena for one night,” Pet Shop Boys’ singer Neil Tennant mused to an interviewer in April, on the decision to play five nights at London’s Royal Opera House. They eschewed the opportunity in favour of this intimate, refined space to stage Dreamworld – the duo’s ongoing greatest hits tour. It’s a set that covers much hallowed pop ground but finds space for deep cuts and the band’s latest output as well.

This is the third time Pet Shop Boys have played an Opera House residency; the venue suits them. Both institutions are long-lived bastions of aesthetic sophistication and mannered feeling in a rapidly changing world. When not making sleek pop that marries the frictionless glide of Kraftwerk and the controlled release of New Order with Tennant’s cool-eyed aperçus, the Boys score ballets and films. There is a grand gesturing to many of their synth chord progressions that chimes with the red velvet upholstery.

Nearly a century after it was first published, Ex‑Wife remains relevant and scathing, writes the Really Good, Actually author

Late in the novel Ex-Wife, a pair of newlyweds turned sudden divorcees gather for a final dinner. Peter and Patricia are both somewhat battle-worn: after their lopsided open marriage came to drunken blows, Peter took up with a series of other women and moved out, while Patricia refused to formally divorce him. Unkind words were exchanged, and each had a habit of drunk dialling the other and suggesting doomed lunches or even more doomed sex. Someone was thrown through a glass door. Now, things are calmer. After a few wistful remarks and rather more Tom Collinses than is prudent, it’s time for Peter to call his former wife a taxi. As he leaves the room he pleads: “For God’s sake, think of something flippant for your parting speech, darling. I have thought of mine.” When he returns, both their efforts falter (having the last word is not always the pleasure it’s made out to be). But perhaps this is inevitable: how to sum up the end of a marriage?

One of the many successes of the book is that it doesn’t really try. Patricia, its narrator, equivocates and changes her mind, doubts herself and tells different versions of her partnership and its ending to different audiences for different reasons. The result is a moving, funny and at times disquieting portrait of a woman shocked by the end of something she thought would last for ever. Reading Ex-Wife as one myself, I was struck by our similarity of experience, despite the nearly 100 years separating Patricia’s divorce and mine. Here were the familiar flailing efforts at self-improvement, the disastrous dates repackaged as fun anecdotes for friends with fiances, the expensive facials one cannot really afford, the histrionic tirades about how Love is Irrevocably Broken. Among the alarmingly relatable humiliations and miseries, there were familiar triumphs, too: a near-manic night on the town with a fellow single friend, a perfectly timed comeback in an imagined argument, a flicker of self-belief on the walk home, those early flirtations that gesture at the possibility that another human being might one day desire and even love you.

The jeopardy of a zombie show is surely whether the characters get bitten to death or not – but somehow the stars manage to survive endlessly. Will the spinoffs ever cease?

Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there. You just caught me writing a script for AMC’s mega-franchise The Walking Dead, which finally finished in 2022 after 177 episodes and has now splintered into a number of spin-off shows which are basically just the same. I’ve got the most obvious thing in there early (a scene where someone desperately tugs on another character’s arm and goes: “Please, we have to go!” while a mass of zombies get closer and closer to pushing the door down), so just need to pad out the other 55 minutes.

What else? Oh, of course: I need someone to get bitten by a zombie and slowly transform into a zombie but the person who has to kill them is also their brother or sister or wife, so they dilly-dally and either they do kill them in the end but become a shell of a person afterwards – or they mess about so long that they also get bitten by a zombie and die. Got to have an adult having an unbearable conversation with a child, obviously. A scene where a man gets a rifle out of the flatbed of a truck and goes: “No, you stay here – it’s safer,” before messing up their mission in a way where a second person could have been really helpful. A rumour about another city actually being safe, someone’s lost their husband and can’t find them, and the group taking refuge in a building you wouldn’t expect them to take refuge in. Right, that’s 60 pages. AMC, I’ll send you an invoice.

In this exclusive extract from her new book, Dinner, our star food writer reveals what she really cooks at home, from family meals to feeding a crowd

I’m flabbergasted to tell you that this month marks my seventh year of writing the New Vegan column. That’s a total of 348 recipes (or just 17 short of one for every day of the year). It’s taken a lot of vegetable peelings, sweat and tears to get here, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that plant-based cooking has been anything but a limit on my creativity, and that the fire in my belly for writing new recipes has often been sparked by your support. As a “thank you” for coming along for the ride, here are eight exclusive recipes from my new book, Dinner, which is published on 1 August.

The model and musician on wanting to be a spy, a brush with gun violence, and the pleasure of fishfingers with ketchup

Born in London, Guinness, 56, married at 19, moved to Switzerland and had three children. She went on to work as a model, fashion writer and muse to Alexander McQueen and Karl Lagerfeld. In 2011, she created a show from her own archive for the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She began recording music in 2011 and, this summer, released her fourth album, Sleep. Divorced, she lives in London.

When were you happiest?
I am often happiest on a shoot with David LaChapelle, being pushed to the extremes – either suspended from a harness or immersed in a tank of water. He calls it “extreme modelling”.

Blue walls, green ceilings… Inside the colourful home of a creative couple

Danielle Taylor, an Illinois native, moved into her top-floor Chicago apartment in 2020. When she and her then boyfriend, writer-director Curtis Taylor Jr, saw the building, it reminded them of something out of a Harry Potter film. Period features recalled Old Chicago with crown mouldings, hardwood doors and a quaint foyer exuding charm. “The apartment has beautiful bay windows, a spacious floor plan and plenty of natural light,” explains Danielle, a sustainability marketing executive. “There were built-in bookshelves and an archway separating the small galley kitchen and the dining area.” A combination of interesting elements made it feel magical, propelling the couple to secure the lease.

The building is in Hyde Park, which is a historically black neighbourhood in Chicago that’s become increasingly diverse. Despite being only an hour away from where Danielle was raised, it was a world apart. “I grew up in a predominantly white neighbourhood and when I moved here, I wanted to immerse myself in black culture.” It’s where Curtis co-owned a concept store called The Greens, which Danielle managed. It also doubled up as an art curation space, where they hosted exhibitions and talks and built up relationships with artists.

The former sprinter and athletics coach and his daughter on their close relationship and fiery debates

Born in Jamaica in 1960, Linford Christie is a former sprinter and athletics coach. He spent his childhood near Kingston, before moving to west London aged seven. During the late 1980s and 90s, Christie became the UK’s most celebrated athlete; the only British man to win successive golds at the Olympic Games, World Championships, European Championships and Commonwealth Games. Retiring in 1997, Christie devoted his time to his sports management company, Nuff Respect. He lives in Buckinghamshire with his partner and two of his children; his son Kian, and his eldest daughter, Briannah, who is in her final year studying law. The documentary Linford is on iPlayer.

Just back from Spain, my wife has decided that a new dog will give the old one a new lease of life

While we were away, the middle one took the dog to its grooming appointment. When the dog returned shorn, the cat concluded, not for the first time, that this was a different dog altogether, and spent the next 24 hours living in a tree.

“But then it was fine,” the middle one says, the day after we get back.

We want to hear from people in parts of Europe that are experiencing high temperatures

Though the summer has only just begun, parts of southern Europe are already experiencing scorching temperatures, with Greece recording its earliest ever heatwave last week.

Extreme heat can pose serious health risks, especially for babies, children, pregnant women and elderly people.

We want to hear from people about how they’re affected by soaring temperatures and the creative ways they stay cool

Americans are bracing for another sweltering summer, with millions currently under heat advisories.

Heat is the deadliest weather phenomenon, with the US recording about 11,000 heat-related deaths and 120,000 emergency room visits last year. As temperatures soar, air conditioning and electrical grids can’t always keep up.

We’d like to hear how people are experiencing travel disruptions ahead of the Olympic Games in Paris

France’s high-speed rail network has been hit by coordinated “malicious acts” including arson attacks that have brought major disruption to many of the country’s busiest rail lines hours before the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

Eurostar journeys are also affected, with eighteen Eurostar trains due to run between London and Paris, but an unknown number having been cancelled. Travellers from London to Paris face 90-minute delays and train cancellations on the day of the Olympic Games opening ceremony.

If you’ve come to regret your past brow decisions, we would like to hear about it

Over the last couple of decades, brows have been big news the world of beauty – but shapes and styles have shifted dramatically. Now, TikTokkers are sharing throwback photos of what the internet has dubbed #eyebrowblindness – an apparent inability to see how terrible certain brow trends looked at the time.

Have you experienced so-called “eyebrow blindness”? Perhaps you over-plucked in the nineties, or opted for the super-heavy “slug” brows of the 2010’s? If you’ve come to regret your past brow decisions, we’d love to hear about it – and see your photos! – below.

She’s had death threats, seen her friend and fellow MP murdered, and has just survived a bruising election campaign. So what drives her?

• ‘I’ve intervened in environments that would make the toughest men cry’: read an extract from Jess Phillips’ latest book

The pub is empty when we arrive. “Can you fit us in?” Jess Phillips asks the barman, followed by the familiar smirk. She can’t help herself. Phillips has never been your regular MP. She’s a warm, wise-cracking, potty-mouthed, deeply serious showoff. She’s political Marmite. Lots of people love her, while a fair few hate her with a passion. At least half a dozen men have been convicted of abuse, death and rape threats.

She orders half a lager, then mocks herself for being such a wuss. “Half a lager!” she parrots, as if she can’t quite believe that it’s come to this. But Phillips is exhausted. It’s six days since the most remarkable British general election in decades, with Labour transforming the 2019 trouncing into a landslide victory. On a night of memorable moments (the unseating of Liz Truss, Jeremy Corbyn winning as an independent, Nigel Farage becoming an MP at his eighth attempt, and on it goes), the most memorable might well belong to Phillips – and not in a good way. She had started the day with a majority of 10,659 and only just held on to her Birmingham Yardley seat by 693 votes, with George Galloway’s Workers party of Great Britain, standing on a pro-Palestine platform, finishing a close second. When she began her victory speech, she was heckled by Workers party supporters. She looked both distraught and furious.

A secret legal battle between the media mogul and his children is evoking parallels with his TV counterpart

• This article contains spoilers for the HBO series Succession

Rupert Murdoch is reportedly in a secret legal battle with his four eldest children over the future of his media empire, in a turn of events that has sparked comparisons with the battles of the Roy family in the hit HBO drama Succession.

According to sealed court documents seen by the New York Times, Murdoch, 93, is arguing that his eldest son, Lachlan, should have sole control of the family’s investments in a move that would in effect freeze out his other children – James, Elisabeth and Prudence.

Changes include converting Bentleys to run on biofuels but helicopter use shows difficulties in balancing priorities

A pair of gas-guzzling Bentleys are not the most obvious candidates to burnish the monarch’s green credentials. But news that King Charles is converting his chauffeur-driven luxury vehicles to run on biofuels was this week billed as a small step in a bigger plan to reduce emissions – perhaps the equivalent of lesser mortals separating paper from plastic in the weekly rubbish.

“The two existing state Bentleys will undergo refurbishment in the coming year to enable them to run on biofuel,” said Sir Michael Stevens, the keeper of the privy purse, adding that it was an interim measure in advance of “the next generation of state vehicles being fully electrified” and part of a “wider plan to make a significant impact on our carbon emissions in the years ahead”.

As Llama 3.1 405B is made freely available, investors are asking when the huge industry spend will pay off

Spending on artificial intelligence could hit a staggering $1tn, according to analysts concerned about whether there will be a return on such a spree. Mark Zuckerberg’s answer this week to such jitters was to release his latest AI system for free.

Meta’s Llama 3.1 405B is its most powerful yet, it says, and one of the most capable in the world. While the tech company didn’t disclose how much it cost to train, Zuckerberg, its co-founder and chief executive, has previously disclosed a $10.5bn (£8.9bn) investment in just the chips required to power its AI data centres – with the rest of the electronics, the electricity itself, and the physical building an additional cost on top of that.

Louisiana’s Elizabeth Francis, ‘America’s grandmother’, was born before women could vote and has seen two world wars

The oldest person in the US offers two bits of advice when asked for the keys to her longevity: “If the good Lord gave it to you, use it” and “Speak your mind, don’t bite your tongue!”

Elizabeth Francis’s pearls of wisdom were recirculated widely as she celebrated her 115th birthday on Thursday. The milestone cemented her place as the world’s fourth-oldest living person, according to the LongeviQuest website, an authority on supercentenarians, or those who are 110 or older.

A set of cunning quizzes from the former Only Connect champion and the author of The Cryptic Pub Quiz Book. You might need a pen and paper …

The eight answers in this round form a palindrome. That is to say, if the answers are seen collectively as a single string of letters (disregarding spaces, punctuation and capitalisation), it will read the same forwards and backwards.

Bombing forced Hazem Rahma to flee Gaza City with the children in his care. But the attacks continue – and there are more and more children to look after

Hazem Rahma, 39, is a director at Mubarrat Al Rehmat orphanage in Gaza City.

What was your life like before 7 October?
I’m from Rimal, in Gaza City. My wife and I have worked at the orphanage since 2010. Before the war, we had 22 children. Most of them have no traceable family and many are disabled. They usually come to us at birth from hospitals because their families can’t afford to take care of them. Five of our wards are girls who are over 18, but since they have no families they stay with us.

The director, along with his collaborator Chrystabell explain – or try to – their new album Cellophane Memories and the magical marriage of music and film

‘Where we’re from,” says The Man from the Other Place in David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks, “there’s always music in the air.” The line concerns a terrifying alternate reality called the Black Lodge, but could apply to the whole of Lynch’s surrealist cinematic universe. From industrial drones to soaring ballads, it has always been filled with music: think of Roy Orbison songs shattering reality in Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, or Julee Cruise’s spectral singing in Twin Peaks. “Cinema is sound and picture both – 50/50 really,” Lynch says. “I don’t know why everyone doesn’t think this way.”

Lynch has long made his own music, dating back to 1977 with his soundtrack for his debut feature film Eraserhead, composed with sound designer Alan Splet. Lynch gave his first vocal performance on Ghost of Love, a song for 2006’s Inland Empire in a spine-chilling croon, and has since released two solo LPs. Now, his new album Cellophane Memories, made with longtime collaborator Chrystabell, is another strange adventure in sound: an album of ghosts, fed by several of the long, devoted creative partnerships that have shaped Lynch’s remarkable 78 years.

In the 1970s, David Duke was grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. In the 80s, he was elected to Louisiana’s house of representatives – and the kinds of ideas he stood for have not gone away

On 21 January 1989, the day after George HW Bush’s inauguration, David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, a neo-Nazi, and the head of an organisation called the National Association for the Advancement of White People, finished first in an open primary for the 81st legislative district of the Louisiana house of representatives. Running as a Republican, he came out ahead of the state party’s preferred candidate, John Treen. Republican National Committee staff members went to Louisiana to bolster Treen’s faltering campaign and work against Duke. “We will do anything to defeat this man,” the Bush campaign manager and then RNC chief Lee Atwater declared to the Wall Street Journal.

The former and current Republican presidents endorsed Duke’s opponent and made advertisements on his behalf, to little avail: Duke would go on to win the runoff vote a month later and enter the state legislature. Over the next three years, Duke would aspire to higher and higher office. These subsequent campaigns, unsuccessful though they were, garnered Duke an ever-expanding platform for himself and his cause, bedevilled the establishment, and suggested deep structural failures in American society and its political system. But how did Duke, previously an abject failure in personal and political life, come to defy the direction of his chosen party and represent the crack-up of an old order?

Victoria Pendleton is one of Britain’s greatest ever athletes, but has often felt like a failure and fraud. She tells Simon Hattenstone about her Olympic golds, the misery that came with them, and the joy she has found since she retired. And Twisters is the tornado blockbuster that almost has it all. But its two hot stars – Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones – avoid a climactic smooch. Is Steven Spielberg to blame?

I was once Ireland’s No 1 player, and tried for years to climb the global ranks. But life at the bottom of the top can be brutal. By Conor Niland

Kamala Harris enjoyed a brief period of excitement as Democrats rallied behind her presidential bid ahead of November’s election. Only a few days in, however, she is being asked questions over her stance on Israel and the war in Gaza.

With fewer than 100 days left, Joan Greve speaks to the former adviser to Barack Obama and co-host of Pod Save The World, Ben Rhodes, about the state of play for November 2024

Archive: CBS, CNN, Al Jazeera, PBS Newshour, Dawn News

Mina Smallman’s world fell apart after the murder of her two daughters. Then came a shocking revelation about the police’s behaviour. She explains how she found the strength to fight back

Mina Smallman’s life has not been an easy one but she could always find hope somewhere. The first female archdeacon from an ethnic minority background she was brought up, she says, in “poverty and chaos”. But as a young single parent she went back to school and became a teacher, looking for sparks of potential in even the most unpromising children.

She met her husband Chris, and had a wonderfully happy family life with her three daughters until one day when everything changed. Two of her adult daughters had been celebrating a birthday together but never came home. The police did not go to look for them so their friends and family did – only to find they had been killed. Mina says, for the first time, she felt robbed of hope.

This week, Chanté sits down with pop culture writer and Strictly Come Dancing fan Michael Hogan to discuss the latest Strictly scandal and why the show is such a big deal in the UK

Archive: BBC One, BBC News, Youtube (James Acaster) Tik Tok (mxwlch03, eveningstandard, metro, dailymail) X (RNCResearch, ryanlong03), ‘The Bear’ (Disney), ‘Dance Moms’ (Lifetime), Channel 4 News

A series of super tusker elephant killings has sparked a bitter international battle over trophy hunting and its controversial, often-counterintuitive role in conservation. Biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston speaks to Amy Dickman, professor of wildlife conservation at the University of Oxford, about why this debate has become so divisive, and the complexities of allowing killing in conservation

Trophy hunter killings spark fierce battle over the future of super tusker elephants

Keir Starmer has suspended seven of his MPs who rebelled against the whip to scrap the two-child benefit cap. So why won’t Labour scrap the controversial limit, and what does this first test of Starmer’s leadership tell us about the party’s financial position? The Guardian’s John Harris is joined by columnist Gaby Hinsliff and former Downing Street chief of staff and Conservative peer Gavin Barwell to discuss the issue. Plus, the Conservative leadership race begins

One person was killed and another injured after a firework factory exploded in Bulgaria. The explosion took place on Thursday evening in the town of Elin Pelin near the capital, Sofia, sending mushroom clouds into the evening sky, some flecked with the reds and whites of exploding fireworks. The interior minister, Kalin Stoyanov, said a 49-year-old man died of injuries sustained in the fire and his 20-year-old daughter was in critical condition in hospital. Two men, a 22-year-old son of the warehouse owner and a 60-year-old employee, were believed to have been in the warehouse and remained unaccounted for, he said

• One person dead and another injured in Bulgarian firework factory explosion

Sierra Leone is facing a drug abuse epidemic with young people becoming addicted to ‘kush’ – a deadly cocktail containing chemicals and even human bones. The government has announced a crackdown on kush and called the crisis a national emergency as people are dying from its use, though the exact numbers are unknown. While police raid drug dens, the government burns confiscated drugs, and desperate families turn to the help of ‘kush healers’ who put users in chains. Our reporter Saidu Bah asks: can the spread of kush be stopped?

Displaced civilians have been sleeping on streets and outside hospitals after the Israeli military ordered Palestinians to leave several neighbourhoods, including areas designated by the military as part of a humanitarian zone.

The military launched another attack on the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, killing at least 70 people on Monday, according to medics. Palestinian civil defence in the territory estimated that 400,000 people sheltering there were affected by the order, which included the eastern part of al-Mawasi, a sandy strip of land without infrastructure where Palestinians have sought shelter in tent encampments in recent months

• Scores killed in Israeli attacks, medics say, after IDF orders evacuation of Gaza humanitarian zone

• Middle East crisis: latest updates

Joe Biden has announced he will no longer be seeking reelection as US president. When he leaves office on 20 January 2025, it will mark the end of a political career spanning more than 50 years. At the age of 30, he was one of the youngest senators in the country's history

• The tragedy and resilience of Joe Biden: a look back at a life in politics

• Biden’s selfless decision to drop out sets stage for an entirely different election

Joe Biden has withdrawn from the race for the US presidency, an extraordinary decision upending American politics, that plunges the Democratic nomination into uncertainty just months before the November election against Donald Trump, a candidate he has warned is an existential threat to US democracy. Biden thanked the vice-president, Kamala Harris, in a letter announcing his decision, and later endorsed her as the Democratic nominee for president in a tweet.

In this video the Guardian US's politics correspondent, Lauren Gambino, explains why Biden has ultimately decided to step aside

• The tragedy and resilience of Joe Biden: a look back at a life in politics

• Joe Biden endorses Kamala Harris for Democratic nomination; Trump claims Biden ‘not fit to serve’ – live

Less than a week after a failed assassination attempt, Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Milwaukee. But supposed nods to national unity gave way to partisan falsehoods, as the former president was anointed at a moment of national crisis. Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone go behind the scenes at the RNC

When the Afghan Taliban ceased production of heroin, global supplies were depleted, with new, powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl and nitazenes flooding in to fill the vacuum. With overdoses creeping up and very little on-the-spot testing available in the UK, experts are concerned about how to keep drug users safe. The Guardian visited Copenhagen to see how the Danish approach to problematic drug treatment differs from the UK and asks, with a new safe injection room set to open in Glasgow this summer, whether we might have something to learn from our continental neighbours

Fertility tourism is booming for single Chinese women with hopes of future motherhood. China's birthrate is at a record low, yet unmarried women are not legally allowed to freeze their eggs there. We meet Lei and Abu, as they travel to the US for the procedure, battling self-doubt and scepticism along the way. What does this mean for womanhood and parenting in modern China?

Ban Khun Samut Chin, a coastal village in Samut Prakan province, Thailand, has been slowly swallowed by the sea over the past few decades. This has led to the relocation of the school and many homes, resulting in a dwindling population. Currently, there are only four students attending the school, often leaving just one in each classroom. The village has experienced severe coastal erosion, causing 1.1-2km (0.5-1.2 miles) of shoreline to disappear since the mid-1950s

On a non-stop road and rail trip, John Harris and John Domokos go from Rishi Sunak's well to-do seat in Yorkshire via County Durham and Lanarkshire to arrive amidst the new-town community spirit of Milton Keynes on election day. Everywhere people are holding places together: will a victorious Labour party soak up those vibes?

Musicians, farmers, actors and restaurateurs all feature in the best original photographs from the Observer commissioned in July 2024

For the twin photographers, this spontaneous shot captures the timeless pleasures of a day by the sea

‘Coney Island beach and boardwalk is such an iconic fixture in so many people’s New York summers,” Mariel Tyler says of the location of this iPhone photograph. She and her twin sister, Katherine, make up the Tyler Twins, professional photographers who specialise in celebrity portraits, events and concerts. Past subjects include Jay-Z, Whoopi Goldberg and Lady Gaga.

Mariel took this image in 2015. “Normally when we shoot professionally, we pass the camera back and forth. Whoever is not shooting is directing. We rarely remember, or care, who took what shot. It’s always a joint effort,” Mariel says. “This shot was entirely spontaneous. The work I do with my sister often has to be more thought out, so it’s nice to shoot without expectations sometimes. On this occasion, Katherine was on a work trip in LA but, ironically, had taken photos of Santa Monica pier earlier that day.”

Wildfires in California, Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, Israeli bombardment in Gaza and Snoop Dogg at the Paris Olympics: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

• Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

From a four-storey Victorian property on a hillside to a Grade II-listed Georgian home moments from the beach